Introduction to Verticality
Homo sapiens and our need for verticality
This chapter is part of a series that compose the main verticality narrative. The full series is located here.
Man must rise above the earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.
-Socrates
Ever since humans descended from the trees and out onto the savannah, we’ve gazed upward in wonder at the sky and the stars. Until fairly recently in our history, this space above our heads was a mystery. Our ancestors would witness the diurnal movements of the sun and the moon, and the brilliance of a glowing sunrise or sunset. The clouds would drop water and thundering bolts of light and energy. At night, they would witness a spectacular tapestry of light-emitting dots, and connect them into elaborate shapes. The sky has been a continual source of wonder throughout our history, and we’ve spent countless hours thinking about the world we see above our heads.
Early humans were beholden to the elements they saw in the sky, yet they knew nothing about their true nature. We humans are a curious bunch, however, and our history is filled with attempts to understand, and ultimately reach, the sky. Many of our greatest minds have looked up in awe and set to work trying to understand what we see above our heads.
I began this introduction with a quote by the Greek philosopher Socrates. He is describing a deep need within us to escape the surface of the earth in order to fully understand our place in the cosmos. He is not alone. Many of history’s brilliant minds have expressed this same deep need. Leonardo Da Vinci also thought a great amount about how we can escape the surface. His designs for flying machines tap into a deep desire for flight that our species has dealt with since our inception. These ideas pre-date any actual human flight, which illustrates how these things were on our mind long before they became a reality. Vincent Van Gogh was fascinated with the night sky, and is quoted as saying the sight of the stars makes me dream.[1] His iconic painting Starry Night shows him trying to represent the timeless beauty of the night sky.
Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night, painted in 1889. Van Gogh had a deep fascination with the night sky, and he attempted to recreate the brilliance of the moon and the stars in some of his work.
Humans have an innate need to break free of our confinement to this planet. From our first vertical act of standing upright to our conquering of the skies through flight and skyscraper construction, humans have been driven by our need for verticality. This is a timeless struggle, and it has been fought by every member of our species who has ever lived.
Each of our lives is defined by verticality. From birth, we begin to crawl and over time we learn to walk. It’s a major source of pride for parents to witness their child’s first steps. This is a vertical progression of locomotion, and it results in our upright bodies. As children, we have a deep fascination with heights and high places. When I was a boy, my friends and I loved climbing trees. There was something thrilling about the act of ascending the limbs, which also brought on feelings of fear due to the dangers of falling. It was a bit of a paradox; I wanted to climb as high as possible, but the higher I got the more anxious I became. This dichotomy of fear and thrills is quite common among our species; high places simultaneously represent safety and danger. Therefore, we seek them out in myriad ways throughout our lives. In addition to tree climbing my friends and I would play games like King of the Hill, and we had a habit of climbing on the roof of my house to hang out. Each of these activities involved placing a greater value on a high place of some sort.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s designs for flying machines, circa 1490. Da Vinci was tapping into an innate need we have to escape the surface of the earth, and he was using flight as a way of achieving it.
Other examples of seeking out high places are all around us. Observation decks and viewing platforms are common in parks and cities, creating high places so people can view their world from above. Everywhere on the planet, high land is valued more than low land, and those who occupy the high ground have an advantage over those who don't.[2] Many of our most primitive towns and villages were located at high points in the landscape, and in modern cities, the highest floors of our buildings carry the most value. In the natural world, mountains provide us with high places to aspire to, and mountain-climbing is a popular activity around the world. Mount Everest, the highest place on earth, is like a magnet for these types of activities, simply because it's the highest. From the outside looking in, the act of risking your own life for the experience of a high place is nothing short of irrational. This is especially true when considering the people who attempt it have enough free time and money to make it a sport or leisure rather than a necessity for survival. There is a primal drive here. A drive hidden somewhere in our source code, whether we are aware of it or not. We seek out high places. We spend great amounts of time and energy to get to them.
It’s fairly common for writers to acknowledge that humans have an inner drive for height, but they rarely dig deeper into why this is true.[3] Why do humans seek out high places? What is it about our species that gave us an innate need to escape the surface of the earth? I’ve wondered about these two questions since my days climbing trees as a boy, and this work is an attempt to answer them.
In the interest of clarity, I’ll approach the subject of verticality through the lens of architecture. This is a storyline that runs deep within our species. We’ve been building structures for tens of thousands of years, and architecture, or shelter, is one of our four basic survival goals along with fighting (weapons), feeding (agriculture), and comfort (medicine). It’s how we shape our surroundings to ensure comfort, safety and defense.[4] Architecture is also our most direct cultural indicator, since our buildings take great amounts of time and effort to construct and they remain on earth long after we die.
There is much to discuss before the beginnings of architecture, however. To properly approach the subject, a deeper understanding of our species is warranted. This begins with the context we exist in. This context will establish the rules of our existence here on earth. Next, the natural phenomena we interact with on the earth’s surface will be explored. After the context and surface are introduced, I’ll jump into our species and where we come from. This will include our early history and how we came to escape the natural food chain and colonize the globe. Finally, we arrive at architecture and how humans have used our buildings as a means to escape the surface of the earth and to conquer the skies.
It’s been a long and arduous journey for humans to reach our goal of escaping the planet we live on. This is a 1969 photo of Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission, marking the first time in the history of our species that we’d escaped earth and set foot on another planet.
Keep reading: Verticality, Part I: The Context
[1]: Van Gogh’s full quote was ‘For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.’
[2]: 'Occupy the high ground' is an age-old concept and can be traced all the way back to Sun-tzu in the 5th century BC. See: Sun-tzu. The Art of War. Translated by John Minford. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
[3]: Many authors have acknowledged our inner drive for height, but do not get specific about why this is true. See: Binder, Georges. 101 Of The World's Tallest Buildings. Victoria: Images Publishing Group, 2006. 8-9.; Goldberger, Paul. The Skyscraper. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. 80.; Heinle, Erwin, and Fritz Leonhardt. Towers: A Historical Survey. New York: Rizzoli, 1989. 7.; Huxtable, Ada Louise. The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered: The Search For A Skyscraper Style. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1984. 99.; Korom, Joseph J. The American Skyscraper, 1850-1940: A Celebration of Height. Boston: Branden Books, 2008. 15.; Nobel, Philip. "Introduction: The Future of the Skyscraper." In The Future of the Skyscraper: SOM Thinkers Series, 6-15. New York, NY: Metropolis Books, 2015. 8-9.; Van Leeuwen, Thomas A.P. The Skyward Trend of Thought: Five Essays on the Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper. 's-Gravenhage: AHA Books, 1986. 63.
[4]: Morris, Desmond. The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967. 139.