gradenko_2000 posted:

dr_rat posted:

Give me ten fine men with blade or pole arm and I'll have that death trap of a hovel take within the hour.

Applewhite posted:

Why would you want it, though?

Applewhite posted:

Why would you want it, though?

Vernii posted:

Blistex posted:

I always thought that businesses on the first floor of apartments was something that should have never gone out of style. You see this happening all the way up to the 60's/70's, then pretty much stopping. That's one thing I really miss about Korea and China (although they have stopped the practice as well), but it's nice to be able to go to the first floor to pick up some groceries, or have a bite to eat. Nothing (IMO) destroys an area faster than just erecting a pile of apartments for miles in every direction and saying "this is a vibrant neighborhood because there is a gas station, Starbucks, and a Walmart 2km away".

dr_rat posted:

Best designed building in thread. A castle for the ages.

Apollodorus posted:

That Byzantine revival Orthodox (I assume) church in the upper left corner is tight as hell, though.

Halah posted:

Yep! That's the Annunciation Greek Orthodox cathedral, home of a fantastic festival.

Sharpest Crayon posted:

This box o' beauty is the finely named Finlandia-house, a congress and event center in Helsinki:



The three towering boxes were built to get deeper cathedral-like acoustics for musical displays.



(the other side actually looks sorta nice)


The failure here was that the designer, Alvar Aalto, absolutely needed the building to be clad in the purest white marble.
The building was finished in 1971, and ten years later they noticed that the Carrara marble couldn't withstand the weather conditions in Finland. The constant freezing and melting as well as the fact the marble slabs were leaning into each other caused the marble to start deforming and bowing outward.



Talks were started on what should replace the material when they'd eventually need to strip the marble and redo the outsides. Several different kinds of white stone were discussed as a replacement, especially a kind of white granite from China that could actually stand against the weather. As the damage became worse year by year, In 1991 a net was installed to stop falling slabs of marble from killing people.

Finally, after more than 10 years of bickering, the committee came to a decision and the building was reclad 1998-1999 ... with the SAME GODDAMN MARBLE that failed in record time in the first place.
That durable Chinese granite? Not white enough.

The new slabs were made slightly smaller, so that when they started weathering, at least they wouldn't lean on each other and make the damage worse!
No surprise, the new slabs are well on their way to deforming by now. The picture here is of the new slabs in 2005, less than 8 years after they'd been installed.

Blistex posted:

There are naturally exceptions (if we're talking about new architecture), but I'm talking about the general trend in North America to segregate commercial and residential and have a nice 5km drive on a 4 lane highway between them. So basically you have apartment blocks/condos/suburbs with absolutely nothing around them, and retail villages with the same. So for some people, there is literally no reason for you to be outside of your apartment unless your in your car driving somewhere. On the other hand, areas like what Frosted Flak posted encourage people to walk, shop, browse and to beautify the area so that it becomes a more inviting and interesting place.

CannonFodder posted:

He was talking about Charlotte and Raleigh because NC cities have tried hard to build up their downtown areas with mixed commercial/residential areas with areas friendly to pedestrian traffic. The craft beer boom has helped, because now there are loads of craft breweries with restaurants setting up shop downtown.

Musluk posted:

Ankara Courthouse:




I loving hate this building and everyone in it.

Can't find an inside photo but it's the most soul crushing, oppressive thing ever.

HappyKitty posted:

I missed out on Ottawachat back in the first few pages of the thread, but no thread about ugly architecture would be complete with:




The City Centre building.








The worst thing was how prominent a landmark it was if you were approaching downtown Ottawa on the Transitway from the west end. It was the perfect reminder that you were on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. They've changed the exterior somewhat (it no longer has the depressing "CITY CENTRE" sign on all four loving faces), but it's still an ugly grey box attached to a squat, ugly warehouse. You could replace "CITY CENTRE" with "ЦЕНТР ГОРОДА" and get a soviet-era small-town government building. It's really, really sad.

Ottawa Citizen posted:

Denounced repeatedly as one of Ottawa’s worst eyesores, the City Centre complex has been saved from demolition for one of the saddest possible reasons: nobody was interested enough in the location for it to be worth tearing the place down.

Libelous Slander posted:

whats the festival? i've passed this place a bunch of times for other downtown festivals/convention stuff

Skutter posted:

On the topic of ugly art museums and college campus buildings... This is the Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, MI.

This if the "front", street-facing part of the museum


Street view of the front side


Opposite, campus-facing side with the front entrance


Another front entrance shot


Another shot of the opposite side


The entrance in the back


Another shot of the back entrance, along with a weird metal bush sculpture


There's also this thing out back too.



