ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS

Although the evolution of high-rise buildings counts the second centenary, there is no overall criterion used to characterize them. Different are the reasons of their origin and evolution (in view of urbanism, heritage preservation, etc.) in various countries. As a result of analising building code attitudes in some countries and literature sources, in this paper we try to propose a criterion of defining high-rise buildings. The paper also analyses the reasons of their uprise in diferent continents and evolution peculiarities as well as differences in architectural-planning solutions of these buildings in different world cities and their influence on urban development.