Starting from the need to concentrate the settlement density of the emerging modern city in a building model with a pronounced vertical orientation and reduced planimetric footprint, over time the skyscraper has become the symbol of the contemporary metropolis and of a tension towards the sky that is often synonymous of economic power and prestige, as often demonstrated by the pharaonic investments fuelling the race to high-rise supremacy all over the world.
But if, like Icarus, success is not always guaranteed by aiming high, sometimes the adrenalin rush has turned into a clamorous débâcle, with the progressive functional decay and abandonment of the building due to the lack of a clear programmatic vision extended to the building's life cycle, to the drying up of resources during construction or maintenance, to legal fetters or to the changing winds of the real estate market and wars.
From Bangkok to Caracas, from New York to Beirut, Domus examines some of these “unburied architectural corpses” (to quote Ernesto Nathan Rogers) which, apart from a few lucky “resurrected” ones, still stand out in urban landscapes like specters in memory of past glories.