20160114 - skyscrapers

Skyscrapers are boring:

One architect against the tyranny of the tower

Jan 14, 2016 / Dan Kedmey

Architect Ole Scheeren fights against the rigid hierarchy of the skyscraper.

When Ole Scheeren (TED Talk: Why great architecture should tell a story) unveiled his design for a complex of residential towers in Singapore, his clients were stunned. “There was a moment of silence, and I could feel that there was a degree of disbelief in the room.” Why? Because Scheeren had turned 12 towers on their sides, and stacked them like Lincoln Logs. It would take him two weeks to convince the clients that the plan could even work — but he relishes conversations in which he can challenge the ingrained notion that the only way is up. He invites us to reimagine our cities’ skylines via two of his iconic buildings.

The steel loop of Beijing’s CCTV building 

Scheeren, then a partner at Dutch architecture firm OMA, designed the headquarters for one of China’s largest broadcasting companies. From the very beginning of the design process, he knew that he wanted to avoid a regular skyscraper design. “A tower is a very isolating structure for the people who occupy it, who are simply stacked floor by floor,” Scheeren says. “We took the needle of the tower and bent it back into itself to create a loop of interconnected activities, like a tube folded into space. It’s a system that has no beginning or end, that is not about the hierarchical top and bottom.” ................



 http://ideas.ted.com/skyscrapers-are-boring-one-architect-against-the-tyranny-of-the-tower/