Leslie, Thomas, Saranya Panchaseelan, Shawn Barron, and Paolo Orlando. 2018. “Deep Space, Thin Walls: Environmental and Material Precursors to the Postwar Skyscraper.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 77 (1): 77–96. 

• 20s building depend on natural ventilation and natural light
• Deep space is now possible with the development of air conditioning and artificial lighting
• Kenneth H. Ripnen thinks these buildings can still be efficient, functional, comfortable, and healthful

The Historically Invisible Prudential Building

• Chicago’s Inland Steel Building represented rebirth of Chicago’s business district, regain architectural leadership in steel-frame construction back from NY
  • First major structure built in the Loop in 24 years
• Prudential Building (constructed 1952-1955) tallest building in Chicago.
  • 600 feet
  • Tallest building west of Cleveland in US
  • Naess & Murphy
  • 20,000 sqft floors
  • $40 million

• Architectural Forum remarked on Inland Steel Building, but not on the Prudentail Building. Why not?
• Why most technically advanced structure not mentioned in professional press and histories of postwar architecture?
• Not seen as innovative, compared ot Rockefeller center built 20 years prior
• Solid skin vs glass-and-aluminum skins
• Glass was commercially viable in postwar economy
• 5 developments:
  • Air-conditioning
  • Fluorescent lighting
  • Automated plate-glass manufacture
  • Double glazing
  • Heat-absorbent glass
• Enabled larger floor plates and transparent skins in high-rises after midcentury
• The Prudential Building was a key moment in skyscraper development with deep floor plates, but solid skin. Glass production and performance lagged behind other technologies.

The Windowless Building of the Future

• In 1898, architect and civil engineer Howard Constable thought removing glass all together with no windows would be the future
• Fuel bills so expensive in Chicago’s winters and summers with glass building
• The Simonds Saw and Steel Company used electric lights and no windows
• Windowless store in Chicago
  • merchandise would not degrade from sunlight, smoke, or grime
  • More room for shelf space
• Designers liked exterior views widows had to offer for offices and homes
• First windowless offices appeared in 1930s
• Glass technology needs advancement to keep up with artificial lighting and cooling/heating to meet performance needs

Toward the Deep Plan: Air-Conditioning and Fluorescent Lamps

• Late 1910s first mechanical air-conditioning
• Ammonia dangerous in system
• Milam Building in San Antonio, Texas in 1928, first high-rise office building fully air-condltioned.
• Very dusty in Chicago 1934-36. Could not open windows, or dust would come in.
• Many residents installed air conditioning
• Incandescent lighting produced heat more than light and contributed to cooling problem in summers
• Solution: Fluorescent lighting
  • This lighting needed in war time for work in undercover factories and to illuminate assembly bays
  • Light distributed more evenly
• Chicago’s 1934 Field Building increased floor plate depth to a full half-block deep. Lower floors air conditioned.
• 1955, Prudential was Chicago’s first fully air-conditioned building with 75 feet depth at narrowest section. Lower floors, 200 feet deep.
  • Facilities on side of space instead of in the middle, like stairs and elevators.
  • It used water from the Chicago River
  • 13 feet floor to floor
  • contemporary American office building wrote Naess and Murphy, no ornamentation

Toward the Glass Skin: Twin Grinding, Insulated Glazing, and Solex

• Indiana Limestone for Prudential’s exterior
• Plate-glass manufacture more affordable
• Three developments:
  • continuous furnace eliminated labor for forming plate
  • traveling tables to polish both surfaces simultaneously (twin grider and polisher)
  • double ane windows for insulation
• Thermopane in 1951 Time magazine reduces heat transmission through glass. Employees can sit near windows maximizing space.

Early Applications, Mixed Results: Equitable Building, U.N. Secretariat, and Lever House

• first commercial double-layered windows in Pietro Belluschi’s Equitable Building in Portland in 1944-48. Used aluminum.
• Fire codes prevented more glass walls.
• Transparent skin economical for Portland’s climate

The Ongoing Case for Solid Skins

• Tall office building must support large floors and a varying outdoor climate

Coda: Further developments in Postwar Cladding

• transition from stainless steel usage to aluminum
• Aluminum prices declined from 1956 to 1973 in energy crisis. Aluminum-framed, double-glazed curtain walls common
• No grinding or polishing with invention of float glass process.
• Glass skin had to be useful and affordable: improvements in insulating capacity and refinements in fabrication
• Skyscraper was a phenomenon of the time

Sulivan, Louis. 1896. “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.” Lippincot’s Magazine, March 1896.

• demand for tall office buildings
• problems contain their own solution
• all office buildings contain a series of floors that have the same features
  • entrance
  • milder pretension for second floor
  • office floors that look alike because they are all alike
  • attic
• The hand of the architect can create a charm of sentiment
• What is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? Answer: Lofty
  • Modeled offer a single column
  • The mystic of the number three
  • beginning, middle, and end, so three vertical parts would accomplish this
  • Organic in design
• So why then are stories of office buildings piled up on one another?
• Where function does not change, form does not change
• invention of the elevator made moving vertically accessible and comfortable, increasing population in cities made the use of vertically space necessary in urban environment
• only occasionally does a tall office building take on an aesthetic value
• All things in nature have a shape
• life seeks and takes on its form in response to needs
• Architecture is living art
• The art of an architect becomes a living form of speech
• Nature is our friend, not our enemy
• Deep and eternal is the vast art of architectures
• Architecture is an art of the people, for the people, and by the people

Forty, Adrian. 2000. “Space.” In Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. New York: Thames & Hudson.

