I have shown many foreign visitors around Copenhagen, and to probably more my enjoyment than theirs, provided extensive information on its more or less prominent monuments. I have always paused on Arne Jacobsen’s mid-century high rise the SAS Royal Hotel, and told the story of how it broke the innocence of the Copenhagen skyline as the first non-religious/governmental structure. The chairs, the curtains, the night lamps were all designed by Jacobsen, and some of the pieces now feature prominently in corporate lobbies across the globe. The building, unimpressive to the twentyfirst-century eye, is a chronic low-point of my tour, and in spite of it being at heart a selfish endeavour, I have begun considering whether to appease my audience. Attempting to revamp its feature, I showed it last time framed in a moonlit view through a romantic park area, also the city’s cruising ground. Retrospectively unsurprising, the building appeared less interesting than ever. One wonders what it is about these tall buildings; what they mean as monuments in the city, and why people stop listening when I talk about the SAS Tower.

Meanwhile, the city’s Opera House has managed to, at least, interest visitors and residents alike, and is also a regular feature of my tour. The Opera, or the ‘toaster’ (as the canal tour-guides dub it), sits on the harbour directly opposite the royal winter residence Amalienborg and the dome of the Frederik’s church. Patriarchal in the most literal sense that word may be applied to a building — think dark-wood-panelled office with chester furniture — the Opera was a gift to the city from shipping billionaire A.P. Møller. The gift was awkwardly accepted in 2000 (the national theatre did not receive extra money to actually run the new venue), and more or less denounced upon its completion in 2004 by architect Henning Larsen (it is ugly to the fullest extent possible under the relativity of systems of taste). Surpassed by few of its kind in vulgarity, it stands, I suppose, to tell us something about ‘who is in charge now’. To much surprise not the/this old queen, nor whoever will consent/descend to represent the national Danish church lurking in the eighteenth-century compound Frederikstaden on the other side of the water.

Who demands our vision as populace of capital cities is not unimportant, and very interestingly, between the old-world order of Frederikstaden, and the not substantially different anything-goes-as-long-as-you-are-a-rich-white-man logic of the Opera, stands the tower of Nikolaj Church opposite from the parliament Christiansborg. Nikolaj church largely burnt down in 1795, but was rebuilt with a tower bigger than ever, in the first decade of the 20th century as a gift to the city from the founder of the Carlsberg breweries, Carl Jacobsen. Jacobsen’s contribution to the city — the positioning of his phallus in the viewpoint of every man, woman and child of Copenhagen — veiled in stucco and copper ornamentation, was justified in religion, in fact a humble gift to God. The image of Møller, on the other side of the harbour, is similarly dissolved by the fractured light of Olafur Eliasson’s chandeliers, Per Kirkeby’s reliefs and Casper Holten’s 8-hour production of Der Ring des Nibelungen (or was it 16?). His gift is a generous contribution to the arts. In a talk recently at London’s Royal College of Art, architect Renier de Graaf mentioned museums and opera houses as among the only ‘safe’ objects for architects; the only safe way of responding to contemporary society’s increasing demand for icons. Rightly, it seems that between Jacobsen and Møller, art has has taken the place of religion as the apolitical guise. However, judging by the vulgar aesthetic manifestation of Møller’s Opera, (a near faithful rendition of one man’s disproportionately large claim to a nation), it seems art is capable of being about as apolitical as the church.

What I am interesting in, is how these monuments watch over the people living in the cities. What it means to us to see them every day, to recognise them. The buildings as a source of reassurance of our ‘being in the city’. Being somewhere that is instantly recognisable to the people we don’t know, but whom we imagine are watching from outside or from the future. Being somewhere that will lend us a sense of purpose, or tell the story of our lives when there doesn’t seem to be one. Cities will give you that from the moment of biking across the Copenhagen harbour with Møller’s limp, enlarged member (at the time of his recent death he was perhaps the oldest man in the world) looming in the corner of your eye. Or from the weather as reflected in London’s oil-funded Shard every morning. These manifestations of power are interesting to look at as signifiers of urban collectivity. As something that orients our movement through the cities, becomes the image of the city.

The perspective moves to London now, because I had a dream which featured a barely-finished addition to the city’s skyline. (This is the extent to which these monuments sit in the corner of our eyes, leak through the eyeball and haunt us in our sleep). I was at the top of the what is called the ‘Walkie Talkie’, but could also look like a number of other things, looking over New York’s central park. The Frieze Art fair was taking place below me with a number of huge pavilions, one of them a black pyramid. At one point the building was rather in front of me, so I could see that the whole top floor was the size of one regular bedroom and inhabited by a single man, folding his laundry. Rather in the style of a Wizard of Oz. Being able to see the building from where I live in South London, I have wondered whether the house prices are going up due to the new view of the skyline provided by the Shard, the Walkie Talkie and the Cheese Grater. (you are also able to see the Erotic Gherkin from certain points, but it no longer holds value as news-object). They participate in the narrative of our urban lives. They put us on the map, provide closeness, iconicity. Includes us in the image of London. Buildings become taller as populations of newly gentrified areas pay to become included in what they represent.

