TowardsAGlobalArchitectureReinventing the Contemporary Skyscraper

07/01/2010

Chris Cornelissen

Table of contents

Personal Statement of Motivation 3

Introduction 4

1. The International Style and globalization 5

2. The skyscraper 6

3. Placelessness 8

4. Reinvention of the skyscraper 10

5. Globality and locality 14

6. Identification with place 17

7. Custom massification 18

Conclusion 20

Epilogue 21

Figures 22

Bibliography 23

2

Personal Statement of Motivation

Where am I? I’m sitting in a Toyota car. In my right hand a hamburger from McDonald’s, in the left

a can of Coca-Cola. I’m looking at a shiny, glass skyscraper, probably by SOM. I am surrounded by

products of global culture.

I could by anywhere in the world.

What language accompanies this global culture? If English is the global language, is there a global

language of architecture? If that language is limited to the creation of an easy-to-communicate

building that looks better on photo’s than in reality and better on first glance than after studying it,

there is something to worry about.

Despite the fact that I want to choose content over form, I don’t want to be fooled by the most shiny

and most appealing, my consuming of internet imagery limits the screen-time of a picture to a

maximum of five seconds. If the message is to be communicated in just five seconds, how should it

be designed? Overload please?

Figure 1. Skyscrapers designed by Chicago-based firm Skidmore, Owings & Merril (SOM) in respectively Tokyo, London, Los Angeles, Chicago and Hong Kong

3

Introduction

The starting point for this thesis is the general notion of globalization and how this effects

architecture. Globalization has connected almost everybody and everything in the world, provoking

some to call the world smaller (in a relative sense, of course). The co-existence of different cultures

in a smaller world creates a convergence towards a global culture. Inevitably, architecture deals

with this condition.

In the beginning of the previous century there was a major architectural movement, sometimes

described as the International Style, more broadly defined as modernism. For the first time in

history, there seemed to emerge an architecture that could be characterized as global. Its main

invention was the skyscraper, celebration of new technological opportunities and materials.

Now, in the new millennium, the skyscraper seems to be reborn, but in a completely different form.

No longer strict, rectangular, glass-and-steel objects, but highly profiled, iconographic symbols of

status, built by only a handful signature architects.

This contrasts with another share of contemporary buildings, taken by the bulk of generic

architecture. Examples are the Chinese superblock, a highly efficient extrusion of the building plot

or the chain store, build up out of the same components worldwide.

Both don’t seem to be the accurate reflection of today’s global culture. The first seems led by a

dominant image culture or a nostalgic longing for identity of place. The second seems driven only

by the market economy and global capitalism.

Can an architecture that does reflect conditions of globalization be identified, or described? To do

this, we can ask the question: How are today’s skyscrapers different from the skyscrapers of the

International Style? How were both concerned with globalization, which elements do they react

on?

To come to an answer to these questions, this thesis has different approaches. Firstly, a comparison

between the International Style and contemporary architecture is being made, for this comparison

the typology of the skyscraper is used.

Secondly, to find out how both are concerned with globalization, their position between culture and

form is examined. Thirdly, elements of globalization, like placelessness and mass-production, and

as a result of that, identification with place and the concept of locality, are described and reflected

upon the architectural movements.

Eventually, this global architecture cannot be described. It can only be designed, and even then

only the future can tell its complete story. With the thesis I am trying to react on what I think is

happening in contemporary architecture, and for some aspects modern society. Instead of slowing

down or neglecting global society, embracing and celebrating this condition with great potential.

4

1. The International Style and globalization

An exhibition in the Museum of Metropolitan Art, New York, in the year 1932, gave name to a

global phenomenon that started five centuries earlier and had finally manifested itself in a

distinctive, or as Le Corbusier would put it ‘New Architecture’1. The exhibition was titled ‘The

International Style’ and was organized by Alfred Barr, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, and Philip

Johnson.

The accompanying catalogue described the three main aspects of the Style:

‘There is first of all a new conception of architecture as volume, rather than as mass. Secondly,

regularity rather than axial symmetry serves as the chief means of ordering design. These two

principles with a third proscribing arbitrary applied decoration mark the productions of the

International Style.’2

The exhibition was mainly focused on the stylistic attributes of the International Style, rather than

explaining why there had to be an International Style and what its underlying motives were, what

would seem to be a much more relevant question (but maybe this question can only be answered in

retrospective).

The buildings of the International Style may seem like a radical break from the past, a rejection of

traditions, still their roots go far back. If the origin is mainly a social matter, originating in the

Enlightenment, or mainly driven by technological and engineering developments of the Industrial

Revolution, can be disputed, but the very international aspect leads us back to the year 1492, when

Christopher Columbus proved the world was round and at the same time starting the flattening of

the world.

At least, according to Friedman (2005) who in his book ‘The world is flat’ discerns three phases of

globalization. Columbus initiated the first phase, opening the trade between the old and the new

world.

