The World's Top 5 Scenographic Skyscrapers

At the 1929 Beaux Arts Ball, William van Allen, the designer of the Chrysler Building, masqueraded as his landmark skyscraper, which was then being built. Van Allen's elaborate costume, complete with his signature spire headdress, underscores the theatrical dimension of the skyscraper and the role it has played in the theater of the urban skyline. The Chrysler building and the Empire State building were some of the first protagonists in the unfolding drama of the city. These early skyscrapers dressed structural steel frames in elaborate cladding, transforming the mundane into the spectacular. These five skyscrapers we are about to see are very good examples of how the mundane was turned into the spectacular. DG Bank (Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, Frankfurt, 1993)

The 658 foot (201 meter) DG Bank Headquarters is one of the first American-style skyscrapers to be built in a European city, where building regulations had traditionally limited building heights. The design of the DG Bank allows this American import to integrate itself into the city fabric by breaking the tower into a composition of discrete parts.

Composed of distinct masses, the design introduces a new "tower of three parts." Each of its parts-podium, shaft, and crown-is molded by external site forces and internal programmatic needs. In this case, the design brief called for a mix of uses, including office space, residential apartments, and a central winter garden. The design of the tower includes a slender shaft with a low rise podium that wraps around the winter garden. The low rise structure embraces the winter garden and defines the perimeter of the block. The tower takes on a figural quality in the shaft, and creates a signature profile against the sky, where a radial, cantilevered crown gestures towards the old center of Frankfurt.