Paris er best igjen!

On a pink wall of Alfama, Lisbon. Stock-bilde | Adobe Stock

Tall Buildings:

• Skyscrapers are usually designed according to a template (a rectangular slab)
• Ignore context and environment
• Imposition of architect’s will
• Can never arise from step-by-step adaptation

Unsustainable:

• Skyscrapers can never be made sustainable
• Using the latest technology does not alter their intrusive character
• They introduce urban singularity

From a colleague (Michael Imber):

• Claim that tall buildings are sustainable is a cruel fraud
• Excessive heat gain and loss from unshaded exposures and typical glazing systems
• “Heat island” effects
• Require materials with very high embedded energy
• Skyscraper floor plates are inefficient — excessive space requirements for lifts and for emergency exit stairs (more floors==more waste)
• They block the sun and view (view is aesthetic - maybe not a big deal; sun builds Vitamin D in the skin and to avoid depression)
• Create wind effects at the ground level (urban tunnels, downgusts, etc.)
• Carbon benefits of urban density level-off at 4 to 6 storey building envelope

Social Problems

• Ground floor usually disconnected
• Christopher Alexander’s pattern: children living more than 4 storeys from the ground feel disconnected (leads to child pathologies)
• Leon Krier proposed tall buildings that are monuments, not residences

Religious icons

• Le Corbusier’s “Towers in the Park” has become a religious symbol
• Worshiped by modernist urbanists
• Despite repeated disasters, still used as “modern” typology the world over
• …with towers of ever increasing height! People never learn…

Good tall buildings

• Must be very few in any city
• Always in the high-density center
• Ground floor helps urban fabric
• Examples from late 19th Century, early 20th Century
• Thin, not too tall, hierarchy of scales
• No setbacks (from the street)

Conclusion

• There are several branches of New Urbanism practiced today
• All of them are far better than zones car-dependent sprawl, or skyscrapers in the park — a monstrous idea
• Communities the world over are building neo-traditional developments