Gorilla Salad posted:

Every time I see these dictator's wet dream megastructures I think how it would work for some poor bastard coming home after a long hard day at work with arms full of groceries.

Or even just the daily fifteen minute walk to get out of the place if you're one of the saps who lives right at the back. I hate it when I go to a hotel and have to walk through a bunch of featureless, identical corridors to get to my room. I couldn't live with doing that every day, except multiplied by a factor of ten.

therattle posted:

That Interlace building looks really awesome.

This thread reminds me of a building I used to see when I lived in South Africa; the enormous UNISA (correspondence university) building overlooking the main highway between Johannesburg and Pretoria. I'm pretty sure it was designed to look like an airplane, and the nose is cantilevered out almost over the highway.

Roy posted:

I like to post this whenever people criticize Le Corbusier



It' called The Interlace, and it's an apartment complex in Singapore. Essentially it's a deconstructed apartment block. It has some clear visual references to early post-war brutalism.

ANAmal.net posted:

The best building in South Africa is that hollow cylindrical apartment building where everyone got together and filled the middle atrium with a five-story pile of garbage.

smackfu posted:

It's definitely cool looking, but I don't feel it's much of a defense of Corbusier if changing it back to standard towers would ruin it.

ANAmal.net posted:

The best building in South Africa is that hollow cylindrical apartment building where everyone got together and filled the middle atrium with a five-story pile of garbage.

a pipe smoking dog posted:

Well I need to see pictures of this

Jerry Cotton posted:

What?

fuctifino posted:

I checked out the new(ish) staircase at the Grade 1 listed Royal William Naval Yard in Plymouth the other day, thinking that I'd hate it. I ended up really liking it.

skbw posted:

Well, for starters, Corbusier Habitational Units in Marseilles and elsewhere, where based on one idea, that vertical transport(i.e. elevators) where faster than horizontal transportation (i.e. walking, public transport, or, at the time, cars). Therefore, for the time, those housing units where the best example of rational architecture, where one would provide to every inhabitant most of what they needed (i.e. if I'm remembering properly, a kindergarten, grocery shop, etc.), in the building, connecting said building to the rest of the city through fast motorways.
Compounded with the fact that it was believed at the time, that the old urban streets, more chaotic, tight, and grown in a organic manner, where bad, as in it cannot be used by cars, there isn't enough sun light in the houses, and they aren't safe. So, in line with the CIAM precepts, the buildings where elevated in pillotis, so one can use the most of the outside space as possible, with every house having enough sun light, and it is the most rational and modern thing one can have. It is a brilliant piece of architecture, and corbusier was a brilliant architect.

But, it doesn't work. The habitation machine, and modernism to an extent, was a pure, rational, almost mathematical architecture, getting rid of all excess, where one tends to try and optimize everything for a more effective life style, guaranteeing a minimum quality of life in to every space. A noble effort, but doomed to fail from the start. Why? humans arenīt machines. Living in a community, in a city, is good, and healthy. Putting people in a building, the same as many, isolated, creates a lot of psychological, sociological and anthropological problems. And, again, one needs variety, need to be engaged by it's surroundings, one needs to have landmarks (in a matter of speaking) that contributes to it's own identity, everyone needs it's own mindscapes, and territory. Yeah it's a little esoteric and complicated I know, but then again, architecture is complicated.

Well, now a days every one complains about star architects, and how their architecture is more about their own style, than the most rational solution for a problem, and one would be right. Because it is an evolution of post modernism, and post modernism is/was a response to the "flaws" of modernism in it's more rational side. And now I should quote bot Bruno Zevi and Kevin Lynch, talking about genius loci and how one perceives a city, the need for landmarks, the problem of the grid layout and the problems of the isolated tower layout, etc etc, to substantiate a little more but this is getting a little bit long. And, yes, I complain about star architecture as well, as I'm more inclined to favour functionalism over formalism.

Anyway, I could go and write for ever, but, mostly, the Interlace looks like a cool collection of buildings to study, and designed by some one from OMA, because, of course it is, it's a gated community, well design and all, but a luxury gated community, not a social housing project that was to be almost a frame work of a new type of life, and a new type of city, that thankfully never happen. If you google Le Corbusier Paris master plan, you'll see his proposition to raze most of the historical centre of Paris to build a collection of tall, geometrically pure with the optimal sunlight and facade to area ratio, and even bomb proof roofs. Again, we are lucky this has never happen.

