July 14, 2022 • 50 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the architectural element known as the skyway or skybridge – typically an enclosed bridge connecting the upper stories of two buildings or skyscrapers.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and we're back with part two of our talk about
sky bridges or sky ways. Uh, if you haven't heard
(00:24):
part one yet, maybe should go check that one out first.
But as a brief refresher, a sky bridge or a
skyway is an architectural feature that you can think of
as kind of a hallway in the sky, or an
enclosed bridge linking two buildings by the upper floors. In
the last episode, we talked about some modern examples of
(00:44):
sky bridges and some interesting ones from history, such as
the the Bridge of Size in Venice, Italy's enclosed passageway
that may look romantic from the outside but has mostly
historical associations with torture and zens. But in the uh,
let's see. But in today's episode, I think we're gonna
(01:05):
be talking more about what sky bridges mean, how they're interpreted,
and how they might be used in the future. That's right, So,
first of all, I do want to refer back to
some examples just briefly that we we were we discussed
the you know, just the idea of say, the powerful
Medici family in Italy using these enclosed spaces and occasional
(01:27):
things that we would definitely categorize as a sky bridge
to move from one place to the other without interacting
with enemies or commoners, etcetera. We also looked at some
examples of of royalty in China engaging in similar practices,
using these as sort of privileged passage ways for royal
(01:48):
members of society. Oh so you what was the the
Chinese ruler who went about in these halls so that
devils would not see where he walked and he could
only embrace good people. It's said, yes, yes, that would
have been impertin shi Wong. Yeah, so that he could
uh quote act mysteriously to avoid devils and meanwhile embrace
(02:09):
virtuous individuals. And one thing that we mentioned was that, yeah, okay,
this is this is one thing within a historical context,
but generally speaking, I think a lot of us wouldn't
want to overtly um invoke that kind of idea. So
in there we get to some of the sort of
controversy and back and forth over just the nature of
the sky bridge, like not not only what it physically does,
(02:33):
but also like what is it? What does it do?
Um in terms of society and urban planning and uh
and just the like the larger nature of the city
that goes beyond just mere structures and moving people around.
And so I want to come back to the architect
John Portman Jr. John Portman Jr. Live through seventeen UM
(02:55):
American neo futurist architect and real estate developer. Uh we
allude we mentioned some of the examples of his work
here in Atlanta, Georgia. He's known for popularizing the atrium,
but also in using a lot of sky bridges. Now,
as we mentioned, of course that there are a number
of practical reasons to have sky bridges in a structure,
moving people around so they don't have to uh engage
(03:17):
in say hostile environment and you know, hot temperatures, freezing rain,
that sort of thing. Also, you're gonna have situations where
you want to share resources within two different towers, so
connect those towers at a higher floor. That way people
don't have to go all the way back down and
then back up again, perhaps crossing a street or uh
(03:39):
you know, checking in and out of security along the way.
That sort of thing. But in the case of Portman's
Peachtree Center sky bridges, there's apparently been controversy over the
years over the use of such walkways. So this area
emerged during the nineties seventies, and while some of of
it is is dated, some of it is still quite impressed.
(04:00):
If I have to say, the Marta train station at
Peachtree Center is probably the coolest looking one in the
system and has these these rock walls as well as
this kind of still I would say futuristic looking, like
shiny metal surfaces. I don't know if he designed, uh,
the Marta station in question, but there was one Marta
station at least that was used as a setting for
(04:21):
a cut scene in John Carpenter's Escape from New York.
I think because it, you know, the sort of the
blocky concrete fixtures in it just looked futuristic enough. Yeah, yeah,
certainly at the time that was was that five Points station.
I can't recall off hand, but but certainly you're right
on that sounds likely. Yeah, yeah, that that also is
a huge enclosed space that it is impressive in its
(04:43):
own way to walk through. But at anyway, Yeah, this
is all part of the you know, the varying stages
of revitalization efforts in downtown Atlanta, and during this time
and especially the decades to follow, Peachtree Center was, in
the eyes of its critics, this thing that by its
very structure sought to cut out street level Atlanta in
(05:05):
its entirety um and now not only people but businesses.
So rather than optimistically futuristic, the critics would say, well,
this is actually more wellsy in a world of privilege above,
cut off from the realities of the street below. For
there was one account that I was looking at looking
(05:25):
through various old news stories, and I saw one about
a believe it was a janitor strike that was taking place,
and this particular author had mentioned people avoiding the protesters
by making use of the sky bridges, which seems like
a stark example of the sort of u uh, you know,
the sort of privileged walkway that in ways I think
(05:46):
can be compared to some of these older models that
we were discussing now, the nineteen seventies we're also not
a period during which green downtowns were prioritized, just certainly
not in Atlanta. Uh So, of one can can factor
that into the kind of weirdly spaceship like architectural approach.
That one season, some of these buildings were discussing so
(06:07):
giant open atriums in buildings joined to each other by
enclosed tunnels and bridges cut off from an outside where
you have a languishing downtown and also just everything is
just a sweltering gray heat island. Uh. This is actually
one of the reasons that Trees Atlanta was founded in
to begin the quote greening of downtown. Oh, I didn't
(06:29):
know that, So I don't know exactly how far this
far back this reputation goes, but at least today Atlanta
is known as a city that has an unusual amount
of trees and it's in its urban center. Yeah, well,
as far as downtown Atlanta goes, especially a lot of
that is we can think Trees Atlanta for so that
all that's very very local to us. But I think
(06:50):
these are all great examples of some of the you know,
the discussions that take place over the use of the
sky bridge and next where the direction we'd like to
go in though is taking a step back and talking
about for the most part, taking a step back. But
a lot of this is also still contemporary as well.
But talking about futurism and the sky bridge the ideas
that end up being wrapped up in concepts that have
(07:12):
sky bridges in them. You know, what we're what we're
actually trying to achieve, And what are some of the
visions sort of the loftier ideas that are caught up
in all of this, and indeed, what are some of
the really pivotal forward facing ideas that we can point to,
uh in the early twentieth century. So, when I was
thinking about the social meaning of sky bridges, especially in
(07:34):
science fiction, it's interesting. I have a general sense that
sky bridges are often used in fictional architecture to emphasize
exactly this kind of theme you were just talking about.
It was sort of people living in elevated tubes of
privilege that disconnect them from the realities below. And one
(07:54):
specific example is that I had a pretty distinct memory
of the movie Metropolis, the nine Fritz long movie, UH,
sort of German expressionist science fiction masterpiece. UH. And my idea,
at least in my head, was that this movie was
full of sky bridges. But when I did a Google search,
(08:17):
I didn't find a lot of examples. The main thing
I actually found in screenshots appeared to be rail lines
connecting the tops of buildings, and I found what looks like,
I don't know, it looks like hand drawn UH illustrations
based on the movie that do appear to have like
connected enclosed hallways, but I'm not sure how accurate my
(08:37):
memory that the city in Metropolis is full of sky
bridges is. Nevertheless, for some reason, I had that impression
there certainly are these these elevated rail lines going between
UH skyscraper tops and Metropolis. Is A is a great
dystopian sci fi film, one of the major themes of
which is economic injustice. It it presents a sort of
class bifurcated society where you have, you know, idle rich
(09:01):
people sort of frittering away their days up in the
tops of great tall buildings, apparently rarely or never having
to go down into the streets. And meanwhile, the workers
and the factories who make this techno utopia possible are
confined to physically lower spaces, even subterranean tunnels and caverns.
And eventually there there is a revolt in the in
(09:22):
the film, but the theme is certainly there. But though
maybe it doesn't have as many sky bridges as I
actually remember, and I don't know, maybe they're just not
coming through in the screen, you know, grabs that people
have put up on the internet. I think there are
definitely sky bridges in Metropolis. I know that some of
the sources I was looking at they referenced specifically early
twentieth century science fiction cinematography. And when you're talking about that,
(09:46):
you're talking about Metropolis. I mean, Metropolis is the the
the example of a futuristic cinema from from from especially
the twenties part excellence, you know, I mean, this is it,
this is the big one. And h I did want
to note that this vision of tall buildings occupied by
the rich at the top while the workers live down
on the ground. This, interestingly, it squares with some reality,
(10:10):
such as the idea of like I don't know, you know,
the penthouse apartment. But also the class associations are often inverted.
Like I was reading some actual research papers about the
psychological and social impact of living in tall buildings, which
I'll get into in a minute, and these studies often
cited the exact opposite that there there are widespread assumptions
(10:31):
of high high rise living being associated with lack of
economic means, but as much as architecture is often a
metaphor for for economic realities, I think also lots of
sci fi has visions of future urban spaces where the
tops of tall buildings are connected, and doesn't necessarily have
that meaning. It's not always a class critique. I think
(10:53):
sometimes instead it's supposed to be taken as a sign
of a complex or complicated a did society, that there
are avenues connecting things back and forth, like the like
the arteries of a circulatory system, that it's a complex
and not of associations resembling a kind of like the
vines in a jungle in physical form. And and of course,
(11:14):
and in fact there's sort of a literal analogy to
the the biological architecture of a rainforest, because on a rainfort,
in a rainforest, you know, you have sort of one
level of life going on at the forest floor, which
of course is all connected by the continuous surface. But
then you have the tree canopy level where the the
lateral connection of the ground level is replicated up above. Yeah,
(11:38):
and so I think even in sci fi movies without
an economic critique, there we see all these hallways going
back and forth between the skyscrapers and it just makes
us feel like, wow, it's so complex and there's so
much going on, and it would be you know, it
would be hard for me to even understand how the
you know, the many layers of this society. Yeah, because
(11:59):
it's interesting to crack this nut. Because one thing, and
I'll come back to some sources that touch on this
in a bit. If you think of like the upper
penthouse of a of a of a very tall building,
of skyscraper, what have you, the thing is like that
is a dead end. Uh. That is the the point
at which you you generally have no choice but to
turn around and come back down. Um. And uh, you
(12:22):
know you can say, oh, well maybe there's a helicopter
port up there. Okay, well there's that. Um. And certainly
you can extend this by pointing out that while some
of the futuristic visions of cities and where we're going
with they have been planning, they also often involved say
a whole bunch of flying cars moving around or other
flying the flying vehicles, flying machines that are serving as
(12:44):
as a way to connect these isolated islands in the sky.
