[QUOTE=Key Lime Guy]
We’ve done this a thousand times before and IMO it’s one of the most frustrating sources of doper ignorance.
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[QUOTE=Northern Piper]
And this kind of arrogance is what makes it frustrating to talk about modern architecture. Because we do not agree with your taste, we are ignorant, by your standards. Architects are responsible for creating the urban environment which we all have to live in. Don’t you think that architects have a responsibility to design buildings that the people like, rather than lecture the people for their ignorance when they don’t like the buildings?
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My intent was not to be arrogant. These discussions never get PAST the issue of taste. People with a distaste for modern architecture do not seem to want to understand the historical motivation. Architects (for the most part) do not foist their strange proclivities on an unsuspecting society. Strange to say, there was a genuine enthusiasm for “Fort Book” at one time and it is a sincere reflection of a certain set of values. Nobody here wants to have that discussion.
I could start a thread every few months about my distaste for Victorian architecture. But I don’t. Instead I try to understand why the Victorians did what they did.
Try Geisel Library at UCSan Diego for the “opposte of concrete, but just as repulsive” look. The place always has me looking for more Space Invaders. But it is nice and airy inside, with a gorgeous view. Just what you need when you’re trying to focus on classwork. :smack:
Better than what, a sod hut? Actually, let me take that back. Sod huts solved the problem of lack of timber for plains settlers. Those buildings are answers to a question that nobody asked.
The fact that one of those buildings actually won some kind of award is simply mind boggling.
[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion]
I wish. Today’s buildings are built to last. In particular, a university like Georgetown isn’t going to spend money to tear down Lauinger library until it becomes too small for Georgetown’s collection (which won’t happen, as we move into an era of digitized media) or falls apart (which won’t happen for a couple of hundred years, with proper maintenance).
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You’re right. Universities are special cases because they spend tons on maintenance. I was thinking of residential & commercial buildings.
[QUOTE=Key Lime Guy]
Architects (for the most part) do not foist their strange proclivities on an unsuspecting society. Strange to say, there was a genuine enthusiasm for “Fort Book” at one time and it is a sincere reflection of a certain set of values. Nobody here wants to have that discussion.
[/QUOTE]
If you can provide some evidence to show that anyone beyond architecture professors, their trainees, and architectural critics, advocated for these styles, I would love to hear it.
Look at the overwhelming response of this thread. Modern architecture and its current progeny continues to be foisted on the public, while we are condescendingly told that “We just don’t get it.”
[QUOTE=Key Lime Guy]
My intent was not to be arrogant. These discussions never get PAST the issue of taste. People with a distaste for modern architecture do not seem to want to understand the historical motivation.
[/QUOTE]
I meant to respond to this as well. I perfectly well understand the motivations of Le Corbusier and the like. I also understand the motivation of many thieves and murders. Understanding a person’s motivation doesn’t equal a need to like or approve of what they did (or made).
[QUOTE=Dominic Mulligan]
Cities aren’t laboratories for architects to foist their fashionable crap on an unsuspecting public. Case in point: the Czech National Library. A monstrosity.
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Is that the one that looks like a biology experiment horked up and spat out by Godzilla?
[QUOTE=Muffin]
Is that the one that looks like a biology experiment horked up and spat out by Godzilla?
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Yeah. It’s the “I dare say” link that Captain Lance Murdoch posted above. A design so degenerate that the only rational response is to put the architect to death.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
At least it has a distinctive style. The main Tampa Campus Library at the University of South Florida is just a big featureless rectangular box.
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Well, from the outside I grant you that; but it was absolute hell on the inside - like being buried underground. The way the place was designed, there was literally no natural light except in tiny corner niches.
[QUOTE=Dominic Mulligan]
Please expand upon the [historical?] motivation for the design of the Scottish Parliament or the Czech National Library.
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Simple – some Catalan wanted to stick it to the Scots so that they would not get independence first, and some fellow who escaped from Prague wanted revenge fo the Soviet period he suffered through as a child.
[QUOTE=Dominic Mulligan]
Please expand upon the [historical?] motivation for the design of the Scottish Parliament or the Czech National Library.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know, but I’d start by trying to read about the intentions of the clients. Follow the money. People don’t usually commission multi-million dollar buildings without knowing what they’re going to get, and approving.
[QUOTE=Dominic Mulligan]
Yeah. It’s the “I dare say” link that Captain Lance Murdoch posted above. A design so degenerate that the only rational response is to put the architect to death.
[/QUOTE]
I think the blob won the design competition, not the earthwquake refugee of “I dare say.”
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
And this one.
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That one actually looks kind of cool, at least from a distance, in a quasi-fascistic, Bond villian-ish, Atlas Shrugged sort of way. Like the writings of Ayn Rand, though, I suspect it becomes tiresome up close and at length. I certainly wouldn’t want to work in it any more than I’d want to work in the giant dildo Swiss Re Tower in London.
[QUOTE=Captain Lance Murdoch]
So we see endless use of classical elements in contemporary design made for the masses to consume.
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There’s nothing new about that. Ever heard of Romanesque? Gothic Revival? Give me any architectural style throughout history, and I’ll show you elements stolen from earlier eras. Architecture has always been about looking backward as much as forward… until 1950 or so, when some academic cretins decided that originality was not only a virtue, but the ONLY virtue.
That’s what people hate about modern architecture: it has no sense of history. It’s so intent on *revolution * that it forgets that most good things come from evolution.
When referring to the blob that will become the Chez National Library, it was hasty of me to say “Might want to take an aspirin before viewing.” I apologize for the hasty quip.
I should have said “For the love of all that’s good and right, take some antibiotics and get your shots.”
Seriously, that place looks like a disease. If it was on my bathroom floor, I would take a sample to the hospital’s lab, and bleach the hell out of the floor.
[QUOTE=Muffin]
I think the blob won the design competition, not the earthwquake refugee of “I dare say.”
[/quote]
Dear God, that’s even worse. The worst part is the context that “the blob” is in. Look at the other buildings, then look at that piece of shit. Holy Christ, how could anyone think that building that is a good idea?
