LOBOTOMY AND SCHIZOPHRENIA

Manhattan Skyline + 425 Park Avenue Building (Foster + Partners)

Under the intention of rising the most beautiful office building in the world, The Chicago Tribune Competition was announced in June 1922. Attracted not only by the high prizes but also by the possibility to deal with such a pioneering theme as skyscrapers, the competition effervesced the architecture community attracting 263 entries from 23 countries. Such an unprecedented scope, experimentation and irony of submissions, arose from the attempt not only to process, but to criticize ongoing dogmas on vertical expansion, configuring the competition as a crucial moment during the formative years of skyscrapers.

Precisely ninety years had passed and a new competition was launched in 2012 aiming to raise a new skyscraper in Manhattan, at 425 Park Avenue. Less inclusive as allowed closed tenders only, the competition had among its finalists some of the most renowned and awarded names in contemporary architecture. Even though almost one century has passed, some of the limitations that seemed exclusive of the period marked by the paucity of knowledge on skyscrapers are still present, as issues raised in Chicago are likely to stay – sometimes deliberately – unanswered.

Going back in time once more to 1978, Rem Koolhaas – curiously one of the finalists on 425 Park Avenue – addresses in ‘The frontier in the Sky’ the dichotomy between interior and exterior of a building. Using the architectural analogy of a “lobotomy”, the possible discrepancy between facade and internal configuration is considered as a crucial point that allowed New York Makers to experience an area of unseen freedom.

Such freedom, in terms of autonomy and independence is clear. However, it is necessary to consider if freedom is by itself automatically positive. The late submission made by Claes Oldenburg for The Chicago Tribune Competition in 1962 seems quite current, as the schizophrenic phallic skyscraper paradigm seems to persist.