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Adriana De Angelis

Skyscrapers – Strong Images of Culture and Art; Globalized

Abstract This article shows how skyscrapers have developed into globalized symbols of modernity and (political) power since they were attributed these qualities in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s.

Dieser Artikel zeigt, wie Wolkenkratzer sich in globale Symbole von Modernität und (politischer) macht entwickelt haben, seit ihnen im New York der 1920er und 1930er Jahre diese Attribute zugeschrieben wurden.

In 1927, during the Weimar Republic, a most significant silent motion picture, Metropolis, realized by Austrian, Expressionist director Fritz Lang, was released in Germany. It talked about the dystopia of the modern city as a result of human insanity and its power of transforming masses into machines, and, consequently, the world into hell. In this film, Art was used as the expression of the soul which, at the time, the world was learning to study thanks to Freud and his theories; while Architecture was the icon of the social reality that formed and emphasized the scenery in which action took place. The focus was on the city and, above all, on skyscrapers; seen as tall symbols of modernity, and reflections of the most harmful outcome of power, and of the dark side of human beings and their insane emotions. The uneven forms of the tall buildings, derived from van Gogh’s pictures and Schiele’s landscapes, made grief touchable. The city sketched by scenographers, such as Otto Hunte,...