This place is terrible. The "front" part is their main gallery, which only has a few small portions of flat wall space, the other walls are all at angles (they still hang things on them though), most of the main gallery is comprised of windows. These windows held up construction for almost a year because the specifications were so "unique" that it took forever for them to be crafted, and of course one broke, delaying things even further. There are also two small, diamond-shaped rooms near the main gallery for separate exhibitions, but they're so small you can't fit much of anything in there, and there are only three walls on one of them because one wall is all glass of course. The entire place is just a poor use of space. Not to mention that it looks like a giant future razor in the midst of a really pretty red brick campus that was built in the 1850s.

SaltLick posted:

Building was kind of an eyesore. Glad they got rid of it.

Skutter posted:

Another front entrance shot

RandomFerret posted:

This makes me super uncomfortable. Not aesthetically, it's deeper than that. It feels like something out of a nightmare that I'm trying to remember, but I can't.

I'm pretty sure if I saw it in person I would scream.

Halah posted:

the greek festival. I don't think it has a fancier name, it's just the greek festival

Evil_Greven posted:

Yeah, haha, real funny.

Some edgy humor there!

gently caress you.

Evil_Greven posted:

Yeah, haha, real funny.

Some edgy humor there!

gently caress you.

Evil_Greven posted:

Yeah, haha, real funny.

Some edgy humor there!

gently caress you.

KoRMaK posted:

We have this in cleveland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ameritrust_Tower


e: hahah I didn't realize this sad fact

Sharpest Crayon posted:

This is the Futuro, the coolest cabin ever and I would so live in one! Presented first in 1968, it came in baby blue, yellow or white.
Note the outside door opens up as stairs.




It was designed to be a ski cabin that could be constructed and heated as quickly as possible. It was made of fiberglass-reinforced plastic (plastic being the cheap, durable material of the future). Delivered in prefabricated pieces, you could easily put one up in hard-to-travel terrain in just a few days, or even air-drop a completed one on a helicopter.



So why was it a failure? Well, for one, the price was too steep. The price of oil jumped in 1973 and tripled the price of plastic.
That, and there was really very little usable space inside one because of the shape. The plastic would scratch up something fierce.
No storage really, and hardly any room to move. The chairs would pull down to be beds during the night:



The kitchen was small. Yes, this is the kitchen.



Every one came with a fireplace/bbq spot in the middle.



People also protested on the building of these "unnatural" ufo's into their lovely untouched woods. The design was too eccentric to really break into mass market.
The license to build them got sold to 25 countries, only 10 of which actually built any. Less than a hundred of these cabins ever got made and production ended in 1978.



I would still pay any price to live in that.

Frostwerks posted:

stop being gay

Evil_Greven posted:

Oh I'm sorry.

I just heard the explosion, saw the bombed out remains, and my father had friends killed there.

You know. No big deal.

Fojar38 posted:

where are you supposed to poop

Fojar38 posted:

where are you supposed to poop

Sharpest Crayon posted:

Skutter posted:

On the topic of ugly art museums and college campus buildings... This is the Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, MI.

This if the "front", street-facing part of the museum


Street view of the front side


Opposite, campus-facing side with the front entrance


Another front entrance shot


Another shot of the opposite side


The entrance in the back


Another shot of the back entrance, along with a weird metal bush sculpture


There's also this thing out back too.



This place is terrible. The "front" part is their main gallery, which only has a few small portions of flat wall space, the other walls are all at angles (they still hang things on them though), most of the main gallery is comprised of windows. These windows held up construction for almost a year because the specifications were so "unique" that it took forever for them to be crafted, and of course one broke, delaying things even further. There are also two small, diamond-shaped rooms near the main gallery for separate exhibitions, but they're so small you can't fit much of anything in there, and there are only three walls on one of them because one wall is all glass of course. The entire place is just a poor use of space. Not to mention that it looks like a giant future razor in the midst of a really pretty red brick campus that was built in the 1850s.

Skutter posted:

Sharpest Crayon posted:

This is the Futuro, the coolest cabin ever and I would so live in one! Presented first in 1968, it came in baby blue, yellow or white.
Note the outside door opens up as stairs.

quote:

The Dymaxion House was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times — all of them factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended to be suitable for any site or environment and to use resources efficiently. A key design consideration of the design was ease of shipment and assembly.

Sharpest Crayon posted:

There's a small alcove on the side you can't see