The Skybridge, Part 1

one encounters in various films. Uh. These are of course we're talking about sky bridges or sky uh walks or you know, they're various terms one might use for these. We're talking generally about enclosed bridges of metal and glass or stone or other materials that connect artificial heights to artificial heights. And UM, I don't know about about you, Joe, if if you I don't think we've ever talked about this.

If you see if you share my my interest in sky bridges, if you ever like gaze up at a sky bridge in a city and just try and imagine what it would be like to be up there in it looking out. Oh absolutely, I mean there are a number of these around the world, but they're rare enough that they still they stick out when you see them, I guess, unless you're in a in a city that

has a lot of them, like Calgary or something. Um. But yeah, that they look like something that's a kind of obvious solution that you would expect to see more

of in the city that's full of tall buildings. Yeah. Yeah, that we can will certainly get into the practical sides of the sky bridge, but there's also something there's something attractive about it that I find almost hard to put into words because on one level, yes, there's a view that is available to one in a sky bridge, and generally speaking, you can often look in two directions at once,

and and that's that's pretty neat. But by and large, there's not a tremendous amount of difference between being on the tenth floor of the building and looking out at the city as opposed to being on a tenth floor sky bridge and looking out of the city. Um. But but for some reason, if you gave me the choice between the two, the sky bridge, of course, is tremendously more attractive as an opportunity. Well, and in a lot

of recent sky bridges. They've started doing the thing where they make the bottom out of transparent materials, you know, some kind of tough glass, and of course, you know, the kids like to jump up and down on it.

That's always fun. Yeah, And I think maybe with sky bridges to a lot of a lot of what makes the sky bridge attractive and interesting, it's also it's actually wrapped up in a deeper understanding of bridges, Like we're essentially taking our already existing excitement for bridges, even though we see bridges all the time, and maybe that that gets kind of like pushed down in our consciousness, but then it becomes new again when we look at something like a sky bridge. And also sky bridges kind of

I think served to exaggerate the feats of skyscraper building. Like, for instance, if I'm looking at just a normal skyscraper, it may be really impressive, but if I see a little i don't know, like a gargoyle up there or some sort of like little space where a human being could potentially stand for some reason, it draws me in more, maybe like there's an artificial mountain aspect to it, And then seeing the bridge up there kind of does as much the same thing. Yeah. So in this look at

sky bridges, we're gonna drawn a several different sources. One of the main sources that I'm gonna keep coming back to, though, is a wonderful history overview of sky bridges titled sky Bridges A History Interview to the Near Future by Anthony Wood and Daniel Safaric of the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, published in two thousand nineteen in the

International Journal of High Rise Buildings. The authors here define a sky bridge as quote a primarily enclosed space linking two or more build things at height, and they make a point of looking at structures that are, you know, at least six stories and high to set them apart from other mere pedestrian bridges and overpasses. Um, because I guess, truly the sky bridge at least modern sky bridges have

a different feel altogether. Though some of the especially older examples we're going to look at are not necessarily going to be that high in the sky. Yeah, especially a lot of the publicly accessible uh sky bridges or or lower whatever you'd call the lower versions of them that aren't like connecting two towers of essentially the same building

or buildings that have the same owner. Instead, they're you know, forming a walkway for for people or pedestrians along a sort of maybe like second story level in the city. I mentioned the example of Calgary earlier. Calgary in Canada has an extensive network of what have sometimes been called sky bridges or skyways, but I think they're mostly on more like the second story level, and and they're open to the public. You know, people can walk all around

in them. Yeah. When you look of the the overall history of skybridges, it's a mix of of passageways for the elite, passageways for everyone and uh and and sometimes you have kind of kind of like double deckers where well one floor is for the residents, but the other floors for tourists. Um, so that sort of thing. Also, you have a mix of some of some of these

are still very much an operations. Some are not accessible currently now I was I was recently in Chicago, and while I was there, this was probably one of the reasons that I decided, Yeah, I think now it's the time to to go ahead into the skybridge episode. Because I took one of these architectural tours by boat in the city, which which I highly recommend it's a it's a city that's it's uh, it's it's a steeped in

