From
Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (pp.66-67)
On American skyscrapers and verticality
On American skyscrapers and verticality
¥ÒThe verticality of the
skyscrapers of the American functionalists is obtained by reducing the window area
and increasing the weight of the screen wall. It also contradicts the storeyed character
of the construction and destroys the human scale of the design. In the early evening,
when the lights come on, the solid towerlike quality of the skyscraper
disappears. Then, at
least, it is seen as one volume divided up into horizontal storeys. Only on rear elevations,
or on facades where the architect has been severely restricted by economy, is the
underlying horizontality of the American commercial building visible in the
daytime.
¥This artificial impression of
solidity, this applied verticality, undoubtedly increases the visual congestion
of the modern city. The
continual appeal of vertical lines tires the eyes. Even the most commercial buildings of the nineteenth century
provided the reposing horizontal of an approximately even cornice line.
¥The verticality of the skyscraper
is meaningless and anarchical. Yet because the skyscraper is an American development and the
international style has developed in Europe, some nationalist critics would protect our
functionalist architects from the invasion of a
horizontal aestheticÉ
¥Horizontality is not in itself,
however, a principle of the international styleÉ.The
principle of regularity tends to increase the effect of general
horizontality at the expense of the vertical elements
which play but a subordinate part in most buildings.Ó