Tower to Tower: Gigantism in Architecture and Digital Culture

247 Pages·2020·6.978 MB·English

by  Henriette Steiner, Kristin Veel

Tower to Tower

Tower to Tower
Gigantism in Architecture and Digital Culture
Henriette Steiner and Kristin Veel
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2020 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Steiner, Henriette, 1980- author. | Veel, Kristin, author.
Title: Tower to tower : gigantism in architecture and digital culture /
Henriette Steiner and Kristin Veel.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2020] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019031894 | ISBN 9780262043922 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture- - Composition, proportion, etc. | Digital
communications- - Social aspects. | Largeness (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC NA2760 .S76 2020 | DDC 720.1- - dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031894
For Sofus

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Prologue: Scaffolding 1
A Tale of Two Cities, A Tale of Two (and More) Towers 4
Gigantism 8
Vertical and Horizontal Gigantism 13
Gigantic Dichotomies, Containers, and Leaks 18
Tower to Tower 20
Latent Gigantism 23
1 The Eiffel Tower: Grand- Scale Montage and Lightning Rod for
Meaning 28
Prologue: An Elevator Ride 29
Going Up 32
Montage as Method 35
Seeing the Eiffel Tower See: Expanding Meaning 47
Leaks, Crisis, and Gigantism 53
2 The Twin Towers: The Remanence of the Twins 64
Prologue: A Telephone Conversation on 9/11 65
Scales of Impact 68
The Twin Towers and the Intermingling of Vertical and Horizontal 74
Challenging the View from Above 80
Is Architecture in or above History? 86
Towering, Falling 94
3 The One World Observatory: Caught between Vertical and
Horizontal Gigantism 100
Prologue: Gigantic Buildings 101
The Sky’s the Limit 104
One World Trade Center and the New Metropolitan Mainstream 109
viii Contents
The Womb as Time Machine 116
A Leaking Container 124
New Visual Orders 129
Temporal and Material Excess 136
4 The Ground Zero Site: Calmly Common 142
Prologue: Trump Tower 143
The Fifth Leak 146
Never Ever Modern 149
Calculated Publics at the Edge of the Memorial Pools 152
From Containment to Leaks 164
5 Into the Ground: Cataloging Latent Gigantism 172
Prologue: The Earth Leaks 173
Tower to Tower and Beyond 175
Kool Chinese Twisted Twin Towers 181
Telling Tales of Tech Giants 188
Big Business beneath Manhattan 195
Epilogue: The Bias Cut 202
Notes 205
Index 223