I was reading an article posted in the French forum. It talked about how many hi-rise architects now prefer to articulate their buildings by making them very distinct as opposed to tall. Beijing's planned CCTV building was cited as an example.
This got me thinking. New yok has has a recent spurt, but while many are interesting, and unique designs, they aren't that tall. Goldman Sachs is going to build 2Msqft, $1.28 billion tower in lower Manhattan, but it's only going to be 800ft! Two prudential is smaller and was less expensive than that. The floorplates of the Sachs building will exceed the lower sections of the Sears Tower in area.
Bank of America is building its tower at Bryant Park, they claim it will be a 1,000ft+, but we all know better. Again, the floorplates are huge, so this giant 1Msqft+ building will only have 57-stories, and chunky, though unique and pointy, profile. Is this what passes for great hi-rise architecture? What happened to the slender visions of long ago?
I will not even mention what has unfolded at the World Trade Center site.
Hong Kong, once the city where anything could be built now has a height restriction. Just a few years ago they were contemplating any number of potential WTB's. However, once Union Square is built out, there is nothing big left on the horizon. The New York of the orient has just up and quit before it even really started. Just 20 years of building supertalls, and their exlaimation point is only 1,500ft. What kind of end is this?
Of course other cities are building tall buildings. Dubai and Shanghai are bulding them by the dozen, but each building is too unique, too different. They lack the organic look of the Big Three. They seem artificial. Dubai and Shanghai look like Las Vegas on horse steriods. Once financing runs out (and it will run out quicker than they think) what will happen? Will they remain sterile billion dollar tourist traps, or will they gain the character that is earned through hard times as well as good?
Which brings me to Chicago. We're also going through a spurt, no made one made of an orgy of oil money and government funding, but of private development. We still are building true skyscrapers. Not giant pieces of abstract art, or stumps that claim to be what they are not. No, what I mean by skyscraper are buildings that are rooted in the ground, and history, and our lives, and at the same time, reach for the sky.
We do not limit them with restrictions. We aren't building pointy shards of glass and steel that have no context, no roots. We are not building 60-story office towers and calling them them giants. We are not building windmills.
True our growth is more measured, more logical today. No one's proposing 4.5Msqft of offices in one building, but with the limited budget, we are building greatness. Nowhere else can you find the height and economic sense combined as well as Waterview. Nowhere can you find a better postmodern piece of glass than Trump Tower. We are building for a new century, but we are not spoiling the masterpieces of the past, or ruining the real estate market with projects far too massive. We are leaving the future open for more great work.
And no one is trying to stop us. No one is complaining about shadows, no one complains about ruining the view of the surrounding landscape. No one is making artificial limits on high we can reach. We are building tall. We are still expressing that once great dream of reaching for the sky. We have not not corrupted that vision, we have not lost it, we still cherish it. We are the last bastion of the vertical dream.
Or have I been asleep?> |
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