Are Great Skyscraper Proposals Cursed?

[Troubadour]

You may have noticed there seems to be an unusual or even spooky tendency of truly awesome building proposals - serious projects with major backers and a lot of buzz - to be gutted by subsequent value engineering or regulatory impositions, put on hold, or cancelled. Part of this, of course, is just selection bias: Their failure or corruption is much more damaging to morale than the failure of some purely economic, generic proposal. But there seems to be another explanation that is, in some ways, every bit as disheartening as the idea of vengeful gods jealous of a great vision.

Only a tiny handful of developers care what they build at all, and even those few largely do it only to the extent necessary to attract high-end customers - people who are themselves largely of the "business" mindset, and couldn't care less as long as it's expensive and appreciates in value. In other words, the market for a great skyscraper is very limited under most conditions - it may cost substantially more than a "good" skyscraper without guaranteeing a greater return.

So great ideas just sit there in a neglected pool, until somewhere, at some point the market spikes just high enough that the money people deem it worthwhile to compete on aesthetics. This is when architects are allowed to dust off their visions, and a few of them make it through to being proposals or even early-stage construction projects.

Here's the problem: By the time developers start caring enough about aesthetics to pay a premium for true greatness rather than mere adequacy, the market is already overheated and capacity far in excess of current demand. They've already squeezed almost every drop of blood from the market, but some are more daring than others (if not foolhardy) and now gamble on whether they can get just a little more by doing something flashy. Enter the "great proposals" - spooky, beautiful, awesome, timeless, mythic structures that really capture and exude something.

From that point on, it's a death race to build it before the market crashes and obliterates the financing. But since most of them are undertaken at a late stage in the bubble, most are caught in the collapse to some extent - put on indefinite hold, scaled down and redesigned, or the project liquidated altogether (RIP, Chicago Spire). A few squeeze through, though not many totally unscathed, and then the cycle begins again. Except when it's best to begin building again is not when the best projects are undertaken - at highest profit potential, developers want to build the cheapest and absolutely least challenging buildings, because that's where the volume is.

The picture this observation paints is not pretty. We see that art and business only intersect in this tiny, transient island in the economic ocean, because businessmen treat beauty (like they treat human beings) as a great big expense that gets in the way of their precious bottom line rather than being one of the few legitimate reasons they exist. It only becomes appealing to them in a risky climate that ends up dooming so many tremendous projects. If they would plan to build in the most auspicious part of the cycle, then a lot more great buildings would be finished, but that would involve taking a risk when a risk is not economically necessary. So instead of beautiful buildings, it's just rich, ugly pigs snorting up a little more of their green slop.

Now, this doesn't necessarily apply to situations where the financiers are directly interested in aesthetics - e.g., emerging countries trying to spiff up their cities and suck in new business - but even there the phenomenon is visible and often painful. I'm thinking specifically of the Pingan in Shenzhen - a barely-alive project with an original design I and many others considered to be the greatest in China (haven't seen the new design, but three guesses whether it will be better or worse than the original). It may just be a blip, or a dead canary signaling the approaching collapse of the Chinese real estate bubble (not that it's exactly sneaking up on us, with entire cities of vacant skyscrapers).

Basically, the point is that the mass-failure of the best projects seems to be inscribed in the DNA of capitalist development: True architectural achievement is caught between the competing pressures of a higher profit from cheaper buildings during the fat times, and impending financial strangulation when bubbles pop. Like all the elements heavier than iron are born in the few split-seconds of a supernova shockwave, it seems that true greatness in architecture only succeeds by dancing on the edge - one step too short, and it's never undertaken; one step too far, and it falls.

[urbanlife]

This is sort of a broad stroke, I am not sure I follow what the point is? Bad architecture is built everyday at every level. You just notice these things more with the large projects because of having a much more noticeable impact.

Is there somewhere you were hoping this thread were to go? Or conversation you were hoping to start? Is this related to anything specific that has happened lately or something you have read you wish to share?

Just not sure of this point, sure, lots of great ideas never get built, that is just the way it is...and honestly often times the only reason why something is considered a great idea when it has never been built is because it can't be judged in reality, it just stays a perfect daydream.

[The Chemist]

Never thought much of Ping An. Shanghai Tower is FAR better, IMO, and it's well and truly U/C.

[Troubadour]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

This is sort of a broad stroke, I am not sure I follow what the point is?

Describing how the vagaries of developmental cycles contribute to the suppression of high-quality architecture, and how it's sometimes set up to fail when it is attempted.

Originally Posted by urbanlife

Bad architecture is built everyday at every level. You just notice these things more with the large projects because of having a much more noticeable impact.

Not really interested in bad architecture. I did note that selection bias plays a role in the perception that great projects end up falling through proportionally more often than merely good, mediocre, or ridiculous ones. But it does seem there is an economic basis for the "curse" rooted in how such projects are selected in the first place.