in in architecture. And therefore, if you understand the architectural history of the city at least just a little bit, you have I think a much better understanding of what Chicago is when you when you walk around it, drive around, etcetera. And Uh. One building in particular that you can't help but notice is, of course the Wriggly Building. Uh. And indeed, uh, you have this beautiful fourteenth story sky bridge connecting the

two sections. And at first glance you might think it's made out of aluminum um, but it's actually made out of allegheny nickel. Uh. So that's that's pretty interesting. But yeah, if you look up pictures of the Wriggly Building, yeah, you'll will definitely see this impressive sky bridge. Just trying to remember if this shows up in The Fugitive, which is a movie that I deeply associate with Chicago architecture

that I'm not quite sure why. I mean, obviously it's in Chicago, I don't know what the architecture connection is. I remember as a kid, I would look at pictures of sky bridges and think, and you know, also watching a lot of action films back in the day, I kept thinking that there had to be like a great action sequence where the hero has to run through a sky bridge and maybe a helicopter is firing at him in the sky bridge, or maybe there's a fight on

top of the sky bridge. And maybe my memories faint on this, maybe these things actually happen in some movie or TV show. But if they didn't, I'm I'm surprised it never happened. It seems like the most logical place, like a weird place for some sort of a fight to take place. Like why why why didn't we see this in Highlander? Right? The answer is insurance problems, that that was a scene and they wanted to shoot but

they couldn't. Probably now, if anyone, if you're a New Yorker, or certainly if you've even visited New York, you've seen multiple examples of this. There are some great examples of both old school and modern sky bridges. Uh, you can look up lists of these. I know there's I think there's at least one really picturesque one that's the viewable

from the high line there. But then of course we don't have to go to New York in order to experience a sky bridge, because Joe, we live in Atlanta, and we have a pretty noteworthy example of sky bridges or skyways as well, and that's Peachtree Center, designed by Atlanta architect John C. Portman Jr. Uh Portman lived seventeen and he's famed for popularizing the atrium as well as just leaving a profound mark on downtown Atlanta and U One of the things that he also did is especially

with again with Peachtree Center, here is we see this um almost excessive use of of sky bridges and skyways connecting these buildings to each other. Yeah, if you drive around the city center streets, you will you will see a number of these. Yeah. They have a very seventies modern look to them, so they're they're not the classical sky bridges. They're not these supermodern looking ones you'll see

in many of the examples today. But this is an example we're gonna come back to later because it's actually with Portman's work that we see some of the more pronounced social criticisms of the basic concept of the sky bridge, which are interesting to get into. Now, another local example here in Atlanta. The High Museum of Art has some great sky bridge is part of the Rinzo Piano designed addition to the Core Museum in two thousand five. Joe, I know you've walked through these Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

so there you always get some some brilliant sunline. There's that all that beautiful white architecture going on. I think I associate them with the sudden feeling of being irradiated because you've been in the uh climate. Because you've been you have the climate control galleries, and then suddenly, yeah,

here's the sun now. Would in Safari point out that the most common function of the sky bridge is of course, to convey traffic from one building to another without forcing individuals to descend down to the ground level or even below ground level, potentially exiting and re entering the building, which, of course, if you're dealing them, especially with a building that has some sort of a security system in place and security check ins and checkpoints, we can see where

that would that could become problematic. Easier to have people uh enjoy access to both buildings the bridge um and you also have situations where okay, maybe we don't want people having to cross the street deal with traffic or adverse environmental conditions. Yeah, I was trying to think what would be the main factors motivating somebody to connect buildings via skybridge versus just having people you know, enter an

exit at the surface level like they normally would. And yeah, those are some of the main things that came to mind for me. Bad weather and climate that that's got to be a motivator, which is also true of places that have more underground tunnels connecting buildings together. Um. But then yeah, also bad traffic and like thoroughfares that are

