This is southern Colorado is n.p.r. Station k. Or c. C. K. Or c. C h d Colorado Springs case e.c.c. Line Turkey C.C.'s Starkville and k w c c f.m. Woodland Park. Hello I'm Bridget Kendall and coming up after the news on the forum towering cliffs of concrete or glass with canyons down below seeding flood of street life buildings so tour less sometimes released with clouds I'm talking of course about the modern skyscraper today these vast buildings are found in cities around the world from London to Dubai Chicago to Shands then they shape our sky lines capture the imagination and suddenly study bait but what is the story of the skyscraper where did they 1st begin what engineering techniques made them feasible and power their popularity and what might high rise cities of the future look like I'll be joined by 3 experts on skyscrapers a museum director a cultural analyst and an architect so put on your hard hat and safety harness and prepared to join us on our skyscraper journey or on the forum after the b.b.c. News. Hello I'm Jim Lee with the b.b.c. News Iran is observing a day of national mourning for the victims of the earthquake which killed more than 400 people on Sunday President Hassan Rouhani is due to visit the worst hit area the mountainous western province of Cayman char the Iranian Red Crescent told the b.b.c. That $12000.00 residential buildings across a wide area had collapsed the B.B.C.'s Ramiro home whose across the border in Iraq says the chances of finding more survivors in Iran are thought to be slim we're hearing they're not very big Obviously it's a very remote areas that were more severely affected than others there's also the issue of getting to these areas and there's the issue of the cold many people are having to stay outside been very cold conditions and that's another big problem the authorities are facing security issues are expected to dominate the final day of the annual summit of Southeast Asian nations in the Philippines president Roderigo deter Tay began with a speech on the importance of fighting international terrorism North Korea's missile tests and rival claims to sovereignty over parts of the South China Sea will also be discussed as young leaders are being joined by counterparts from Japan South Korea and China as well as President Trump Howard Johnson in many other looks at what's on Mr Trump's agenda he'll be talking about so-called Islamic State in Southeast Asia he'll be talking about the threat of North Korea missile strikes but most important of all today is discussions about the South China Sea leaders will try to push to agree a code of conduct to govern the waters to see how this trade of ships and also who owns the waters as far as exploration of oil and other important economic issues like that they're trying to find out how they can all agree a hymn sheet that they can all sing off the u.n. Secretary General Antonio has met the berm he's leading and sounds hoochie on the sidelines of the r.c.n. Gathering to express his concern over the plight of Muslim or Hindu refugees from the Northern Rock Island. Page from Manila Here's Jonathan Head the UN's many pleas to me Amar to address the crisis in Rakhine state have until now had only limited effect the un secretary general has used his attendance at the our c.n.n. Summit in Manila to meet me a martyr facto leader and sense. She has remained mostly silent on the Rakhine crisis here choosing instead to give a speech about the empowerment of women but Mr terrace has directed his appeal to Myanmar neighbors warning that what he called the protected tragedy of the Muslims in Rakhine state could have dire consequences for the stability of the region the British prime minister to reason may has Firstly criticized Russia accusing it of meddling in elections and attempting to sow discord in the West in a speech in London Mrs May said Vladimir pro Putin's government was seeking to weaponize information mounting a sustained campaign of cyber espionage world news from the b.b.c. . More details have been emerging of how a North Korean soldier was shot and seriously wounded by his own side in an unsuccessful attempt to stop him defecting to the south one report says the soldier was hit as many as 6 times by North Korean fire as he ran across the border on Monday his wounds included want to the abdomen. Another Australian politician has been forced to step down from parliament after discovering she had Jule citizenship in a tearful address to the Senate in camera Jackie Lambie said she had just discovered she was entitled to British citizenship because her father was born in Scotland she's the 8th member of the Australian Parliament to fall foul of the constitutional ban on Jewel nationality in recent weeks the rule has wiped out the parliamentary majority of the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. A judge in Brazil has reopened a criminal lawsuit against executives of a mining company 2 years after the collapse of a dam killed 19 people 21 people who worked for some Arco have been accused of being responsible for the disaster the dam burst caused a huge mudslide which destroyed a nearby village the Brazilian government described it as the country's worst environmental disaster. For the 1st time in 60 years Italy have failed to qualify for the football World Cup finals 4 time winners of the competition were held to an illness draw by Sweden in the 2nd leg of their play off in Melanne the team's coach Jan p.l.o. Ventura spoke to reporters that it was really a sort of interest I absolutely apologize for the result not for the effort we put in all our desire to win but for the results of bridge that's the main thing that counts I know with that it's a terrible result from a sporting point of view I was absolutely sure the match showed our great determination or to get results but this is football and I think in this business a long time so I know I have to accept it b.b.c. News. Welcome to the forum from the b.b.c. World Service where you need a head for heights this week we're exploring the story of the skyscraper we're talking about those towering structures that stand head and shoulders above their peers that cause passes by to gaze up in wonder that generate headlines thanks to their bold innovations in technology taste and design from Chicago to Shanghai to buy to Taipei these Mega Structures shape the silhouettes of our city's puncturing our skylines and aspiring it seems to be ever bigger bolder and taller too but where did the skyscraper story begin in this program we're focusing on the foundations of the 1st Morton skyscrapers and for that we have to look to the United States of America. Say prepared to scale to dizzy heights as we hear about the Empire State Building the Seagram Building and more on Bridget Kendall and I'm joined by 3 experts who are going to share their knowledge with us they are Carol Willis the founding director and creator of the skyscraper museum in New York City the architect and author Thomas Leslie who's researched the rise of early skyscrapers in the place known as windy city she called and Benjamin