Skyscrapers as Status Icons

Given that I live in a city, I walk past skyscrapers every day. The view out of my apartment’s windows even features a hand full of them. Despite their omnipresence in my life, I am now noticing how very little I actually consider them on a daily basis. Sure, I point them out to my friends visiting from out of town, but I don’t think very much about them or their significance in our society. That’s why this week’s readings were particularly interesting to me. What stuck out to me the most was the skyscraper as a means of portraying the image of status. The readings provided a couple good examples of what this means to different bodies of people: government and corporations.

In “Importing Urban Giants: Re-Imaging Shanghai and Dubai with Skyscrapers”, Al-Kodmany describes the motivations behind Dubai and Shanghai’s skyscrapers. These cities used heights to improve their images, as a way to re-brand them as major global cities with bustling centers for business and trade. With this in mind, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai makes a lot more sense. When reading Bayley’s “Burj Dubai: The new pinnacle of vanity”, I was having a hard time imagining the case for the building. It was built seemingly just to become the tallest building in the world, with little regard for the culture of the city or the economic status of the government that was helping to plan the project, and especially little concern for the future inhabitants. Al-Kodmany clarifies the value having one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers can bring to a city in his section on tourism when pointing out the attraction of visiting the world’s highest outdoor observation deck in Shanghai, or dining at the world’s highest restaurant. These are novelties that are undeniably attractive to tourists from around the world. In the case of Burj Khalifa, the building of the tower also served as a way to drive up property values in the area. Clearly there are many economic benefits to attempting the construction of a tower that will rank among the world’s tallest.

I thought it was interesting to juxtapose a city’s motivation for building skyscrapers and a corporation’s. Lange introduces the idea of using a company’s building as advertising in “Writing about Architecture” when speaking of Mumford’s review of Lever House. We have all heard statistics about how many thousands of advertising images we now see in the course of a day, but it never occurred to me that a building could be one of these images. One of the most iconic examples of this concept is the former Sears Tower in Chicago. Formerly the world’s tallest building, it became an architectural icon, instantly recognizable to all.

In essence, the skyscraper is an effective advertisement tool, whether it is to promote top-of-mind brand recognition for a company or entice tourists or big business to inhabit your city. I wouldn’t say it is the most cost-effective way to advertise a city or business, but using architecture can certainly make a statement and go a long ways toward granting stature on a global scale.