The classic examples of that would be like Blade Runner.
Now I think you could assume that maybe with Blade Runner,
like you look at some architectural features and say, there's
implied critique here. There there's some kind of implied critique
about the society we're being shown. But there are other
cases where I don't know if there is. It's just
(13:06):
sort of like inherited science fiction texture. Like in the
Star Wars prequels, you see that traffic going back and
forth at many levels. There's like you know, like the
layers of a cake, the different criss crossing streams of
flying cars. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's definitely an underworld
to Coorisson as well. But yeah, there are other films
like I don't know, The Fifth Element, for example, has
(13:27):
a lot of cool flying cars and that that feels
may be more like just sci fi texture. But to
come back to this idea like Corisson with an underworld
and all of this, I can't help but think, of course,
of Dante's Inferno and all of this, and think again
of the of the skyscraper as mountain in Dante's Divine Comedy.
We of course have the complexities of the the underworld
(13:50):
of Inferno. We have the mount of Purgatory that extends
upward and reaches the point of paradise, because because then
in the third book, of course, we have to have
only realm and the heavenly realm. I guess we might
we might well compare to some of these visions of
the the the upper parts of skyscrapers being connected together.
We don't want isolation and loneliness in our heavens. We
(14:13):
want elaborate complexity. Ah, this maybe a more apt analogy
even than you intended, because you remember, like how often
in the Paradiso Dante just talks about how like I
couldn't describe what I was seeing. Yeah, it's just and
and certainly when you look at illustrations, it's you know,
you can have a pretty firm map of of of
the inferno, pretty firm map of the mouth of Purgatory.
(14:36):
But yeah, Paradise is just this, like swirling circles and
interconnected wheels. Of course, any of these cinematic examples we're
looking at, yeah, they they hearken back to Metropolis. Metropolis
is the granddaddy of them all. And Metropolis is one
of those movies that they just stands the test of time.
It's certainly worth taking a look at again. Uh, but
while it is one of the most popular, enduring and
(14:58):
certainly sci fi influential visions of sky bridges and this
interconnected skyscraper world. Um. That film, too, was continuing trends
of futurism, which apparently can be traced back to American
folk artist Erastus Salisbury Field, who lived eighteen o five
through nineteen hundred. So I didn't even live to see Metropolis,
(15:23):
but he did this, this wonderfully intriguing work titled Historical
Monument of the American Republic um eighteen sixty seven through
eighteen eighty eight being the dates on this piece, and
definitely looked this up. You can find images of this
online and Joe, I've included an image of this for
you here. Oh okay, So I think this vision of
(15:44):
the future is that everyone will get to live in
their own Tower of Babel. Yeah it is. It is
very uh brugal esque. I would say these don't instantly
read a skyscrapers to the modern I but I mean
there there are certainly architectural features here that you will
see on modern tall buildings. But yeah, this, this is,
(16:05):
this looks like a fantastic realm. So whereas in a
more mundane age you you have the jealous competition with
your neighbor for who can have the prettier lawn or
the fancier I don't know, satellite TV antenna. Uh. In
this case, you're competing to see who can kill God first. Yeah.
And if they're gonna pull it off, they're gonna do it.
From these what looked to be like penthouse temples kind
(16:28):
of goes are in in their structure that are all
connected by bridges and have just oodles of statues at
the top. I assume those are statues. Uh, and this
is and they literally appear to be clouds swirling around them.
I mean it's a cool drawing. Yeah. Yeah. So this
was created for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in eighteen seventy
(16:48):
six and Woulden Safaric the the authors that I referenced
in the first episode. They say that this image influenced
a number of other artists, including Charles R. Land Um
and Vernon hoe Bailey, who created the night Streets High
in the Air illustrations. These are also worth checking out,
(17:09):
and Joe I have included two examples of these for you. Now,
these are not necessarily uh sky bridges are skyways in
the more narrow sense that we're talking about earlier of
basically an enclosed hallway that's got stuff all around the
But these are still interesting because they are ideas of
the bridge connecting skyscrapers buildings at height, having a second
(17:32):
level or maybe multiple levels of lateral connection. But here
they're just open streets. I mean that's interesting too. Yeah,
and you see a train moving through one of them,
like a great worm burrowing through this behemoth. Um. Yeah,
these are these are impressive images that also have uh,
you know, maybe it's the coloration, at least the versions
(17:53):
I have here, Like one is definitely like a charcoal
looking black and white, and the other has this kind
of washed out, um like orange and brown temp to it.
It makes it feel kind of apocalyptic in some ways.
But still this yeah, this was roughly twenty years before
we'd see such images in cinema. Another key twentieth century
(18:14):
figure in all of this was editor and publisher Moses King,
who commissioned many such images for King's Views of New York. Uh.
This was a book that came out, and I've included
a cover from from this publication for you, Joe. And
as you can see, this one's just crazy with it.
They're just bridges connecting all of these skyscrapers, skyscrapers that
(18:34):
that look more um contemporary for this time period. But
then also flying machines galore. Oh, your city is full
of biplanes. Were minds full of triplanes? Yeah, I see
some airships. Uh, pretty fantastic looking. So this is what
would in Safaric have to say in their paper, and
(18:55):
that paper again if anyone wants to check that out,
it is skybridges, a history and a view to the
near future, they write. Quote. The early skybridge sky city
portrayals came about as a direct response to very real
urban issues which were pressing at the time. Primary of
these urban issues was the impact that both tall buildings
(19:17):
and increased vehicular traffic were having on the ground floor
urban condition. Tall buildings were increasingly growing in height and
overcrowding the street, and the conflict between pedestrian and vehicular
traffic was increasing. The recurring themes in all the early
futuristic visions evolved as a response to these problems, both
(19:38):
the stepped back tiered skyscraper and the multi level circulation system.
The stepped back skyscraper was seen as a way to
preserve light and air on congested, over developed New York streets,
and the multi level circulation system a practical organizational tool
to handle the vast number of new vehicles and people
flooding into the city. Ah, So to come in to rob.
(20:00):
I don't think you explained this one yet, but the
the idea of the stepped back teared skyscraper results also interesting.
So you're imagining something. Well, actually this might explain the
idea of the why the towers in that drawing look
like the Tower of Babel from from Broigel. You know that,
like it's a terrorists I don't know what you call it,
stadium seating levels? You know that they go back each level. Uh,
(20:22):
and this, I guess would let more light into the city, right,
I mean this this also factored into a few other
design issues that and engineering issues that were were definitely
present in buildings of that time period. And and sometimes
it was like the code of the city that if
you built it, you had to have upper level stepped
back from the street a certain amount. Interesting. Now, another
(20:44):
another name to mention here American architect, illustrator and poet
Hugh Ferris no connection to GAYL. Ferris Jr. Ferris Wheel fame.
Their last names are spelled differently, but Hugh Ferris another
big name who created uh some images for Nines, the
Metropolis of Tomorrow and Joe. If you look at these,
just beautiful art deco black and white illustrations. Uh, you know,
(21:10):
these are pretty fabulous, Like this is Gotham City. They
make me think of the Oscar statue for some reason. Yeah, yeah,
I couldn't say why, but they are very pretty. Thank Yeah,
I guess I just want to drive home that this
this craving for sky bridges and interconnected skyscrapers like this.
(21:32):
It's it's kind of this mix of this attempt to
solve practical problems while also clearly to you know, to
create beautiful architecture, to bring dreams into physical reality. And
uh and I imagine there's a bit of of of
of of pushing and pull between those, uh, those aspirations. Well, yeah,
and I think you you know, we've talked about some
(21:53):
of the dystopian associations of of sky bridges in science fiction,
but they certainly don't have to have those. And in
some ways you look at interconnecting higher levels of buildings
as a very positive social outcome especially given that it
just looks like the reality is urban population density is
probably going to continue to increase. Um. You know, they're
(22:15):
strong urbanization trends worldwide. People are more often just moving
further into city centers. Into percent of the world's population
lived in cities. The World Health Organization estimates that by
twenty fifty that number will probably climb to about sixty
six percent. It's hard to know for sure, but if
you know, trends continue, so people are continually crowding more
(22:39):
and more into cities. Population density is increasing, and where
we're going to fit all those people that there is
no way to generate additional surface area, So the main
direction you have to go would be up or down. Um,
So I guess you could dig into tunnels, but you know,
natural light is nice, so you want to go up? Yeah. Yeah.