hard to cross. So for example, uh, this this would also include places where the where the streets are not always streets, where there's not ground on the streets, such as cities with canals. Sometimes you have sky bridges to cross those. And then of course you have security concerns, like if you have I don't know, high security government buildings or something I mentioned, they try to limit the necessity to go outside and enter a different door and

do that whole thing all over again. Yeah. So, so obviously there are some some some basic reasons why you might have a skybridge connecting to buildings. Um. However, the authors here also classify some sky bridges as as quote enclosed programmatic sky bridges, meaning that there's something about them, something inside them to draw people to them beyond just

mere conveyance. For example, that one example they give is the American Copper Buildings in New York City built in two six which feature a robust two story skybridge full of common rooms and swimming pools for residents. It's a great place to go swimming. Yeah, it's it's it's an

interesting choice. I mean, it looks like it has a tremendous view though, I would imagine, yeah, view and just sort of novelty has got to be one of the main points for these enclosed programmatic sky bridges, because again, they're not so common connecting American buildings and in American

cities that you're just numb to them. Now, like going into skybridge is kind of interesting and unique, unless you know, you just happened to be one of the few people who lives or works in buildings where you cross one every day. Yeah. Now, they also bring up a few additional expansions on the form. One is something they called the sky plane, and this is essentially a shared horizontal roof structure for two or more buildings. And the example

they bring up is Marina Based Sands in Singapore. Uh, Joe, if you should probably just look up a picture of Marina Bay Sands and and just take this in because I would have to say, I mean, I'm I'm no judge of architecture here, but it looks almost a little bit ridiculous. It's this. It looks like there is a ship perched atop three identical skyscrapers. Yes, it's a cruise ship. There is a cruise ship on the buildings. Yeah, which

I mean, I guess it looks really cool up there. Um, it makes me a little bit queasy to look at something these aerial shots of it for some reason. But yeah, it looks it looks very nice. Uh. And I guess, And and certainly we can imagine it's that we may come back to this one as we think about some arguments to be made for similar structures. They also bring

up the idea of building as sky bridge. So this is when the horizontal bar of the sky bridge is so massive in comparison to the rest that it is more of a defining part of the building itself rather than something that bridges it. And this also is a is a statement one could make about like the nature of the skybridge. One of the examples will come to

in a in a minute. Either the skybridge is not really um firmly set in place, it's kind of setting in there, kind of slotted into place, whereas building as skybridge, it's like it's all one structure. Um. The example they bring up is the CCTV headquarters in Beijing. This is a building I believe it was built in twenty eleven, and it looks basically like a really boxy upside down

you very cool design. Yeah, i'd characterize it as it looks like it was built out of the out of giant versions of the L shaped Tetris blocks, and they're connecting above the ground way you know, many many stories up. But yeah, it's clear that this is not just a little hallway connecting the upper levels of a skyscraper. A substantial portion of the the occupied part of the building is hanging over air. Yeah. Yeah. And and it also looks like it could walk just like like two legs

and a pelvis. But but like they walked out of the Tron universe or something. You offend the master control program, this building comes walking at you it probably does. Ya, thank thank. Now you might be wondering, well, what's the highest sky bridge in the world. Well, I believe if the Guinness Book of World Records is correct on this, it is the Patronis Towers in on Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. The this is a quote a double deck bridge at

the forty one and forty two floors. It's a hundred and seventy or five fifty eight feet above the ground and measures fifty eight ms or a hundred ninety feet in length, weighs seven fifty metric tons. Uh and this building opened in uh. This one is really cool looking. This is one of the ones I was talking about earlier where it's essentially it's a connector between two towers

that are the same building. Like it's all one complex, but the complex consists of like a you know, a lower level thing and then two towers going straight up and they're connected in the at the middle of their height by this sky bridge. Yeah, this is an interesting one to look at two because first of all, it's like it's so high up and at the floor you can imagine a good case being made, like what if you need to get to the next tower. Uh, you don't want to go down forty floors and then up

