Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers Stephen Graham
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Transcript of Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers Stephen Graham
ver$cal / ˈvɜː-k(ə)l
A adjec(ve. (1) Of, pertaining to, situated at, or passing through the vertex or zenith; occupying a
posi<on in the sky directly overhead or above a given place
or point. (2) Placed, extending, moving, or opera<ng at right angles to a
horizontal plane; perpendicular; upright.
Oxford English Dic(onary
‘Geography’ as a Flat Plane: ‘Geopoli<cs is a flat discourse. It largely ignores the ver<cal dimension and tends to look across
rather than to cut through the landscape. This was the cartographic imagina<on. Ver<cal inherited from the military and
poli<cal spa<ali<es of the modern state” Eyal Weizman
“What would happen if you took geographic thinking and instead of puQng it on a horizontal axis, you
added a ver<cal axis?” Trevor Paglen
“While aSen<on is tradi<onally given to the plans of urban civiliza<on and top [down] views of human history, this schema<c
cross-‐sec<on view of the world opens a lens on the planet as an urban projec<on,
paSern and process of overlapping change across different layers and level of space... “
Processes that are oYen isolated in plans, or divided in conven<onal categories from above, can be beSer understood and
revealed from the side, as being associa+ve and integra+ve— o1en overlapping,
intertwined and entangled.
Opening a lens on the complex urbaniza<on of the underground and of the atmosphere, this associa<on of the quan<ta<ve with the
qualita<ve made possible by seeing sideways offers three important
observa<ons on the once and future hinterlands of the underground, the ocean
and the atmosphere” Pierre Bélanger (my emphasis)
Stacked Socie$es
A growing “independence of volumes with respect to the original land” Henri Lefebvre
From the Stable Horizon and Linear Perspec$ve to ‘Groundlessness’
Speeded-‐up, hypermediated, hyperurbanised, highly ver<calised world of Groundlessness
“The lines of the horizon shaSer, twirl around, and
superimpose” in a “mul<plica<on and de-‐
lineariza<on of horizons and perspec<ves” Hito Steyerl
Need new ‘cogni<ve maps’ for ‘Postmodern hyperspace’
3. ‘Dead’ Metaphors: Ver$cal Language, Ver$cal Bodies
Ver<cal metaphors saturate – indeed, cons(tute – language about power, wealth, status and happiness... Overlap with struggle against gravity, ver<cality of upright, able-‐bodied human, and eventual des<na<on back in earth! So ubiquitous that we cease to see them as metaphorical at all To ‘Stand’ is root of ‘status’, ‘estate’, ‘stature’, ‘ins<tu<on’... ‘Upper’, ‘lower’ and ‘under’ class’; an ‘upright’ ci<zen; UpliYing, His/Her Royal Highness; Feeling ‘up’ Sup (La<n for ‘above’) superior, supreme, supervise, superman Sur (La<n for ‘over’) surveillance, surpass Sub (La<n for ‘under’) subordinate, subhuman, subaltern Infer (La<n ‘low) inferior; under hand; look down on/up to ‘Low’ feeling bad or something deceigul; base; depression etc
“The direc<on upward, against gravity, inscribes into space world-‐regions with spa<al-‐emo<onal values, such as those expressed in high and low, rise and decline, climbing and falling, superior and inferior, elevated and
downcast, looking up to and despising. On Olympus, high, remote, inaccessible, exalted, dwell the Homeric gods. On Mt. Sinai, Moses
receives the Ten Commandments. Below in the depths, is Hades and the world of shadows.” Erwin Strauss
‘Mythology of tallness’: “Greater height is naturally equal to power and dominance” Laura
Butera
“At the climax of the straight line, “white masculinity becomes architecture and
architecture becomes white masculine form” Barbara Hooper
Le Corbusier: “I stand therefore I am.” ShiY of ‘Modulor’ from 1.75m to 1.83m because "in
English detec<ve novels, the good-‐looking men, such as policemen, are always six feet tall!”
Fe<sh for Tall(er) Bodies
Heaven, Hell and the Legacies of Eurocentric Cosmography
“One pole is ever high above us while the other, beneath our feet, is seen of black Styx and the shades infernal.” Roman poet Virgil “This quarter of the earth, which is inhabited all the people with whom we can have any contact, verges towards the North pole. And the spherical shape of the earth causes the south pole to be plunged into the depths,” Roman Philosopher, Macrobius, 420 AD. Even Australia is Plus ‘Down Under and when something goes wrong it ‘Goes South’...
“Gold value is a kind of fic<on, embodied by a block of material wrung like blood from a stone from vast tracts of the earth to end up in a vault,
in the earth” Liam Young and Kate Davies,
“A virile force, an en<re male. It stands in physical fact, a monument to trade, to the organized commercial spirit, to the power and progress of the age, to
the strength and resource of individuality and force of character.
Therefore I have called it, in a world of barren peQness, a male, for it sings
the song of procreant power, as others have squealed of miscegena<on” Louis Sullivan: ‘Father’ of the Skyscraper
The Gendered, Some Would Say Phallic, Poli<cs of the Skyscraper ‘Race’
“The summit of the world should be associated with a great name”
His Highness Al
Maktoum opening of the Burj Khalifa,
Dubai.
‘Vanity’ Height: ‘There is of course
something ludicrously childish
about the irra<onal urge to build high, simply for the sake of
being the world’s highest” Deyan
Sudjic
5. Above and Below: The Poli$cs of Looking
“From the 90th floor, you feel as connected to the sky as to the ground. The city is laid out like a map, and the enormous windows are less like frames for
the view than wide-‐open portals to it.” Paul Golberger writes on 432 Park Ave
Sci-‐Fi Ci<es/ Real Ci<es: ‘Where are the people whose hands built your city?’, Freder asks
desperately. ‘Off where they belong!’ his father replies scornfully. ‘In the depths!’
Wizard of Oz and the Burj Khalifa:
Adrian Smith, SOM
“I just remembered the glassy, crystalline structure coming up in the middle of
what seemed like nowhere,”
7. Material Connec$ons (i) Sand:
“The old adage, ‘Buy land – they’re not making it any more’ is no longer
true!” Ren. Kolman
(ii) ‘Ar<ficial’ Ground and the Lethal Poli<cs of Gravity: e.g. Payatas Waste Slide, Manila, July, 2000
Thank You! [email protected]