Verticality, Part XI: Breaking the Box
A rebellion against spacecraft and efforts to humanize our tall buildings
This chapter is part of a series that compose the main verticality narrative. The full series is located here.
The human experience of stacked, identical floors on top of one another was foreign to our surface-dwelling nature. The disconnected, isolated experience of International Style buildings took us up to the sky, but cut us off from everything surrounding us. This lack of variety in tower floors and the monotony of box-like tower forms would begin to be challenged by architects. This signaled that we needed to humanize our experience of verticality again. Instead of monotonous boxes, towers began to see their forms eroded away in order to create more varied experiences within them. We needed to recreate the surface in the sky.
Erosion: Rebellion against spacecraft
Humans are surface-dwellers, and our species is built to exist there. The surface contains an amazing amount of variety, and it’s where nearly all recreation and travel occur. It’s also where all plant life exists naturally. In short, the surface is where all the action is. As a result, we have an intimate connection with it, and we miss it when we’re deprived of it. When we work or live at great distances from the surface, we crave the variety and the action that we left behind. As a result of this, we began trying to recreate the experience of the surface in the sky. This can be done in many ways, and the aforementioned erosion of building forms is one way we started experimenting with.
An early example of an eroded building form is the 1972 Petrobras Headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. The building’s overall form is a box, but a checkerboard of terrace cutouts throughout the stack break up the monotony. These terraces do a few things to enhance the experience of the tower. First, they provide outdoor space for the occupants, allowing them to experience the sounds, smells and weather conditions of their surroundings. Second, the terraces create spaces where people can look back at the building they inhabit, giving them an identity within the building. They also allow occupants to see different levels above and below them, which creates a visual connection to more spaces. Third, the cutouts allow light to penetrate deeper into the building, giving more interior spaces direct access to daylight. Lastly, the terraces provide something different beyond the typical floors one finds in a corporate office tower. They provide more spatial variety, resulting in a more meaningful experience for the users. Another example of a tower that uses a terracing strategy is the Menara Mesiniaga, just outside Kuala Lumpur. Completed in 1992, the building features a series of outdoor terraces that spiral up the buildings and bring green space to each individual floor. They also allow occupants to see multiple levels at once.
Left: Petrobras Headquarters, completed in 1972 in Rio de Janeiro. Right: base of the CitiCorp Center, completed in 1977 in New York. Both buildings erode away their forms in order to break down the scale of the tall building and to humanize their experience. Petrobras photo by Felipe Lange Borges. Petrobras image source. CitiCorp image source.
The CitiCorp Center also has an eroded form. Built in 1977 in New York, the base of this massive tower is cut away, leaving only four mega-columns and the core exposed at its base. This allows the tower base to integrate with its surroundings, and it provides a more welcoming entry experience. In addition, there is an adjacent sunken plaza that houses mixed-use functions, including shops, restaurants, a chapel, and a connection to the subway. These functions create a more spatial variety at ground level, adding more uses than a typical tower base would. Another notable example of an open tower base is the HSBC Building in Hong Kong. Built in 1985, the tower features an outdoor ground level with a central atrium directly above it.
A few years after CitiCorp was completed, the 1983 National Commercial Bank Building in Jeddah would take erosion a few steps further. The building is triangular, with an open, central atrium and large voids cut out of the facade. The exterior doesn’t have windows due to the extreme desert environment, so the voids work to counteract this by bringing in daylight into the central atrium. There are also large terraces at the base of each void with greenery planted on them, giving occupants a place to be among plants and vegetation. Also known as skygardens, these spaces break up the monotony of the tower experience, much like the Petrobras terraces did. The resulting tower does much to enrich the experience of the skyscraper, and it was a major landmark in our quest for verticality.
The National Commercial Bank Building, completed in 1983 in Jeddah. The building has a central atrium and large voids in the facade that provide terraces. The atrium and voids let daylight penetrate deep into the building and provide a more human experience for occupants. Image source.
The National Commercial Bank Building would serve as inspiration for a much more well-known building that would become a model for humanizing the skyscraper. The Commerzbank Tower put together each strategy discussed above and went a few steps further. It represents one of the great experiments in the humanization of the skyscraper experience, and it was the first to be dubbed a ‘green skyscraper’.[1] Built in 1997 in Frankfurt, the tower uses the same design basis as the National Commercial Bank Building, with a triangular form, a central atrium, and large voids in the exterior. Also, like the CitiCorp Center, the building opens up its base and knits itself into the surrounding city with a large atrium and winter garden.[2] The skygardens at the base of each void are partially enclosed, giving them a connection to the outdoors while remaining protected from the elements. They are also planted with trees and shrubs, which creates a more surface-like experience. The skygardens are also meant to function as social spaces, creating the idea of a ‘village’ by grouping every four floors together.
Partial section of the Commerzbank Tower, completed in 1997 in Frankfurt. The tower uses a similar design to the National Commercial Bank, featuring a central atrium and voids that bring daylight deep into the building. The voids also contain skygardens that allow occupants to experience trees and schrubs while up in the tower. Image source.
