
The Form Could Be Reborn: The Future of the Skyscraper - waterlesscloud
https://medium.com/@SOM/the-form-could-be-reborn-6bc134872240
======
adwn
> _We all know how Facebook has disrupted what now seem like quaint forms of
> friendship, [...], information, [...]_

No, it really, _really_ , has not.

> _But more than that, Facebook, along with all the start-up successes of
> Silicon Valley, has also disrupted paradigms of success and power._

Huh, seriously? Who makes this stuff up?! Maybe the author should get out of
SV every once in a while to see that in the rest of the world, the concepts of
"success" and "power" have not changed in the last 10 years.

~~~
Silhouette
Indeed. If there is one thing Facebook has taught us more than anything else,
it is probably that technology and trivial banter are no substitute for
meaningful personal relationships.

------
xixixao
This does not hold up as an essay, more so from an architect, if she does not
discuss the reason why Facebook settled in that Sun campus and why the new
building is not a skyscraper... It is not hard to find out: Facebook (and
Google) love large floors, large open spaces. They are much easier to operate
in. This is why the Google office in New York is not in a skyscraper but in
largest-floor-plan building, spanning a hole wide city block, in NYC.

If the function is not the first consideration of the architect, well, then
they are not really doing their job. So we want to start building more
skyscrapers again, we need to show their physical utility. Perhaps change the
way people move in such space. That is a grand challenge for, wait for it,
some architect.

~~~
jseliger
_if she does not discuss the reason why Facebook settled in that Sun campus
and why the new building is not a skyscraper... It is not hard to find out_

It's actually illegal to build skyscrapers in SV (see, e.g., here:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/facebook_george_lucas_and_nimbyism_the_idiotic_rules_preventing_silicon_valley_from_building_the_houses_and_offices_we_need_to_power_american_innovation_.html)
although one could cite many further articles on the subject). FB can't build
skyscrapers (or even in many cases mid-rises) because local municipalities
won't let it.

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jlg23
This reads like an architect's whining that she is not allowed to build
skyscrapers. But surprise, people are also part of nature and sometimes they
want to feel as such. I don't want to check my phone for the weather, I'd like
to look up and see the sky. If it rains, I want to get wet. If sun is shining,
I'd like to feel it on my skin. I would like to hear birds singing, preferably
real ones and not some recorded "ambient sound, birds #42". If asking for an
outdoor playground for my kids is "fetishization of the past", then, hell yes,
sign me up for that.

Once upon a time one could actually impress people by building skyscrapers,
but that time is over. Now we all know that it is possible, the novelty wore
off.

And the argument about saving resources: There are only very few places in the
world where space is at a premium.

I wonder what Christopher Alexander would say about that article - while his
"Timeless Way of Building" did resonate with me because it was all about
"humans first", this article is just the other way around.

~~~
Nav_Panel
> people are also part of nature and sometimes they want to feel as such

Sure, but while you're at the office/at work/in your apartment? Does it matter
so much whether your building is 2 or 40 stories? You get back on the street
for your lunch break either way. The author is not _against_ building parks
and recreational spaces where you can have this; I don't really understand
your complaint.

> Once upon a time one could actually impress people by building skyscrapers,
> but that time is over. Now we all know that it is possible, the novelty wore
> off.

I obviously can't change your opinion here, but there's something very
satisfying about looking out from a high floor on a tall building. There's
always something satisfying to me about driving towards NYC and seeing the
skyline in the distance. Maybe I'm just holding on a little too much to
modernist aesthetics, but I agree with the author that skyscrapers can still
impress.

For a more recent example, I took a trip to London a few weeks ago. The piece
of art I saw there that most affected me wasn't a painting, but a skyscraper:
I saw The Shard* (completed 2012), rising up into the clouds and mist. I found
it incredibly powerful to gaze up at a building like that. It's an experience
I have difficulty describing -- it felt like a quasi-religious monument to
some aspect of our contemporary culture, and it affected me as such.

> There are only very few places in the world where space is at a premium

And those are also the areas where people want to live. People like other
people. People, in general, like density. Why keep them playgrounds for the
international wealthy? Cities used to be places for everyone: immigrants,
travelers, artists, businesspeople, parents & children... There are more
people now than ever: let's build to the sky.

*: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shard)

~~~
jlg23
> Sure, but while you're at the office/at work/in your apartment?

