You're 100% correct. Europe cities have beautiful old 500+ year old buildings n they want to preserve them. In Lisbon only high-rise buildings allowed are in the city borders.
On my family property in Gjøvik, Norway, we have an outhouse which is older than America. America does not have history, they're an infant country so they make dumb mistakes, like a child not understanding that the square peg goes into the square peg.
@@cosmincasuta486 Well, considering that their oldest buildings date back to the 16th century (not counting pre-Columbian structures, of course), built by the Spaniards in Puerto Rico, they don't have their own architectural cultural legacy until the 19th/20th century. That is precisely the skyscrapers, which could be considered their architectural legacy, so no, they won't change
If you want to look into more urban planning, I would suggest the channel 'Not Just Bikes'. It's a channel by Canadian who now lives in Amsterdam, he makes some great comparisons between North American and European city planning, and explains why prefers the latter.
@@NoProtocol On the Asian side, I'd also like to suggest a vid from the "Life Where I'm From" channel regarding Japanese zoning practices. It highlights how and why most of Japan's urban centers are pedestrian and bike friendly.
Cities need more than cohesion; they need a soul. When structures don't reflect local ideas and culture, uniformity spreads, and eventually, no place maintains a unique appearance. It's as if you are simultaneously nowhere and everywhere at the same time.Distinctive local architecture gives your city a sense of 'home' rather than just being 'any place'.
I live in Utrecht Netherlands in a area that they planned a 262 meter high building (860ft) and would be the biggest building in the country at that time. The plan failed but i do remember the architect interview that told me everything i needed to know 'It would be seen by 5M people (about 30% of the country) on a daily basis'. He seemed very pleased and mostly motivated by forcing a large part of the country to look at his giant ..... all day ...
@@thevoid5503 i am not against higher buildings myself but his 'logic' seemed a little off. What is amazing is how these plans are born and how first drawings look when they are discussed. The last plan in that area called for a 140meter building and both that 262meter and 140meter building they show surrounding areas that simply don't exists unless they take down a large part of the city.. these images are all made up to look good with buildings around it that don't exists, parks that somehow pop up to create the 'view' they want to sell...
What do you mean by forcing? I think it is the opposite. Seems like you are forcing owner of private property to not build a skyscraper on his land. Smells like socialism to me.
I visited Sagrada Família and went inside, in my trip to Barcelona and its awesome, really detailed. Also if you go look the first picture of S.F. that they took in 1800s when it was being built, its crazy how they built Barcelona almost from scratch, it was deserted, and now look at the city.
Wasn't the city built over 2k years ago? Crazy that it stayed small-ish for that long, then. Then again, so did Berlin iirc and Rome was a village again until recently, so maybe not that crazy
In London specifically, the bed rock is clay. Skyscrapers are being built now but it's much harder to do on soft rock. I used to have a view of the Gherkin from my flat until a skyscanner was built next door, after that it was more like 50 windows with a view into my bedroom.
@@kasperkjrsgaard1447 lol. They were all above my bedrooms height, I could only really see the ceilings. I was on the 4th floor but because the new building was so massive the flats didn't really start until a 6th floor kinda height.
Green Onions, for the Win!! I have listened to this, really, just about all of my life, I am 6 years younger than the song, thanks for putting it back on my radar... Peace!
One of the other reasons that other options are used instead of skyscrapers is one of efficiency. Building a single skyscraper requires more utilities, money, time and preparations. Also there are a lot more permits that are required as higher buildings can interfere with radar etc. Another point is that unlike in the US, in Europe zoning is less black and white. In the US there seem to only be two types of zoning, freestanding detached housing and non-zoned areas. Where the non-zoned areas are often limited in size meaning that any density of housing/offices needs to be done in a much smaller area, making skyscrapers the ideal solution. In European cities there is a large area zoned for multiple types, meaning the density of housing/offices can be spread over a much larger area. This means there is much less need to optimize the density of housing/offices on a very small footprint area. As noted in the video, as populations of cities in Europe increase more high rises are needed to facilitate the increased demand potentially also making sky scrapers more attractive.
Hi NP, a great video from the B1M. I love tall buildings but I admire European cities that have chosen to take the opposite path and preserve their historic centres and mix it with low rise modern architecture. Very interesting! This past week B1M published a video on Christchurch's long road back to rebuilding their city after the 2011 earthquake; focusing on their cathedral. Well worth a watch or a reaction video. While Australian cities have taken the American road with tall buildings in the centre of town and sprawling suburbs; my city of Melbourne also produces some pretty slick buildings, tall and small. If not familiar, def worth a gander in your spare time. 🌁🌁🌆🌆
When admiring skyscrapers from a distance, we should also be mindful of what's on the inside. There are exceptions, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Space Needle in Seattle, and residential skyscrapers do exist, but mostly skyscrapers are office blocks, with bland open-plan or cubicle-filled spaces, repeating uniformly through most of the floors. So when you see skyscraper office blocks, their presense is also an imprint of a certain type of corporate culture, and a certain organisation of cities, where workers are supposed to live in one zone, commute to a different zone where they're supposed to do menial work, before commuting back home to repeat the cycle. To be sure, there are lots of bland offices in low- and mid-rise development as well, but skyscraper offices are a tell-tale sign that the culture surrounding work and city planning is stuck in the past.
Not a huge fan of skyscrapers but some in London are quite cool, the Gherkin, the Walkie Talkie, the Shard, and some of the ones in the Canary Wharf/ Docklands area are quite cool as well. They should be kept well away from historic buildings though. In the 60s some concrete monstrosities were put up next the St Paul's Cathedral which was not great. As long as they are in areas of the city where redevelopment is needed it can work.
I am with you about not being emotionally connected to any skyscrapers. There is a part of me who is fascinated by science and technology and thinks it is cool that they exist, but it is more of an intellectual appeal. I certainly wouldn't want to live in one, especially after 911.
While not about skyscrapers, I would highly recommend "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. It's set in the Middle Ages, and is about a man whose dream is to build a cathedral. A number of years ago, I visited Edinburgh castle, and my appreciation of it was greatly enhanced because of what I had read in that fascinating book. BTW, if you look at the New York City skyline from either the Hudson River or East River side, you'll notice that the southern end of Manhattan features many skyscrapers, and then, as you look north, the buildings are quite small, and then the skyscrapers reappear as you approach midtown (Empire State Building). The reason is a feature of where the bedrock is located. The area immediately north of lower Manhattan does not contain the bedrock necessary to support tall buildings, but as you move further north, it is present again. Interesting video. As always, love ya.
Just listened to "La Leyenda del Tiempo" by Camarón de la Isla. The vocals remind me of Gypsy Kings. Of course, "Green Onions" is an American classic. Thanks for the video and recommendations! 👊😎
Camarón es un genio absoluto en su arte muy posiblemente el mejor que ha habido según todos los expertos; Gipsy Kings es un grupo pop- flamenco de mucha menor calidad y con mucho sonido enlatado si fuera por ellos el flamenco seguramente no sería patrimonio UNESCO saludos
Megatall - 600 metres or higher Supertall - 300 to 599 metres Skyscraper - 150 to 299 metres High Rise - 50 to 149 metres Medium Rise - 20 to 49 metres (or 5-10 stories)
Congrats on 100k subs. Well deserved. Easily one of the better channels on the platform. Love the way you handle the topics of the vids, very refreshing. 🙏🧡
There's definitely a balance - London manages this quite well, but London is geologically constrained in where skyscrapers can be built anyway - if there's enough cash on the table you can deal with almost any geological constraint, but there's almost never infinite money available. The deep clay in London means you need a lot of very very deep piles so outside 3-4 areas they're pretty impractical. The constraints on London geologically has let to quite a lot of innovative buildings - the new Google HQ for example at Kings Cross is a massive skyscraper: but on its side - and as a result is really interesting.
as a child, my dad warned me to never live or work in a building that is higher than the local FD's ladders. anywhere above that, and you're on your own in an emergency.
