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Old Posted May 13, 2015, 3:46 PM
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The Schemes and Secrets of Skyscraper Spires

The Schemes and Secrets of Skyscraper Spires


5/12/15

By Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

Read More: http://gizmodo.com/the-secretive-sch...sig-1703978377

Quote:
To most of us, the spires that top tall building are an afterthought—a necessary extra, by no means interesting. But if you look closer, those spires are where all the drama has gone down, from the 1920s to this very week.

- A new residential skyscraper at 225 West 57th Street, aka the Nordstrom Tower, has apparently gone through a tiny but important growth spurt: A taller parapet may push its spire 20 feet higher than originally planned, boosting the height to 1,795 feet. --- According to the report, the design change would beat out the current tallest building in the US by a measly 19 feet of spire. The developer of the building, meanwhile, denied it in the NY Post, saying, “the Nordstrom Tower will categorically not be taller than 1 World Trade Center.”

- Two years ago, the Council on Tall Buildings published a report on what it described as “vanity spire” amongst supertall (over 1,000 foot) buildings. By the council’s calculations, spire height has increased by 400 percent since the 1970s. 29 percent of the Burj Khalifa is “non-occupiable” spire height. 31 percent of the New York Times Building is. If you lopped off the spires of all the supertalls in the world, 60 percent of them wouldn’t even qualify as supertall anymore. In short, the race skyward has pushed developers to develop the cheapest, easiest way to boost official building height: Taller spires.

- Now, whether or not that’s a huge moral transgression is up to you. But it’s interesting to realize there’s a very under-acknowledged alternate history to the world’s ever-increasing tall building heights. --- In fact, this is very far from the first time a developer has quietly added a bit of spire to beat out a competing building. Fedak points out the most famous example of this kind of scheming: The construction of the Chrysler Building in the late 1920s. Back then, two architects were locked in a fierce battle over which would build the tallest building in New York City—and the world.

- Of course, a lot has changed since the days of Severence and Van Alen. These days, it’s mainly the job of developers to keep their building heights secret and ever-changing until the last minute. In fact, the Burj Khalifa’s height remained secret until it opened. As to the Nordstrom Tower and the WTC, we’ll have to wait until the building is finished to ascertain its final height—and whether really really have a new tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

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Old Posted May 13, 2015, 5:05 PM
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I can appreciate spires when they are integrated to the overall design, when they resolve the top of the building in a pleasing and logical manner (like Chrysler and ESB). But I find them rather silly when they are basically a long stick plopped on top of a building. I'm no CTBUH of course, but when I consider the height of a building, I ignore the sticks.
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