Hi, this is Benjamin. I’m an aspiring architect, and one thing that any artist needs are standards. If you don’t have standards, you have no ability to judge the quality of your own work or the work of others. Fundamentally, what standards are, are the ability to judge what you like and what you don’t like. I can tell you, I do not like commercial skyscrapers, here’s why, threefold.

     1. Aesthetically

They’re an eyesore, and it astonishes me that I have to say this, because there are genuinely people who think they’re not. There are people that look upon a city skyline and think “Cool, giant steel pillars, awesome!” In this case, I believe their standards are skewed because they have been raised to believe that anything aesthetically pleasing in a skyline is a famous monument and could not possibly be ordinary.

     2. Psychologically

I don’t know who the hell looks up when walking in a place covered in these buildings, but do so if you want to feel pure dread. I remember going to Vancouver as a child during the 2010 Winter Olympics, the monstrosities there made it a not-so fun experience. You look up, especially as a tiny child, and there seems to be a dark, glass wall having over you everywhere you look. How on Earth can that be fun?

In higher latitudes, they, along with their slab compatriots, prevent any sunlight from pouring onto the street. When the entire ground is covered in solid concrete and the only life is the periodically placed small tree, it seems a lot like living underground in a sterile tube.

     3. Philosophically

There’s an architecture firm, I forget which one. A spokesman noted something along the lines of “…With skyscapers nowadays you take an elevator from your apartment down to the car-park, drive to your work, and hop on another elevator up. There’s no journey to this like there is in an old East Asian city, where your path to and from your house is a journey through the clear, vegetated, winding streets and alleys.” Then they went and built one of these bloody things, because in the end, the only reason they exist is to make a fat check as simply and inhumanely as possible.