And and to your point, like access is also a
(23:00):
big point that's not necessarily going to be as baked
into the architectural design. Um, you know, just to to
take it in a different direction. It's like the difference
between a fully public park and a and a membership
based golf course in a city. Yes, like one of
the they're both big green spaces. But they're totally different
(23:20):
in how they connect with the city and the people
of the city exactly. So you can imagine a a
city full of tall buildings that are connected at upper levels,
just providing new kind of public spaces in the In
the better version of this future, where you know, it's
like the streets below, there's new things to see and
do up their new places to live and and uh
(23:41):
sites to visit. And so when you look at these
sci fi visions of a future where tall buildings are
often connected by sky bridges and other lateral thoroughfares, again
creating a kind of like like the canopy level of
the trees and a rainforest, it implies the society where
one can travel from build to building at the top
level without ever having to go down to the bottom,
(24:03):
exit the building, and use the surface level streets. And
I guess what that means about if you're trying to
imagine the life people would live in that environment, it's
just a life where there are fewer reasons to exit
the high rise environment. So today, if you live in
a tall building, you probably need to exit that building
to do most things, to see family and friends, to
(24:24):
go to work, to go shopping and so forth. But
what if all of those things were also in the
tops of nearby buildings and you could travel across sky
bridges from one to the other. That that's clearly a
future that some people have in mind, and it's not
impossible to imagine something like this. But if you are
imagining that as the future, it's worth asking how would
(24:45):
this situation affect our minds and our culture. You know,
you can such a radical restructuring of the you know,
the location and architecture of our lives, that that's probably
not totally neutral. So has anybody looked into the question
of what being in a high rise all the time
does to people? Are there psychological effects of spending more
(25:06):
of your time in the upper floors? And it turns
out yes, there actually is a good bit of research
on this subject. So I came across a review of
the existing body of literature on this from by a
couple of scholars affiliated with Cornell University. So this paper
is by Solid Clintari and Mardel Shepley. It was published
(25:29):
in the journal Housing Studies again one and it's called
Psychological and Social Impacts of High Rise Buildings. A review
of the post occupancy evaluation literature. So this paper looks
as specifically at what are called post occupancy evaluation studies,
which are the quote evaluation of buildings in a systemic
(25:50):
and rigorous manner after they have been built and occupied.
This systemic evaluation measures and monitors the performance of a
built environment using data gathered from behavioral techno, coal and
functional observation. So this is what what's happening in buildings
after people have moved in and lived there now. Unfortunately,
this is another one of those social science areas where
there are lots of different studies, but they aren't always
(26:12):
perfectly easy to compare to each other because they're not
always measuring exactly the same thing, or maybe limited in scope,
or have results that conflict with one another. But a
few trends do seem to emerge from this literature. The
top line I would say is that spending your life
up in a tall building is associated with some fairly
(26:32):
consistent negative consequences for life and health, especially for lower
income occupants, but that these negative effects can probably be
mitigated or even erased by better design of high rise
living spaces. So what are some of the negative effects
that have been repeatedly found to be associated with high
rise living. I want to mention a couple of these
(26:54):
in more detail and then give some summary comments In
terms of the ones I'm gonna mention more Detai Hill.
One of them appears to be loneliness and social isolation.
So since the nineteen seventies, researchers have found that people
living in high rises are likely to experience more feelings
of loneliness and less social and community engagement. Why would
(27:18):
this be well? The authors of this review right quote
Ronald two thousand seven indicated a relative deficiency in social
engagement in a broad comparative study of European high rise
housing and attributed this isolation to designs that quote support
individualization and anonymity. A study conducted in Singapore reported minimal
(27:38):
neighborly relations and concluded that high rise living quote does
not readily build community. So at least, what some of
these studies seem to conclude is that there's something about
the way we are building high rise building high rise
residential buildings that sort of discourages people from forming community
relationships with their neighbors and encourages a kind of isolated
(28:01):
way of living that it sort of makes you feel
like you need to retreat into an anonymous space. Oh,
once again, I'm reminded of the lyrics of Warren zevon
Um from Splendid Isolation. I want to live on the
upper east side and never go down in the streets.
Oh yeah, I didn't even think of that, but yeah.
And so the authors of this review that they look
at a number of studies from different places all around
(28:23):
the world Scotland, Hong Kong, India, which all found that
high rise living was more associated with things like loneliness,
anti social behavior, decreased trust in neighbors, and stuff like that. However, uh,
and this seems to be important. I think. The researchers
note that it may not actually be the fact that
you were high up off the ground that causes this,
(28:46):
Like it might not actually be the elevation. It may
be more the kind of more kind of side effect
resulting from trends in the design of high rise buildings.
In other words, it may just happen to be that
high rise buildings are designed in ways that discourage social
interaction and community and that breed loneliness and isolation. But
(29:06):
that would be the case no matter what floor you
lived on. So it's not a not a case of
what if if God wanted us to live in the skies,
he would have given us wings. It's more of a
situation where well and were human beings are not wired
to live in this kind of isolation generally speaking, like
we are social creatures who need to have some level
(29:28):
of community around us. Yes, and also that there's some
indication that maybe the designs of high rise residential buildings,
when they do force interaction between residents, it tends to
be negative interactions, like the author's site of study of
of high rise residential buildings in Paris, which found that
people attributed their poor relationships to quote, overcrowded conditions in
(29:53):
their high rises, which they've viewed as prompting irritability and conflict.
So it's possible that friendly designed spaces for high rise
life would not produce these negative effects at all. And
then I thought this was really interesting. To further complicate things,
there are some studies that don't find this association, or
even find the exact opposite, with people living in high
(30:14):
rises having fairly strong community bonds, especially when building designs
include things like central courtyard areas like common spaces where
people can gather, or when residents had pre existing external
social connections, meaning that like they know each other in
some capacity other than just being neighbors in the building,
(30:36):
maybe they work together, or they they are you know,
knew each other before they moved in. Uh to read
from the authors here quote. In many of these latter studies,
various sociological factors in the overall environmental design, rather than
high rise buildings per se, appear to be more relevant
to the health of social interactions. It's also notable that
all of the included studies that found positive community relationships
(30:59):
in high rise contexts were conducted in East or Southeast Asia,
such as Singapore, Taiwan, or Hong Kong, while the majority
of studies that found negative community impacts were carried out
in the US and Europe. And so, I don't know
what would be the cause of these cultural differences in
the impact of high rise buildings. I don't know if
there it's a result of different trends in architecture in
(31:21):
these places or cultural differences, but those divergent outcomes are interesting.
This is fascinating. Yeah, it reminds me I've been I've
been watching this show on Apple TV titled Home, which
is about different specifically about different home designs that have
been constructed that you know, that explore new ideas or
explore old ideas. And in the show they do get
(31:44):
into some of some of the cultural aspects. It makes
me wonder like if if multigenerational households are a part
of this equation, because you definitely see I mean, in general,
I think you see this UH, this trend away from
that with with modern city based living, but perhaps less
so in UH in like East Asian models versus European
(32:06):
and and US models. But but I'm not sure. Well,
so that's the idea of loneliness and isolation UH and
and promoting anti social living. But another thing is that
many studies have found a fairly consistent link between high
rise living and UH several negative mental health outcomes, though
in this case, again it's difficult to isolate the high
(32:29):
rise itself is the causative factor rather than attendant social
and cultural issues that that often go along with high
high rise living in places where this has been studied.
So if it is actually living in the high rise
building that causes negative mental health outcomes, how would that work? Well,
one explanation would be that this is caused by reducing
(32:51):
exposure to nature, reducing exposure to vegetation and green space.
If you are up in the high rise and there's
not much greenery around you in the you know, rooms
in the hallways that you that you occupy, and being
up there, you're just less likely to get out into
nature at the ground level. That probably will have some
negative consequences for mental health. And this seems to be
(33:12):
backed up by at least a couple of studies showing
that adding more natural elements to high rises. So maybe
if you include access, like you ease access to green
space from the upper floors of the high rise, or
you include green space within those places, that that reduces
some of these problems. And finally, the authors cites some
(33:34):
probably important findings about the potential effect of high rise living,
specifically on childhood growth and development. So they write, quote,
a number of studies conducted during the nineteen seventies found
increased behavioral problems, physical health issues, and decreased motor and
academic skills among children living in high rise buildings. They
say that these findings have been confirmed in later studies
(33:55):
several times, and then they write quote, As is the
case with other demographic population. However, the current research has
demonstrated that these outcomes are strongly mediated by income level
and other socioeconomic variables. Children from wealthier families who live
in high rises are much more likely to have access
to vibrant play spaces and to experience a greater sense
(34:15):
of safety and involvement in the surrounding neighborhood, which makes
it unsurprising that they exhibit few of the developmental issues
that are widely reported for their less privileged peers. And
that last point about a sort of economic determinism in
the outcomes of child development can actually be extracted to
the findings of this research more broadly. So the authors
(34:36):
right in their discussion section that you know, one of
the most significant trends observed here is that quote the
high rise environment appears to intensify existing socioeconomic divisions. So
there seems to be a kind of Matthew principle at work, right,
Like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
So when you when you study wealthy people, it seems
that the ones living in high rise environments tend to
(34:59):
report outcomes are just as good or even better than
equivalent equivalently wealthy people in other built environments, whereas for
lower income people, living in a high rise is correlated
with a lot of negative outcomes when compared to other
types of buildings, and this seemingly paradoxical result could have
It could have a number of causes, so it's hard
to pin it down to one thing, but to the
(35:20):
extent that the built environments themselves are at least one
of those causes, a lot of these unequal outcomes could
probably be alleviated by better, more humane building design in
affordable residential high rises, and so some of the better
designs would probably you know, couldn't be limited to this,
but would probably include things like the incorporation of these
(35:42):
vibrant shared spaces right essentially courtyards, lobbies, gathering places which
have safe open spaces for children to play and explore
and for people to gather. Also, on top of that
lots of natural light and greenery. These factors seem really
important for people psychological well being. You need to be
able to see the sun, there need to be plants around, uh.
(36:05):
And then they also call out things like better wayfinding
and layout design, though I think they mentioned this more
in the context of like a commercial buildings though that
matters too, you know. They say the floors of tall
buildings can sometimes be hard to navigate in ways that
cause a kind of stress and confusion that that really
builds up onto on you over time. Yeah, like that
(36:26):
feeling of of exiting the elevator and not really knowing
like which way you're supposed to go in and yeah
and uh okay, sort of getting lost in the hallways. Yeah.
Than so, to bring all this back to the idea
of building this sci fi fantasy city, sort of the
(36:47):
concrete canopy, if we were to try to build cities
that had um, that had life, that existed in a
more consistent way, and the upper levels of buildings, I
do think that's wible, But it sounds like you need
to be very careful how you design in that city.
