FORM FOLLOWS FINANCESkyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago

Carol Willis

Although fundamental factors of program, technology, and economics make tall buildings everywhere take similar forms, skyscrapers in New York and Chicago developed very differently in the first half of the twentieth century. Willis shows how market formulas produced characteristic forms in each city—"vernaculars of capitalism"—that resulted from local land-use patterns, municipal codes, and zoning.

Form Follows Finance cautions that the city must be understood as a complex commercial environment where buildings are themselves businesses, space is a commodity, and location and image have value.

1995 / 220 pp / 170 b+w / 978-1-56898-044-7 / hc / $27.50