Cities around the world are adding more and more skyscrapers because there are more and more people. Most people think of skyscrapers as an American thing -- but they are scattered all over the world. There is not a major or minor city in the world today without skyscrapers. If you were too look at skyline pictures of the world's cities you would barely be able to tell one from another. Only certain signature buildings, like the Empire State Building, would identify a cityscape. Few people are knowledgeable enough about individual buildings to immediately guess which city they are looking at. And that's why when people talk about cities and skyscrapers they are usually led more by perceptions from Hollywood and the tourist brochures, than by an awareness of the facts.
 |
Ever since the World Trade Center attacks there has been a lot of talk about never building tall buildings again. I believe this belief stems from the American tendency to make the world totally safe in all disregard to the potential for trouble. Not only that, but the terrorists proved you can hit a 5 story building just as easily as a 100 story building. So are we to not build short buildings too? Rather than running scaredy cat from terrorists we must build for the future when all the crazed loonies are killed, incarcerated or so hounded into the ground that they pose no threat. It is absurd to live our lives predicated on what uniknown actions the terrorists will concoct. If we were to do so, why not just wrap ourselves up in bubble wrap and play Michelin Man? I call this The Avalanche Tower, becuase is reminds me of snow falling off a drift, or tumbling down a mountain |
||
 |
Skyscrapers are the epitome of urban stature. Every city aspires to have the tallest building they can induce a developer to build. Barely a month goes by when there isn't some announcement about some other super tall building. The problem is that so many buildings that have been built since the mid-1960's have been plain brown boring ugly boxes. I hope these designs here encourage architects to be a bit more daring, yet still design practical and reasonable structures. This is my Tuscan Tower, so named by a friend here in New Orleans. The sharp angles are designed to move the viewer's eye further up the tower. . |
||
 |
If we were to stop building skyscrapers we would have to build structures that are spread out all over the place. They would take up acres. And wouldn't that grossly interfere with our cultural desire to preserve open green space? This translucent powder blue glass tower has a square base, that through the use of a long pleasant arched edge becomes a rectangle at the crown. The darker rectangles are actually sliced into the facade of the tower, like the port holes on an old Buick. Most architects today would have simply left the sheer glass wall all one color. My version has the dramatic slices in a darker shade of powder blue. . |
||
 |
By spreading out all of our business activities across huge suburban, rural and exurban areas we are contributing to the use of more gasoline to move people to and from the new structures, thus playing into the hands of the very terroristic nations that seek to keep us dependent on their oil. By building in dense urban enviroments, or at their immediate edges, we can increase the use of public transportation. This white glass tower has dramatic red brick and metal 'boxes' stacked, or terraced on top. The effect is one of objects floating in mid-air. . |
||
 |
There are people and organizations in America that seek zero growth. Their beliefs are that we not increase the population nor the amount of structures, nor do anything whatsoever to take into account increasing populations. It's nice that they are glad to be alive, but they wrongly seek to deny the right to birth for untold millions of people. And just whom is going to stop people from having sex? The zero-growth people are Luddites in the worst way, hypocrital, too. If they were really so concerned about people wrecking the planet they wouldn't use precious resources to spread their message, and even more to the point, they would simply commit suicide, lessening the burden of people on earth. But they seem to believe that people are alien to earth, that we should leave before we screw it up any more. It's just a negative, destructive, self-debasing, notion. This delicate glass walled slab of a tower has two slightly angled punch-outs on the lower half of the curtain wall. The entire structure would be red glass and red aluminum spandrels and mullions, with jet black trim as a dramtic outline. |
||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | |
