4 ms·

> Columns are cultural iconography (e.g. the Parthenon vs Johnson Wax). Flashbacks to every McMansion I ever had a client at. It's always gotta have columns.

> Columns are cultural iconography (e.g. the Parthenon vs Johnson Wax). Flashbacks to every McMansion I ever had a client at. It's always gotta have columns. Just jammed in. No sense, no style, no awareness of the form, just "put a column there for no reason." Columns used to represent something that was _difficult_ to build and place and often carried artwork and detail of their own. The days of them being iconographic lobby structure are long gone. > Columns can create points that organize spatial experience. These columns are ugly, do not match their surroundings, and are sat right in the middle of a transition that has no point in being divided. They're also sat in a pair side by side in what is possibly the worst arrangement of column I've seen yet. > had designed a duck (very common among museum commissions) removing the columns would have been difficult or impossible [1]. This is a wing on the campus of an already existing historic building. Which itself has traditional columns. In an appropriate and iconographic style. I'm with the author, the wing's columns are gaudy and completely misplaced.

brudgers 2y ago
I don't understand all the ins and outs of UK Historic designations, but Wikipedia asserts the Sainsbury Wing is a listed structure. Venturi and Scott Brown got the commission over Richard Rogers perhaps in part because Charles Windsor called Rogers' design "a monstrous carbuncle." The columns have been there for thirty years and one of the learnings in Learning from Las Vegas is designing for that kind of lifespan is a reasonable architectural practice (thirty years is a typical mortgage term in the US). I think it is particularly relevant that the columns are in an ancillary space. Foyers get reconfigured every time a building program changes (e.g. signage and graphics as shows come and go). Now that Elizabeth Windsor is dead, it is ok to change the design she dedicated. a wing on the campus of an already existing historic building. Which itself has traditional columns. In an appropriate and iconographic style. Or it's kitsch. Beloved kitsch, but kitsch nontheless. Villa Rotunda was centuries old when the National Museum used its domestic idiom for public purpose and Palladio had already looked back a millennium for the Villa Rotunda’s kitsch back then. The original building made the same claims as those McMansions you hate. Or the Caesar's Palace Venturi and Scott Brown wrote about.

brudgers 2y ago

I don't understand all the ins and outs of UK Historic designations, but Wikipedia asserts the Sainsbury Wing is a listed structure. Venturi and Scott Brown got the commission over Richard Rogers perhaps in part because Charles Windsor called Rogers' design "a monstrous carbuncle." The columns have been there for thirty years and one of the learnings in Learning from Las Vegas is designing for that kind of lifespan is a reasonable architectural practice (thirty years is a typical mortgage term in the US). I think it is particularly relevant that the columns are in an ancillary space. Foyers get reconfigured every time a building program changes (e.g. signage and graphics as shows come and go). Now that Elizabeth Windsor is dead, it is ok to change the design she dedicated. a wing on the campus of an already existing historic building. Which itself has traditional columns. In an appropriate and iconographic style. Or it's kitsch. Beloved kitsch, but kitsch nontheless. Villa Rotunda was centuries old when the National Museum used its domestic idiom for public purpose and Palladio had already looked back a millennium for the Villa Rotunda’s kitsch back then. The original building made the same claims as those McMansions you hate. Or the Caesar's Palace Venturi and Scott Brown wrote about.