Skyline

A skyline is the outline or shape viewed near the horizon. It can be created by a city's overall structure, or by human intervention in a rural setting, or in nature that is formed where the sky meets buildings or the land.

For other uses, see Skyline (disambiguation).
"City skyline" redirects here. For the video game, see Cities: Skylines.

City skylines serve as a pseudo-fingerprint as no two skylines are alike. For this reason, news and sports programs, television shows, and movies often display the skyline of a city to set a location. The term The Sky Line of New York City was first introduced in 1896, when it was the title of a color lithograph by Charles Graham for the color supplement of the New York Journal.[1] Paul D. Spreiregen, FAIA, has called a [city] skyline "a physical representation [of a city's] facts of life ... a potential work of art ... its collective vista."[2]

Ten-mile panorama of the Manhattan skyline, from 120th Street to the Battery, taken February 21, 2018, from Weehawken, New Jersey.
  1. Riverside Church
  2. Time Warner Center
  3. 220 Central Park South
  4. Central Park Tower
  5. One57
  6. 432 Park Avenue
  7. 53W53
  8. Chrysler Building
  9. Bank of America Tower
  10. Conde Nast Building
  11. The New York Times Building
  12. Empire State Building
  13. Manhattan West
  14. a: 55 Hudson Yards, b: 35 Hudson Yards, c: 10 Hudson Yards, d: 15 Hudson Yards
  15. 56 Leonard Street
  16. 8 Spruce Street
  17. Woolworth Building
  18. 70 Pine Street
  19. 30 Park Place
  20. 40 Wall Street
  21. Three World Trade Center
  22. Four World Trade Center
  23. One World Trade Center

History

Early examples

Modern city skylines

Some natural skylines have been unintentionally modified for commercial purposes.

Features

High-rise buildings
Main article: High-rise building
Skyline of Detroit, Michigan, ca. 1929

High-rise buildings, including skyscrapers, are the fundamental feature of urban skylines.[3][4] Both contours and cladding (brick or glass) make an impact on the overal appearances of a skyline.

Towers

Towers from different eras make for contrasting skylines.

San Gimignano, in Tuscany, Italy, has been described as having an "unforgettable skyline" with its competitively built towers.[5]

  • San Gimignano Towers
  • 9 Water towers in Villejuif (Paris)
  • A cell phone tower making a surreal addition to the skyline

Sports stadiums
2008 Beijing Olympic Stadium
Main article: Stadium

The Colosseum and 2008 Beijing Olympic Stadium give varied sport stadium skylines.

Remote locations

Some remote locations have striking skylines, created either by nature or by sparse human settlement in an environment not conducive to housing significant populations.

Apollo 17 Moon landing site panorama

Architectural features

Notable architects influencing skyline
Nuremberg in September 1936.

Norman Foster served as architect for the Gherkin in London and the Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, and these buildings have to added to their cities' skylines.

Albert Speer made a notable night time skyline with searchlights at Nuremberg.

Use of skylines in media

Skylines are often used as backgrounds and establishing shots in film, television programs, news websites, and in other forms of media.

Subjective ranking of skylines

Several services rank skylines based on their own subjective criteria. Emporis is one such service, which uses height and other data to give point values to buildings and add them together for skylines.

See also

References
  1. "Moving Uptown". New York Public Library. Archived from the original on 2014-12-29. When Charles Graham's view of New York was published, the new term used in the title, "sky line," caught on immediately.
  2. Paul D. Spreiregen (1965). Urban Design: The Architecture of Towns and Cities. McGraw-Hill.
  3. Heath, Tom; Smith, Sandy G.; Lim, Bill (July 2000). "Tall Buildings and the Urban Skyline: The Effect of Visual Complexity on Preferences". Environment and Behavior. 32 (4): 541–556. doi:10.1177/00139160021972658. ISSN 0013-9165. S2CID 5199331.
  4. McNeill, Donald (February 2005). "Skyscraper geography". Progress in Human Geography. 29 (1): 41–55. doi:10.1191/0309132505ph527oa. S2CID 220928675. geographers have tended to neglect the substantial impact of skyscrapers on urban life.
  5. Centre, UNESCO World Heritage. "Historic Centre of San Gimignano". whc.unesco.org. Archived from the original on 2016-08-04.

Further reading
  • Emporis ranking of cities by the visual impact of their skylines
  • Attoe, Wayne (1981). Skylines: understanding and molding urban silhouettes. Wiley. ISBN 9780471279402.
  • Bacon, Edmund (1967). Design of Cities. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-14-004236-8.
  • Lim, Bill; Heath, Tom (1993). Hayman H. (ed.). "What is skyline: a quantitative approach". Architectural Science: Past, Present and Future, Proceedings of the Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Architectural Science Association: 23–32.
  • Ford, Larry R. (1976). "The urban skyline as a city classification system". Journal of Geography. 75 (3): 154–164. doi:10.1080/00221347608980594.
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