Tl;Dr: Just because a building/collection of buildings has both habitational and social areas/shops, that doesn't it the same as the habitation units. Although they did influence every architect since they were built, one must remeber, that Modernism died, for a reason, in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3.32 pm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe

fuctifino posted:

I checked out the new(ish) staircase at the Grade 1 listed Royal William Naval Yard in Plymouth the other day, thinking that I'd hate it. I ended up really liking it.

Uncle Enzo posted:

Agreed, this is ok. It seems like a reasonably functional staircase (people can reach and hold on to the handrails, its a reasonable gradient etc) while also architecturally proclaiming "this staircase isn't original, it was added later when this place became a museum".

Lucy Heartfilia posted:

That Singaporean building is really awesome. But I bet it's only affordable for rich people.

Dmitri-9 posted:

Here is Sandburg Village which is a towers in a park urban renewal project that is still around and wasn't a disaster but notice that its only 1-2 city blocks wide and not 10.

Phanatic posted:

It's also a condominium, not public housing.

Phanatic posted:

It's also a condominium, not public housing.

MikeJF posted:

Is the Sydney Opera House postmodernism?

Accretionist posted:

Post-Modernism makes me think everything after 1930 was a mistake.

quantumavenger posted:

I find the last few posts about the Interlace as a deconstructed Le Corbusier building and the failures of modernist urban renewal interesting, because the Singaporean public housing program started out with utilitarian, modernist housing projects at least somewhat similar to Pruitt-Igoe, Cabrini-Green and various other post-WWII public housing estates, but appears to have achieved radically different results.

Compare this photograph of Toa Payoh New Town:



with the aerial view of Pruitt-Igoe from Wikipedia:



Structurally, the two developments appear very similar, yet the former is a thriving suburb while almost nothing remains of the latter.

I'd say that Le Corbusier-style modernist housing can work, but it's not something that can be just left to sit once completed, which, by my understanding, at least, is where many such projects start to fail. It needs to be maintained.

Of course, the fact that, unlike America, there just isn't anywhere else to go may have helped matters a little.

anchoress posted:

i'll be perfectly honest: it's because in the first instance, those buildings are full of singaporeans, while in the second they are full of black americans

Naxuz posted:

It could just as well be lower-class Finns, we have a ton of modernist housing projects that were especially dreary to live in from 1970's the 1990's. Whaddaya know, uprooting people from their homes and setting them up in remote tall buildings with little other infrastructure, services or social networks tends to be a horrible idea! Those Singaporean ones seem to be well-integrated into the adjoining community and peppered with human-scale shops and other stuff that tends to lessen the social impact of stuffing people in residential towers and letting them fend for themselves.

quote:

Mr. Calatrava was paid approximately 94 million euros (about $127 million) for his work. How could that be, Mr. Blanco asks, when the opera house included 150 seats with obstructed views? Or when the science museum was initially built without fire escapes or elevators for the disabled?

thekeeshman posted:

The other difference between the housing projects in Singapore and elsewhere is that in Singapore people own their apartments, while I know at least in New York the projects were rented out, so people didn't feel a sense of ownership or permanence.

Munin posted:

Of course when you are talking about people who have the capital to own their own flats then they probably also have the money and clout required to make sure the building they have invested in is maintained rather than the poor saps who are wholly at the mercy of their landlords. I'd say that has probably more to do with their relative success than any "sense of ownership". Not to mention that you have quite a few examples of strong communities arising in public housing blocks to make the best of a bad situation for people and families who want to have a reasonably normal existence.

ghosthorse posted:

Neat br-
http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/project/2008/10251/santiago-calatrava/quarto-ponte-sul-canal-grande-in-venice.html

woops

quote:

In Bilbao he designed a footbridge with a glass tile surface that allowed it to be lighted from below, keeping its sweeping arches free of lampposts. But in a city that gets a lot of rain and occasional snow, pedestrians keep falling on the slippery surface. City officials say some 50 citizens have injured themselves, sometimes breaking legs or hips, on the bridge since it opened in 1997, and the glass bricks frequently crack and need to be replaced. Two years ago the city resorted to laying a huge black rubber carpet across the bridge.

ghosthorse posted: