Unbuilding

What would happen if a crazy multibillionare in the Middle East decided to buy the Empire State Building and transport it across the ocean? Macaulay presents this scenario with a meticulously researched deconstruction with detailed illustrations of the building's internal structural features, showing over the course of two years what it would take to dismantle this monument of American architecture. In so doing, he helps the reader appreciate how significant an architectural achievement it is while also helping the reader understand how great buildings like this are made. The concept of taking the building apart to show off its construction is a novel one, and Macaulay not only makes the reading worthwhile through his careful research, but also with humor. (Spoiler warning at the end of this paragraph). Tongue-in-cheek, he describes the local protests at the building's sale, and the appeasement of New York's residents by transforming the site into a park with the spire installed at its center. Ironically, after years of deconstruction, he chooses to have the building lost at sea en route to its destination. This plot twist is undoubtedly an acknowledgement of the Empire State Building's place in the American consciousness as a cultural icon, whose ownership cannot change hands. This book, like all of Macaulay's architecture books, focuses primarily on the physical details of the building, so it will appeal best to readers who experience life through the details. This is an outstanding choice to prepare for a trip to New York, as part of an architecture or history study, or just for entertaining reading. Because most of the information comes through the exquisitely detailed drawings, it's a better read-alone than read-aloud.

When as a child I first read this book, I was captivated by it, as I was by all of David Macaulay's imaginative works of illustration and storytelling. And yet even then I thought it was very strange, this charming and odd tale set in an undefined future in which an Arab sheik purchases the Empire State Building and has it unassembled brick by brick for eventual reconstruction in his homeland (a la London Bridge, which today rests in Arizona). I loved reading about how even a vast building might be "unbuilt". I also loved learning about the interior anatomy of a tall building (which was really David Macaulay's intent all along) and I liked the quirky little hidden additions Macaulay always includes for a sharp-eyed reader to discover (like King Kong as one of the workers on the project). Today in an era when it is impossible to read or even think of this 1980 book without being confronted with the destruction of the World Trade Center, Unbuilding seems even more bizarre and ironic. Macaulay, brilliant and creative man that he is, wrote Unbuilding in another age, a more confident time and place, when it was unthinkable that New York's skyscrapers, those mighty symbols of commerce and human achievement, were in any way endangered by anything less titanic than nuclear war, or that they would not stand for millennia, the Gothic cathedrals of an age wherein faith was replaced by the relative egalitarianism of free-flowing commerce. Ah, how different was my perception of Unbuilding upon my most recent reading: the first since at least the early 1990's. I was keenly aware that in 2006 this book might never be marketed at all, and if it was how different its plot would have been. Nonetheless, or perhaps for that very reason, Unbuilding seems more important than ever to me, and I hope it stays in print for a long time to come. Read this thirty-page book if you get a chance. It says a lot about the near-miraculous process by which tall buildings are made, and it shines metaphorical light on the psychological reactions of we contemporary Americans.

David Macaulay's incredible Unbuilding is a masterpiece of drawing. Occasionally the book on the disassembly of the Empire State building, purchased by an Arab shiek, will show a gorilla hand hanging over a ledge or beer cans lying around. Although in the post 9/11 era the conceit that the World Trade Center's removal sealed the deal may ring hollow, the book captured the culture of city planning decisions of the time.

This is a highly unlikely story. But it is rich with detail, and the author's drawings are, as usual, incredible. The ending is the also a delight. This is one you will buy for your kids but keep for yourself