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From Architectural Record:
Will the White House Order New Federal Architecture To Be Classical?
February 4, 2020
Cathleen McGuigan… RECORD has obtained what appears to be a preliminary draft of the order, under which the White House would require rewriting the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture, issued in 1962, to ensure that “the classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style” for new and upgraded federal buildings. Entitled “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” the draft order argues that the founding fathers embraced the classical models of “democratic Athens” and “republican Rome” for the capital’s early buildings because the style symbolized the new nation’s “self-governing ideals” (never mind, of course, that it was the prevailing style of the day).
The draft decries the quality of architecture under the General Service Administration’s (GSA) Design Excellence Program for its failure to re-integrate “our national values into Federal buildings” which too often have been “influenced by Brutalism and Deconstructivism.” The draft document specifically cites the U.S. Federal Building in San Francisco (2007, by Morphosis), the U.S. Courthouse in Austin, Texas (2012, by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects), and the Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. U.S. Courthouse in Miami (2007, by Arquitectonica) for having “little aesthetic appeal.”
Here’s the 2007 San Francisco federal building.
Yup, that is really ugly. It was designed by misanthropic architect Thom Mayne, whose mission in life appears to be to take revenge upon government workers. It’s like if bureaucrat-hating rancher Cliven Bundy were also a fashionable architect employed to design government buildings in trendy cities. Mayne devotes much ingenuity to tormenting civil servants, such as building giant staircases that lead nowhere.
From Wikipedia,
In 2010 the GSA commissioned a survey of employees in 22 federal buildings nationwide, to determine employee satisfaction with their workplaces. … the lowest ranked building for employee satisfaction was the San Francisco Federal Building, with a rating of just 13%; the next-lowest was considered twice as satisfactory, at 26%. The San Francisco building scored well below the median in the categories of thermal comfort, lighting and acoustics.
From Architectural Record:
The mechanism for the radical upending of these principles, in order to promote classical and traditional regional architecture (Spanish colonial style, for example, would be permitted in places like Florida), would be a President’s Committee for the Re-Beautification of Federal Architecture.
The American Institute of Architects responded:
“The AIA strongly opposes uniform style mandates for federal architecture. Architecture should be designed for the specific communities that it serves, reflecting our rich nation’s diverse places, thought, culture and climates. Architects are committed to honoring our past as well as reflecting our future progress, protecting the freedom of thought and expression that are essential to democracy.”
The specific community that Thom Mayne’s buildings serve are Starchitect-Americans and nobody else.
I’d be fine with a rule that says that you just have to build in any style from before 1945.
Rome was not built in a day!
Rome…whatever…that is a Godawful building!
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/t/styled-bath-towel-draped-over-freestanding-vintage-style-bath-tub-77164368.jpg
Iowans have a lovely capital building in Des Moines – I toured it during a cross-country drive a few years back, definitely worth seeing.
“Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” – I love it.
After WWII, Europe wisely chose to rebuild with classical architecture rather than following America's lead with skyscrapers and hideous brutalist concrete blocks. But their stupid modernist starchitects have caught the American stupidity. Modern starchitects like Rem Koolhaas are building hideous modern architecture like those in the US because they think they more befit the new multicultural Europe. They claim Europe's classical architecture is out of place in the modern world and make immigrants feels out of place and uncomfortable.
Round buildings and buildings with curves are an assault to the senses, like the Geary Museum in LA, the Guggenheim in NYC, and this Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain:
https://www.dw.com/image/19172478_303.jpg
Rem Koolhaas' design for China's CCTV bldg destroyed Beijing's skyline with its hideousness:
https://cdn.archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Koolhaas-CCTV-Headquarters-.jpgReplies: @LondonBob
I guess, much like landscape, it’s a lot about what you grow up with, hit puberty with.
Like, I’ve gotta say I’m a big fan of the ‘brutalist lite’ style that you find in Southern California buildings built in the late 1950s to late 1970s. Like here’s the Pollack library at Cal State Fullerton
http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlhttp://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.html
https://ratcliffarch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/uc-berkeley-bancroft-library-1.jpgReplies: @Laurence Whelk
Everyone hates brutalism. They find it brutal.
Other styles are evergreen.
José from IKEA's cafeteria will feel right at home.
https://www.hotelrestaurantsupply.com/img/lrg/p/pipad-5s.jpgReplies: @kaganovitch, @RadicalCenter
https://dcairns.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/vlcsnap-2017-01-19-10h40m26s722.jpg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UTrKx-IJsLs
http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.html
I’m kinda a fan of the ‘brutalist lite’ style in SoCal, early 1960s to late 1970s. Practical yet clean and modern.
http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.html
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Qrcju93eWRjT7xUsVgPnBZ-650-80.jpg
(Only Townshend's contribution was genuine.)Replies: @Dan Hayes, @nokangaroos
That building in San Francisco is a monstrosity.
That, would be Trump’s greatest contribution to America.
Enough of Howard Roark’s hideous brutalism architecture. Ayn Rand and her tribe gave us that crap in the enlightened 60s and 70s to defy all things traditional and western.
Well-proportioned and pleasing to sight.
The Afro-Museum
We've endured to nauseum.
Raise Speer from the grave so it's right.Replies: @Kronos
Here’s hoping!
It’s called Neoclassical, by the way. Not classical, because as we all know classical civilization is dead.
We all know Neoclacissism is Unbearably White, at least according to Mark Zuckerberg’s sister. Though Brutalism is perhaps even more white, because only white people have ever conned themselves into building ugliness on purpose. (Non-whites are forced to live with ugly buildings, but that happens without their consent.)
One thing we forget is that there was a large gap between the advent of Ugly Academic Modern Building and its conquest of our daily lives. It wasn’t until last mid-Century that governments and businessmen were willing to brutalize the public. I’m the meantime there was what has been termed the Monumental Style. This was a truly international style; more spontaneous than *the* International Style (i.e. boxes).
Washington, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Rome…they were all neoclassical before something happened. I don’t know what, exactly. I presume everyone who knew how to build pretty things died and they weren’t replaced because intellectual barbarians captured strategic heights in the profession.
He needs to outlaw the breeding of pit bulls. Normal people of all races would love that.
Personally, I wouldn’t object to euthanizing all pit bulls - and their owners. I’m not recommending it; I just wouldn’t object. I consider the increased ownership of these dangerous beasts as just another symptom of the negrification/thugification of American culture.Replies: @Known Fact
Yes Trump has capitulated on balancing budgets, homosexuality, affirmative action, organized labor etc.
But he’s gonna fight like hell against ugly federal buildings.
Trump was always on the other side on those issues. All he offered the rest of us was appreciation rather than eradication, as well as a hearty defender against those ravenous for our destruction.Replies: @Dissident
That’s because having common plans means less work for architects.
http://www.englishcathedrals.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Cathedral_Liverpool21.jpg2.Catholic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedral#/media/File:Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedral_Exterior,_Liverpool,_UK_-_Diliff.jpgAKA Paddy's Wigwam.Replies: @Old Palo Altan, @MBlanc46
As your New Jersey correspondent, I would like to point out that for $1.6 billion the Giants and the Jets built an ugly-ass stadium.
Like, I've gotta say I'm a big fan of the 'brutalist lite' style that you find in Southern California buildings built in the late 1950s to late 1970s. Like here's the Pollack library at Cal State Fullerton
http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlhttp://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlReplies: @syonredux, @guest, @Bill Jones, @SunBakedSuburb
I prefer UC Berkeley’s Beaux Arts architecture:
There is something to be said for having a somewhat consistent “federal style” of architecture. And that style would certainly be neoclassical, in the mould of the major D.C. government buildings and monuments.
I think almost everyone finds these to be aesthetically pleasing. And they generally exude a proper balance between the seriousness of government and the republican aspirations of liberty.
Some of the modern federal court buildings are functional and not awful. (E.g., Santa Ana, downtown LA., Salt Lake City). But IMHO, they feel “wrong.” They feel like modern art museums or high tech office parks instead of halls of justice.
Sending people to jail and taking their money away in civil judgments is serious business. It should be done in surroundings of marble and wood panelling.
The federal style is more originally American, so maybe there should be a federal style revival.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_styleReplies: @slumber_j
https://i.ibb.co/4SPhM6k/Modern-Arch-Royal-Ontario-Museum2.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/DpmTzKg/Modern-Arch-Foster-Ipswich.jpgReplies: @Lurker, @Reg Cæsar, @MEH 0910, @Thirdtwin
That last one – I like the vaguely art deco building on the left. As with all the photos there is the telling contrast with appealing older buildings while at the same time an architect’s loafer stamps on human faces.
The brownstone across the street from Mayne’s new Cooper Union building appears to be holding up a cross to ward off its Lovecraftian horror.
https://lovecraftianscience.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/43573_1276488000_paul_carrick.jpgReplies: @J.Ross
Few realise Seattle's public library has its own theme song...
https://youtu.be/t1RTgznup5c
I harbor the suspicion that that category no longer represents a substantial voting block.
Personally, I wouldn’t object to euthanizing all pit bulls – and their owners. I’m not recommending it; I just wouldn’t object. I consider the increased ownership of these dangerous beasts as just another symptom of the negrification/thugification of American culture.
I hope so. I would love to see the government return to the beautiful architecture of yesterday….
https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1224824931877191680?s=20
Indeed. That abomination would not be out of place in R’lyeh…..
Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
That building looks just like a 1970s transistor radio.
I find a lot of those old radios elegant - maybe the look just doesn’t scale up.
What does Trump think of the African American history museum that has been plopped onto the national Mall?
What does Steve think about it?