floss who's interested in how politics and power helped to create one of the world's most iconic skylines that of New York City welcome to all 3 of you and to get us started you all involved in investigating and analyzing these buildings so tell me why does the idea of the word skyscraper fascinate you Benjamin It's a building type that is global but its origins are filled with so many interesting stories and so many characters that we don't really associate perhaps with construction. Writ large each one of these has the capacity to tell us a whole lot about where we came from but also where as cities and societies we're going to miss what about you well there's always a human desire to think about or to see the fastest the best the longest the tallest I think building tall has it has a particular resonance because it has all of these almost kind of spiritual connotations you know you can go back to early mythology and there's always some foundation myth about trying to build something you know tall to the heavens and I think today the fact that these buildings are often public that we can not only see them but we can actually inhabit them makes them this kind of really amazing on inspiring experience that we can also be very intimate with them Carol you direct a museum dedicated to skyscrapers what draws people to these buildings there they become a part of people's lives they are the image of the skyline that is the kind of establishment shot of any movie it tells you where you are when you see the Empire State Building in the in the skyline and 1st moment it sets the scene when it's likely seems that we humans have always been impressed by Tool structures and keen to meet the challenge of constructing them think of the pyramids to mediæval cathedrals So maybe skyscrapers are just a recent case of an ancient urge to test the limits of what we can do is this piece from an American newspaper over a century ago suggests 2 since the world began one characteristic has always been dominant in mankind and that is the desire to create to construct a 2 places of business to build something that would serve for comfort or convenience or among you but to his greatness individually and collectively through the ages this characteristic has dominated more and more until today the advantage of the creative genius of man seems without limit every civilized country on the globe is marked with cities exemplifying the almost perfect can. Struct of genius of human and invention has always stood ready to meet every rising necessity know whether respect is this some stretching shown as in the development of the modern skyscraper was found in an article in The Sun newspaper in New York in 1912 which it seems as part of a promotion for the modern n.e.v. To something that's key to the skyscraper story and Tom do we know where the word skyscraper came from was it always just used for buildings no it has an interesting history on its own it was American slang in the middle 19th century that referred to anything that was sort of astonishingly or ridiculously tall or a high it was used to refer initially to the tallest sail on a on a full rigged ship but by the 18th sixty's and seventy's you see it referring to ladies' hats for instance and my own personal favorite is sportswriters used it to describe a very high hit ball in baseball a pop fly in baseball is often referred to as a skyscraper when it comes to defining buildings of skyscrapers Benjamin what definitions of being pulled over the years it seems that some of focused on structural materials but there's also things like height it's a back and forth and there is no consensus in my opinion among most architectural stories on this and I think the simplest explanation is a contextual which is to say in its moment when it 1st was constructed was it unusually tall and this is a reminder that what was called a skyscraper in the 1000 forty's and fifty's are now buildings we might regard merely as tall but not truly skyscrapers and indeed the skyscraper in some ways has been supplanted by the new creation which is the super tall building which sort of leaves the skyscraper commonly understood behind John what about the key engineering breakthroughs that essential to the story of these high rise buildings what was really important the initial advances that make skyscrapers tall commercial buildings radically different from other tall structures like the pyramids is. That they need to have floor area you need to have space to rent out so any development that makes the structure of the building smaller that enables people to move up and down more quickly and in the 19th century particularly any development that allows more light and air through the building walls all of these contribute in some way to continually redefining what exactly a skyscraper is so we're talking about things like the steel frames and the elevator which you mentioned earlier exactly of Carol there's also phrases in there that comes from the architect Catskill bit he said the disk I scrape is the machine that makes the last pay would you mean land is expensive in cities where there's a great demand for space so in order to create a commercial building that produces rents which is what high rise buildings are there is a high demand produces high rents produces high rise buildings it's not so much when the terminology became used in the language of critics or the daily newspapers it's the urban condition that creates them and in New York especially this happens in the 870 s. And notably 20 years after the elevator is introduced so the technology didn't drive the adoption of high rise buildings it was demand Well there are clearly different ways of looking at skyscrapers and one other place besides New York that Sun deniable essential to the story is the American city of Chicago so what was it about Chicago that meant people started building tall buildings there but Chicago was the hottest real estate market in the country probably in the world in the 18 fifties 960 s. Its geography is such that it's about a 3rd of the way across the country and it's at the southern tip of the Great Lakes so a great deal of the agricultural wealth of the nation's midsection has to be funneled through the city by railroads this creates commodities speculative market where people come in they basically bet on. The price of wheat or the price of corn but eventually land itself in Chicago becomes a commodity that people speculate on and this push is the real estate market if you can buy a piece of land and exploited usually by building offices then you can make a good amount of money off of it and the building there is initially very cheap very inexpensive and Chicago really suffers for this in 871 when all of this inexpensive lightweight mostly timber construction gets swept aside in a giant fire that burns about a 3rd of the city including all of the downtown financial district so then there was an opportunity to rebuild but that wasn't easy was it because the swampy marshy land on the edge of one of the Great Lakes wasn't exactly perfect this newspaper