Dirk Stichweh. Photography by Jörg Machirus Scott Murphy SKYSCRAPERS PRESTEL. Munich London New York

Transcription

1 Dirk Stichweh Photography by Jörg Machirus Scott Murphy SKYSCRAPERS PRESTEL Munich London New York

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3 CONTENTS 5 Foreword 6 The History of New York s Skyscrapers: A Journey Through Time DOWNTOWN SKYSCRAPERS 14 Introduction 16 Trump Building 18 Bankers Trust Company Building 19 Bank of New York Building 22 Standard Oil Building 23 One New York Plaza Water Street Exchange Place Wall Street Pine Street 32 One Chase Manhattan Plaza Wall Street 35 Park Row Building 36 New York by Gehry 38 Municipal Building Leonard Street 44 Woolworth Building Park Place 50 Barclay-Vesey Building 52 World Trade Center (Twin Towers) 54 One World Trade Center 60 World Financial Center 62 West Street Building 63 One Liberty Plaza 64 Equitable Building MIDTOWN SKYSCRAPERS 68 Introduction 70 Flatiron Building 72 Metropolitan Life Tower 74 Metropolitan Life North Building 78 New York Life Building 79 One Penn Plaza 80 Empire State Building 86 American Radiator Building 88 Lincoln Building 89 Chanin Building 90 MetLife Building 94 Chrysler Building Lexington Avenue 101 Daily News Building 102 United Nations Secretariat Building 104 One & Two United Nations Plaza 105 Trump World Tower 108 Lipstick Building 110 Bloomberg Tower 112 Citigroup Center 116 General Electric Building 118 Helmsley Building Madison Avenue 122 JPMorgan Chase World Headquarters 124 Waldorf Astoria Hotel 126 Seagram Building 130 Lever House Park Avenue 134 Four Seasons Hotel 135 IBM Building 136 AT&T Building 140 Trump Tower 142 General Motors Building 144 Sherry-Netherland Hotel 145 Solow Building 146 Crown Building 147 Olympic Tower 148 Rockefeller Center / 30 Rockefeller Plaza 156 CBS Building 157 Time-Life Building 158 XYZ Buildings 160 W. R. Grace Building 161 Fred F. French Building Fifth Avenue 164 Bank of America Tower Times Square 168 New York Times Tower 170 McGraw-Hill Building 172 Paramount Building 174 One Astor Plaza 175 Bertelsmann Building Broadway 179 One Worldwide Plaza 180 AXA Center 181 CitySpire Center 182 One Carnegie Hall Tower 185 Hearst Tower 186 Time Warner Center 188 The Future: Skyscrapers Currently in Planning or Under Construction in New York 190 Biographies and Acknowledgments

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5 5 FOREWORD New York City, the mega-metropolis on the east coast of the United States, is the world s undisputed capital of the skyscraper and is synonymous with this archetypical American form of architecture. Yet New York s exceptional standing is not only due to the sheer number of skyscrapers; it is also the juxtaposition of so many high-rise buildings from different stylistic periods that gives the New York skyline its particular dynamism. New York was where all the important developments in the history of the skyscraper took place. And while in both Chicago and New York new styles were invented, implemented, and launched, New York building was a vital trendsetter that left its mark on international architectural history. Even within the headline-grabbing category of tallest building in the world, New York maintained its exceptional position over a long period. From the end of the nineteenth century until the 1970s, eight of the buildings constructed in New York alone could claim this prestigious title in uninterrupted succession. The form, size, and height of skyscrapers were influenced by various factors over the decades. Initially the limitations were of a technical nature, but later zoning ordinances or even direct and indirect restrictions on height became critical factors. New developments and the growing ambitions of architects and their clients continued to influence interior and exterior design. With time and increasing building heights, the achievements of structural engineers became of paramount importance. In 1896, Louis Sullivan ( ), arguably the skyscraper s greatest theorist, presented in his renowned essay The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered a call for a tripartite division analogous to the classic column of the skyscraper into base, shaft, and capital. The base, as a public pedestal, was to connect the building to the city. The middle section, the shaft, required of the architect a feeling for symmetry. It was on the capital, the crown of the building, that architects could immortalize themselves as artists. The classic tripartite division of the skyscraper would characterize its design until World War II, and, to a large extent, again during the past three decades. However, the typical New York silhouette of the early 1930s, with a few dominant and outstanding towers, is now a thing of the past. These days, what the viewer sees is a dense accumulation of structures from different stylistic periods. NY Skyscrapers presents the most prominent and significant skyscrapers in the city. It shares the stories behind their construction and discusses their influence on New York s cityscape and international architectural history.