It's called Neoclassical, by the way. Not classical, because as we all know classical civilization is dead.
We all know Neoclacissism is Unbearably White, at least according to Mark Zuckerberg's sister. Though Brutalism is perhaps even more white, because only white people have ever conned themselves into building ugliness on purpose. (Non-whites are forced to live with ugly buildings, but that happens without their consent.)
One thing we forget is that there was a large gap between the advent of Ugly Academic Modern Building and its conquest of our daily lives. It wasn't until last mid-Century that governments and businessmen were willing to brutalize the public. I'm the meantime there was what has been termed the Monumental Style. This was a truly international style; more spontaneous than *the* International Style (i.e. boxes).
Washington, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Rome...they were all neoclassical before something happened. I don't know what, exactly. I presume everyone who knew how to build pretty things died and they weren't replaced because intellectual barbarians captured strategic heights in the profession.Replies: @Mr McKenna, @BB753, @Authenticjazzman
Let’s just say that modern architecture is largely a ‘FWP’ pursuit, at least at the top levels where it enjoys favorable notice in the ‘prestige’ media. Speaking of, I’ve no doubt that scribes are currently sharpening their virtual pencils this evening to call out Trump’s distaste for ugly design as ‘thinly-veiled anti-semitism’. And I expect someone will draw parallels with the Prince of Wales before long as well.
Extra points for your use of the word loafer rather than shoe or boot 😉
On the contrary, the government workers are the lucky ones. They’re inside, and thus don’t have to look at it. I’m sure the toilets and elevators are quite uplifting.
For some reason, Conquest’s first law, that people are most conservative about what they know best, hasn’t applied to architects in at least a century.
That San Francisco building looks like the last two or three all-in-one PCs that failed on us within a year or so. Thus, it’s appropriate for the city. I hope there’s a copy somewhere in Shenzhen.
My kids were watching The School of Life’s video How to Make an Attractive City. It was making a lot of sense until the final minutes, when they blamed our lifeless cities in corporate developers (not without cause), and said that only strict government regulation can produce beauty and comfort in cities.
??????
Does this guy really believe Government Center is an improvement on Scollay Square? That the World Trade Center beautified Manhattan in a way the Singer, Woolworth, Bank of Manhattan Trust, Chrysler, and Empire State Building did not?
https://i.ibb.co/4SPhM6k/Modern-Arch-Royal-Ontario-Museum2.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/DpmTzKg/Modern-Arch-Foster-Ipswich.jpgReplies: @Lurker, @Reg Cæsar, @MEH 0910, @Thirdtwin
The top example isn’t Brutalism, it’s Busboyism. Hence, perfect for a Mexican consulate.
José from IKEA’s cafeteria will feel right at home.
I thought it captured the parking garage aesthetic almost perfectly.
The medical and dental fields here in SoCal, admittedly, are dominated by Asians in wild disproportion to their share of the population, often with receptionists, billing, and other staff consisting largely of Mexican women.
I think almost everyone finds these to be aesthetically pleasing. And they generally exude a proper balance between the seriousness of government and the republican aspirations of liberty.
Some of the modern federal court buildings are functional and not awful. (E.g., Santa Ana, downtown LA., Salt Lake City). But IMHO, they feel "wrong." They feel like modern art museums or high tech office parks instead of halls of justice.
Sending people to jail and taking their money away in civil judgments is serious business. It should be done in surroundings of marble and wood panelling.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous
We already have a federal style of architecture, and while it has some classical elements, it’s not like the later monumental neoclassical architecture of DC and elsewhere. It’s named federal because it’s from the Federalist era. The older parts of DC and cities in the Northeast tend to be in the federal style. It’s similar to Georgian architecture.
The federal style is more originally American, so maybe there should be a federal style revival.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_style
??????Does this guy really believe Government Center is an improvement on Scollay Square? That the World Trade Center beautified Manhattan in a way the Singer, Woolworth, Bank of Manhattan Trust, Chrysler, and Empire State Building did not?
https://www.boston.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Scully-Square-2-240941-6302.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B74XH7/boston-city-hall-located-in-government-center-plaza-in-downtown-boston-B74XH7.jpg
https://s.yimg.com/aah/mcmahanphoto/woolworth-singer-building-new-york-city-photo-print-16.jpghttps://buildingtheskyline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/40WallChryslerESB-640x761.pnghttps://www.nyhistory.org/sites/default/files/styles/exhibitions_new/public/3-WTC-from-Exchange-Pl.-Jersey-City%2C-1978-_f.jpg?itok=iTeZAeRgReplies: @Mr McKenna, @Brutusale, @Bostonvegas
Great stuff. Scollay Square looks amazing. Never stopped to think what the Government Center had replaced.
Urban vandalism on a monumental scale. Part and parcel of the extended wreckage of once-great American cities. Someone needs to tally up the cost at some point. But how?
http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlReplies: @Reg Cæsar, @ben tillman
Brutalism peaked with this:
(Only Townshend’s contribution was genuine.)
(though the pillars are nice ;) )
But what´s so bad about going one up on Adolf Loos ("Ornament ist Verbrechen") ?
Not the deconstructivist shit of nowadays (more or less a contest of what abomination can be erected with modern materials short of toppling or crumbling from shame - a challenge for materials science instead of design), just naked unpretentious concrete ... pure FUNCTION ?!
https://lvironpigs.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/1a1a1a12aa65.jpg?w=500
What does Steve think about it?Replies: @Laurence Whelk, @Pericles
I don’t know what the President thinks, but I think it’s an eyesore. Plus it’s blocking my view of Washington’s enormous white phallus.
Apparently an African-American architect could not be found anywhere in America with the requisite skills to design this stack of Popeye’s chicken trays, so they had to get a regular African-African.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Adjaye
The injun museum is also pretty fugly:
https://imway2fat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/fat-man-with-grapes1.jpgReplies: @RadicalCenter
Looks like a giant hippopotamus about to engulf the visitor.Replies: @Thirdtwin
https://ratcliffarch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/uc-berkeley-bancroft-library-1.jpgReplies: @Laurence Whelk
Problem is anything with columns looks like a plantation big house to some people…
I find a lot of those old radios elegant – maybe the look just doesn’t scale up.
Ummm … isn’t this Trump’s milieu?
Over the years Trump has been criticized for his philistine approach to art and architecture as a real estate developer.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/trump-files-when-donald-destroyed-priceless-art-build-trump-tower/
"To build his skyscraper, Trump first had to knock down the Bonwit Teller building, a luxurious limestone building erected in 1929. The face of the building featured two huge Art Deco friezes that the Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted to preserve. The museum asked Trump to save the sculptures and donate them, and the mogul agreed—as long as the cost of doing so wasn’t too high"
There are whole chapters in "Art of the Deal" dedicated to these controversies between Trump and preservationists about remodeling landmark buildings like the Commodore Hotel and demolish historic NYC buildings filled with artwork. Thought Steve would have referenced those.
“Deconstructivism is a movement of postmodern architecture which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building. It is characterized by an absence of harmony, continuity, or symmetry.”
The basic idea is to make everything traditional ugly. It is to invert all standards of beauty so as to traduce the host nation’s ancestry as a daily debasing ritual of demoralisation.
It has been perfected in the year of 2020 with the mass penetration of pornography into every waking hour along with constant ridicule by media disembodied heads yammering away into eternity.
The White Western Soul yearns for transcendence.
Could be Thom is also none too fond of multi-billionaires. Although this effort is not nearly as depressing, and it does have kind of a built-in-garage PC vibe.
Wish Trump would maintain more focus on building that “Big, Beautiful Wall” he’s always promising. Be really great if he could by decree ensure it be both beautiful and simultaneously intimidating.
In my youth I spent a week on the rooftop of the McKesson building, just down the street from that new SF fed eyesore. Folded & tossed a few paper airplanes off; probably a capitol offense now. At the time it seemed near top of the world, but it’s a relative dwarf now, especially with the Salesforce tower nearby, which looks very impressive as you drive into the city over the Bay Bridge.
The Indian museum would be a better evocation of a Pueblo cliff dwelling if it were wide and not deep.
Looks like a giant hippopotamus about to engulf the visitor.
There should just be
– Minimal places where “Federal Architecture” is even needed.
– It should not be considered a permanent fixture and fulfill the requirement of being used for JDAM target practice every 10 years or so as the relevant administration is disbanded and regenerated with fresh members.
But he's gonna fight like hell against ugly federal buildings.Replies: @Redneck farmer, @guest, @Desiderius
So is there any chance you’ll swap your daily blackpill for fentanyl?
Like, I've gotta say I'm a big fan of the 'brutalist lite' style that you find in Southern California buildings built in the late 1950s to late 1970s. Like here's the Pollack library at Cal State Fullerton
http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlhttp://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlReplies: @syonredux, @guest, @Bill Jones, @SunBakedSuburb
False.
Everyone hates brutalism. They find it brutal.
Other styles are evergreen.
Charles Windsor’s disgust with modern building is perhaps the one saving grace of English royalty now alive. Is he not otherwise part of the In-Crowd, however?
One expects the “art world” (a thousand fancy folk in three or four cities) to be able to have their say in feilds like painting or literature. Because what does it take to exhibit a few canvasses or put a crappy book in print? Not much. They could have an order up next Wednesday.
Buildings require capital outlay. You must convince governments/businesses to pay for them. You need to hire people who actually know how to engineer and construct them. And unlike abstract expressionist paintings or dirty poetry, which Joe Lunchbox can easily avoid looking at across his lifespan, public architecture is all up in everyone’s face all day everyday. (If you live or work in a city.)