piece from the 8090 s. Sgt some tricky questions What shall it profit Chicago to have taken the prairie's and the wheat fields and the distant layers of wolves and bears in its municipal embrace if the proud palaces in the haunts of its Board of Trade must sink in a smother of slimy lose who shall restrain the great layer of jelly in Chicago's cake who can say when it will be released to be mixed with those sluggish sewage of the river and then to fill the streets and poor in at the windows while the thin upper crust sinks to its ultimate resting place on the lower clay. A vivid image from the New York Times that just in Chicago might be split up by jelly like ground presumably the challenge of building tool in this context Bush you know whole host of problems all of us tell us about a couple of the most interesting characters on that scene the most interesting one to me is New York architect named Peter Bodett White who as he told the story later was walking down the street in Manhattan and saw a newspaper article that says you know Chicago burned to the ground and white in addition to being an architect was a sort of tinker and he had ideas about terra cotta fireproofing and he sees the newspaper and he says Chicago is burned to the ground and I'm going there and he basically goes and sets up shop he's fairly successful at it and in fact he lives long enough to train some of the next generation of Chicago architects and even long enough to write some of their obituary in the early 20th century another key figure was William Le Baron Jenny what about him he was an engineer trained at the occult central in Paris who had been a military engineer in the Civil War He moved to Chicago and hung out a shingle as an architect and an engineer and constructed some of the most important buildings of the of the 880 s. That began to experiment with how iron and Brick together could create much more efficient structures the home insurance is probably his most famous building it's sometimes called the 1st skyscraper but it wasn't all that different from a lot of the other buildings around it it was mostly Jenny's sort of sense of publicity that let it to be called that later because the way that these skyscrapers with changing the shape of American cities didn't just inspire architects they also inspired novelists and the changing city was put on the page by Henry be fuller in his novel the cliff dwellers in which he describes the streets shaped by trade and commerce Here's some of his words from the start of his novel. Each of these canyons is closed in by a long frontage of cowering cliffs and the soaring walls a brick in line stone and granite rise higher and higher weight each succeeding gear according as the work of erosion at their bases goes on with. The work of debt ceiling flood of carts Kerridge is Bush's carobs cars messenger shoppers clerks in capitalists which surges with increasing violence for every passing day. It's a striking description isn't buildings likely screeching canyons of activity beneath you can feel the scale of it to Benjamin in places like Chicago How did people at the time react to these new things I think there was a attendant ambiguity about to what extent building tall represented an opportunity but also to what extent represent a threat to a kind of way of life where suddenly your access to Sun in air was dramatically altered by the creation of structures that change the skyline but also change the nature of life at the street scale pretty significantly as President Putin thing if you think about both these cities where the skyscrapers became so iconic Chicago or New York was exactly what the different regulations were Benjamin how do they compare in New York and Chicago when New York throughout the late 19th century and early 20th century was far less regulated than Chicago and as a result the height of tall buildings in this area was greater in New York and there were simply more of them as well it wasn't exactly a free for all but it was more to the tune of what someone like barking timber no one of which is not letting the prejudices of today impede on the potential architectural greatness of tomorrow and so you saw that if you had the technology and the investment capacity to build to a certain height and you could assemble the land to do it then prior to 1916 you were largely unfettered in New York City in a way that was not true in Chicago that changes in 1016 were there. Is a zone in law enacted that does require certain allotments of sunlight and fresh air but it does leave a certain parcel of land unrestricted which means if you're willing to build a smaller portion of your lot you were still able to build as tall as technology and economic sense would dictate and Carol some of New York City skyscrapers would newspaper buildings weren't they why was that yes well there's a stretch of New York right by City Hall Park in which our $812.00 city hall sits and right next to that was a line up through the 19th century of newspapers who drew some of their their news and their excitement from City Hall and from the courts that were congregated around there so this kind of clustering and the community of businesses that operated really concentrated the activity of newspapers right at the at the point of production and indeed these taller buildings they replaced the shorter ones for newspapers like The New York Tribune and many others built symbolic in a way buildings to proclaim their success on the skyline but they also built the factories of production because the press is were in the basement and the compositors that type were on the top floors where the sun was very good as were the editorial offices and then a floor for the writers and in between you had rental spaces well through the years New York group of course I did not think that you want one building opened the do it soon be emotionalized in the film King Kong I'm talking of course about the past State Building that elegant pointed structure in Manhattan loved by locals and tourists alike and scaled by countless visitors every year Benjamin that the Empire State Building was built in the Great Depression wasn't it his idea was this initially had been the project of a speculative investor who had purchased the right to the lots to the up to the Waldorf Astoria a grand hotel that was in decline due to prohibition. Ran a number of advertisements try to get investors he failed to do that in time to to pay off his next mortgage payments or defaults and the bank that held the loan actually was friends with a guy named John j. Rascal and they approached him and said we have this operation we think you might be interested in rescue it was the right hand man of one of the wealthiest men in United States at the time or a member the name of Pyrrus Dupont who was the head of his family's upon his corporation that had made its money in gunpowder but had branched out into chemicals and petrochemicals and the 2 of them decided that they would build an office tower and so they purchased the water for a story with the intent of demolishing it hired a firm Shreve