6 6 MIDTOWN MIDTOWN THE HISTORY OF NEW YORK S SKYSCRAPERS: A Journey Through Time A NEW BUILDING STYLE IS BORN In October 1871, a devastating fire destroyed large parts of Chicago s city center. This disaster paved the way for a completely new type of building, the development of which would rapidly spread to New York. By the mid- 1880s, the first high-rise buildings with skeleton frames using structural steel were erected in Chicago. The metropolis on Lake Michigan can thus claim to be the birthplace of the skyscraper. Only in 1889 was the first steelframe structure completed in New York: the Tower Building on lower Broadway. In the late nineteenth century, the world s most distinguished architects congregated in Chicago. They developed the first representative style in high-rise construction, what became known as the Chicago School. For them, the vertical emphasis of the building and the tripartite division of the façade into base, shaft, and capital were of singular importance. Their builders used the façade cladding not to conceal the construction behind but to emphasize it. In general, with the Chicago School buildings the prevailing principle was the decoration of structure and not the structure of decoration, as was preferred in distant New York. But by century s end, sites for building in the city center were in such short supply that building upward was the only way to solve the space problem. In addition to the steel-frame structure, one additional technical innovation was indispensible in the emergence of skyscrapers: the invention of the elevator in the mid-nineteenth century. NEW YORK CLASSICISM AND THE FIRST REGULATIONS The first New York skyscrapers were constructed at the southern tip of Manhattan. In contrast to the Chicago tradition of uniform flat roofs, New York offered room for various styles that followed no clear line. Not infrequently, these were towers overladen with historicist touches. Eyes here were oriented more toward Europe and reproducing styles from the Old World. And yet the first skyscrapers still blended into the urban context. Though they were higher than the existing buildings, they were not so high as to enjoy absolute domination of the skyline. At the turn of the century, New York surged ahead of Chicago as the leading center of high-rise construction. Buildings influenced by the solemnity of Beaux-Arts neoclassicism soon grew taller and increasingly more spectacular in design. Thus the construction of the Flatiron Building in 1902 attracted greater public attention than any previous new skyscraper structure. Built on a triangular plot of land, the Flatiron Building was the godfather of all heavily ornamented skyscrapers constructed in early twentieth-century Manhattan. Yet the most important work of this period was the Woolworth Building, completed in 1913, which with a height of 792 feet would remain the tallest building in the world for seventeen years. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, an increasingly common phenomenon in downtown Manhattan was for high-rise buildings, constructed only a few years earlier, to be torn down to make way for even larger structures. In contrast to slender towers in which a relatively large space was lost to elevators and supply ducts, these new buildings had a better functional ratio. They frequently occupied a whole block, and sometimes had twenty to thirty stories. Until the building of these first large office boxes, the incidence of sunlight had been something that had always been taken for granted. In the narrow canyons of the streets around Wall Street, however, the incidence of natural light decreased with each new building, so that in almost all office buildings, even on a sunny day, artificial lighting was necessary at midday. With the construction of the Equitable Building in 1915, it became clear even to opponents of building limitations that regulations were necessary in Manhattan. With more floor space than any other structure in the world at that time, the Equitable Building rose in a straight line through forty stories, casting long shadows on surrounding streets. After many public hearings, the days of laissez-faire were over with the passing of New York s first land-use regulations in 1916, known as the New York Zoning Resolution. A principal point in the ordinance