That’s a lot of un-initiated brains to wash.
Which is why my theory is that they had to wait until everyone outside the field had nowhere else to turn. On account of the old masters being dead.
Doesn’t neoclassical architecture trigger trauma in negroes of color by its association with hegemonic patriarchal shareholders, giddyup!, like Thomas Jefferson?
But he's gonna fight like hell against ugly federal buildings.Replies: @Redneck farmer, @guest, @Desiderius
Capitulated on homosexuality? What does that even mean?
https://youtu.be/vc7_NEinAjI
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-launches-global-effort-end-criminalization-homosexuality-n973081
Few realise Seattle’s public library has its own theme song…
What does Steve think about it?Replies: @Laurence Whelk, @Pericles
Crashed pyramid from the Kangz era.
Presumably he refers to the president’s not taking a firmer stance against efforts to pretend people can marry others of the same sex and allow them to adopt (thus scarring for life) children, efforts to permit perverts into bathrooms with children of the opposite sex, and so on; I don’t think he means by that unfortunate turn of phrase what most would think the it to mean (thank heavens!).
More than anyone else in public life (maybe except Mike Kaiser) Trump’s vision on architecture of buildings and golf courses are well known. There was the original Trump Tower in Manhatten, gaudy and rude. Trump Chicago is subdued for such a giant building (except for the obnoxious sign.
Early Trump golf courses had giant fake waterfalls and the Ilk. Later designs are much more mainstream and in line with modernist golf architecture. I thought the re-do of The Blue Monster was great (from pictures, I’m too cheap to pay greens fees that high).
If he did that, he’d leave a legacy worth remembering. Normal people like the old stuff, even if architects don’t.
I think it’s the valuation of ‘new’. You have to keep innovating, which means old techniques that worked have to be gotten rid of.
There are issues with the old, pretty buildings being much more expensive to construct in terms of marble and granite the rest versus glass and concrete, no? This is out of my field.
Perhaps Thom Mayne’s style of architecture should be known as farceitecture:
I think almost everyone finds these to be aesthetically pleasing. And they generally exude a proper balance between the seriousness of government and the republican aspirations of liberty.
Some of the modern federal court buildings are functional and not awful. (E.g., Santa Ana, downtown LA., Salt Lake City). But IMHO, they feel "wrong." They feel like modern art museums or high tech office parks instead of halls of justice.
Sending people to jail and taking their money away in civil judgments is serious business. It should be done in surroundings of marble and wood panelling.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous
What is your opinion of the African American History Museum on the National Mall?
I wonder what Thomas Mayne’s ‘radical’ and ‘modern’ Sukkah looked like? He seems to have been part of a Sukkah building project, as outlined in this book:
https://www.worldcat.org/title/sukkah-city/oclc/974250417
“When best-selling author Joshua Foer began to build his first sukkah, a small hut that Jews build and dwell in every fall for the holiday of Sukkot, he wanted to move beyond the generic plywood boxes and canvas tents that have become the unimaginative status quo. He discovered that while the Bible outlines the basic parameters for what a sukkah should look like and how it should function, it leaves plenty of room for variation and interpretation. Foer thought, ‘what if contemporary architects and designers were challenged to design and construct twelve radical sukkahs? What would they come up with?’ And so was born the design competition known as Sukkah City in Union Square Park, in the heart of New York City. Chronicling the competition, the film goes behind the scenes during construction, exhibition, and judging to provide an entertaining and inspiring portrait of the project’s visionary architects and structures – an exciting, singular moment in the American Jewish experience ”
The federal style is more originally American, so maybe there should be a federal style revival.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_styleReplies: @slumber_j
Isn’t that what this document is mostly advocating? Anyway, from the article:
Weird snark but okay: it was the prevailing style of the day because American architects embraced classical models for ideological reasons. This isn’t a controversial assertion.
Stripped Classicism is underrated.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_Classicism
A modern style that still bears some relationship to humanism and history.
http://blog.adeccousa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Marriner_S._Eccles_Federal_Reserve_Board_Building-1024x568.jpg
José from IKEA's cafeteria will feel right at home.
https://www.hotelrestaurantsupply.com/img/lrg/p/pipad-5s.jpgReplies: @kaganovitch, @RadicalCenter
The top example isn’t Brutalism, it’s Busboyism. Hence, perfect for a Mexican consulate.
I thought it captured the parking garage aesthetic almost perfectly.
What is that horrible carbuncle on the side of the classical-ish building?
That Injun one immediately reminded me of Mayan script. If it was meant to it succeeded.
https://dwkcommentaries.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/iowacapitol.gif
“Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” - I love it.Replies: @Anon, @RadicalCenter, @JUSA, @MBlanc46
Shouldn’t that be capitol building?* The state capital is Des Moines and the building where its state legislature meets is the capitol. And if we’re talking about the capital of the U.S., Washington, D.C., that building, the Capitol, is capitalized because it refers to a specific building. D.C. is known as “The Capital City” and its NHL team The Capitals though its old jersey logo was the Capitol. 🤦♂️
*I know there are some English language purists on iSteve who are quick to correct and comment on any English use transgressions and haven’t so maybe I’m mistaken?
James Howard Kunstler has written pretty extensively on how crummy the modern built environment is in the US.
This is a good idea on Trump’s part. The problem is that, as a group, architects are somewhere near Mao on the political spectrum. They think this endless wave of brutalist/post-modernist crap is helping to destroy the Four Olds.
It's called Neoclassical, by the way. Not classical, because as we all know classical civilization is dead.
We all know Neoclacissism is Unbearably White, at least according to Mark Zuckerberg's sister. Though Brutalism is perhaps even more white, because only white people have ever conned themselves into building ugliness on purpose. (Non-whites are forced to live with ugly buildings, but that happens without their consent.)
One thing we forget is that there was a large gap between the advent of Ugly Academic Modern Building and its conquest of our daily lives. It wasn't until last mid-Century that governments and businessmen were willing to brutalize the public. I'm the meantime there was what has been termed the Monumental Style. This was a truly international style; more spontaneous than *the* International Style (i.e. boxes).
Washington, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Rome...they were all neoclassical before something happened. I don't know what, exactly. I presume everyone who knew how to build pretty things died and they weren't replaced because intellectual barbarians captured strategic heights in the profession.Replies: @Mr McKenna, @BB753, @Authenticjazzman
It was done on purpose to demoralize the population the better to rule them like sheep. Some call it aesthetic terrorism.
Jim Kunstler has been riffing on this theme for years. Lots of great takedowns in this series: https://kunstler.com/featured-eyesore-of-the-month/
“misanthropic architect Thom Mayne”
Like most of the blatantly misanthropic “famous” architects, Mayne is Jewish. Jewish architects really seem to have a thing for shoving ugliness in people’s faces. The “artist” Richard Serra is another one (mother: Gladys Feinberg). Just one long career of nasty, ugly monstrosities designed specifically to dishearten people. What color is the soul of someone like that?
AJM
All of his work manifests the sickness of a soul yearning for damnation.
Federalist style buildings were usually originally designed without any thought of how to hide air conditioning ducting, insulation, solar panels, electrical cables, anti-terrorist barriers and bollards, and so on, and did not need parking lots.
So there would probably be a few practical problems in making federal buildings great again, although one advantage would be that there would be no need to provide for watering horses.
The danger is that architects would just make modern buildings with cheap, nasty classical porches and we would have the worst of all worlds and your local DMV looks like this:
??????Does this guy really believe Government Center is an improvement on Scollay Square? That the World Trade Center beautified Manhattan in a way the Singer, Woolworth, Bank of Manhattan Trust, Chrysler, and Empire State Building did not?
https://www.boston.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Scully-Square-2-240941-6302.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B74XH7/boston-city-hall-located-in-government-center-plaza-in-downtown-boston-B74XH7.jpg
https://s.yimg.com/aah/mcmahanphoto/woolworth-singer-building-new-york-city-photo-print-16.jpghttps://buildingtheskyline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/40WallChryslerESB-640x761.pnghttps://www.nyhistory.org/sites/default/files/styles/exhibitions_new/public/3-WTC-from-Exchange-Pl.-Jersey-City%2C-1978-_f.jpg?itok=iTeZAeRgReplies: @Mr McKenna, @Brutusale, @Bostonvegas
The whores frequenting the old Scollay Square had hearts of gold.
The whores at the Government Center, not so much.
The government’s destruction of this genteel adult entertainment district led to the creation of the tawdrier, much more violent Combat Zone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Zone,_Boston
Federalist style buildings were usually originally designed without any thought of how to hide air conditioning ducting, insulation, solar panels, electrical cables, anti-terrorist barriers and bollards, and so on, and did not need parking lots.
So there would probably be a few practical problems in making federal buildings great again, although one advantage would be that there would be no need to provide for watering horses.
The danger is that architects would just make modern buildings with cheap, nasty classical porches and we would have the worst of all worlds and your local DMV looks like a shrine to Elvis:
http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlReplies: @Reg Cæsar, @ben tillman
That stuff is fine. I agree.
That building in San Francisco is a monstrosity.
https://i.ibb.co/4SPhM6k/Modern-Arch-Royal-Ontario-Museum2.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/DpmTzKg/Modern-Arch-Foster-Ipswich.jpgReplies: @Lurker, @Reg Cæsar, @MEH 0910, @Thirdtwin
OT
There a cruise ship floating in the middle of Yokohama harbor with 3,700 quarantined passengers, mostly Japanese, and staff (probably mostly third worlders). At least ten have tested positive for coronavirus, so they are stuck there for at least 14 days, longer if more patients surface, and I bet they will. The cruisers are “asked” not to leave their rooms.
