Wedding cake (architecture)
The wedding cake (ger .: Wedding Cake ) is a 1916 embossed, then colloquial term that entered the 20th century in the technical language of architecture. This refers to buildings that taper upwards like stairs.
History and examples
In 1916, the first zoning resolution for New York City came into effect in Manhattan , with the aim of putting a stop to the construction of high-rise buildings of any height and size. Legislators considered it appropriate to provide people on the street with enough fresh air and sunlight. The most daunting example at the time was the 40-story Equitable Building (New York) , completed in 1915 , with four outer edges reaching to the top at a height of 164 meters. Instead of issuing a general ban on new high-rise buildings, the new law stipulated that buildings above a certain height should be downgraded ( setbacks ). This gave them the staircase structure of a wedding cake.
It was not until the construction boom of the 1930s after the Great Depression that wedding cake architecture achieved a breakthrough. It was no longer seen as a flaw, but as a stylistic device. At that time, among other things, the Empire State Building was built with five distinctive levels.
Even if the term is closely connected with Manhattan and there led to its own high-rise top aesthetic that has shaped the city today, wedding cakes are also used in a broader sense for the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome and St Paul's Cathedral in London. Many buildings of Stalinist architecture, such as the Seven Sisters in Moscow, are closer to the American original .
Far-fetched, but occasionally mentioned in this context, is the ziggurat , which also tapers upwards, but usually has no clear stairs, but mainly slopes.
literature
- Charles F. Floyd, Marcus T. Allen: Real Estate Principles , Kaplan Publishing 2002. P. 70 f, ISBN 1427724881 ("The zoning law established height and setback regulations that led to" wedding-cake "architecture.")
Individual evidence
- ↑ see for example the New York Times of July 13, 1980: Radical Midtown Zoning Overhaul Proposed, Giving Greater Diversity
- ^ David Watkin: A History of Western Architecture , Laurence King Publishing 2015, p. 647, ISBN 1-78067-597-6