#manhattanism

The Latting Observatory and the dome of the Crystal Palace introduce an archetypal contrast that will appear and reappear throughout Manhattan's history in ever new incarnations. The needle and the globe represent the two extremes of Manhattan's formal vocabulary and describe the outer limits of its architectural choices. The needle is the thinnest, least voluminous structure to mark a location within the Grid.  It combines maximum physical impact with negligible consumption of ground. It is, essentially, a building without an interior. The globe is, mathematically, the form that encloses the maximum interior volume with the least external skin. It has a promiscuous capacity to absorb objects, people, iconographies, symbolisms; it relates them through the mere fact of their coexistence in its interior. In many ways, the history of Manhattanism as a separate, identifiable architecture is a dialectic between these two forms, with the needles wanting to become and a globe and the globe trying, from time to time, to turn into a needle - a cross-fertilisation that results in a series of successful hybrids in which the needle's capacity for attracting attention and its territorial modesty are matched with the consummate receptivity of the sphere.