Phase two starts in 1800, with the advent of industrialization. The main catalyst of change in this

phase is the multinational, looking for new markets and labour forces. This phase was driven first

by lowering transport costs (invention of steam engine, making of railway systems) and then by

lowering communication costs (first the telegraph, followed by the telephone, PC, satellites, fiber

networks, web 1.0).

The third phase starts in 2000. Now every individual has the opportunity to cooperate and

compete on a global scale. And for the first time, this phase not only includes the Western, but the

whole world. Now, the world is really flat.

5

1 Based on the (mistranslated?) English version of Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture, published in 1923: ‘Towards a new architecture’, a collection of essays originally published in L’esprit Nouveau

2 Hitchcock, H. & Johnson, P., 1932, The International Style: Architecture since 1922, W.W. Norton & Company, New York (quoted by Curtis 1996, p.239)

In this process of globalization appeared the International Style. First of all, it was international

because its buildings all had certain features in common:

‘From Moscow to Milan, from Los Angeles to Japan, buildings of different function, size, material,

meaning and expressive power could be found which none the less had obvious features in

common. One could speak of the shared characteristics in terms of recurrent motifs like strip

windows, flat roofs, grids of supports, cantilevered horizontal planes, metal railings and curved

partitions.’ (Curtis 1996, p.257)

Some of the ideas of the international style have their roots in the second phase of globalization, in

industrialization. Industrialization meant mass production, standardization. Le Corbusier and

others praised the efficiency in the process of making airplanes and automobiles and from that

admiration came the idea of the house as a machine for living. Less is more and other dogma’s

pushed ornament and symbolism aside.

How were the architects of the international style concerned with globalization? What were they

trying to do with their buildings? React on this new condition, change it, just accept it? These are

key questions, which open a discussion about critical architecture, about the relations between

architecture, culture and form (because more than just a condition of globalization, we might talk

about a culture of globalization, which has manifested itself firmly all over the globe by now,

according to Friedman’s third phase).

K. Michael Hays, in his essay ‘Critical architecture - between Culture and Form’ (1984), makes a

distinction in two approaches, architecture as an instrument of culture and architecture as

autonomous form.

‘The first position emphasizes culture as the cause and content of built form (...) the optimum

relationship to be established between culture and form is one of correspondence, the latter

efficiently representing the values of the former.’

The second position is ‘characterized by the comparative absence of historical concerns in favor of

attention to the autonomous architectural object and its formal operations.’

The position of the architect of the international style, in Hays’ example Mies van der Rohe, is

somewhere in between, with an architecture he calls critical.

2. The skyscraper

One of the buildings used in Hays’ argument, is Mies’ 1922 Skyscraper Project. This project is

particularly interesting for two reasons. First of all, it is an exhibition of international style

architecture and second, it is a skyscraper.

6

Figure 2. Mies van der Rohe, Skyscraper Project. Charcoal drawing, 1922

The skyscraper is the ultimate typology produced by industrialization and modernism. A

technological innovation, the elevator, made the very existence of the skyscraper possible and

skyscrapers are perfect vehicles to show progress and new technologies, impressive if only by their

sheer height and mostly build up out of ‘modern’ materials like steel and glass.

Mies’ skyscraper can be seen as a reaction to the ‘chaotic metropolitan experience’ of that time. The

metropolis was a relatively new phenomenon, the big urbanization only started after the beginning

of the industrial revolution with masses coming to the city to find work in the factories. Instead of

trying to find it’s place in this newly erupted chaos, the skyscraper is one ‘complex unitary volume’

covered in a glass curtain wall that ‘absorbs, mirrors, or distorts images of city life’ ... ‘Mies’

skyscraper is not conciliatory to the circumstances of its context. It is a critical interpretation of its

worldly situation.’ (Hays 1984, p.19-20)

The vocabulary of modernism used in the design of the Skyscraper project is used repetitive, and by

doing that it can be developed on its own, without having to conform to conventions or authorities.

7

It is not the easy choice of building the same anywhere on the world, but the challenge of

developing your ideas in different contexts.

‘Repetition thus demonstrated how architecture can resist, rather than reflect, an external cultural

reality’ (Hays 1984, p.27).

According to Mies, architecture’s position should be in between culture in form, so that it can

detach itself from the forces that influence it, from the market, personal taste and aspirations,

tradition. What is left is architecture as a single, discontinuous, cultural object, which form is never

the aim but only the result. 3

This is modernism’s international architecture. The skyscraper is it’s ultimate vehicle. By being

higher than most other buildings it exhibits a certain indifference towards those other buildings, it

maneuvers itself in a position where it can be critical, it is detached so it can be autonomic in its

cultural value.

3. Placelessness

This disconnection from anything outside the realm of the building includes an apparent

indifference towards the location of the building. This also applies to the whole notion of an

international style (what happens to national styles?).

The same could be said for the phenomenon of globalization. The flattening of the world

supposedly also leads to the flattening (and disappearing) of local traditions and identities.

With the international style, a style of architecture was spread out over the whole world. With the

multinational, main catalyst of globalization from 1800 to 2000, specific types of buildings

appeared anywhere in the world. With the multinational, the corporate headquarters, most not

unlike Mies’ skyscraper project - rectangular, steel and glass, curtain wall facade - found its place in

what would now be called the ‘global cities’ of the world. After the Second World War, the

international style was on it’s way to becoming the dominant style in architecture around the globe

(thus becoming truly international), occupying this position for (at least) thirty years.