The cruisers are given breakfast, lunch, and dinner on plates placed outside their rooms. Smartphone photos of the meals make them look pretty basic, but edible. After eating the cruisers put the plates outside to be picked up later by staff. Water seems to be in short supply and the authorities are working on it.
The rooms, for most passengers, are very small, of course. The ship is the Diamond Princess from Princess Cruises.
Watching coverage of this on the news and listening to the news media interview detainees by smartphone, I was amazed at how civilized the Japanese passengers were taking it. And then I wondered what would have happened if Katrina refugees had been placed on a cruise ship for two or three weeks in the Gulf of Mexico: Escape from New York! Coast Guard cutters circling the ship. Riots on board. All broadcast in real time on social media.
Reminds me of the Richard Serra “tear down this wall” video posted here a while ago. There is good new architecture out there but the bad ones are really, really bad. I’m interested by the idea of putting non-Gramscian bureaucrats in charge of this– and for the NEA and nat’l parks too. If we can’t get rid of these agencies why do they have to be run by purple-haired SJWs?
There are renovated WPA-era post offices in the Cal. central valley, The bigger cities all seem to have a few. They look like relics of a Thomas Hart Benton fantasia (whereas most USPS facilities are brutal indeed). The problem is, I think a lot of the older, classic branches would just be closed now, ADA compliance and so forth; but they got Obama shovel-ready pork to be restored and stay open a few hours a day. First they came for the post offices, and I said nothing, bc I don’t really use snail mail…
Japan initially gave the contract for designing the main Olympic stadium to an Iraqi-British woman architect, Zaha Hadid, who submitted this design, a sort of scaled up bicycle helmet:
Japanese architects were disgusted and the contract was awarded to a well-regarded Japanese architect who came up with a cheaper and more sensible design, made partially of wood:
The Iraqi threatened to sue, but she ended up dying before she could make much trouble.
Just what the Republic needs: Aesthetic standards enforced by the guy who built this:
http://www.ammoland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Richmond-Virginia-State-Capitol-Building.jpg
http://gardenandgun.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/West-Front_Monticello-JLooney-26aug2013-0056_work-1600x1067.jpg
https://www.traditionalbuilding.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_80%2Cw_1280/MTUwNDcwODI3NTMwMjY2Mjgz/uva-1.jpgReplies: @Kronos, @Desiderius
I would prefer a moratorium on the building any new structures for the federal government. Any new federal buildings just means more growth in government. But if we must, let’s keep building the frigid monstrosities that stick out in the landscape like gangrene rotted thumbs.
Like, I've gotta say I'm a big fan of the 'brutalist lite' style that you find in Southern California buildings built in the late 1950s to late 1970s. Like here's the Pollack library at Cal State Fullerton
http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlhttp://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlReplies: @syonredux, @guest, @Bill Jones, @SunBakedSuburb
That’s you on the Lamppost list then.
We have a winner.
Nice contrast here : The two Cathedrals in Liverpool
1. Church of England.
2.Catholic.
AKA Paddy’s Wigwam.
It means this:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-launches-global-effort-end-criminalization-homosexuality-n973081
But he's gonna fight like hell against ugly federal buildings.Replies: @Redneck farmer, @guest, @Desiderius
Capitulated?
Trump was always on the other side on those issues. All he offered the rest of us was appreciation rather than eradication, as well as a hearty defender against those ravenous for our destruction.
Personally, I wouldn’t object to euthanizing all pit bulls - and their owners. I’m not recommending it; I just wouldn’t object. I consider the increased ownership of these dangerous beasts as just another symptom of the negrification/thugification of American culture.Replies: @Known Fact
But as The Wild Geese Howard recently pointed out, pit bulls appeal not just to thugs but to an especially annoying group of leftist save-the-world nice white ladies
A few years back I was walking my normal non-murder dog (beagle mix) on the beach when a huge grey beartrap with legs starts rushing towards me and my 20lb mutt, dragging a white chick in yoga pants over the sand.
I put my hand in my right jacket pocket and yelled, “Stop your dog!” She plopped her ass down in the sand and wrapped the leash around her waist. Luckily that was enough to stop the charge.
As I walked away (looking over my shoulder) she yelled - not “Sorry” - but, “She’s friendly! She just wanted to meet your baby!”
If we’re not going to put down these menaces, there should least be a strength test to own one.Replies: @Lurker
Not bad, but I hope they don’t go the white sterile neoclassic look. Ancient buildings were rather colorful, but it washed out, so everyone thought they were pure white, which is wrong. And kinda ugly
Hey, as long as they don’t look like the White House or the Capitol it’s good
Modern art can be awful, but at least it’s usually safely confined inside modern art museums or galleries and do not bother anyone; many are even happily unaware of what’s going on inside.
The problem of modern architecture is that it is imposed on the public, lasts for decades, and even if unliked by all except the architect it will remain there, “like a boot stomping on a human face forever” and you can’t even avoid looking at it.
Architects are monstrous narcissists. They are not content, like visual artists, to show their visions only to those few who may care to see them in places apt for them; no, they have to impose them to maximum number of people, and who cares what they think.
Bring back the anonymity and patience of the old European cathedral builders.
Hideously futuristic buildings do serve one vital role, as ominous exterior locations for low-budget sci-fi shows and movies — e.g. Rollerball or every Mission Impossible episode where they convince the bad guy he’s somehow woken up 30 years in the future.
Moyne’s design coming soon to LA
Here’s the Perot Museum in Dallas. Is there paint peeling off?
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/P6C752/reading-room-library-of-congress-building-the-thomas-jefferson-building-washington-dc-usa-P6C752.jpg
https://cdn.britannica.com/84/189184-050-D8DB4148/Facade-Library-of-Congress-Washington-DC-Jefferson-1897.jpg
https://www.flipkey.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/National-Gallery-of-Art_art-museums.jpg
https://www.sbaranes.com/resources/projectsImages/1422737467treasury-building-1-sba.jpg
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/images/CourtBuilding.jpgReplies: @Desiderius
Not just yesterday. Here’s where Trump’s people are getting their ideas today:
Looks like a giant hippopotamus about to engulf the visitor.Replies: @Thirdtwin
Looks like payback for Mount Rushmore.
You know who else HATED modern art? Adolph Hitler
All the modern atrocities posted here are the result of ubiquitous CAD modeling tools. They look exactly like public restroom soap dispensers. And females are behind a lot of it.
Off-topic but ironic that after Tuesday’s Democrats primary debacle Trump may need to call for foreign oversight of our elections.
It seems like a relatively trivial thing, but these sorts of symbolic gestures let people know that Trump’s head is in the right place. You can tell a lot about a person by what they think is aesthetically pleasing. I would surmise that Trump has always really liked high end neoclassical architecture but economic necessities prevented him from really doing it well, and thus some of his properties looked a bit tacky. A failure of execution but his heart was in the right place.
It’s also the sort of thing that appeals to his base. It’s a bitchslap to overeducated provocateurs that revel in making stuff that normal people find ugly, and believe that this is proof of their sophistication. It eliminates jobs for these sorts of people, but creates for skilled blue collar professions (masons, plasterers, etc.)
https://i.ibb.co/4SPhM6k/Modern-Arch-Royal-Ontario-Museum2.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/DpmTzKg/Modern-Arch-Foster-Ipswich.jpgReplies: @Lurker, @Reg Cæsar, @MEH 0910, @Thirdtwin
The middle one is just glorified Orlando cartoon architecture…
https://dwkcommentaries.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/iowacapitol.gif
“Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” - I love it.Replies: @Anon, @RadicalCenter, @JUSA, @MBlanc46
You’re right, that’s beautiful. The domes and gold coloration give it a somewhat Slavic / Eastern Orthodox look, no?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Parliament_Building%2C_Budapest%2C_outside.jpg/303px-Parliament_Building%2C_Budapest%2C_outside.jpgReplies: @nokangaroos
This article says it all
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/why-you-hate-contemporary-architecture
As a side note, some people think the world’s most brutally honest architecture critic was Osama bin Laden.
The underlying truth, which the authors hint at, is that the people designing these monstrosities have inner lives as grotesque as their creations.Eh, the Twin Towers were not beautiful, but they were memorable and iconic.
One WTC looks like a generic immivader that belongs in Dubai.Replies: @Paleo Liberal
José from IKEA's cafeteria will feel right at home.
https://www.hotelrestaurantsupply.com/img/lrg/p/pipad-5s.jpgReplies: @kaganovitch, @RadicalCenter
Funny, but you’ll find that Mexicans also OWN quite a few of the restaurants here in California, and a host of other businesses of almost every type. There are so many of them that they often constitute a majority of every level of an enterprise, from ownership and management down to busboys, cooks, cashiers, and manual laborers.
The medical and dental fields here in SoCal, admittedly, are dominated by Asians in wild disproportion to their share of the population, often with receptionists, billing, and other staff consisting largely of Mexican women.
https://imway2fat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/fat-man-with-grapes1.jpgReplies: @RadicalCenter
Are these DNC members?
I prefer our shitty ironic modern buildings to our shitty kitsch “classical” ones, but Trump’s plan has sent the whole academic/governmental architecture internet into a psychotic toddler tantrum, and hurting their feelings is more important than not hurting my eyes.
Build the wall—of plastic columns harvested from Trump’s golf course restaurants and Long Island Italians’ living rooms.
The renovated Soldier Field in Chicago is awful too.
