Is the Era of the Skyscraper Over?

Author: Oliver Wainwright
Year: 2021
Source type: article (The Guardian, opinion/news)
Raw file: raw/articles/wainwright-2021-era-of-skyscraper-over.md

Summary

In this Guardian piece, architecture critic Oliver Wainwright asks whether the pandemic — plus environmental concerns and China's 2020 edict against supertalls — has ended the age of the skyscraper, as office towers sit empty amid remote work. He answers that, on the historical record, predictions of the skyscraper's death have always been wrong: the form has survived the Great Depression, telecommuting scares of the 1970s, and even 9/11, rebounding each time. Yet he also charts a more ambiguous future: corporate campuses and now "smart buildings" that permit continued density only through continuous surveillance.

Key Claims

• The skyscraper's obituary is a recurring genre: the Empire State Building was "the most colossal miscalculation of the 1920s," vacant for a decade; the 1970s predicted "telecommuting"/"electronic cottages" would empty towers (Toffler's The Third Wave); 9/11 led James Howard Kunstler to declare "the age of skyscrapers is at an end."
• Each end-prediction failed: more than five times as many skyscrapers were built after 9/11 than before; 86 of the 100 tallest buildings worldwide have been built since 2001.
• The pandemic did cut construction (London planning applications down a third; global construction down ~20%), but the lure of density endures. Glaeser & Cutler's Survival of the City argues cities' "joys of human interactions and shared experiences" are their "greatest protection against urban exodus."
• Carol Willis's Form Follows Finance treats skyscrapers as "weeds": they grow when economic conditions are right — a financial, not purely formal, account of the high-rise.
• A more sinister trend (Manaugh & Twilley's Until Proven Safe): "smart buildings" that allow normal life to continue only through "continuous tracking and AI-powered assessment of their occupants" — "you will be able to go anywhere – but you will be watched, measured, and diagnosed the entire time."
• Corporate-office history (Mozingo's Pastoral Capitalism): the out-of-town office campus, whose "greenness was associated with goodness," prefigures both the pandemic-era suburban turn and the environmental critique of glass towers.

Connections

Concepts: Neoliberal Metropolis · Iconic Architecture
Authors: (related) David Harvey — the financialized city; Rem Koolhaas — the generic city and skyscraper culture
Related source notes: The Edifice Complex (Sudjic 2005) — the political/ego drive behind tall building; The Architecture of Neoliberalism (Spencer) — the financialization of the built environment

Direct Quotes

"Willis describes skyscrapers as 'weeds'; if the economic conditions are right, they'll grow."

"In the coming quarantine,' they write, 'you will be able to go anywhere – but you will be watched, measured, and diagnosed the entire time." (Manaugh & Twilley, cited)

Open Questions

• Does the "smart building"/surveillance trajectory connect Wainwright's piece to the noopolitics/affective-turn readings in Geoffrey's framework (Bismarck, Spencer)?
• Is the skyscraper's endurance best explained economically (Willis's "weeds"), politically (Sudjic's edifice complex), or technologically (surveillance)?