Confectionary

From the air New York’s skyline looks jerry-built, improvised, as much draped raggedly from the atmospheres as it is built up. I always expect to see rope bridges impulsively thrown across the nearly perfectly calipered gaps across streets. Chicago’s looks modeled, fashioned, carved, as if a hand has just finished its work and gone home--it looks like an artisanal studio or shop. San Francisco’s is confectionary, with fanciful and frivolous irregularities, spires, angularities, and pitches lifting and dropping structures as if the ground had been bunched like a rug and left that way: architects love the challenge of matching structure to pitch. All three cities are money stacked different ways.

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