Editing Skyscraper (section)

===Basic design considerations===
[[File:Jade Signature under construction September 2016.jpg|thumb|A view of the interior structural design can be seen in this residential skyscraper that was constructed in [[Florida]], the [[List of tallest buildings in Sunny Isles Beach|Jade Signature]].]]
Good structural design is important in most building design, but particularly for skyscrapers since even a small chance of catastrophic failure is unacceptable given the tremendous damage such failure would cause. This presents a paradox to [[Civil engineering|civil engineers]]: the only way to assure a lack of failure is to test for all modes of failure, in both the laboratory and the real world. But the only way to know of all modes of failure is to learn from previous failures. Thus, no engineer can be absolutely sure that a given structure will resist all loadings that could cause failure; instead, one can only have large enough margins of safety such that a failure is acceptably unlikely. When buildings do fail, engineers question whether the failure was due to some lack of foresight or due to some unknowable factor.