The View from Above

Brou Monastery, Bourge-en-Bresse, France, which looks even better from a helicopter. [flickr source]

Watching the Tour de France this week, I'm amazed by the consistently great aerial camera-work that accompanies the broadcast—not only those entrancing shots of the peleton morphing and shimmying like a shoal of tropical fish—but the postcard views of the landscape along the way.

One thing that's amazed/interested me is how the most attractive buildings from the air are just about always those that were built before there was much chance of them being seen from the air (still more so if we discount ballooning). The ones built in the past century, though, are just about always uglier from above than from the ground. Blame flat roofs and air conditioners I guess. Maybe the ubiquity of Google Earth and other identifiable aerial views will inspire top-tier architects to give greater weight to the view from above. Or maybe they'll just rent it out as billboard space.