What values would those be? 
Then you’ll love this!
It looks like Godzilla sneezed that out. :eek:
Voltron!
Stranger
It’s a pretty tight group of architects who sit on the jury. For example, the head of the jury used to work with the winner of the competition: http://www.ejal.com/PAGES/00ABOUT.html
My guess? Inbreeding, if not of bodies, of ideas.
Aside from holding a lot of books (although it eventually proved to be insuffiient in capacity), I don’t think that there were any values. Architects were into brutalism at the time, so that’s what was designed for U of T, and that’s what was designed for U.W.O.
For example, just up the street from Robarts a brutalist design was used for Rochdale – a free hippie college at U of T. There’s no way anyone can convince me that user values were taken into consideration when designing that place, other than cost of construction. The aesthetic values of the architects, yes, but the aesthetic values of the hippes, not a chance. The same can be said for the brutalist Tartu co-op residence that U of T built in the same neighbourhood a couple of years after Rochdale.
Now, be fair. That may have been true at one point, but no longer-- the library now has big vertical terracotta stripes to complement the beige brick exterior. The aesthetic impact of those big terracotta stripes cannot be overstated. Whereas the library was originally a mere “blank beige box,” instead it is now strongly reminescent of a huge 1970’s-era naugahyde sofa.
The resulting improvement was so remarkable that the university has since adopted the beige/terracotta color scheme for many other buildings on campus. For example, the Science building, which originally bore more than a passing resemblance to the previously-mentioned Launiger Library, also shared that structure’s exterior treatment of unadorned raw concrete. But!-- it has since been repainted… beige! It doesn’t take much imagination to realize what a huge improvement that is. Indeed, today’s USF boasts architecture that combines all the best features of the minimalist tradition with the earth-toned, stain-resistant color palette of the most popular motel chain furniture.
Bear this in mind when choosing a university in Tampa! Otherwise you might find yourself looking at this monstrosity every day. Yes, whereas USF’s forward-looking motel room aesthetic bespeaks modernity and sophistication, the University of Tampa is actually housed in a once-condemned old hotel! Hey, UT: news flash-- it’s the 21st century! Compare their crappy digs with, for example, the classic lines of the USF College of Nursing and it’s pretty obvious how architecture has evolved over the last hundred years.
Not to keep tooting USF’s horn, but the College of Nursing just repainted all its covered walkways last year. In a daring departure, the whitewashed structures were NOT repainted terracotta… instead, ecru! You read that right, folks. In Tampa, if you want a university education AND ecru walkways, you have no other option than USF! You think UT is brave enough for ecru? Unlikely.
My quick & surely-incomplete understanding of Brutalism:
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On campuses it represented the administrations’ profound fear of student protest & rebellion. I bet most of the “Fort Book”-type buildings we’re talking about were designed shortly after 1968. Brutalist buildings conveyed authority, surveillance, centralized power.
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(related to 1) It reflected cold-war apocalyptic fears and the desire for big heavy buildings that expressed stability & permanence.
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60s culture in general was often pre-occupied with pre-history or futurism (the well-known Flintstones/Jetsons dichtomy). Brutalism struck a chord by conveying the aesthetic of prehistorical structures like Stonehenge.
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Early Brutalism (late-40s) had been motivated by the beauty of raw concrete as an expression of, let’s say, United Nations-era universal harmony. Le Corbusier’s buildings at Chandigarh India are an excellent example. Later the US Embassy in London used Brutalism. This has significant political meaning. Concrete was a “universal” material.
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Obviously the general priority on lack of ornament was a continuing theme from 1920s modern architecture, which had mostly to do with saving labor & capital, as well as expressing “truth”.
I agree, by the way, that these buildings are usually ugly by today’s standards. But I appreciate them as a record of our culture.
I take it you were not a Business Administration major?
I like the way the description of Ferguson Hall talks up the building’s experimental design:
Yeah, that was the plan-- too bad it didn’t work, not that they go on to mention that. The idea was that, since the building was underground, there would be no need for air conditioning-- a major concern in Florida temperatures. However, the designers evidently overlooked the fact that, as a functioning university hall, the building would often be filled with hundreds of students and faculty, all generating body heat. So they had to pay to install air conditioning anyway. USF has a noble tradition of these sorts of oversights-- see also “Biosciences Building, Fifth Floor, designed to contain banks of gene sequencers with zero weight.”
Still, I can’t personally complain about Ferguson Hall. Whatever its shortcomings as a university building, the Bunker was an awesome place for the gamer’s guild to meet on weekends. There’s nothing like playing Dungeons and Dragons inside a giant hobbit hole.
My own person nomination for the ugliest building in the history of mankind: Boston City Hall. Pictures don’t actually do its sheer hideousness justice. The worst part of all is that the City Hall Plaza, voted worst plaza in the world by the Project for Public Places, replaced this.
…Hey! It’s the Scolley Square station!
(I’ve never been to Boston, so I only know it from that one Kingston Trio song.)
Except that Robarts was built after Rochdale, and the administration did not pick the design for Rochdale. It was a co-op. I doubt very much if the hippies who commissioned Rochdale wanted to express stability and permanence.
