Not true of all modern architects. And this thread seems to take Gehry to be the only one. An interesting case of a big-name architect taking an interest in a small-scale low-profile project: the lowly London Metropolitan University needed a new graduate centre, on the very lowly Holloway Road. They put a budget of £3m on it, and made it a competition for architects to submit designs. Daniel Libeskind put in a completely unexpected entry. Why? Certainly not for the money, not when you’re winning contracts everywhere from Las Vegas to Singapore.
Two questions:
- Have you ever been inside a Frank Lloyd Wright building?
- How tall are you?
Well… as I said earlier, most modern buildings are not even interesting enough to be ugly. You can’t claim that of Libeskind’s building, I grant you. I do have one question: what the hell is it?
Okay, so Libeskind is another ‘big-name architect’ besides Frank Gehry. These are the guys that we’re looking to design our public spaces for the 21st century. Let’s take a good, close look at the London Metropolitan University graduate centre and its accompanying description:
This building hates people. A civilized building wouldn’t have “uncompromising angles.” A sensibly designed staircase wouldn’t loom sidewise over you until you throw up. This is all stuff that Shirley Jackson’s Hill House did to its victims, because it was pure evil.
How does this building relate to any other building in the history of architecture? What design tradition does it identify with or seek to improve on? It’s a freak of nature, a parentless abomination. It looks like it was designed by carnies. The blueprints were lifted directly from the original floorplan for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
The New York Times ran an obituary of this guy this weekend.
The picture they ran floored me. Check it out.
Surrounding the building that was supposed to be the focus of the article were all these older buildings with great roof lines, and dormers, and that interesting green space in the lower right.
To each their own. I really can’t get behind the idea that what Ungers did was an improvement over that style.
Welcome to Baltimore.
santiago calatrava ( Santiago Calatrava - Wikipedia ) is one interesting modern architect not named frank. his uneven blocks design for 80 south street is at least something different. but overall, modern buildings tend towards the shitty side. have you seen the freedom tower designs?
I like this building.
It’s about art. No one cares about craft anymore. Modern art does takes some thinking ahead of time to make a painting, but the craft of actually rendering the image is looked down upon in some circles.
It’s been done before, so how can you make a name for yourself? You make something that is in complete disharmony with everything in its surroundings, and all of a sudden you are ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘innovative’. But in the long term, the aesthetics don’t stand up to scrutiny.
And as for the money, it’s possible that skilled workers were less expensive before unions. Even with the money, you end up with iffy construction. This, a really beautiful building to be in, the external accents were stucco over styrofoam, and the wood slats on the second floor parque were separating, roughly 2 years after construction.
Well, what’s so soft and cuddly about right-angles?
Interestingly, the floor plans (PDF) gives little hint of the outside appearance.
Actually, it looks like an institution for the criminally insane. (And if you’re not criminally insane before entering the building, you will be once you’ve spent some time in there.)
Now I can go with that. Calatrava’s designs aren’t especially practical as working or living spaces, but they are gorgeous, sweeping spans that are beautiful inside and out. I wouldn’t want him to design my office building, but if I wanted a bridge or cityscape showpiece that looks like a cross between a villain’s secret lair and an interstellar spacecraft, Calatrava’s your guy.
Stranger
There are two buildings in that picture. Could you be more specific?
Ha!
I don’t know where I come down on Frank Lloyd Wright here. I’ve been in a FLW house before, and I was thoroughly impressed. It was something totally surreal. It had a very natural sense of harmony but yet very modern at the same time. It’s hard to explain, but I think it would give me a very harmonious feeling living there. And I’m not a person big on the Feng Shui or other such mysticism, but that place FELT right.
But oh yeah, I’m 5’9 and I was a bit cramped in that place. FLW was a smaller guy if I remember correctly, and one of his grad students at his house was constantly having problems bumping his head into everything.
But on the other hand, I can side with the OP. Why must all things now be challenging. I understand when it comes to other forms of art, because when we don’t feel like looking, hearing, watching, etc, we don’t have to. But buildings are there, we have to deal with them. Might as well make them as livable as possible. Good art is supposed to make you uncomfortable sometimes, yet good architecture shouldn’t in my opinion.
FLW is different though. His architecture is very minimalist in some ways, but it is also quite flowing. The way his buildings are put together appears to be harmonious.
P.S. If anyone is curious, the FLW house I went to was very well maintained, although it was a struggle. The problem is that the foundation was somehow cracking. I am sure the house was okay, but the point is that it was a difficult thing.
I do think it is something that we as a society are going to have to get used to. We are going to have bland looking buildings, because nobody is willing to pay the price for intricacies of old. It’s probably more of a testament to the growing middle class than anything else. Such ornate detail is only possible when labor is so cheap. I suppose some things could be done now, but not like they were before.
Maybe we are in an architectural funk? Maybe at some stage in the near future we’ll figure out a way to use our new materials and construction to our benefit?
The taller one on the right. 
Well, if what I’ve been told is anything to go by (and I have no idea how true it is), today’s architects try to please themselves. Sadly, I have no cites, but I was once told–perhaps at a lecture I attended on this question–that at one time in the past, when architects accepted the job, they did what their client asked. Nowadays, they tell the client what the client will get. That’s a big difference.
