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Anyone taking a look at a list of the twenty tallest buildings in the world will be hard pressed to find one outside Asia. Reflecting the mighty surge of East Asian and Middle Eastern oil economies in the last two decades, their increasing wealth has been translated into monumental, sometimes grandiose, architectural projects that push further and further towards the clouds. The world’s current tallest building- Dubai’s Burj Khalifa- was completed in 2010, and added over a 1,000 ft to the record previously held by Taiwan’s Taipei 101 towers. It might be easy to argue that Asian countries are locked in a never ending race to go higher and higher, given the prestige that derives from having the world’s tallest building located within one’s borders. It says something: something about power, wealth, destiny, and perhaps more than anything else highlights the increasing importance of Asian economic muscle in today’s fragile global economy. It comes as no surprise that out of the top ten tallest buildings, only one resides outside Asia, and just two were completed before the 21st century. Yet the majority of these 21st super-skyscrapers are conspicuous by their relative anonymity. Though the promotion and advertising surrounding the Burj Khalifa makes it impossible to ignore, how many people have heard of the Nanjing Greenland Financial Center, or the Kingkey 100 in Shenzhen? Their uninspiring names, ambiguous association with the global financial industry, and carbon-copy ‘International Style’ of post-modernism render their height, design and attempted grandiloquence rather flat. It is as if they have been built and designed without human purpose or feeling. Sleek and shiny they maybe; unique contributions to the built environment, testaments to architectural creativity and engineering ingenuity they certainly are not. For over forty years between 1931 and 1972 the Empire State Building in New York City held the record for the world’s tallest structure. Like today’s skyscrapers, the Empire State was built as a symbol of growing economic power, harnessing the cheap costs of working class labour to hurry its completion. Despite its unveiling at the beginning of the Great Depression, the Empire State building, along with the Chrysler and Rockefeller centre, became enduring and iconic architectural marvels. They were, more importantly, a uniquely American contribution to the world; testaments to the unravelling potential of modernity, demonstrations of the newfound capability of human talent. They remain today models of political, economic and cultural emulation, as recently emergent Asian cities seek to stamp their mark on the as yet unwritten narratives of a future globalized world. Yet one wonders whether tourists of the future will queue for hours to climb the Al-Hamra Tower in Kuwait the same way they do for a glance of New York from the Top of the Rock observation deck at the Rockefeller Center? Will art historians marvel about the dry and empty interior facades of Malaysia’s Petronas Towers in the same way they write glorious passages about the stylish art deco design and modernist canopies of the Empire State? Of course, only time can tell. But one senses the human aspect of the ‘old’ skyscrapers; cultural icons of a unique period of history that was unmistakenly American in character and soul. Today’s versions, for all their height, seem to represent the interconnected yet increasingly fragmented, depersonalized and soulless existence of the 21st century.
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