You’ll never guess what the architect of Robarts is up to now: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E3D8113FF936A35757C0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Nice to know he learned his lesson. Too bad for Toronto that he did not learn it a few decades earlier.
Death! Wow, what a critique!
It strikes me as odd how several people in this thread have expressed disdain for modern architecture in the most garish, super-critical and entirely brutal terms and yet have the nerve to call the architects arrogant. Invest in mirrors people!
Those examples I posted were things I pulled down in just a few seconds of looking on the net. They are not particular favorites of mine, but they are examples of architects trying to make interesting spaces that work for people in the best way they can.
Most modern construction (see the houses I posted before) are not really architecture at all. No architect was involved. They are thrown up by builders who have a couple models clients can pick from. They work to serve people’s needs too. Especially if people consider their garages to be the centerpiece of the home and the people stand fourteen feet tall so those vaulted ceilings come in handy.
People have repeatedly stressed that they hate the boxiness of modern architecture (but they shot the sharpest arrows at the un-boxy Prague Library). I ask, what is the shape of your house? What shape are the rooms? The doors? The windows? Unless you’re Bilbo Baggins I’m guessing “rectangles” is your answer. How can you stand that if you hate boxiness?
Cite on that last part?
You know what? Modern architecture also acknowledges the past. Architecture students often study architectural history.
But enough. People here have made it clear what they hate. Let’s see some examples of what you guys think architecture should look like.
Were the concept drawings done by Carlos Ezquerra? Judge Dredd would be right at home there.
Stranger
I actually think someone found a lost drawing that Dante made of his 7th level of hell.
Lets look at it this way. Say one a surgeon came out and loudly and vociferously claimed that he had a great new surgical technique and brusquely dismissed the accumulated knowledge of centuries of medical learning. Subsequently in applying his new techniques, he manages to kill, injure, or maim 98 out of 100 patients that he operates on; saving the other two by sheer luck and likely in spite of his new techniques.
Now, if I were to super-critically and brutally condemn him as a hack and a fraud, while others steadfastly and condescendingly supported him despite all evidence to the contrary, would I be the arrogant one?
Its not as simple as you are making it. Buildings with minimal decoration, like many Georgian buildings, can be great. Buildings with extravagant decoration, like beaux arts buildings, can also be great. Buildings that are all hard angles, often work just fine. As do ones that are all curves.
Where modernism and its spiritual decedents fail is the conscious rejection of the basic, almost intuitive, notion of what makes a building something that people want to interact with. I’d go so far as to say that someone like Libeskind goes so far as to design his buildings to be actively malignant. He wants them to be jarring, unsettling, and completely at odds with their surroundings.
Modern architecture acknowledges the past only as far as it is necessary to dismiss it as quaint and sentimental.
The thing about the ugly Saltine boxes is, at least they’re boxes. People like boxes. We have paintings that we like to hang on vertical walls. We have furniture that we like to put in right-angled corners, like bookshelves and tables.
Then you go and build one of those “tumor ate my library” buildings, and where the hell do I put my filing cabinet? One of our courthouses here in town is one of those “right angles? we don’t need no stinkin’ right angles” buildings, and everybody complains about the weird wasted space in it. Nobody has a triangular file cabinet. Nobody wants a triangular file cabinet.
I actually kinda like this one. (Although I’m not sure what all the…flagpoles?..are for.) And it’s probably a very well done photograph, in terms of composition and so on. Still, that’s Modern at its best, IMHO: lots of light and glass and clean lines.
This…thing…though. Good God. It looks like the army needs to call in artillery and air strikes quick, before it can spawn. I would not rule out nuclear weapons as an option. As Dominic Mulligan pointed out, beyond the sheer awfulness of the National Library of the Czech Republic (AKA the Giant Booger Building), its arrogant disregard for its surroundings is pretty breathtaking–a major part of what’s wrong with this thing as well. Not that’s there’s a particularly good place on this planet to build a Giant Booger, but surely in the midst of all those fine old buildings in Prague has got to be one of the worst places to put it. It reminds me of some quip about one of the Stalinist Wedding Cake* buildings in Eastern Europe having the best view in town…because it was the only place you didn’t have to look at it. One would be tempted to pitch a tent on the viewing platform of the Giant Booger Building and start trying to live there, just so you didn’t have to look at the damned thing. Although on the other hand, I’d be afraid to go inside it lest I be doused with digestive enzymes or something. Has that thing actually been build yet, or is that just an artist’s conception? Perhaps there’s still time to save Prague from being phagocytized!
*Which actually seem like shockingly good architecture compared to some of this stuff.
(And what the hell is with Czech libraries, anyway? Did Gutenberg write some famous-only-in-Prague epistle in which he said “all the Bohemians are unwashed drunkards”, and the Czechs have harbored a burning hatred of books ever since?)
Regarding the fortress-like appearance of this building (yet another library, the Robarts at U of T): I wonder if the gun-slit windows actually have some utilitarian purpose? Maybe to preserve the collections in the stacks by minimizing direct exposure to sunlight? (Or maybe the architect just secretly yearned to be a designer of maximum-security prisons.)
I second the nomination. Bleah. And an honorary mention to the ugly cartons on end that replaced the West End.