ABSTRACT
Citicorp’s daring tectonic balancing act was, as it would turn out, the city’s penultimate event in skyline transformation. Although cities contain stable monuments such as memorial plazas, parks, cultural institutions, etc., it is the sustained flux of the masses that makes cities thrive. HL23 architecture is a volatile mix of unstable elements, especially the ones that form the initial conditions under which design takes place. Extensive studies were carried out to determine the potential negative effects of added volume. Today, it is never enough to simply say that the envelope is now the site of the most extreme forms of experimentation and novelty in construction as a way to legitimize the expenditure of so much energy on one aspect of architecture. To design a facade with intent in a climate of ambivalence is to accept the labor that it must perform in order to attain value.