Lemon Harman to design the project and did all this just on the cusp of the start of the of the Great Depression and what are you trying to achieve wealth for status Well they were already very very wealthy had grown quite wealthy Dupont had also been in charge of General Motors in fact is often regarded as the father of the modern corporation but in some ways they were still outsiders in New York society both Racicot and Dupont were Catholics at a time when and to Catholic sentiment in the United States was quite pronounced and so I think part of this effort initially was simply about making money but the decision to go from an economically rational building of say 80 to 85 stories to the tallest one in the world I think was driven by a set of agendas that were not strictly about making money and it's worth noting that they were joined in this task by Alford Smith who was the former 4 time governor of New York who had run for president in 1908 losing in a massive landslide to Herbert Hoover and who had during their campaign faced incredible outpouring of anti-Catholic bigotry so part of me thinks that 3 of them saw building the tallest building the world the way to stick a claim in society the other way as had been denied to them Carol ego certainly plays a role in the romance of the story of the skyscraper but the fundamental economic basis for these business buildings is a much more of a story of urban competition. Of success of location and the lesson of location location location being the 1st 3 principles of real estate investment is demonstrated to a fault by the Empire State Building which was not really close to anything it needed to create its own center of gravity which was the plan of Ras carbon Dupont to get their tycoon magnet industrialist friends to move into that building and to give it status and stature through its height and its conspicuous role in the in the New York skyline but to make it successful through its sheer size and when it came to the Empire State Building Benjamin there was one person who documented the construction a photographer called Lewis Hine who was the and how come he did this the papers of the Empire State Building corporation don't definitively answer the question of why hind that they wanted to hire a photographer Hein was a famous American photojournalist and documentarian who had really established himself many many years earlier documenting abject poverty and the condition of African-American labor throughout the South and so he was at that time about 55 that doesn't necessarily seem like an important point except that he was climbing around a construction site and he was using a 4 by 5 graph lexically quickness heavy it's bulky and he's documenting not the kind of heroic elevations of the building but rather the individual faces of many of the workers and fascinating enough the Empire State Building corporation never really uses those images in any promotional materials for the building they become famous documents in their own right but it was never entirely clear at least from the research I've done what exactly it was that the Empire State Building corporation hoped to achieve by doing this but fortunately they did it and as a result generations of art students but also architecture students have really unique insight into how no ways these super tall projects were being built at an incredible rate of speed. We would never be able to to equal in the more highly regulated building environment in Manhattan today Thomas Leslie later on Lemmon Harman the architects publish articles about it and they actually mention that safety was was a concern I think in part because an accident on the jobsite always stops things and slows things down but I think there was also beginning to around the time of the Empire State Building there was this like greater concern for the laborers the people who worked on the site that they weren't seen as they had been maybe 30 or 40 years ago as kind of a disposable commodity you start to see some by our standards very rudimentary safety precautions being taken on the Empire State including things like nets to catch people or things that fall off of the high steel Carol so I wanted to talk a little bit about the Empire State Building and the construction process which was enormously fast during the summer of 1930 the building rose at the rate of a story a day the enormous efficiency of the building process astonished everyone and this is outside of the boundaries of anything in skyscraper history the Chrysler building had been built at the same pace and likewise 40 Wall Street but they they contained in terms of floor space only about 900000 square feet or under a 1000000 square feet the Empire State Building was more than 2000000 square feet it was twice the size not height not thinking of height but of the mound of materials twice the size of any existing building at the time and by April one 193186 stories or an equivalent of 102 story building was erected and completed on its exterior and its facade and was there for the world to see and for the world to publicize because this was a world event buildings like the Empire State Building became seen as symbols of American success not just in the u.s. But across the world and even the Soviet Union didn't want to be left. Hind after the 2nd World War started and said that the Soviet Union should have its own skyscrapers Benjamin was the competition of sorts here I think there absolutely was when Cuba Khrushchev is visiting Manhattan there's all kinds of debates in the papers of the city about what should New York show Nikita Khrushchev's And so the argument is that wherever he's taking a Manhattan it has to be in order to demonstrate the superiority of the American way of life of capitalism ocracy to socialism and so it is widely agreed upon by columnists across the political spectrum that he has to go the Empire State Building and he has to be sort of forced to acknowledge that there is something here that the United States has that the civilian does not have and he famously because Khrushchev never admitted that you had gotten him said Yes Well you have this now it but just wait in 5 years we will have 5 of these ourselves You're listening to the forum on the b.b.c. World Service where we're talking about the world's 1st skyscraper has so far we've heard about how Chicago New York City began to build tool and we've been reflecting on how the word has been used over time. Next we'll turn to a German born man who made a big impact on modern architecture and helped to create an American icon the Seagram Building His name was nice van de Rohan That's all coming up after the news summary. Distribution of the b.b.c. World Service in the u.s. Has made possible by American Public Media producer and distributor of award winning public radio content a.p.m. American Public Media with support from General Motors fleet you can experience how a dedicated fleet staff an expert advisors can make a difference for your business because it g.m. Fleet dot com forward slash a.p.m. To learn more. America's opioid crisis is