Abstract:
Amidst a global crisis of overpopulation, an increasing number of metropolitan cities are adopting the typology of the skyscraper as a form of remedy. While acknowledging the practicality and benefits provided by vertical buildings in the context of overcrowding, many cities are developing extravagant skylines at an unprecedented rate without ever considering the detrimental effects they induce. Specifically, the patterns of urban growth by which vertical developments embody a construct of hierarchy, entails various conditions of concern which elicit an urgent response that is yet to be made. In the context of this thesis, the detrimental conditions to be confronted are: firstly, that of the hierarchical scale and its delineation of success as an objective construct prescribed by corporations, and secondly, the disparity of spatial qualities and the quality of life entailed at either end of the vertical spectrum. Given hierarchy’s propensity to induce predicaments when manifested into physical environments, this thesis seeks architectural precedents as to provide insight in developing a new system of vertical programming that denies the abstraction of a hierarchical scale. Upon the dissection of all the constituents that lead to the development of said predicaments, a critical analysis is carried out on the cases of New York and Hong Kong as these cities have exhibited conditions of potential which could be appropriated to establish the new Template for Non-Hierarchical Vertical Programming.
