Definition

Week 12 (2 hours)

Texts: “Modern development. Australia”

Grammar: THE COMPOUND SENTENCE AND THE COMPLEX SENTENCE

Listening and discussion: Text “Space heating”

Text:

“Modern development. Australia”

High-rise living in Australia was limited to small pockets of bohemian inner Sydney until the 1960s, where a short-lived fashion saw public housing tenants located in new high-rise developments, especially in Sydney and Melbourne. Due to the stigma these enormous and impersonal developments gained, high-rise living fell out of favour until a new wave of developments aimed at the affluent inner urban middle class began from the 1970s onwards. Developers have enthusiastically adopted the term 'apartment' for these new high-rise blocks, perhaps to avoid the stigma still attached to housing commission flats.

Definition

Although there is no precise definition that is universally accepted, various bodies have tried to define what 'high-rise' means:

• Emporis Standards defines a high-rise as "A multi-story structure between 35-100 meters tall, or a building of unknown height from 12-39 floors."
• According to the building code of Hyderabad, India, a high-rise building is one with four floors or more or one 15 meters or more in height.
• The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines a high-rise as "a building having many stories".
• The International Conference on Fire Safety in High-Rise Buildings defined a high-rise as "any structure where the height can have a serious impact on evacuation"

Massachusetts, United States General Laws define a high-rise as being higher than 70 feet (21 m).

Most building engineers, inspectors, architects and similar professions define a high-rise as a building that is at least 75 feet (23 m) tall.