CULTURAL ROLE OF THE
SKYSCRAPER
Skyscraper in America Form Follows Finance: Early Towers of New York and Chicago Skycraper in Europe Tatlin’s Monument, Mies Friedrichstrasse, Corbusier Radiant City International Style Origin and Legacy
Skyscrapers in America
Form Follows Finance
Definition of a skyscraper: “A machine that makes land pay.” Cass Gilbert, 1900 Architect of Woolworth Building, NYC
Chicago Style 1872‐1922 predates International Style Chicago fire of 1871 destroyed 2000 acres of the city Steel structure, fireproofing, passenger elevator safety break invention by Otis = skyscraper 1880s Colin Rowe’s essay “Chicago Frame” “Apparently the neutral grid of space which is enclosed by the skeleton structure supplies us with some particular cogent and convincing symbol, and for this reason the frame has established the relationships, defined a discipline, and generated form … The frame has become architecture, that contemporary architecture is almost inconceivable in its absence. … The frame has come to possess a value for contemporary architecture equivalent to that of the column for classical antiquity and the Renaissance. The frame establishes throughout the building a common rationale to which all parts are related … it prescribes a system to which all parts are subordinated.”
Empire State Building, Shreve Lamb and Harmon, 1931 102 floors, 1454 ft, Tallest building in the world for 40 years until 1972 2 million sq ft, not fully leased for 20 years 1980: Empire State Building received its own zip code: 10118. It has 1000 businesses. More than 20,000 people work here.
Men who built the Empire State Building Pierre DuPont, John Raskob, Al Smith
The Promise of Utopia
Skyscrapers in Europe
Vladmir Tatlin The Monument to the Third International St Petersburg, Russia, 1920, unbuilt 400 m in height (over 1300 ft) intended to triumph over the Eiffel Tower 324 m (about 1000 ft) builit in 1887
Mies Van der Rohe Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper Competition entry, 1921
Mies Van der Rohe Glass Skyscraper, Berlin, 1922
Ville Radieuse Le Corbusier, 1930
Unite d’Habitation Le Corbusier, Marseille, 1952
The International Style
Origin and Legacy
The International Style The effect of mass, or static solidity, hitherto the prime quality of architecture, has all but disappeared; in its place there is an effect of volume, or more accurately, of plane surfaces bounding a volume. The prime architectural symbol is no longer the dense brick, but the open box. Indeed, the great majority of buildings are in reality, as well as in effect, mere planes surrounding a volume. With skeleton construction enveloped only by a protective screen, the architect can hardly avoid achieving this effect of surface, of volume, unless in deference to traditional design in terms of mass he goes out of his way to obtain the contrary effect. Henry‐Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson The International Style, 1932 Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, NYC