The vertical society: I could really use a wish right now
For so many years, Chicago and New York seated on the clouds with angels blowing vuvuzelas, as home of the world’s tallest buildings. The world looked up to their glimmering windows that almost reflected the whole solar system. But it didn’t stop the human species from being crab-minded as they challenge each other in competition, from the Petronas to the Burj Khalifa. In fact, even the terrorists of Al-Qaeda had stiff necks looking up to Manhattan’s finest twin towers, that they only thought of one medication to their aching napes. And as it is forever written in history, that the aforementioned degenerate thugs foretold Hayley Willam’s hit song almost a decade earlier. And that’s why we can’t pretend that airplanes are like shooting stars.
And before any American citizen gets offended, I shall digress this article to the world of residential development. While it is still unachievable for me to live in a house designed by starchitect Zaha Hadid and if possible, the soul of the overrated Frank Lloyd Wright, it has been possible, however, to live 100 feet above the ground. What I am pertaining to is the growing trend of verticality development in housing. When I first heard its meaning hours ago, my brain immediately classified it into “one of the stupidest things Jmar ever heard of.” Of course, fanatics of this building type may exhale steams of fury for my classification but my apologies for it is just merely my intuition. But upon contemplating about it for a few moments, I still think it’s a bad idea. I haven’t researched extensively about it, though, so kindly put down that knife.
Anyway, my point is I think it defeats the classic home—aground and not-so-high. Literally living in the sky can be a contemporary revolution to residential architecture but anything that stands tall, falls harder—like the twin towers and the biblical Tower of Babel. Being more technical, while verticality can be a practical solution to small building spaces, it clogs up the sky and I don’t think it’s a good idea to convenient urban design. But when time comes that being pragmatic is the only solution to our growing urbanity (unless we subject our society to totalitarianism and do a major Metro Manila clean up, demolishing all the unpleasant buildings), then so be it.
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I am resurrecting my writing stint by joining UST-Architecture’s student publication, Vision Magazine, “the first and longest-running collegiate publication for architecture, design, and the arts in the Philippines.” The article above is one of my two entries at the on-the-spot writing examination this afternoon. I hope to get in. But to tell you honestly, I’m not really comfortable writing about technical things so I just resort to being ironic and irrelevant. Heh. I just wish that majority of the population in my college does not consist of irony-challenged geeks who would send me hate mails. So help me God.
on 17 July 2010 @ 6pm
on 31 July 2010 @ 5am
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