Booker T and MGs were the legendary house band of the Stax Studios in Memphis. Green Onions was made-up by the band jamming with no initial intention of making it into a record.
I live in rural England. A village with a population of 5300 It takes me a 5 minute walk to get to a grocery shop with everything I want. A 10 minute drive to a superstore with everything I need and when I was a kid every school, every shop, cinemas, bowling and every other form of entertainment was within a 50 minute bus ride or a 30 minute drive. My mum lives in the outskirts of Newcastle. She has pretty much the same experience except shorter bus rides. Yes, we don't want Skyscrapers because they're ugly and destroy the scenery. But also we don't need skyscrapers. There's no central hub we need to be close to. And if something is far away, we have plenty of public transport to be able to access it easily. Even kids can freely travel without the assistance of their parents to drive them. I think that skyscrapers are just unnecessary for us at the moment. But we are slowly gaining the need for more housing space and I imagine we'll see more skyscrapers like this dude said.
Warsaw even thought it's way older than the US itself was destroyed in over 80% during WW2 so it was possible to kinda build it from the ground with it's modern purpose so the city feels more open, wider etc. so more space for skyscrapers. A lot of old buildings were also rebuilt though.
The big problem with skyscapers in Europe is that the infrastructure can't support the additional population density. They might mention that in the video but I haven't watched it all yet and I'm too impatient to wait until the end. Example. I live in Manchester UK and out of my apartment window I can count 11 cranes building buildings 20+ stories. The roads here can't cope with the thousands of additional people. I love the progress and seeing the city grow but really they should limit the high rises to places where the supporting infrastructure can be built around them instead of making it take me 30 minutes to get out of town in the car now when it used to take 5 minutes a few years ago.
I'm a 68-year-old Mancunian. When I was small, my older brother used to take me to 'town', 'to watch the skyscrapers being built'! Those being the Piccadilly Plaza and the CIS building (which had the accolade of being the tallest building in the UK until the Post Office tower in London was built. The towers built around Deansgate are impressive in their height but hardly inspiring in their design. An interesting fact; The Artdeco Sunlight House, on Quay Street, would have been the UK's first 'skyscraper' had the council not rejected the original plan of 40 storeys in 1932. It has an impressive swimming pool in the basement lit by an atrium; I went swimming there many years ago.
@@astrecks I believe they have to look like that for planning reasons but that’s just something I heard. I’m in a conservation area on deansgate so hopefully we won’t get a tower block next door for a while yet
@@ruk2023-- I've read that The Deansgate (pub) is going to be surrounded by really tall buildings. From the artist's impression, it will look like the building from the film 'Batteries Not Included'!
Stewart Hicks has a good channel on architecture/city planning. He's based in Chicago so uses it for a lot of examples. His video on the design of the city's skyline is excellent.
Europe is by far the most developed continent on the planet, so there isn't much of a need for skyscrapers. Similarly, Europe is the continent with by far the most documented history. There's more documented history in Europe alone, than in all the other continents combined, and that history is visible in the architecture, that makes countless of Europeans cities look like fairytales. I think it would be so sad for skyscrapers to appear across Europe, and I hope the European people keep insisting on preserving their architectural culture and history. As demonstrated across all of Europe, buildings and cities with architectural cultures dating thousands of years back, are still as modern and well-built as a skyscraper would be. They just happen to be a lot more beautiful.
Stewart Hicks and City Beautiful both do excellent videos on architecture and planning. In any European wealthy city there is call for skyscrapers, but within architecturally rich areas it's fair to have restrictions. Old industrial land, such as disused docklands, are often great options to allow compromise, as they tend to have been built away from historic city centres.
... take a look at "Hamburg Speicherstadt" or "Leipzig Baumwollspinnerei" for an argument against that assumption that "old useless industrial lands" are/could be used for high-rise ^^
I live in Denmark and we have very few buildings that could be considered skyscrapers. The tallest building in Denmark is called “Lighthouse” and is 142 meters tall. Western Europe’s second tallest building was supposed to be built in Denmark. It was called “Bestseller Tower” and was planned to be 317 meters tall (only the Eiffel Tower in Paris would be taller). It was supposed to house a large hotel, conference rooms, offices, cafés, restaurants and around 60 shops. It got cancelled in 2020 for various reasons, less than a year after the project was approved. Tall buildings in Denmark are usually met with opposition in the local population because they don’t “fit in” with the surrounding landscape. This also applies to things like very tall wind mills which we have a lot of (they are very unpopular locally).
In Athens there aren't any skyscrapers because they will block the view of the acropolis. Recently tho they began constructing 7 of them down to the coast
One funny example is the Montparnasse tower in Paris which is the most hated building in the city since its the only highrise, with a common joke being that the best view of the city is from the top of the tower
I think we're gonna see some, but not the extremely big and tall ones. In my home country of Sweden you can see some "almost skyscrapers" in some cities having been build. For example Gothia Towers in Gothenburg and Turning Torso in Malmö, they are tall compared to rest of the structures but dwarfed next to a "real" skyscraper. It's definitely a preference thing and very much a try to preserve our skylines with church towers and other old buildings still taking front seat over more brutalist modern buildings. There is a movement among architects in sweden and I think it has spread pretty much world wide called "design upproret/arkitekt upproret" (design/architect rebellion) trying to work against the modern style buildings and urging architects to design classically once more. Great video and thoughts on a fascinating subject, thank you.
Skyscrapers are only in very specific circumstances economically feasible. As soon as you exceed a certain height, the construction and maintenance costs per cubic meter of enclosed space starts to rise exponentially. Therefore most skyscrapers in Europe, but also in parts of Asia are not built for economic reasons, but for prestige and powerplay. In Paris, Frankfurt, London all of the highest skyscrapers were built by big financial corporations to show off (or by other players believing in big phallus symbols), not because they had another use for them than advertising their brands (they had in some cases over years problems to find tenants for many of the offices within the new skyscrapers). Only in places where the base area is very limited (Manhattan, Singapore, Hongkong, ...), skyscrapers can make sense in a objective cost-benefit analysis. (New construction methods can move the "critical height" to an higher level, but not change the principle as such.)
Not to mention the traffic and service implications. Skyscrapers are incredibly silly. It's particularly ridiculous combined with the suburban style, which seems to be imported at the same time. Incredibly concentrated traffic... with nowhere to live, and nowhere to relax, and nowhere to do anything, really. It's just a big extended middle finger to "the poor" (including your other "rich friends" who have a slightly smaller pen... eh, skyscraper).
Sve što vidiš, to je istorija. Teško je to shvatiti, za nekoga ko živi u državi koja istoriju nema. Ja sam iz Srbije i svaka daska u ogradama u mom selu je starija od države u kojoj živiš.
Hahaha strašna vam "istorija" 😂😂...od nje se dobro živi kao, zato svi i bježite iz Srbije na Zapad, a nitko ne ide sa Zapada u Srbiju da gleda vaše daske u selu
I hate Skyscrapers. No history. No feeling with it. It is just make for money making I think. I like flowers, trees, animals. Why watching human making stones. I will move away.
Ancient Egyptians: I hate pyramids. No history. No feeling with it. Just made for the vanity of the ruling class. I like flowers, trees, animals. Why watching humans making stones. I will move away.
Ancient Egyptians: I hate pyramids. No history. No feeling with it. Just shapes for the vanity of the ruling class I think. I like flowers, trees, animals. Why watching human making stones. I will move away.
@@madjarov42 We visit and are amazed of the age of pyramids, of the probable techniques by what they were build but apart from that? A facade of 4 empty triangles leaning against each other. Would you really like to find your 2-story-home suddenly beside those structures, taking possibly away most of the sunshine of your house. Is the surface of a pyramide really attractive rather than merely interesting in a engeneer's perspective? Personally I think I would pretty soon willing to relocate away from that behemoth. By the way by erecting a pyramid as well as a business tower one has to remove quite a bit of urban life. The new building wouldn't contain much companies I would probably visit (as in way too expensive, too posh). So for most neighbors it would be a big useless space they have to go around to find the places they need. Building enough of these "useless spaces" and people migrate away from them leaving only day-users and by six o'clock these areas are entirely deserted - look at American city centers! Compare them to centers of towns where people actually live!