nationwide but it hits home in many small towns like Huntington West Virginia just a 5 year period there was over 40000000 doses in this county alone 3 women there are leading the fight a fire chief a judge and a Street Missionary their stories from a new Netflix documentary next time on one from w e n u and n.p.r. Today at 10 am 91.5 care is the c Southern Colorado's n.p.r. Station Still to come on the forum more on the dizzying story of the modern skyscraper how New York City's Seagram Building came to be a modern icon Plus we discuss futuristic visions of super tall structures to come still with me skyscraper museum director Carol Willis architect Thomas Leslie and school are on the Power and Politics of architecture Benjamin. So do stay with this we'll all be back after the summary b.b.c. News with Jim Lee a national day of mourning is being observed in Iran for the victims of the earthquake which killed more than 400 people on Sunday the Iranian Red Crescent told the b.b.c. That 12000 residential buildings across a wide area had totally collapsed security issues are expected to dominate the final day of the annual summit of Southeast Asian nations in the Philippines president Rhodri go to target a began with a speech on the importance of fighting international terrorism he referred to the recently won 5 month battle against militants linked to the Islamic state group in the southern Philippines city of Moore are we on the sidelines of the us in meeting the un secretary general internal terrorism at the Burmese leader and son Suchi to express his concern over the plight of Muslim or Hindu refugees he said that hundreds of thousands who cross from Myanmar into Bangladesh could be a source of instability and radicalisation with dire consequences for the region. Afghan officials say dozens of people have been killed in a series of Taliban attacks on checkpoints carried out over a 6 hour period in the southern province of Kandahar more than 20 police are said to being killed and 45 Taliban fighters the British prime minister tourism a has accused Russia of meddling in elections and attempting to sow discord in the West in a speech in London Mrs May said the government of President Vladimir Putin was trying to undermine free societies Italian football fans have reacted with dismay to the failure of their team to qualify for the World Cup finals in Russia next year Italy needed to beat Sweden in their playoff match but could only draw nil nil the coach g.m. Player p.l.o. Ventura has apologised to the Italian people scientists have found evidence that people were drinking wine 8000 years ago up to a 1000 years earlier than previously thought earthenware jars containing traces of wine compounds have been discovered near the Georgian capital Tbilisi the oldest jar was dated to 5980 b.c. B.b.c. News. This is the forum from the b.b.c. World Service where we're lacing up our steel takeout boots slipping on our yellow safety jackets and hard hats and inspecting the world's early skyscrapers I'm joined by 3 experts scholars all in the USA They are Carl Willis who is the director of the skyscraper museum in New York City the academic Benjamin floss he's interested in how politics and power shaped the skyline of that place and the architect Thomas Leslie he's written about the rise of Chicago in the early years of the skyscraper the late 18th hundreds so far we've looked at how Chicago built toll after its great fire and we heard about how New York looked to the skies with its newspaper ties and structures like the Empire State Building scale by everyone from fictional gorilla King Kong to the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev But let's hear now about an important person who played his part in the story of the skyscraper and indeed American architecture means found a rower he is talking to the b.b.c. In the late 1950 s. About materials including the one he was perhaps best known for glass and there's a wonderful glass is the best material you know. Possibility to drain divine out of glasses the red 2 dollars and years old. Very in the ground and nothing happened only the color they lit the ria otherwise perfect and it's a mist response that is fire like the 2nd spitting nothing will happen to the blonde only really close. So Benjamin before we talk about muses buildings tell us simply Who was he he's the German architect who was the final director of the bat house for a year or 2 when it was in Berlin just remind us what was the Bauhaus was a school of architecture and design in Germany and he eventually emigrates United States where he's offered the opportunity to take over the School of Architecture at what was then the Armor Institute of Technology in Chicago which becomes the Illinois Institute of Technology Thomas Meese had been in Germany more or less and of on guard architect but when he gets to Chicago he begins to work with the local developer to do apartment towers 1st out of concrete and then eventually out of steel and there are 2 apartment buildings in Chicago in particular it's $6880.00 Lakeshore Drive that he does in the right around 1958 there are these beautiful pristine You know they're the original glass boxes but they're also 2 of the best glass boxes and you can sort of see me stressed agonizing over every detail trying to get them as Crispin as clean as he possibly can and this is a very seductive image for architects and clients alike that you can take these complicated building programs like high rises and turn them into something that kind of seems to tell a really simple story it's you know like watching a trap piece artist make something impossible look easy and this becomes really the kind of legacy of the so-called international style the European modernism that had come up in the twenty's and thirty's this becomes its legacy in the state's office buildings that take the idea of the very pristine very crisp glass box and sort of pushed them to their aesthetic limits Seagram's is definitely one of these That's probably the most influential and certainly the best known yet the secret building in New York City finished in 1958 let's get a sense of the famous secret building Have a listen to this b.b.c. Recording made a few decades after it has been my name is Philip Johnson and I was a co-anchor can't we general I understand of failing. What we can see from here is the impression of a stadium building on Park Avenue and why it's considered so great the 1st thing that comes to mind right away is the brown. Glass part of it you see at night you're right I mean you feel like you look up in the extent of bronze it was dignified material in the world and there it is rising unique and New York nothing like the way anywhere and everywhere. Phillip Johnson who worked with me is founder of on the secret building I think it's been called the most significant movement skyscraper of the post-war era would you agree with that Carl I would call it more important for the history of architecture than for the history of the skyscraper there were certainly many sons of Seagram across America and what was said about