was a restriction on the distribution of mass. Henceforth, buildings could occupy the entire site only on the lower stories. Above that, they had to be set back. If the building occupied only a quarter of the site, there were no restrictions on the tower s height. As a result of the regulations, what came to be known as setback skyscrapers were built. They differed from existing structures in that the distribution of massing was tiered, with setbacks as the building rose higher, and the buildings took on the appearance of terrace-like, stepped mountains. This generation of skyscrapers would fundamentally alter the urban landscape during the following decades. THE GOLDEN AGE In the years immediately after World War I, there was little in the way of building in New York. It was not until 1922, with the competition for the design of the Chicago Tribune Tower, that this situation would change. More

7 MIDTOWN 7 NEW YORK BY GEHRY than 260 architects from all over the world took part in the competition. All conceivable styles were represented, from ornate neoclassicism to the unadorned Bauhaus style of Walter Gropius. While the commission was awarded to Raymond Hood s neo-gothic design, it was the arrangement of mass in the second-place submission of the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen that strongly influenced future buildings. His design for an axial tower, soaring upward like a huge mountain mass, effortlessly seemed to overcome the gap between neoclassicism and modernism. Another major influence on the design of New York skyscrapers was the 1925 Exposition internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (Art Deco for short) in Paris. During the years following, Art Deco s ornamental effects were in evidence in some of the most impressive Baujahr: 2011 Höhe: 265 m Stockwerke: 76 Architekt: Frank O. Gehry & Associates Mit New York by Gehry wurde Anfang 2011 eines der imposantesten Hoch häuser der letzten Jahrzehnte in Downtown Manhattan fertig gestellt. Der Entwurf stammt aus der Feder des Stararchitekten Frank Gehry. Bei dessen ersten Entwurf für ein New Yorker Hochhaus kommen die typischen Gestaltungselemente des Pritzker-Preisträgers zum Tragen. So besitzt es an seiner Ost-, West- und Nordseite eine gewellte Oberfläche mit Einkerbungen in vertikaler Linienführung, die ihm das Aussehen eines dahin schmelzenden Turmes geben. Aber auch andere Assoziationen, wie die einer riesigen skyscrapers Wasserkaskade oder in New einer zerknitterten York. Aluminiumfolie fanden Verwendung. With the economic boom of the late 1920s, a substantial number of skyscrapers were built that exhibited a more mature style than their predecessors. They were elegant, Neben seiner hauptsächlichen Nutzung als ein Apartmentgebäude mit 900 Wohneinheiten, die jede für sich einen einzigartigen Grundriss aufweisen, befinden sich in den unteren fünf Etagen eine öffentliche Schule sowie eine Ambulanz des New York Downtown Hospitals. Hinzu kommen noch kleinere Geschäfte und eine Parkgarage im Untergeschoss. Die Wohnungen reichen von kleinen Studioapartments bis hin zu großen Einheiten mit über 150 Quadratmetern Wohnfläche. New York by Gehry ist aufgrund seiner Höhe und äußeren Gestaltung zu einem neuen Wahrzeichen in der Skyline von Lower Manhattan geworden. Mit seiner Fertigstellung konnte zudem eindrucksvoll tall, well proportioned, and often lavishly ornamented. With a flourishing economy and building activity to match, land prices in the business centers likewise soared into the stratosphere. This circumstance in itself forced developers to strive for even greater heights. Between 1929 and 1932, New York s skyline would be fundamentally altered. Many of the skyscrapers im Süden Manhattans that are nicht still ausschließlich notable auf today das dokumentiert werden, dass sich die Bautätigkeit were completed within World this Trade short Center period. Areal beschränkt. In addition, Seine Dominanz moved gegenüber from der unmittelbaren the already Umgebung, densely die the focus of new building zum großen Teil aus älteren und deutlich flacheren built Financial District to neighborhoods farther north, Gebäuden besteht, vermag der 76-geschossige Turm in midtown Manhattan. jedoch dadurch abzumildern, dass er sich von ihr In 1930, height was wie the ein eigenständiges, uncontested