In the information age, the icon is the most powerful weapon of all.

1. The Great Wall of China is perhaps the most famous and lasting of any military ar-
chitecture ever built. Its value was measured in weight and scale, by its ability to keep
invaders out of China. It did its job to such as an effect as to keep China's border with
Korea from changing for over seven centuries. I find it fascinating that now, and for
the rest of time, that border can never change; not because North Korea doesn't posses
the capability to cross the wall, but because a Great Wonder of the World now desig-
nates that division. In the information age, the icon is the most powerful weapon of all.
In his book, The Edifice Complex,
Deyan Sudjic labels the 2001 attack on
the Twin Towers as a "literal acceptance"
of the power of the icon. At the time of
their construction the Twin Towers were
the tallest buildings in not only Man-
hattan but the world, making them the
perfect representation of Western ide-
ology. Arrogant enough to steal the sky
in the name of making money, the tow-
ers became a monument to capitalism.
Terrorism is by definition, an attack not
with military goals, but ideological ones.
The target becomes a nation's ideals.
To attack the Pentagon would be to attack the military;
to attack a skyline is to attack the American way.
Theevent'sof2001werebynomeansthe
first example of a building's height bring-
ing with it symbolic attributes. The Phar-
aohs of Egypt, in an attempt to live forever,
commissioned taller and taller pyramidal
tombs; monuments that to this day still
maintain the civilisation's immortality.
Since the steel age of American construction began the development of
real estate has been in an arms race, with any building being lucky to hold the
title of world's tallest for even ten years. In the unfortunate example of the
Bank Of Manhattan Trust Building (40 Wall Street), the 282m tower lost its
reign after less than two months. Factoring in the spiraling costs of support-
ing a super or mega-tall tower against wind loads and ground subsidence, was
the motivation for building higher and higher merely juvenile competition?
It is the icon status bestowed upon only the world's single most sky-scrapingly tall that brings the
added value capable of offsetting the inherent costs. Height is a metric so easily digested, that it be-
comes the only characteristic retained by the general public. Google data shows a correlation between
the height of a building the number of searches for it. In other words, regardless of age, a buildings
height is directly proportional to the interest from the internet, searching for information, images
and news about it. We can call this Objectified Cultural Capital; the invisible value of building tall.
Function, value and even the object itself become irrelevant.
Icons represent a lifestyle > embodied by their brand > represented by their form.
Through the portal of the internet, buildings are reduced to their good sides, photo-
graphed and put on the front cover of e-magazines.
Looking again through the digital manifestation of hu-
manity's curiosity, Google, illustrating the degree to which
something dominates its field. Another example of objecti-
fied cultural capital is the Eiffel Tower. The Parisian lifestyle
is dominated by the image of the Eiffel Tower; its brand is in-
extricably linked to this image. In the first sixteen results re-
turned by a Google image search for “Paris” fifteen contain
the image of the Eiffel tower. Thus it comes as no surprise
that it is the tallest structure in the city, surpassing any build-
ing by almost one hundred metres. There is a raw, innate,
human response to the monolith's of our built environment.
Scale is the shortcut to the landmark, the icon, the brand.
In an era where icons embody more power than military arms, weaponry is no longer limited to govern-
ments. Businesses can now wield as much power as a country and business has become as cut throat as
war. The rise of commerce, big business and multi-national corporations has redefined the human battle-
field. Where the early hominid with the biggest, sharpest stick could win a fight, today's corporation with
the tallest, shiniest building leads the pack. Now corporations fight to be the alpha-male and to dominate
the commercial market with headquarters that fight to dominate the skyline. Corporations, above all, want
to make money. This economic capital is achieved by being recognised as the alpha-male corporation.
The war on terror has globalised ideological warfare, where
groups fight to defame one another to gain the most support.
Attacks are focussed on the physical embodiments of nation-
al ideals, ideology and pride. The Twin Towers, airports and
mosques all embody this capital. Architecture has become
the weapon of this age, tactically deployed to cripple morale.
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Google Trend Data shows the search frequency of supertall buildings is directly proportional to their height.
828m - Burj Kalifa 553m - CN Tower 492m - Shanghai WFC