Unfortunately, I don’t think that was included in the budget. I shall send the builder a copy of Moonraker in an attempt to sway them in this direction, though.
It is one of the great mysteries of our time.
Is there any discipline other than architecture where its practitioners purposely try to screw things up at every level and sometimes even admit as such (brutalism)? I suppose high end fashion designers do but those designs aren’t really released into the wild. You can’t just blame the architects though. Someone else is writing a check to let them do it. In murder for hire cases, both the hitman and the hiring party get charged. In the links above showing the “art” buildings, I think it is clear that those art departments needed to be shut down as soon as the design was approved yet no one did it. I assume that it takes more than one person to approve these projects. Where are they finding whole groups of people that think these types of designs are the best ones out of the whole universe of options?
I like OCAD and I love walking past it, you can’t help but stare.
I don’t mind the ROM but I with you on Robarts. It’s ugly…very, very ugly.
Actually, I love modern architecture (a quick glance at my bookshelf should support this theory, as between me and The Boy, we’ve got dozens of books on the topic). However, there’s good modern and bad modern.
I especially have a hate-on for architects who somehow garner an international name-brand reputation, despite the fact that their designs are entirely focused on form and completely forget function (and occasionally, forget the basic tenets of physics and engineering). Architecture should always be both pleasing to the eye and pleasing to live/work in.
Simply put, Liebeskind is BAD design. One could argue about the aesthetic qualities (personally, I find them lacking), but there’s no one out there who would agree that a giant mass of angles and jagged edges is a suitable design for a freakin’ museum. Climate control is a nightmare in a space like that, not to mention exhibit layout
Walk two blocks west to the Bata Shoe Museum and you’ll see a perfect example of clever modern design that is well-suited to its intended use.
Dear Og. It’s the Selwyn Outreach Centre on steroids…
The picture of the Selwyn Outreach Centre in the link is… optimistic. In reality the front of the building rises from a gravel parking lot. The back of the building, a plain concrete-block biox, is clearly visible from the front, which makes the concrete arches appear cheap and tacked-on. It is a thoroughly-unappetising building.
I like modern architecture. I dislike bad modern architecture.
OM NOM NOM NOM
Y’know… if you take the Pyongyang Hotel, then move the Gherkin and the Agbar Tower to the base of the pyramid you could have a really badass looking rocketship! Now THAT would be COOL! You could use the Boot as a launch tower–perfect! 
Okay, that’s the official nickname of the L Tower now: the Boot. I’m going to start using it on the UrbanToronto formums. 
Help me out here. Is this Boot on top of the O’Keefe Centre*? Or beside it? I gotta say, that in the angles these pictures show it at, it’s hard to tell. Unless, of course, it’s humping the O’Keefe, which looks to be a distinct possibility…
- Yep, I said “O’Keefe” Centre. The name it bore up until a small little computer company with a big ego that the public had never heard of but which thinks it’s a major player like IBM and Microsoft bought the right to rename it. Plus, it would be nice to have some permanence to building names in Toronto–so to me, it will always be SkyDome (not Rogers Centre) as well. What’s next? The TD Bank Roy Thomson Hall? The Petro-Canada Royal Alex Theatre? The Ontario Legislature Buildings Brought To You By Bell Canada? The mind boggles…
Let us not leave out Boston City Hall, another IM Pei masterwork.
That entire neighborhood needs to be levelled.
wow, turns out, I love ugly buildings. whoda thunk it.
IANA, but I would live in most of these.
Ditto. Maybe I’m just frivolous beyond words, but I love these buildings. I’d take them over a half-hearted cracker box any day of the week.
No exaggeration, that photo actually made me shudder–and I thought people only shuddered in bad horror novels …
Context does matter. Ouch. Holy fuck, does that ever fail to fit in with the neighborhood.
I still like probably 95% of the buildings posted, especially the ones being labelled as “brutalist” or whatever (the dildo towers, not so much). Either I’m from Mars, or y’all are a bunch of crazies.
You should be more careful when keeping your cover, Dirx. Besides, why are you using that name, which is obviously from the Syrtis Major region? You should use something less notorious, like Millicent.
And, back to weird buildings… Let us not forget the Cube Houses from Rotterdam:
Yep. They are what their name indicates: Cubic structures standing on a vertex, on top of pillars, and you live inside. I’ve seen them from close up. Absolutely hideous.
Just my 2 eurocent!
JoseB
Not all bad buildings are bad on the outside. The Humanities building at the University of Wisconsin, looks somewhat interesting on the outside. On the inside it is a mess of corriders and stariwells and offices that require a class in orienteerring to find where you are going most of the time.
I am loving the new wing to the Royal Ontario Museum. I think it’s fantastic!
BWHAHAHAHAAAAHAHA!
Oh, that’s a fun model. Can you imagine if someone actually built that ridiculous cartoon thing?
Wait, what?!??!