Articles
How Billionaires’ Row came to be and what comes next for NYC's skyline
The emergence of Billionaires’ Row on 57th Street is no accident; it's the product of calculated strategy, geographic happenstance, and legal opportunity.
How the elevator transformed the silhouette of our cities
Before elevators reshaped our lives, height was tyranny. In pre-industrial cities, the rich occupied the first floors of buildings, leaving cramped attics to the poor. The absence of vertical mobility placed a hard ceiling on the imagination of architects.
Phantom Floors and the Illusion of Altitude in American Skyscrapers
We crave authenticity, but we are also seduced by the dream of rising higher than anyone before us. In that tension lies the strange magic of phantom floors—floors we can’t quite stand on, but which lift us, nonetheless, into the realm of possibility.
What makes a skyscraper a skyscraper?
Ultimately, cultural perception, more than any hard-coded set of rules, will determine which structures become –and remain– skyscrapers, and which ones don’t. Because skyscrapers are as much a social and cultural construct as they are architectural ones.
The legacy of Named Towers in America's skyline
The success of naming rights hinges on public acceptance, architectural significance, and the seamless integration of the corporate identity into the urban fabric.
What are Air Rights and how they shape America's skylines
The notion of owning the sky traces back to the ancient legal doctrine cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos which translates to “whoever owns the soil owns up to the heavens and down to hell”.