Talking Tall

Cityscapes on Friday published an article about the upcoming conference hosted by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The conference will be headlined by Eric Trump, Mohamed Ali Alabbbar, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and Adrian Smith, to name a few, and will focus on the role of the skyscraper in the era of financial upheaval and global climate change. Reading on the CTBUH website about the event brought to mind the fire that destroyed the hotel-portion of the CCTV project in Beijing. Perhaps reaching even further back one can include the Twin Towers into the lineup of tall and supertall structures which have slowly morphed from objects of status to objects of liability.

The twin obstacles of terrorism and climate did a lot in the 6 years following 9/11 to stop the exponential growth of buildings, but growth still occurred.  Starting in 2007, it finally took the dollar to do what terrorists and climate couldn't do: stop the tall building. Lynn Becker said it best:

"When, in February, a raging fire, set off by illegal New Years’ fireworks, turned the still-to-open 31-story TVCC building, housing a super-luxury Mandarin Oriental Hotel, into a burnt-out hulk, it was seen by many as the signpost of the end of an era. The hotel was the less-known component of the complex designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas for the Chinese television monopoly, dominated by the sloping, interlocking towers of the new CCTV headquarters, Many of the locals saw the conflagration as a bad omen for the incoming Year of the Ox. Others saw it as a comeuppance for the hubris of their city’s orgy of massive eye candy constructions for the 2008 Olympics. In the words of one satisfied blogger, it was like “seeing a bully fall down.” 

Although with buildings like the Burj Dubai nearly ready for occupancy there's a strong argument that the era of the tall building is far from over. Perhaps an attendee of Adrian Smith's lecture would be given this perspective. Certainly Dubai's newfound desire to become a tourist destination has come to rely heavily on the iconography of the tall building, and the explosion of new towers have all sought to be the biggest, best, most advanced building in the city, just as the competition between the Chrysler building and Empire State did in 1931. But then there's the other part of the issue -  the UAE understands that global climate change and more specifically peak oil have changed the game, and that in the future oil will not be their primary source of income.

But while Dubai is at one time acknowledging the changing enviromental landscape, the also choose to defy it. SkiDubai is a 400M indoor ski slope in the middle of the desert. Its mere presence suggests the cavalier attitude of the regions' developers toward environmentalism.