Word: ziggurat
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...record, oldtimer, what the Sam Hill is a Fifth Avenue ziggurat...
Your comparison of "wedding-cake modern" skyscrapers to the Babylonian ziggurat [TIME, Jan. 23] is most apt. For the ziggurat was none other than the Tower of Babel, a culture center for men intent on creating a world unified without God. Babylon the Great marches on: "Alas, alas, that great city . . ." (Revelation...
...ziggurat served remarkably well its purpose of being a man-made hill on a marshy, level plain, from which the astronomer-priest made his observations. Today's architectural "wedding-cake" in its own stead serves with keen acuteness the need of providing today's businessman with the area necessary for conducting his affairs ... At the end of the day he is vomited out; scurries into the holes provided in the sidewalk, and is not seen until the next morning...
...result was a squat, dumpy ziggurat tapering toward the top and crowned with a concrete blockhouse containing elevator and air-conditioning equipment. High-minded architects referred to them scornfully as "wedding-cake modern." They were white and unadorned, faceless warrens comprised of layer upon layer of strip windows alternating with concrete, like stacked sandwiches. They looked appallingly alike...
Wright said he got his basic idea from Assyrian ziggurats (pyramidal temples with outside ramps ascending spirally). Eventually he decided that "the ziggurat is pessimistic," because it is pyramidal, so he turned it upside down to get his own building. Pointing to his model, he said triumphantly: "This is pure optimism...