Russian super skyscraper halted due to global crisis

A trip to Spain ages ago was an eye opener. You cannot miss seeing buildings which just refuse to look 'normal.'

On one floor the windows face one way, on the next floor they are turned slightly and face a different view.

People above talk to people below - "What can you see? Is the fleet back yet?"

To look at a Spanish town in Andalusia, a place in the mountains like Mijas, is a shock for being so unconformist. Buildings are built atop other buildings, nobody seems to care. Across the region, amidst the aqueducts built by Rome 2000 years ago, stand structures that dazzle. And somehow it works.

Is this the image of Paradise? Not if you recall it was the battlefield of a bloody civil war.

But the point remains. We confine ourselves in cookie-cutter houses with cookie-cutter perceptions of what life must be.

I can remember lectures 40 years ago about what then was called design intimidation. That a space could dominate a person as easily as a person could dominate a space.

It begged a question - Was the Imperial Palace in part responsible for the absurdities of princes and kings? Is the same true of Parliaments, Assemblies and Legislatures?

I remember reading about ancient Africa and a verse which went --

the elders sit beneath a tree
and talk until they all agree.

Did they all agree because they were not in a formal setting? Do formal settings inhibit agreement?

For a century we seem to have fixated on Henry Ford's assembly line as a way of life. A process found nowhere else more sociable.

Where futuristic comic books and sci-fi novels envisaged buildings made of unique layers - interconnected by elevated and silent trams - we settled for single car commuting and sprawl, instead.

It was a terrific way to avoid others on the way to our professions to conjure ways to help make things more dysfunctional for our neighbors...

Answers I have none.

But the questions are unavoidable.

Consider this general principle: that the closer we live to the places where we work, shop, dine out, and enjoy recreation …. Then the better we know our neighbors, and the less we have to travel around (with all the benefits “not-traveling” accrues).
Williamsburg, VA -- your place of business in front, your domicile behind. The neighborhood where I lived for a while in Rome: places of business on the bottom floor, apartments above that. Many “model cities” -- everything integrated. A place like Disney World? Same thing (except for the place you work). Those are horizontal implementations of the principle.
Every big architectural firm works with a team involving dreamers, engineers, implementers, community planners, sociologists, psychologists, etc. Teams like that are the ones coming up with vertical implementations of the integrated model.
I have different feelings about different projects, but I do approve of the model. Much better than dead inner cities and hundred-mile commutes to work.
* * * * *
Re the ziggurat thing, gods always live on top of mountains -- like Mount Olympus and Mount Sinai. The ruling god today is Mammon, and he deserves a really big mountain. Archetypal? Or Erich von Däniken’s space-aliens continuing to do their thing?

Scarabus,

It reminds me more of "Parkinson's Law."

He noted that odd things happen when power shifts from one entity to another.

The monument built to demonstrate the eternal power and glory, Egyptian and Azetec sacrificial pyramids, The Tsar's Winter Palace, New York's fabulous banking towers, the Great Cathedrals of Europe, The Colosseum, The Parthenon, one day become tourist attraction, um, "tombstones."

He realized also that horizontal expansion of authority could reach very amusing lengths. He counted the number of Admirals in the British Navy and discovered there were more of them - than ships!

So there's always that question when something monumental and narcissistic fills the skyline - is this it?

The last hurrah?

Boo

who the hell would want to actually buy an apartment and call that home amongst huge offices and a hotel! I would need a dog walker for sure. All this makes me appreciate the humble little house my grand parents lived in with flowers in the front, and veggies growing in the back, and a swing on the front porch. Ah, life was good then.

Fear not.

Our visionaries are still arguing over the truly vital and important stuff - like who gets the next Olympics.

Populations may suffer untold ills from neglect but wave an Olympics proposal at politicians and it's a miracle how much loot they can throw at a contest based on showing off.

I guess now I can blame the global financial crisis for everything that goes wrong in my life.

Makes me think of Tatlin's Monument to the Third International.

Man, I hope this whole "credit" debacle teaches people/countries to not live beyond their means.

It's a necessary humbling, on a global scale. Awesome.