You'd want to design it in a way that doesn't
make people miserable and cause these negative downstream outcomes for
(37:11):
their for their well being and mental health. Again, this
is not exhaustive of the things you need to do,
but it seems clear that like a very important thing
would be putting plenty of things like parks up there. Um,
and I think this is partially the spirit of an
architectural movement I've read about called streets in the Sky,
where I think the idea is sort of to create
(37:32):
high rises in which there are lots of public areas
that are more like the streets on the ground, not
like private hallways, but open spaces connecting desirable destinations that
cause that that have plenty of foot traffic, and of
course foot traffic is associated with all kinds of positive
outcomes in residential areas, you know, resultant improvements in public safety,
(37:54):
and just a positive vibe that comes along with people,
you know, wanting to hang out and go from place
to place. I think attempts to design buildings like this
may may have had some limited success so far, but
you could imagine it working better if it was more
widely adopted, if you had more contiguous buildings connected each
(38:14):
with destinations for shopping in public spaces, especially lots of
greenery and natural light, places that people would want to
go and be walking around in all the time. Yeah,
and I guess one of the big challenges here, obviously
is that one sky bridge is not going to fix it.
Like we're not talking about throw up with skybridge, So
I'll tell you what, throw up to sky bridges and
(38:34):
we'll fix things. No, you you, you really are talking
about a whole different approach to treating these these towers,
the skyscrapers, and they're uh not only you know what's
available with the the the upper levels, but also the
street level as well. Uh you know, I mean there
there are plenty of existing apartment towers in cities like
Chicago that that were designed with the idea of, yeah,
(38:58):
you don't have to leave this tower, like here your shops,
here's your here's where you park your car, and it's
all in the various layers of the design, and so
you know, it's it's almost like a tear down approach. Um,
you would need a new type of building, a new
type of architecture to create the city. And and so
there have been some really interesting designs that have emerged
(39:19):
over the years. Um. One of which that I've been
fascinated by in the past is a Russian concept that
emerged called the the vulcan bugle. Okay, this is um.
This can be translated as cloud hangers, sky hangers, or
sky hooks, and these were the brain child of a
(39:41):
Russian architect by the name of l uh Lisitski, who
lived eighteen through nine. Um, I encourage everyone out there
to look up some images of these. These are what
are sometimes described as horizontal skyscrapers. Uh that they were
never built, but the basic concept here, the the the
(40:02):
idea was that there would be eight, um basically three
story L shaped buildings in Moscow position fifty meters above
the street on three pylons. So yeah, imagine one of those. Um,
imagine a tetris block that is uh what to what
(40:23):
two or three up and then it has a little
L part. Now imagine turning that horizontally, turning it on
its side, and then sticking that up in the air
on a massive pylon. I think, I think it's very
cool design. Though you can imagine being nervous walking under
one of these, yes, yeah, um, you know, but I
guess you'd get used to it, you know, the same
way we get used to the concept of skyscrapers in
(40:46):
the in the air above us. But um, yeah, it's
it's basically the idea here. It's a wide, horizontal living
space elevated with a very narrow footprint on the street.
So again go back to what we're talking thing about earlier,
like some of the reasons that people were looking at
sky bridges. Part of it was congestion, vehicular and pedestrian
(41:08):
congestion below They're like, well, we gotta if you can
reduce the footprint, uh, then then that's great, and then
if you can connect things above even better. So one
of the central ideas though, on top of this, was
that Lesinsky didn't think that vertical living was natural for
human beings. He argued that we needed horizontal spaces, and
(41:30):
this sort of of design, while certainly still requiring vertical
movement you'd still have to take stairs or elevators up,
it would maximize the horizontal environmental experience. I mean, none
of the empirical researchers I was reading put it in
exactly those terms, but in a vague way that seems
to square pretty strongly with with the research I was
just looking at that, you know, like that these what
(41:51):
do they call these vibrant shared spaces, Like having these big, open,
horizontal spaces seems to be very helpful in creating a
more humane living environment. Yeah. Yeah. Um. On top of this,
there was the idea that these pylons would extend into
the ground, connecting to a subway system. And then he
also even factored in the idea. Okay, if you have
(42:13):
multiple of these, um these these sky hangers, the cloud
hangers in a given part of the city, it might
be confusing. They all look the same. Uh No, he's saying,
little color code them. That way you have, you know,
you're able to instantly tell where you are in reference
to another. So it's not just a bunch of sort
of alien gray buildings all emerging from the same area.
(42:34):
No one is say orange, one is red, one is green,
et cetera. Also, these would be positioned at intersections where
traffic and congestion was that it's worse freeing up room.
Uh yeah, so these are these are fascinating to look
at some of the the images of what could have
been here. And while there are modern buildings with fantastic
(42:56):
cantilever designs that that bring these images to mind, no
volcan Googles were ever actually built, certainly not in Russia,
and largely it seems to be just two ahead of
its time. Uh, partially as a concept perhaps, but also
just I think engineering wise. Uh. The Sitsky seemed to think, well,
it's just we weren't ready to build these. Yet you know,
(43:18):
as I'm looking at these pictures, though, a consequence was
emerging in my mind. We've been talking about more more positive,
more equitable, more humane ways to design cities that are
connected at the upper levels. But I was just thinking
about how, to some degree, some of the benefits of
of horizontal space are kind of zero some right, because
(43:40):
if you were to end up creating a city that's
totally covered in these horizontal spaces at higher levels, you'd
essentially be cutting off the ground level from sunlight. You know,
like you get some diagonal sunlight, but there are some
limits on what you could put up above without negatively
impacting the quality of life below. And then you get
back into that that possible vision of of of bifurcation
(44:04):
with with negative consequences at the ground. Yeah, Like, oops,
I accidentally created a shell and created a new underworld. Yeah,
I thought of that, because this goes beyond just sort
of like like hallways connecting tall buildings that might have uh,
you know, horizontal spaces that are vertically aligned with their
footprint on the ground. But this is like reaching out
over empty space. So if you imagine lots of buildings
(44:26):
like that, they just start to kind of become a
like a roof for the city. Yeah. And certainly when
you look at look at these these concepts, they don't
or certainly the original concepts, they don't really create this
sense that the like a vibrant street level uh community
was very much part of the that the aim here
(44:50):
now looking into the future would And Sapharic point out
that one of the lingering failures of tall buildings is
just that lack of integration into the urban fabric. So
obviously there are a lot of cool skybridges, but most
buildings are not connected in this way. They're connected to
the city at ground level, and there's a broad spectrum
of what it might be like at ground level, from
(45:12):
having like a vibrant community and shops to it just
being uh, you know, desolation in some cases. Um. And
so the goal of many tall buildings, it seems, has
has has very much been not to fit in with
the world beneath, but to stand out from it. And
so they present an idea that may feel equal parts
(45:33):
fantastic and reasonable. Uh. And and perhaps today as it
has been for for decades, quote, if cities concentrate perhaps
ten or a hundred times more people at a given
location through building tall. There is also a need to
replicate the facilities that exist at the ground plane up
in the sky, including the parks and the sidewalks, the
(45:54):
schools and the hospitals and other public civic functions. The
ground plane should be considered as a duplicable layer of
the city which needs to be replicated, at least in
part at strategic horizons within and between buildings in the sky,
not as a replacement of the ground plane, but as
an addition to it. Every tall building would then need
(46:17):
to be considered as a vital element in an overall
three dimensional urban framework, rather than a standalone icon superimposed
on a two dimensional urban plan. I think that's very
well put. Yeah, this idea that again you're not replacing
the street, but you were augmenting it. You're replicating it,
so you would have still have a vibrant street level
(46:39):
a community, but that you would have this sky level
community as well. Yeah. So yeah, I think it's some fascinating,
fascinating ideas here. Um. I would obviously love to hear
from tower dwellers out there, and and former tower tower
dwellers and perhaps future tower dwellers who are listening to
this show because I, for one, I've I've never lived
(47:01):
in a tall building. I've I don't think I've really
worked in a tall building. I mean our most recent well,
I mean our most recent studios, our most recent office
building was what what fourth floor of a building? Well,
the most recently the one we used to record in
a tall building, I mean, but that was what what
floor will we be on? Like four? Yeah, it had
(47:26):
a nice balcony, I remember that, that one, that one.
But I guess one of the things about that building
is that we had for most of the run there,
we had the entire floor and a balcony, so we
did have a lot of horizontal space, so maybe that
was part of it. We didn't feel as locked in. Also,
though that original office had some cubicles, wasn't wasn't full
(47:48):
open office yet. Oh yeah, I did love those cubicles.
They were stylish cubicles too. They weren't your They weren't
like what you would see on the office or something.
They were more like what you would see on severance.
You know. They're they're fun cubicles. Yeah. But anyway, like
I said, we'd love to hear from everyone out there
in different parts of the world. What is it? What
is it like living in the tall building? Does any
(48:10):
of this match up with what we've been discussing in
these episodes? Or again, your favorite skywalks? Tell me about
your skywalks? Um uh, what are your favorite? What is it?
What has it been like to traverse some of the
notable skywalks out there in our world. In the meantime,
if you would like to check out other episodes of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head on over to the
(48:32):
Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Get that wherever
you get your podcasts. You'll find core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. You'll find short form artifacts or monster facts
on Wednesday's listener mail. On Mondays and on Fridays, we
do weird el Cinema. That's our time to set aside
most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Also add this, if you want to be a part
(48:52):
of the Discord channel or proup, Discord whatever Discord world
for this show, email us and we'll send you a
link to join that. I wanted to share that some
of the users there are doing a book club. It
looks like they're planning to read umberto echoes the name
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on that again, email the show. Joe will give you
(49:13):
the email address in a second and I'll make sure
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huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
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(49:42):
Mind's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for
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b b b b BO. It was graduate or propo
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and we're back with part two of our talk about
sky bridges or sky ways. Uh, if you haven't heard
(00:24):
part one yet, maybe should go check that one out first.
