2000 Reports of the skyscraper's death, it turns out, were greatly exaggerated. A decade ago, with American cities awash in empty office space after the 1980s building boom ran amok, deep thinkers predicted that the tall building would go the way of the dinosaur. Adding to the sense of impending doom, telecommuting seemed to destroy the skyscraper's original reason for being - the need to marshal armies of office workers in downtown castles of commerce. But the skyscraper is back, and little wonder. Big egos like big buildings.
Skyscrapers provide instant status symbols for emerging economies.
Few of us have the time or money to visit new towers in Europe, Asia, the United States or such far-flung locales as Sweden, Saudi Arabia or Uruguay. The world, the show makes clear, is getting smaller even as buildings get bigger. Globalization makes the tall building a little bit like Superman - able to leap national borders in a single bound. Once an exclusively American phenomenon, the skyscraper truly has gone multinational, altering the face of cities and even language. Take the new skyscraper district along Frankfurt's Main River.