Welcome to On Verticality. This blog explores the innate human need to escape the surface of the earth, and our struggles to do so throughout history. If you’re new here, a good place to start is the Theory of Verticality section or the Introduction to Verticality. If you want to receive updates on what’s new with the blog, you can use the Subscribe page to sign up. Thanks for visiting!
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Albert Robida’s Eighteen-Story House
The above illustration was drawn by Albert Robida for his 1883 novel Le Vingtième Siècle, or The Twentieth Century. The novel describes a future vision for Paris in the 1950’s, focusing on technological advancements and how they affected the daily lives of Parisians. Here he shows what an apartment building might look like.
Satan Overlooking Paradise by Gustave Doré
This is an illustration by Gustave Doré for John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. The poem deals with the biblical narrative of original sin, and the first half of the story focuses on Satan and his fall from heaven. In this part of the story, Satan is standing on a mountaintop, overlooking the earthly paradise and considering his plan to corrupt Adam and Eve. Milton is using verticality to enhance the drama of the moment, and by placing Satan in such a high place it allows him to examine his motivations more clearly.
Flying Carpets and the Power of Flight
Flying carpets are the things of folk tales and fantasy. They are magical objects with the power of flight, and anyone who owns one has considerable power over those who don’t. They can quickly transport their owners across the land at great speeds, and they allow their owners to achieve verticality. Here’s a look at the folk tales that established the myth of the flying carpet.
En L’An 2000 : In The Year 2000
Imagine a future where flight is commonplace, and the skies are full of flying people, including police officers, fire fighters, postman, and countless others, zipping around above our heads. That’s what a group of artists led by Jean-Marc Côté dreamed up in 1899 when asked to imagine light-hearted inventions that would contribute to the future. The result was a series of nearly 90 vignettes called En L’An 2000, which means In the Year 2000. The pieces were originally printed as cigarette cards, and later made into postcards. They include a variety of subjects, with a distinct focus on flight and flying machines.
The Tower of Babel : A Parable of Verticality
The Tower of Babel is arguably the most storied myth about the human need for Verticality that has survived from antiquity. It’s a legendary tale of a clash between Ego and God, and it acts as a starting point for any worthwhile history of human towers or skyscrapers. Let’s take a look at why it’s been so influential, and why it encapsulates our struggles with Verticality.
The Unpretentious Philosopher
Check out the above illustration. It’s the frontispiece to Louis Guillaume de La Follie’s science-fiction work La philosophe sans Pretention, or The Unpretentious Philosopher, from 1775. What’s most interesting about it is the flying machine featured in the drawing, evidenced by the crowd of onlookers in awe of it.
The Tale of the Ebony Horse
Pictured above is an illustration from The Tale of the Ebony Horse, which is a folk tale featured in the Arabian Nights. It tells the story of a mechanical horse that has the ability to fly. Throughout the tale, the horse bestows great power on those who know how to operate it, and it illustrates the power of verticality for the rest of us who cannot fly.
Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Vertical Worldview
Dante Alighieri’s epic poem La Divina Commedia, or The Divine Comedy in English, is widely considered one of the world’s greatest works of literature. It tells the fictional story of Dante and his soul’s experience after death. Throughout the story, Dante descends through Inferno, then ascends through Purgatorio and Paradiso. It’s a journey defined by the axis-mundi, and the entire work is rooted in verticality.
The Myth of Wayland the Smith
Throughout the history of myths and legends, there are myriad stories that are shared or borrowed from earlier sources, then re-named and adjusted for a different culture. Certain themes repeat themselves throughout the ancient world, and those that resonate most effectively will endure over time and evolve alongside the cultures they exist in. The myth of Wayland the Smith is one of these.
King Bladud and the Myth of the Flying Man
Legends have a way of expanding through time. They exist in the collective consciousness of the people who believe them, and the ones that endure usually grow and evolve alongside the cultures and civilizations they exist in. Take the myth of King Bladud, for example. Over time his story has expanded and endured. This is because he made an attempt to fly.
Daedalus and Icarus : A Parable of Human Flight
The oldest and most storied myth of human flight is the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Any history of flight, if tracked back far enough, will find it’s inception rooted in this timeless tale of youthful hubris. Over the centuries, the name Icarus has become synonymous with over-ambition, and has inspired countless other stories relating to human flight.
Nicolas Edme Rétif’s Flying Man
The above illustration is from Nocolas Edme Rétif’s 1781 novel La Découverte Australe par un Homme-Volant, or The Discovery of the Austral Continent by a Flying Man. The fictional bird suit pictured was built by Victorin, the main character of the novel. He was in love with the daughter of a local lord, and he built a flying suit in order to kidnap her and fly her to the summit of a local mountain, where no people could reach.
Étienne Gaspard Robert’s La Minerve Airship
Pictured above is an airship design from 1803 by Étienne Gaspard Robert. Robert was a Belgian stage magician and physicist, and he also designed and flew balloons. His most famous design, called La Minerve, is pictured above. It was meant to be an exploratory vessel which would make multi-month trips around the world. Robert described the craft as an aerial vessel destined for discoveries, and proposed to all the Academies of Europe. It’s impractical, naïve, and amazing.
A Voyage to the Moon
There’s a fine line between fiction and invention. Throughout my research into flying machines, I’ve come across many fictional designs that weren’t meant to actually fly, but to evoke the idea of flight. The above cartoon is one of these. It’s a French cartoon from 1867, titled Voyage a la Lune, or Voyage to the Moon. It riffs on the idea of a bicycle that flies, and it’s got a playful feeling about it, as if it doesn’t take itself seriously.
The Man in the Moone
Pictured here is the frontispiece to Francis Godwin’s 1657 book The Man in the Moone. The story is an adventure tale about Domingo Gonsales, a Spaniard who builds a flying machine while stranded on an island. The machine is powered by a flock of large swans, held together by a wooden skeleton with a simple seat at the base for Domingo to sit. From this simple perch, Domingo flies to the Moon and back, among other travels throughout the story.
The Matrix and Verticality
I was watching the first Matrix movie a few days ago, and the ending scene stuck with me. It features the main character Neo, flying high above the city. Neo is a character that transforms into a God-like figure throughout the movie, and the end scene represents him realizing his full potential. What struck me was the writers’ choice to encapsulate this moment by showing him flying.
What We Are Coming To
If you wanted to cram every possible building type into a single structure, what might that structure look like? It’s a hell of a design problem, and the image above shows one artist’s idea of what it might look like. It’s an illustration by Grant E. Hamilton, called What We Are Coming To. It appeared in an 1895 issue of Judge magazine, with the headline ‘Judge’s combination apartment house of the future.’
The Tallest Building in The South
To hell with context. The artist behind the postcard above must have been thinking something similar when conjuring up the fantasy that was to be The tallest building in the South. I use the term artist, rather than architect or designer, because the building depicted hasn’t been designed, but rather imagined. It’s a non-functional idea for a tall building, rather than an actual building proposal.
Superheroes and Skyscrapers
It’s a common shot in superhero movies for the titular character to be shown on top of a building, looking out over the landscape and the city below. I first took notice of this trope on a recent flight while watching Venom (2018), and I began pondering just how common this shot is.