The future of the skyscraper /
Philip Nobel, Bruce Sterling, Tom Vanderbilt, Matthew Yglesias, Diana Lind, Will Self, Emily Badger, Dickson Despommier, Michael Govan ; editor, Philip Nobel.
- 127 pages : color illustrations ; 17 cm.
- SOM Thinkers. .
- SOM Thinkers. .
Includes bibliographical references.
Introduction : the future of the skyscraper / The unbuilt towers of futurity / Never had people lived in such aerial splendor / An American Versailles / The form could be reborn / Isenshard / Buildings are not supposed to move / A singularity of integrated functions / Yuri Avvakumov's House of cards / Philip Nobel -- Bruce Sterling -- Tom Vanderbult -- Matthew Yglesias -- Diana Lind -- Will Self -- Emily Badger -- Dickson Despommier -- Michael Govan.
Engines of industry, expressions of ego or will, tall towers are nonetheless, when they pierce the shared skies, intensely public. We may ask of them artistic questions: what do we make of these things we make? What do these forms mean? But also, because architecture is forever tied to real life, we may ask of them questions of a political, economic and technological nature-as well as those, touching on the body and the mind and the soul, that we may simply call human. In this volume, Bruce Sterling describes four possible futures that might shape future towers, presenting a choose-your-own-adventure of potential futures for architecture, some of them terrifying in their nearness. We peer up at skyscrapers old and new, visit their highest floors, turn them this way and that to see them clearly through the psychology (Tom Vanderbilt) and physiology (Emily Badger) of living and working on high, and through the lens of policy in the low-rise counterexample of Washington, DC (Matthew Yglesias). Diana Lind tests the idea of tall against the more sprawling needs of those spatially mundane but transformative new economy industries that may well be the supertall clients of the future. Will Self looks back in literature, film and recent urban history to write forward toward a new understanding of the tower in the popular imagination.