the Asymmetry of Objectivity
“The city historically constructed is no longer lived and is no longer understood practically. It is only an object of cultural consumption for tourists, for aestheticism, avid for spectacle and the picturesque.”[1] That cultural revolution, according to some scholars, was inaugurated with the removal of ornamentation from objects of everyday use,[2] exploiting a notion of separation from elements that informed our cities and hence the way we have lived thus far. Highlighting the capacity of individual responsibilities versus group actions. That “lack of natural agreement between form and content”[3] will be discussed in this paper.
According to Loos’, “the Greatness of our age resides in our very inability to create new ornaments.”[4] “The endeavors of modern architecture allow purpose itself to direct architectural form. A building should give expression to its content rather than to its architect.”[5] Constituting culture as “the balance between our physical, mental and spiritual being which alone can guarantee sensible thought and action.”[6] Art on the other hand, is not something that can be utilized to a practical purpose.[7] It is something that one created without being a need for it. From its nature, it lacks responsibility and thus sometimes its responsibility is to unsettle us,[8] “transforming the struggle for existence into collaboration for existence.”[9]
If “architecture then is the business of manufacturing adequate shelter for human activities”[10], the skyscraper could be either seen as an ideal implementation of this dogma or the manifestation of its total excess. Raymond Hood described Manhattan as a place with “no time of consciousness.”[11] Hence, it could be understood as a fast-moving agency with no time to develop critical skills towards the place we inhabit, as long as, our preliminary needs are fulfilled. Like doing so, the architect of the 20th century had the capacity and the “inner urge to conceive and erect buildings in which real people come and go, creations that will last, that belong not to the world of theoretical backdrop but to that in which real people live.”[12]
“The skyline, by contrast, continually reasserts the town’s unity, because its stepped line vaults over all the discrete properties that plans individuate.”[13] Skyscrapers may have started as a pursuit of sky supremacy but moderately acquired more layers of meaning. They were soon seen as not just structures, but as new building typologies, “destined to confront our creative architects with a challenge that is not only worthy of the mettle, but also appropriate to the age in which we live in.”[14] “Form persists and comes to preside over a built work in a world where functions continually become modified”[15], “an outward expression of the contemporary life process.”[16]
If Manhattan then “is the only program where efficiency intersects with the sublime”[17], the skyscraper should not be conceived as a finalized structure both conceptually and technically but rather as an “establishment of logic”[18] No one can deny the contribution of the skyscraper in our contemporary every day and the role it played in forming our present-day notion of the modern city. Personally however, “what is it that one seeks to achieve in putting up a “skyscraper” or a tower building”[19], is still something that has not been answered.
[1] M. Mostafavi. “Why Ecological Urbanism, Why Now?” in Ecological Urbanism. Baden, Switzerland: Lars
Muller, 2010: 23
[2] Ornament and Crime” (1908), from Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays, ed. Adolf Opel (Ariadne, 1998), p.167
[3] Gunnar Asplund, et al, “Acceptera,” in Lucy Creagh, ed. Modern Swedish Design (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 295.
[4] Ornament and Crime” (1908), from Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays, ed. Adolf Opel (Ariadne, 1998), p.168
[5] Gunnar Asplund, et al, “Acceptera,” in Lucy Creagh, ed. Modern Swedish Design (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 297
[6] Architecture” (1910), from On Architecture, ed. Adolf Opel (Ariadne, 1995), p.74
[7] Architecture” (1910), from On Architecture, ed. Adolf Opel (Ariadne, 1995), p.83
[8] Architecture” (1910), from On Architecture, ed. Adolf Opel (Ariadne, 1995), p.82
[9] Gunnar Asplund, et al, “Acceptera,” in Lucy Creagh, ed. Modern Swedish Design (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 298
[10] Rem Koolhaas, “The Talents of Raymond Hood,” from Delirious New York: A Retrospective Manifesto for Manhattan (Monacelli Press, 1994 [orig. 1978]), p.162
[11] Rem Koolhaas, “The Talents of Raymond Hood,” from Delirious New York: A Retrospective Manifesto for Manhattan (Monacelli Press, 1994 [orig. 1978]), p.162.
[12] Siegfried Kracauer, “On Skyscrapers” (1921), “Rollercoaster Ride” (1928), and “Radio Station” (1931), from Iain Boyd Whyte and David Frisby, eds., Metropolis Berlin, 1880–1940 (University of California, 2012), p.326.
[13] David Leatherbarrow, “Skylines,” Architecture Oriented Otherwise (New York: Princeton Architectural Press), 201
[14] Siegfried Kracauer, “On Skyscrapers” (1921), “Rollercoaster Ride” (1928), and “Radio Station” (1931), from Iain Boyd Whyte and David Frisby, eds., Metropolis Berlin, 1880–1940 (University of California, 2012), p.326.
[15] David Leatherbarrow, “Skylines,” Architecture Oriented Otherwise (New York: Princeton Architectural Press), 204
[16] David Leatherbarrow, “Skylines,” Architecture Oriented Otherwise (New York: Princeton Architectural Press), 206
[17] Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York (New York: Monacelli, 1994), 174
[18] Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York (New York: Monacelli, 1994), 173
[19] Siegfried Kracauer, “On Skyscrapers” (1921), “Rollercoaster Ride” (1928), and “Radio Station” (1931), from Iain Boyd Whyte and David Frisby, eds., Metropolis Berlin, 1880–1940 (University of California, 2012), p.327.