Welcome to On Verticality. This blog explores the innate human need to escape the surface of the earth, and our struggles to do so throughout history. If you’re new here, a good place to start is the Theory of Verticality section or the Introduction to Verticality. If you want to receive updates on what’s new with the blog, you can use the Subscribe page to sign up. Thanks for visiting!
Click to filter posts by the three main subjects for the blog : Architecture, Flight and Mountains.
The Porcelain Tower of Nankin
This is the Porcelain Tower of Nankin. It stood at a height of roughly 79 m (260 ft), and is one of the tallest pagodas that we have records of. It was built as part of the Great Bao'en Temple in present-day Nanjing, China. Pagodas are usually associated with a temple, which suggests that they function much like a bell tower or steeple, using Verticality to announce the importance of a place.
Verticality, Part VII: Heavens on Earth
Humanity’s first major attempts to recreate heaven on earth
In the previous section, we explored ancient civilizations and how they utilized Verticality in their architecture. In each of these civilizations, building a structure that connected the surface to the sky was seen as the pinnacle of human achievement. This was done to appease or satisfy some type of god or gods, and untold amounts of time and effort were spent on the road to achieving it. Throughout time, however, the needs of our gods would begin to see competition from the needs of humanity, or our own Ego.
Verticality, Part VI: Archetypes
Man’s initial attempts to get closer to the sky in each of the five cradles of civilization
How does one achieve physical Verticality? At the most basic level, we can get closer to the sky in two ways. First, we can recreate the human body with singular elements that express height on their own. These objects can be seen as proxies for our own bipedal bodies. Second, we can physically raise the surface under our feet in order to raise our bodies up closer to the sky. These constructions can be seen as recreations of mountains, which are the highest places we can reach in the natural landscape. As our ancestors set out to externalize their need for Verticality, they experimented with both of these methods.
The Izumo-taisha Shrine
The ancient Izumo-taisha Shrine in southern Japan, built sometime around the 10th century AD, has all the ingredients of Verticality in its built form. The structure pictured above no longer exists, and we don't know exactly how it looked, but some records claim that the ancient temple was raised as high as 48 meters above the ground.