The Future of the Skyscraper
Architecture practice Skidmore Owings & Merrill invited nine writers and journalists to ponder the future of tall buildings. Thomas Wensing reviews the result
SOM Thinkers series,
Metropolis Books, £12.95
Review by Thomas Wensing
The central icon of the American city in the 20th century is, without doubt, the skyscraper. In cities such as Chicago and New York the type developed between 1870 and 1950 in the maelstrom of laissez-faire economic development and explosive population growth.
Its emergence was made possible by rapid industrial progress and advances in building technology (most notably the invention of the elevator, steel-frame construction and plateglass manufacture), and it was forced upwards by speculation and the space limitations of the street grid.
Stylistically they moved from the historicising, 'European' style blocks and towers of the 1860s to the late 1910s, to the ziggurat step-backs of the Twenties and Thirties to become, after the war, the international style, glass-clad symbols of the power and modernity of corporate America.
Artists, photographers and writers - for better and worse - perceived the skyscraper as the archetypal image of the new, of progress, and as a unique symbol of American energy and optimism. In the Fifties and Sixties skyscrapers further spread across city centres in the USA and the world, and while the designs became increasingly derivative and interchangeable, the symbolism changed to become analogous with overdevelopment and American cultural, political and economic dominance.
The ultimate consequence of these negative symbolic and political connotations played itself out with the terrorist attacks on the towers of the World Trade Center in 2001. At the time, with the 24-hour news cycle operating in overdrive, pundits and experts predicted that this, finally, would sound the death knell for building tall. And yet, little more than a decade later, with the building of Taipei 101, One World Trade Center, Makkah Royal Clock Tower, the Burj Khalifa, and with many other talls and supertalls on site or in the pipeline, evidence suggests otherwise.
Sensing that the development of skyscrapers is entering a new phase in its existence, and inspired by the desire to let skyscrapers be more than just the expression of engineering prowess and the symbols of national pride of emerging economies, the practice Skidmore Owings & Merrill, possibly the foremost innovator of the skyscraper, invited nine writers, critics, futurists and journalists to ponder the future of the skyscraper.
The angle for this little publication was to invite people outside or obliquely related to the profession of architecture to think and reflect.This approach is, it has to be said, appealing, not in the least since the consequences of building skyscrapers with respect to their ecological, material and energy footprints are so large that the decision of their construction ought to be a larger societal question and a shared, public responsibility.
In the most positive scenario this building type can help to solve problems of an increasingly urbanised and overcrowded planet: they can make cities denser, function as carbon sinks, generate energy and be used for rainwater retention and urban agriculture.
However, if their explosive, and largely unregulated, growth is left unchecked, they will continue to be used to reinforce inequality and class divisions by creating privatised, heavily secured havens for the few, will continue to deplete resources, will create micro climates and heat islands, and last, but not the least, will remain a massive contributor to CO2 emissions and thus speed up the process of climate change.
The yardstick by which I propose to measure the relative success of the essays in this book is whether they offer the most plausible and comprehensive vision on the future of the skyscraper within a larger sustainable urban context. When I do so, predictably, some of the more outlandish, dystopian and entertaining essays fall by the way side. Apologies to Bruce Sterling and Will Self, by the way.
This is not to say that the literary and socio-critical reflections of Will Self are not as valid as the more optimistic speculations that I favour, and his essay amusingly focuses on the typical British unease with building tall and modernism in general. He closes off with a similar observation to Philip Nobel in the first essay, namely - and I paraphrase both - that the skyscraper has as much to do with identity as with finance and power.
One World Trade Center, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and tallest of the new World Trade Center complex. Photo: James Ewing - OTTO
Just as the first skyscrapers borrowed heavily from European styles in the search to express a native identity for the USA as a nascent superpower, it is now the Middle East and Asia that are searching for their own aesthetic to dramatically proclaim the shift in the global balance of power. Be that as it may, besting your neighbours in the race to build the tallest tower of the world is completely irrelevant when set against supranational problems such as poverty, violence, environmental degradation and climate change.
Dickson Despommier is one of the writers who addresses this, and opens up the debate as to what the place is of building tall in a sustainable city. He presents a well-thought-out argument, in which he invites us to view and manage cities as 'living' entities, in other words, he proposes to shorten and enhance flows and to build in (environmental) resiliency.
Food and energy production will have to become more local and there is a role for skyscrapers in energy generation and vertical, urban farming, he writes. Other essays are worth mentioning, including that by Emily Badger, who explains some of the engineering and human physiology challenges that have to be addressed when building tall and living high up.
The Future of the Skyscraper is an enjoyable, informative and at times entertaining read. In the current context of New York City, however, where affordable rent has become anathema and high-rise condominiums by starchitects go up left and right, the book fails to answer the important question: how can the skyscraper become a more inclusive building type? If we are to seriously commit to the creation of more equitable, inclusive, sustainable and cooperative societies and economies, such as the writers in this book hope for, then Lewis Mumford's statement of 1933 that the erection of skyscrapers is 'a blind alley and insupportable luxury' may after all still be true.
