the Material curtain of the Malls : a modern equivalent ?

A few weeks ago I purchased a 1823 Italian edition of Durand's RECUEIL ET
PARELLELE via eBay. I will (someday) scan all the plates and selectively
publish the results at Quondam. In general, it is quite revealing to see how
relatively smaller than Giza and St. Peter's all other historic (pre-1800)
architecture is. 
 
Koln was completed 1824-80 and at a height of 500 ft. does exceed both Giza
and St. Peter's. The Washington Monument, built 1848-54 and 1879-84 reaches
a height of 555 ft. It just might be that Koln was once briefly the tallest
building in the world if the Washington Monument was not yet up to 500 ft by
1880.

the height of a building is a mesure of the importance it acquires in "his"
social/economic environment.
also in his contemporary scale of values. ( You precisely defined a
disgression when separating pre-post 1800 constructions)
 
Reference: most of the factual data pertaining to dates and heights comes
from Fletcher's A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE [ON THE COMPARATIVE METHOD], were
ground cover area of certain buildings is also sometimes provided.

About ground coverage:
Saddam, Ceaucescu and many other tyrans like Stalin, the Iran's Shah , or
Abyssinian kings,  Pharaons or Greek architects  used not the height but the
ground surface  re-covered as a manifestation of their power.

More recently, such "power" manifesto is adquired by attaining height.
Eventually after 1800.

Scraping the sky instead of  occupying extended ground.

Just like  modern wars don't like to occupy the killing fields at the ground
level, they prefer (?) sky - power.

Koln cathedral is the latest (I believe) manifestation of this old fashioned
way of showing both horizontal and vertical power , creating  strong social
importance in the public's mind, even to allied forces bombing Koln during
ww2 who precisely spared such latter Goethic (?) symbol.

The modern equivalent  could be the huge complexes of power and attirance to
the public exerced by the western  commercials malls, in Ryiad or outside
Washington D.C..

Comparing to the iron curtains discussion here on the list, such malls also
materially divide the public inside  such Mall from all feeling from the
real outside world.

A wall is a Mur in the french, and a Mall is also a separation like a wall
between two worlds, just like the iron curtain was.

A customer inside a Mall feels (or must feel and behave)  "good", like  a
believer inside St Peter, or a Ra's adept in pharaonic times in front (not
inside)  the Gizeh pyramid.
(only  special guest were allowed inside after their earth's life to keep
living underground their embalsamed postmortem symbolical transfer to
another "life". 

And inside St Peter , underground, are also many buried symbols too, some
embalsamed.
        (Just wondering here)
-- ¼at