another forty floors. What if you could just walk over? Um? And of course you can adjust the math based on what floor you're trying to get to in each tower. And I think it's an area of the complex that has increased foot traffic because there's sort of a sky lobby concept, like you go halfway up the towers and there's it's not just more regular office occupancy there, there are I don't know, lobbies and and and things for people to hang out and walk around and do at

that level. Yeah, and apparently one whole floor that is for is open to to tourists and as you know, part of this lobby concept. The other is apparently closed off and more for residents or businesses what have you. Um. But it's it's neat that on top of this, and not only is it mere conveyance, but also it adds at least a little bit of structural support as well as a possible means of evacuating individuals from one tower

into the other during an emergency. Maybe not a primary function, but but one that they've apparently looked into, Like what if there was an emergency in one tower, but the other tower was still viable. Uh. That's one way you could help get people out. It's also interesting that this bridge is not directly connected to the buildings. It's designed so that it can shift or slide in and out

of them to to counterbalance building sway from the winds. Well, So that's I mean, this is something that I always forget about skyscrapers, and then I'm told about skyscrapers, and it kind of whigs me out a little bit, the the idea that, yes, they're not just purely stationary. They have a little give to them. There's a little bit of sway involved, and certainly if you have a bridge connecting to uh skyscrapers, you have to take that into account, all right. So at this point I thought we might

get into some of the history of the skybridge. I mean, one of the things about our our look at skybridges here is we're not going to be able to look at every step in the process. We're not gonna take use skybridge by skybridge through human history. But we thought it might be a good idea to hit on some key examples, some of which are more historical in nature. UH and before we get into some of the psych logical aspects, before we get into some of the futurist

ideas that are tied up with sky bridges. And so a great place to start is to travel to Italy. Surely, I think maybe we should start by taking a look at the Bridge of Size or the Ponte day Suspiri in italian Um. You know, Suspiria, like Suspiria, like the movie Size the Size, this is a beautiful one. And this is one where if you you look it up,

you'll instantly recognize it. You'll instantly find yourself longing to be in a gondola with with with your beloved or some imagine beloved, perhaps with a glass of wine in hand, very ironically romantic. I'll get to that. So the Bridge of Size is is it really interesting landmark in Venice, a city that already is already unusual in many of its thoroughfares because many of them are not streets but

canals navigated by boat. And one of these canals, known as the Rio de Palazzo, is crossed over by a totally enclosed limestone bridge connecting two buildings on either side at the level of what looks like about the second story. It is covered with elaborate Baroque decorations, having been commissioned by the Doge Marino Grimani. And no doge is a word that had a meaning before before internet memes. It has nothing to do with dogs. It was an office

in medieval and Renaissance Italy. It was like it was kind of like being like a lord or some other kind of executive. So it was this doge, Marino Grimani, who commissioned it. I think it came up in the early seventeenth century. Apparently it is tradition for couples to kiss as they pass underneath the bridge in a boat or I don't know if it's tradition, it's at least something a lot of people do. I think especially tourists, and tourists are often taking pictures of themselves kissing with

this bridge in the background. You can probably find plenty of those on the internet if you want. So, what is the purpose of this hallway in the sky over the canal that's the causing people to to spontaneously break out in kissing. Uh, you might wonder what you know, was it connecting two wings of a library or an art museum? Maybe so people could move uh, priceless antiques and books and artworks back and forth in the rain without getting wet or something like that. No, not at all.

