PoMo ruins everything: architecture edition

[Toxn]

Yes, even architecture.

Yes, even when they're given the blank slate they always want, even when they are doing it for charity.

 

As someone who has a few friends studying architecture, I have a theory. Modern architects serve two purposes: 1) to stamp the designs on ugly, inhuman Tuscan-styled security complexes  and 2) to make their universities obscene amounts of money in fees and project costs (which have been rising nigh exponentially for the last few years) while studying.

[Sturgeon]

My contribution to the thred

[Toxn]

And yes, I know this is ostensibly about the effect of modernist architecture. But let's be real: denying empiricism and elevating the artist-critic above the consumer/observer is post-modern to the core. If latter-day modernist architecture is producing melted-looking, expensive and retardedly unliveable houses then it is indistinguishable from post-modern architecture.

 

Edit: adding this link, although I haven't read anything yet. Perhaps good things reside here?

[Toxn]

My contribution to the thred

Nice example, although not the worst of the breed by any standard.

 

As someone who actually has a huge boner for Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright and all the other usual suspects, I find myself rooting instinctively for concrete-and-glass buildings. Which makes it doubly sad when they all end up being the pugs of the building world.

 

Maybe that's actually a perfect analogy: current trends in architecture are like current trends in dog ownership. The product is inbred useless, pointless, expensive, short-lived and (being an international phenomenon) indistinguishable in terms of placing it in its surroundings. 

 

Edit: in addition to the 'is it ugly' test, we should also have a test where you try to guess where it comes from.

 

Any takers?

[Collimatrix]

 

This is the Frederic C Hamilton building, which is a wing of the Denver Art Museum.  The big red squiggly thing is of course an Alexander Calder piece.

 

This building is exactly as functional as it looks.  Internally it has no right angles and very few clearly defined floors, making it difficult to curate and disorienting to visitors.  It also leaks, since the roof is covered in concave joints that collect rainwater and snow.

[Toxn]

 

This is the Frederic C Hamilton building, which is a wing of the Denver Art Museum.  The big red squiggly thing is of course an Alexander Calder piece.

 

This building is exactly as functional as it looks.  Internally it has no right angles and very few clearly defined floors, making it difficult to curate and disorienting to visitors.  It also leaks, since the roof is covered in concave joints that collect rainwater and snow.

Gah that's ugly!

 

I wonder if the architect was the same dude responsible for these buildings in my home town?

 

You can't see it that well at this angle, but that part on the left is a giant, projecting wing...

 

 

 

 

This one is known as the ship of fools, as it houses the admin wing for the University.

 

Edit: this makes me wonder why starchitects seem so obsessed with ships. Is there something about a large, functional structure that just makes them go nuts?

[Toxn]

As for shitty sculptures, Pretoria is just chock full of steel things made by Eduardo Villa.

[Collimatrix]

How, I wonder, is one supposed to escape those cantilevered apartments in the event of a fire?

[Toxn]

How, I wonder, is one supposed to escape those cantilevered apartments in the event of a fire?

I would say by jumping, but I know for a fact that they put mesh over the windows due to suicides.

 

edit: maybe it's a scheme to harness the power of vengeful spirits angry at the moron who designed the thing?

[Collimatrix]

Postmodern architecture reliably inspires suicidal thoughts:

 

 

The building was a perfect place from which to commit suicide, with what looked like large diving boards emerging from the top of the building, leading straight to the ground far below. Looking up at them, one could almost hear in one’s mind’s ear the terrible sound of the bodies as they landed on the ground below. There were also some (for now) silvery industrial chimneys, leading presumably from the incinerators so necessary for the disposal of rubbishy art. The whole building lacked harmony, as if struck already by an earthquake and in a half-collapsed state; it’s a tribute to the imagination of the architect that something so expensive should be made to look so cheap. It is certain to be shabby within a decade.

 

[Sturgeon]

Not as bad as some, but still pretty stupid looking.

[Belesarius]

I give you the Royal Ontario Museum :

 

[Collimatrix]

I thought it looked similar to the DAM extension, and sure enough it's the same architect.

[Sturgeon]

This man must be stopped (Also note that One World Trade Center is his, as well):

[Belesarius]

Might be worth a kickstarter to hire a hitman?

[Collimatrix]

All his buildings look the same.  Like they're some sort of mineral formation, or they were designed to have minimal radar cross section or something.

[Sturgeon]

All his buildings look the same.  Like they're some sort of mineral formation, or they were designed to have minimal radar cross section or something.

Yeah, worse, like they're first-gen stealth.

PoMo architects are so obsessed with making their work standout that they become unconcerned with actually making a functional building. The irony is that their products end up looking uniformly like shit. It's like they forgot that the best way to stand out is to achieve excellence.

Or maybe PoMo is just the formal rejection of achieving excellence?

[LostCosmonaut]

The building even has a stupid name.

 

Also, that building looks like its planform alignment is pretty terrible, and if I've learned anything from the moderately sane ramblings of Collimatrix, it's that planform alignment is a big deal in stealth.

[Tied]

Do not dispare brothers

 

For the brilliant ray of authoritarianism may shine apon all, even architecture 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Collimatrix]

Guess who made this:

 

[Tied]

Guess who made this:

 

 

"hey guys, lets gut a perfectly good 3 story building and waste a shitload of steel to make some statement about modernism or something else hip to impress college kids in America"

"well, we did think of the Jadtiger and the 8 foot Vagina statue, so it wont be our lowest moment as a nation" 

[Toxn]

Guess who made this:

I'd go with 'the devil', but old scratch is supposed to have good taste.

That thing looks like some sort of heretofore-undiscovered building disease.

[Toxn]

This thing looks set to somehow cost more than a traditional steel-and-concrete structure, deteriorate sooner and burn hot enough to actually melt steel when/if it goes up in flames:

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/01/vienna-plans-worlds-tallest-wooden-skyscraper

[Khand-e]

I'd go with 'the devil', but old scratch is supposed to have good taste.

That thing looks like some sort of heretofore-undiscovered building disease.

 

Exactly!

 

vvv

[Tied]

This thing looks set to somehow cost more than a traditional steel-and-concrete structure, deteriorate sooner and burn hot enough to actually melt steel when/if it goes up in flames:

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/01/vienna-plans-worlds-tallest-wooden-skyscraper

 

dont let your steel beams be dreams