Architecture: No end in sight in quest for height

Amazingly, despite the collapse of credit, the skyscraper continues its march across the world as a symbol of modernity and commerce. From its origins in Chicago and Manhattan, its emergence as the truly American contribution to world architecture, the tower has swept the world from the Gulf, across Asia and back up to eastern Europe.
As Dubai fades into the desert sunset, the towers seemed to be marching across eastern Europe. This is not, however, the region’s first encounter with the tower. The Soviets launched their own programme of towers in the 1950s. Moscow built its Seven Sisters, modelled at least in part of New York’s Woolworth Building and the Lomonosov tower. Warsaw had imposed on it the incongruous Palace of Culture and Science, the symbol of an unhappy city and its crushing domination from the east.