Verticality, Part II: The Seeds of Verticality
Natural phenomena throughout our context that exhibit verticality
This chapter is part of a series that compose the main verticality narrative. The full series is located here.
So there we were. Confined to the earth's surface, competing with life around us and existing at the center of our own worlds. As our ancestors evolved in the trees, we didn’t have the means to shape our environment like we do today, so we had to look to the natural landscape of the earth’s surface to satisfy our need for verticality. These natural phenomena would define our early relationship and struggles with the surface, the sky, and the underground.
The surface environment of the earth is widely varied, and no two landscapes are the same. There are common elements found in most places, however. We’ll explore four here. The first is the closest we can get to the underground: caves. The second and third are present at the surface: mountains and trees. The last is the sky. It’s what we’ve looked up at and what we’ve wondered about throughout our history. Together, these four elements provide our earliest reference points for verticality, and each is deeply connected to our subsequent attempts at achieving it.
Caves
Caves are our earliest known shelters.[1] Before we had the means to build our own structures, we looked to the surrounding landscape to provide it for us. In many ways, they represent the underground. They are below the surface, but they still have a surface of their own, so in a way the underground is still under us even when we’re inside a cave. Once inside, we have protection from the elements and we have control over an entrance, which increases safety and our ability to survive.
Caves also represent part of the human life-cycle. Each of us begins in the womb and ends in the grave. We begin life in the darkness and claustrophobia of the womb, and through birth we exit out into the light of the world to live our lives. We end life by returning to the earth; our bodies becoming part of the underground itself.[2] This book-ending of our lives gives us a deep connection to caves and the underground, and this contributes to our need to escape the surface of the earth. We seek to escape death and to prolong life in any way possible, because deep down we know that someday our bodies will return to the underground.
Mountains
Mountains are the highest places we can experience on earth. They are the closest we can get to the sky while remaining on the surface. Throughout time, we’ve constantly sought out high places for a variety of reasons. When we’re on higher ground, we have better access to views, sunlight, wind and rain. High places also provide isolation, both from other humans and from other life forms that could harm us. Mountains also symbolize a link between the surface and the sky.[3] They contain their own axis-mundi and relate to our upright bodies through their inherent verticality.
A New Yorker cartoon from March 31, 1986 by Ed Fisher. Humans are drawn to mountains because they provide us with high spaces to occupy and aspire to, and our upright bodies relate to them.
Ascending to the peak of a mountain is an act that represents a journey from the surface to the sky, and mountain peaks are commonly imbued with spiritual or religious significance. Myriad examples can be found. The ancient Greek Gods lived up on Mount Olympus, and the peak represented the earthly world of the Gods. In the Old Testament, Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the ten commandments from God. In Shinto mythology, the god Kuninotokotachi is said to live on top of Mount Fuji. Hindus believe that Mount Kailash is where the deity Shiva resides. In the Mesopotamian poem Epic of Gilgmesh, from roughly the 18th century BC, multiple references are made to the twin peaks of Mount Mashu, where the sun is believed to rise from, and under which Gilgamesh must travel to reach paradise. In Dante’s Divine Comedy from 1320, Dante must climb up Mount Purgatory to reach paradise at the top. These examples, among many others, illustrate our connection to mountains and our need for high places.
Today, ascending to a mountaintop is still seen as an achievement, and people spend great amounts of time and effort to do so. Children play the game King of the Hill, and mountain-climbing is a sort of sport or leisure activity. In the former, the goal is to ascend the hill and defend the peak; in the latter, a successful journey to the summit is a status symbol and a rite of passage for those who attempt it. The statement I climbed Mount Everest carries with it a weight of achievement and superiority, since great risk and skill are needed to reach it. For anyone who remembers the TV show Guts on Nickelodeon, the final event was a race to climb up the Aggro Crag, which was an artificial mountain. It was no doubt the dream of many children in the mid-90s (myself included) to one day reach the top of the Aggro Crag, but I digress.
In early civilizations, we would build our most important structures at or near the peaks of hills and mountains. Where they didn’t exist, we would create our own. Ancient Greek temples were frequently located on mountaintops, and many Shinto and Buddhist temples were built on high places to symbolize their importance. The Ancient Egyptians, Mesoamerican and Mesopotamian civilizations created their own mountains in the form of pyramids and ziggurats. Anywhere you go in the world, early civilizations used or created mountains in some way to get closer to the sky.
Trees
Trees are where our ancestors resided, and their vertical orientation is the embodiment of the surface, sky and underground with their trunk, canopy and roots, respectively. Our ancestors’ relationship with trees will be further explored in the next chapter; our interest here is what trees symbolize for us.
