In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

ROOF GARDENS 199
is the city. The circle is broken only by a crooked bottleneck, which gives
access to the Pacific" (21). For a number of reasons, Morand experiences
the rooftop of his Vancouver hotel as an ambiguous space. It belongs to
a skyscraper and is therefore part of the admirable achievements of
homo faber. [see Engineers] But it also offers a view of nature in the
surrounding area. This "nature" is itself ambiguous because, although it
is the sublime nature of the Pacific Coast, it also serves as a stage for the
cityscape of Vancouver. And such double ambiguity is overdetermined
by yet a third ambiguity stemming from the town's geographic location
on the border of Western civilization, between the North American
continent and the Pacific: "This is the 'Land's End' of the West" (23).
Bringing together such multiple contrasts between civilization and nature
in a space of simultaneity, the rooftops of skyscrapers are an ideal site
for a paradox. They are frequently transformed into roof gardens, and
as roof gardens they ostentatiously display nature as artifice. [see Center
= Periphery (Infinitude)]
Although the city in Fritz Lang's film Metropolis does not feature a
roof garden, its vertical space is structured according to the same organizational
principles that Morand invokes. From the upper stories of the
skyscrapers in Metropolis, the industrial work and the production of
capital are constantly monitored. Here resides John Fredersen, the Master
of Metropolis, himself a functioning element within the overwhelming
internal complexity of the building and of the city as its environment
[see Employees]: "Again we look through the canyon-like streets. Far
above everything else, storey upon storey, rises the building known as
the 'New Tower of Babel.' In the cognitive center of this New Tower of
Babel lives the man who is himself the brain of Metropolis ... The scene
shifts to an immense office. A great window looks out over the city in
the background, while in the foreground is a vast semicircular desk with
clocks and writing materials on it and a couple of thickly upholstered
armchairs at a table beyond. A thin, gaunt-looking man ... walks across
the room, wagging a finger as he dictates to his secretaries off-screen"
(Lang, 35). Even higher than this office, indeed high above the entire city,
loom two gigantic structures: Masterman Stadium, built by the rich
fathers of Metropolis for their sons, and Eternal Gardens, the club where
the sons seek amusement. Consisting of stalactites and ferns, the artificially
produced nature of Eternal Gardens carries the same connotation
of archaicism as the skyscrapers in Morand's text ("Chaldean astro-