Frank Lloyd Wright's mile high skyscraper proposal (2021)
35 comments
·February 6, 2025Animats
Thats's from Wright's big pointy object period. Several of his unbuilt designs, including Broadacre City and the Arizona state capital, included big pointy objects. The Marin Civic Center was the only completed project where the big pointy object [1] was built.
[1] https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/26/a4/cb/8f/...
chasil
Does Price Tower count?
ignormies
The spire in Scottsdale is also a big pointy object that was completed (but long after he died). Looks like it was originally meant to be at the state capital, so perhaps it's the same one you're referring to?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ftdtd2WhghdcYV9R7
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/frank-lloyd-wright-spire
gibsonf1
Actually, it's not about pointy, but about the high rise as a building type - structure as a tall tree. Wright's prototype for this is Price Tower in OK [1] [1] https://www.gibson-design.com/sketch-price.html
bhasi
Just realized that architects had to actually draw their designs before computers. This is obviously true, but I haven't had to think about this until now.
photonthug
Huh, looks like the burj khalifa.
ryanmcbride
I had no idea Burj Khalifa was half a mile tall
njarboe
Parking: 100 Helicopters.
Love it
JumpCrisscross
High rises with parking is such a stupid combination. You’re paying for density to put cars in so much of it. If you need parking in your high rise, you’re cosplaying a real metropolis.
taurknaut
There are people who own penthouses they've never seen. At some point practicality just goes out the window.
riffic
Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language) has a few words to say about skyscrapers:
iknowstuff
well this guy is an idiot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouverism - many advantages to tall dense development. Especially stupid are his comments about how suburbia is supposedly better for kids even though they have nothing to do and rely on their parents to be driven to every activity. All based entirely on his made up anecdote.
People are less lonely in dense cities than they are in suburbs.
defrost
> suburbia is supposedly better for kids even though they have nothing to do and rely on their parents to be driven to every activity.
That's a USofAian "suburb" .. not a well designed suburb.
There are many types of "dense", ranging from all skyscrapers, through (say) dense row housing with much open space, to big single house blocks everywhere (arguably the worst form).
Elsewhere in the world suburbs are surrounded by green belts and have embedded parks, footpaths and cycleways, shops, etc that are reachable without cars.
kennysoona
> That's a USofAian "suburb" .
Better to just say 'American', FYI. It's much clearer and the ambiguity you are trying to avoid doesn't exist.
riffic
Ah, you didn't catch the last line:
> And finally, don't take the four-story limit too literally. Occasional exceptions from the general rule are very important - High Places (62)
sonofhans
Calling Christopher Alexander an idiot in the context of architecture or urbanism is like calling Linus Torvalds a casual programmer. Peak Dunning-Kruger.
iknowstuff
This is an appeal to authority. His arguments were prevalent in the 70s, but no less stupid, and we know better now. We have data to prove it too, unlike his unsubstantiated opinion piece.
renewiltord
Or perhaps like calling Paul Ehrlich, the pre-eminent expert on Malthusian theory, a dabbler in ecology.
carabiner
You have chosen, or been chosen...
ForHackernews
"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency." ~ Daniel Burnham
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trhway
wrt. grandiose construction projects to get built in the near future i hope :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia
"The Line (stylised THE LINE; Arabic: ذا لاين) is a conceptual linear smart city in Saudi Arabia in Neom, Tabuk Province, housed in a single building, that is designed to have no cars, streets or carbon emissions.[2][3] The original plans called for the city to span 170 kilometres (110 mi) at a height of 500 m (1,600 ft)[4] and a width of 200 metres (660 ft) sized to accommodate a population of 9 million"
My personal pet dream, if i had a sufficient number of billions, - several large, like that Wright's, skyscrapers 30+ km into the ocean off the SF Ocean Beach (the depth there is like 50-80m, so sub-1M tons of concrete and steel would give you a 100m-side square foundation with 10m walls, and such foundation itself already can house 10-20 underwater stories)
Etheryte
Nothing grandiose about the line, a vanity project built on slave labor and blood money.
seryoiupfurds
That sounds perfectly in line with the usual connotations of grandiose.
JumpCrisscross
Wright’s tower has a better chance of being built than the Line. (From just a security perspective, a Saudi Red Sea megaproject is all kinds of stupid.)
actionfromafar
Both seem equally far-fetched IMHO.
It's worth noting that the "tower in the park" modernist ethos of building very tall towers to create lots of green space was largely a bust.
Parks need a certain level of activation, and developments like these tended to fall below those thresholds. If not active, parks become ill-maintained, desolate, and foreboding. In the worst case scenario, they become havens for crime, since there are no witnesses or bystanders to help out someone getting mugged.