I'm not an urban planner, but I've grown to really have a different view of them, or at least, the best of them. I really do think that largely they work for the people; Even if the pressures in some countries come from the govt., the solutions are always about the people either way. I've come to this by watching a lot of videos about roads vs. streets in the Netherlands vs. everywhere else, especially the US. Zoning laws, incentives, and a really interesting balance therein have created some amazing things for the people. I'll leave you with a quick interesting fact: In N. America wood was cheap, so bigger buildings were made of wood. When fire broke out the damage was catastrophic to whole cities. In Europe wood was already expensive, so larger multi-use buildings were already made of stone or brick, so fires, though still common, were not quite as catastrophic. Zoning laws precipitated from this, leading to US building of 4 stories or more requiring 2 staircases (for escape). This makes certain kinds of buildings not worth building, and apartments less valuable due to layouts that 2 staircases lead to. Combine this with the exclusionary and myopic zoning for 1. Commercial, and 2. Single family homes (no third option) and you get these strange car-centric cities that dominate the USA (I think you can figure out how A leads to B). Long and short: Urban Planners have really cool jobs that are more concerned with the movements of people than one would imagine.
An interesting thing happened in Vienna - we have a few areas in the city, especially on the eastern bank of the Danube, where they built several tall buildings - dunno if they qualify as skyscrapers. This has caused that area to become extremely windy. On the other hand, Vienna is one of the few cities in the world where you can shoot a helicopter chase between skyscrapers. I think they shot the last Tom Cruise film here.
A "highrise" has a practical definition that can change based on geography. A high rise from a emergency services standpoint is described as any building taller than the responding fire department's tallest ladder's capabilities. So a building taller than the tallest ladder is a high-rise
In Germany, Frankfurt has high-rise buildings and skyscrapers that create a "real" skyline. 18 real skyscrapers, by definition over 100m and around 100 high office buildings. There are 10 more skyscrapers in the pipeline. Frankfurt's nickname is "Mainhattan". Main is the river that flows through Frankfurt and "hattan" is a reference to Manhattan. It is a trademark of the city and it is desirable that more high-rise buildings be allowed to be built there. Of the approximately 200 high-rise buildings throughout Europe, 66 percent are in these six cities - London, Paris, Frankfurt, Warsaw, Moscow and Istanbul.
My first thought, pretty much, was a quote from a Rowan Atkinson sketch, "Modern architects? Scum of the earth. Eveything they design looks like a dustbin with a bicycle on top" Books: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet (a series, can't recall the other titles off the top of my head), about the building of a cathedral back in he 1100s I think
I mean in many cities there's the historic center and the downtown financial district is an hour drive away. So it's not like you can't have both. But of course something is sacrificed. Farming land, recreational areas or suburban living space. Normal people here would just hate to live in the shadow of the towers of Babylon. I guess the problem lies in the need for an ever growing population to grow the economy as to not "fall behind" to be cramped into the finite city space for some reason. Good channel btw no BS and incredible width of background knowledge.
10:46 If you're interested in urban planning, you should check out Not Just Bikes. He's a Canadian that moved to the Netherlands. "Why City Design is Important (and why I hate Houston)" is a good video to start with. I'm Dutch myself and NJB really opened my eyes about the importance of good urban planning and how I took everything for granted.
The steps on skyscrapers are a great excerise. How fast the Empire State Building was constructed is amazing I looked at Skyscrapers as in indication of the power of a city but after watching this i dont feel the same
In order to preserve historical city centers, the construction of skyscrapers in many European cities is only allwed in the outskirts, off the limits center limits. One example is the la Défense business district in Paris (constrcuted from the 1970's on) which actually is outside the city of Paris per se. Actually, the standards for the construction of buildings are pretty demanding everywhere from the moment you're close to a historically classified building or area, city, town, or village. One small example: in the village where I live tiles are not allowed on roofs, only slates or slate-looking roofs , in order to preserve the local traditional architecture.
Fred Mills (who run's 'The B1M') is well known in my industry (construction). While all their video's are interesting, one of the more interesting ones is on building the world's tinniest skyscraper.
One building that I find intriguing is The Interlace in Singapore. It's not quite a skyscraper at 88.7 m but the 6 levels of staggered blocks is oddly appealing to me. Here is a musical suggestion to go with futuristic architecture: Essenger - "Empire Of Steel" ua-cam.com/video/MX8V45bqgOU/v-deo.htmlsi=ASb9MmyYFAdIwNKl
What I think about soviet blocks? I've seen them in Slovenia and Slovakia my last vacation and when they are well maintains and renovated they don't look bad at all. A bit bland, sure. But not exactly ugly either. And much better then what they remove: homelessness. People living there own their own flat and everyone gets one (at least that was how they worked during the cold war). Not very inspirational or pretty but they got the job of housing everyone in a decent place with basic amenities done very well.
I spent two weeks in Warsaw, there were a few skyscrapers, but most of the city was what had been rebuilt after ww2 (I’ll call it “classical architecture”) and also what was built during the soviet era (namely, commie blocks). For an American who had never seen Europe before, it was all breathtaking, each for different reasons.
The rebuilding of Europe after WWII and the desire to return to how it was, rather than modernise, is similar to London after the fire of 1666. Christopher Wren and others planned to remake London in a grid design, like New York, but the poorer and the criminal elements wanted the snaking, narrow streets returned as they were, so in a rare case of majority opinion rules, the original layout was remade.
Istanbul is actually very much also on a shortlist of architectural innovators. Very much overlooked, but jumping ahead rapidly. And I'm talking in terms of cities actually executing projects, not the source of the architectural bureaus behind it, because western European architecture firms are driving development in eastern European cities ready to embrace this, often due to newfound independence from earlier neighbouring oppressors.
Liverpool has a policy *not* building high buildings. They have a small part of the fringes of the city centre where _in theory_ they are allowed. Even then they clip the heights on planning application.
It's not government vs the people, it's big business vs the people, when developers, banks and corporations capture regulatory authorities like planning departments of city governments. "High rise" I believe only applies to housing, whereas skyscrapers are always commercial office space plus maybe a restaurant or two. And yes, apartment blocks don't go that high, because it's not safe or convenient to live too high off the ground and be dependent on elevators when you have to go outside to shop and get to church and everything else. Office workers don't live there, and they only have to be in an office building during the working day, and then they get to go home somewhere more normal and healthy.
In Munich for example there are restrictions on builing high rises inside the middle ring (city highway), that is surrounding the city center, that are taller than the 99 m high towers of the Cathedral. Outside the roughly 5 km in diameter rings higher buildings are allowed. The only amerinanized city in Germany is Frankfurt with it's financial district and it's band towers.
I'm not a fan of skyscrapers even thought I used to work in construction and build them. I worked on a couple in The UK, Dubai and in east Asia. I love the architecture in Italy. If you go to the top of the Vatican and look out over Rome, there's nothing quite like it. So much history. Florence is also a beautiful city I have visited. I look at the skyscrapers in Britain alongside mid rise post war gray tower blocks and I just find the architecture depressing. There are much more beautiful towns and smaller cities with old buildings that speak to the heart much more.
5:28 To clarify this is not a diss. He is not referring to something against the influence of citizens local to Brussels and the region. European Union parliament sits in Brussels so EU legislation on the matters are often described as "coming from Brussels". That's what this man is getting at.
B1M is a brilliant channel. I think you would love his videos as he looks at the massive engineering projcts going on around the world. Never mind skyscrapers, China is rapidly building whole cities.
