steve martin

In the past century buildings have got taller and taller, as the world becomes more populated and more people want to get on the same piece of land. Tall buildings are nothing new, towers and pyramids have existed in architecture for thousands of years, but in has only been in past 100 years.
In the quaint Tuscan hillside is a small town called San Gimignano. Half way in between sienna and Florence, San Gimignano was a stop for pilgrims on route to Rome. Built in the 13th century, it steadily got bigger as more people started to settle inside its medieval walls. Tuscan towns can be expected to have one or two for a church or town hall, but the people of San Gimignano built 70. San Gimignano is now a world heritage site, and has a skyline that could be reminiscent of manhattan. It is very peculiar for such a small town to have so many towers, however in the video of ‘Skyscraper’ a local resident said “The noble families were always arguing about who was the boss, they wanted to build taller and taller towers to publicise their owner”. The town became so overridden by towers that the mayor of the town implemented a law that meant no one could build taller than the town hall. This law meant that these towers were more than just buildings, they were status symbols, these building had the buildings had such a sense of ore about them that could make the mayor feel powerless. These buildings were built at a time when people could afford to show off wealth, as these towers were nothing more than symbolic, as the space inside had very little function.
You would of thought in the modern day, in a time of people being more money conscious that places like this would not exist, but is this the case? In New York plans for developments in plots of land for the world’s tallest building are a regular occurrence. When plans like this are brought forward, billions of dollars are at risk in development that New York doesn’t really need. Donald Trump, a developer said in The