Googling the walkie-talkie now, I see that its effects have been more tangible than both house prices and dream cameos. The building’s hollow, semi-circular sway inwards towards the sky, reflects the sunlight onto the street so unflinchingly it melts the cars below: This extraordinary building melts its surroundings with rays that come from space.

I fell into doubt the other day about whether Godzilla was an actual dinosaur, but quickly realised I had confused it for T-Rex. Godzilla is T-Rex’s oversized Zizekian brother. We are reassured by knowing the source of destruction, Godzilla gives it a face. As it has recently turned out, the dinosaurs were actually feathered, like birds, not scaly. Perhaps their mythological offspring have been similarly misconceived: not roaringly monstrous, but glass-paned immaculate, sometimes branded CO2-neutral, sometimes with the power to melt cars, sometimes with roof-top gardens, or 24-hour waffle-restaurants. Sometimes new additions to the Serpentine Gallery, which is not a gallery at all, but a restaurant. They are Trojan horses amongst us, always claiming our attention, acquiring familiarising nick-names, letting us know where we are, who we are, and always letting us forget that they are all the same on the inside: lit by fluorescent light.

Architectural monuments, skylines and silhouettes provide the visual identity for cities both in the way that they are marketed to visitors, and in the way they contribute to the sense of what it means to be a self in that city. These new high-rises have acquired an ability unknown to their predecessors. The ability to make up stories: to borrow feathers, activate empty signifiers. Whether in the shape of a vegetable, an electronic device or New York’s World Trade Centre mid-destruction (MVRDV’s Seoul towers), these buildings don’t care what they actually are. In the case of operas, churches, and galleries, the power invested in them metamorphoses into spiritual encounters with sin and death, £50 lunches in a gallery, or 32-hour productions of Der Ring des Nibelungen; things not directly, or at least exclusively, running the errands of their benefactors, hence their (at least, part) safeness. We have two signifiers: ‘Walkie Talkie’ and ’20 Fenchurch Street’. One refers to the other. But the other doesn’t really refer to the one. And only the other kind of makes up the referent: whatever is actually in the building, is not what we are talking about when we talk about the Walkie Talkie. Combatting this trend means fabricating more narratives: The difference between Walkie Talkie and 20 Fenchurch Street is the difference between Godzilla and T-Rex. T-Rex is a fossil; Godzilla probably has a sexy victim. Capitalism is boring; being on nickname-basis with Big City life is fun, and fast-universally recognised as desirable, and more than anything monstrously consumable.

A regular on London’s skyline, St. Paul’s Cathedral, must be visible from selected London hill tops. New buildings cannot block the view, and haven’t since it scandalously unveiled itself as dome, not spire. These new monuments, however, are temporary, not only because Zaha Hadid’s £14 mil Serpentine Gallery extension appears to be a tent, but because stories have an ending. (I am including this building among the tallest in London because height, for the purposes of monumentality, is measured in ego not metres, two things that often, but not always go hand-in-hand). They disappear from our mouths and from our memory. Fall back into endless office landscapes. The shrill voice of the ADSL-modem echoing through the Lloyds Building, previously known as ‘the Inside-Out Building’, however, since the completion of the Gherkin, has anyone called the Lloyds Building by its nickname? Has anyone called the Lloyds Building anything? No, because its story was told taller by at least 5 other buildings since, and is now barely visible, even from up close.

In a comical/unbearable cramp of rhetorics I am back at the SAS Royal Hotel, which is no longer called that either, but something different, determined by the international company that now runs it (although it still says SAS on it because it is listed: the break-down of the referent). It no longer has the curtains or the night lamps (it has the chairs, because everyone has those chairs), and if there is an interesting story to tell, it is definitely the one that is out of sight. Narratives are instantly nostalgic, and telling stories of what is here, but no longer quite, is perhaps our only source of iconicity today. The nominalisation of tall buildings is the instance of their death that foreshadows their future as monuments. Great made-up dinosaurs of the city. Like the Lloyds Building, invisible in a cluster of disused names, Jacobsen’s Royal Hotel is his (whisper it): lost Gesamtkunstwerk. It is there and not there, simultaneously. Incredibly exciting. And still on my tour.