But as a brief refresher, a sky bridge or a
skyway is an architectural feature that you can think of
as kind of a hallway in the sky, or an
enclosed bridge linking two buildings by the upper floors. In
the last episode, we talked about some modern examples of
(00:44):
sky bridges and some interesting ones from history, such as
the the Bridge of Size in Venice, Italy's enclosed passageway
that may look romantic from the outside but has mostly
historical associations with torture and zens. But in the uh,
let's see. But in today's episode, I think we're gonna
(01:05):
be talking more about what sky bridges mean, how they're interpreted,
and how they might be used in the future. That's right, So,
first of all, I do want to refer back to
some examples just briefly that we we were we discussed
the you know, just the idea of say, the powerful
Medici family in Italy using these enclosed spaces and occasional
(01:27):
things that we would definitely categorize as a sky bridge
to move from one place to the other without interacting
with enemies or commoners, etcetera. We also looked at some
examples of of royalty in China engaging in similar practices,
using these as sort of privileged passage ways for royal
(01:48):
members of society. Oh so you what was the the
Chinese ruler who went about in these halls so that
devils would not see where he walked and he could
only embrace good people. It's said, yes, yes, that would
have been impertin shi Wong. Yeah, so that he could
uh quote act mysteriously to avoid devils and meanwhile embrace
(02:09):
virtuous individuals. And one thing that we mentioned was that, yeah, okay,
this is this is one thing within a historical context,
but generally speaking, I think a lot of us wouldn't
want to overtly um invoke that kind of idea. So
in there we get to some of the sort of
controversy and back and forth over just the nature of
the sky bridge, like not not only what it physically does,
(02:33):
but also like what is it? What does it do?
Um in terms of society and urban planning and uh
and just the like the larger nature of the city
that goes beyond just mere structures and moving people around.
And so I want to come back to the architect
John Portman Jr. John Portman Jr. Live through seventeen UM
(02:55):
American neo futurist architect and real estate developer. Uh we
allude we mentioned some of the examples of his work
here in Atlanta, Georgia. He's known for popularizing the atrium,
but also in using a lot of sky bridges. Now,
as we mentioned, of course that there are a number
of practical reasons to have sky bridges in a structure,
moving people around so they don't have to uh engage
(03:17):
in say hostile environment and you know, hot temperatures, freezing rain,
that sort of thing. Also, you're gonna have situations where
you want to share resources within two different towers, so
connect those towers at a higher floor. That way people
don't have to go all the way back down and
then back up again, perhaps crossing a street or uh
(03:39):
you know, checking in and out of security along the way.
That sort of thing. But in the case of Portman's
Peachtree Center sky bridges, there's apparently been controversy over the
years over the use of such walkways. So this area
emerged during the nineties seventies, and while some of of
it is is dated, some of it is still quite impressed.
(04:00):
If I have to say, the Marta train station at
Peachtree Center is probably the coolest looking one in the
system and has these these rock walls as well as
this kind of still I would say futuristic looking, like
shiny metal surfaces. I don't know if he designed, uh,
the Marta station in question, but there was one Marta
station at least that was used as a setting for
(04:21):
a cut scene in John Carpenter's Escape from New York.
I think because it, you know, the sort of the
blocky concrete fixtures in it just looked futuristic enough. Yeah, yeah,
certainly at the time that was was that five Points station.
I can't recall off hand, but but certainly you're right
on that sounds likely. Yeah, yeah, that that also is
a huge enclosed space that it is impressive in its
(04:43):
own way to walk through. But at anyway, Yeah, this
is all part of the you know, the varying stages
of revitalization efforts in downtown Atlanta, and during this time
and especially the decades to follow, Peachtree Center was, in
the eyes of its critics, this thing that by its
very structure sought to cut out street level Atlanta in
(05:05):
its entirety um and now not only people but businesses.
So rather than optimistically futuristic, the critics would say, well,
this is actually more wellsy in a world of privilege above,
cut off from the realities of the street below. For
there was one account that I was looking at looking
(05:25):
through various old news stories, and I saw one about
a believe it was a janitor strike that was taking place,
and this particular author had mentioned people avoiding the protesters
by making use of the sky bridges, which seems like
a stark example of the sort of u uh, you know,
the sort of privileged walkway that in ways I think
(05:46):
can be compared to some of these older models that
we were discussing now, the nineteen seventies we're also not
a period during which green downtowns were prioritized, just certainly
not in Atlanta. Uh So, of one can can factor
that into the kind of weirdly spaceship like architectural approach.
That one season, some of these buildings were discussing so
(06:07):
giant open atriums in buildings joined to each other by
enclosed tunnels and bridges cut off from an outside where
you have a languishing downtown and also just everything is
just a sweltering gray heat island. Uh. This is actually
one of the reasons that Trees Atlanta was founded in
to begin the quote greening of downtown. Oh, I didn't
(06:29):
know that, So I don't know exactly how far this
far back this reputation goes, but at least today Atlanta
is known as a city that has an unusual amount
of trees and it's in its urban center. Yeah, well,
as far as downtown Atlanta goes, especially a lot of
that is we can think Trees Atlanta for so that
all that's very very local to us. But I think
(06:50):
these are all great examples of some of the you know,
the discussions that take place over the use of the
sky bridge and next where the direction we'd like to
go in though is taking a step back and talking
about for the most part, taking a step back. But
a lot of this is also still contemporary as well.
But talking about futurism and the sky bridge the ideas
that end up being wrapped up in concepts that have
(07:12):
sky bridges in them. You know, what we're what we're
actually trying to achieve, And what are some of the
visions sort of the loftier ideas that are caught up
in all of this, and indeed, what are some of
the really pivotal forward facing ideas that we can point to,
uh in the early twentieth century. So, when I was
thinking about the social meaning of sky bridges, especially in
(07:34):
science fiction, it's interesting. I have a general sense that
sky bridges are often used in fictional architecture to emphasize
exactly this kind of theme you were just talking about.
It was sort of people living in elevated tubes of
privilege that disconnect them from the realities below. And one
(07:54):
specific example is that I had a pretty distinct memory
of the movie Metropolis, the nine Fritz long movie, UH,
sort of German expressionist science fiction masterpiece. UH. And my idea,
at least in my head, was that this movie was
full of sky bridges. But when I did a Google search,
(08:17):
I didn't find a lot of examples. The main thing
I actually found in screenshots appeared to be rail lines
connecting the tops of buildings, and I found what looks like,
I don't know, it looks like hand drawn UH illustrations
based on the movie that do appear to have like
connected enclosed hallways, but I'm not sure how accurate my
(08:37):
memory that the city in Metropolis is full of sky
bridges is. Nevertheless, for some reason, I had that impression
there certainly are these these elevated rail lines going between
UH skyscraper tops and Metropolis. Is A is a great
dystopian sci fi film, one of the major themes of
which is economic injustice. It it presents a sort of
class bifurcated society where you have, you know, idle rich
(09:01):
people sort of frittering away their days up in the
tops of great tall buildings, apparently rarely or never having
to go down into the streets. And meanwhile, the workers
and the factories who make this techno utopia possible are
confined to physically lower spaces, even subterranean tunnels and caverns.
And eventually there there is a revolt in the in
(09:22):
the film, but the theme is certainly there. But though
maybe it doesn't have as many sky bridges as I
actually remember, and I don't know, maybe they're just not
coming through in the screen, you know, grabs that people
have put up on the internet. I think there are
definitely sky bridges in Metropolis. I know that some of
the sources I was looking at they referenced specifically early
twentieth century science fiction cinematography. And when you're talking about that,
(09:46):
you're talking about Metropolis. I mean, Metropolis is the the
the example of a futuristic cinema from from from especially
the twenties part excellence, you know, I mean, this is it,
this is the big one. And h I did want
to note that this vision of tall buildings occupied by
the rich at the top while the workers live down
on the ground. This, interestingly, it squares with some reality,
(10:10):
such as the idea of like I don't know, you know,
the penthouse apartment. But also the class associations are often inverted.
Like I was reading some actual research papers about the
psychological and social impact of living in tall buildings, which
I'll get into in a minute, and these studies often
cited the exact opposite that there there are widespread assumptions
(10:31):
of high high rise living being associated with lack of
economic means, but as much as architecture is often a
metaphor for for economic realities, I think also lots of
sci fi has visions of future urban spaces where the
tops of tall buildings are connected, and doesn't necessarily have
that meaning. It's not always a class critique. I think
(10:53):
sometimes instead it's supposed to be taken as a sign
of a complex or complicated a did society, that there
are avenues connecting things back and forth, like the like
the arteries of a circulatory system, that it's a complex
and not of associations resembling a kind of like the
vines in a jungle in physical form. And and of course,
(11:14):
and in fact there's sort of a literal analogy to
the the biological architecture of a rainforest, because on a rainfort,
in a rainforest, you know, you have sort of one
level of life going on at the forest floor, which
of course is all connected by the continuous surface. But
then you have the tree canopy level where the the
lateral connection of the ground level is replicated up above. Yeah,
(11:38):
and so I think even in sci fi movies without
an economic critique, there we see all these hallways going
back and forth between the skyscrapers and it just makes
us feel like, wow, it's so complex and there's so
much going on, and it would be you know, it
would be hard for me to even understand how the
you know, the many layers of this society. Yeah, because
(11:59):
it's interesting to crack this nut. Because one thing, and
I'll come back to some sources that touch on this
in a bit. If you think of like the upper
penthouse of a of a of a very tall building,
of skyscraper, what have you, the thing is like that
is a dead end. Uh. That is the the point
at which you you generally have no choice but to
turn around and come back down. Um. And uh, you
(12:22):
know you can say, oh, well maybe there's a helicopter
port up there. Okay, well there's that. Um. And certainly
you can extend this by pointing out that while some
of the futuristic visions of cities and where we're going
with they have been planning, they also often involved say
a whole bunch of flying cars moving around or other
flying the flying vehicles, flying machines that are serving as
(12:44):
as a way to connect these isolated islands in the sky.
