Dave Concepcion posted:

Arian_Samurai posted:

Reminds me of the humanities building at UW Madison



Personally I like the style

Volcott posted:

I dunno, I kind of like the design.

nomadologique posted:

yeah hold on lemme see if i can scrape together half a billion for front-end and first five years...

Applewhite posted:

Benagain posted:

http://www.architectural-review.com/essays/empty-gestures-starchitectures-swan-song/8679010.article?blocktitle=Must-read&contentID=12701

An article with a whole bunch of contenders for this thread.

The Twinkie Czar posted:

Look at this structure that "flagrantly disregard their settings, reducing architecture to mere superfluous spectacle, over-exaggerated and detached from reality". And after looking at the Eiffel Tower, check out Frank Gehry’s Fondation Louis Vuitton.

Total Meatlove posted:

I understand why some people dislike this but I love it

Authentic You posted:

Well, it certainly works better than the other Zaha Hadid thing the article talked about, and is not hideous and terrible like the crystal shard sticking out of the ROM. I'm not really a fan of Zaha Hadid's style at all, though - most of it looks like sets for music videos from the late 90's or giant versions of over-designed consumer electronics to me. I'd take Disney Concert Hall (which I actually think is pretty cool and well-placed, despite my general dislike of Frank Gehry and how expensive and ridiculous the construction process for his buildings are) over Hadid's vagina spaceships any day.

Not all zany starchitect buildings are automatically bad and out of place, but so many of them are.


That does sound fascinating. I'll definitely have to check it out.

I went to school for industrial design, another field where we care a lot about timeless aesthetics and long-term functionality, and while I was there, they were building a new computer science building which was allegedly inspired by a loving Rubik's cube and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the rest of the campus aesthetic. It was this boxy trendy sort of style and was supposed to be all awesome and cool. We spent a whole class bitching up a storm with our professor one time about how shortsighted the design was and how it would look stupid and be dated ten years down the line while the original Beaux-Arts buildings would still look just as good and remain just as functional. I later ended up working in the new building once it was finished, and holy gently caress it was idiotic - shoddy workmanship (started leaking two years in), plumbing schematics made no sense (sucked for the plumbers trying to fix the drat leaks), interior layout loving sucked and wasted/squandered tons of space, landscaping was poorly designed (giant mudslide!), the materials are all aging poorly and quickly, and the much-hyped green roof quickly turned into a giant mound of five-foot weeds due to being inconvenient to access. The thing is six years old.

Our token brutalist building, on the other hand? Hulking, ugly, rock solid, and brutally sensible and usable. I have a grudging respect for it, unlike the aforementioned new building, because ugly as it may be, it will no doubt remain useful and in good shape for a long time. And it's where everyone will hide when the apocalypse happens.

Tochiazuma posted:

American Embassy in Ottawa, if the intent was to put up an ugly building that looked like it had a bunker in the roof then Mission Accomplished