riesiges priority Kunstwerk for new abhebt. construction. The Woolworth Bis zur Fertigstellung Building von One57 had been im Jahr the 2014 tallest war New York by Gehry mit seiner Höhe von 265 Metern building in the world for more than seventeen years, and zudem noch das höchste Wohn- und Stahlbetongebäude New now Yorks. broke out to wrest away in New York bitter rivalry this prestigious designation, with the leading contenders being the Bank of Manhattan Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building. After William Van Alen s Chrysler Building had snatched the title from Ostansicht Luftbild Ansicht von Norden Left: Flatiron Building Right: Woolworth Building

8 8 MIDTOWN THE HISTORY OF NEW YORK S SKYSCRAPERS MIDTOWN from left to right: Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center Van Alen s former partner H. Craig Severance and his Bank of Manhattan Building, the rivalry ended in 1931, just one year later, with the completion of the Empire State Building. When the 1,046-foot Chrysler Building opened its doors in 1930, it not only outranked every other building in the world but it also deprived the Eiffel Tower in Paris of the distinction of being the tallest structure ever built by human hands. More than any other building, the Chrysler Building exemplified the perfect realization of the Art Deco style. The Empire State Building, completed the following year, was more than 200 feet higher than the Chrysler Building. And its construction time of only thirteen months must be seen, even by today s standards, as a superb achievement of planning and engineering. In the mid-1930s, there were more skyscrapers in New York than in the whole rest of the world. Eighteen of the twenty highest buildings were located here. Admittedly, the new, substantially higher structures did bring technical problems with them. For example, as height increased, wind pressure became an increasingly greater problem that could only be offset by installing additional load-bearing elements that directed the wind force to the ground level. Another major problem that developed was the amount of space taken up by elevator shafts. Sometimes such technical issues could have also led to a restriction in height.

9 THE HISTORY OF NEW YORK S SKYSCRAPERS MIDTOWN 9 NEW YORK BY GEHRY Baujahr: 2011 Höhe: 265 m Stockwerke: 76 Architekt: Frank O. Gehry & Associates Mit New York by Gehry wurde Anfang 2011 eines der imposantesten Hoch häuser der letzten Jahrzehnte in Downtown Manhattan fertig gestellt. Der Entwurf stammt aus der Feder des Stararchitekten Frank Gehry. Bei dessen ersten Entwurf für ein New Yorker Hochhaus kommen die typischen Gestaltungselemente des Pritzker-Preisträgers zum Tragen. So besitzt es an seiner Ost-, West- und Nordseite eine gewellte Oberfläche mit Einkerbungen in vertikaler Linienführung, die ihm das Aussehen eines dahin schmelzenden Turmes geben. Aber auch andere Assoziationen, wie die einer riesigen Wasserkaskade oder einer zerknitterten Aluminiumfolie fanden Verwendung. Neben seiner hauptsächlichen Nutzung als ein Apartmentgebäude mit 900 Wohneinheiten, die jede für sich einen einzigartigen Grundriss aufweisen, befinden sich in den unteren fünf Etagen eine öffentliche Schule sowie eine Ambulanz des New York Downtown Hospitals. Hinzu kommen noch kleinere Geschäfte und eine Parkgarage im Untergeschoss. Die Wohnungen reichen von kleinen Studioapartments bis hin zu großen Einheiten mit über 150 Quadratmetern Wohnfläche. New York by Gehry ist aufgrund seiner Höhe und äußeren Gestaltung zu einem neuen Wahrzeichen in der Skyline von Lower Manhattan geworden. Mit seiner Fertigstellung konnte zudem eindrucksvoll romantic forms. As the Chrysler Building was being inaugurated, just a couple hundred yards east work was underway on the Daily News Building, which represented an entirely new style looking toward the future. It was the first skyscraper that in form and detail can already be considered modernist. The architect responsible was Raymond Hood, who just a few years later would also be involved as a principal architect of Rockefeller Center. This large-scale building project brought together the various tendencies that had surfaced in the 1920s and 1930s. The concept of Rockefeller Center as a city within a city set completely new standards. Construction on the project lasted from 1932 to 1940, dominating building activity in New York during the 1930s and providing an endpoint for the era of pre-world War II skyscraper construction. MODERNISM dokumentiert werden, dass sich die Bautätigkeit im Süden Manhattans nicht ausschließlich auf das World Trade Center Areal beschränkt. Seine Dominanz gegenüber der unmittelbaren Umgebung, die zum großen Teil aus älteren und deutlich flacheren Gebäuden besteht, vermag der 76-geschossige Turm jedoch dadurch abzumildern, dass er sich von ihr wie ein eigenständiges, riesiges Kunstwerk abhebt. Bis zur Fertigstellung von One57 im Jahr 2014 war New York by Gehry mit seiner Höhe von 265 Metern zudem noch das höchste Wohn- und Stahlbetongebäude New Yorks. Ostansicht Luftbild Ansicht von Norden The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 hit the American economy when the construction boom was at its zenith; it would have dramatic consequences for the North American construction industry, albeit somewhat later. When the full effects of the Great Depression were being felt in 1932, hardly any new building projects were undertaken and the oversupply of office space left many newly built skyscrapers empty. Even the Empire State Building was affected its low occupancy rate, shortly after its opening, caused it to become popularly known as the Empty State Building. At around the same time, the style of skyscrapers began to undergo a transformation, leading to a stronger emphasis on horizontals and an abandonment of Art Deco s Perhaps no style of architecture is so closely associated with one name as modernism is with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The German-born architect emigrated to the United States to become the head of the School of Architecture at what is now the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. It was here that modernism would flourish, becoming responsible for fundamentally changing the appearance of American cities. However, the beginning of the modernist period in the United States can be dated to as early as 1932 when the exposition Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, conceived by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, was shown at the Museum of Modern Art. The catalogue that accompanied the exhibition was called The International Style the American term for Bauhaus modernism. That same year, William Lescaze s Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building presented the first combination of the reductive style of the early Chicago School with its steel-frame structure, and the metal and glass structures of modernism. (Along with the McGraw- Hill Building in New York, it was the only high-rise to be mentioned in Johnson and Hitchcock s pioneering exhibition.) The new style achieved its final breakthrough twenty years later, however, as in the late 1930s and the following decade building activity was minimal or insignificant. After World War II, architects found themselves at a crossroads. Classical architecture and Art Deco were no longer options as styles. It was a time of pragmatism and economy. Neither the craftsmen nor the money was available for lavish ornamentation. Buildings were increasingly produced industrially and underwent a degree of standardization. The formula consisted of new materials, simple forms, and austere, undecorated exterior surfaces. Mies van der Rohe s idea of skin-and-bones architecture envisaged surfaces that were as transparent as possible. The traditional façades were replaced by curtain walls, a curtain of glazing enclosing buildings within an exterior wall consisting of windows and stainless-steel frames. It is one of the most conspicuous features of the International Style and became the hallmark of the 1950s and 1960s. After the war, skyscraper construction was slow to get started again. As noted, because the pre-depression construction boom had left an overabundance of unused