The classic examples of that would be like Blade Runner.
Now I think you could assume that maybe with Blade Runner,
like you look at some architectural features and say, there's
implied critique here. There there's some kind of implied critique
about the society we're being shown. But there are other
cases where I don't know if there is. It's just
(13:06):
sort of like inherited science fiction texture. Like in the
Star Wars prequels, you see that traffic going back and
forth at many levels. There's like you know, like the
layers of a cake, the different criss crossing streams of
flying cars. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's definitely an underworld
to Coorisson as well. But yeah, there are other films
like I don't know, The Fifth Element, for example, has
(13:27):
a lot of cool flying cars and that that feels
may be more like just sci fi texture. But to
come back to this idea like Corisson with an underworld
and all of this, I can't help but think, of course,
of Dante's Inferno and all of this, and think again
of the of the skyscraper as mountain in Dante's Divine Comedy.
We of course have the complexities of the the underworld
(13:50):
of Inferno. We have the mount of Purgatory that extends
upward and reaches the point of paradise, because because then
in the third book, of course, we have to have
only realm and the heavenly realm. I guess we might
we might well compare to some of these visions of
the the the upper parts of skyscrapers being connected together.
We don't want isolation and loneliness in our heavens. We
(14:13):
want elaborate complexity. Ah, this maybe a more apt analogy
even than you intended, because you remember, like how often
in the Paradiso Dante just talks about how like I
couldn't describe what I was seeing. Yeah, it's just and
and certainly when you look at illustrations, it's you know,
you can have a pretty firm map of of of
the inferno, pretty firm map of the mouth of Purgatory.
(14:36):
But yeah, Paradise is just this, like swirling circles and
interconnected wheels. Of course, any of these cinematic examples we're
looking at, yeah, they they hearken back to Metropolis. Metropolis
is the granddaddy of them all. And Metropolis is one
of those movies that they just stands the test of time.
It's certainly worth taking a look at again. Uh, but
while it is one of the most popular, enduring and
(14:58):
certainly sci fi influential visions of sky bridges and this
interconnected skyscraper world. Um. That film, too, was continuing trends
of futurism, which apparently can be traced back to American
folk artist Erastus Salisbury Field, who lived eighteen o five
through nineteen hundred. So I didn't even live to see Metropolis,
(15:23):
but he did this, this wonderfully intriguing work titled Historical
Monument of the American Republic um eighteen sixty seven through
eighteen eighty eight being the dates on this piece, and
definitely looked this up. You can find images of this
online and Joe, I've included an image of this for
you here. Oh okay, So I think this vision of
(15:44):
the future is that everyone will get to live in
their own Tower of Babel. Yeah it is. It is
very uh brugal esque. I would say these don't instantly
read a skyscrapers to the modern I but I mean
there there are certainly architectural features here that you will
see on modern tall buildings. But yeah, this, this is,
(16:05):
this looks like a fantastic realm. So whereas in a
more mundane age you you have the jealous competition with
your neighbor for who can have the prettier lawn or
the fancier I don't know, satellite TV antenna. Uh. In
this case, you're competing to see who can kill God first. Yeah.
And if they're gonna pull it off, they're gonna do it.
From these what looked to be like penthouse temples kind
(16:28):
of goes are in in their structure that are all
connected by bridges and have just oodles of statues at
the top. I assume those are statues. Uh, and this
is and they literally appear to be clouds swirling around them.
I mean it's a cool drawing. Yeah. Yeah. So this
was created for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in eighteen seventy
(16:48):
six and Woulden Safaric the the authors that I referenced
in the first episode. They say that this image influenced
a number of other artists, including Charles R. Land Um
and Vernon hoe Bailey, who created the night Streets High
in the Air illustrations. These are also worth checking out,
(17:09):
and Joe I have included two examples of these for you. Now,
these are not necessarily uh sky bridges are skyways in
the more narrow sense that we're talking about earlier of
basically an enclosed hallway that's got stuff all around the
But these are still interesting because they are ideas of
the bridge connecting skyscrapers buildings at height, having a second
(17:32):
level or maybe multiple levels of lateral connection. But here
they're just open streets. I mean that's interesting too. Yeah,
and you see a train moving through one of them,
like a great worm burrowing through this behemoth. Um. Yeah,
these are these are impressive images that also have uh,
you know, maybe it's the coloration, at least the versions
(17:53):
I have here, Like one is definitely like a charcoal
looking black and white, and the other has this kind
of washed out, um like orange and brown temp to it.
It makes it feel kind of apocalyptic in some ways.
But still this yeah, this was roughly twenty years before
we'd see such images in cinema. Another key twentieth century
(18:14):
figure in all of this was editor and publisher Moses King,
who commissioned many such images for King's Views of New York. Uh.
This was a book that came out, and I've included
a cover from from this publication for you, Joe. And
as you can see, this one's just crazy with it.
They're just bridges connecting all of these skyscrapers, skyscrapers that
(18:34):
that look more um contemporary for this time period. But
then also flying machines galore. Oh, your city is full
of biplanes. Were minds full of triplanes? Yeah, I see
some airships. Uh, pretty fantastic looking. So this is what
would in Safaric have to say in their paper, and
(18:55):
that paper again if anyone wants to check that out,
it is skybridges, a history and a view to the
near future, they write. Quote. The early skybridge sky city
portrayals came about as a direct response to very real
urban issues which were pressing at the time. Primary of
these urban issues was the impact that both tall buildings
(19:17):
and increased vehicular traffic were having on the ground floor
urban condition. Tall buildings were increasingly growing in height and
overcrowding the street, and the conflict between pedestrian and vehicular
traffic was increasing. The recurring themes in all the early
futuristic visions evolved as a response to these problems, both
(19:38):
the stepped back tiered skyscraper and the multi level circulation system.
The stepped back skyscraper was seen as a way to
preserve light and air on congested, over developed New York streets,
and the multi level circulation system a practical organizational tool
to handle the vast number of new vehicles and people
flooding into the city. Ah, So to come in to rob.
(20:00):
I don't think you explained this one yet, but the
the idea of the stepped back teared skyscraper results also interesting.
So you're imagining something. Well, actually this might explain the
idea of the why the towers in that drawing look
like the Tower of Babel from from Broigel. You know that,
like it's a terrorists I don't know what you call it,
stadium seating levels? You know that they go back each level. Uh,
(20:22):
and this, I guess would let more light into the city, right,
I mean this this also factored into a few other
design issues that and engineering issues that were were definitely
present in buildings of that time period. And and sometimes
it was like the code of the city that if
you built it, you had to have upper level stepped
back from the street a certain amount. Interesting. Now, another
(20:44):
another name to mention here American architect, illustrator and poet
Hugh Ferris no connection to GAYL. Ferris Jr. Ferris Wheel fame.
Their last names are spelled differently, but Hugh Ferris another
big name who created uh some images for Nines, the
Metropolis of Tomorrow and Joe. If you look at these,
just beautiful art deco black and white illustrations. Uh, you know,
(21:10):
these are pretty fabulous, Like this is Gotham City. They
make me think of the Oscar statue for some reason. Yeah, yeah,
I couldn't say why, but they are very pretty. Thank Yeah,
I guess I just want to drive home that this
this craving for sky bridges and interconnected skyscrapers like this.
(21:32):
It's it's kind of this mix of this attempt to
solve practical problems while also clearly to you know, to
create beautiful architecture, to bring dreams into physical reality. And
uh and I imagine there's a bit of of of
of of pushing and pull between those, uh, those aspirations. Well, yeah,
and I think you you know, we've talked about some
(21:53):
of the dystopian associations of of sky bridges in science fiction,
but they certainly don't have to have those. And in
some ways you look at interconnecting higher levels of buildings
as a very positive social outcome especially given that it
just looks like the reality is urban population density is
probably going to continue to increase. Um. You know, they're
(22:15):
strong urbanization trends worldwide. People are more often just moving
further into city centers. Into percent of the world's population
lived in cities. The World Health Organization estimates that by
twenty fifty that number will probably climb to about sixty
six percent. It's hard to know for sure, but if
you know, trends continue, so people are continually crowding more
(22:39):
and more into cities. Population density is increasing, and where
we're going to fit all those people that there is
no way to generate additional surface area, So the main
direction you have to go would be up or down. Um,
So I guess you could dig into tunnels, but you know,
natural light is nice, so you want to go up? Yeah. Yeah.
