It's easy to knock tall buildings. They consume a lot of power, they block light and they seem to represent a form of progress that has gone out of fashion in recent years.
It's hardly surprising that this should be the case. With increasing concerns about energy use and climate change dominating the political agenda these energy hungry buildings have come to represent the apex of unsustainable design. The Guardian's design editor Jonathan Glancey took up the baton of criticising tall building in a recent article 'Skyscrapers are costing the Earth'.
Glancey acknowledges the case for high-rise design in areas where land is at a premium but goes on to say: "It can be argued that the taller a building is, the greater is its hunger for lifts, air-conditioning, power and water. As it rises ever higher, so the amount of usable floor space diminishes. Towers are, very often, wasteful luxuries, like whirlpool baths or 4WD town cars decked out with all the chic accoutrements and electronic gadgets of limousines."
Notice how he segues effortlessly from an arguably justifiable environmental criticism into a simple form of snobbery: you like tall buildings? How gauche.
KenYeang's Canning Town Tower
How did the primary architectural form of the last century suddenly become the design equivalent of fake tan and bling-bling? Moreover, exactly what is a 'wasteful luxury', and who gets to decide these things? Glancey's criticisms smack of a very post-modern form of hair-shirt puritanism that middle-class liberals have pioneered over the last decade or so: they recycle all of their used rocket leaves and are damn well going to make everyone else suffer too.
It's of little consequence really, though. There are valid criticisms to be made of skyscrapers and the form is not going to go away. Pragmatism dictates that architects and engineers must address sustainability concerns with the form because they are going to become an increasingly common part of the built environment for two reasons:
Firstly, it is the nature of society that related businesses often cluster together in relatively small areas.
Secondly, urban sprawl is now considered a primary issue in planning. The European Environment Agency (EEA) cited Dublin as a 'worst-case scenario' of urban planning so that newer EU member states might avoid making the same mistakes. The key lesson will be to build up, not out.
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