Boxes and spires

America's cities take pride in their skyscrapers. They build them bigger, challenge gravity and even put cupolas, domes, little temples and tiaras on top of them. But in the end they are just giant boxes filled with executives and office workers. They physically dwarf the domes, spires and minarets of mosques, churches and synagogues. These monuments to capitalism can point to nothing higher than their physical and technological limits, while the spatial limits of these spititual structures are the mere beginnings of their real meanings. The gravity they call attention to is the gravity of deep human experience.