Abstract
Urban Planning / Land demarcation & vertical construction of high-rise have remained relatively unchanged in the 20th century. A Fordist extrusion of the plot, where greater emphasis is placed on architectonics the higher the building goes and less urban the building becomes. Contemporary interventions are mainly targeted at image or profit, heavily focused on the object that is the skyscraper, which does not provide organic developmental growth of the city rather only promoting vertical density and artificially increase land values. The common skyscraper has become synonymous with inaccessibility. This upward sprawl when overdone will isolate occupants; vertical skyscrapers must keep sight of the ground, for the urban and architecture interventions on the ground-plane and lower levels have the greatest of responsibilities, energizing a place. Mobility must be granted not just within the building but also to local infrastructure. The future of humanity on this planet relies on the collective benefits of urban density; reducing both land consumption and the energy needed to construct and operate the horizontally dispersed city. Tall buildings must now be the vehicles for creating increased density not just through sheer height, but by connecting multiple layers of the city. Physical urban infrastructure, circulation, greenery, and urban functions traditionally restricted to the ground level would all, ideally, continue up and into the building, such that the buildings themselves become an extension of the city: a part of the two-dimensional horizontal urban plane flipped vertical. This paper explores the idea of creating density within a contemporary compact city by first creating places - horizontal connectors that bridge the spaces between the plot fabric, that not only provides but also celebrates culture and public spaces, an intervention of the horizontal that begins to bridge the vertical.