The Late Capitalist Skyscraper Theoretically Considered

Abstract

This dissertation outlines a portrait of the skyscraper within the context of the contemporary urban world, undertaking an analysis that spans the period contained between 1973 and the present. Through a critique of key theoretical texts from the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the project traces the building’s manifold relations with logics of financial abstraction and urbanization, as well as its complex symbolic and spatial roles amid a period characterized by global crises and the deployment of capital at a planetary scale. Assembled as a multilayered narrative in which architectural theory intersects with a constellation of critical discourses and a mosaic of visual materials, The Late Capitalist Skyscraper reads the ongoing metamorphoses of the type as intrinsically connected to emerging modalities of capital accumulation and its associated socio-spatial implications across a wide range of vertical urban landscapes and territorial formations.