The phenomenon of the global city was described by Saskia Sassen (1991), the strategic places on

the world where main exponents of globalization - multinationals, flows of capital, services,

information, goods - concentrate, in what she calls a ‘new geography of centrality’. The main cities

in this global network are New York, London and Tokyo, ‘command centers’ of the world.

Along with the example of the multinational are many more global typologies; chain restaurants

like McDonald’s or chain stores like Wal-Mart look roughly the same all over the world.

French anthropologist Marc Augé (1992) goes as far as denying that these places are in fact places,

by identifying the non-place.

8

3 Mies: ‘We refuse to recognize problems of form, but only problems of building. Form is not the aim of our work, but only the result. Form by itself does not exist. Form as an aim is formalism; and that we reject.’ (In Johnson, P., 1947, Mies van der Rohe, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

If a place is something that can be defined by the identity, relations and history of its inhabitants,

then a space that cannot be defined in this way must be a non-place. His examples include the

shopping mall, motorway, airport lounge. These are the spaces of supermodernity, highly

individual spaces where people only pass, without interacting, losing their identity by entering and

regaining it by leaving. Is this global architecture?

Globalization has another side, which existence is given away by the global cities and the geography

of centrality. Because no matter how connected everything might be, there are still very specific

places where people, economy and culture concentrate.

‘Even the most global and advanced firms need cleaners, lorry drivers, secretaries.’ (Sassen 2007,

p.277). Sometimes this concentration means the specialization of cities and regions. A good

example is Silicon Valley in California, which can be seen as a hub for high tech and innovative

businesses.

And no matter how placeless a building might be, in reality it is always bound to the earth it stands

on. In what might be an extension of the critical architecture of the modernists, Kenneth Frampton

reminds us about the connections any building has with its site and the ground, with something he

calls critical regionalism.

‘Situated at the interface of culture and nature, building is as much about the ground as it is about

built form.’... ‘Hence the notion of ‘building the site’, in Mario Botta’s memorable phrase, is of

greater importance than the creation of freestanding objects, and in this regard building is as much

about the topos as it is about technique.’ (Frampton 1995, p.27)

This call for architects to be receptive to the characteristics of the site can be seen as the denial of a

possibility of placelessness.

The factor of technique emphasizes the importance of how a building is made. Frampton quotes

Heidegger to stress this point: ‘Heidegger conceives of architecture as having the capacity not only

of expressing the different materials from which it is made but also of revealing the different

instances and modes by which the world comes into being.’ (1995, p.23). To get back to the

discussion of architecture as an instrument of culture and architecture as autonomous form: the

making of the form already tells much of the culture in which it was made (and at the same time

contributes to this culture).

Leach (2003) adds to this that ‘critical regionalism, for example, in investing form with such

significance, does not recognize how the same form will take on radically different connotations in

different cultural milieus. The same concrete tower block - replicated in, say, America, China, Latin

America and Eastern Europe - will effectively appear different, as it is treated and used differently

in each context.’ (p.77)

An example here can be found in how McDonald’s is used in, for example, ‘home country’ United

States and country number two (in number of McDonald’s restaurants) Japan.4

In automobile-focused US, drive-through sales are more important than the counter sales and

eating in the restaurant itself is not very popular. In Japan, on the other hand, where the

9

4 According to http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_mcd_res-food-mcdonalds-restaurants (accessed 30-12-2009)

restaurants (and the menu) are almost exactly the same, McDonald’s is used as a gathering place,

mostly for young people, or a place to do homework or use the wireless network. The exact same

space has become something complete different in a different context.

A part of the making of the building is the designing of the building. Not only the built form tells a

story about the culture it is part of, the design process is also incorporated into this story. A

building is now designed in a culture with an abundance of images, making it not very surprising

that the main focus of the design process seems to be on creating an image. To this the increasingly

important role of the computer, a very powerful tool in the creation of these images can be added.

The working of the architectural office has changed, Frampton (1995) describes a ‘corporatization

of the industry’, leading to architecture being offered as a ‘package deal’, which is ‘inimical to the

critical cultivation of architectural form’ (p.379). Architectural education has changed and is now at

many places part of an efficient, university-wide system (like the Bachelor-Master system in North

America and Europe), often shortening the education and streamlining it into a more global

educational system. The more precise effects of these factors lies outside this thesis, but the impact

of these factors on the architectural product and the reflection and impact on culture should not be

underestimated.

We might conclude that not placelessness, but locality is a product of globalization and that, while

buildings may look alike, in fact they never are. In their use they carry innumerable subtle and less

subtle differences, in their whole building process, from education to designing to the site to the

building itself, architecture is enriched with something that might let itself be described as culture.

Globalization doesn’t erase local differences, the connectivity of globalization ensures that localities

are enriched, which is also reflected in architecture.

