Chaos and cosmos
I call to mind the Hancock Tower: a Boston skyscraper, its peak higher than the sun for much of his course through the sky. Its shape is a smooth form drawn from patterns found in crystals, but not in living things. It rises as a gravestone into the horizon, visible throughout the city as a mineral proclamation, guiding lost travelers to the resignation of their most human concerns, announcing these as not native to this wasteland. “The world, in truth, operates at the mineral level.”
In such a hostile environment, sorcerous industries and the corporations who distribute their marvels form a bulwark against the indifference of a strange and lonely world made of particles and forces, whose most honest expression cannot be a man or something human, but a massive obelisk, well-representing the apathy of dead matter.
The Hancock is the world in miniature, a micro-cosmos or microcosm: as the universe was understood to be summarized in the temples of the ancient world, in both their form and material, so too such a modern building reflects and summarizes our modern scientific cosmology.
The building also caused tremendous damage to its neighborhood by undermining the water table during its construction. Trinity Church's basement was flooded; The Copley Plaza had so much trouble that Hancock found it cheaper to buy the hotel than to compensate the damage. The building flexed in the high winds so much that 500 pound glass windows repeatedly popped out, and spotters were hired to look up at the building all day to warn pedestrians below when a shower of glass might be imminent. Adjacent streets were closed on windy days. Plywood graced the window holes until PPG came up with a suitable replacement window. What a mess!
Posted by: joe | 02/25/2011 at 08:00 AM