A response spectrum technique is applied to two well known linear elastic continuous models of slender high rise buildings in order to obtain likely positions for the centres of earthquake loading. The models chosen are the uniform cantilever shear beam and the uniform cantilever shear wall, which represent the two extremes of pure shear deformation and pure flexural deformation, respectively. The results obtained are at variance with the static provisions of the current
New Zealand code; this is especially so in the case of the shear wall. On the basis of these findings a tentative suggestion is made for a change to the familiar equivalent static lateral load distribution at present specified by the code.