A Manifesto for Blue Skies

A Manifesto for Blue Skies

by Sheng Yi Lee Inspired by and dedicated to Nicole, Jacques and Vivi.

November 2013

I see skies of blue, clouds of white Bright blessed days, dark sacred nights And I think to myself what a wonderful world.1

2

Tall buildings, skyscrapers and megastructures must cease to be. Instead of endless bickering over height limits2 we must simply stop building tall.

We must instead build smaller collective architecture. There is much we can learn from traditional vernacular forms sensitive to the human scale3. We must inform our cities with long-lost humility.

We must seize this opportunity to reclaim our Skies.

Let us return to the collective harmony of historical towns - and let us bring technology along with us, so that we may redefine our architectural landscape altogether.

Let our buildings recede from the Clouds and let us all lie across the earth, caressing her undulating form, in awe of the clarity of the Sky.

3

A humble toy cowboy named Woody once said, “Reach for the sky!”

Architects took this on board quite literally, but they are not alone in the consensus for mass ascension.

The economists tell us the only way to build is up.4 Height has become fashionable.

The millionaires flaunt their gold with skyscrapers.

The people assure each other that height is, after all, success.5 Skies and Clouds fascinate me, as it did John Constable, a 19th century artist whose preoccupation was to sketch Clouds. “The sky ... governs everything,”6 he says. I concur. I often find myself lying on the grass to watch the Clouds drift across the Sky. The earth is soft behind my head; it whispers into my ears; “from here we can see more of who we are than up there looking back down.” A breeze then sweeps across the lawn, gently tracing the outline of my body. I can hear myself breathe and I can hear my heart beat; I feel human. It is from this position that I present my manifesto.

4

Man’s biggest problem is that he celebrates height. Burj Khalifa, glorified as the tallest building in the world since 2010, dominates the cityscape of Dubai at 830m8.

We flock as high as our buildings will lift us as if they would bring us closer to our God - that is, if architecture was our religion.

Architecture never challenged the Sky before the industrial machine implied that it could. Ground was where humans found their feet - and ground was where they built. Where mountains kissed the Sky, architecture sat on its lap in admiration of its expanse.

Such is the condition of houses on the Yemeni-Burra Mountain in Yemen. The Village of Oia perches on the arched back of the Santorini Island in Greece, borrowing - but never stealing its height.

Today, architecture wants to be the mountain. Bjarke Ingels7 has proven in Copenhagen that an artifice is enough to fool the urban jungle that it, too, can kiss the sky.

Cities have kept up with the endless rat-race to the highest point in the atmosphere. We cheer with undying faith, our arms raised Skyward; we cheer on the same architects who build tall to build even taller. By pushing our limits we are progressing as a civilisation; those are the words that spill from the buildings that rise all around us.

When the first tall building in New York realised how much power height had bestowed upon it, the whole city became infected with this megalomania9. When the Modernists sang an anthem of efficiency and objectivity, the world echoed in harmony10. Whilst the twenty-first century has finally shed the bygone reverie of the latter, tall and efficient have bred to propagate the global Skyward pursuit of glory.

She is infinite; a blue canvas that extends beyond the reach of Man. The Sky creates the Ground by means of juxtaposition; the Sky is the birthplace of the Cloud. It is a delightful experience to observe Clouds as they glide overhead; they remind me of how little I am - how little we all are - and how futile architecture’s attempt is at breaching the Sky. Clouds are the transient, impermanent architecture of the Sky. Junya Ishigami, too, has translated this possibility rather poetically; “Architecture ... transparent and intricate like an airflow, vast and enormous but even then having no substance.”11 5

Skyscrapers, megastructures - buildings are getting taller and they are closing in on my view of the Sky. I feel like I am drowning; everyone is drowning except they just don’t know it. We worry about rising sea levels and we prepare for the flood, but cities are drowning in their own architecture. The ground sinks further as finite entities crawl towards infinity - reaching higher, tiptoeing, yet to stumble. I am not moving yet I am sinking. But where I see the Sky peeping into the depths of the concrete jungle, I catch my breath. A Cloud drifts past.

