My three days spent in, like, two neighborhoods in LA left me thinking that LA has a lot more tolerance for not-great “weird” architecture. Like, I would see a building with the footprint of a small high school that seemed like someone “inspired” by Frank Gehry but who ultimately just managed to incorporate matte orbs, cones, and slab awnings into a relatively normal design. I wish I could be more specific, but this was, like, six months ago.
My main despised “architecture” 'round here is these apartments:
Quotations around architecture because making something that looks like stacks of shipping containers just doesn’t qualify as such to me.
The place looked better when it was a scrapyard.
Can’t speak for every school, but I know that at Pratt* they definitely do. Everything you present you must also build or have some sort of physical material to support it. Rhino is the assigned 3-D program there, and I never had the impression that people actually enjoyed using it very much. It was just a tool to convey a different level of information, but as a student you don’t have infinite time to fiddle with 3-D models AND do the physical stuff. So it’s not as if every student has their nose buried in their laptop.
On the other hand, it’s not as if people have the time, resources, or obsessive personalities required to build models that actually look exactly like the finished building. You have to do that stuff on the computer, and at an actual firm it’s obviously a team project (whereas in school you’re often solo).
At Cooper-Union I believe they’re not even allowed to use 3-D programs or it’s majorly de-emphasized. The skinny was always that they emphasize draftsmanship. Though I don’t know how they actually rank. They just have a crazy rep for being free and having a famously oblique application process.
Don’t really know anything about Syracuse or Cornell, which I think are usually in the top positions. I would guess that you also have to build models, etc. However, in the actual work force, I think it’s all on computers. I dunno. I can ask around if you’re interested.
*which is always on the low-end of top architecture schools. I think the lowest it got during my college years was 15 but it was back up to 9 before I left–something like that. US News and World Report rankings, btw.
i would very much like to live in an obelisk or monolith in a cooltown
Oh, it also kinda depends on what you mean here.
I’m pretty sure that in a large firm, certain people will specialize in selecting materials. In a smaller firm, probably not.
However, then the engineer will change a bunch of stuff to make sure the building is up to code and safe. The engineer might be internal, part of a separate firm, or an independent contractor. So the relationship/communication is up in the air.
And then the construction company decides everything is too expensive and uses cheaper materials that suck. This is one of the big problems with the current fashion of modernism + bricks. Glass and steel looks/feels/is shitty if you’re cheap about it.
And, like diplo said, the developer is ultimately calling the shots here, so “creatives” are hamstrung by the desires of their clients.
So diplo, what specific trends are you talking about here?
Neo-modernist materials?
The vertically-strip effect of the windows in most of your examples?
The big thing in Brooklyn for the last 5-or-so years has been combining brick facades with modernist materials/design. The idea is basically, “We like modernism, because everything looks slick and cool. But there are a lot of red/brown brick building that are going to surround this building. So, we’ll contextualize the new within the old with some brick facades.”
The problem is that it sucks.
The back of Pratt’s Myrtle Hall (2011) is a pretty good example (though it’s actually a bit more considered than most offenders).
In the second picture you can see a bit of the 100 year old tenement buildings it’s supposed to be blending with.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this integration strategy is being used in a lot of cities in the US.
As far as the vertical stripiness, that seems to be an international trend that. I definitely see that in high rise hotels throughout Asia, and it is popular with high end condos throughout Bangkok. Bangkok is overflowing with new condos.
Yeah, models aren’t what I mean. They are not a good indicator of how materials behave or feel or affect people.
I just mean the kind of understanding you get from working directly with materials and being around them (and paying attention).
I can’t believe you said creatives. I don’t know/care about any of that uni/New York/ranking stuff you mention.
Ah, okay.
Do people not know what scare quotes are for?
This is more or less what I’m talking about. There’s a building on the main street right next to me that’s basically the same sort of thing.
Modular sections applied over a glass and steel grid, asymmetrical fenestration and/or patterning on the sections, a complete or near-complete lack of ornamentation, perhaps a big window or pseudo-portico that looks like a massive picture frame, coloration that I guess is supposed to mimic “traditional” materials like brick or sandstone, the sense – as Blueberry said – that the building’s main formal principle is “bunch-of-intersecting-boxes” (leaving no room for curvature/things that aren’t blatant squares/rectangles), some sort of indebtedness to the Bauhaus.
No, you’re right, it’s standard procedure at architecture schools. Usually for a student’s thesis they’ll have a to-scale model built accompanied by posters describing attributes like the project’s spatial and energy efficiency and what sorts of interactions the spaces will encourage. So I don’t think the problem is a disconnectedness from materials but an academic and I guess economic climate that’s leading to a very narrow range of building types.
When I went to see students’ thesis projects at the BAC (Boston Architecture School) a year or two ago practically all of them were steel and glass grids with the addition of some “playful” element like a colored slab that rides along the main rise of the building. As an architect, getting one of your designs actually realized is very rare, and I just feel worse for these graduates when it seems like their education has funneled them into adopting the most infertile of formal convictions. But, again, the amount of money you’re granted can have a big say in what’s feasible.
Yeah, I think that’s the bulk of it.