So let’s say that in the early 20th century, a bank wants to build a building in a downtown. The bank wants to display how big and important (and safe) it is to depositors and the like, so it wants to build an expensive building: stone carvings created by skilled workers, special materials like marble blocks, and so on. High ceilings in the public areas (we can afford not to have a floor just up from street level), murals, mosaics, and so on. The bank asks an architect if he or she can design what they want. If the architect says “Yes,” then he or she gets to bid on the commission. If the architect says “No,” then the bank looks for another architect who will design the building they want. Since architects want the work, they will do as the client wishes.
Now, in the mid-20th century, styles and tastes have changed. But the bank still wants a nice building. They again have a rough idea of how they would like it to look, and they tell the architects who will bid on the project. This time, though, the architects say, “We don’t care what you want. Here is what we will do for you. Take it or leave it.” And all the architects the bank approaches have the same attitude.
Somewhere along the line, architects changed from being contractors-for-hire to artists with a vision. One story I also heard was that Mies van der Rohe, who designed the Toronto-Dominion Centre in Toronto had so much control over his vision that he could (and did) demand how the Centre’s tenants could use their window blinds: a tenant could be have the blind fully up or fully down only. After many complaints, Mies relented, but only a little–a tenant could also have the blind halfway (not a third of the way or three-qurters of the way) open.
We also cannot discount the influence of the Bauhaus school of architecture which basically stated that buildings serve a utilitarian, not artistic, purpose, and so they should be clean and plain. Decorative frippery must be discouraged.
Just a hypothesis anyway, as to why things are the way they are. Architects changed their attitude towards clients, and the Bauhaus was extremely influential.
Actually, I attended a convention in Baltimore five or six years back, and had a blast wandering around the downtown area, seeing the sights-- Poe’s grave(s), the Dental History Museum, etc.-- and appreciating some of your classier old buildings.
Also, somewhere in that area-- it couldn’t have been too far from the Harbor-- I unexpectedly encountered The Most Evil Looking Building I Have Ever Seen. Right in the middle of an otherwise normal block squatted this appalling, dead black, windowless stone cube-- the architectural equivalent of “The Emperor’s March” from Star Wars. I even took a few pictures, because I simply could not believe that someone had seriously designed such a hideous building for use by humans. It looked like the architect was anticipating the imminent takeover of the United States by a brutally totalitarian dictatorship, and wanted to get in ahead of the curve. I seem to recall that the building was being used by a telecommunications company like Verizon or some such. By all appearances, though, this building was designed to be the place for the city to bring people who don’t like Baltimore. And when those people finally come out again, they love Baltimore.
Not such a mystery once you remember that he had a mega-high-profile, ultra-prestigious, exceptionally controversial project under consideration elsewhere in London at the time, namely the V&A Spiral.
You’re aware he has partners & employees & consultants, right? They’re some of the best in the business. Are you honestly criticizing him for not doing it all himself?
I’d like cites for “frequently suffer…” and “often rust-stained…”
Anyway, leakage problems are more commonly the fault of the builder than the architect.
I can not only imagine it, but I fully expect it.
No, I’m criticizing him for designing buildings that are expensive to build and costly to maintain, and uncomfortable and poorly space utilized too boot. Gehry isn’t an architect in the traditional sense, he’s a showpiece artist, and one, in my opinion, who creates installations that look like they were shat from the arse of a giant Cyberman. And color me unimpressed that they use “advanced computer aided design” (i.e. CATIA) to “escape the bounds of conventional construction”. Big whoop; I’d hazard that any modern commercial architectural firm uses some kind of some kind of 3D solid design code with shading and rendering capabilities, be it Pro/ENGINEER, Unigraphics, SolidWorks, or CATIA.
Go look at the Disney Center before the spring refurbishment every year. And while leakage problems can be problems with constructions, the designs that Gehry creates–which totally ignore the reality that rain falls, snow collects, and the sun shines and is reflected onto other things–exacerbates problems with keeping joints sealed against leakage.
We’ll just have to differ here. Gehry’s designs look to me to be disposable pop-art influenced junk piles, already cheap and tacky when new and unlikely to age gracefully.
Stranger
Not sure what that is. Out in the county, the weirdest building is the Public Safety (I think) building. It looks like the Borg built it. It’s clear that the red building is a cube in this photo. The glass building also is.
http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/36loc/bco/images/1198-1-726.jpg
It’s actually sort of works for the space it occupies. But, I’ve never seen anything like it.
It won’t be considered classic. It’ll be considered camp, the fate of art taken to extremes since the Baroque Period. And it will take considerably less than fifty years. Gehry will be tacky in five to ten years and campy in twenty.
On the subject of cost, and speaking as a resident of north London who reasonably frequently passes LMU, the touch that always slightly annoys me about the completed building is the material used for the black surround about the windows. Very cheap looking when seen close up. The rest of the detailing is fine. Nor is it a reaction I’ve had to any other Libeskind building, even his even smaller scale Serpentine summer pavillion.