It is not just about not liking something: You must consider that you were coming from an era where many European cities had grown more or less organically into something very historical, and the people living there still remembered those cities from before the wars. The new stuff was just a jumble without charm where before, it may have been a jumble, but WITH charm.
Why you got the old handshake modem sound? Brings back memories and not from when i was a kid. I spent 3500 bucks on a pentium 66. Then 1 month later it was old. Like me now lol
Should have seen the price of RAM when the only factory - in South Korea - that produced one of the main components burned down in the '80s. I had just bought a 286 laptop and wanted to upgrade the ram. It was $900 CAD for something like 250 Mb.
@@jimgore1278 it had to be more. I bought 4 megabytes for 400 dollars. Not giga, mega lol. 1990s that was the norm 100 bucks per megabyte. Down from 200 dollars.
It's not about holding back, we just don´t see the need. In Sweden we have rather hard rules about packing people to tight. What ever you do comes with a cost, balancing it makes a better society.
I think it's also because of the public transportation, if you can travel by subway, bus, tram, for far less time than using a car, it doesn't matter that much to live a bit outside of the city
Not a Brusseler, but I have been there several times and I kind of like mix of new and old in general. Generally the high-rises are built around train stations which make sense. A few ones are really ugly but in general they look okay. Being from Gothenburg, Sweden I have to mention the newly erected Karlatornet at 245 meters.
Khruangbin released their latest single called "May Ninth" a couple days ago and Ive been listening to it non stop. Awesome song, more to the chilled side 👌
Skyscrapers may be a very efficient area use, but with all other things it's the contrary. They need more building material than normal or mid-rise buildings with the same floor space and more carbon intensive ones at that, they are less energy efficient and need more maintenance. And they create way more traffic in one area rather than spreading it out. The are the like urban sprawl, just in a vertical direction.
The word skyscraper was adopted from sailing and was a term for the tallest of masts,in buildings it is a building of more than 150 metres in height,or around 40 stories. So more of the buildings you see are skyscrapers than you think...there are hundreds in new your city for example. People just see the tallest few and assume that they are the skyscrapers yet one much smaller is still technically a skyscraper. The really tall ones are categorised as "super tall" and there are only 17 of these in new York,this is what people think is a scraper yet as I said there are hundreds,they just look less impressive when next to a super tall.
In addition to the issues around building regulations in London there is also the issue of the city being built on clay based foundations which makes it more problematic.
When i was in St. Petersburg for work, they told me that skyscrapers are forbidden to build in the city. After a few days near the coast i saw one. They told me that it was the headquater of Gazprom, so obviously this was allowed by the government.
There's a fair bit of Brutalist architecture where I am. I suspect their prevalence in eastern Europe is due to the practicality and simplicity. We have plenty of high-rises and a few skyscrapers but as I understand it their construction is more heavily influenced by market forces, followed by zoning. Office buildings and gentrified high-rises can recoup more costs per meter of land than other options. Assuming they can fill them. The souring economy has diminished the number of customers willing or able to afford their planned pricing models. TBH I see most suburbs to be as ugly as cookie cutter soviet apartments. I've seen two architectural or zoning related videos recently and interesting enough to recall. The later was about team who used some game design software to create a completed 3D rendering of Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67. "How a 23-Year-Old Solved Urban Sprawl" -The B1M The later was about "Georgism" and municipal land taxation. It's an interesting take that I could see being useful in some circumstances. But it works better for some than others so there are detractors. I haven't heard an audible fax or modem handshake in ages. I hope it continues to meme on in the future. I think Warsaw has a few scrapers too. "That building" @07:38 is likely the "Bosco Verticale" in Milan. You might be onto something with cultural resistance. I vaguely recall reading that there were some prolific "not in my back yard" opponents to the Eifel Tower's construction in Paris. Idk what the definitions are for skyscrapers, but I can say that the height records only really started to climb after steel frame construction came into play. Brick and masonry had some practical limits. Booker T. There's a classic. It's close enough to the ball park to that I feel justified in suggesting some "Black Keys". They have some range, but maybe their song "Lonely Boy" would be a good place to start if you're unfamiliar with their work.
Europe is start building skyscrapers, but in specific areas to keep preserved buildings protected. But Europe is not exempt from high rises.. Futurism in architecture is definitely more prominent in Asia and Rich Arab countries. But Europe mixes beauty with some modern architecture to remind people that we still have beautiful buildings.
A few reasons i guess, first would be that they clash with our classic architecture, second reason i can think of is many European countries having soft soil, third reason might have to do with experiences with blocks of flats, instead of raising the value around them, they actually lowered the value because people do not like to look at big blocks of concrete. We're used to having a lot of nature being part of our cities and direct line of sight, tall towers do not fit into that. And i guess we're far better at urban planning than most nations outside of Europe, we strike a balance with the surroundings of a city (or try to), plan transportation and everything around that. Do we do it better? i do not know, i'm not an urban planner, do we do it "prettier"? absolutely, most towns, cities and villages have a charm about them, old architecture combined with new architecture that has to fit in, regardless where you go, we want things to be spacious and open, sky scrapers do not fit into that ideal.
What you may think of as futuristic cities, like Dubai and Tokyo, I think of them as a dystopian future. Just about the only thing wrong with the Paris "skyline" is the Montparnasse Tower, the only true Skyscraper. It just ruins the whole look of the city, which is dominated by the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur Cathedral.
AdamSomething has interesting videos on urban planning - the one about commie blocks gives a nice overview on Soviet architecture and the one about Dubai is a rant that more folks need to hear :D
Just commented the same. His Dubai video is so good and Dubai is so bad. I can say this with confidence, i have a 1000h SimCity education in Urban Planning.
Sadly, although London is technically in Europe, it has been destroying many of its lovely old buildings and replacing them with huge and often ugly skyscrapers. This is especially the case in East London.
You're 100% correct. Europe cities have beautiful old 500+ year old buildings n they want to preserve them. In Lisbon only high-rise buildings allowed are in the city borders.
On my family property in Gjøvik, Norway, we have an outhouse which is older than America.
America does not have history, they're an infant country so they make dumb mistakes, like a child not understanding that the square peg goes into the square peg.
@@OriginalPuro they will learn eventually.
@@ortros1 Or not!
@@cosmincasuta486 Well, considering that their oldest buildings date back to the 16th century (not counting pre-Columbian structures, of course), built by the Spaniards in Puerto Rico, they don't have their own architectural cultural legacy until the 19th/20th century. That is precisely the skyscrapers, which could be considered their architectural legacy, so no, they won't change
in my country we have 2000+ y building :D (italy)
If you want to look into more urban planning, I would suggest the channel 'Not Just Bikes'. It's a channel by Canadian who now lives in Amsterdam, he makes some great comparisons between North American and European city planning, and explains why prefers the latter.
Thank you for the suggestion!
@@NoProtocol As a Geodata-Analyst working in urban mobility, I strongly support this suggestion
You took the words right out of my out of my mouth.
@@NoProtocol On the Asian side, I'd also like to suggest a vid from the "Life Where I'm From" channel regarding Japanese zoning practices. It highlights how and why most of Japan's urban centers are pedestrian and bike friendly.
A very hated channel by all car lovers 🤣
Whenever an old building is demolished a horrendously ugly concrete monstrosity takes it place
They turned one of our old churches in our capital city into a parking lot. Do you think it helped with traffic? Answer is 'no', lol.
7:42 It's the Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) in Milan! :)
Thank you!
"Does cities require cohesion?" It's a really American thing to ask ^^ As a European, it does, it can't even be a question, it's a fact!
Cities need more than cohesion; they need a soul. When structures don't reflect local ideas and culture, uniformity spreads, and eventually, no place maintains a unique appearance. It's as if you are simultaneously nowhere and everywhere at the same time.Distinctive local architecture gives your city a sense of 'home' rather than just being 'any place'.