me says it is absolutely true that that kind of perfection of detailing God is in the details is what it misphrased it and he was always very sinked all of those qualities of minimalism are apparent in the kind of definitive statement of the steel frame but it was a building kind of like a a light box a perfectly cooled perfectly lit workspace and it's those things which we they're a little appreciate now with the environmental priorities and of a whole new set of what we think of are responsible sustainable approaches to building the skyscraper the differentiate the postwar period and the period of the Empire State Building and before when windows opened when buildings were lit in the workspace was lit primarily by natural light in the postwar era technology reigns air conditioning fluorescent light bulbs open space planning changes the nature of the skyscraper tall as one of the phrases that means became one who was less is more which probably suddenly doesn't apply to the cost of the building so you can. Well that's what it was like what it was like inside it's very today we would call minimalist and so you get these impressions of a very calm very serene spaces with very elegant materials high end materials like marble but what you don't get a sense for is the mechanics that make the building go nice was very careful to hide those from you so we've got a sense of what the building that like what about the secret company why did they want this Carol I think it's important for the the Seagram Building to take that as an example of the importance of a great client with a marriage with the great architect in the case of the secret building of course this refers to the Seagram company a liquor manufacturer and the Brompton family that was building a headquarters in New York and they experimented with several different type of architects and it was at this point that a great woman and a great client Phyllis Lambert who was Phyllis Bronfman at the time came into the picture and when she was presented with the drawings of her some of the options for the competition the Seagram Building She wrote back to her father with a mostly 5 knows no no no no no and she undertook to become the head of the committee to find the correct architect because she was in college at the time and learning about modern architecture and from a very wealthy family she had access to the best taste in the world of architecture and she was connected to me sense it was she who made the connection and the ambition to make the Seagram Building into something which became really a world famous symbol of quality been around how did to Seagram Building reflect the changing culture in America at the time and this is a company that as Carol pointed out sold liquor and not high in liquor but rather sort of mid to your help at all and so you see the connection now between the skyscraper and expanding consumer economy in the post-war era in an era when politicians and corporate leaders are like this. Book In Praise of the corporation as the tool that would allow our capitalist democracy to flourish and that would be the way in which we actually eventually win the Cold War and you likewise see a link between the technology of the tall building and the sense that technology was a key ally in the Cold War for the United States it's interesting that one person who was watching American cultural life in the decades after this building went out was the writer Tom Wolfe he cost a critical eye on me through his style and with his usual wit he described New York's Avenue of the Americas as row after row of glass boxes that was a comment which came from his books in the early eighties but tell us how many other people do you think shared Tom Wolfe's criticisms of this kind of architecture Well I think the reaction to the post-war glass box was pretty widespread and I think misses reputation suffered quite a bit because of his imitators it's a difficult thing to make a complicated building seems so simple and not everyone was as good at it and I think too that there's a difference between having one Seagram's building and having a whole row of them and Park Avenue in New York in the sixty's there are a number of buildings built to the same formula and after a while it gets a little bit deadening what we've been talking today about the story of some of the 1st skyscrapers in the United States and we can continue to look at it with the Sears Tower in Chicago and skyscrapers in many other cities across the u.s. And of course far beyond the United States we see vast structures in cities like Shanghai Kuala Lumpur Shen's in the list goes on Benjamin things going to very long way haven't laid from the early days when a skyscraper could be just 10 stories tall It seems that a growing ever taller I'm going on ever faster but is there a limit on it there doesn't seem to be one as of yet and I think the interesting thing is that if you think about where the tallest building in the world now sits is that the the very forces that we associate with driving the rise the skyscraper scarcity of real estate. And therefore an incentive to build tall on what is a limited amount of land simply does not apply in the case of Dubai where you have a spine of skyscrapers surrounded by a sea of 4 to 5 story construction and surrounded by that by little or nothing and so what you see now is an increasing demand on the part of clients to build tall not in response to economic considerations or even to considerations of demand and so in that context where engineering capacities are growing at a speed a fairly significant clip and you have clients in new places with capital I think in some ways as of yet we have not seen the top you know what the opportunities are to us can you tell me about some of the safety concerns that exist around 2 buildings I'm thinking about fire risk in particular just this year for example Dubai's torch tower an enormous skyscraper caught fire a not for the 1st time and then there was also the fire that tore through the residential block grant full time in London earlier this yeah well historically fire has always been one of the biggest concerns that architects and engineers have have had because you're putting so many people into a very concentrated space and because it's very difficult to get people out of a tall building fire it has always been one of the biggest problems in high rise design and construction but we have over 150 years of experience in how fires and high rise buildings work and we have had lots of code developments so we know pretty much now how to get people out in a fire how to contain a fire and even with sprinklers how to building itself can actually suppress the fire architects and engineers have gotten very good at knowing where we need fireproof materials we've gotten very good at getting people out in a fire and designing buildings so that exit routes are intuitive fire sprinklers have a almost parallel track. Record of success in fighting fires within buildings so the thing to me that's really shocking about seeing something like the Dubai torch tower