There is hope still that the Ground may resurface; the Sky waits in anticipation for this reunion of parallel fields.

If we are not acrophobic, then architecture has to be.

6

A building rises to the sky, multiplying the Ground in a single location12. There is an inherent problem in the conception of tall buildings. The desire for exposure creates enclosure. As they rise to embrace the sun and sky they inevitably negate the existence of sun and sky behind them with their deep, looming shadows. For every action there is a reaction13. Whilst architects indulge in the artificial multiplication of Ground, they fail to realise that the Sky is irreplaceable. When there is a proliferation of tall buildings in a single location, architecture starts to drown its streets. The invisible flood is at hand.

Dark ...the streets are dark today. I can hardly see the Sky; grey is smothering; I don’t know how to feel.

7

The Sky is a talented artist. In the evenings she bathes in azure and copper tones and the realm beneath her reflects her vehement artistry. She works together with the Sun to draw our eyes toward a single point in the horizon; as she draws a dark veil over us she has yet another show on display.

Where there were clouds, there are now Stars. Yet architecture insists on outdoing the Sky in all her glittering magnificence. Skyscrapers unabashedly flash their beacons and their million windows glow bright against the night. They are the artificial Stars of the city. Buildings close in on my night Sky. 8

I now turn to lie on my side, so that the Ground and the Sky appear to meet at the Horizon. Two parallel fields meet along the imaginary horizontal, yet also vertical, axis of the earth, infinite in all directions. It is here, at a distance, that the true scale of Man is apparent.

The architecture of Height lacerates the Horizon. It perverts our only manifestation of infinity.

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It must be stopped.

First architects must surrender their Ego, for there is none in the humble architecture of small buildings. Then they must, hand-in-hand, step back down and join us and lie on the grass. We must help cure them of their illness; they have been riding the waves of cities for so long that they have forgotten the idle moments of life that are truly worth relishing. A city of concrete can only inspire more concrete. But in a city of Skies ... inspiration itself will be infinite.

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References 1

‘What a wonderful world’ 1967. Written by Bob Thiele & George David Weiss.

Building Design UK 2013, Should tall buildings be banished from historic cities?, accessed 19 September 2013, <http://www.bdonline.co.uk/comment/debate/should-tall-buildings-bebanished-from-historic-cities?/5055754.article> 2

Maki, F 1964, Investigations in collective form, Washington University School of Architecture, St.Louis.

3

Charney, I 2007, ‘The politics of design: architecture, tall buildings and the skyline of central London’, Area, vol.39, no.2, pp. 195-205.

4

5

Koolhaas, R 1994, Delirious New York, The Monacelli Press, New York, p.10.

Hawes, L 1969, ‘Constable’s sky sketches’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 32, p. 344. Available from: JSTOR [19 September 2013].

6

Archdaily 2009, Mountain dwellings/ BIG with JDS, accessed 19 September 2013, <http:// www.archdaily.com/15022> 7

BBC news 2010, World’s tallest building opens in Dubai, accessed 19 September 2013, < http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8439618.stm> 8

9

Koolhaas, R 1994, Delirious New York, p.10.

10

Koolhaas, R 1994, Delirious New York, p.255.

11

Ishigami, J 2011, Another scale of architecture, Seigensha, Kyoto, p.9.

12

Koolhaas, R 1994, Delirious New York, p.87.

13

Isaac Newton’s third law of motion.

Image credits (sorted by page number) p.2 : Constable, J 1822, Cloud sketch. pp.3,5,9 : Lee, SY 2012 p.4 : Ng, SCY 2013 pp.6-8,10 : Jacquet-Lagreze, R 2012, Vertical Horizon, series of photographs.