Reporting standards for building heights in Ottawa

[Harley613]

Rocketphish, can we please reopen the dialogue about building heights? The international standard is to architectural tip. Every city on Earth that has a wiki for building heights measures by architectural tip. The CTBUH standards are to architectural tip. The elevations clearly show 72m to the top of the mechanical penthouse. I don't know why you have to trigger my clinical OCD like this

Edit: even SSP's own diagrams section show architectural tip. I could be wrong, but I believe every single page for every region and section on SSP registers height to architectural tip.

[vtecyo]

Originally Posted by Harley613

Rocketphish, can we please reopen the dialogue about building heights? The international standard is to architectural tip. Every city on Earth that has a wiki for building heights measures by architectural tip. The CTBUH standards are to architectural tip. The elevations clearly show 72m to the top of the mechanical penthouse. I don't know why you have to trigger my clinical OCD like this

Edit: even SSP's own diagrams section show architectural tip. I could be wrong, but I believe every single page for every region and section on SSP registers height to architectural tip.

Wait - are the building heights in the Ottawa forum titles all lower than the real height?

If so - I vote for showing the actual height above grade.

It's one thing to leave out the underground levels in the floor count, since they're invisible to the public, but not to arbitrarily leave off some of the height above ground.

What if there are two buildings of the exact same physical height (say 100m):
- building A has a penthouse apartment and mechanical penthouse on the top floor - so we list it as 100m - since there's an occupied floor
- but building B only has a mechanical penthouse at the top - do we we list that as 95m (or minus whatever the top level height is)?

That wouldn't make any sense...

[originalmuffins]

Originally Posted by vtecyo

Wait - are the building heights in the Ottawa forum titles all lower than the real height?

If so - I vote for showing the actual height above grade.

It's one thing to leave out the underground levels in the floor count, since they're invisible to the public, but not to arbitrarily leave off some of the height above ground.

What if there are two buildings of the exact same physical height (say 100m):
- building A has a penthouse apartment and mechanical penthouse on the top floor - so we list it as 100m - since there's an occupied floor
- but building B only has a mechanical penthouse at the top - do we we list that as 95m (or minus whatever the top level height is)?

That wouldn't make any sense...

As per Harley, yes we don't record up to the architectural tip. I agree with Harley and you on this, would be better because our towers are recorded as smaller as they are. CN Tower is recorded to the tip.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Harley613

Rocketphish, can we please reopen the dialogue about building heights? The international standard is to architectural tip. Every city on Earth that has a wiki for building heights measures by architectural tip. The CTBUH standards are to architectural tip. The elevations clearly show 72m to the top of the mechanical penthouse. I don't know why you have to trigger my clinical OCD like this

Edit: even SSP's own diagrams section show architectural tip. I could be wrong, but I believe every single page for every region and section on SSP registers height to architectural tip.

The CTBUH has 3 standards (tip, top, occupied floor).

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The CTBUH has 3 standards (tip, top, occupied floor).

Architectural Tip is the CTBUH standard that is used on building wikis, other forums on ssp, ssp diagrams, the industry, virtually any list of tall buildings anywhere on the internet, encyclopedias, coffee table books...you name it.

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by Harley613

Rocketphish, can we please reopen the dialogue about building heights? The international standard is to architectural tip. Every city on Earth that has a wiki for building heights measures by architectural tip. The CTBUH standards are to architectural tip. The elevations clearly show 72m to the top of the mechanical penthouse. I don't know why you have to trigger my clinical OCD like this

Edit: even SSP's own diagrams section show architectural tip. I could be wrong, but I believe every single page for every region and section on SSP registers height to architectural tip.

Interesting... I would have thought that OCD-folks would prefer consistency to haphazard data presentation?

If you can convince the City of Ottawa Planning Department to require proponents to state the CTBUH "architectural tip" measurement in their Planning Rationales or Elevations, then we wouldn't have a debate on our hands. But they don't. It's not a requirement.

Having spent hundreds of hours reading and posting quite a few City of Ottawa development proposals, I can confidently say that what they do require is the "maximum building height" in the statement of zoning compliance, which seems to be a measurement to the top of the roof, without any mechanical penthouse or other permitted projections, and so that's all we have to use as a known and consistent measurement. Yes, some buildings do depict the absolute height in their elevations, but most don't. In the case of buildings that do not seek a variance for the height, sometimes they don't even state the actual height at all, other than a floor count.

Now, I'm not the boss here, but the issue for me is that in the Ottawa-Gatineau forum, we report on a variety of building proposals, from low-rise infills to mid-rise projects, and from commercial warehouses to residential and office towers. We scour the development proposal documentation and extract a consistent set of data so that we can assess proposals throughout our region against each other. Having some thread titles display one height standard and others another standard is just poor information management, IMO.

