Their corners scrape the sky like sheaves – angular, calculated and distant. Up, up, the lines sweep, joining in geometric communion high above my head, and I feel space warp below my feet. As I move, they rotate, a slow dance composed for the observant spectator alone. They cling together, and on first glance, their amassment is one of homogeneity, however, when one approaches, the explosion of difference is almost fractal, and I understand that this existence of assumed binary space is actually a composition of all human achievement, juxtaposed time, chronicled culture and our desperate desire to create order in chaos. And here, the beams, wires, the liquid concrete, the light bulbs and railings and steps so disordered during construction come together in a symphony of intent and symmetry and balance. Alone, they stand, as an idea – but together they are the vast mixing pot of potential and society.

And we build, like the swallow constructing its nest out of mud. We rake and dig and pillage the world around us to manifest a materialization of the truths we have discovered as a species. And there are surprisingly few as them, but, as far as the built environment goes, they are everywhere, because we can only inhabit structures which we deem obey the laws of our culture. These laws have changed over time, visible in the lines of my city. It is a land of mosques, synagogues, and churches. It is a land of futuristic curvature, of historicist columns, of brutalist holes punched into a concrete wall, of contemporary blue glass, and of 80’s plastic panes. Through our pillaging, we re-organize what was given to us, in such unintelligible gestures. As we pretend, our city does not.

Some of these buildings, their glass glittering in the sunlight, seem to obey certain laws more than others. They are beacons of the hegemony of geometry, of the dominance of glittering white space, of cleanliness, of the firm grip held on our society by computing, of the retention of the past, and of political organization of space. Some seem to be constructed for the CEO, to dwell in his corner office in complacency. Some seem to be dominant, and some reactive, mere space-fillers, flowing into neglected and forgotten corners.

And the city, it is always growing, for it is analogous to us, and when we grow, it does too. Its skyline is littered with cranes, and through day and night the bleeping and groaning of construction sites echoes through its corridors, spewing golden light into the sky. And this night dust sky glows orange until the colours of the dawn seep back into the arena of aesthetic competition.

This is when the glass surfaces assert their dazzling reign, and the city explodes into a wild forest of reflective surfaces, throwing, bending, absorbing, magnifying and piercing. A thousand artificial suns explode over my morning head. For it is no longer only the cathedrals who filter light through their roaring domes – the command of light has been distributed fairly amongst all inhabitants of the city. But amidst this democratization of the sun, the magic of the simultaneity of reflectivity and penetration was forgotten, and the pools of reflection, the streaks on walls, the rotating doors and their caleidoscope surroundings have slipped into obscurity. These skyscrapers, however, shining bright against a grey sky, awash in clouds, preserve the magic of the stained glass window in the Gothic cathedral. They compartmentalize the beams into little squares, the unorganizable sorted neatly, to be admired against the chaos of an uncontrolled sky.

The city must be approached as an object, to be viewed from a point of constant velocity. And from the distance I observe it, and untethered by the qualms of traffic, disorder, the shortfalls of human vision and the tendency toward continuous acceleration, it stands in a misleading and unlikely silence. The buildings, they fall and recede out of my plane of vision, like actors bowing on the stage of 21st-century culture, only the audience is not yet aware of their performance. These buildings embody all we have achieved and are a culmination, brimming with the the issues we occupy ourselves with, symbolizing not only the glamour of humanity, but also its gluttony, its hypocrisy, and its shortfalls. They are humanity at its most visceral, its most raw – and the balconies dangle, the windows glimmer. A steady stream of visitors frequents its entries to fill its cavernous interior. Cars creep through the streets, streets so caked in concrete it is impossible to imagine that anything ever existed here previously. We are swallows, dwelling in our glittering cathedral of stone, the capstone of building achievement, the validation of our species.