I live in Utrecht Netherlands in a area that they planned a 262 meter high building (860ft) and would be the biggest building in the country at that time. The plan failed but i do remember the architect interview that told me everything i needed to know 'It would be seen by 5M people (about 30% of the country) on a daily basis'. He seemed very pleased and mostly motivated by forcing a large part of the country to look at his giant ..... all day ...
I remember that as well (Amersfoort here). It's just as well that the plan fell through.
@@thevoid5503 i am not against higher buildings myself but his 'logic' seemed a little off. What is amazing is how these plans are born and how first drawings look when they are discussed. The last plan in that area called for a 140meter building and both that 262meter and 140meter building they show surrounding areas that simply don't exists unless they take down a large part of the city.. these images are all made up to look good with buildings around it that don't exists, parks that somehow pop up to create the 'view' they want to sell...
They could just build a much smaller version in Rotterdam. It's not like anythjng over there can still be messed up any further.@@scb2scb2
What do you mean by forcing? I think it is the opposite. Seems like you are forcing owner of private property to not build a skyscraper on his land.
Smells like socialism to me.
I visited Sagrada Família and went inside, in my trip to Barcelona and its awesome, really detailed.
Also if you go look the first picture of S.F. that they took in 1800s when it was being built, its crazy how they built Barcelona almost from scratch, it was deserted, and now look at the city.
Wasn't the city built over 2k years ago? Crazy that it stayed small-ish for that long, then. Then again, so did Berlin iirc and Rome was a village again until recently, so maybe not that crazy
Damn it was closed when I went there.
07:38 Its the "Bosco Verticale" in Milano, Italy.
In London specifically, the bed rock is clay. Skyscrapers are being built now but it's much harder to do on soft rock. I used to have a view of the Gherkin from my flat until a skyscanner was built next door, after that it was more like 50 windows with a view into my bedroom.
At least it have left you with a possibility view into 50 bedrooms too
@@kasperkjrsgaard1447 lol. They were all above my bedrooms height, I could only really see the ceilings. I was on the 4th floor but because the new building was so massive the flats didn't really start until a 6th floor kinda height.
Green Onions, for the Win!! I have listened to this, really, just about all of my life, I am 6 years younger than the song, thanks for putting it back on my radar... Peace!
Love that old modem sound you put in. 😂 I was sitting ther like : "Am I hearing that or.. I am, that's so funny!" you're so cool! ❤
haha, same. :D
One of the other reasons that other options are used instead of skyscrapers is one of efficiency. Building a single skyscraper requires more utilities, money, time and preparations. Also there are a lot more permits that are required as higher buildings can interfere with radar etc.
Another point is that unlike in the US, in Europe zoning is less black and white. In the US there seem to only be two types of zoning, freestanding detached housing and non-zoned areas. Where the non-zoned areas are often limited in size meaning that any density of housing/offices needs to be done in a much smaller area, making skyscrapers the ideal solution. In European cities there is a large area zoned for multiple types, meaning the density of housing/offices can be spread over a much larger area. This means there is much less need to optimize the density of housing/offices on a very small footprint area.
As noted in the video, as populations of cities in Europe increase more high rises are needed to facilitate the increased demand potentially also making sky scrapers more attractive.
Hi NP, a great video from the B1M. I love tall buildings but I admire European cities that have chosen to take the opposite path and preserve their historic centres and mix it with low rise modern architecture. Very interesting!
This past week B1M published a video on Christchurch's long road back to rebuilding their city after the 2011 earthquake; focusing on their cathedral. Well worth a watch or a reaction video.
While Australian cities have taken the American road with tall buildings in the centre of town and sprawling suburbs; my city of Melbourne also produces some pretty slick buildings, tall and small. If not familiar, def worth a gander in your spare time. 🌁🌁🌆🌆
When admiring skyscrapers from a distance, we should also be mindful of what's on the inside. There are exceptions, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Space Needle in Seattle, and residential skyscrapers do exist, but mostly skyscrapers are office blocks, with bland open-plan or cubicle-filled spaces, repeating uniformly through most of the floors.
So when you see skyscraper office blocks, their presense is also an imprint of a certain type of corporate culture, and a certain organisation of cities, where workers are supposed to live in one zone, commute to a different zone where they're supposed to do menial work, before commuting back home to repeat the cycle. To be sure, there are lots of bland offices in low- and mid-rise development as well, but skyscraper offices are a tell-tale sign that the culture surrounding work and city planning is stuck in the past.
Not a huge fan of skyscrapers but some in London are quite cool, the Gherkin, the Walkie Talkie, the Shard, and some of the ones in the Canary Wharf/ Docklands area are quite cool as well. They should be kept well away from historic buildings though. In the 60s some concrete monstrosities were put up next the St Paul's Cathedral which was not great. As long as they are in areas of the city where redevelopment is needed it can work.
I am with you about not being emotionally connected to any skyscrapers. There is a part of me who is fascinated by science and technology and thinks it is cool that they exist, but it is more of an intellectual appeal. I certainly wouldn't want to live in one, especially after 911.
No Protocol Awesome Video Today!!🔥🐐🐐💎
While not about skyscrapers, I would highly recommend "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. It's set in the Middle Ages, and is about a man whose dream is to build a cathedral. A number of years ago, I visited Edinburgh castle, and my appreciation of it was greatly enhanced because of what I had read in that fascinating book. BTW, if you look at the New York City skyline from either the Hudson River or East River side, you'll notice that the southern end of Manhattan features many skyscrapers, and then, as you look north, the buildings are quite small, and then the skyscrapers reappear as you approach midtown (Empire State Building). The reason is a feature of where the bedrock is located. The area immediately north of lower Manhattan does not contain the bedrock necessary to support tall buildings, but as you move further north, it is present again. Interesting video. As always, love ya.
True, the geologic situation is important.
Smart, great comments, reacting on my favorite channel B1m, plus really cute, subscribed!
Just listened to "La Leyenda del Tiempo" by Camarón de la Isla. The vocals remind me of Gypsy Kings. Of course, "Green Onions" is an American classic. Thanks for the video and recommendations! 👊😎
Camarón es un genio absoluto en su arte muy posiblemente el mejor que ha habido según todos los expertos; Gipsy Kings es un grupo pop- flamenco de mucha menor calidad y con mucho sonido enlatado si fuera por ellos el flamenco seguramente no sería patrimonio UNESCO saludos
you are an enigma! hehe, architecture, with a hint of musicality at the end! keep up the great work please! big love to all people :)
Megatall - 600 metres or higher
Supertall - 300 to 599 metres
Skyscraper - 150 to 299 metres
High Rise - 50 to 149 metres
Medium Rise - 20 to 49 metres (or 5-10 stories)
Congrats on 100k subs. Well deserved.
Easily one of the better channels on the platform.
Love the way you handle the topics of the vids, very refreshing. 🙏🧡
For those interested in buildings and architecture in general DamiLee goes into details on how/why this stuff is made.
yay! ArchiBeans!
There's definitely a balance - London manages this quite well, but London is geologically constrained in where skyscrapers can be built anyway - if there's enough cash on the table you can deal with almost any geological constraint, but there's almost never infinite money available. The deep clay in London means you need a lot of very very deep piles so outside 3-4 areas they're pretty impractical. The constraints on London geologically has let to quite a lot of innovative buildings - the new Google HQ for example at Kings Cross is a massive skyscraper: but on its side - and as a result is really interesting.
as a child, my dad warned me to never live or work in a building that is higher than the local FD's ladders.
anywhere above that, and you're on your own in an emergency.
Booker T and MGs were the legendary house band of the Stax Studios in Memphis. Green Onions was made-up by the band jamming with no initial intention of making it into a record.
I live in rural England. A village with a population of 5300
It takes me a 5 minute walk to get to a grocery shop with everything I want. A 10 minute drive to a superstore with everything I need and when I was a kid every school, every shop, cinemas, bowling and every other form of entertainment was within a 50 minute bus ride or a 30 minute drive.
My mum lives in the outskirts of Newcastle. She has pretty much the same experience except shorter bus rides.