I'm not really concerned about how Ottawa/Gatineau buildings compare to other municipalities, who may have different standards for their planning documentation. This is an Ottawa-Gatineau forum where we've been pretty consistently reporting the City's notion of building height in thread titles for over a decade. Luckily, for inter-city comparisons of tall buildings we have people like you who maintain those wikis, and I'm not disputing how you should record the heights there. By all means use the architectural tip, if you can determine that measurement. That's awesome, and it is more useful for tall buildings comparisons. And of course there's nothing wrong with posting this measurement to our thread if we know it.

If I haven't convinced you that we can't accurately and consistently determine and record the "architectural tip" measurement for all buildings in Ottawa/Gatineau, then we'll just have to agree to disagree on this.



Here's the thread title format I've been using:

<Street address, with street type in short-form> | <City of Ottawa recognized building height>m | <City of Ottawa recognized floor count>f | <Project status>

Where:
"Street address" may be preceded by the City name, in square brackets, if it's not Ottawa. eg. [Gatineau].
"Street address" may be preceded by the building name, if known, and then the street address follows, in square brackets.
Recognized building height is rounded up to the nearest meter.
Recognized floor count may not include rooftop amenity spaces, if this isn't included in the proposal's reported count.
"Project status" = One of Proposed|Demolition|Site prep|U/C|Completed. Usually.

[J.OT13]

Compromise, could we list both?

[waterloowarrior]

For the threads I've made or updated in the past, I looked at the elevations and documents and added the mechanical penthouse or other projection manually to the total height if that data was available. If not, than the listed height is the next best thing (similar to the SSP database).

The problem with zoning height is that it's not a real number, it varies depending on the roof type and excludes certain projections but might include others.
https://twitter.com/g_meslin/status/1632848278453723142

[acottawa]

Is information about spires and other decorative features even readily available for most projects that have threads?

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

For the threads I've made or updated in the past, I looked at the elevations and documents and added the mechanical penthouse or other projection manually to the total height if that data was available. If not, than the listed height is the next best thing (similar to the SSP database).

The problem with zoning height is that it's not a real number, it varies depending on the roof type and excludes certain projections but might include others.

Yes that's one way to do it, but then we would get a mishmash of height standards in our thread titles. Only those proposals where the planned absolute height data was available would show a close-to-accurate measurement, and most others wouldn't. But the reader wouldn't know which is which, as all semblance of consistent data presentation would be lost.

We also have to contend with a thread title length restriction which already requires a fair amount of shorthand to fit everything in at times. Adding more data would pose a challenge in some cases.

Zoning height is definitely a weird number. The only thing it has going for it is that it's a required value in all proposals, and is readily reportable. But even the absolute height isn't immutable. Do people care that a communications mast added to the building in its final stages will change the absolute height again and we will never know it? (Sorry OCD-folks).

Perhaps the overarching question is: Does it really matter? Our threads are not a compendium of tall buildings where this data is important. The height geeks have other lists to turn to.

So when it comes to thread titles, I guess we can have the consistent reporting of an official, but dubious, value (the zoning height), or the inconsistent, and not obvious, reporting of a mix of zoning heights and near-absolute heights, where they are known. What do people prefer?

Originally Posted by acottawa

Is information about spires and other decorative features even readily available for most projects that have threads?

No, unfortunately not. Because the City only requires the "zoning height" in proposals, only some architects provide the absolute height values, though it does tend to be the taller buildings.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Is information about spires and other decorative features even readily available for most projects that have threads?

Spires

I doubt well ever see a proper spire in Ottawa.

On rocketphish's communication mast comment, I don't think any of us are arguing to add those. PdV C's height would go up to the mechanical room's roof, not the mast. WEP would go to the top of the arch, not the balloon.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Spires

I doubt well ever see a proper spire in Ottawa.

On rocketphish's communication mast comment, I don't think any of us are arguing to add those. PdV C's height would go up to the mechanical room's roof, not the mast. WEP would go to the top of the arch, not the balloon.

Yeah, but these heights are not reported for most projects. The vast majority of threads are not for buildings tall enough for architects to report the height to the architectural top for commercial reasons.

[Harley613]

I'd prefer we don't be overly pedantic and that we report the height to architectural tip when it's available, and use simple math to estimate the height to architectural tip when that measurement isn't shown on the planning document. I don't think we are the caretakers of 'consistent data presentation'. I would prefer we simply do our best to call the building as tall as the building is and not nitpick over whether that exact height is listed in a document.

[Harley613]

User 'Insertnamehere' informed us on another thread that Google Earth can be used to measure building heights very accurately. I have done some research and gotten enough baselines to be able to use it effectively and trust the results.

