9/11 Events Didn't Cloud Skyscraper Construction
The conventional wisdom has it that the desire to build tall received a serious setback from the World Trade Center disaster. But the conventional wisdom has it wrong.
The conventional wisdom has it that the desire to build tall received a serious setback from the World Trade Center disaster, The Wall Street Journal reported. But the conventional wisdom has it wrong. The reality is that we are building higher than ever, with buildings in construction, or on the boards, that dwarf buildings today.
Superskyscrapers are proposed or rising in London, Paris, Vienna, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing and Mexico City; they already exist in Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Taipei. While the earthbound argue about fear and safety, Asia has outstripped the West, using the most advanced structural technology and safety features for buildings already completed and occupied; Malaysia's twin Petronas towers became the world's tallest in 1998 at 1,483 feet, and the 101-story, 1,667-foot Taipei 101 tower broke that record when it opened in Taiwan this year.
These dramatic additions to the international skyline are being designed by the familiar high-wire performers — Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and Santiago Calatrava are all represented, while seasoned skyscraper pros like Henry Cobb, Cesar Pelli and William Pederson have been quietly producing the first generation of superbuildings. They are all working with structural engineers who have so radically transformed the possibilities that the name "skyscraper" has become old-fashioned.
At least, that is the judgment of Terence Riley, the Philip Johnson chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and Guy Nordenson, a structural engineer and Princeton professor, the co-organizers of the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. They prefer to call it "Tall Buildings," because they find the word skyscraper a romantic throwback to an earlier age when one considers the conceptual possibilities and structural innovations of today's enormous towers.
The 25 examples being shown in models, sections and elevations are on display at MoMA's temporary outpost in Queens, where they will remain until Sept. 27, after which the museum returns to Manhattan and its own new tall building at its old site on West 53rd Street. They range from a modest 187 feet for an office building in Santiago, Chile, chosen for its ingenious engineering, to a proposal for Chicago at 2,000 feet and 108 stories that would have been the world's tallest building if it had been constructed.
All have been designed within the past 10 years, although only six have been built, with another half-dozen under construction; the rest were conceived as projects or for competitions. Three were finalists for the World Trade Center site: a pair of "kissing" towers by Norman Foster that meet as they rise and are a marvel of suavely expressed technology; a forest of connected leaning towers by an international consortium of Dutch, British and American architects that say come with me to the precipice and leap into the arms of tomorrow; and a matched set of minimalist towers joined with orthogonal precision by a prestigious New York team that included Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey, Peter Eisenman and Steven Holl.
A Mobius in their midst: Rem Koolhaas's design for the Central Chinese Television (CCTV) Tower, Beijing, shows how new materials and techniques are making bold, outsize structures possible as never before.
It is safe to say that as long as architects are possessed by a timeless obsession to build tall — a universal ambition that can make even the most modest fancy themselves masters of the universe — and developers pursue ways to wring every ounce of profit out of expensive land, the race for height will continue, limited only by how high practicality and this alliance will take them. And that is discounting symbolism, hubris and dreams.
There is, however, a significant difference between the tall buildings of the past and those of this new Skyscraper Age. Radical changes in architecture are the result of radical advances in technology. High-speed computer calculation and modeling of structural systems has changed the rules of the game. Surreal and sculptural shapes now rival more traditional towers of increasing decorative complexity.
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