Like, I've gotta say I'm a big fan of the 'brutalist lite' style that you find in Southern California buildings built in the late 1950s to late 1970s. Like here's the Pollack library at Cal State Fullerton
http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlhttp://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/03/finding-beauty-in-unexpected-places.htmlReplies: @syonredux, @guest, @Bill Jones, @SunBakedSuburb
The upside to the brutalist style is it seems to drive away people who instinctively gravitate towards warmer aesthetics. It’s a people repellent. It empties out urban spaces. Standing alone amongst the cold grey concrete, feeling like the Omega Man. It’s peaceful.
You know what would be EVEN BETTER? A BAN on all new Federal Buildings, and the destruction of existing ones when they are in need of repair….and of course the firing of all the parasites that infest them.
So there would probably be a few practical problems in making federal buildings great again, although one advantage would be that there would be no need to provide for watering horses.
The danger is that architects would just make modern buildings with cheap, nasty classical porches and we would have the worst of all worlds and your local DMV looks like a shrine to Elvis:
https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/graceland-exterior-memphis.jpg?w=2000Replies: @SunBakedSuburb
Anything with white pillars gives me the sense of corrupt politicians and Greek faggotry.
https://www.alliancembs.manchester.ac.uk/news/archive/wp-content/uploads/manchester-town-hall.jpg
https://static.thousandwonders.net/Centre.Block.original.23065.jpgReplies: @Dan Hayes
This architectural abortion was responsible for depleting and eventually destroying Cooper Union’s endowment with consequently ending its hitherto free tuition.
The Cooper Union took in $175 million in debt for that monstrosity.
That is not even close to the worst effect a bad building had. The original World Trade Center bankrupted the City of New York. Seriously.
First, the neighborhood where the original WTC stood was a thriving (I would say vibrant, but that meaning has changed) business neighborhood, Radio Row. That neighborhood, and the $$$$ it brought into the economy, was lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_World_Trade_Center#Eviction_controversy
Then, the building was expensive. Lots of debt.
Worse, the building was completed at a time when NYC was shrinking, and there was already a glut of office space. Nobody needed that office space for at least another 20 years. For a while, the City and the State of New York, as well as the Port Authority, kept as many offices as possible in the WTC because nobody else wanted it.
Of course, by 2001 the office space was needed.
It won’t happen. Given the zeitgeist with which we are afflicted, “classical”=”Greco-Roman”=”white”=”racism”= (fill in whatever “ism” or “phobia” you want). The NY Times Editorial Board and the Cult of Diversity won’t accept such a proposal.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/why-you-hate-contemporary-architecture
As a side note, some people think the world's most brutally honest architecture critic was Osama bin Laden.Replies: @The Wild Geese Howard
That is a great article, I think I read it before but it was worth the re-read.
The underlying truth, which the authors hint at, is that the people designing these monstrosities have inner lives as grotesque as their creations.
Eh, the Twin Towers were not beautiful, but they were memorable and iconic.
One WTC looks like a generic immivader that belongs in Dubai.
One complaint was that NYC during the late 1800s to the mid 1900s had developed an interesting sort of skyscraper which defined NYC. Think of the Woolworth building downtown, or the Chrysler and Empire State Building in midtown. The original WTC was one of the early skyscrapers to go against that architectural trend. Also the Citibank building in midtown.
And downtown Manhattan did develop a new style of architecture with the Twin Towers, the Lipstick building, the World Financial Center, etc. When a competition was held for a new WTC building, one complaint was that every single building looked more at home in Shanghai or Dubai. The design they chose was as good as any submissions.Replies: @Lot
Holy sh!t you are correct!
The Cooper Union took in $175 million in debt for that monstrosity.
That is not even close to the worst effect a bad building had. The original World Trade Center bankrupted the City of New York. Seriously.
First, the neighborhood where the original WTC stood was a thriving (I would say vibrant, but that meaning has changed) business neighborhood, Radio Row. That neighborhood, and the $$$$ it brought into the economy, was lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_World_Trade_Center#Eviction_controversy
Then, the building was expensive. Lots of debt.
Worse, the building was completed at a time when NYC was shrinking, and there was already a glut of office space. Nobody needed that office space for at least another 20 years. For a while, the City and the State of New York, as well as the Port Authority, kept as many offices as possible in the WTC because nobody else wanted it.
Of course, by 2001 the office space was needed.
I can see Trump himself having input on this. As a real estate guy and someone who likes things to look impressive, I’m sure he ordered this himself. I agree with him about taste. A good government building should make you think about the dignity of the institution it houses, not the architect who designed it.
Architects should be serving their clients’ desires, not bamboozling them into what architects want.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_Classicism
A modern style that still bears some relationship to humanism and history.Replies: @syonredux
When done well, it has a kind of austere beauty…..
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Qrcju93eWRjT7xUsVgPnBZ-650-80.jpg
(Only Townshend's contribution was genuine.)Replies: @Dan Hayes, @nokangaroos
Yet absolutely perfectly complements the lyrics!
Someone in the WH is reading BAP.
The antique style in my town was Richardson Romanesque, which is hard to do in a way that doesn’t make you think of being stuck inside Moria during its decline. It could be nasty and inhuman. Most of it was torn down in the 1950s and 60s before ideas of conservation took hold. Some of it really deserved to be gone, but a few buildings should have been preserved. Unfortunately, it was replaced by 1950s Modern Cheap, which is the most boring and boxy-looking stuff ever.
White female nurturing instinct gone septic is responsible for so many ills across history.
http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/580e66698d83b44b4a8b53dc-2400/ap16103816789509.jpgReplies: @McFly
Yes, I was going to say…
Over the years Trump has been criticized for his philistine approach to art and architecture as a real estate developer.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/trump-files-when-donald-destroyed-priceless-art-build-trump-tower/
“To build his skyscraper, Trump first had to knock down the Bonwit Teller building, a luxurious limestone building erected in 1929. The face of the building featured two huge Art Deco friezes that the Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted to preserve. The museum asked Trump to save the sculptures and donate them, and the mogul agreed—as long as the cost of doing so wasn’t too high”
There are whole chapters in “Art of the Deal” dedicated to these controversies between Trump and preservationists about remodeling landmark buildings like the Commodore Hotel and demolish historic NYC buildings filled with artwork. Thought Steve would have referenced those.
You could always go with Gothic Revival…..
This is the Wilkie D. Ferguson building:
Arquitectonica is a major force down here.
Matrix headline: Left tops AfD in Thuringia.
Actual news: AfD is now the second strongest party in a central constituency, leaving Merkel’s once-dominant Christian Democrats in the dust. They’re not number one but they’re past where the naysayers put them. Thuringia is not a big state and it only has four representatives out of 69 in Germany’s legislature.
(Vexillology note: Thuringia’s livery colors are those of Poland, Bohemia, and also several Austrian and Swiss places, and Indonesia when drunk. The livery colors system is stupid. Flags should be unique. Livery colors are extrapolated from the arms, and, in Thuringia’s case, the arms are wierdly American: white stars on a light blue background, around red and white horizontal stripes. The crowned lion rampant distinguishes it.)
It's called Neoclassical, by the way. Not classical, because as we all know classical civilization is dead.
We all know Neoclacissism is Unbearably White, at least according to Mark Zuckerberg's sister. Though Brutalism is perhaps even more white, because only white people have ever conned themselves into building ugliness on purpose. (Non-whites are forced to live with ugly buildings, but that happens without their consent.)
One thing we forget is that there was a large gap between the advent of Ugly Academic Modern Building and its conquest of our daily lives. It wasn't until last mid-Century that governments and businessmen were willing to brutalize the public. I'm the meantime there was what has been termed the Monumental Style. This was a truly international style; more spontaneous than *the* International Style (i.e. boxes).
Washington, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Rome...they were all neoclassical before something happened. I don't know what, exactly. I presume everyone who knew how to build pretty things died and they weren't replaced because intellectual barbarians captured strategic heights in the profession.Replies: @Mr McKenna, @BB753, @Authenticjazzman
” They were all neoclassical before something happened. I don’t know what”
Okay so for your further edumacation and enlightenment I will tell you what happened:
The leftist Teutons began disseminating their horrid “Bauhaus” garbage throughout the western hemisphere and they were welcomed with open arms by the dumb-ass uncultured American academia.
For a marvelous example of “classical” architecture take a look at the Michigan state capital.
And by the way just what is “classical” architecture composed of? Here it is : Greek, Romanesque, and Baroque elements.
Baroque being the epitome of architectural artistry.
Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained US army vet, and pro Jazz artist. ( last gig : yesterday evening)
Like most of the blatantly misanthropic "famous" architects, Mayne is Jewish. Jewish architects really seem to have a thing for shoving ugliness in people's faces. The "artist" Richard Serra is another one (mother: Gladys Feinberg). Just one long career of nasty, ugly monstrosities designed specifically to dishearten people. What color is the soul of someone like that?Replies: @Authenticjazzman, @Old Palo Altan
Apparently you have never heard of one Albert Kahn, Hebrew Detroiter and a genius in the field of neo-Baroque Art-Deko. His motor city creations are nothing short of otherworldly dreams.
AJM
Thank you sir!
Wayne County’s former administrative building is Neoclassical/Beaux Arts. Some offices were moved to the deco Guardian building — real polychromed tile Deco should be the alternative option, so long as it doesn’t sink into Federal.
Nearby is a squat lopsided beige block with a bright yellow thing sticking out of it, connected to a taller International style window-wall-block by a Gigeresque tube (I’m not making this up), which together comprise our schizoid yet consistently horrible city hall.
In the city of kaiserslautern ( Germany) there is a Villa which is famed throughout arcitectural circles in Germany : the Villa Kröckel . You can google it and view it's heavenly stonework, and luckily enough it was spared in the war, with bombs dropping a kilometer distant.