It was a bridge connecting the Doges Palace and the inquisitors facilities within to the prison on the other side of the canal. Uh. And so it's called the bridge of size because of the size of the doomed prisoners who walked within. Apparently conditions in the prison were pretty nasty. So I've I've at least read the allegation that being confined,

they're frequently resulted in death. So you would, you know, you would sigh knowing your fate was sealed as you were taken across the Bridge of Size into the jail. Well that's not romantic at all. That's horrible, and it makes me wonder. Okay, then, why in particular was this enclosed and not just not just an open bridge. I don't I don't know this, but I wonder if the reasoning had something to do with like preventing prisoners from trying to escape by jumping over the edge into the

canal and getting away. Yeah, yeah, I mean, also, I guess given the nature of the work going on, there. Maybe you don't want them seen by anybody going by in a boat. Uh, that sort of thing. I also have to say, now that you reveal its true nature, I kind of see a skull in this design. I don't know if that's I mean, granted, we tend to lean into uh anthromomorphic details of things anyway, but now that I know it's it's secrets. Yeah, I kind of see these these teeth and two I sockets and uh

and in a nose socket there. Well, I can't find a close up shot to look at right now, though I do think the bridge bears a certain um famili's coat of arms. It might have been the family of the Doge or or someone else. But uh, but possibly that coat of arms looks like a skull. I don't know, all right. Another interesting example from Italy, Texas to Florence, and this is a sixteenth century example. This is a

sary corridor. This was built in fifteen sixty five to allow members of the powerful Medici family to move freely between their residents and the governmental center there in Florence. So it's certainly an elevated, enclosed passageway reaching the full length. I believe it's an entire kilometer in length. There's at least one section of it that is instantly identifiable as a skybridge, like there's a street below it, that sort of thing. But in other cases there are buildings or

businesses beneath a Sari corridor. It literally just cuts through the city, built over like in one case, it's apparently built over what was some riverside butcher shops, because you know, you want to dump all that the leftovers that directly into the river. But that smelled too bad, and so with a little Medici um uh finagling, they got some

jewelers in there as well. Uh. There's also a tower that it goes around because there was one stubborn Florentine who would not sell and so they had to to to to make the their corridor go around this particular tower. And there's even a place where it basically it basically cuts through the Church of Santa Felicita, opening up onto the balcony into a balcony there so that the Medici could take their corridor, attend mass, and I guess keep on going all the way, enjoying a kind of privileged

view of the city. In places, uh, you know, they get to walk from point A to point B in Florence without having to worry about their uh, their enemies trying to murder them. Uh. And over the over time, portions of the Quarridor have been been altered, destroyed, rebuilt, and I believe it was closed for a while and is once more open to tourists visiting the city. You know, what I've always wanted is the ability to wake up, go to math us without ever stepping foot outside. Yeah.

I mean it's such a power flex right, um, yeah, and uh, And it's definitely one to keep in mind when we talk about other examples and modern examples of sky bridges and similar structures. It would be kind of like if you didn't want to leave your bedroom to go to work, and you didn't have tele uh working technology, you could say, what if I were just to physically extend my bedroom across town to the office. How about that?

And I mean that's essentially what what the Medici did here, though to some degree, I think what we're thinking of as a skybridge really has more to do with, um, with just external appearance and like what is the stuff underneath it? And how high is it and things like that. More so than than function, because there are other things that don't quite look exactly like a sky bridge, but

they clearly serve the same function. And there's like a long uh elevated passageway in Rome connecting that a con city to some uh uh I don't some chapel or palace or something there. And you can see it in pictures of the city, though I think a lot of it is uncovered, so it doesn't read exactly like uh, you know, like a tunnel in the sky that's fully enclosed all around. It's more like there's just sort of this elevated bridge going over the rooftops or over parts

of the city. Yeah. Yeah. To to what extent do these examples feel like a bridge? Do they have this this feeling of being above things or or or or having some sort of privileged passage through things? Uh? For instance, we mentioned cold cities or cities that have cold winters. Um The Chicago Padway is a strong example of a

system like this. Parts of it are elevated, but then also parts of it are are completely underground, so that you know, you don't have to go out into the elements during the winter to move from one place to another. Downtown necessarily UM on my visit to Chicago, I wanted to go down and see it. Um though it was it was very pleasant outside, so we didn't have to go down there. But I was reading some accounts of people who of course really like it, some who think

