Skyscrapermuseum8/11/2023 As for their supposed modernity, skyscrapers are like air travel: they used to be as glamorous as the jet set, but now they’re in a Ryanair phase – generic, dull and predictable, a default option for unimaginative property companies. If you go to the new multistorey districts in London, you’ll tend to find arid, lifeless places, lacking in specific character, their residents removed from street life by lifts and lobbies, their mood set by could-be-anywhere landscape design and by those chains that can pay the rents for their retail outlets. Nor are the zones created at the feet of towers convincing evidence that they enrich cities socially, spatially or culturally. And, as shown by the just-announced bankruptcy of Woking council, which went bust investing in skyscrapers, the returns on tall buildings can go down as well as up. But their contribution to housing needs is debatable – as they are expensive to build and their apartments tend to sell for high prices. To use the word in its most literal financial sense, they create vehicles for investment that bring money, often from abroad, to their locations. The question is whether they really do “enrich” cities. “If vertical buildings can enrich the heart of the capital,” says Jean Nouvel, architect of the completed Duo twin tower scheme, which is one of the projects that has prompted the new restrictions, “why deprive ourselves?” Photograph: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Imagesīackers of skyscrapers, in Paris as elsewhere, say they are exciting, modern, provide much-needed space for homes and employment, and attract business. The tree-lined Boulevard Haussmann In Paris has changed little over the decades.
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