I place artistic stonework on the same level as the great musical masterpieces.
AJM
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1ZT2W3
https://www.liveabout.com/are-fatal-car-accidents-on-the-rise-4171847
Steve….interesting on rise of carrelated deaths
The underlying truth, which the authors hint at, is that the people designing these monstrosities have inner lives as grotesque as their creations.Eh, the Twin Towers were not beautiful, but they were memorable and iconic.
One WTC looks like a generic immivader that belongs in Dubai.Replies: @Paleo Liberal
To be fair, there was a while when I had an apartment in Brooklyn (Park Slope) with a nice view of downtown Manhattan. There were times when the sunlight would reflect very nicely off of the Twin Towers.
One complaint was that NYC during the late 1800s to the mid 1900s had developed an interesting sort of skyscraper which defined NYC. Think of the Woolworth building downtown, or the Chrysler and Empire State Building in midtown. The original WTC was one of the early skyscrapers to go against that architectural trend. Also the Citibank building in midtown.
And downtown Manhattan did develop a new style of architecture with the Twin Towers, the Lipstick building, the World Financial Center, etc. When a competition was held for a new WTC building, one complaint was that every single building looked more at home in Shanghai or Dubai. The design they chose was as good as any submissions.
https://lovecraftianscience.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/43573_1276488000_paul_carrick.jpgReplies: @J.Ross
HPL wrote often and emotionally about architecture, and his happiest lines (not about cats) concerned metal-topped Neoclassical and Georgian buildings in Boston. Everything but the creatures and the grimoires in Lovecraft is usually verifiably real, even the North Hill smuggling tunnels leading to the cemetary in Pickman’s Model. ST Joshi’s excellent multi-volume annotated editions (which I prefer to the big one-volume new annotated, which Joshi chivalrously endorsed) has photographs of the various locations and notable houses. So this is that rare Lovecraft reference which is totally solid and not just a byword for “wierd:” this is a sentiment he would endorse, except for doubting the usefulness of the cross.
Enough of Howard Roark's hideous brutalism architecture. Ayn Rand and her tribe gave us that crap in the enlightened 60s and 70s to defy all things traditional and western.Replies: @Eustace Tilley (not)
Let’s return to those temples of white
Well-proportioned and pleasing to sight.
The Afro-Museum
We’ve endured to nauseum.
Raise Speer from the grave so it’s right.
http://www.warrelics.eu/forum/attachments/history-research-third-reich-ww2/496341d1365352096-albert-speers-architecture-image.jpg
James Lileks is ranting about this today: http://lileks.com/bleats/archive/20/0220/020520.html
2) This ugly crap is also very expensive to build with all its curves and angles.
https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/50a4/e099/b3fc/4b26/3f00/0059/slideshow/zaha_japan_national_stadium.jpg
Japanese architects were disgusted and the contract was awarded to a well-regarded Japanese architect who came up with a cheaper and more sensible design, made partially of wood:
https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5851/8d8d/e58e/cef1/d600/00dd/slideshow/Kuma_Tokyo2020.jpg
The Iraqi threatened to sue, but she ended up dying before she could make much trouble.Replies: @Barnard
They cut the cost in half and got a better design. What kind of events would Tokyo ever host that would fill the place in the future? I can’t see them getting many major world track and field meets or soccer matches. Even at the reduced cost this is not a good deal for the Japanese.
White Russian émigré prince foresook the (pure) remedies of the Motherland and tried to drown his sorrow (l´ âme slave) in absinth instead, yes.
One complaint was that NYC during the late 1800s to the mid 1900s had developed an interesting sort of skyscraper which defined NYC. Think of the Woolworth building downtown, or the Chrysler and Empire State Building in midtown. The original WTC was one of the early skyscrapers to go against that architectural trend. Also the Citibank building in midtown.
And downtown Manhattan did develop a new style of architecture with the Twin Towers, the Lipstick building, the World Financial Center, etc. When a competition was held for a new WTC building, one complaint was that every single building looked more at home in Shanghai or Dubai. The design they chose was as good as any submissions.Replies: @Lot
Agree, WTC wasn’t beautiful but it wasn’t bad or offensive either.
The Standard Oil (now Aon) building in Chicago, also built in 1973, looks very similar to the WTC:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/architecture-org/files/buildings/aon-center-eric-rogers-013-2.jpg
http://www.englishcathedrals.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Cathedral_Liverpool21.jpg2.Catholic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedral#/media/File:Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedral_Exterior,_Liverpool,_UK_-_Diliff.jpgAKA Paddy's Wigwam.Replies: @Old Palo Altan, @MBlanc46
The contrast is deeper than even the appearances suggest:
The Anglican cathedral (the interior of which is even more stunningly beautiful than the exterior) is the work of a Roman Catholic, Giles Gilbert Scott, who, dying in 1960, missed the ruination of his own religion by the calculating traitors and contented mediocrities of the Vatican II era, while the Roman edifice is the work of an atheist, Frederick Gibberd, who is said to have committed suicide. To be fair to him, one must add that the interior of his building is rather more successful than the widely derided exterior.
The tragedy for Liverpool and its Catholics is that the original design, which two world wars and Labour’s electoral landslide of 1945 made a financial impossibility, had been designed by Edwin Lutyens, arguably the greatest architect produced in England since Christopher Wren. His monumental creation, an essay in precisely that stripped down classicism rightly approved of by some in this thread, would, had it been built, have quickly taken its place at the forefront of the greatest buildings of the Twentieth Century.
The flat in the tower at St Pancras is Air BnB's most popular and highest value rental in London.Replies: @Old Palo Altan
Like most of the blatantly misanthropic "famous" architects, Mayne is Jewish. Jewish architects really seem to have a thing for shoving ugliness in people's faces. The "artist" Richard Serra is another one (mother: Gladys Feinberg). Just one long career of nasty, ugly monstrosities designed specifically to dishearten people. What color is the soul of someone like that?Replies: @Authenticjazzman, @Old Palo Altan
Yes indeed, and the very worst is Daniel Libeskind, one of whose monstrosities is shown as the second photo in comment six above.
All of his work manifests the sickness of a soul yearning for damnation.
State buildings shouldn’t be beautiful. They should be minimal, utilitarian, and evoke ridicule. For the same reason, I think all state employees, particularly police, should wear hideous kaleidoscopic jumpsuits. These trappings of shame would make megalomaniacs less likely to pursue the station.
Federal buildings should be ugly given the nature of the government. More honest that way.
And that SF building doesn’t look brutalist. Just crazy-ist. Brutalism has a certain austerity and solemnity. The SF building just looks demented.
??????Does this guy really believe Government Center is an improvement on Scollay Square? That the World Trade Center beautified Manhattan in a way the Singer, Woolworth, Bank of Manhattan Trust, Chrysler, and Empire State Building did not?
https://www.boston.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Scully-Square-2-240941-6302.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B74XH7/boston-city-hall-located-in-government-center-plaza-in-downtown-boston-B74XH7.jpg
https://s.yimg.com/aah/mcmahanphoto/woolworth-singer-building-new-york-city-photo-print-16.jpghttps://buildingtheskyline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/40WallChryslerESB-640x761.pnghttps://www.nyhistory.org/sites/default/files/styles/exhibitions_new/public/3-WTC-from-Exchange-Pl.-Jersey-City%2C-1978-_f.jpg?itok=iTeZAeRgReplies: @Mr McKenna, @Brutusale, @Bostonvegas
At the risk of getting on my man brutusales radar as he has referred to me as a dave mcgowan fanboy(guilty as charged).I couldnt help but notice the chem trails over the pic of Government center in Boston.In vegas they spray like crazy almost daily.Wish i knew why!
That may be true but Mayans ain’t our Injuns, they’re Spain’s Injuns – maybe they should put a Mayan museum smack dab in the middle of Madrid.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Qrcju93eWRjT7xUsVgPnBZ-650-80.jpg
(Only Townshend's contribution was genuine.)Replies: @Dan Hayes, @nokangaroos
M Young´s examples are not … BRUTAL enough – that´s hippie
(though the pillars are nice 😉 )
But what´s so bad about going one up on Adolf Loos (“Ornament ist Verbrechen”) ?
Not the deconstructivist shit of nowadays (more or less a contest of what abomination can be erected with modern materials short of toppling or crumbling from shame – a challenge for materials science instead of design), just naked unpretentious concrete … pure FUNCTION ?!
Thom Mayne, architect = Ha! Match my erection*!
*erection: something erected; structure, building, etc.
Looks like a towel draped over something. It’s even touching the ground.
They are the worst. I can’t you how many times I’ve seen <100lb women being helplessly dragged by one those precious misunderstood child-maiming murderous beasts.
A few years back I was walking my normal non-murder dog (beagle mix) on the beach when a huge grey beartrap with legs starts rushing towards me and my 20lb mutt, dragging a white chick in yoga pants over the sand.
I put my hand in my right jacket pocket and yelled, “Stop your dog!” She plopped her ass down in the sand and wrapped the leash around her waist. Luckily that was enough to stop the charge.
As I walked away (looking over my shoulder) she yelled – not “Sorry” – but, “She’s friendly! She just wanted to meet your baby!”
If we’re not going to put down these menaces, there should least be a strength test to own one.
However pit bulls are illegal here and he was destroyed by the police at some point.Replies: @Danindc
More than a whiff of Atlantikwall 😀
Someone needs to do a re-make of A Christmas Carol, one where Trump receives an education in aesthetics from the ghost of Thomas Jefferson….