Yes, we don't want Skyscrapers because they're ugly and destroy the scenery. But also we don't need skyscrapers. There's no central hub we need to be close to. And if something is far away, we have plenty of public transport to be able to access it easily. Even kids can freely travel without the assistance of their parents to drive them.
I think that skyscrapers are just unnecessary for us at the moment. But we are slowly gaining the need for more housing space and I imagine we'll see more skyscrapers like this dude said.
Warsaw even thought it's way older than the US itself was destroyed in over 80% during WW2 so it was possible to kinda build it from the ground with it's modern purpose so the city feels more open, wider etc. so more space for skyscrapers. A lot of old buildings were also rebuilt though.
The big problem with skyscapers in Europe is that the infrastructure can't support the additional population density. They might mention that in the video but I haven't watched it all yet and I'm too impatient to wait until the end.
Example. I live in Manchester UK and out of my apartment window I can count 11 cranes building buildings 20+ stories. The roads here can't cope with the thousands of additional people. I love the progress and seeing the city grow but really they should limit the high rises to places where the supporting infrastructure can be built around them instead of making it take me 30 minutes to get out of town in the car now when it used to take 5 minutes a few years ago.
I'm a 68-year-old Mancunian. When I was small, my older brother used to take me to 'town', 'to watch the skyscrapers being built'! Those being the Piccadilly Plaza and the CIS building (which had the accolade of being the tallest building in the UK until the Post Office tower in London was built.
The towers built around Deansgate are impressive in their height but hardly inspiring in their design.
An interesting fact; The Artdeco Sunlight House, on Quay Street, would have been the UK's first 'skyscraper' had the council not rejected the original plan of 40 storeys in 1932. It has an impressive swimming pool in the basement lit by an atrium; I went swimming there many years ago.
@@astrecks I believe they have to look like that for planning reasons but that’s just something I heard. I’m in a conservation area on deansgate so hopefully we won’t get a tower block next door for a while yet
@@ruk2023-- I've read that The Deansgate (pub) is going to be surrounded by really tall buildings. From the artist's impression, it will look like the building from the film 'Batteries Not Included'!
@@astrecks good film but better pub. Shame that’s happening. With todays drone and robot technology maybe they will make a real version of the film
I wish i was as smart as you. Your obvious joy in knowledge and every thing else is an inspiration. Best regards.
Stewart Hicks has a good channel on architecture/city planning. He's based in Chicago so uses it for a lot of examples. His video on the design of the city's skyline is excellent.
A book I would recommend is Tom Wolfe's "From Bauhaus to Our House"
I think you would find Kowloon interesting. Its pretty amazing the place didnt fall over like a card house.
Europe is by far the most developed continent on the planet, so there isn't much of a need for skyscrapers. Similarly, Europe is the continent with by far the most documented history. There's more documented history in Europe alone, than in all the other continents combined, and that history is visible in the architecture, that makes countless of Europeans cities look like fairytales.
I think it would be so sad for skyscrapers to appear across Europe, and I hope the European people keep insisting on preserving their architectural culture and history. As demonstrated across all of Europe, buildings and cities with architectural cultures dating thousands of years back, are still as modern and well-built as a skyscraper would be. They just happen to be a lot more beautiful.
Stewart Hicks and City Beautiful both do excellent videos on architecture and planning.
In any European wealthy city there is call for skyscrapers, but within architecturally rich areas it's fair to have restrictions. Old industrial land, such as disused docklands, are often great options to allow compromise, as they tend to have been built away from historic city centres.
... take a look at "Hamburg Speicherstadt" or "Leipzig Baumwollspinnerei" for an argument against that assumption that "old useless industrial lands" are/could be used for high-rise ^^
Every corrupt place with weak, incompetent and/or corrupt governance has a demand for skyscrapers.
I live in Denmark and we have very few buildings that could be considered skyscrapers. The tallest building in Denmark is called “Lighthouse” and is 142 meters tall. Western Europe’s second tallest building was supposed to be built in Denmark. It was called “Bestseller Tower” and was planned to be 317 meters tall (only the Eiffel Tower in Paris would be taller). It was supposed to house a large hotel, conference rooms, offices, cafés, restaurants and around 60 shops. It got cancelled in 2020 for various reasons, less than a year after the project was approved.
Tall buildings in Denmark are usually met with opposition in the local population because they don’t “fit in” with the surrounding landscape. This also applies to things like very tall wind mills which we have a lot of (they are very unpopular locally).
In Athens there aren't any skyscrapers because they will block the view of the acropolis. Recently tho they began constructing 7 of them down to the coast
One funny example is the Montparnasse tower in Paris which is the most hated building in the city since its the only highrise, with a common joke being that the best view of the city is from the top of the tower
Tour Montparnasse, Eiffel Tower and Grande Arche lie on an Axis.
Ray lamontagne, you can bring me flowers.
Sharon Jones and the dap kings, window shopping.
Celeste, love is back.
Music recommendations 😉
I think we're gonna see some, but not the extremely big and tall ones. In my home country of Sweden you can see some "almost skyscrapers" in some cities having been build. For example Gothia Towers in Gothenburg and Turning Torso in Malmö, they are tall compared to rest of the structures but dwarfed next to a "real" skyscraper.
It's definitely a preference thing and very much a try to preserve our skylines with church towers and other old buildings still taking front seat over more brutalist modern buildings. There is a movement among architects in sweden and I think it has spread pretty much world wide called "design upproret/arkitekt upproret" (design/architect rebellion) trying to work against the modern style buildings and urging architects to design classically once more.
Great video and thoughts on a fascinating subject, thank you.
Skyscrapers are only in very specific circumstances economically feasible. As soon as you exceed a certain height, the construction and maintenance costs per cubic meter of enclosed space starts to rise exponentially. Therefore most skyscrapers in Europe, but also in parts of Asia are not built for economic reasons, but for prestige and powerplay. In Paris, Frankfurt, London all of the highest skyscrapers were built by big financial corporations to show off (or by other players believing in big phallus symbols), not because they had another use for them than advertising their brands (they had in some cases over years problems to find tenants for many of the offices within the new skyscrapers). Only in places where the base area is very limited (Manhattan, Singapore, Hongkong, ...), skyscrapers can make sense in a objective cost-benefit analysis. (New construction methods can move the "critical height" to an higher level, but not change the principle as such.)
Not to mention the traffic and service implications. Skyscrapers are incredibly silly. It's particularly ridiculous combined with the suburban style, which seems to be imported at the same time. Incredibly concentrated traffic... with nowhere to live, and nowhere to relax, and nowhere to do anything, really. It's just a big extended middle finger to "the poor" (including your other "rich friends" who have a slightly smaller pen... eh, skyscraper).
Sve što vidiš, to je istorija. Teško je to shvatiti, za nekoga ko živi u državi koja istoriju nema. Ja sam iz Srbije i svaka daska u ogradama u mom selu je starija od države u kojoj živiš.
Hahaha strašna vam "istorija" 😂😂...od nje se dobro živi kao, zato svi i bježite iz Srbije na Zapad, a nitko ne ide sa Zapada u Srbiju da gleda vaše daske u selu
I hate Skyscrapers. No history. No feeling with it. It is just make for money making I think. I like flowers, trees, animals. Why watching human making stones. I will move away.
We don't want them. We are opposed to them.
Ancient Egyptians:
I hate pyramids. No history. No feeling with it. Just made for the vanity of the ruling class. I like flowers, trees, animals. Why watching humans making stones. I will move away.
Ancient Egyptians:
I hate pyramids. No history. No feeling with it. Just shapes for the vanity of the ruling class I think. I like flowers, trees, animals. Why watching human making stones. I will move away.
@@madjarov42 We visit and are amazed of the age of pyramids, of the probable techniques by what they were build but apart from that? A facade of 4 empty triangles leaning against each other. Would you really like to find your 2-story-home suddenly beside those structures, taking possibly away most of the sunshine of your house. Is the surface of a pyramide really attractive rather than merely interesting in a engeneer's perspective?
