3 ms·

I always find architectural designs like this very odd, since they seem divorced from anything like customer requirements. It's something like a programmer disc

• lopmotr 7y ago
  Well there isn't really a customer. It's the whole world judging it. The people who actually make a decision won't have a profit motive but are also responsible for satisfying all those general opinionated people everywhere.
• stupidcar 7y ago
  It's intended as marketing, not a serious proposal. It's like how graphic designers publish unsolicited redesigns of Facebook in their portfolio. It's not because they expect Facebook to use them, but because they're a good way of getting attention. The agency in question here isn't even an architecture firm, it's just a company that produces renderings of the kind you see in marketing collateral when buying off-plan properties. Someone there realised this Notre Dame business was a good opportunity to get some publicity by publishing a deliberately radical idea, and it seems to have worked.
  • davidivadavid 7y ago
    That's a good analogy and probably a better mental model to judge it by, but I was thoroughly disappointed by the architects' rationale. "We also wanted to mix traditional wood and new materials to find the right balance between history and future" "What could be more natural than paying homage to this place through a real vegetated space?" That kind of literalism sounds like it's right out of the mind of a first year architecture student.