that parts of it needs some work. I think some people think it is a bit dank and perhaps needs a facelift of some sort. Well, that opens up a theme that I'm definitely going to get to it at some point, maybe maybe later in this episode or maybe in the next one, but that when it comes to designing urban spaces in many ways, I think form can be about as important as function. Like it doesn't just matter are these spaces traversable and do they get you

where you're going? But like there are pretty profound effects on our psychological well being depending on the various esthetic qualities of these thoroughfares and tunnels introversial spaces, and and it makes a difference in our lives what these spaces are like absolutely if you if you're spending your life walking around and like just dank concrete with no you know, no plants and no natural light and stuff that that does affect people or it's also like having super reinforced

transparent flooring in your skybridge. I mean, it's fine forward for tourist scenarios, but if you're if you're using this skybridge just as a daily way of connecting, say from from your office to the coffee machine um in the other building, you don't necessarily want it to be a harrowing journey through the sky or at least not to get the coffee maybe on the way back. That would

be impecible than now. If you look around at various articles about sky bridges, particularly even if you go to the wiki page for sky bridges, you'll see some images of some examples. And there's a picture that that has circulated a lot. This is a model that was found in an Eastern Han tomb in a non province in China. And this is quite uh it's it's quite interesting to

look at. It is clearly a multi story building connected by an enclosed sky bridge to another shorter um tower or multi story building, and it's it's pretty cool to look at it. Again, this is this is quite old. Uh al I wasn't able to find anything to indicate that this is a model of something that was ever built. In reality, perhaps it was or perhaps this was just

a model that again went into a tomb. But I was able to look around uh, and I finally found some interesting things about sky bridges and things like sky bridges that were that were actually constructed in various Chinese palace complexes and gardens. So I was looking at um the philosophical encounter embodied by the One Ning by one Hoi Zoe published in Environmental Philosophy, Volume seven, number one.

This came out in spring of So The One Ning Gone or the Summer Old Summer Palace in Beijing was a complex of elaborate gardens and palaces is of the Qing dynasty, built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In eighteen sixty, during the Opium War, it was looted and destroyed by British and French forces. But according to Zoe here the original gardens consisted of three Chinese gardens and a Western style garden that had been designed by Jesuits.

The Chinese gardens were laid out with Daoist cosmology and Finshwe in mind, so that there's so that one stroll through these gardens was said to be one of of contemplated depths. You know, it wasn't just you weren't just putting everything out of your mind as you strolled here. You got to contemplate the tao. Oh do images of these gardens remain, I would be really interested to see the difference between that and the Jesuit garden. You can there are schematics of what it looked like and UH

and the ruins still exists. I believe it was looking at some photographs of this, and it's still a site that I believe can be can be visited, but probably not with all the vegetation in the original place, I don't think. So. I didn't find in that there may be some really robust creations of what these would have looked like, but I was I didn't. They didn't come up in my research. But if anyone out there has seen such an image, I would love to to look

at it. So in talking about this particular park, Zoe turns to some other examples. Zoe shares that the the shan Lin Park of the emperor Chin chi Wong of the third century BC Chin Dynasty featured UH was said to feature covered double floor passageways that allowed the emperor to move from one grand palace to another quote through the wilderness, and in doing so, quote act mysteriously to

avoid devils and meanwhile embrace virtuous individuals. WHOA wait, so the the skyways here were alleged to be so this emperor could like keep his movements secret sort of? Is that? Am I understanding that? Right? Yeah? If I mandered? Well, so, first of all, these wouldn't have been skyways per se. I think these were maybe situated on the ground owned but yes, that they would have been enclosed so that nobody could necessarily see him moving around. He was an

important guy after all. But also he could avoid devils and embrace virtuous individuals, which, uh, you know, we can certainly lean into the supernatural interpretation of that. But also it sounds like not run into people who I don't want to greet, don't run into people who wish me harm, and also, you know, only encounter people who are are worthwhile for me the emperor to run into. But then Zoe turns to an example that I think we can

properly think of as a skywalk. He says, quote in the Imperial huilin garden in the capital of liu Yang of northern way. This is the fifth century. There was an island named Pingle, on which buildings were connected by a rainbow skywalk where walking was like flying to and fro. Visitors moved about in this garden like celestial birds up