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHi7YXKXAAAf-90.jpg
Especially parents. Extra-especially parents who take on the inestimable burden of the leadership of their beloved country.Replies: @Mr. Anon
It had a certain simplicity about it. No pretension, no aggressive misanthropy, no misguided sense of whimsy.
The Standard Oil (now Aon) building in Chicago, also built in 1973, looks very similar to the WTC:
And that SF building doesn't look brutalist. Just crazy-ist. Brutalism has a certain austerity and solemnity. The SF building just looks demented.Replies: @syonredux
Dunno. I’m a conservative. I like beauty:
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
The kind of deep state goons and soulless bureaucrats who run government deserve the ugliest buildings possible.
It's like a beautiful dress belongs on a beautiful woman, not on a gross-looking tranny.
Government is like a gross-looking tranny who deserves a clown suit.
I say stick it to government scum. Build them the ugliest things possible.
Same with food. Make government cafeteria serve the worst-tasting foods and lots of beans and bugs.
Why waste good food on that bunch of scum?
https://www.alliancembs.manchester.ac.uk/news/archive/wp-content/uploads/manchester-town-hall.jpg
https://static.thousandwonders.net/Centre.Block.original.23065.jpgReplies: @Dan Hayes
To accomplish this noble task you’ll have to resurrect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin!
What else exactly was supposed to happen by sending the hatred-based nothing-case to the Republican held Senate? A dumb and meaningless waste of time is finally over, until the next “Russian hackers” hoax.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/481670-senate-votes-to-acquit-trump-on-articles-of-impeachment
To associate the actual Bauhaus – foreskinned or not – with these atrocities borders on blasphemy.
The purpose of true art is to create beauty, basta.
AJMReplies: @Dissident
It doesn’t look Slavic or Orthodox because the domes aren’t onion-shaped and the ornament is classically western (which does make it look like Russian Imperial buildings after Peter, but still not Slavic), however, it does rather resemble the Hungarian legislature, which is Eastern European without being Slavic:
Still no one yet figured out what the Hungarians needed Europe´s biggest parliament for - I mean they weren´t THAT much into pistol duels :DReplies: @J.Ross
Bay City, Michigan is a combined regional post office and federal court house and was built in 1933 in the classy end of lumber era. The mags courtroom is okay, but the main courtroom is a great homage to the settlement of the region.
https://dwkcommentaries.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/iowacapitol.gif
“Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” - I love it.Replies: @Anon, @RadicalCenter, @JUSA, @MBlanc46
That is indeed a beautiful building. Most state capitol buildings are beautiful because they were all built in the 1800s, before the arrival of the soul sucking “progressives” whose hideous modernism sucked out the soul from all our buildings. “Modern” anything is hideous and pointless — modern art, lit, music, architecture, all are symbols of soullessness and pointlessness. Progressives destroy everything good in the name of progress. Progressivism is the single most destructive force in human history. It needs to go die for the world to survive.
After WWII, Europe wisely chose to rebuild with classical architecture rather than following America’s lead with skyscrapers and hideous brutalist concrete blocks. But their stupid modernist starchitects have caught the American stupidity. Modern starchitects like Rem Koolhaas are building hideous modern architecture like those in the US because they think they more befit the new multicultural Europe. They claim Europe’s classical architecture is out of place in the modern world and make immigrants feels out of place and uncomfortable.
Round buildings and buildings with curves are an assault to the senses, like the Geary Museum in LA, the Guggenheim in NYC, and this Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain:
Rem Koolhaas’ design for China’s CCTV bldg destroyed Beijing’s skyline with its hideousness:
The opening up of Burma is leading to concern their historic buildings will be demolished for glass towers soon enough.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31146066
A few years back I was walking my normal non-murder dog (beagle mix) on the beach when a huge grey beartrap with legs starts rushing towards me and my 20lb mutt, dragging a white chick in yoga pants over the sand.
I put my hand in my right jacket pocket and yelled, “Stop your dog!” She plopped her ass down in the sand and wrapped the leash around her waist. Luckily that was enough to stop the charge.
As I walked away (looking over my shoulder) she yelled - not “Sorry” - but, “She’s friendly! She just wanted to meet your baby!”
If we’re not going to put down these menaces, there should least be a strength test to own one.Replies: @Lurker
I must make my argument from anecdote here. For various complicated reasons I had to look after a pit bull for a few weeks and while walking him was akin to being hauled around by a bulldozer he was a lovely dog. Good temperament, relaxed to the point of indifference about other dogs.
However pit bulls are illegal here and he was destroyed by the police at some point.
OT: Chinese mortuary worker claims they’ve been cremating 100 bodies a day since January 28 at his place of work in Wuhan, and that all crematories are working 24/7 to keep up with the bodies.
https://obits.mlive.com/obituaries/flint/obituary.aspx?n=irene-l-mcwilliams&pid=189077571&fhid=4727
That’s 700 bodies in one week at one particular crematory. For comparison, Wuhan has a population size close to that of New York. In New York, the normal death rate is about 158 people per day, (as should be Wuhan’s) and they have around 25 places in the New York City that handle cremation. Most people in China, because of dense population, cremate instead of bury. At a very rough estimate, if Wuhan has 25 crematories, that means Wuhan is doing 2500 cremations a day, instead of 158. In one week, that’s 17,500 dead in Wuhan.
Zerohedge says someone may have accidentally let out the real death rate, and it’s around 24K, and possibly 233k infected.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/did-chinas-tencent-accidentally-leak-true-terrifying-coronavirus-statistics
Estimating from the cremation rate, 24K dead throughout all of China sounds right.
Considering that older Chinese males are more vulnerable than anyone else to this virus, I’ve begun to wonder if some young-to-middle age Chinese guy weaponized this virus in a lab to target all the old Chinese guys who are the backbone of the Communist Party. I could see the younger generation wanting to wipe the old guys out so they could modernize the country and become a normal place with freedoms like Japan and South Korea. Anyone clever enough to weaponize a virus could make a vaccine to it, and inoculate himself and his family before letting it lose.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if some oligarch in Hong Kong paid for the virus to be created. After the crackdown and protests in Hong Kong earlier this year, this may be retaliation. The people in Hong Kong no doubt feel it’s in their best interests if the mainland Chinese Communist regime topples. Mainland China also has a whole class of new rich oligarchs who are sick of their government, and who would be happy to get rid of it. They want to be able to hang onto their wealth, and not get it taken away by the Communists. They’re rich and ruthless enough to plot against their government, too.
Although people like to point fingers at the US for this, I think there are so many people in China with a vested interest in getting rid of the Communists, that I think the virus was homegrown.
The Senate just acquitted Bad Orange Man.
Muh Impeachment! has now failed just as Muh Russia! and Muh Pussygrab! did.
What will the liberals try next?
I have just learned that the Wikipedia page for Fatburger does not reference”The Men All Pause” by Klymaxx even though it does find the space to mention song references by Ice Cube and the Notorious BIG. The inclusion by Klymaxx (in a song which also references a limo service owned by a band member) is actually notable because Klymaxx was part of a trend where women played all the instruments in their bands (cf the Go-Gos or Bangles; contrast, say, Bananarama) and the Fatburger was founded and wholly owned by a chick (but not a member of Klymaxx). So there’s a whole girl power thing here. It’s more than a name drop, the video takes place inside a Fatburger.
The thing is I’m leaving it uncorrected because I want Wikipedia to lose credibility.
Disgraceful!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34QVPwRLRKU
The thing is I’m leaving it uncorrected because I want Wikipedia to lose credibility.
http://www.sickchirpse.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bill-and-ted-excellent.jpg
The thing is I'm leaving it uncorrected because I want Wikipedia to lose credibility.Replies: @anon
have just learned that the Wikipedia page for Fatburger does not reference”The Men All Pause” by Klymaxx
Disgraceful!
The thing is I’m leaving it uncorrected because I want Wikipedia to lose credibility.
Well-proportioned and pleasing to sight.
The Afro-Museum
We've endured to nauseum.
Raise Speer from the grave so it's right.Replies: @Kronos
You’re talking about this Speer right?
http://www.ammoland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Richmond-Virginia-State-Capitol-Building.jpg
http://gardenandgun.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/West-Front_Monticello-JLooney-26aug2013-0056_work-1600x1067.jpg
https://www.traditionalbuilding.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_80%2Cw_1280/MTUwNDcwODI3NTMwMjY2Mjgz/uva-1.jpgReplies: @Kronos, @Desiderius
Now THATS beautiful architecture.
RE: the decline in civic architecture, here’s a rather interesting article:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/american-architecture%E2%80%99s-classical-revival-13725.html
http://www.takimag.com/article/a-desperate-search-for-uniqueness/
syonredux,
Thanks for the “City Journal” article which cites Duncan Stroik and his efforts (somewhat successful) to reintroduce sanity into church (primarily Roman Catholic) architecture!
WTF? Spain doesn’t have any Injuns; Mayans are México’s, Honduras’, Belize’s, El Salvador’s, and Guatamala’s Injuns. (By your logic the Injuns from around here are not those of the F.U.S.A., but of Britain, and, perhaps, France and The Netherlands).
Spain made all those Injuns what they are today. We have enough responsibility to bear for our own Injuns, so I’m just saying that our National Museum for Injuns should have nothing to do with Mayans.
http://www.ammoland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Richmond-Virginia-State-Capitol-Building.jpg
http://gardenandgun.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/West-Front_Monticello-JLooney-26aug2013-0056_work-1600x1067.jpg
https://www.traditionalbuilding.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_80%2Cw_1280/MTUwNDcwODI3NTMwMjY2Mjgz/uva-1.jpgReplies: @Kronos, @Desiderius
Some people need to get off their high horses and recognize that people change and mature over time.
