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?

[jadine.livejournal.com]

Now, do you take issue with Wright as an artist, or as an engineer whose buildings fall down if you look at them funny?

Gehry designed the new building (http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/peterblewis/index.htm) at my college. Beside the lack of artistic merit and the fact that the spaces were utterly inappropriate for their intended uses, he wouldn't let them install cat5 jacks because they were unaesthetic. Seriously.

[encapsulate.livejournal.com]

Fuller?

You're not a fan of the Domes?

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

What is it about architecture that attracts such profound depths of wankery?

I think I can answer this one: architects design objects that are so big they're impossible to ignore. The profession attracts sculptors with ego issues who are prone to forget who's paying their commissions.

For the record, though, I like some of FLW's & Gehry's work.

[novalis.livejournal.com]

What about Saarinen?

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Any big issues with Gaudí?

I don't think the wankery itself goes to greater depths, so much as people have to live with the costly mostrosities for decades. Perhaps it's wankery to take money up front to indulge one's design fantasies, though.

[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?

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of fond of my dad, but I admit he's stronger in aesthetics than in structures.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

I think it's because good architecture, like good UI design, is by definition invisible, or at least very subtle.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

What about LeC's Ronchamp?

I know architects, I work with architects, let me tell you about architects . . .

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

Having to work with architects, and having wondered about them a lot, I would offer several observations.

First, their education is all about learning to tear each-other's work apart critical. Because it is essentially an aesthetics standard, the "best" is determined by how well you can trash the other guy or gal's work. Seriously, they spend much of their educational career "critically" evaluating piers' work.

So, big difference between engineers and architects:
Tell an Engineer, "hey, I think there might be a better way to do this" or "did you consider xyz in the design yet"? and they will say "really? what are you thinking?" or give a factual run-down of the design considerations and process to date. In engineering, there are often significant differences in design approach/theory, but some basic stuff is either right or wrong, and one has to present some objection reasons for doing something.

Start to question an architect on something and they go into massive defensive mode and immediately counter-attack. It's how they are trained.

Second, architects are frustrated artists. And the way they are employed in their early career just makes them even more frustrated, so that the bad mood they got started with in college just is deepened. Entry level architects (called Interns, I kid you not) are given all the shit detail work that is not all creative or engaging. And they get paid poorly for the privilege, as architecture is still a glamorous profession.

So, third, architecture is a considered a glamorous profession. Look at how many movies feature trendy hot-architects as protagonists. Compare that to engineers. So, few people become engineers out of hope for glamour, or riches, or opportunity to "express their inner (artistic) vision." Architects expect glamour, and money, and get very little of either. They are bitter people. How many people know FLW by name, compared to a famous (?) civil engineer? But only the architects that claw and con their way up into dominance have anywhere near that kind of individual expression or hope of fame. Can you imagine the pressure of being a "big" architect knowing that there is no objective way to demonstrate your designs are "better" than Joe Blow's? The less understandable or approachable your work, the easier it is to dismiss critics as "not getting it." Also, it's flamboyance that makes an architect famous, not solid staid design.

When I was in NY, did see one guy at MoMA that I liked, Santiago Calatrava. Maybe I like his stuff because he’s also a civil engineer and a lot of is some very clever engineering.

http://www.turningtorso.com/
http://www.calatrava.info/

-B.

[nder.livejournal.com]

I was also going to point out Calatrava. Renzo Piano has some interesting bits as well.

[dryaunda.livejournal.com]

What do you think about Daniel Libeskind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Libeskind)?