and down on in a divine residence. Okay, So when they moved about and it was like flying to and fro, does that just mean that they're crossing about in the air, they're they're high up and they can see all around, or is there more significant? Like I think it's just a poetic way of saying that. Yeah, being moving from one building to another via bridge, Uh, that it it creates this feeling of flying. Yeah. I don't think they were on zip lines or anything. Yeah. Yeah, nor were

they dressed like birds. But but there's there's something, you know, almost supernatural about the experience of youth and using these elevated walkways. Yes. So, And it gets a little more interesting when you look at some of the details here. Solu Yang is certainly a real place, and it's one of the oldest cities in China, which is certainly saying something.

But ping Ley is also the name of a mythical island, and in fact ping Ley is said to be where the elixir of life and the eight immortals may be found. Uh And the connection here is, of course that gardens of this sort are meant to be quote unquote fairy lands, and in fact peng lay can be translated as fairy land. So these are places of supernatural beauty that that invoke different models of reality or in the earlier example that you know you're you're contemplating the Tao as you walk

through it. Um. And it's mentioned by Zoe that tall buildings as well, we're thought to invite the spirits to reside in them. Uh. So it's it's neat to think of. Like I feel like these descriptions that that he's discussing here, like they really draw in things that are certainly unique to like the poetic Chinese interpretation it seems, of these structures. But I think also they get at our universal attraction to these things. Like again, there's something about the skyscraper.

There's something about not only the sky bridge, but bridge them bridges themselves that invite us to them. You know, if you're in a little park and there are bridges, you gotta walk across that bridge, right yeah, Oh yeah, totally I feel the same way. I'm always attracted to bridges and um and spaces that are not just normally readily accessible. Like you know, if if I see an island in the middle of the pond, I do want

to go to it. I want to stand there. But and of course the same applies to locations high up. And this is something that I think is a pervasive strain of thought in the ancient world I guess maybe even um not just the ancient world, but I would say the pre industrial world, the world before skyscrapers became common in city centers everywhere, or you know, you just have like secular urban density driving driving occupancy higher and higher.

In the pre industrial period, I think there was a pervasive association between physical altitude and like I don't know,

the spiritual elevation or holiness or the gods. I mean, I think about how many different types of like tower type structures are associated with either royalty or divinity, going all back, all the way back to like you know, the zigarots of ancient Mesopotamia, uh, where you know, it was literally believed that in some sense the God resides on the top, or that God at least will come down to the top in some cases. Uh. And and royal towers, royal palaces with you know, things reaching high

up in the air. That that that's I think we're still impressed by tall buildings now, but I think it's lost some of the magical umph that it once had in the human minds. Still there would be dennigods of today like where do they want their offices? Where do they want their their apartments? They want they want to be at the top, right, We're still drawn to that. Uh.

Speaking of really tall buildings. One more note about lou Young here is that between five sixteen and five four c e. It contained the the the young Ning Pagoda, which at an estimated nine stories in height, And I think there's some back and forth about exactly how tall it was, but it read roughly nine stories in height. This was one of, if not the tallest buildings in the world at the time, according to the source i's looking at here. It was destroyed by a lightning strike

which then burned it to the ground. Now, I have not had the benefit of visiting any of these sites that that I've I've mentioned here, so certainly if anyone out there listening to the show has and certainly if you have photographs, I'd love I'd love to hear from you, so certainly right in. Uh, and of course that goes that goes to we can say the same regarding any of the sky bridges we're we're discussing in this episode,

or any that we we don't mention. Yes, send in your sky bridge experiences and photographs so that we may enjoy them as well. So that's it for this episode, but we will be back with a part two on this We have much more to discuss regarding sky bridges. But certainly go ahead and right in, we'd love to hear from you. As always, Core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind publishing the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday we do

listener mail. On Wednesday we do a short form artifact or monster fact that on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.