Especially parents. Extra-especially parents who take on the inestimable burden of the leadership of their beloved country.
There is no need for new Gov office buildings at state or fed level. Just push all those fat loser gov employees into the empty schools, colleges and malls. Win win win.
Just because Spain has decided to neglect its duty to its Injun children in Mexico and Central and South America doesn’t mean that Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas and their descendants aren’t still their Injuns. The conquistadors gave them their language, numberless elements of European culture, their religion, their architecture (any decent building in any of those countries was built by the Spanish), Western tonal music – and countless other gifts. Everyone south of the US border should face Spain, kneel, and give thanks to the Spanish daily (except Brazilians, who should thank Portugal).
Spain made all those Injuns what they are today. We have enough responsibility to bear for our own Injuns, so I’m just saying that our National Museum for Injuns should have nothing to do with Mayans.
Especially parents. Extra-especially parents who take on the inestimable burden of the leadership of their beloved country.Replies: @Mr. Anon
Trump is not my parent. He is not Daddy America. There is no such office.
below average in the category of thermal comfort? in San Francisco?
Hell, you could open the window in San Francisco and have thermal comfort. San Francisco has to be the easiest place on the planet to climate control a building because the ambient temperature is already near ideal every day of the year.
I swear these people could screw up a wet dream.
Uh yeah. Was referring to his five children, not your daddy issues.
You seem to think of Trump as some kind of totemic father figure. Stop projecting with your "Daddy Issues" freudian bulls**t.
And for somebody who presumes to lecture everyone, you might try climbing down off of your high horse, nitwit.
https://dwkcommentaries.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/iowacapitol.gif
“Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” - I love it.Replies: @Anon, @RadicalCenter, @JUSA, @MBlanc46
A dreadful pile. Really awful.
http://www.englishcathedrals.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Cathedral_Liverpool21.jpg2.Catholic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedral#/media/File:Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedral_Exterior,_Liverpool,_UK_-_Diliff.jpgAKA Paddy's Wigwam.Replies: @Old Palo Altan, @MBlanc46
The Anglican is a boring knockoff. Big, but boring. The RC cathedral is very impressive inside, not so much outside. Their siting at two ends of a major street is a nice touch.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Parliament_Building%2C_Budapest%2C_outside.jpg/303px-Parliament_Building%2C_Budapest%2C_outside.jpgReplies: @nokangaroos
Habsburg classicism has a certain mature, unobtrusive charm to it, and it is all over the place from Dresden to Sofia.
Still no one yet figured out what the Hungarians needed Europe´s biggest parliament for – I mean they weren´t THAT much into pistol duels 😀
It’s what they call ‘progress’.
It replaces a stadium that had been there since the 1964 Olympics. It wasn’t massively used, but there was a steady use for domestic soccer competitions, rock concerts, and various other events.
Giles Gilbert Scott did the stunning St Pancras station. Thankfully it was preserved, unlike its sister down the road, Euston was demolished and rebuilt in the sixties.
The flat in the tower at St Pancras is Air BnB’s most popular and highest value rental in London.
After WWII, Europe wisely chose to rebuild with classical architecture rather than following America's lead with skyscrapers and hideous brutalist concrete blocks. But their stupid modernist starchitects have caught the American stupidity. Modern starchitects like Rem Koolhaas are building hideous modern architecture like those in the US because they think they more befit the new multicultural Europe. They claim Europe's classical architecture is out of place in the modern world and make immigrants feels out of place and uncomfortable.
Round buildings and buildings with curves are an assault to the senses, like the Geary Museum in LA, the Guggenheim in NYC, and this Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain:
https://www.dw.com/image/19172478_303.jpg
Rem Koolhaas' design for China's CCTV bldg destroyed Beijing's skyline with its hideousness:
https://cdn.archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Koolhaas-CCTV-Headquarters-.jpgReplies: @LondonBob
Most of Peking is hideous already, Asian cities haven’t preserved their historic buildings, Peking has the Imperial Palace, some parks and a just a few hutongs left.
The opening up of Burma is leading to concern their historic buildings will be demolished for glass towers soon enough.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31146066
The flat in the tower at St Pancras is Air BnB's most popular and highest value rental in London.Replies: @Old Palo Altan
No, that was his grandfather George Gilbert Scott, an amazingly prolific and often quite good architect, and the first of the family to reach eminence in the field. Then came George Gilbert Scott Jr, whom his son Giles thought the true genius of the family, and then Giles himself (perhaps best known to the wider public for his famous red telephone boxes, the K2 and K3) and his brother Adrian Gilbert Scott, whose stripped down Gothic is too simple for my taste. But at least he too missed the destruction of the liturgy those churches were designed to serve.
If the Architects Society is against mandating a particular style, presumably they could set out, say, five or six aesthetic points which should be taken into consideration when architectural style for Federal Buildings is under discussion.
For example, symmetry; scale ; comfortable ratios of length, width and height of individual rooms; whether or not such a building would sit easily in its proposed environment; the incorporation of a garden scheme or tree scape to confer a sympathetic tone; efficiency of human circulation within the building – ie make it easy to move about from one office or one department to another; adequate and aesthetic cloakroom facilities, and canteen facilities; a dignified exterior, both fore and aft, with clearly defined main entrance.
Your writing is so poor it is usually impossible to divine your meaning. Though I think the answer mostly is there is none.
You seem to think of Trump as some kind of totemic father figure. Stop projecting with your “Daddy Issues” freudian bulls**t.
And for somebody who presumes to lecture everyone, you might try climbing down off of your high horse, nitwit.
Nearby is a squat lopsided beige block with a bright yellow thing sticking out of it, connected to a taller International style window-wall-block by a Gigeresque tube (I'm not making this up), which together comprise our schizoid yet consistently horrible city hall.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Detroit_MI_2015.jpg/1200px-Detroit_MI_2015.jpg
https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5363801/il_fullxfull.342374037.jpg
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3499/3776111873_ae4a737556_b.jpgReplies: @Authenticjazzman
Kahn’s marvelous stonework was executed by a famed Italian stonemason, and myself I am thoroughly enthralled by the artistry of the classical and Baroque stone workers.
In the city of kaiserslautern ( Germany) there is a Villa which is famed throughout arcitectural circles in Germany : the Villa Kröckel . You can google it and view it’s heavenly stonework, and luckily enough it was spared in the war, with bombs dropping a kilometer distant.
I place artistic stonework on the same level as the great musical masterpieces.
AJM
Still no one yet figured out what the Hungarians needed Europe´s biggest parliament for - I mean they weren´t THAT much into pistol duels :DReplies: @J.Ross
They’re Magyars. Obviously the size is to accommodate the horses.
Trump was always on the other side on those issues. All he offered the rest of us was appreciation rather than eradication, as well as a hearty defender against those ravenous for our destruction.Replies: @Dissident
https://americansfortruth.com/issues/donald-trump/
A lot more at the linked page.
Why would we want beautiful government buildings, esp in this day and age?
The kind of deep state goons and soulless bureaucrats who run government deserve the ugliest buildings possible.
It’s like a beautiful dress belongs on a beautiful woman, not on a gross-looking tranny.
Government is like a gross-looking tranny who deserves a clown suit.
I say stick it to government scum. Build them the ugliest things possible.
Same with food. Make government cafeteria serve the worst-tasting foods and lots of beans and bugs.
Why waste good food on that bunch of scum?
The “actual Bauhaus”, although quite different than the grotesque examples shown here, was ugly and uninspiring.
The purpose of true art is to create beauty, basta.
AJM
AJM, would you agree that the late Betty Carter and the late Abbey Lincoln were perhaps the very last of the great jazz singers?Also, what type of jazz do you play?Replies: @Authenticjazzman
The purpose of true art is to create beauty, basta.
AJMReplies: @Dissident
(Off-topic)
AJM, would you agree that the late Betty Carter and the late Abbey Lincoln were perhaps the very last of the great jazz singers?
Also, what type of jazz do you play?
I/We do standards in the Swing/Be-Bop idiom, tunes everybody knows : "Night and Day", "All the things you are", "Sumertime", and Bossa numbers such as : "Wave"
AJM
- Minimal places where "Federal Architecture" is even needed.
- It should not be considered a permanent fixture and fulfill the requirement of being used for JDAM target practice every 10 years or so as the relevant administration is disbanded and regenerated with fresh members.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
EXACTLY.
Damn. Used up all my [AGREE]s a while back.
I see cirrus clouds and a couple of jet condensation trails. That’s how the upper atmosphere rolls.
Over Vegas you’ve probably got a lot of trans-con flights headed out of or into Los Angeles, and then others out of Mexico headed to the Pacific Northwest. It all depends on the relative humidity up there whether a contrail will form or not. Ever see ones that look like the engines have cut on and off? They haven’t – it’s different states of the atmosphere.
AJM, would you agree that the late Betty Carter and the late Abbey Lincoln were perhaps the very last of the great jazz singers?Also, what type of jazz do you play?Replies: @Authenticjazzman
I would place Anita O’ Day, Nancy Wilson and Carmen Mc Rae at the top of the list.
I/We do standards in the Swing/Be-Bop idiom, tunes everybody knows : “Night and Day”, “All the things you are”, “Sumertime”, and Bossa numbers such as : “Wave”
AJM
However pit bulls are illegal here and he was destroyed by the police at some point.Replies: @Danindc
Why was the dog killed? What did it do?it had to do something, no?
Well we have pretty consistent weather on a day to day basis and one day we will have lines from one end of the valley to the other and the next day absolutely nothing…how do you explain?