WALKING UP A SKYSCRAPER

Batman walking on a skyscraper. Source:http://joseph-murrell.blogspot.com

The right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart’s desire. We need to be sure we can live with our own creations (a problem for every planner, architect, and utopian thinker). But the right to remake ourselves by creating a qualitatively different kind of urban sociality is one of the most precious of all human rights (David Harvey, The Right to the City).

Often architects and urban planners argue about the dense design of Manhattans skyscrapers and the impact of that in people’s everyday life. People living in the center of Manhattan, live in the shadows of the skyscraper world, as they are unable to climb these giant constructions made out of steel. But how could be to experience a skyscraper through the eyes of a free runner? How could people occupy these giant facades? Architects the last decade have started to cooperate with freerunners in order to understand these different experiences that they have in the urban space. In the documentary ‘My Playground’ released on 2010, director Kaspar Astrup Schroder represents the unique relationship between the buildings and the human body.  The parkourists movement inside the city is something that architects cannot predict. They transform the city according to their will. For them the roof could function as a road, the balconies as stairs. In this documentary BIG architects speak of the idea of walking up on a skyscraper facade. How could a skyscraper like that transform the center of Manhattan? How could people occupy this façade if they were able to walk on it?