10 10 MIDTOWN THE HISTORY OF NEW YORK S SKYSCRAPERS MIDTOWN office space, only around 1950 did demand begin again and work resume on the construction of new skyscrapers. From 1947 to 1960, the preferred types of skyscraper in New York were the bulky type with a truncated tower or the tall box shape with no setbacks. The classic tripartite division was almost completely dispensed with. The rather stocky-looking buildings also lacked the stylishness of prewar structures, but on the other hand they were considerably more profitable and more spacious. Along with numerous nondescript buildings, construction in New York in the 1950s produced those skyscrapers that can be considered milestones of classic modernism. These include the Secretariat Building of the United Nations, completed in 1952, which was the first office tower to feature a curtain wall. However, its slender north and south façades were still clad with marble elements. Lever House on Park Avenue, inaugurated only a sort time later, was totally enclosed in a glass skin. The culmination and last great work in the International Style was the Seagram Building on Park Avenue, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Completed in 1958, this office building combines all the positive qualities of modernism, and in its attention to detail remains a unique work of art. Unfortunately, the Seagram Building did not offer scope for further development, unlike earlier styles. The logical outcome of this was countless imitations that possessed neither its degree of originality nor its love of detail. NEW BUILDING LAWS AND RECORD BUILDINGS New York City officials were so impressed with the design of the Seagram Building and its provision for public space that shortly after they revised the old building regulations. The new zoning ordinance of 1961 provided for greater consideration of total floor area relative to the size of the plot. While the floor space index ratio of a skyscraper could be no more than fifteen times greater than the site area, if provision was made for public space the value could be increased by 20 Left: Seagram Building Right: Office towers along Avenue of the Americas

11 THE HISTORY OF NEW YORK S SKYSCRAPERS MIDTOWN 11 Ostansicht Luftbild Ansicht von Norden NEW YORK BY GEHRY percent. Because of the new restrictions, box-shaped buildings clearly brought in the greatest profit, and consequently became the preferred building type. The additional policy of transferring packages of air rights from one building to another or combining those of several buildings was seen as an invitation for many unsavory deals. Air rights were now bartered as if in a bazaar, opening the way for collections of anonymous office boxes that shot up without any regard for Baujahr: 2011 Höhe: 265 m Stockwerke: 76 Architekt: Frank O. Gehry & Associates Mit New York by Gehry wurde Anfang 2011 eines der imposantesten Hoch häuser der letzten Jahrzehnte in Downtown Manhattan fertig gestellt. Der the Entwurf urban stammt fabric. aus der Feder des Stararchitekten Frank Gehry. Bei dessen ersten Entwurf für ein New Yorker Hochhaus kommen die typischen Gestaltungselemente des Pritzker-Preisträgers zum Tragen. So besitzt es an seiner Ost-, West- und Nordseite eine gewellte Oberfläche mit Einkerbungen in vertikaler Linienführung, die ihm das Aussehen eines dahin schmelzenden Turmes geben. Aber auch andere Assoziationen, wie die einer riesigen Wasserkaskade oder einer zerknitterten Aluminiumfolie fanden Verwendung. Neben seiner hauptsächlichen Nutzung als ein Apartmentgebäude mit 900 Wohneinheiten, die jede für sich einen einzigartigen Grundriss aufweisen, befinden sich in den unteren fünf Etagen eine öffentliche Schule sowie eine Ambulanz des New York Downtown Hospitals. Hinzu kommen noch kleinere Geschäfte und eine Parkgarage im Untergeschoss. Die Wohnungen reichen von kleinen Studioapartments bis hin zu großen Einheiten mit über 150 Quadratmetern Wohnfläche. New York by Gehry ist aufgrund seiner Höhe und äußeren Gestaltung zu einem neuen Wahrzeichen in der Skyline von Lower Manhattan geworden. Mit seiner Fertigstellung konnte zudem eindrucksvoll In the mid-1960s, the first signs of new styles in skyscraper building could be found. The vertical emphasis of the CBS Building, completed in 1965, was the first indication of a rejection of the prevailing horizontal style. The late-modernist skyscrapers can be regarded as a logical continuation of early modernism, but this transition cannot be attributed to any single structure or to a particular year. It was, in fact, a slow process of mutation. The high-rise buildings of the late 1960s and early 1970s also distinguished themselves from their predecessors in their greater reliance on new technology, evidenced in new load-bearing structures, which was to become a typical feature of these skyscrapers. In contrast to earlier buildings, the new buildings made use of exterior loadbearing elements and a central steel core. The new technology rendered the intrusive support elements on the interior largely superfluous. At the beginning of the 1970s, the skyscrapers that were erected in New York were mainly notable for their lack of imagination. The best examples of these are the three almost identical extensions to Rockefeller Center on the Avenue of the Americas (XYZ Buildings) and 55 Water Street at the southern tip of Manhattan. The latter, on its completion in 1972, stood as the largest office building in the world, with a gross floor area of 3.5 million square feet. At the same time, a megaproject was in the process of being implemented on the southern tip of Manhattan that would eclipse all previous schemes. When completed in 1973, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were not only the largest skyscrapers in the world in terms of gross floor area, but with towers of 1,368 and 1,362 feet in height, respectively, they took the Empire State Building s title as the world s tallest building after forty-two years. The exterior walls contained a dense array of vertical steel supports forming a lattice. The effect was of a self-contained rigid tube capable of carrying the weight of the building. The era of record-high buildings reached an end a year later with the Sears Tower in Chicago. With a height of 1,454 feet, after eighty years it returned the title of tallest building in the world to the city that gave birth to skyscrapers, though without Chicago being able to shake off the stigma of being a perennial runner-up. POSTMODERNISM OVERCOMES THE MODERN BOX No exact date can be identified for the end of late modernism and the beginning of postmodernism. The transition phase that began in the mid-1970s and that reached its conclusion at the beginning of the following decade was categorized by a hodgepodge of buildings. Although the skyscrapers of the period wished to distance themselves from classic modernism, they were incapable of taking a major step forward to establish a new architectural style. Retrospectively, World Trade Center dokumentiert werden, dass sich die Bautätigkeit im Süden Manhattans nicht ausschließlich auf das World Trade Center Areal beschränkt. Seine Dominanz gegenüber der unmittelbaren Umgebung, die zum großen Teil aus älteren und deutlich flacheren Gebäuden besteht, vermag der 76-geschossige Turm jedoch dadurch abzumildern, dass er sich von ihr wie ein eigenständiges, riesiges Kunstwerk abhebt. Bis zur Fertigstellung von One57 im Jahr 2014 war New York by Gehry mit seiner Höhe von 265 Metern zudem noch das höchste Wohn- und Stahlbetongebäude New Yorks. one might describe the high-tech structures of the 1970s as a constructive transition. The modernist box turned into sophisticated sculpture, but initially retained a distaste for façade art. The great difference between postmodernism and the previous periods was that no longer did any one stylistic element have absolute authority. Built instead was an agglomeration of pastiches. In contrast to the International Style, postmodernism manifested a strong affinity for design. A typical feature of postmodern architecture is the pronounced return to masonry façades, which succeed like no material in bringing out the gradations, lines, and coloration of a building s facing. While these buildings meet the latest technological standards, they revel in traditional ornamentation. The signature structure of the postmodern period is Madison Avenue s AT&T Building, completed in Here, finally, was a building that showed what postmodernism really was. The building s architect was, of all people, Philip Johnson, formerly one of the greatest champions of modernism. With this building he rang the final death knell of modernism. In the postmodern period, signature buildings became the rule. Whereas in the mid- 1980s postmodern skyscrapers stood out by being different from neighboring buildings, with time architects became

12 UNVERKÄUFLICHE LESEPROBE Dirk Stichweh NY Skyscrapers Gebundenes Buch, Pappband, 192 Seiten, 24x farbige Abbildungen ISBN: Prestel Erscheinungstermin: Juli 2016