• space is luxury
• need to understand space to understand architecture
• Yet no agreement is what “space” means
• volumes and void terms used in 18^th century
• The word space was adopted by modernist architects
• Space is both a description of physical property and extent as well as property of the mind
• commonly held belief that architects produce space
• architectural space developed in Germany. In German, this word space also means a philosophical concept
• In English this word lacks the suggestiveness fo the original
• The origins of architectural space have two possibilities:
  • create a theory of architecture
  • psychological approach to aesthetics
• Future = space creation
• Architecture = Art of spatial enclosure, warm and livable space, consturcive and decorative space
• Space just meant enclosure in 1920s
• Do not consider a building just from the outside
• Camillo Sitte in 1889 thought urban design was an art of space
• Other architects thought enclosed spaces only meant interiors
• Crucial in 1920s that space belonged both inside and outside
• Kant said space exists in the mind as a prior, it is not based on relationships between things
• Empathy for architecture: Bodily sensations interprets meaning of form
• Neitzche: Existence and the world seem justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon
• Space is a force field generated by bodily movement
• Process of perception may lead to understanding inherent themes in art
• Space is the subject of art
• Hildebrand: Space itself, in the sense of inherent form, becomes effective form for the eye
• Vision constructed through sense of space
• Space exists because we have a body
• We perceive space as a body outside ourselves with its own organization
• development of art understood in relationship to it’s own internal development
• additive space vs. spatial division
• less interesting interior, one is more aware of infinite space
• Definitions of space:
  • enclosure
  • continuum
  • extension of the body
• Architecture = bring to life awareness of present consciousness of space
• Heidegger: Space is unmeasurable and non-quantifiable
• space produced by thought and the space by which thought happens
• Lefebcre: Space is part of dominant discourse of power in capitalist societies. Architecture serves power in general.
• So then was adoption of language of space really a move by architects to seek power?
• Success of discourse about space = way for ruling power to assert domination of space

Response to “Deep Space, Thin Walls: Environmental and Material Precursors to the Postwar Skyscraper”

Considering the idea of a windowless building in today’s context seems absurd. Of course people want natural light and control over their own environment by being able to individually open a window. It was interesting to hear why people at the time thought regulated temperature control with air-conditioning and heating as well as artificial light would make the window obsolete. In 1898, architect and civil engineer Howard Constable, thought removing glass all together with no windows would be the future. Reasons for the removal of windows was due to advances in building temperature control technology and artificial lighting, so the light and ventilation that a window offered was no longer necessary. Window fabrication technology was slower to progress than other building technologies, for instance window cost and insulation could not keep up with artificial lighting and temperature control. Single-pane windows were poor insulators, so fuel bills would be less expensive without them and additional wall space would be available to display merchandise. The main downside seen at the time was that the view to the outside would be removed with only opaque walls. In today’s world a scenic window view and natural light are prized in an interior space. Passive cooling and heating is also of high importance in building technology. While artificial lighting and building temperature control was the newest and greatest technologies at the time, now we are celebrating the more simple technologies that do not require energy input, such as opening windows at night when it is cooler and closing them during a hot day. With climate change at the forefront of people’s minds, the public opinion has shifted to reducing a building’s carbon footprint. With the average person spending more times indoors, access to natural light and outdoor ventilation though a window is a critical.

Capital Tower

Architect: RSP Architects Planners & Engineers

Developer: CapitalLand

Capital Tower, exterior view.

Capital Tower is a skyscraper office building located in Singapore. It has 52 floors and five shuttle double-deck lifts. It was completed in 2000 and is the fourth tallest skyscraper in the city. The skyscraper does follow the tall office building formula that Sulivan explained in the second reading where most of the floors look the same with the exception of the entrance level and the highest level. The top floor of Capital Tower is a club with a bar, restaurant, dining rooms, and meeting rooms. This is an outlier to the formula Sulivan set forth for a tall office building skyscraper. Now this is a common feature of skyscrapers, but in 1896 the office building was used solely for work rather than a mixed-use building. Health and convenience were considered when designing the Capital Building. There is a landscaped urban plaza as well as a fitness center and retail outlets. The aesthetics from the exterior of the building are also different from floor to floor with a central form rising up from the bottom and then narrowing the second half of the façade. While the main use of the building is for office spaces, this modern skyscraper has deviated in design from the tall office building skyscrapers of the early 1900s.

Take-Aways

• Skyscraper was a phenomenon of the time
• Invention of the elevator made moving vertically accessible and comfortable, increasing population in cities made the use of vertically space necessary in urban environment
• Space can be quantifiable as well as a mental concept