Elevators Rise to the Occasion

摘要

Half a century ago, New York City's Empire State Building was the tallest in the world, measuring 381 meters from the sidewalk to its roofline. It had set the height record upon its completion in 1931 and held onto it until the North Tower of the World Trade Center was topped out four decades later.In the meantime, architectural preference in skyscrapers had evolved from the Art Deco style of the Empire State Building to the Bauhaus-inspired International Style that emerged in the 1950s. Whereas the former was characterized by an ornamented and tiered profile that provided a form of buttressing, the latter was marked by strict rectilinear elements that were often unbroken from bottom to top. Without the structural advantages of buttresses, International Style buildings grew inherently more flexible as they rose to new heights. (Since 2010, the tallest building in the world has been the strongly buttressed 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai.)