The skyscraper
What it is
The skyscraper was a tall commercial building made possible by a riveted iron-and-steel skeletal frame that carried the loads previously borne by thick masonry walls, freeing the exterior to become a thin curtain wall. The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, completed in 1885 to a design by William Le Baron Jenney, is usually cited as the first example, rising ten storeys. Crucial companion technologies were the safe passenger lift (Otis's safety elevator, 1850s) and improved fire-proofing of the steel members. Together these let developers stack rentable floor area far above the ground on a small plot.
Why it matters
By multiplying lettable space on expensive central land, the steel frame decoupled building height from site area and made the dense business district and the modern skyline economically rational. It reset land values, concentrated office work in city cores, and established the vertical city as the dominant form of the twentieth-century downtown.
Plans it shaped
- La Défense masterplans (1960s–)
- London Docklands Regeneration (1981–)
- Naples Centro Direzionale (1982–)
- Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 (1983–)
- Canary Wharf Masterplan (Isle of Dogs) (1985–)
- Düsseldorf MedienHafen (1990s–)
- Bonifacio Global City (BGC) Masterplan (Manila) (1995–)
- Ho Chi Minh City Thu Thiem New Urban Area (1996–)
- Tokyo Otemachi–Marunouchi–Yurakucho (OMY) District Plan (1998–)
- Amsterdam Zuidas (1998–)
- Shanghai Master Plan 1999–2020 (1999–2020)
- Baltimore Harbor East/Harbor Point Plans (2000s–)