
This is the vertical-push room. Masonry walls carried buildings until the steel frame, the elevator and the curtain wall let them rise. Here are the riveted column, the joinery bench, a curtain-wall unit and the Monadnock wall section; and the panels that ask why cities go up: land, access, technology, rules, money and people who can build.

A riveted column section from the early steel-frame era.

Mortise and tenon, dovetail and lap joints to cut and fit.

A full-height unitised curtain-wall panel: glass, mullions, anchors, seals.

A cut section showing the base thickness a 16-story load-bearing wall required.

Stack the same floor area under three zoning codes and see three skylines.

Pour the sand, watch the wall fail, set the trench box, pour again.
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