And and to your point, like access is also a
(23:00):
big point that's not necessarily going to be as baked
into the architectural design. Um, you know, just to to
take it in a different direction. It's like the difference
between a fully public park and a and a membership
based golf course in a city. Yes, like one of
the they're both big green spaces. But they're totally different
(23:20):
in how they connect with the city and the people
of the city exactly. So you can imagine a a
city full of tall buildings that are connected at upper levels,
just providing new kind of public spaces in the In
the better version of this future, where you know, it's
like the streets below, there's new things to see and
do up their new places to live and and uh
(23:41):
sites to visit. And so when you look at these
sci fi visions of a future where tall buildings are
often connected by sky bridges and other lateral thoroughfares, again
creating a kind of like like the canopy level of
the trees and a rainforest, it implies the society where
one can travel from build to building at the top
level without ever having to go down to the bottom,
(24:03):
exit the building, and use the surface level streets. And
I guess what that means about if you're trying to
imagine the life people would live in that environment, it's
just a life where there are fewer reasons to exit
the high rise environment. So today, if you live in
a tall building, you probably need to exit that building
to do most things, to see family and friends, to
(24:24):
go to work, to go shopping and so forth. But
what if all of those things were also in the
tops of nearby buildings and you could travel across sky
bridges from one to the other. That that's clearly a
future that some people have in mind, and it's not
impossible to imagine something like this. But if you are
imagining that as the future, it's worth asking how would
(24:45):
this situation affect our minds and our culture. You know,
you can such a radical restructuring of the you know,
the location and architecture of our lives, that that's probably
not totally neutral. So has anybody looked into the question
of what being in a high rise all the time
does to people? Are there psychological effects of spending more
(25:06):
of your time in the upper floors? And it turns
out yes, there actually is a good bit of research
on this subject. So I came across a review of
the existing body of literature on this from by a
couple of scholars affiliated with Cornell University. So this paper
is by Solid Clintari and Mardel Shepley. It was published
(25:29):
in the journal Housing Studies again one and it's called
Psychological and Social Impacts of High Rise Buildings. A review
of the post occupancy evaluation literature. So this paper looks
as specifically at what are called post occupancy evaluation studies,
which are the quote evaluation of buildings in a systemic
(25:50):
and rigorous manner after they have been built and occupied.
This systemic evaluation measures and monitors the performance of a
built environment using data gathered from behavioral techno, coal and
functional observation. So this is what what's happening in buildings
after people have moved in and lived there now. Unfortunately,
this is another one of those social science areas where
there are lots of different studies, but they aren't always
(26:12):
perfectly easy to compare to each other because they're not
always measuring exactly the same thing, or maybe limited in scope,
or have results that conflict with one another. But a
few trends do seem to emerge from this literature. The
top line I would say is that spending your life
up in a tall building is associated with some fairly
(26:32):
consistent negative consequences for life and health, especially for lower
income occupants, but that these negative effects can probably be
mitigated or even erased by better design of high rise
living spaces. So what are some of the negative effects
that have been repeatedly found to be associated with high
rise living. I want to mention a couple of these
(26:54):
in more detail and then give some summary comments In
terms of the ones I'm gonna mention more Detai Hill.
One of them appears to be loneliness and social isolation.
So since the nineteen seventies, researchers have found that people
living in high rises are likely to experience more feelings
of loneliness and less social and community engagement. Why would
(27:18):
this be well? The authors of this review right quote
Ronald two thousand seven indicated a relative deficiency in social
engagement in a broad comparative study of European high rise
housing and attributed this isolation to designs that quote support
individualization and anonymity. A study conducted in Singapore reported minimal
(27:38):
neighborly relations and concluded that high rise living quote does
not readily build community. So at least, what some of
these studies seem to conclude is that there's something about
the way we are building high rise building high rise
residential buildings that sort of discourages people from forming community
relationships with their neighbors and encourages a kind of isolated
(28:01):
way of living that it sort of makes you feel
like you need to retreat into an anonymous space. Oh,
once again, I'm reminded of the lyrics of Warren zevon
Um from Splendid Isolation. I want to live on the
upper east side and never go down in the streets.
Oh yeah, I didn't even think of that, but yeah.
And so the authors of this review that they look
at a number of studies from different places all around
(28:23):
the world Scotland, Hong Kong, India, which all found that
high rise living was more associated with things like loneliness,
anti social behavior, decreased trust in neighbors, and stuff like that. However, uh,
and this seems to be important. I think. The researchers
note that it may not actually be the fact that
you were high up off the ground that causes this,
(28:46):
Like it might not actually be the elevation. It may
be more the kind of more kind of side effect
resulting from trends in the design of high rise buildings.
In other words, it may just happen to be that
high rise buildings are designed in ways that discourage social
interaction and community and that breed loneliness and isolation. But
(29:06):
that would be the case no matter what floor you
lived on. So it's not a not a case of
what if if God wanted us to live in the skies,
he would have given us wings. It's more of a
situation where well and were human beings are not wired
to live in this kind of isolation generally speaking, like
we are social creatures who need to have some level
(29:28):
of community around us. Yes, and also that there's some
indication that maybe the designs of high rise residential buildings,
when they do force interaction between residents, it tends to
be negative interactions, like the author's site of study of
of high rise residential buildings in Paris, which found that
people attributed their poor relationships to quote, overcrowded conditions in
(29:53):
their high rises, which they've viewed as prompting irritability and conflict.
So it's possible that friendly designed spaces for high rise
life would not produce these negative effects at all. And
then I thought this was really interesting. To further complicate things,
there are some studies that don't find this association, or
even find the exact opposite, with people living in high
(30:14):
rises having fairly strong community bonds, especially when building designs
include things like central courtyard areas like common spaces where
people can gather, or when residents had pre existing external
social connections, meaning that like they know each other in
some capacity other than just being neighbors in the building,
(30:36):
maybe they work together, or they they are you know,
knew each other before they moved in. Uh to read
from the authors here quote. In many of these latter studies,
various sociological factors in the overall environmental design, rather than
high rise buildings per se, appear to be more relevant
to the health of social interactions. It's also notable that
all of the included studies that found positive community relationships
(30:59):
in high rise contexts were conducted in East or Southeast Asia,
such as Singapore, Taiwan, or Hong Kong, while the majority
of studies that found negative community impacts were carried out
in the US and Europe. And so, I don't know
what would be the cause of these cultural differences in
the impact of high rise buildings. I don't know if
there it's a result of different trends in architecture in
(31:21):
these places or cultural differences, but those divergent outcomes are interesting.
This is fascinating. Yeah, it reminds me I've been I've
been watching this show on Apple TV titled Home, which
is about different specifically about different home designs that have
been constructed that you know, that explore new ideas or
explore old ideas. And in the show they do get
(31:44):
into some of some of the cultural aspects. It makes
me wonder like if if multigenerational households are a part
of this equation, because you definitely see I mean, in general,
I think you see this UH, this trend away from
that with with modern city based living, but perhaps less
so in UH in like East Asian models versus European
(32:06):
and and US models. But but I'm not sure. Well,
so that's the idea of loneliness and isolation UH and
and promoting anti social living. But another thing is that
many studies have found a fairly consistent link between high
rise living and UH several negative mental health outcomes, though
in this case, again it's difficult to isolate the high
(32:29):
rise itself is the causative factor rather than attendant social
and cultural issues that that often go along with high
high rise living in places where this has been studied.
So if it is actually living in the high rise
building that causes negative mental health outcomes, how would that work? Well,
one explanation would be that this is caused by reducing
(32:51):
exposure to nature, reducing exposure to vegetation and green space.
If you are up in the high rise and there's
not much greenery around you in the you know, rooms
in the hallways that you that you occupy, and being
up there, you're just less likely to get out into
nature at the ground level. That probably will have some
negative consequences for mental health. And this seems to be
(33:12):
backed up by at least a couple of studies showing
that adding more natural elements to high rises. So maybe
if you include access, like you ease access to green
space from the upper floors of the high rise, or
you include green space within those places, that that reduces
some of these problems. And finally, the authors cites some
(33:34):
probably important findings about the potential effect of high rise living,
specifically on childhood growth and development. So they write, quote,
a number of studies conducted during the nineteen seventies found
increased behavioral problems, physical health issues, and decreased motor and
academic skills among children living in high rise buildings. They
say that these findings have been confirmed in later studies
(33:55):
several times, and then they write quote, As is the
case with other demographic population. However, the current research has
demonstrated that these outcomes are strongly mediated by income level
and other socioeconomic variables. Children from wealthier families who live
in high rises are much more likely to have access
to vibrant play spaces and to experience a greater sense
(34:15):
of safety and involvement in the surrounding neighborhood, which makes
it unsurprising that they exhibit few of the developmental issues
that are widely reported for their less privileged peers. And
that last point about a sort of economic determinism in
the outcomes of child development can actually be extracted to
the findings of this research more broadly. So the authors
(34:36):
right in their discussion section that you know, one of
the most significant trends observed here is that quote the
high rise environment appears to intensify existing socioeconomic divisions. So
there seems to be a kind of Matthew principle at work, right,
Like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
So when you when you study wealthy people, it seems
that the ones living in high rise environments tend to
(34:59):
report outcomes are just as good or even better than
equivalent equivalently wealthy people in other built environments, whereas for
lower income people, living in a high rise is correlated
with a lot of negative outcomes when compared to other
types of buildings, and this seemingly paradoxical result could have
It could have a number of causes, so it's hard
to pin it down to one thing, but to the
(35:20):
extent that the built environments themselves are at least one
of those causes, a lot of these unequal outcomes could
probably be alleviated by better, more humane building design in
affordable residential high rises, and so some of the better
designs would probably you know, couldn't be limited to this,
but would probably include things like the incorporation of these
(35:42):
vibrant shared spaces right essentially courtyards, lobbies, gathering places which
have safe open spaces for children to play and explore
and for people to gather. Also, on top of that
lots of natural light and greenery. These factors seem really
important for people psychological well being. You need to be
able to see the sun, there need to be plants around, uh.
(36:05):
And then they also call out things like better wayfinding
and layout design, though I think they mentioned this more
in the context of like a commercial buildings though that
matters too, you know. They say the floors of tall
buildings can sometimes be hard to navigate in ways that
cause a kind of stress and confusion that that really
builds up onto on you over time. Yeah, like that
(36:26):
feeling of of exiting the elevator and not really knowing
like which way you're supposed to go in and yeah
and uh okay, sort of getting lost in the hallways. Yeah.
Than so, to bring all this back to the idea
of building this sci fi fantasy city, sort of the
(36:47):
concrete canopy, if we were to try to build cities
that had um, that had life, that existed in a
more consistent way, and the upper levels of buildings, I
do think that's wible, But it sounds like you need
to be very careful how you design in that city.
