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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The Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Axis Mundi
Pictured here is the campanile at the Pisa Cathedral, known worldwide as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tower is world-famous for its iconic four-degree lean, and has become a major tourist attraction for the town of Pisa. This lean has allowed the campanile to become a symbol of the city. If you think of Pisa, you think of the Leaning Tower. This status and appeal comes from the campanile’s lack of vertical equilibrium, which forces visitors to confront the axis-mundi. It’s a unique tension that’s rooted in verticality.
Sir Christopher Wren’s Church Steeples
Sir Christopher Wren was an English architect best known for his Renaissance and Baroque church designs that commonly featured conspicuous steeple designs. Pictured above are drawings of two such examples. These steeples are massive in scale, and they dwarf their adjacent church buildings. This mismatch of scales suggests that Wren considered these towers to be much more important than the churches they accompany. Through their height, Wren was using verticality to announce the presence of his buildings.