4. Reinvention of the skyscraper

In this context of placelessness, supposedly connected to global architecture, it’s time to go back to

the phenomenon of the skyscraper, which has undergone considerable change since the

international style became the norm in its design.

The acceptance of the international style as norm already diminished its functioning as critical

architecture. Its function and form were now market driven, its positioning as autonomous became

a positioning as authoritarian or just indifferent, it’s role as a skyscraper became one of

competition (high, higher, highest). The building of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in

New York marked, in a certain way, the end of all this: ‘The fact that there are two of them signifies

the end of all competition, the end of all original reference. (...) As high as they are, higher than all

the others, the two towers signify nevertheless the end of verticality. They ignore the other

buildings, they are not of the same race, they no longer challenge them, nor compare themselves to

them.’ (Baudrillard 1983, p.44).

In the same way, their destruction in 2002 seem to have opened a new competition, this time based

on other factors. Since 2002, there is a boom in the construction of the skyscrapers, most of them

10

are now being built in the Far East. The skyscraper seems to have surrendered to the importance of

the visual, the norm now seems to be to create an apparently unique shape. Again it would seem

that the market has taken over, asking for the most distinctive building, for an image that sells. The

characteristic of the skyscraper of being instantly iconic, shaping the image of a city by being an

addition to the skyline, is misused.

Skyscrapers are often objected to discussions. Skyscrapers are almost always controversial. In

historic towns there are often strict rules on the addition of skyscrapers, since they can change the

appearance of a city. And when in such a city plans for a skyscraper are being made, the discussion

can be stretched to national level, involving ministers and presidents. Example here is the recent

competition for the new headquarters of Russian company Gazprom in St. Petersburg. The

competition was part of former Russian president Vladimir Putin’s long range plan to boost the

prestige of his home city. The main tower had to rise at least 300m into the sky and symbolize the

growing power of the firm. The competition resulted in protests of the inhabitants and even a

threat of UNESCO to remove the historic centre of St. Petersburg off the world heritage list.

Figure 3. Entries for the Gazprom competition by respectively RMJM (winner), Massimiliano Fuksas,

Herzog & de Meuron, OMA, Daniel Libeskind

Also amongst architects and architectural critics there is discussion on the design of these

skyscrapers and the nature of the high-rise competitions. There would be too much focus on image

and innovation in form, and the same architects are asked to design the same buildings in their

autograph style everywhere, contributing to a monotone global landscape.

This excess of images and lack of real innovation motivated OMA/Rem Koolhaas to design

something of an ‘anti-icon’, Dubai Renaissance, a new beginning for the skyscraper. It is a super

slender skyscraper (200x300x10m), instead of investing in image, there is invested in technology

(the building rotates with the movement of the sun). It is ‘modernism on steroids’, back to the

silent architecture of the international style, but bigger and better. It is symbolic in the sense that it

should symbolize a new beginning in the design of the skyscraper, which makes its motives very

paradoxical.

11

Figure 4. Dubai Renaissance, OMA (foreground)

Figure 5. Housing in Hong Kong

From a global perspective, a rough division between European, American and Asian skyscrapers

can be made.

Most American cities have a typical concentration of high-rise office buildings in the downtown city

area. In Asia, high-rise is not only used for offices, it is also very popular residential solution.

Skyscrapers are divided all over the city and concentrated in the most accessible area’s of the city.

In Europe, the high-rise typology is not very common. The implementation of a skyscraper in the

(historic) city center is often problematic, concentration of high-rise is therefore often outside the

center (La Defense in Paris, Canary Wharf in London). When skyscrapers do appear in the city

center, it are often ‘ornaments aimed at producing vistas or orientation points in an otherwise

relatively low skyline’ ‘The closest precedent of skyscrapers (in Europe) are churches and other

representations of power..’ (Zaera-Polo 2007).

According to Alejandro Zaera-Polo (2007), there is a split in the construction of high-rise projects.

‘These projects are subject either to ruthless efficiencies that constrain possibilities to the repetition

of verified models, or they fall into the economy of the brand image, in which everything is possible

and the desired novelty can direct choices without drawing significant links to the typology

phylum.’

12

Of the first example, the ruthless efficiencies, most examples can probably be found in East-Asia,

for example in the Chinese residential super-blocks copied throughout the landscape. They are the

product of the developer, wanting to minimize his budget, and of the housing shortage, which

allows no time for carefully designed towers.

The second example, the economy of the brand image, are the skyscrapers described earlier (with

the example of the Gazprom competition). These skyscrapers often have a very recognizable profile,

which made Londoners to develop a tendency to nickname their skyscrapers, after Norman Foster’s

‘Gherkin’(30 St Mary Axe), new developments have been named ‘Shard’ (Renzo Piano’s London

Bridge Tower), ‘Helter Skelter’ (Kohn Pedersen Fox’ Bishopgate Tower) and ‘Cheese

Grater’ (Richard Rogers’ Leadenhall Building).

In some cases, the profile of the tower is justified by structural or functional efficiencies. The

Gherkin, for example, has a free (columnless) floor space because of it’s triangulated skin, it’s shape

allows natural ventilation throughout the building and because the mass was not too imposing, the

building was approved by London’s city council.

