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	title of this thread your message Truly adventuresome architecture in commercial and industrial and R&D, requires huge institutional players (preferrably quasi monopolists) building monuments to themselves (headquarters), but even then it usually requires an unusually large equity contribution, plus an institution owned by a holding company that also owns a lender, an insurance company, or a real estate investment trust, to quell the inherent conservatism of persons deploy large sums of capital that could earn alot more by being reinvested in the monopoly's business, rather than its real estate. Basic real estate 101: real estate is a piggy bank with low yield, unless you leverage it way up (finance a high loan-to-value ratio), so that the rate of return on equity is spiked through the high leverage on the equity (i.e., a hundred million dollar building appreciating at 2.5%/yr over 15 years--about the best you can hope for historically--with 10 percent equity invested makes you alot more than a 10 million dollar building does with a 10 million dollar equity investment under the same appreciation scenario). but if you're going to use a lot of debt to make a lot of return on investment, then you've got to be very conservative in what you build to persuade a lender to take such a lending position...unless the equity player owns the lender, as is often the case with, say, East Asian players. So there are a lot of financial forces (read risk management constraints) encouraging doing what's been done before with just enough variation to fit the site. Phillip Johnson understood this and accepted it, when he built both the bevelled top skyscrapers for the oilcos in Houston and the ATT tower with the funny cornice in Manhattan. Basically, he gave them the net/rentable/sf the financial model required for the ground rent and if it looked like and had the space program of every other high rise from foundation to top floor, well, the lenders and equity players just didn't much give a damn what Phillip did to the tops...unless what he did cost them rentable square footage. A few extra bucks for a pointy roof? Who cares? We'll pump a few extra barrels of crude out of Angola, or Kuwait, or what have you. So Phillip gave the big players what they wanted and, considering that guys who run these large corporations are saavy dudes, they probably all had a good laugh about the cockamamie roofs down at 54th and 5th Avenues in the University Club, or at the Petroleum Club down in Texas, or whatever clubs these sorts of folks go to these days. associated web images (optional) associated web link (optional) your email your password create a forums account \| you forgot your password?