Personally I think I would pretty soon willing to relocate away from that behemoth. By the way by erecting a pyramid as well as a business tower one has to remove quite a bit of urban life. The new building wouldn't contain much companies I would probably visit (as in way too expensive, too posh). So for most neighbors it would be a big useless space they have to go around to find the places they need. Building enough of these "useless spaces" and people migrate away from them leaving only day-users and by six o'clock these areas are entirely deserted - look at American city centers! Compare them to centers of towns where people actually live!
We respect and love our history and its architecture, our IDENTITY !
I'm not an urban planner, but I've grown to really have a different view of them, or at least, the best of them. I really do think that largely they work for the people; Even if the pressures in some countries come from the govt., the solutions are always about the people either way. I've come to this by watching a lot of videos about roads vs. streets in the Netherlands vs. everywhere else, especially the US. Zoning laws, incentives, and a really interesting balance therein have created some amazing things for the people.
I'll leave you with a quick interesting fact: In N. America wood was cheap, so bigger buildings were made of wood. When fire broke out the damage was catastrophic to whole cities. In Europe wood was already expensive, so larger multi-use buildings were already made of stone or brick, so fires, though still common, were not quite as catastrophic. Zoning laws precipitated from this, leading to US building of 4 stories or more requiring 2 staircases (for escape). This makes certain kinds of buildings not worth building, and apartments less valuable due to layouts that 2 staircases lead to. Combine this with the exclusionary and myopic zoning for 1. Commercial, and 2. Single family homes (no third option) and you get these strange car-centric cities that dominate the USA (I think you can figure out how A leads to B). Long and short: Urban Planners have really cool jobs that are more concerned with the movements of people than one would imagine.
I would like to recommend 2 "Isaac Arthur" videos on the subject.
"Arcologies" and "Ecumenopolises".
An interesting thing happened in Vienna - we have a few areas in the city, especially on the eastern bank of the Danube, where they built several tall buildings - dunno if they qualify as skyscrapers. This has caused that area to become extremely windy. On the other hand, Vienna is one of the few cities in the world where you can shoot a helicopter chase between skyscrapers. I think they shot the last Tom Cruise film here.
A "highrise" has a practical definition that can change based on geography. A high rise from a emergency services standpoint is described as any building taller than the responding fire department's tallest ladder's capabilities. So a building taller than the tallest ladder is a high-rise
In Germany, Frankfurt has high-rise buildings and skyscrapers that create a "real" skyline. 18 real skyscrapers, by definition over 100m and around 100 high office buildings. There are 10 more skyscrapers in the pipeline.
Frankfurt's nickname is "Mainhattan". Main is the river that flows through Frankfurt and "hattan" is a reference to Manhattan. It is a trademark of the city and it is desirable that more high-rise buildings be allowed to be built there.
Of the approximately 200 high-rise buildings throughout Europe, 66 percent are in these six cities - London, Paris, Frankfurt, Warsaw, Moscow and Istanbul.
I think you would enjoy “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett. A fictional story about the building of a cathedral in 12th century England.
7:15 🤣🤣 nice little sound edit lol i laughed 🤣
Greetings from the Netherlands
That's a sound I hadn't heard in a while!
@@Outland9000 AHAHA Yes :3
My first thought, pretty much, was a quote from a Rowan Atkinson sketch, "Modern architects? Scum of the earth. Eveything they design looks like a dustbin with a bicycle on top"
Books: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet (a series, can't recall the other titles off the top of my head), about the building of a cathedral back in he 1100s I think
I mean in many cities there's the historic center and the downtown financial district is an hour drive away. So it's not like you can't have both. But of course something is sacrificed. Farming land, recreational areas or suburban living space. Normal people here would just hate to live in the shadow of the towers of Babylon.
I guess the problem lies in the need for an ever growing population to grow the economy as to not "fall behind" to be cramped into the finite city space for some reason.
Good channel btw no BS and incredible width of background knowledge.
10:46 If you're interested in urban planning, you should check out Not Just Bikes. He's a Canadian that moved to the Netherlands. "Why City Design is Important (and why I hate Houston)" is a good video to start with. I'm Dutch myself and NJB really opened my eyes about the importance of good urban planning and how I took everything for granted.
No. He's a cultist and a fanatic. Also totally dishonest.
Great music selection, loved them all Thanks 😁
Thanks for checking them out!
Once i had a love , original Heart of glass ,also by Blondie ?
Yes, they’re both by Blondie! Just different versions
Bedankt
Thank you as well (:
You're welcome, great videos!
Soy Español y no cambio ningun rascacielos por la belleza de los campanarios centenarios en el horizonte de mi ciudad.
The steps on skyscrapers are a great excerise.
How fast the Empire State Building was constructed is amazing
I looked at Skyscrapers as in indication of the power of a city but after watching this i dont feel the same
In order to preserve historical city centers, the construction of skyscrapers in many European cities is only allwed in the outskirts, off the limits center limits. One example is the la Défense business district in Paris (constrcuted from the 1970's on) which actually is outside the city of Paris per se. Actually, the standards for the construction of buildings are pretty demanding everywhere from the moment you're close to a historically classified building or area, city, town, or village. One small example: in the village where I live tiles are not allowed on roofs, only slates or slate-looking roofs , in order to preserve the local traditional architecture.
I had my office in one of those Chicago skyscrapers (the previous tenant was the Daily Racing Form).
Great video, i would pick Blondie it brings back roller rinks to me, again im old.
3:40 Because beauty is actually important.
Fred Mills (who run's 'The B1M') is well known in my industry (construction). While all their video's are interesting, one of the more interesting ones is on building the world's tinniest skyscraper.
And I read it like BIM not "B One M".
@@snurfli5605 it is a play off of "BIM" (Building Information Modeling" but it's definitely "Bee One Em".
One building that I find intriguing is The Interlace in Singapore. It's not quite a skyscraper at 88.7 m but the 6 levels of staggered blocks is oddly appealing to me.
Here is a musical suggestion to go with futuristic architecture: Essenger - "Empire Of Steel"
ua-cam.com/video/MX8V45bqgOU/v-deo.htmlsi=ASb9MmyYFAdIwNKl
I live in New York and trust, you’re always hearing or seeing something
there are skyscraper looking buildings in riga too, but sparse and relatively not too tall.
What I think about soviet blocks? I've seen them in Slovenia and Slovakia my last vacation and when they are well maintains and renovated they don't look bad at all. A bit bland, sure. But not exactly ugly either. And much better then what they remove: homelessness. People living there own their own flat and everyone gets one (at least that was how they worked during the cold war). Not very inspirational or pretty but they got the job of housing everyone in a decent place with basic amenities done very well.
I spent two weeks in Warsaw, there were a few skyscrapers, but most of the city was what had been rebuilt after ww2 (I’ll call it “classical architecture”) and also what was built during the soviet era (namely, commie blocks).
For an American who had never seen Europe before, it was all breathtaking, each for different reasons.
"Why We Can’t Build Better Cities (ft.Not Just Bikes)" - Philosophy Tube
It even comes with its own book recommendation.
The rebuilding of Europe after WWII and the desire to return to how it was, rather than modernise, is similar to London after the fire of 1666. Christopher Wren and others planned to remake London in a grid design, like New York, but the poorer and the criminal elements wanted the snaking, narrow streets returned as they were, so in a rare case of majority opinion rules, the original layout was remade.
Istanbul is actually very much also on a shortlist of architectural innovators. Very much overlooked, but jumping ahead rapidly. And I'm talking in terms of cities actually executing projects, not the source of the architectural bureaus behind it, because western European architecture firms are driving development in eastern European cities ready to embrace this, often due to newfound independence from earlier neighbouring oppressors.
Liverpool has a policy *not* building high buildings. They have a small part of the fringes of the city centre where _in theory_ they are allowed. Even then they clip the heights on planning application.
