After the world's population increased and agricultural areas decreased, horizontal expansion was no longer feasible in housing, and the shift to vertical expansion began, which makes the area itself accommodate a larger number of people.
It did not stop at the vertical expansion normally, but tall skyscrapers appeared for housing and work, after the towering monuments belonged to the great rulers, religions and empires, from the legendary Babylon Tower, to the great pyramids of Giza.
The first generation of modern skyscrapers appeared in the eighties of the nineteenth century, in the cities of Chicago and New York, and built the first tallest building in the modern industrial era by William Le Baron Jenny, 12 floors high.
The American technological revolution of (1880-1890) witnessed a creative rush that helped architects to build high-rise buildings, in addition to iron factories that produced iron more flexible than before, allowing electric elevators to rise more than 10 floors.
High buildings in crowded cities, such as Paris, London, Manhattan and Hong Kong, appeared in commercial places, and revolutionized office work, because it enabled the administration to focus offices and departments in one building, especially with the emergence of trams, subways and railways that transport workers from their places of residence to One job site, decades before everyone can own their own car.
Major cities raced to own the tallest buildings, and the need for ventilation and artificial light began to increase, as a necessity for human habitation in these tall buildings.
The traditional patterns of decoration and known windows retreated to show the windows that are characteristic of the skyscrapers, and after it started to solve the problem of population and the lack of spaces, competition and the desire to show progress and supremacy became the reasons for building skyscrapers.
It reached its height of obsession in 1931 with the construction of buildings such as Chrysler Building and Empire State Building, and Art Deco buildings in favor of the glass style and buildings that resemble the steel frame boxes, which we see in all capitals of the world today .
Dazzling insecure
After the engineers struggled to build the tallest skyscrapers in the world, the architecture now returns, telling us that the skyscrapers are more damaging than we think, as tall buildings require a lot of effort to stop wobbling, which requires more iron and concrete, and they also need stronger and more deep foundations , To fit these high-rise heights.
High-rise buildings consume a lot of energy to operate air conditioners, industrial lighting and elevators, and the carbon emissions from them are significantly higher than those from mid-rise buildings, which means that high-rise buildings solve the problems of residents and office departments on the one hand.
On the other hand, they are tearing countless tons of natural lands for deep foundations, and pumping tons of other gases and carbon into the atmosphere, which accelerates the climate change process, which the countries with the highest skyscrapers in the world claim they are fighting.
In addition to all its environmental harms, it is currently - and with the spread of the Corona virus - an environment that is unsafe and not suitable for work, because it depends on air conditioners, which are one of the reasons for transmitting the virus during the air cycle, as the designers of skyscrapers did not think that nature has its own methods of revenge.
Environmental policy teachers warn of tall buildings and say that building skyscrapers should be banned globally, because glass is a special problem with sunlight, because it makes the light unlimited access to the building but without a way out, there is never natural ventilation, but only more Air conditioners!
And they assert that the world is going through a vicious cycle of building skyscrapers, then attempts to cool it which consumes energy and contributes greatly to the climate crisis, which increases the temperature of the planet.