or course Grenfell is that today with proper codes and with all that we know you should almost literally never see that happen you should never see the exteriors of a building on fire like the other ongoing debates amongst design is in the engineers and architects regarding the safety of making tool buildings to live in and work and today well there's really not much debate at all about how we make buildings safe from fire we know how to do that very well and we have a very good track record if you think of the 10s of thousands of high rise buildings in the world and just how rare it is that we see a news item about a catastrophic fire in one of them I think the debates today more and more focus on what we don't know and particularly on issues of security and terrorism and what happens when there are bad agents who actually want to do harm to your building or to the people in it the debates today I think focus much more on security much more on access to the building both from public areas from streets but also from things like parking garages maintenance facilities and even areas that might be adjacent to a high rise not maybe part of it but you know across the street or something Thank you Thomas Well we've reflected on some of the discussions and questions that is shaping 2 buildings in the present day including some very serious concerns indeed but let's depart from that now and take a look into the mood distant future a few years ago the b.b.c. What if Season one did what would dominate the headlines of the future and this rather playful news report gives a light hearted take on what things could look like in 2050 a skyscraper and here to open them was that Morocco this week will be the 1st building to reach 10000 metres in height called The sky had. Traitor it's taller than Mt Everest the structure operates as a city in the sky for its $40000.00 residents containing 5 schools 2 hospitals 2 swimming poles a golf course and $23.00 hella pads and also boasts the world's highest observation advanced composites a big news for the construction of the building which will be capable of withstanding wind speeds of up to 180 miles per hour and you can see more on that story by tuning into the hyper feed well a made up skyscraper of course imagine there are not spoof news reports in the future Carol what's shaping the height of the world's future tallest building is it shaped by the changing demands of urban living Well I think the focus on height is is the problem in that conceptualization height is no doubt important in the history of the skyscraper the story of competition but as much as we can't get away from that idea of focusing on height and measuring vertical height the definition of the reason the motivation for the skyscraper is about floor area it's not the one dimensional measure of the competition it is to see how high you can go in the sky but from the point of view of the people who make it the people who live in it it's the space that's created within Benjamin we've already seen haven't we environmental concerns driving some design features I've read for example about vertical forests tree covered towers and sky gardens and so on that seems to be in some places what might be around the corner it is there it's actually already here there's a project in Milan The Doesn't very nice job of that which is a kind of $35.00 storey tower that is heavily Green There's also technologies like 3 d. Printing which ostensibly will allow for perhaps to move the needle on and that energy costs and things like that I think the real question is not so much whether the technology will allow for new and more ecologically sustainable projects I think the question is. Whether the clients are out there who are going to be interested in that next step forward with the attendant risks that come with questions about prestige but also I would say that there we are seeing tall buildings built in places where economic considerations of a floor area ratio clearly aren't at play and so how in what ways that might actually work to the advantage of driving more sustainable more innovative kinds of projects and how architects might be able to use the prestige of their design skills to advance new uses new programs and new modes of tall inhabitation is really the question that is going to be interesting to see what the answers are Thomas is as an architect What's your futuristic vision of the skyscrapers that the years to come I agree with Carol I think that we as a society have gotten less and less interested in the tallest building and more and more interested in the best building and I think that a lot of the way the global economy works now people don't necessarily need to be downtown they don't necessarily need to be in proximity we can work virtually we can work from a distance and I think a lot of the things that pushed the height in the 19th and early 20th century a lot of those forces I think of kind of dissipated I think architects in general are beginning to focus much more on making buildings that perform better provide better spaces in some cases that may lead to a taller and taller buildings but I think in most cases it leads to taking buildings of more modest scale and trying to make them simply better I'm afraid that's all we've got time for many thanks to all 3 of you Benjamin flowers Thomas Leslie and Carole Willis and if there's a topic that you'd like to find out more about do go to our website and send us your suggestion click on the open forum button for instructions will find us on Facebook but for now for me Bridget Kandel and all of us on the forum team good buy . B.b.c. B.b.c. . Hello and welcome to sporting witness with the b.b.c. World Service it may actually be today we're taking you back to the early 1990 s. And the stance of one of the world's fastest growing sporting events the Ultimate Fighting Championship I've been speaking to Davey the man who created the unique blend of martial arts and t.v. Spectacle. It's a 12 in them by 1903 and an audience of 90000 a glued to the seats as the 1st of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Denver Colorado crushes on to the television screens there were only 2 rules no biting and no I guess for 3 hours fighters from many different disciplines battle each other in a tackle cage at the McNichols sports arena it was a single in the nation tournament so there were 7 bouts 8 fighters and at the final bout you know the only 2 men left and as the audience rolls in the cameras attempt to capture every moment creates a Davies franticly rushing around I spent all of my time running between the dressing room the truck where we were broadcasting the signal and the octagon because I had to keep track of the fighters I wanted to see what it looked like on television it was a wild and crazy event and we were breaking the rules in a sense but we were pioneering a new sport for him. As a teenager Davey was the amateur boxer and he never forgot a conversation with a wrestler at the time about which skills will be more valuable in a fight the striking arts like boxing or karate all the