“The instinct to climb up to some high place, from which you can look down and survey your world, seems to be a fundamental human instinct.”

-Christopher Alexander, British-American architect, born 1936

Christopher Alexander is widely known for his human-centric approach to design, and the above quote comes from his book A Pattern Language.[1] Throughout the text, Alexander deals with height in a few different places, where he argues for a city made up of low-rise buildings with the occasional tall landmark or monument. His human-centric approach to design runs contrary to many of the results of verticality, such as skyscrapers and high-density city centers, but despite this he still acknowledges the basic human need for verticality in the above quote. Architects and planners have been debating the merits of density since ancient times, but there’s at least one thing each side has always seemed to agree on: verticality is a fundamental human instinct.


[1]: Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.