In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

200 ARRAYS
logical towers") and as the building that contains Fredersen's office
("New Tower of Babel"). The intrinsic ambiguity of Eternal Gardens as
a border-space between nature and the city's technological civilization is
underscored by a ceiling which, although it covers the elegant club, is as
transparent as a shining membrane: "The milk-colored glass ceiling
above the Eternal Gardens was an opal in the light which bathed it ...
Strange convoluted stalactites rise to the ceiling; there are ferns and
greenery on every side" (23-24).
While roof gardens constitute a sphere of luxury, and while the upper
stories of skyscrapers are reserved for the systems' self-observation,
rooftops without artificial nature are the place where culture meets the
sky as its infinite environment. This is why rooftops have a magnetic
attraction for architects. Architects belong to the environment of buildings
because they construct them, but they also assign themselves specific
tasks within the buildings' internal functioning. [see Engineers] During
a visit to New York, Le Corbusier frequently climbs "to the roof of a
friend's apartment house at night and let[s] the Manhattan of vehement
silhouettes sweep over him" (Hawes, 219). The daylight version of this
New York panorama appears in two watercolors by Edward Hopper in
which the random configurations of railings, chimneys, billboards, and
huge water tanks join in a cityscape that seems to mimic nature. The
convergence and tensions between technology and nature are a common
element in Hopper's work, which brings together rooftops, railroad
tracks running through the countryside, and steamers fighting the waves
of the ocean (Levin, 239-240, 265-266, 176ff.). Meanwhile, German
newspapers report on the first skyscrapers rising in historic town centers.
Among them, the seventeen-storey Wilhelm-Marx-Haus in Dusseldorf
dramatically emphasizes its rooftop by surrounding this space with a
two-storey semitransparent gallery (Chronik, 56).
As a general rule, however, the outside of such new high-rises is
"unassertive." When Rosario Canela, a star among New York architects,
designs 101 East 72nd Street as a sober "thirteen-story limestone-andbrick
palazzo," it is his ambition to fill the interior of this building with
combinations of "simplexes, duplexes, maisonette apartments with private
street entrances, penthouses, and roof garden apartments (including
a triplex with fifteen rooms and an elevator direct to its door)" (Hawes,
225ff.). The architectural development of such enormous buildings has