Madness or poetry. In 1974, Philippe Petit had (and carried out with a funny team, "the World Trade Center Association") the brilliant idea of ​​uniting the twin towers with a tightrope and walk in the air between them. How simple and how complex at the same time.
Skyscrapers, even twins, have the peculiarity of isolating ourselves. Either you're in or you're out, are to be seen or to see from within. They host so many people in one building that is difficult to get to know anyone. They are the urban symbol of capitalism, the glass and steel materialization of an always rising chart. They are a competition. At 9AM, thousands of men in suits and ties, and women well dressed will enter... and many others will leave at 6PM. Some will stay in doing a few extra hours, leaving some loose lights lit on the tower that brings some humanity. Sometimes I look through the glass and, about 40 meters away in the tower in front, I see people like me, working. They seem to check out of the window less than I do, because we never stare at each other simultaneously. In the tower we all appear the same.
At night, one can tour the silent depths of the skyscraper, smoke a cigarette hidden in the bathrooms, have sex through an open window on the computer, or with the girl who looks out the window in the hotel opposite to your building. After Dark. "What for one person may be a safe distance, to another can be an abyss" Haruki Murakami. Aren´t the windows of the skyscraper an abyss?
To reach your floor you need to access through a magic box called lift that transports you to the number you choose, it's always the same. Why never press another number, to see what happens ?. In any case, the skyscraper is a dead end, once you're on the roof, where can you go?. In most cases, the roof is inaccessible (and NOT a fire escape), or you need to buy your access somehow. On the top floor of Yintai Tower in Beijing there is the China Bar. With a jazz singer, a piano and some other instruments. From the window you see red lights, there might be more colors but I only remember red. Inaccessible, that's the word. Inaccessibility to the luxury of that bar, those red lights, the girl who sings jazz who never looks at you.
How impressive is the view of the city from up there, like the cover of this blog. The city seen in this photo is not New York or Hong Kong, is Taipei. From so high, the city melts into small lights at night and, finally, all cities look alike.
Our cities, even the densest ones, are flat, they grow horizontally over the territory until this can´t provide any more. Skyscrapers are protrusions that break the horizontality. There are cities that work three-dimensionally, as in the case of Hong Kong, but this three-dimensionality operates within a range of ± 5 storeys. Hong Kong´s landscape reminds me of Blade Runner.
To live in a true three-dimensionality, we would need a spaceship, a personal elevator that makes us move freely, vertically and horizontally. Otis Elevator Company has already developed some prototypes that move horizontally and diagonally, but the market is not interested in this type of product yet. I remember the sketches of the architect Enric Ciriani of three-dimensional cities in which people move in capsules. Perhaps in anot too far away future, some kind of carrier drones will make this image come true.
I wonder what would happen if we started to tie skyscraper together with ropes as the mad Frenchman did. Imagine if we all lose our fears and started to walk on the air. During lunch time, of course, from 9am to 1pm we must work. The landscape would change, straight lines would be drawn in the sky and gravity would turn them into arches linking buildings.
If we don´t lose that fear, we would begin to set up large bridges and slides between buildings, or glass elevators operating in all directions, like Charlie Chocolate Factory´s.
Some architects have already tried something similar, perhaps, the clearest example is Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid in Beijing. The bridges connect all the residential blocks together providing common spaces inside. The connectors have a strong visual power and bridges have enough presence to symbolize the closing of the circle, where the towers are no longer a dead end on its roof. However, these common spaces are somewhat isolated from the city, perhaps because of the fragmented enclave system that powers Beijing growth.
Another example, also in Beijing is the CCTV tower OMA. While this project is a more formal attempt, we can say that the tower is no longer a tower, is different thing. The new BIG apartment building in New York, perhaps it is a different way of putting high residential buildings feet on the ground.
Another more radical proposal is that of REX studio in New York, which turns the skyscraper "upside down" as the New Concept of American skyscrapers. These last three projects all have the DNA of Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Great legacy of Rem Koolhaas.
Skyscraper, the name sounds aggressive, why not upinthesky? or hinting at Chillida, Elpeinedeloscielos?. How high is a skyscraper?. According to the standards, although it is relative to the context, a building is considered as skyscraper if it exceeds 100 meters, but there are much higher. The tallest building in the world currently is Burj Khalifa in Dubai with 828m. If we talk about imaginary towers, we have much higher, for example F.Y Wright´s One Mille Tower (1956).
How high? Should we add limits to skyscrapers, in addition to those already imposed by gravity, wind or the complex mechanics of the lifts ?. The elevator, a crucial element, without which there would be no skyscrapers, probably not even big metropolis. It is paradoxical that the purpose of the first elevators was to go "down", as they were designed for mining. In fact, we would be surprise to discover that underground lifts reach nearly 10 times higher distances than those used in skyscrapers. "Journey to the Center of the Earth"
HIgh rise building´s boom took place, of course, in the United States. Starting in Chicago and reaching its peak in Manhattan. The New York island could be considered a museum, or a testing hub, of elevator milestones.
Also in Manhattan, in 1929, even before the film Blade Runner, Empire State Building investors justified the increase in height of their initial design in order to incorporate a landing platform for dirigibles at the top of the tower. The project, however, never took place despite some dirigibles tried to approach the building, and it looked more like a strategy to overcome the Chrysler Building in height, which, at the time, was the tallest building in the world. Who could imagine back then that in 2001 two Boeing were going to crash against the Twin Towers, challenging the sovereignty of these buildings, and all that they represented?.
Glass and steel, also essential ingredients that made possible the growth of skyscrapers. From the elegant buildings of Mies Van Der Rohe in America to the modern towers that stand today in every corner of the planet. International style, as named back in the day, has evolved in different ways, some more successful than others but, undoubtedly, it has had a global reach.
An example of the globalization in skyscrapers construction (in and out of context) is the Bitexco tower in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. The building was designed by a Venezuelan architect settled in New York and French consultants. In addition, the glass curtain panels were produced in Belgium, then shipped to China, where 6000 individual panels were cut, and, finally, carried to Vietnam.
Now, let´s go up to the top of this lotus flower-shaped tower and observe through its curtain wall. On a cloudy day, as in the picture below, we can see one more element of the skyscraper, its reflection.
Reflection is an important component of skyscrapers, both from the inside and the outside. Reflections produce effects that merge interior and exterior, or even buildings with each other. Perhaps, reflection is the last stronghold to cling to, the tightrope that ties skyscrapers together, or people.
*The main sources of information for this post were: the documentary Man on the Wire directed by James Marsh; the book Delirious New York by Koolhaas R; the booklet on elevators for Venezia Bienale edited by AMO in 2014; the article of the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/realestate/26scapes.html?_r=2) about Empire State Building; as well as several web sites on architecture such as Archdaily or BIG and REX offices.