In 2006, the Office of Metropolitan Architecture designed an immense skyscraper for Dubai. Had it been built, the rectangular slab would have risen only a relatively modest 985 feet but spanned 655 feet. The aim of such a monolith, the firm’s co-founder Rem Koolhaas explained, was to “end the current phase of architectural idolatry—the age of the icon.” In one sketch produced by OMA, the building is depicted against a collaged skyline of immensely tall buildings from cities throughout the world, its simple form defiant against the discordant array of modern skyscrapers. 

It is hard not to agree with Koolhaas and disdain extravagant buildings as monuments to consumption and the hubris of their owners and architects. So much about them seems excessive or performative—the height of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, for example, the tallest building in the world at 2,720 feet, is an architectural conceit. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) defines the top 27% of the building—its 735-foot-tall spire—as “vanity height.”¹ If you lopped off this unusable top and dropped it somewhere in Africa, only five other buildings on the continent would stand taller.

Despite OMA’s aspirations, the age of the ultimate architectural icon did not end. Most of the world’s tallest buildings have been built in this century and construction recently restarted on Burj Khalifa’s great rival, the Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, which is continuing upward to approximately 3,281 feet. The actual height has been kept secret to thwart competitors—such as a behemoth planned for Kuwait City that will top out at over 3,284 feet. 

Hubris isn’t the only problem with these giants. Their immense height requires vast quantities of material, much of it wasted on vanity height, and their glass facades amplify the sun’s heat, requiring huge amounts of electricity for cooling. Add banks of high-speed elevators and the energy consumption rate doubles that of low-rise buildings.

Still, in many places, competition, pressure from developers and relaxed zoning laws continue to push buildings higher. Some cities demand trade-offs for extra height, such as funding for low-income housing, but citizens rarely have much say about their metastasizing skylines. In a recent Atlantic article on New York skyscrapers, Bianca Bosker points out that our loftiest buildings no longer valorize collective enterprise, as they did for most of the 20th century; now they venerate individuals. As she says, historically the tallest buildings honored “deities, then commerce, and now: billionaires.” In Manhattan, the most notable new skyscrapers are the super thin residential towers of Billionaires’ Row, their opulent penthouses each costing more than a thousand houses in rural New York state.

The competition to build higher is as intense as ever, but there are signs of a more considered approach emerging. In China, where most of the world’s tallest buildings have been built over the last 20 years, unrestrained competition among fast-growing cities is about to end. New regulations imposed by the central government will limit building height to 1,640 feet. And, despite their regrettable symbolism and obvious wastefulness, today’s newest skyscrapers offer plenty of promise. Their enormous budgets and complex engineering drive important innovations, such as the development of extremely high-strength concrete and steel, new techniques for resisting wind and earthquakes and ultrafast elevators (45 mph!). The Skyscraper 2069 initiative launched by CTBUH in 2019 envisions other innovations that will produce net-zero, carbon-negative high-rises within 50 years, such as energy-generating surfaces and materials that capture huge amounts of carbon. 

Extremely thin towers are already yielding insights into the development of urban housing, showing how affordable apartments can be built on narrow, underutilized lots. Perhaps we can hope that the age of the icon will evolve rather than end—that tall buildings will no longer valorize gods, corporations or plutocrats, but the earth and the people who live on it.