SYNDROME OF THE TOWER OF BABEL

Peter Bruegel the Old has represented the tower of Babel which in the Bible, was a tower built by men for reaching the sky. According the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is Nemrod, the “king-hunter” reigning on the descendants of Noah, who had the idea to build in Babel (Babylon) a rather high tower so that its top reaches the sky. The painting of Bruegel was supposed to represent the dangers of the human pride but also the failure of rationality against the divine.

The Burj tower in Dubai inaugurated in jan.-10 is from now on the highest skyscraper of the World, high of 828m (2,717 ft).
More and more, men are building giant skyscrapers. Among the giant ones, there are:

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai (828m),
the CN tower of Toronto (553m),
The twin towers of the World Trade Center (526m)(collapsed in 2001),
The Taipei 101 (509m),
The Shangai World Financial Center (492m),
The International Commerce Center à Hong Kong (484m),
The Petronas Towersin Malaysia (452m),
The Nanjing Greenland Financial Center (450m),
The Chigago Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) (442m),
The Guangzhou West Tower (440m).

If the Eiffel tower (313m) in Paris has been the tallest one erected at the end of 19th, it is mainly during the 20th and the beginning of the 21st, that more than 200 towers/skycrapers have been erected in the world. And it seems that this phenomenom accelerates as if there was a monstruous worldwide competition, despite the sad event of the fall of the Twin towers in 2001.

Thus, there is a theory which runs and is widely diffused among the students in architecture around the world, commonly called the syndrome of the Tower of Babel which tells that when men start to build too many higher towers and want to compete with the sky, some disaster is close.

A small village in Italy illustrates perfectly this theory. It is the village of San Gimignano in Tuscany which has its glory in the Rinascimento. The city flourished until 1348 and was an important relay for the pilgrims who went to Rome or returned from using the road Francigena. The noble families which controlled the city had built some 72 house-towers (till 50 m height) which were the symbols of their richnesses. These families ruined themselves in an absurd competition because each family wanted to have the tallest tower which showed the richest men of the village. They added stages till their complete ruin. Today it remains only 14 of the 72 famous house-towers.

Men should never forget the natural law of the universal balance.
The tower in Dubai and the towers of San Gimignano proceed of the same example.

Since times, one also finds the theory of the syndrome of the tower of Babel in human societies and civilizations, either human society or business firms, in which -as many examples show it daily- too many hierarchical layers induce the collapse and the ruin of these same societies or companies which thus believed to be protected by their giant hierarchal pyramidal system (feodalism which induced revolutions,
bankruptcy of companies because of too high structures, societies victim of their tentacular administration...)

Human errors are a perpetual restarting as shows the humanity history and so, goes on the syndome of the Tower of Babel though the ages...