This is just something that’s been on my mind over the past few days.
Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a fascination with tall buildings. I used to have a few books on them, one showing how the John Hancock Centre worked, I used to build the tallest tower I could from legos, etc. Whenever I hear of a new proposal in town I wish for something tall, slender and graceful and I always prefer something like this rather than a bulky, stumpy groundscraper.
Thing is, the general public thinks in the entirely opposite way. For example, here in my home town we have a new 18-storey building under construction which will be the tallest in the city. Every time I’m in someone’s car and we pass it, or else just walk past it the person I’m with makes a comment. Not even once has it been positive. This also applied to many world landmarks that we all love. Take the gherkin, most people here would consider it a major London landmark and a great piece of architecture but your average joe (well, at least the people I’ve talked to anyway) will say “why in the name of god did they build that egg there?”. In fact what they complain about usually isn’t the design, or the quality of the materials, or the shape, or the effect at street level, but the HEIGHT and height alone in most cases.
I want to find out why height is such a bad thing for the average joe. Their ideal urban landscape is usually something like this:
Various reasons I can come up with for why a lowrise city might be preferred to a highrise one are (I don’t necessarily agree with them):
Towers block out light
Towers are “out of touch” with the human scale and so are perceived as cold and inhuman whereas lowrises are more “cosy”
Taller towers = more people on the street = overcrowding and noise
Towers are a source of crime
I’ve always thought that architecture is not the same as art where any experimentation can be done and might be only appreciated by a select few but still be considered good. The reason is, if you display a urinal as a piece of art then people come to the museum and if they don’t like it they can leave. However if you design a building, especially a tall one in the shape of a urinal they’ll be forced to look at your monstrosity every day for years. IMO the architect should try and make both an energy efficient building, well designed, high quality, etc but also try and please the general public.
With this in mind is there any way this height = bad thing can be eliminated?
I don’t know if I’m being clear at all but if you don’t want to read through all this bullshit the basic question is “Why do most people hate skyscrapers?”