The last, and possibly the most profound innovation of the Commerzbank Tower is the placement of its lifts. Each lift bank is placed at an exterior corner of the building, visually exposing the lifts to the outdoors rather than burying them in the center of the building. By placing the lifts at the exterior wall and putting windows in each cab, the experience of ascending or descending the tower is continuous, and the severing of space so common in tower design is greatly reduced. In a typical tower, occupants enter a lift and have a black-box experience. This black-box is cut off from the rest of the world and abstracts the movement of the lift. Users can feel the movement, but without a visual connection, the distance covered isn’t relatable. At Commerzbank, occupants can view the outdoors as they travel up or down the tower, giving them a visual connection that makes the journey more meaningful. From the outside, the public can see the lifts operating, which creates a deeper connection to the people using the building. Other examples of buildings with exposed lifts are Lloyd’s Building and Lloyd’s Register, both in London and completed in 1986 and 2000 respectively, as well as the Thompson Center in Chicago, completed in 1985.
Typical floor plan of the Commerzbank Tower, completed in 1997 in Frankfurt. The building’s lift banks are located in the corners of the floor plan, exposing them to the exterior and allowing occupants to see their surroundings while they ascend or descend the tower. Image source.
Each of the buildings discussed here made efforts to humanize the skyscraper experience by eroding away at the building form in some way. These efforts provided building users with more spatial variety and brought elements of the surface up into the sky. Unfortunately, due to the higher costs associated with each of these strategies, they are less common than they should be, and buildings that feature them are the exception to the rule.
Irregularity: Expressing the individual within the collective
We would continue to humanize the skyscraper experience by trying to further recreate the surface in the sky. Our efforts to erode away at building forms would evolve into a need for irregularity. We began to express the individual within the collective through our buildings, which would give each occupant an identity within the tower. The previous examples of erosion included massive voids and large terraces that grouped together many floors. These elements would subsequently begin to atomize into smaller units that would combine with patterns of irregularity. This combination would produce designs with unique floors and a pixelated appearance from the outside.
Breaking down the scale of a tall building was nothing new, however. During the 1960s and ‘70s, the Metabolist movement in Japan attempted to accomplish similar goals. Metabolists believed in expressing the individual within the collective, but the scarcity of built examples made it difficult for the style to catch on. As a result, many designs went unbuilt and it remains a somewhat isolated movement within our struggles with verticality. One example that did get built was the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo. Completed in 1972, the building used a system of capsules to express the individual within the collective. Each capsule contained a single dwelling unit, allowing each person to ‘own’ a distinct part of the building. Elsewhere, buildings like Habitat 67 in Montréal, completed in 1967, Marina City in Chicago, completed in 1968, and the Colonnade in Singapore, completed in 1980, each make efforts to express the individual within the collective form of the building. These were isolated efforts, however, and this type of strategy would fly below the radar until much more recently in our history.
The MahaNakhon tower, completed in 2016 in Bangkok. A pixelated pattern on the facade breaks down the scale of the building and provides each floor with a unique experience. It also provides outdoor terraces and the ability to see other levels of the building. Photo by Wilson Tungthunya. Image source.
One major example of this trend resurfacing is the MahaNakhon tower in Bangkok. Completed in 2016, the building is a box that has been eroded away into a spiralling pattern of pixelated terraces. This pixelation breaks down the scale of the building into an individual unit, and provides each floor with a unique experience. As a result, occupants have a heightened sense of identity throughout the tower, and can more easily identify their floor when viewing the building from the exterior. The terracing also allows users to see spaces above and below them, much like the terraces discussed above. Similar examples include 56 Leonard in New York, also completed in 2016, and the DNB House in Oslo, completed in 2012. The former uses a pixelation strategy that gets more pronounced the higher up one goes in the tower, and the latter uses it to break down the mass of an office building and provide a variety of space types.
Another model for irregularity is Beirut Terraces, also completed in 2016. The building takes the terracing concept and pushes it further, using cantilevered slabs to shade its facade from the harsh Lebanese sun. Each floor of the building is different, which affords a unique experience to each occupant. The building is also able to blur the lines between interior and exterior due to the warm climate in Beirut, which increases the connection to the outdoors for the user.
The Beirut Terraces, completed in 2016. The tower features an irregular pattern of terraces and units that provide a unique experience to each unit, as well as a direct connection between the interior and exterior. Photo by Iwan Baan. Image source.
Irregularity is still being sought after today. The need for a humanized skyscraper experience is ongoing, and we will no doubt continue to struggle with our lives in the sky as we experiment with different strategies. One thing remains clear though: the experience of a tall building is one that requires a human element. Without it, our lives in the sky will be isolated and cut off from our surroundings.
Keep reading: Verticality, Part XII: A Never-ending Struggle
[1]: Kamin, Blair. Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. 119-121.
[2]: Buchanan, Peter. "The Tower: An Anachronism Awaiting Rebirth?" Harvard Design Magazine, Spring/Summer 2007, 10-13