Originally Posted by urbanlife

Is there somewhere you were hoping this thread were to go? Or conversation you were hoping to start? Is this related to anything specific that has happened lately or something you have read you wish to share?

I was reflecting on the Chicago Spire - a very magical project that would have fundamentally altered the spirit of the Chicago skyline - and started wondering why that of all things ended up failing completely when so many other imperiled projects were able to be put on functional hold, and still others ended up being completed after a hiatus. It wasn't merely an awesome and mythic design, but physically gigantic, putting the US back in the height game. So its loss was a big gut-punch to this country's relevance at the upper end of both the creativity and height scales.

When Pingan, another awesome giant, ground to a halt while silly projects all around it were being completed, I started wondering if there's some kind of pattern to this. And there is. Very simply, the conditions that motivate developers to go for such projects are precisely those which imperil them - the climate of commodity saturation where aesthetics and prestige take on maximum value.

Originally Posted by urbanlife

Just not sure of this point, sure, lots of great ideas never get built, that is just the way it is...and honestly often times the only reason why something is considered a great idea when it has never been built is because it can't be judged in reality, it just stays a perfect daydream.

Nevertheless, not all daydreams are all equal. And the handful of the best that ever come within a light-year of being realized always seem to have a giant target painted on them the whole time. Again, because the conditions that make them attractive to money people in the first place are the ones that make them proportionally more likely to fall through once set in motion.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by Troubadour

Describing how the vagaries of developmental cycles contribute to the suppression of high-quality architecture, and how it's sometimes set up to fail when it is attempted.

If I am reading this right, this is the difference between building something small for the individual compared to buildings something large for the masses. Most cities want to have input on what is to be built in their own city because like the building, they too have to live with it. Often times these suppressions are put in place to protect other things, such as historic buildings, key site lines, or park space, or whatever. Here in Portland you can only technically build so tall in order to protect light getting to the street because we value our limited amount of sunlight here.

Not really interested in bad architecture. I did note that selection bias plays a role in the perception that great projects end up falling through proportionally more often than merely good, mediocre, or ridiculous ones. But it does seem there is an economic basis for the "curse" rooted in how such projects are selected in the first place.

That kind of falls under the "if you can't pay for it" rule. If you can't pay for it, why should we? Often times banks do not like to lend to experimental things, they prefer "safe" bets (though this past decade would suggest otherwise, but that is a different topic.) I would assume many of your favorite buildings happened at the peak or at the beginning of the fall of a bubble because that is usually the moment where people feel they are indestructible. I remember the peak of the housing bubble where people seemed to think anything was possible and real estate values were going to continue to rise forever. So much of this "curse" you are talking about seems to be more about timing and luck, more than anything else.

I was reflecting on the Chicago Spire - a very magical project that would have fundamentally altered the spirit of the Chicago skyline - and started wondering why that of all things ended up failing completely when so many other imperiled projects were able to be put on functional hold, and still others ended up being completed after a hiatus. It wasn't merely an awesome and mythic design, but physically gigantic, putting the US back in the height game. So its loss was a big gut-punch to this country's relevance at the upper end of both the creativity and height scales.

When Pingan, another awesome giant, ground to a halt while silly projects all around it were being completed, I started wondering if there's some kind of pattern to this. And there is. Very simply, the conditions that motivate developers to go for such projects are precisely those which imperil them - the climate of commodity saturation where aesthetics and prestige take on maximum value.

The Chicago Spire was doomed from the start because it was completely unrealistic. I am sure a lot of people loved it and would of loved seeing it go up, but the basis of the tower was that it was completely residential (if I remember correctly), and that each unit was a unique custom design by the architect. Basically you were looking at an architect's wet dream in the making, to have complete control over every detail, which is fine on the small scale and happens everyday, but at the large scale towers are profitable when they are able to mass fabricate. From the start, I never thought it was actually going to be built, I was surprised when I actually saw them dig the foundation. But even with the Spire being canceled, there were still more than enough amazing projects going up in this country, and I would say some of the best architecture in this country was built in the past ten years, so it doesn't bother me to see a couple of these projects fall through. There is more to a great city than height, but even still a number of cities in this country did in fact increase their building height.

Nevertheless, not all daydreams are all equal. And the handful of the best that ever come within a light-year of being realized always seem to have a giant target painted on them the whole time. Again, because the conditions that make them attractive to money people in the first place are the ones that make them proportionally more likely to fall through once set in motion.

Well this is very true, but I was more referring to the visionary and unbuilt project that were actually close or a possibility of actually being built, and not all daydreams in general. (just to clarify) But this statement is where I was making the paint brush comment about, this is a blanket statement that sounds like it encompasses all architecture as if nothing visionary is ever built anymore, and with that, I have to disagree. I think only a small portion of these "cursed" buildings are never built, and often times it is to the blame of the developer who was never really serious about building something like this or willing to take on the full risk to see something through.