You'd want to design it in a way that doesn't
make people miserable and cause these negative downstream outcomes for
(37:11):
their for their well being and mental health. Again, this
is not exhaustive of the things you need to do,
but it seems clear that like a very important thing
would be putting plenty of things like parks up there. Um,
and I think this is partially the spirit of an
architectural movement I've read about called streets in the Sky,
where I think the idea is sort of to create
(37:32):
high rises in which there are lots of public areas
that are more like the streets on the ground, not
like private hallways, but open spaces connecting desirable destinations that
cause that that have plenty of foot traffic, and of
course foot traffic is associated with all kinds of positive
outcomes in residential areas, you know, resultant improvements in public safety,
(37:54):
and just a positive vibe that comes along with people,
you know, wanting to hang out and go from place
to place. I think attempts to design buildings like this
may may have had some limited success so far, but
you could imagine it working better if it was more
widely adopted, if you had more contiguous buildings connected each
(38:14):
with destinations for shopping in public spaces, especially lots of
greenery and natural light, places that people would want to
go and be walking around in all the time. Yeah,
and I guess one of the big challenges here, obviously
is that one sky bridge is not going to fix it.
Like we're not talking about throw up with skybridge, So
I'll tell you what, throw up to sky bridges and
(38:34):
we'll fix things. No, you you, you really are talking
about a whole different approach to treating these these towers,
the skyscrapers, and they're uh not only you know what's
available with the the the upper levels, but also the
street level as well. Uh you know, I mean there
there are plenty of existing apartment towers in cities like
Chicago that that were designed with the idea of, yeah,
(38:58):
you don't have to leave this tower, like here your shops,
here's your here's where you park your car, and it's
all in the various layers of the design, and so
you know, it's it's almost like a tear down approach. Um,
you would need a new type of building, a new
type of architecture to create the city. And and so
there have been some really interesting designs that have emerged
(39:19):
over the years. Um. One of which that I've been
fascinated by in the past is a Russian concept that
emerged called the the vulcan bugle. Okay, this is um.
This can be translated as cloud hangers, sky hangers, or
sky hooks, and these were the brain child of a
(39:41):
Russian architect by the name of l uh Lisitski, who
lived eighteen through nine. Um, I encourage everyone out there
to look up some images of these. These are what
are sometimes described as horizontal skyscrapers. Uh that they were
never built, but the basic concept here, the the the
(40:02):
idea was that there would be eight, um basically three
story L shaped buildings in Moscow position fifty meters above
the street on three pylons. So yeah, imagine one of those. Um,
imagine a tetris block that is uh what to what
(40:23):
two or three up and then it has a little
L part. Now imagine turning that horizontally, turning it on
its side, and then sticking that up in the air
on a massive pylon. I think, I think it's very
cool design. Though you can imagine being nervous walking under
one of these, yes, yeah, um, you know, but I
guess you'd get used to it, you know, the same
way we get used to the concept of skyscrapers in
(40:46):
the in the air above us. But um, yeah, it's
it's basically the idea here. It's a wide, horizontal living
space elevated with a very narrow footprint on the street.
So again go back to what we're talking thing about earlier,
like some of the reasons that people were looking at
sky bridges. Part of it was congestion, vehicular and pedestrian
(41:08):
congestion below They're like, well, we gotta if you can
reduce the footprint, uh, then then that's great, and then
if you can connect things above even better. So one
of the central ideas though, on top of this, was
that Lesinsky didn't think that vertical living was natural for
human beings. He argued that we needed horizontal spaces, and
(41:30):
this sort of of design, while certainly still requiring vertical
movement you'd still have to take stairs or elevators up,
it would maximize the horizontal environmental experience. I mean, none
of the empirical researchers I was reading put it in
exactly those terms, but in a vague way that seems
to square pretty strongly with with the research I was
just looking at that, you know, like that these what
(41:51):
do they call these vibrant shared spaces, Like having these big, open,
horizontal spaces seems to be very helpful in creating a
more humane living environment. Yeah. Yeah. Um. On top of this,
there was the idea that these pylons would extend into
the ground, connecting to a subway system. And then he
also even factored in the idea. Okay, if you have
(42:13):
multiple of these, um these these sky hangers, the cloud
hangers in a given part of the city, it might
be confusing. They all look the same. Uh No, he's saying,
little color code them. That way you have, you know,
you're able to instantly tell where you are in reference
to another. So it's not just a bunch of sort
of alien gray buildings all emerging from the same area.
(42:34):
No one is say orange, one is red, one is green,
et cetera. Also, these would be positioned at intersections where
traffic and congestion was that it's worse freeing up room.
Uh yeah, so these are these are fascinating to look
at some of the the images of what could have
been here. And while there are modern buildings with fantastic
(42:56):
cantilever designs that that bring these images to mind, no
volcan Googles were ever actually built, certainly not in Russia,
and largely it seems to be just two ahead of
its time. Uh, partially as a concept perhaps, but also
just I think engineering wise. Uh. The Sitsky seemed to think, well,
it's just we weren't ready to build these. Yet you know,
(43:18):
as I'm looking at these pictures, though, a consequence was
emerging in my mind. We've been talking about more more positive,
more equitable, more humane ways to design cities that are
connected at the upper levels. But I was just thinking
about how, to some degree, some of the benefits of
of horizontal space are kind of zero some right, because
(43:40):
if you were to end up creating a city that's
totally covered in these horizontal spaces at higher levels, you'd
essentially be cutting off the ground level from sunlight. You know,
like you get some diagonal sunlight, but there are some
limits on what you could put up above without negatively
impacting the quality of life below. And then you get
back into that that possible vision of of of bifurcation
(44:04):
with with negative consequences at the ground. Yeah, Like, oops,
I accidentally created a shell and created a new underworld. Yeah,
I thought of that, because this goes beyond just sort
of like like hallways connecting tall buildings that might have uh,
you know, horizontal spaces that are vertically aligned with their
footprint on the ground. But this is like reaching out
over empty space. So if you imagine lots of buildings
(44:26):
like that, they just start to kind of become a
like a roof for the city. Yeah. And certainly when
you look at look at these these concepts, they don't
or certainly the original concepts, they don't really create this
sense that the like a vibrant street level uh community
was very much part of the that the aim here
(44:50):
now looking into the future would And Sapharic point out
that one of the lingering failures of tall buildings is
just that lack of integration into the urban fabric. So
obviously there are a lot of cool skybridges, but most
buildings are not connected in this way. They're connected to
the city at ground level, and there's a broad spectrum
of what it might be like at ground level, from
(45:12):
having like a vibrant community and shops to it just
being uh, you know, desolation in some cases. Um. And
so the goal of many tall buildings, it seems, has
has has very much been not to fit in with
the world beneath, but to stand out from it. And
so they present an idea that may feel equal parts
(45:33):
fantastic and reasonable. Uh. And and perhaps today as it
has been for for decades, quote, if cities concentrate perhaps
ten or a hundred times more people at a given
location through building tall. There is also a need to
replicate the facilities that exist at the ground plane up
in the sky, including the parks and the sidewalks, the
(45:54):
schools and the hospitals and other public civic functions. The
ground plane should be considered as a duplicable layer of
the city which needs to be replicated, at least in
part at strategic horizons within and between buildings in the sky,
not as a replacement of the ground plane, but as
an addition to it. Every tall building would then need
(46:17):
to be considered as a vital element in an overall
three dimensional urban framework, rather than a standalone icon superimposed
on a two dimensional urban plan. I think that's very
well put. Yeah, this idea that again you're not replacing
the street, but you were augmenting it. You're replicating it,
so you would have still have a vibrant street level
(46:39):
a community, but that you would have this sky level
community as well. Yeah. So yeah, I think it's some fascinating,
fascinating ideas here. Um. I would obviously love to hear
from tower dwellers out there, and and former tower tower
dwellers and perhaps future tower dwellers who are listening to
this show because I, for one, I've I've never lived
(47:01):
in a tall building. I've I don't think I've really
worked in a tall building. I mean our most recent well,
I mean our most recent studios, our most recent office
building was what what fourth floor of a building? Well,
the most recently the one we used to record in
a tall building, I mean, but that was what what
floor will we be on? Like four? Yeah, it had
(47:26):
a nice balcony, I remember that, that one, that one.
But I guess one of the things about that building
is that we had for most of the run there,
we had the entire floor and a balcony, so we
did have a lot of horizontal space, so maybe that
was part of it. We didn't feel as locked in. Also,
though that original office had some cubicles, wasn't wasn't full
(47:48):
open office yet. Oh yeah, I did love those cubicles.
They were stylish cubicles too. They weren't your They weren't
like what you would see on the office or something.
They were more like what you would see on severance.
You know. They're they're fun cubicles. Yeah. But anyway, like
I said, we'd love to hear from everyone out there
in different parts of the world. What is it? What
is it like living in the tall building? Does any
(48:10):
of this match up with what we've been discussing in
these episodes? Or again, your favorite skywalks? Tell me about
your skywalks? Um uh, what are your favorite? What is it?
What has it been like to traverse some of the
notable skywalks out there in our world. In the meantime,
if you would like to check out other episodes of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head on over to the
(48:32):
Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Get that wherever
you get your podcasts. You'll find core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. You'll find short form artifacts or monster facts
on Wednesday's listener mail. On Mondays and on Fridays, we
do weird el Cinema. That's our time to set aside
most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Also add this, if you want to be a part
(48:52):
of the Discord channel or proup, Discord whatever Discord world
for this show, email us and we'll send you a
link to join that. I wanted to share that some
of the users there are doing a book club. It
looks like they're planning to read umberto echoes the name
of the Rose, So if you want to get in
on that again, email the show. Joe will give you
(49:13):
the email address in a second and I'll make sure
that we get the invite to the discord. To you
huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
(49:42):
Mind's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for
My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. B b
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