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

[crimmycat.livejournal.com]

Having dealt with architects and architectural engineering students, I am very inclined to blame their training. Architects are not rewarded, for the most part, for making pleasing, humble designs; the ones who make the wackiest set-ups get the highest marks.

The architects, too, never had to study how a building stresses in an earthquake, or wiring codes, ergonomics, plumbing, or how much things cost in the industry. Such mundane, "trivial" details were the province of the architectural engineers.

Once, I was watching an architect senior rant - she showed me her designs for a five-story senior center shaped like a U (with no connecting points on the legs of the U). The bottom curved portion was to be a open atrium. The subject of her rant was that it was incredibly unfair than all the architectural engineers she had to work with told her she couldn't use a single sheet of glass for the five-story high, several hundred feet long curved outer wall "and it'll totally ruin the asthetics, not to mention I have to redraw everything!"

If we don't train them that a single-pane five-story curved window is unfeasible by the time they're ready to graduate in the working world, how can we expect them to figure out that stairs should not be huge or tiny, roofs should not leak, and buildings in earthquake-prone areas should be able to withstand earthquakes?

[encapsulate.livejournal.com]

If there's one thing I know seniors like, it's walking. I can only imagine how much a senior will enjoy walking from tip to tip of a giant U shapped building.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I'm told there is a dorm at MIT with only vertical stairway links, instead of hallways. Ugh.

As for Fuller, I didn't even think of him. I don't classify him primarily as an architect in my mind.

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't think of him as an architect. He was a wacky inventor type, back when such people could still garner some respect. And some of his ideas for building were just wacky. (eg. prefab mushroom-looking towers brought in by zeppelin, the foundation would be excavated by dropping a bomb from the airship.)