Skyscraper : the politics and power of building New York City in the twentieth century /

Flowers (Georgia Institute of Technology) offers a book with value on many levels. He provides a well-researched, perceptive, and entertaining introduction to three important iconic New York buildings: the Empire State Building, the Seagram Building, and the World Trade Center. This volume presents a strong justification for, and demonstration of, a difficult but powerful way of examining buildings. It looks at what the author terms the "temporal dimension" of buildings, exploring the personal, political, social, economic, and symbolic intentions and circumstances surrounding their inception, construction, and critical reception. In comparing the three buildings, Flowers articulates common themes, which play out in different ways in each of the examples, thereby illuminating key issues in the evolution of the building type (skyscrapers) and, more generally, in architectural culture through the mid-20th century. This challenging book raises many perplexing questions and refuses to provide simplistic answers. Informative footnotes, a comprehensive index, and numerous historic photographs complement the text. This work should appeal to a variety of readers--from casual aficionados to serious scholars across a wide range of disciplines. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. D. Sachs Kansas State University

Examining the life and times of New York City's most iconic buildings, Georgia Tech architecture instructor Flowers reveals not only how the city's skyscrapers are inextricably tied to the city's economic booms and busts, planning and day-to-day functioning, but also how the skyscraper "is a material expression" of social conditions and personal relationships, "of the course chartered by capital" through urban tribes. Chapter three, "Capital Nightmares," paints a gritty picture of the bleak 1930s, as well as the opportunism and corruption it bred. In matters of analysis, however, Flowers can reach: comparing the Seagram Building with the Lever House across the street, he questions Seagram's need for similarly clean lines, and finds that, short of a reflection of "already-extant corporate identities (e.g., cleanliness and soap, as is the case with Lever House). We are left with the conclusion that it was the opportunity to use a design that elided the past and could simultaneously serve to garner cultural capital and respectability." Still, Flowers's broader conclusion, that companies rely on their buildings to promote cultural capital as well as financial, is solid, and makes this an interesting volume for those who like their architecture in proper social and economic perspective. 51 illus. (Sept.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.