Figure 6. Profiled skyscrapers

Other cases use arguments which are probably a reaction to globalization. Their design is based on

local iconographies, which can be applied to either the plan, the profile, the facade or the

construction of the skyscraper. The floor plans of the Burj Dubai, for example are modeled after the

Shanghai:

WorldFinancial

Center492 m

JinMao

370 m

London: Dubai: Taiwan:

Gherkin180 m

Shard310 m

HelterSkelter288 m

CheeseGrater240 m

BurjDubai818 m

BurjAl

Arab210 m

Taipei101

449 m

13

desert flower, the profiles of the Jin Mao tower and the Taipei 101 follow the ancient Asian typology

of the tiered pagodas.

In China, for the design of skyscraper (actually all buildings) a Feng Shui master is consulted,

having great influence on the selection of the building site and the form and shape of the building.

The World Financial Center in Shanghai originally had a round opening at the top. However, the

round opening resembled the Japanese flag too much (especially since the building was developed

by the Japanese Mori Corporation), therefore the design had to be changed.

Figure 7. The desert flower and plan of the Burj Dubai

5. Globality and locality

Zaera-Polo justifies these designs, arguing for a marketing rhetoric, or what he calls ‘form with a

double agenda’: the use of an image/iconography to both conceptually structure the organization of

a building and at the same time use that image to sell the project to the client or the broader public.

As an example, he uses the Hokusai Wave, a famous Japanese print. When he tried to explain his

project of the Passenger Terminal in Yokohama, Japan to the broader public in architectural terms,

he was not understood at all. Not until he mentioned the project being like the Hokusai Wave. The

wave represents the weaving organization of the building, which was understood instantly.

It seems that the architects using local iconographies are looking for a way of connecting the

building to the specificity of the site, to local culture, and to do that they make symbolic gestures,

supposedly continuing local building traditions. The apparent placelessness of globalization seems

to be at work, but is denied rather than accepted. We must not forget that the Jin Mao tower in

Shanghai, for example, is designed by an American firm.

14

Figure 8. The Hokusai Wave and the Yokohama Passenger Terminal by FOA

‘The increasing homogenization of space within a world of global capital has indeed led to a

predominant condition of ‘non-place’ (as Marc Augé has coined it). But this should not lead us back

to old models of dwelling as a way of resisting this condition, as though models formulated in the

past will necessarily still be relevant in the present. Rather it encourages us to formulate new

paradigms for understanding attachment to place that are in tune with contemporary modes of

existence.’ (Leach 2003, p.80)

Koolhaas’ project in Dubai already showed his concern about the role of the skyscraper, his

preoccupation on the subject was already eminent in his 1978 ‘retroactive manifesto for

Manhattan’, Delirious New York. The Manhattan Skyscraper facilitated a Culture of Congestion,

with the elevator as vital technical backbone, ‘the further it goes up, the more undesirable

circumstances it leaves behind’ (Koolhaas 1978, p. 82). The skyscraper is a fragmented,

disconnected vertical duplication of the building plot, anything can happen on each floor, ‘as if the

others do not exist’, creating an unpredictable programmatic mix.

What the skyscraper does is in fact the creation of real placelessness on the scale of the building.

From the second floor up there can be no more connection with the earth, no interaction with the

city, the facade of the building can tell an opposite story than the inside. This would seemingly

proof the typology of the skyscraper as being the real typology of the globalized world (and

establish its symbolic character). Attachment to place is complicated matter for the skyscraper and

because of that the more challenging and interesting to formulate new paradigms for it.

26 years later Koolhaas is a bit bitter about the development of the skyscraper, naming it ‘almost

perfect at its invention’ ... ‘it has not been refined but corrupted; the promise it once held - an

organization of excessive difference, the installation of surprise as a guiding principle - has been

negated by repetitive banality’ ... ‘major architecture firms are prolonging the life of a type that has

not been invested with new thinking or ambition since the World Trade Center’s completion in

1972.’ (Koolhaas 2004, p.473) With the project for the CCTV and TVCC towers in Beijing OMA

tried out new forms of organization.

15

The CCTV tower doesn’t just rise up in the sky, it loops, goes down again to join itself at the

beginning. On the one hand it tries to defy the isolated, differentiated interior of the classic

skyscraper and create more possibilities for encounters and coherence. On the other hand, the

exterior becomes a monolithic shape that stands out to other skyscrapers not by height, but by

form and technological innovation (which corresponds to some of the ideas of the Dubai

Renaissance project).

The CCTV is one of OMA’s recent projects that can be characterized as graphic. Along with projects

like the Casa da Musica in Porto and the Universal HQ in Los Angeles, only the outline of the

building portrays the building in Koolhaas’ Content 5. Somol (2007) calls this kind of project the

architectural logo and opposes it to the blob.

