October 11, 2001-Vol33n6: Q&A

Kent Kleinman is chair of the Department of Architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning.

The historical evolution of the skyscraper is not exclusively the story of progressively taller structures. Skyscrapers are the product of developments in structural steel technology, circulation technology and the aesthetics of vertical expression. The passenger elevator was not used in office buildings until the early 1870s; until that time, stamina was the limit on building height—typically five to six stories. With the advent of the elevator, the governing limit was bearing-wall technology. Daniel Burnham's 1891 Monadnock Building in Chicago is 16 stories tall; to support this height, the walls at the base are 6 feet thick with fairly narrow, slot-like openings at street level. This building was the limit case for bearing-wall construction. The use of steel-frame technology and curtain-wall enclosure is credited to William Le Baron Jenny. His 1881 Leitner Building was a mere 8 stories tall, but it demonstrated the possibility of the structural steel frame. The expressive potential for building vertically was articulated by Louis Sullivan, who in 1896, wrote a seminal essay entitled "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered." In a word, Sullivan identified "loftiness" as the chief characteristic of the tall building. One of the most important and exquisite examples of the art and science of building tall remains Sullivan's Guaranty Building in downtown Buffalo. It is merely 13 stories high.

Skyscrapers have become symbols, and the "bigger the better" seems to have become the hallmark used to judge them. Has this always been the case?

"Bigger is better" has never been an architectural maxim, as far as I know. The benchmark for the modern urban skyscraper is probably Mies van der Rohe's 1957 Seagram Building on Park Avenue in New York. Impeccably proportioned, abstractly figured and set back from the street to create a deep urban plaza, Seagram's became the paradigm for many tall buildings throughout the U.S. Yet, it is only 515 feet—38 stories—tall. It is small compared to the Empire State Building, constructed some 20 years earlier, and miniscule compared the 1,350-feet-high World Trade Center towers, built some 20 years later.

What ideas was the World Trade Center designed to communicate?

Although designed to be, and be known as, a symbol of global finance, the twin towers became much more—or much less—than their original symbolic content. Roland Barthes wrote that Maupassant used to dine often at the top of the Eiffel Tower: "It is the only place in Paris," Maupassant said, "where I don't have to see it." Barthes described the tower in Paris as an "ineluctable, virtually empty sign" that "attracts meaning the way a lightening bolt attracts lightening," The New York towers were enormously bland and blank, and seemed to absorb meaning without ever becoming full. Paul Goldberger, writing on the World Trade towers, was most taken by the attractive pull of the 107th-floor restaurant (presumably because he, like Maupassant, didn't have to see the towers themselves.) After Philippe Petit strung a cable between the towers and crossed without a net, they became something of a carnivalesque venue. The towers were most commonly consumed visually, not in person—they simply were too large to be apprehended from within the urban fabric—but through their representation on postcards and photographs, where they became signifiers not of world finance, but of the sheer exuberance of the modern metropolis.

The WTC reflects the ethos of late 20th century America, and this is why is was the target. Agree?

As far as I know, the terrorists intended to attack the Pentagon, the WTC and possibly targeted the White House as well. It is hard not to read this as an assault on three pillars of American society: the military, the economic and the political. But why the WTC and not some other center of world finance? Why not the stock exchange or the Federal Reserve building? Perhaps, given the nature of these attacks, it is because the towers were both a significant symbolic target and an easy aerial target. The Pentagon, the White House and the towers all are architectures of strong form. Singular strong form has been used before to guide aerial missions. I am reminded of a very distinctive, "T"-shaped bridge, visible easily from an airplane, in Hiroshima. It was the landmark and bull's-eye that guided the American bombers.

Will the attack affect architects' desires to design skyscrapers?

I recently had breakfast at the airport and had to spread cream cheese on my bagel using the back of a plastic spoon. These attacks should not cause us to abandon either tall buildings or plastic knifes, since both exist for pretty good reasons. There is a reasonable argument for the kind of density associated with cities like New York, Paris, London and Tokyo, and this density is possible because a limited ground plane is replicated many times over by building upwards. There is a emerging body of very progressive work being done on issues of sustainability and hybrid programming with respect to skyscrapers, albeit mostly in England and Germany. Undoubtedly, architects and engineers will take stock of the performance of the trade towers and more stringent egress and fire-safety standards may result, although it appears that the towers performed remarkably well, given the enormity of the impact and resulting fire. But I cannot imagine that the skyscraper, per se, will emerge from any post-attack review as inherently unsafe, nor do I think that architects, developers and users will abandon the skyscraper as a legitimate, indeed often times exhilarating, urban building type.

What are your thoughts on rebuilding on the WTC site?

I think that calls to not build on the site are unrealistic. Some form of building complex will be built on the site, and apparently Larry Silverstein, the developer who holds a 99-year lease on the site, already has retained architect David Childs of Skidmore, Owenings and Merrill to work on a scheme involving four 50-story towers. I hope that a truly extraordinary architectural work emerges from the extraordinary circumstances, a work that is technically advanced, spatially and aesthetically progressive and urbanistically inventive. If it is all these things, it will memorialize the loss by celebrating a vital aspect of American culture—namely, its root optimism.