Many of Ottawa's old buildings from the pre-devapp era have had many different listed heights on various websites, with no standard guaranteeing the measurement is base to architectural tip, but now-defunct Emporis seemed to be the predominant source of these heights. It was notoriously unreliable. I am hereby adjusting the Ottawa-Gatineau tall building wiki.

Older buildings we have never seen plans but got numbers from Emporis, and some that had design changes and questionable heights that were visually inaccurate:

Terrasses de la Chaudiere - Accurate, no change
PDVC - Accurate, no change
Metropole - Accurate, no change
Le Parc - Massive downgrade from 6th tallest at 104m to 88m, which doesn't meet the threshold for the wiki. I always doubted the height of this building, and now I know why
Place du Portage 1 - Upgrade from 102m to 110m
RH Coats - Accurate, no change
One60 Elgin - Massive upgrade from 94m to 107m
Minto One80five - Downgrade from 96m to 93m
Ottawa Marriot Hotel - Small downgrade from 96m to 94m
151 O'Connor - Small upgrade from 93m to 97m
The Classics Tower 1 - Accurate, no change
Constitution Square II - Falls off the list, drops from 90m to 84m
The Carslisle - Falls off the list, drops from 90m to 85m
Performance Court - Joins the list at 90m
Tribeca Tower 1 - No surprise here! We all knew the crown was a hell of a lot higher than the listed 84.5m. This one jumps way up onto the list at 96m!
Tribeca Tower 2 - Not as prominent a crown, but this one is 92m
Envie Little Italy jumps onto the list at 91m. We all could see that it was so obviously taller than it's listed 78m, now we know why.

And there we go! For the first time ever our wiki has measurements based on measurement, accurate to within 1-2m and based on the same standard of base to architectural tip. No more weird random numbers from weird random sources over the years. I am excited to measure up new buildings that have changed designs a few times once they update the imagery in Google.

[J.OT13]

Interesting stuff. It says something that a lot of them were accurate.

For Le Parc, I doubt the old numbers, but also Google Earth. It's 29 floors, so 88 meters would only be 289 feet, so just below 10 feet per floor, but that doesn't account for the roof feature which must be 20-30 feet at the very least.

Could you provide screenshots of how the measurements work?

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Interesting stuff. It says something that a lot of them were accurate.

For Le Parc, I doubt the old numbers, but also Google Earth. It's 29 floors, so 88 meters would only be 289 feet, so just below 10 feet per floor, but that doesn't account for the roof feature which must be 20-30 feet at the very least.

Could you provide screenshots of how the measurements work?

Here is an excellent video. I have measured famous buildings around the world and find this to incredibly accurate, with only a slight bit of wiggle room due to varied grading at the base of some buildings. FAR better than any source we have had to date in Ottawa.

Le Parc without the crown is exactly 78m/256ft from the top of the top occupied floor to the base. 8.8 feet per floor. 8 foot ceilings/7" slab/ + drywall/flooring I would guess. Generally residential floor slabs are 7-8", so this checks out perfectly. The main floor/lobby level is just a normal floor as well.

https://youtu.be/K15sAt0b3KQ

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Harley613

Here is an excellent video. I have measured famous buildings around the world and find this to incredibly accurate, with only a slight bit of wiggle room due to varied grading at the base of some buildings. FAR better than any source we have had to date in Ottawa.

Le Parc without the crown is exactly 78m/256ft from the top of the top occupied floor to the base. 8.8 feet per floor. 8 foot ceilings/7" slab/ + drywall/flooring I would guess. Generally residential floor slabs are 7-8", so this checks out perfectly. The main floor/lobby level is just a normal floor as well.

https://youtu.be/K15sAt0b3KQ

That checks out. Must be some pretty low ceilings considering the ground floor probably has slightly taller ceilings than the rest.

I assume the height that was reported previously included the slight elevation/parking garage at St. Laurent street level, or at the very least from the parking garage entrance.

• Video Link

[Harley613]

Here you can measure yourself that it is exactly 78 metres without the crown, using the technique on the video. I have run over a hundred baselines now. It's dead accurate if you have chosen a proper base to go with your roof height or architectural tip.

[Innsertnamehere]

Le Parc is hard to define as it's got a huge grade change down to St Laurent. The original higher measurement may have had something to do with that.

Regarding the short floor heights - older apartment buildings, particularly those built before the 1990's, often had very short ceiling heights. A 20 storey building built today will generally be significantly taller than a 20 storey building built in 1980.

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

That checks out. Must be some pretty low ceilings considering the ground floor probably has slightly taller ceilings than the rest.

I assume the height that was reported previously included the slight elevation/parking garage at St. Laurent street level, or at the very least from the parking garage entrance.

• Video Link

Even if you measure way down on the middle of St. Laurent, you are still only at 93m.