Figure 9. When buildings attack! Respectively the CCTV (China), Hyperbuilding (Thailand), Casa da Musica (Portugal) and Universal HQ (USA) by OMA

This opposition developed itself from ‘four early vectors that developed in the quest for

architectural signification after modernism: namely, articulation, notation, decoration, and

figuration (...) these trajectories can be usefully identified as, respectively, Kenneth Frampton’s

tectonics, Peter Eisenman’s index, Robert Venturi’s shed, and John Hejduk’s characters.’ The first

two focus on the language and processes of architecture itself (Frampton on the production process

and Eisenman on the design process), the latter emphasize message or content over formal

medium, by exaggerating the surface or elemental properties (Venturi’s decorated shed, Hejduk’s

wall houses).

The next generation, ‘following Eisenman’s notational wake’, replaces the line for the spline, in

search for an alternative to the Cartesian linearity. Opportunities to produce this non-linear

architecture were given by new digital production techniques, and, like Frampton, emphasizing the

role of process and manufacturing, often limiting the practice to architecture-as-product. This is

the combination of notation and tectonics, striving to differentiate the homogenous, prioritizing

the individual subject, mass customization. At this point, it’s outcome is the blob.

The pairing of the other two, decoration and figuration, has led to a graphic expediency, focused on

audience and reception, custom massification. More than in its predecessors, there is incongruence

of mass and surface, creating a saturated shape. ‘They don’t represent anything, even less the

impossibility of representation, but they might, under

16

5 Content (Koolhaas 2004), When buildings attack, p.544

certain circumstances, do something.’ (Somol 2007, p.37). It operates as a performative, a graphic

act (as opposed to the metaphorical displacement, which remains in the constative,

representational domain).

This corresponds with Koolhaas’ view on form with a double agenda, which, in a lecture at the

Berlage institute in 2006 6 , he discharged as a decoy language to communicate with the public.

Instead he remarked the authoritarian character of contemporary architecture and referenced

Ignasi de Solà-Morales, who advocated a move away from the blob, and towards an architecture

that would do nothing except facilitate maximum freedom with possibilities for coincidence,

adventure, secrecy and even danger.

6. Identification with place

Having gone from the skyscrapers of the international style to contemporary skyscrapers, looking

at their internationalness/placelessness versus their localness/attachment to place, there is still the

question how this attachment to place takes place.

In the light of Somol’s argument of the performative can be noted that identification with place is

an active process. ‘Culture is constituted not by a system of objects alone, but by a discourse that

imbues these objects with meaning’, Leach (2003, p. 76) writes when explaining the concept of

belonging. The same goes for form, there is no intrinsic meaning to any form. Particular spaces are

given meaning by the practices that take place there - this happens over time and can change over

time.

So, in this light, modeling the floor plans or facades of a building after some local tradition, doesn’t

give them any particular meaning, this can only be defined over time, by the way the building acts

in its surroundings and is used by its users. ‘Its (architecture’s) value lies dormant and in

permanent potential, but it has to be activated by social practices’ (Leach 2003, p.76).

Globalization and the appearance of the non-place have changed the concept of belonging. ‘Just as

globalization leads to regionalization - or even the hybrid manifestation of ‘glocalization’ - so

placelessness automatically encourages an attachment to place, as though the blurring of spatial

boundaries leads to a corresponding increase in awareness of those boundaries. This new

condition, though, must be seen as a product of - and not a resistance to - the homogenizing

placelessness of global capitalism.’ (Leach 2003, p.80)

So the symbolism of the Burj Dubai is a product, rather than a reaction to globalization, but as

concluded earlier, the forcing of meaning on its form makes it in a way not the proper product.

This is a key question: how to incorporate this increased awareness of boundaries with the global

culture we live in. The international style pioneered in being international instead of focusing on

the continuation of local traditions, contemporary architecture paradoxically seems to being doing

the exact opposite.

17

6 As referenced on http://www.archined.nl/nieuws/rem-koolhaas-in-the-berlage/ (accessed 20-12-2009)

The increased awareness of boundaries and globalization go hand in hand, as I tried to explain

earlier, one other aspect of globalization should be able to give another direction in expressing this.

7. Custom massification

A step away from symbolism and nostalgia could be the idea of custom massification in the light of

the mass-production of goods and images that globalization brought with. Along with the idea of

placelessness, globalization can also be connected to the mass-production and mass-consumption

of goods and culture. The two topics are directly related: placelessness is the result of mass-

production and vice versa.

One of the contemporary manifestations of the skyscraper is the mass reproduced skyscraper

(earlier I mentioned the example of the Chinese ‘superblock’) and to get back to the international

style, the mass production and standardization of building originate in modernism. Le Corbusier

saw opportunities for the building industry in the mass production of cars and airplanes. The mass

production of houses was the answer to housing shortages of the previous century (especially after

the Second World War).

