Architects, Cities, Countries, et al. Missing the Point

Look Ma. It's so green, you don't even have to go outside...because the air is too umm visible to breathe!

TreeHugger on the wonderful world of "green" buildings in China:

Let's go thru a sampling of the slideshow, shall we:


I see London. I see France. I see a tower, a park...oh, it's a tower in a park. How has that worked?



And here we have Stephen Holl doing what he does best. Hideous effing buildings.




And here is a drive-in movie theater.



And getting the scale of space all wrong. Unless Godzilla and Space Godzilla choose to move their young family across the East Sea for the better schools.

Speaking of Timely

Newsweek on "The Last Shopping Mall" - sounds a bit Mad Max-ish, no?



...and jumpin' jeezus on a dinosaur is it perfectly and as appropriately ugly as the circumstances and motivations to build the thing.

"Xanadu is the epic discretionary story," says Davidowitz. "It's the epicenter of 'not needed.' How can you have this when the consumer is completely decimated? It's already one of the world's biggest nightmares."

On the Arts District and the Place Architecture is Leaving.

The Foster + Partners bldg is truly gorgeous. You could tell it would be from the very first renderings years ago. The OMA/Prince Ramus Borg Space Ship ...not so much.

[Imagery from nthomas7627's flickr photostream]




[A new analogy. Ready to capture hundreds of patrons of the arts.]

Unfortunately, for the Winspear, like many "object buildings" it needs a frame. We can frame it with our camera lens and it looks great, but ultimately a building is not intended to be experienced on a sheet of paper. I don't mean to be derisive about this building, but ultimately without the urban fabric to "frame" it, it is not an environment, merely an object.

This is the heart of the problem with architecture currently, which is really just residual from the 20th century and dying thankfully. A building has to know its surroundings. It can't exist in a vacuum. The Foster design understood this, which is why one can visualize it set within a more vibrant district lined with "background buildings." It is both dramatic and subtle, iconic yet with humility. The pseudo-Koolhaas/ultimately-Ramus building did not, which is why it looks like it is landing from outer space.

Rather than let it stand out against a foil of standard urbanity, the problem is exacerbated with other sculpture, crying babies screaming for attention. The arts district in its current bastardized form is incoherent b/c rather than stand out, it merely stands.

A singular building is a post card. A true urban environment is drama. We need to start working on making more movies.