architects

[gfish]

What does it say that I can't think of a single architect by name that I like, yet three that I despise jump instantly to mind? What is it about architecture that attracts such profound depths of wankery? It seems like other industries manage to combine function and aesthetics with at least some success and only a very small fraction of the pretension.

(For the record: Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry and Le Corbusier, in order of increasing bile.)

Comments

[eleventoes.livejournal.com]

Say it ain't so! FLW?

Now I'll give you Gehry, he seemed to be trying to work half-ideas as art. But FLW? The Guggenheim and the Robie house? And the glass? The interior work is, dare I say it, devine.

The Ozenfant House by Le Corbusier almost redeems the rest of his lackluster catalogue.


Of course as a great man once said, "you are entitled to your opinion, even if it's wrong." Actually I commend you on actually having an opinion on such an important topic. I find contemporary common American architecture so uninspiring when it's not actually bad that I imagine it creating some sort of negative societal feng shui which is the root cause of many of our problems today.

Of course I may just be crazy. My ire is reserved for the likes of I. M. Pei so what do I know?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I like FLW's interior work a lot better -- though I've never quite figured out why an architect would be doing interior work. I think he was in the wrong profession.

And yeah, I sometimes find contemporary architecture bland to the point of depression. Possibly that's why pretentious artiste architects get me so angry -- they give interesting designs a bad name. If I were a corporate board looking at designs and the choice was between bland-but-functional and a melted Gehry funhouse that goes out of its way not to have right angles, I'd go with the low risk, low interest level, low inspiration option as well.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Some of the Brutalists' creations indeed had bad enough feng shui to create mass personal misery.

Robin Hood Gardens (http://www.hughpearman.com/articles5/smithsons5.html) (and why on earth would you name such a building such a thing, anyway?)

Another link about modernist high-rises with crime problems (http://www.kunstnerneshus.no/news_article.html?news_articles.nid=15)

And a quote from the latter:

The reason for discarding this ideology as a social experiment for building renewal has to do with experience that has proven the experiment unsuccessful in placing socially unfit citizens on the straight and narrow path merely by having the possibility of living in modern apartments in regulated residential areas. On the contrary, evidence suggests that such experiment perhaps encourage crime. Charles Jencks mentions several examples in his book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture from 1977. By way of introduction, there is an illustration of the demolition of such a housing project in St. Louis, with the accopanying text: "MINORU YAMASAKI, Pruitt-Igoe Housing, St. Louis, 1952-55. Several slabs of this scheme were blown up in 1972 after they were continuously vandalized. The crime rate was higher than other developments, and Oscar Newman attributed this, in his book Defensible Space, to the long corridors, anonymity, and lack of controlled semi-private space. Another factor: it was designed at variance with the architectural codes of the inhabitants."(20)
Peter and Alison Smithson were British architects known for designing large housing projects in a New-Brutalist style. An illustration of the open corridors in front of the uniform entrance doors in a Smithsons-designed project show Paul Goldberger with his hands over his head, criminal-style, being lead off to jail. This is a deliberate gesture, as the text declares outright: "Here architectural critic Paul Goldberger mimes an act that often occurs."(21) The description of Smithsons’ Robin Hood Gardens is as follows: "SMITHSONS, Robin Hood Gardens, street in the air, and collective entry. The long empty streets in the air don’t have the life or facilities of the traditional street. The entry ways, one of which has been burned, are dark and anonymous, serving too many families."

And, of course, our local Freeway Park (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=11685)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I like Freeway Park a lot more now that I've started to going to Parkour jams there. It's designed for that even better than it is for drug deals and murders!

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Yes, it would probably be quite good for that.

[eleventoes.livejournal.com]

Youch. "Designed for Crime" needs to be a book that I can purchase, today.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

I'd read it too!