In the light of architecture as a cultural object, mass production of culture evokes questions on the

value of the reproduced items and the authenticity of the original. Walter Benjamin writes about

these phenomena in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935). He introduces

the concept of the aura, referring to a sense of awe experienced when witnessing a work of art. The

aura is not so much incorporated in the work of art, but in rituals and traditions, like its known line

of ownership, its restricted exhibition, its publicized authenticity, or its cultural value.7 One might

say: ‘that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of

art’ (Benjamin 1935, p.3). Some media, like film, don’t even have an original, they are completely

based on reproduction. Benjamin wrote: ‘It is inherent in the technique of the film as well as that of

sports that everybody who witnesses its accomplishments is somewhat of an expert’. This is also

true for the increased access to loads of information made available through the internet, making

almost everybody apparent experts in almost any field. Blogs have made anybody a writer,

removing the distinction between author and public.

The question now is, when so many things are so easily reproduced (even more now in this digital

age), what gives a work of art its value?

Mass consumption and production were embraced by some artists in the form of Pop Art, using

themes and techniques from popular culture (as opposed to elitist culture). Roy Lichtenstein used

images from comic books to create artworks, employing the technique of Banday Dots, often used

in commercial reproduction. Andy Warhol used silkscreen techniques to create portraits of

celebrities, using this technique to create multiple versions of the same artwork. The overload of

18

7 See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction (accessed 30-12-2009)

easily-reproduced and always-available images is made into art instead of seen as a threat. Earlier I

accused designers of contemporary skyscrapers to be consumed by image alone, forgetting other

aspects.

Figure 10. Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam! (1963) and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych (1962, fragment)

Benjamin (1935) categorizes architecture, like film, as being consummated in distraction, as

contrary to concentration in which a painting is consummated. ‘Architecture has always

represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity

in a state of distraction.’ (p.13).

This is directly connected to the way architecture is appropriated: ‘Buildings are appropriated in a

twofold manner: by use and by perception—or rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation

cannot be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building.

On the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile

appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards architecture, habit

determines to a large extent even optical reception. The latter, too, occurs much less through rapt

attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion. This mode of appropriation, developed

with reference to architecture, in certain circumstances acquires canonical value.

For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot

be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit,

under the guidance of tactile appropriation.’ (p.14)

While in pop art the mechanical reproduction of paintings is used as a celebration of consumerism,

making art more accessible and widely available, in architecture there is another dimension to this,

described here by Benjamin and earlier by Leach. The unique potential of a building is activated by

social practice, how the building is used. Benjamin’s argument of the distracted 20th-century user

and habit might be seen as an argument for repetition and mass-production. If a building is

appropriated by habit, a certain repetition of the same building elements should make it easier to

appropriate other buildings.

Leach (2003) agrees with this but adds a possible threat to this: ‘Nothing is authentic in itself.

Everything is authorized through repetition. Yet through its own repetition it begins to instantiate a

certain norm.’ (p.78) This is exactly what happened with the international style. It became the

norm, and with that lost the basis of its functioning.

19

In architecture, mass consumerism was celebrated, maybe for the first time, by Venturi and Scott

Brown in their Learning from Las Vegas (1968). They stressed the importance of popular culture

and saw the Strip in Las Vegas as the equivalent of the Roman piazza. They praise the plurality of

such places, in contrast to the buildings of modernism. Symbolism, for them, is a mean to create

recognizable places in the city, a building is seen as a decorated shed: a simple volume given status

with a pictorial and decorative facade.

In a way, this leads us back to the contemporary skyscrapers, based on symbolisms of local

iconographies or other imagery.

Back to the issue of global architecture: isn’t there an architecture that incorporates globalization,

mass production, and placelessness, without turning to symbolism, without a denial of global

culture?

For me, the concept of custom massification becomes very relevant. It has the repetition and

anonymity (because of the incongruence between interior and exterior) of the international style,

and at the same time it can embrace popular and global culture by acting specific (custom) at any

given location. The skyscraper could become its ultimate typology, being anonymous because of it’s

height and custom because of its acting on multiple scale levels: for the city in the skyline, for the

people at its specific location.

Conclusion

In a globalizing world, we saw the emergence of a style corresponding to this phenomenon, the

International Style. Architects of this style, like Mies van der Rohe, made single, discontinuous,

cultural objects to be able to develop an own, critical language in the globalizing world. More than

the attitude, the style of building became the norm in architecture after the Second World War.

Concerns about loss of a sense of place and inability to identify with places emerged, creating

definitions like the non-place, with examples like the airport and the shopping mall, enforced by

phenomena like the chain store and the multinational corporate skyscraper.

The skyscraper can be seen as exemplary for these developments, being an invention in

modernism, but exploited as symbol of modern and inventive afterwards and now used as reaction

to the fear of placelessness and indirect, globalization, by the creation of image-focussed nostalgic

skyscrapers.

That a sense of place, especially for buildings, will never disappear becomes first of all evident

when realizing that a building is still, and probably always will be, earthbound and built at a

specific location in a specific time, automatically creating deep roots with the culture at this place.

Even if a building looks the same, it will still be used in a completely different way at each place.

The same goes for globalization: it has created a geography of centrality where location matters

more than ever.

