“A skyscraper is the incarnate rebellion against the supposedly unattainable; against the mystery of altitude, against the otherworldliness of the cerulean.”

-Joseph Roth, Austrian journalist and novelist, 1894-1939

This quote is from Joseph Roth’s bookWhat I Saw, which is a collection of essays describing the city of Berlin during the Weimar Republic. Here, Roth is describing the skyscraper as a triumph against gravity, and a way for humanity to experience the unattainable. He believes the unattainable is the experience of life in the sky, high above the surface. For Roth, the skyscraper is humanity achieving verticality.


[1]: Roth, Joseph. What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933. Translated by Michael Hofmann. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. 111.