Trees symbolize upward movement and growth, as well as the axis-mundi and our vertical bodies. They also symbolize attempts to reach the sky, and they are common among creation stories as metaphors for the universe. This is because they connect the sky and the underground, with their roots in the ground and their branches reaching upwards toward the sky. They are a link between the heavens and the earth.[4] Throughout time, trees have also been our providers. The children’s book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is an elegant parable of a common human-to-tree relationship. Throughout the book, the tree provides the boy with a place to climb, shade from the sun, food (apples) and wood (for a house and a boat).[5] Lastly, our vertical, upright bodies relate closely to the upright nature of trees, because we are each in a constant battle with gravity to remain upright.
Piedmont Forest Succession, by Duke University. Trees must constantly compete for access to light and air.
Throughout their lives, trees grow upwards to gain greater access to light and air, and throughout their lives they are in a race with their neighbors to get the most of each, as this helps to ensure survival. A forest can be seen as the result of constant competition for light and air, which leads to taller and taller trees over time.[6] Our modern cities and their clusters of skyscrapers exhibit similar behavior; each building competes with its neighbors for access to light and air, and over time the density and height of the urban form increases as a result.
This link between architecture and trees runs deep throughout architectural history. The triad of root, trunk and branch have been reinterpreted many times, from classical column design (base, shaft and cornice) to modern skyscraper design. Louis Sullivan first used the metaphor of a tree for tall building design in his 1896 article The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, and Frank Lloyd Wright would also use the metaphor in his Story of the Tower in 1956.[7] The metaphor continues today; the contemporary architecture firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill has likened some of their tower designs to tree trunks because of their structural design.[8]
The Sky
The sky is an unattainable place for nearly all surface-dwelling creatures. Ever since the dawn of humanity, we have looked up in wonder at the vastness of the space above us. We have created myriad stories and theories about what goes on up there; the sky is where the heavens are, and it’s where most creation stories tell us that we’ll go after we die. The sky also represents the unknown and the abstract, and getting to it will be central to much of our quest for verticality. It isn’t a place per se, but rather an idea. It’s what’s up there. It’s our main source of light from the sun, moon and stars, as well as a source of water from rain and snow. It’s also the main source we have to gauge and measure the passage of time. The diurnal movements of the sun govern our behavior throughout our lives.
We see much happen up in the sky, but we only see one type of animal up there: birds. Birds represent an escape from the surface and a conquering of gravity. They are a link between the heavens and the earth, and throughout our history we have sought to fly as birds do.[9] Take the Greek myth of Icarus for example; it is a cautionary tale of a man who was able to fly as birds do, but flew too close to the sun and ruined his wings. We have since achieved actual flight, of course, and the history of human flight is rich and full of innovation and invention, but we’ll discuss that later.
These four seeds, combined with the five universal elements from the first chapter provide us with context for life on earth, as well as a foundation for our struggles with verticality. We will now shift focus to the human story. The story of how our ancestors descended from the trees and conquered the earth, and how our need for verticality would shape and guide our history through time.
Keep reading: Verticality, Part III: Inception.
[1]: See: Ferree, Barr. Primitive Architecture. New York, 1890. 157.; Trachtenberg, Marvin. Architecture, from Prehistory to Post-modernism. The Netherlands: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1986. 50.
[2]: See entries for ‘cave’ or ‘cavern’ in the following: Lethaby, W. R. Architecture Mysticism and Myth. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1892.; Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by Jack Sage. Second ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1971.; Cooper, J. C. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.; Chevalier, Jean, and Alain Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by John Buchanan-Brown. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1996.
[3]: ibid. for references to ‘mountain’
[4]: ibid. for references to ‘tree’
[5]: Silverstein, Shel. The Giving Tree. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
[6]: For a description of a forest through the lens of evolution by natural selection, see: Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986. 261.
[7]: See Sullivan, Louis H. "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered." Lippincott's Magazine, March 1896, 403-09. and Wright, Frank Lloyd. The Story of the Tower: The Tree That Escaped the Crowded Forest. New York: Horizon Press, 1956. 15-16.
[8]: Mays, Vernon. "Tree Trunk Towers: Cantilevered Floor/Super Core Structure." Architect Magazine, August 18, 2011.
[9]: See entries for ‘bird’ or ‘sky’ in the following: Lethaby, W. R. Architecture Mysticism and Myth. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1892.; Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by Jack Sage. Second ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1971.; Cooper, J. C. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.; Chevalier, Jean, and Alain Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by John Buchanan-Brown. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1996.