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Dancing skyscrapers. Zaha Hadid’s dynamic “Business Bay Towers” in
Dubai consists of a 75-story office building, a 65-story hotel and a 55-story
apartment tower. estimated completion: 2011
RetuRn
of the giants
Should we or shouldn’t we? That’s what engineers and
architects have been asking themselves in recent years
when it come to the question of building skyscrapers. With
their dominating size, many believe they’re an outdated
model from the last century. Nevertheless, these »giants«
are back. And after the boom cities of Asia and the Middle
East and they are now reaching Europe. TexT Norman Kietzmann
The drive to build to the skies can be said to be as old as civilisation
itself. In the beginning religious and administrative buildings
soared conspicuously above settlements and cities. But starting
at the turn of the 20th century, skyscrapers took over this
important role. They became instantly recognizable symbols in
the urban landscape, conceived and built by private interests in
contrast to the practice in earlier times.
After the birth of the skyscraper in Chicago with the construction
of the 10-story Home Insurance Building in 1885 – with a
height of 42 metres – New York became the arena where everincreasing
and daring records were set. The competition for the
tallest building in the world back then came down to a dramatic,
neck-and-neck race between the backers of the Bank of manhattan
Building and those behind the Chrysler Building. After less
than a year of building, in 1930 the Bank of manhattan Building
completed their tower with a height of 283 metres, beating the
still to be begun Chrysler Building by a metre. What H. Craig
Severance, the architect of the Bank of manhattan Building,
didn’t know is that his competitor William van Alen had intentionally
made an error when declaring the height of his tower.
Then he had the 37-metre high metal spire, famous around the
world today, secretly assembled in the Chrysler Building's crown.
While the public looked on in amazement and H. Craig Severance
with consternation, he had the spire hoisted into place to
attain a magisterial height of 319 metres. The Chrylser Building
was not only significantly higher than the Bank of manhattan
Building, it even exceeded the 300 metre height of the eiffel
Tower in Paris. It was a triumph for its builder William van Alen
and for Chrysler founder Walter Chrysler, who it turned out only
had a year left to live. And then shortly after in may 1931, the
tower was forced to hand the title over to the 381-metre empire
State Building. The builder in this case also came from the automobile
industry and was none other than the founder of General
motors, John Jacob Raskob.
It was mainly for economic reasons that two new projects in
the late Sixties and early Seventies challenged the height record.
During the construction of the empire State Building the economy
was in ruins due to the 1929 stock market crash. The building
stood almost completely unoccupied for many years after it
opened. The idea of building new office towers didn’t come back
to the fore until the economic boom of the Fifties and Sixties,
kicking off a new round of competition for record heights. Built
between 1966 and 1973, the World Trade Center significantly
exceeded the current world record with a height of 417 metres.
But just a year later the Sears Tower in Chicago with a height of
442 metres put it into second place. It was a major triumph for
Chicago that nearly 50 years after the completion of the Home
Insurance Building it was leading the list of the tallest buildings
in the world again. The oil crisis of 1973 during the construction
of the Sears Tower and the aftershocks experienced in 1979
ensured that further plans to beat the height record were put on
ice. The Sears Tower kept the title for almost two decades before
the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur in malaysia beat the
record again with a height of 452 metres.
For many observers in the Western world this seemed like a very
odd turn of events. malaysia is neither an industrialised nation
nor a world power. It meant the record for the tallest building
in the world was for the first time taken by a city outside the
united States and in a country still regarded as being part of the
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