The Future Of Tall Buildings

Are tall buildings easy targets for terrorism? Will the skyscraper survive? Experts express their opinions.

1 minute read

September 20, 2001, 7:00 AM PDT

By Abhijeet Chavan @http://twitter.com/legalaidtech

"[In] their audacious pursuit of astonishing height -- to glorify a god, immortalize a builder, mark a spot or lure a tenant -- architects have created pyramids, domes, minarets, campaniles, spires and skyscrapers. But at the World Trade Center, they inadvertently created something else. Targets. Suddenly, height equals vulnerability. Engineers have a new potential calamity against which to design. And that will change the structural, financial and symbolic equation behind supertall buildings, though it may not doom the species." This article includes comments from William J. Mitchell, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at M.I.T., A. Eugene Kohn of Kohn Pedersen Fox, the designers of the Shanghai World Financial Center, and Guy F. Tozzoli, who supervised the planning and building of the trade center in the 1960's and 70's."

Thanks to Abhijeet Chavan

FULL STORY: Reaching the Sky, and Finding a Limit

Wednesday, September 19, 2001 in The New York Times

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