grappling arts like wrestling and sumo and later on when I was in the United States Marine Corps that was a subject that came up a lot how would a boxer. A wrestler do against a martial artist after leaving the Marines I found a job in advertising and it was whilst developing ideas for a beer import company that the concept for the u.f.c. Began to take shape the world's best fighter that was my working title now I found out in my research that for a 1000 years this type of event was one of the most popular events in the ancient Olympic program the client founded Hooper violent and the idea was rejected around the same time I made friends with the family from Brazil called the Gracies who run a martial arts school and also the history of challenging other martial artists in freestyle no holds barred buyouts I volunteered to do our free advertising campaign and with my advertising they raised an enormous amount of money very quickly now I was able to recruit them into this crazy project it was to be quite exciting but quite daunting as well the same time trying to set this tournament up absolutely there had been a number of people over the years that had been talking about some sort of a freestyle Fighting Championship but nobody had ever organized anything on a grand scale with a 65 page business plan it's left advertising and set about trying to turn his idea into a reality but the t.v. Networks were not convinced they had no faith that it would be successful they told me that type of thing belongs in the movies but it didn't belong on paper view that was the home of boxing Mike Tyson and also they felt that it would probably be illegal Interestingly enough we had approached Chuck Norris we wanted him to maybe be a commentator and his response was is this legal He just kept repeating that question is this legal eventually teamed up with smaller pay per view company center for entertainment he also registered an office in Colorado where Ben nickel for. I think would not run into any legal issues because of an exemption in the lol there was just one thing missing the fights as I began looking for a martial artist all around the world telling them that we were looking for the ultimate martial artist the world's greatest fighter so I began to receive phone calls and faxes people were sending me videotapes I went out and did interviews and I began to assemble the fighters necessary eventually recruited 8 fighters who included Hawks Gracey Ken Shamrock. Bucks Jemison and even a sumo wrestler Tayla to live. On finding them the trials 1903 the moment to see fit finally arrives as nearly 8000 spectators cuts out the mechanical sports arena that 1st bout I had matched up Gerard Bordeaux a lean and tough kick fighter against a look truly the big sumo wrestler it was over in 26 seconds Gordo dodged to discharge spun him around too he went down and Gordo kicked him knocked his teeth out my advertising sponsors all of their executives and wives were seated in the front row and I remember the teeth sailing over their heads and back in the dressing area the other fighters were now sweating in nervous I saw faces that will blanched and what was the atmosphere in the arena like that up for the crowd had gone wild at one point Jim Brown the Football Hall of Famer it said I'm worried that maybe fights a break out in the crowd he said everybody is so pumped up with what they're seeing the adrenaline level is through the roof. The 1st thought was over for Davy The evening was just beginning another wild and crazy bout was our Jimerson matched up against Royce Gracie Jamison was the pro boxer that I've been able to recoup from St Louis. He was scheduled to fight Tommy hit me and her and 6 weeks after the u.f.c. The rumors around the gym wars that some of these grapples could get your arm and break it I could tell he had left his fight in the dressing room because he backed up from a kick the horse threw Bush dodged him came in with a double leg takedown got him on his back and basically Jimerson quit but despite the careful of and planning not everything had been taken into account we actually had to improvise and send young people with rags into the Octagon to wipe up the blood literally almost all of our fighters ended up at the emergency room. The final battle is between jujitsu expect Footscray see a kick fight said. I remember in the 1st bout Gerard Gordo had knocked out the sumo wrestler but it actually had teeth and bedded in his foot and it broke in his right hand he got taken down by a worse Gracie bit Gracie's ear which was illegal there was really no biting right gadget but Gracie got him in a choke and Gracie that night one and when he stood up and I presented him with a $50000.00 check and a gold medal which I had designed he announced that he was going to go to Disneyland as if he was an American football star so it was a great evening and a great end to an incredible tournament and I got to tell you we knew it was a hit. The 1st u.f.c. Was a success both in the stadium and on pay per view television a fellow who once was inevitable but almost immediately there was a backlash over the violence of the sport and $36.00 u.s. States bound so-called no rules fighting the New York Times called it the most barbaric event in history Senator John McCain called it human cockfighting and suddenly we were going to cities where we were in front of a judge questioning whether or not we should be allowed to do this. Over the is the u.f.c. Is tighten the rules and become a less. Islands fighters now compete in weight classes and have to wear gloves and the style of the combat is also different it's no longer a free for all between different disciplines like a boxer against the wrestler for example Instead the athletes old use a mix of techniques in what's become known as mixed martial arts or and then May It's no longer just in the arena for men the u.f.c. Under the Fertitta brothers allowed females to compete and what emerged was money when it was popular athletes in the history of the sport Ronda Rousey So today the audience is from more than 40 percent female and I think that will continue to grow today are Davey is still a successful business executive an entrepreneur He's even written a book called Is this legal and humane very proud of his past in the creation of the u.f.c. . Davy was speaking to me actually been for this edition of sporting witness the program was a made in Monster production for the b.b.c. World Service. Next time on the world a giant beach cleanup on the western coast of India these ocean is mind or spirit charioteer can this or should this man began the cleanup on his hands and knees pulling plastic bags and bottles out of the sand hundreds of people have now joined him and many others are rethinking what one person can do me as an individual had an equally bound to protect and on his story on the world the world today at 2 pm on 91.5 k. R.c.c. No matter the time of day or the time of year you can count on 91.5 k. Or c.c. For quality news coverage fact based reporting carefully curated music and smart entertainment programming.