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.
Verticality, Part XI: Breaking the Box
A rebellion against spacecraft and efforts to humanize the tall building
The human experience of stacked, identical floors on top of one another was foreign to our surface-dwelling nature. The disconnected, isolated experience of International Style buildings took us up to the sky, but cut us off from everything surrounding us. This lack of variety in tower floors and the monotony of box-like tower forms would begin to be challenged by architects. This signaled that we needed to humanize our experience of Verticality again. Instead of monotonous boxes, towers began to see their forms eroded away in order to create more varied experiences within them. We needed to recreate the surface in the sky.
Terracing and the Green Machine
Making meaningful green spaces in high places
Two things that every human being needs are to escape the surface of the earth through Verticality, and to be around plants and vegetation. Ever since the beginnings of permanent shelter and architecture, humans have been attempting to escape the surface by creating and inhabiting high places. We’ve also been repeatedly trying to recreate the experience of the surface by linking these spaces with greenery.