Wright Chat

When the oil market shrinks from a major source of the world's energy to serving just the needs for plastics, lubricants, and other specialized uses including fuel for old car hobbyists, are these supertalls in desert boom towns surrounded by political/social unrest, going to be empty? Are these places economically and environmentally sustainable places for such a concentration of habitation and commerce?

I admire the engineering, thought and effort that goes into these endeavors, but I question the wisdom of expending that effort in some of these locales.

Need and practicality of these building was not their raison d'être.

It is more the chest-thumping "look at me" need to improve the image of third-world theocracies trying to elbow their way into the club of 1st world countries.

The third-world status will return to these countries when it become more apparent that they no longer can control the price of oil.

Perhaps the future of tall buildings in the Middle East, as oil prices continue to decline, and the world continues to evolve beyond gasoline-powered internal combustion engines (plastics not able to sustain the dead dinosaur industry), will echo the fate of the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, a 105 story, 1082' high, 3,900,000 sf hotel sitting unfinished, looming ominously over the city far below. That one was obviously intended to thump North Korea's chest.

At lunch with Ralph Rapson, talking about FLW's tower, he said that Wright's aim in proposing the tower for Chicago was to wipe out the Loop in order to provide vehicular access to the massive building. FLW himself said to Mike Wallace that the entirety of New York City's needs could be achieved by building two of his mile-highs in Central Park (total rentable floor space: 26,094,000 sf), allowing all other buildings (except, one assumes, Guggenheim) to be demolished. Another problem with the Illinois is that, unlike all other high rise towers, there are balconies rising up the sides of the building, encouraging depressed, unfulfilled narcissists to jump through the clouds to a grandiose end.

Roderick Grant wrote:Another problem with the Illinois is that, unlike all other high rise towers, there are balconies rising up the sides of the building, encouraging depressed, unfulfilled narcissists to jump through the clouds to a grandiose end.

Darwin might have wondered why discouraging this activity was necessary.

Long-time Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin should do better than to characterize Wright by his misfortunes, as he does in a one-sentence quickie. But the piece is useful; this, from the final paragraph, gives us one more reason for the creation of the Mile-High:

"The Sherman House Hotel dinner associated with the Mile-High press conference raised $25,000, a considerable amount in those days, Bergdoll reports. In the process, it helped secure the future of the Taliesin Fellowship, Wright's architecture school."

SDR