I don’t know if it’s ever stated, but I’ve just always assumed that the idea is, “Modernism was awesome, but its downfall was that it felt inhuman and like it was denying the existence of the organic world. BUT if we add some more traditional elements we can have our cake and eat it too!”
But it just doesn’t work out that way.
I mean, all this stuff is going to be as retro as wood paneling in, like, ten years. I know that fashion is unavoidable and “timelessness” is itself a construction, but…there’s got to be a way to build cool buildings that aren’t quite so faddish.
I dunno: I’m definitely not an armchair architect, so the thought of having to make something as aestheticized and long-term as a building “timeless” is really daunting.
My sense from talking casually to arch dept friends throughout college was always that the the academic climate was encouraging them to be really inventive and almost willfully impractical with their work. So a high school with giant solar sales that track the sun was incentivized over something more pragmatic. For theses I know their grade was heavily weighed by theory, so I think that’s going to incentivize something a little more creative than a silver box (though I didn’t go to the presentations, just visited friends in the studio). So yeah: I obviously have a very narrow and fragmentary view, and I think Pratt has a rep for being a little more invested in theory, anyway.
Oh: a friend who studied arch as the University of Bath said that they take an annual senior trip to Burning Man where they construct a shelter for school credit. I know Burning Man is douchey, but it still gives me the impression that there are arch programs out there really emphasizing creativity. But–as you say–anyone about to go into an industry has to know what the realities are, and it would be totally logical for students to want there thesis to work as part of a marketable portfolio.
So I dunno: I just going to blame the bogeymen moneymen.
On the topic of integrating high profile contemporary architecture into an organic, historical community, I’ve always been kind of conflicted about the Barclay center in Brooklyn:
On the one hand, I appreciate the thought. Intentional rust is pretty cool, and growing grass on some surfaces is actually pretty awesome.
But as with all the brick facades I would see, the rust is the wrong color somehow.
In person, it looks like this uniform orange, like perfectly manufactured rust. Maybe over the years it will develop a genuine patina. But to me it always felt like something that had invaded the neighborhood and tried to assimilate–not a great image given that it was basically the physical embodiment of gentrification (the construction displaced a bunch of the few remaining working class people in what had become a very bougie neighborhood).
I know it’s reactionary but I have a pretty strong immediate distaste for buildings that look like corporate logos blown up to a massive size. Can you at least climb onto the structure with the grass?
It depends how on how into tasing you are.
For what it’s worth, I have never actually seen that front view and didn’t know that perspective on the building existed. All the subway stops in the area approach the building from behind (the area with the grass), including the areas largest subway hub and one of the city’s few malls. And it’s large enough that unless you have a real reason to walk around to the front you never will. I guess it’s facing towards highways that lead from Manhattan? I’m not really sure. I’m guessing it’s oriented towards facing drivers. In the view I’ve had of it from a distance from surrounding neighborhood in Brooklyn, you tend to see the curves of the rust facade, which gives the impression of a giant rusting carapace.
The curvy front facade also turned me off when I saw it in the pictures, but…I dunno. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a stadium design I liked, and I don’t think the natural dome/toilet shape of that sort of venue does any favors to the design team.
It’s a tricky spot of land to have worked with, that’s for sure.
Here’s a good article I ran across tonight on Boston’s architectural crisis.
I just remembered the worst eye-sore of a building:
It looks like that all the way around. I heard that PNCA has moved to the 511 Building, which is a massive improvement:
1 Like
great topic, enjoying all your input here, thanks.
I’d find it a shame if the axe axe’d it. maybe move to … somewhere?
re bauhaus:
true, this
looks a bit dated today, yeah.
but. if you take into consideration how dated that car looks in this shot …
… you realize how daring it must have been when it was built (actually, it was a bit too much for residents which despised this residential area …)
compared what’s been posted here, idk, i’d rather say it is holding up pretty well.
click around if you want to, some nice shots in there:
http://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/03/14/stuttgart-weisenhof-1927-modern-architecture-comes-into-its-own/
sorry for plugging this so shamelessly here, but i genuinely like how far ahead the first half of the 20th century was in terms of architecture. I’ve seen a picture where a 911 (996-series) was placed in a similar spot like that vintage car in the second picture, and it was mind-boggling to imagine how well this building held up.
There are many more of these buildings that managed to age well, Case Study Houses are also a treasure trove filled with fascinating insight for those that want to go hunting for information or inspiration. Especially if you can get a glimpse into the interior of these buildingblocks.
It’s nice when you slowly start to see both sides of the coin, namely that the exterior is influenced as much by the interior space (or design, whatever you may call it) as it is by the surroundings, and you start to appreciate the things that normally do not meet the eye. How light is used in the building, how space is structured, how affordances of the “users” are met (or ignored), color-schemes, in short, the UX-aspect of a building.
2 Likes
note: i’m an absolute amateur, the only person I know that’s involved in architecture is my brother which has an architect degree but didn’t follow up w/ that because of how everyday life for an architect is. So take everything I write with a grain of salt, because the only architecture where I actually know my way around is software architecture …
rimshot
Hey. I am too. I think it’s good and important to have non-professionals involved in dialogues about architecture, as long as there’s some slight historical knowledge informing those discussions so they’re not purely hinging on knee-jerk reactions. We need more of that. I’ll respond to your other post later.