It's not government vs the people, it's big business vs the people, when developers, banks and corporations capture regulatory authorities like planning departments of city governments. "High rise" I believe only applies to housing, whereas skyscrapers are always commercial office space plus maybe a restaurant or two. And yes, apartment blocks don't go that high, because it's not safe or convenient to live too high off the ground and be dependent on elevators when you have to go outside to shop and get to church and everything else. Office workers don't live there, and they only have to be in an office building during the working day, and then they get to go home somewhere more normal and healthy.
In Munich for example there are restrictions on builing high rises inside the middle ring (city highway), that is surrounding the city center, that are taller than the 99 m high towers of the Cathedral. Outside the roughly 5 km in diameter rings higher buildings are allowed. The only amerinanized city in Germany is Frankfurt with it's financial district and it's band towers.
I'm not a fan of skyscrapers even thought I used to work in construction and build them. I worked on a couple in The UK, Dubai and in east Asia. I love the architecture in Italy. If you go to the top of the Vatican and look out over Rome, there's nothing quite like it. So much history. Florence is also a beautiful city I have visited. I look at the skyscrapers in Britain alongside mid rise post war gray tower blocks and I just find the architecture depressing. There are much more beautiful towns and smaller cities with old buildings that speak to the heart much more.
5:28 To clarify this is not a diss. He is not referring to something against the influence of citizens local to Brussels and the region. European Union parliament sits in Brussels so EU legislation on the matters are often described as "coming from Brussels". That's what this man is getting at.
5:27 Architects do look often and they always have a wider plan.
B1M is a brilliant channel. I think you would love his videos as he looks at the massive engineering projcts going on around the world. Never mind skyscrapers, China is rapidly building whole cities.
China has many cities but they also have urban areas too
Naples (Italy) has a district of skyscrapers: Centro Direzionale.
It is not just about not liking something: You must consider that you were coming from an era where many European cities had grown more or less organically into something very historical, and the people living there still remembered those cities from before the wars. The new stuff was just a jumble without charm where before, it may have been a jumble, but WITH charm.
Why you got the old handshake modem sound? Brings back memories and not from when i was a kid. I spent 3500 bucks on a pentium 66. Then 1 month later it was old. Like me now lol
Should have seen the price of RAM when the only factory - in South Korea - that produced one of the main components burned down in the '80s. I had just bought a 286 laptop and wanted to upgrade the ram. It was $900 CAD for something like 250 Mb.
@@jimgore1278 it had to be more. I bought 4 megabytes for 400 dollars. Not giga, mega lol. 1990s that was the norm 100 bucks per megabyte. Down from 200 dollars.
It's not about holding back, we just don´t see the need. In Sweden we have rather hard rules about packing people to tight. What ever you do comes with a cost, balancing it makes a better society.
I think it's also because of the public transportation, if you can travel by subway, bus, tram, for far less time than using a car, it doesn't matter that much to live a bit outside of the city
Not a Brusseler, but I have been there several times and I kind of like mix of new and old in general. Generally the high-rises are built around train stations which make sense. A few ones are really ugly but in general they look okay.
Being from Gothenburg, Sweden I have to mention the newly erected Karlatornet at 245 meters.
Khruangbin released their latest single called "May Ninth" a couple days ago and Ive been listening to it non stop. Awesome song, more to the chilled side 👌
I haven’t heard it yet! I will right now
I like it already, the guitar is smooth
@@NoProtocol 🥰
Skyscrapers may be a very efficient area use, but with all other things it's the contrary.
They need more building material than normal or mid-rise buildings with the same floor space and more carbon intensive ones at that, they are less energy efficient and need more maintenance. And they create way more traffic in one area rather than spreading it out.
The are the like urban sprawl, just in a vertical direction.
Love the sweater 👌
Thank you (:
The word skyscraper was adopted from sailing and was a term for the tallest of masts,in buildings it is a building of more than 150 metres in height,or around 40 stories. So more of the buildings you see are skyscrapers than you think...there are hundreds in new your city for example. People just see the tallest few and assume that they are the skyscrapers yet one much smaller is still technically a skyscraper. The really tall ones are categorised as "super tall" and there are only 17 of these in new York,this is what people think is a scraper yet as I said there are hundreds,they just look less impressive when next to a super tall.
So beautiful
In addition to the issues around building regulations in London there is also the issue of the city being built on clay based foundations which makes it more problematic.
When i was in St. Petersburg for work, they told me that skyscrapers are forbidden to build in the city. After a few days near the coast i saw one. They told me that it was the headquater of Gazprom, so obviously this was allowed by the government.
There's a fair bit of Brutalist architecture where I am. I suspect their prevalence in eastern Europe is due to the practicality and simplicity. We have plenty of high-rises and a few skyscrapers but as I understand it their construction is more heavily influenced by market forces, followed by zoning. Office buildings and gentrified high-rises can recoup more costs per meter of land than other options. Assuming they can fill them. The souring economy has diminished the number of customers willing or able to afford their planned pricing models.
TBH I see most suburbs to be as ugly as cookie cutter soviet apartments.
I've seen two architectural or zoning related videos recently and interesting enough to recall. The later was about team who used some game design software to create a completed 3D rendering of Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67. "How a 23-Year-Old Solved Urban Sprawl" -The B1M
The later was about "Georgism" and municipal land taxation. It's an interesting take that I could see being useful in some circumstances. But it works better for some than others so there are detractors.
I haven't heard an audible fax or modem handshake in ages. I hope it continues to meme on in the future. I think Warsaw has a few scrapers too.
"That building" @07:38 is likely the "Bosco Verticale" in Milan.
You might be onto something with cultural resistance. I vaguely recall reading that there were some prolific "not in my back yard" opponents to the Eifel Tower's construction in Paris.
Idk what the definitions are for skyscrapers, but I can say that the height records only really started to climb after steel frame construction came into play. Brick and masonry had some practical limits.
Booker T. There's a classic. It's close enough to the ball park to that I feel justified in suggesting some "Black Keys". They have some range, but maybe their song "Lonely Boy" would be a good place to start if you're unfamiliar with their work.
Europe is start building skyscrapers, but in specific areas to keep preserved buildings protected.
But Europe is not exempt from high rises..
Futurism in architecture is definitely more prominent in Asia and Rich Arab countries.
But Europe mixes beauty with some modern architecture to remind people that we still have beautiful buildings.
A few reasons i guess, first would be that they clash with our classic architecture, second reason i can think of is many European countries having soft soil, third reason might have to do with experiences with blocks of flats, instead of raising the value around them, they actually lowered the value because people do not like to look at big blocks of concrete.
We're used to having a lot of nature being part of our cities and direct line of sight, tall towers do not fit into that.
And i guess we're far better at urban planning than most nations outside of Europe, we strike a balance with the surroundings of a city (or try to), plan transportation and everything around that.
Do we do it better? i do not know, i'm not an urban planner, do we do it "prettier"? absolutely, most towns, cities and villages have a charm about them, old architecture combined with new architecture that has to fit in, regardless where you go, we want things to be spacious and open, sky scrapers do not fit into that ideal.
What you may think of as futuristic cities, like Dubai and Tokyo, I think of them as a dystopian future.
Just about the only thing wrong with the Paris "skyline" is the Montparnasse Tower, the only true Skyscraper. It just ruins the whole look of the city, which is dominated by the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur Cathedral.
5:28 - They really need to focus on improving the taste of their sprouts. 😊
AdamSomething has interesting videos on urban planning - the one about commie blocks gives a nice overview on Soviet architecture and the one about Dubai is a rant that more folks need to hear :D
Just commented the same. His Dubai video is so good and Dubai is so bad.
I can say this with confidence, i have a 1000h SimCity education in Urban Planning.
Sadly, although London is technically in Europe, it has been destroying many of its lovely old buildings and replacing them with huge and often ugly skyscrapers. This is especially the case in East London.
That's why Europe has such beautiful cities