20

Forcefully incorporating local traditions in a building will never work. A building derives meaning

out of how it is used, form is given meaning by use. Building with the creation of an image in mind

is therefore reverse reasoning. The result of this reasoning and the market-driven will to create

something different only results in buildings that are so desperately trying to be distinctive, they all

look alike. On top of that, because they are designed prioritizing the wrong principles, they are

likely to fail in their basic purpose. Wouldn’t it be much better if we forget this drive to be unique,

to turn it around? It might not even matter if all buildings look alike, if only there is a rich variation

in how the building functions, with a focus on how it acts in the city and on the site, how it is used.

There is no denying globalization, on the contrary, it should be celebrated. The way in which pop

art celebrated a culture of mass consumption and production, architecture could celebrate the

same things. We should be proud of progress, mass production, high connectivity, globalization.

The skyscraper can do this because it acts at multiple scales and at multiple levels in terms of

representation and use. The concept of custom massification incorporates the concept of mass-

production and consumption and at the same time of place specificity and custom design. It's still

possible to occupy a critical position in this debate, like the international style did in the first

‘global revolution’ in architecture. Let’s design these buildings, towards a global architecture!

Epilogue

This thesis is written within my graduation project dealing with urgent phenomena for our future

cities. The phenomenon of a global culture will only grow in the future, with technology developing

at still expanding pace. The city of the future is therefore a global web of interconnected cities

around the globe. The world as city. This process has already started with enormous urban

expansions in the previous century. The number of cities with more than 10 million inhabitants

increased exponentially, followed by an increasing number of cities passing the 20 million mark.

Old definitions for cities are outdated. A city must be seen in the context of its hinterland, together

they form new powerful mega-regions. Old city cores now have deep connections not only with

their regions, but with cities all over the globe. The truly global cities are the capitals of the world.

This is the city of the next century. Not participating in this process leaves a city in the danger of

being left out.

In this light, the relevance of studying globalization and architecture increases, the search for a

global architecture is vital.

What exactly this broad and still rather vague term could mean precisely, is for me to find out in

the research performed for my graduation. So for now, all I can say is, to be continued...

21

Figures

Cover. Jeff Koon’s Rabbit (1986) balloon flying in New York

found on http://madsilence.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/600-koons-rabbit1.jpg

Figure 1. Skyscrapers designed by Chicago-based firm Skidmore, Owings & Merril (SOM) in

respectively Tokyo, London, Los Angeles, Chicago and Hong Kong

found on http://www.som.com

Figure 2. Mies van der Rohe, Skyscraper Project. Charcoal drawing, 1922

found in Hays, K.M., 1984, ‘Critical Architecture, Between Culture and Form’ , p.8

Figure 3. Entries for the Gazprom competition by respectively RMJM (winner), Massimiliano

Fuksas, Herzog & de Meuron, OMA, Daniel Libeskind

found on http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/gazprom-city.html

Figure 4. Dubai Renaissance, OMA (foreground)

found on http://www.oma.eu

Figure 5. Housing in Hong Kong

found on http://www.flickr.com

Figure 6. Profiled skyscrapers

Figure 7. The desert flower and plan of the Burj Dubai

found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai

Figure 8. The Hokusai Wave and the Yokohama Passenger Terminal by FOA

found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokusai and http://www.f-o-a.net

Figure 9. When buildings attack! Respectively the CCTV (China), Hyperbuilding (Thailand), Casa

da Musica (Portugal) and Universal HQ (USA) by OMA

edited from Koolhaas, R. (ed.), 2004, Content, p. 544

Figure 10. Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam! (1963) and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych (1962,

fragment)

found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein and http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=15976

22

Bibliography

Augé, M., 1992, Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity, translated by

John Howe, Verso, London/New York

Baudrillard, J., 1983, Simulations and Simulacra, translated by Foss, P., Patton, P., Beitchman, P.,

Semiotext(e), New York

Benjamin, W., 1935, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, originally published

in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung

Curtis, W.J.R., 1996, Modern architecture since 1900, 3rd edition, Phaidon, London

Frampton, K., 1995, Studies in tectonic culture: the poetics of construction in nineteenth and

twentieth century architecture, MIT Press, Cambridge/London

Friedman, T.L., 2005, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Farrar,

Straus and Giroux, New York

Hays, K.M., 1984, ‘Critical Architecture, Between Culture and Form’ in Burns, C., Perspecta 21, pp.

14-29, MIT Press, Cambridge/London

Koolhaas, R. (ed.), 2004, Content, Taschen, Köln

Koolhaas, R., 1978, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, new edition,

1994, The Monacelli Press, New York

Leach, N., 2003, ‘Belonging’ in Rappolt, M. (ed.), AA Files 49, Architectural Association

Publications, London

Sassen, S., 1991, The global city: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton University Press, New

Jersey

Sassen, S., 2007, ‘Seeing like a city’, in Burdett, R. & Sudjic, D. (eds.), The Endless City, pp.

276-289, Phaidon, London

Somol, R.E., 2007, ‘Green Dots 101’, in Hunch 11, pp.28-37

Zaera-Polo, A., 2007, ‘A Taxonomy of Towers’ in Burdett, R. & Sudjic, D. (eds.), The Endless City,

Phaidon, London

23