Building to Heaven: Expanding the Earth

Apparently mega developers architects can never seem to be satisfied until they have broken a world record or gotten an obscene amount of publicity. It's probably not completely ill-intentioned, but the abundance of exceedingly tall buildings is ever increasing and it makes me wonder what massive effects this unstoppable trend will have.

There is speculation that a skyscraper in Taiwan has caused earthquakes! If this is true (or even if the possibility is real), then building bigger doesn't really seem like a step in the right direction to combat the extreme weather that looks like it might wipe out civilization. (Although, like this Entropist article points out, it is interesting to think of physically affecting the surface of the earth in such a massive way).


earthquake-causing tower. courtesy Entropist.

I feel like it is very often that I read about someone proposing or building what will be the tallest building in the world. There is Frank Lloyd Wright's proposed mile-high , The Illinois, or the new Beijing airport (the largest building in the world right now), or the Burj Dubai, which when completed will be the world's tallest tower. Only something as culturally destructive as tourism could possibly drive this insane desire to be bigger and bigger and bigger; those who really could benefit from high design are left in the dust. According to Geoff Manaugh's BLDGBLOG, Hyder Consulting have announced that they will be building a hotel skyscraper "somewhere in the Middle East" that should be close to a mile in height.

One Shell Square is the tallest building in Louisiana, located in New Orleans (you guessed it - it's an office building for Shell Oil. Appropriate?). In a few years, the tallest building in Louisiana will be (in New Orleans) a Trump tower to be a condo hotel. I can think of nothing more inappropriate for New Orleans than that.

It may be an obvious comparison, but we've seen this obsession before: a Bible story about the people of Babylon and the Tower of Babel. The story is meant to explain the existence of so many different languages, and to establish the authority of god, so that he can assert that the only way to enter heaven is by doing what he has instructed in life so one may be lifted in death. God stops the people from reaching heaven by striking them with the inability to understand each other's languages. I have no doubt we can build to heaven these days with our technology. We are an unstoppable race. [Can you imagine people translating things on their iPhones after god strikes everyone with a different language so that they can still communicate enough to reach heaven?]

What is interesting about art depicting the Tower of Babel, is that it usually looks as if it is in the form of some sort of spiraling ziggurat, which is a typical architecture for any decent polytheist ruler's tomb.


painting by Abel Grimmer (sometime around 1600).

On the contrary, I always pictured some sort of tumbling tower of stacked up useless junk, teetering with the weight of curious sinners.


Trash Tower in Madrid. courtesy some blogger.


leaning tower of Pisa. Gravity is calling. courtesy NTU.

If we built a tower out of trash, I have no doubt we'd reach heaven. But shouldn't we go to hell for having that much trash in the first place? If some god was going to banish anyone in humanity to eternal suffering, I'm pretty sure destroying his/her planet is up there on the list of deadly sins. I guess the point is moot since they weren't allowed to build to heaven anyway.

If it was a race to heaven (and I'm sure it would be), the United States would get there first. Or, possibly, there would be a second Cold War. Communists can't go to heaven, though. Mike Huckabee for President.

Back to the literal architecture of a tower beyond its implications, is it going to take gravity getting the best of these monstrosities before we understand the value of keeping our feet on the ground? Somehow height as become associated with happiness: social status (the penthouse suite), elevation from the pain of daily life, a closeness to god (building crosses on the mountain!). What is the obsession with going up?


cross atop the Valley of the Fallen in El Escorial, Espana.

When civilization grows so tall that it wipes out plant life and we are forced to live in Paolo Soleri's Arcologies, will that be an elevated level of evolution, or making the best of a terrible situation? What about if we literally grow the size of the planet by covering it in raised civilization, arcologies? Adding new layers to the Earth, so that you have the core, mantle, crust, steel structures, and ecologies. The steel becomes a buried level of civilization. Would going below the surface of the Earth mean descending into the steel - the new underground?


an arcology. courtesy Arcosanti.

Can we expand the size of the earth as we continue to grow, overpopulate, and be forced to build up?





Would temperatures rise?

Would we live in the clouds? Would we evolve to live off of less oxygen? Would we use space shuttles instead of airplanes? Would our bodies not be able to take the pressure of traveling to its previous crust? Would the greatest archaeologists in the world be masters of repelling down through steel trusses?

Would people still try to build to heaven?

Perhaps it is a general unhappiness with the world on which we stomp; there is an appeal to getting into the clouds, being raised off of the world we've paved with waste. Once humanity reaches the clouds, will it stop building up?