Yes, I actually like being woken up by birds or seeing an actual tree when I
look out of my office window. I don't want to commute to a "recreational
space" and I enjoy having meetings in cafes just outside, sitting in the sun,
having a coffee. If you walk in between skyscrapers, you have about one hour
per day of direct sunlight.

> there's something very satisfying about looking out from a high floor on a
> tall building

Only when your view is not blocked by another just as tall building across the
street.

> [The Shard]

I can appreciate nice architecture. But I lived in London for some time and I
also enjoyed the low-rise architecture that still makes up most of the inner
city. The only thing that, after some time, annoyed me: Always seeing the
Gherkin (which, as far as I know, is not even profitable). The picture on WP
illustrates that pretty well:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_St_Mary_Axe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_St_Mary_Axe)

> [The places where space is at a premium] are also the areas where people
> want to live.

And here one should ask what made those places so desirable in the first
place. Would San Francisco still be hip without the parks and cafes but with
skyscraper next to skyscraper? I would doubt that.

------
rayiner
You could fit every job in Silicon Valley, in those countless sprawling
suburban square miles, into midtown Manhattan.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Actually not really :-) Total office space in the San Jose and 'South bay'
area, which covers about 1/2 of what people think of as Silicon valley (people
in Mtn View, Palo Alto, Atherton, and Fremont and Milpitas aren't 'south bay'
but are often lumped into the Silicon Valley pile. Is over 109M square
feet[1], the 'sprawling suburban square miles' add an additional 50M square
feet. Midtown Manhattan was at 143M square feet in in 2013 [2], but I'll grant
you its surprisingly similar.

What tall buildings give you of course is easier mass transit since you get
better economies making a few stations which can serve a million, rather than
a lot of stations that serve only thousands.

[1] _Total office inventory in the South Bay /San Jose market area amounted to
106,215,509 square feet in 4,417 buildings as of the end of the second quarter
2009._ \-- Pg 12,
[https://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1623](https://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1623)

[2] 142,809,572 (table 1) --
[http://www.thesquarefoot.com/blog/posts/manhattan-q3-2013-of...](http://www.thesquarefoot.com/blog/posts/manhattan-q3-2013-office-
space-market-statistics)

~~~
JackFr
Along with that there is an added efficiency to in person meetings, if
everyone works within a mile of one another.

------
jqkeller
One of the basic arguments of this piece is that skyscrapers have a lower
environmental impact than low and mid rise buildings, but that's not
necessarily true.

The city of Seattle released an updated report for 2013 data on their mandated
city wide energy benchmarking.
[http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/OSE/EBR-2013-re...](http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/OSE/EBR-2013-report.pdf)
I would suggest that these results may not translate well to the rest of the
world, Seattle's climate is so mild it's a bit of an outlier.

Based on the data collected, mid-rise housing has a lower Energy Use intensity
(EUI) than high rise housing, see page 33. Figure 22 on page 51 is also
interesting because it looks like the high rise multifamily also has a lower
variance than the mid-family. To me that implies there is less room for design
improvement, more of the buildings are grouped around the median higher EUI.
EUI is the annual energy use per area of building, typically kBtu per square
foot in the states.

I found these results somewhat counter-intuitive from an Mechanical/Energy
Engineer point of view until I thought about it a bit. Ideally a tall dense
building has less exterior area per interior area and hence lower heat
loss/gain, but in reality skyscrapers tend to have substantially more
glazing(windows) than mid rise and the energy load impact of windows is
substantially greater than opaque walls, say R-5 to R-20.

Also, a high rise provides the opportunity for sophisticated mechanical
systems with energy recovery and efficient systems, but in reality
sophisticated systems are complicated, often poorly implemented and difficult
to maintain leading to excessive energy consumption.

Everything can always be designed better in the future, but I would suggest
the data doesn't necessarily support that the density skyscrapers bring
improves their environmental impact. Granted I'm not taking into account any
of the external factors like reduced commutes, transit density, infrastructure
density, etc.

------
jamespitts
Really nice to have architects talking about this key piece of infrastructure.
My wished-for future of the skyscraper:

\- main street social conditions that can exist at the 10th...nth floor,
ideally connecting buildings together

\- trees, gardens, connections to nature

\- fostering more flexible construction of office and housing space

\- allowing for new forms of mass transport and automated delivery

