Between towers and abyss: What kind of society are we when we rise millionaire towers?

The city is not just a set of, but a mirror that reflects, in concrete and glass, the values ​​and principles of society that builds it. When we observe and its very high buildings – such as Senna Tower, 500 meters and apartments of $ 300 million -, we are not facing mere aesthetic options. It is a ethical manifesto Stamped in the local landscape, where each floor symbolizes the choice to prioritize the luxury of the few over collective well-being. Aesthetics follows ethics. Therefore, discussing the cafonice or briguice of the building is, in fact, to question the moral values ​​that it represents e The type of society we choose be when We raise millionaire towers while Millions of Brazilians live without dignified housing. Aesthetic criticism thus becomes social criticism-and both are urgently necessary to rethink our way of inhabiting cities. What’s more, with the science, consent and encouragement of political actors.

A famous Maximum Modernist “The form follows the function”which guided generations of architects in the search for balance between aesthetics and utility, seems to have been supplanted by a new concept: “The form follows the profit”. In Balneário Camboriú and other Brazilians, the excessive verticalization does not respond to the need to house populations or democratize urban space, but to the speculative logic that converts the city into commodity. Buildings are no longer places of living to become financial assets, valued not for their suitability to the territory or social demands, but by market algorithms that measure yields in figures. The discussion, although old among urban planners, gains urgency in the face of the radical commodification of space: narrow sidewalks to enlarge towers, shaded by concrete giants, whole neighborhoods transformed into postcards for global investors.

While buildings like the “Superdige” Senna Tower (not to confuse the Ayrton Senna brand with the pilot) employ state -of -the -art technologies – such as the Tuned Mass DamperSystem that reduces oscillations at stratospheric heights – to ensure comfort to a high purchasing social group, most of the population faces precarious transportation, collapsed infrastructure and absence of housing policies. The question that is imposed is not about technical ingenuity, but about the urban return: What is the collective benefit of a building that consumes public resources (water, energy, soil) and returns to the city only shadow and segregation? When the architecture surrenders to speculation, the urban is no longer a project of coexistence to become business – and “progress” reveals itself, in practice, as the vertical stratification of access to dignity. The challenge, therefore, is not to build higher, but to decide to whom and to build itself. The result is gentrification, architectural standardization – with mirrored towers replicable in any metropolis – and the deepening of urban inequality in which VIP areas contrast with zones forgotten by the government.

This relationship between ethics and aesthetics is not new. , designed to be a symbol of democracy and modernity, eventually reproduced social hierarchies in its own spatial configuration. The Pilot Plan, with its monumental superquadras, consolidated itself as the territory of those who could afford and live in them, while the satellites and peripheral settlements concentrated the population of lower income under more urban precarious conditions. What Brasilia did in the horizontal plane, Balneário Camboriú and numerous vertical condominiums in Brazilian cities repeat in the vertical dimension by stratifying society.

The problem, therefore, is not in the verticalization itself, but in the values ​​that it opens in the landscape. When a building reserves six private leisure floors, including car lifts parking in their living rooms, while the city suffers from precarious public transport, the subliminal message leads to think that the right to leisure is the privilege of those who can afford it. Ethics here reveals itself in the materiality of public, national and international materials, finishes and seal and the invisible walls that reconstitute in their concept.

The public power, in this urban theater, acts as co -author of this endeavor. On the official website of the enterprise there is no mention of the required social counterparts (such as integrated popular housing or investment in public infrastructure), highlighting as mayors and legislators normalize the transformation of the city into a luxury product.

Rethinking the architecture of cities is, first and foremost, rethinking our ethics as a society. It is not about abolishing towers, but requiring them to serve everyone and not just the ego of their residents. They include sunny public spaces, which open to sidewalks, respect the natural conditions, which their residents pay taxes capable of funding urban policies since they appropriated their infrastructure. The true “work of art” urban points to a collective coexistence.

Meanwhile, Balneário Camboriú follows as Caricature of Brazil that we choose to be, representing in the urban landscape a society that can always be unequal. It remains to be seen whether other cities will have the courage to write a different story in which architecture is not a monument to greed and ego, but bridge over the abyss we dug ourselves. Places where the discussion on architectural beauty is not mere prop, but genuine expression of space justice.

*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the young Pan.