7 ms·

Leading Architects Defend Hated Buildings

43 points by c-slice 11y ago

qiqing 11y ago
From the article: "It’s legendary for being the most hated building in Paris. I want to defend it not because it’s a particularly beautiful tower, but because of the idea it represents. Parisians panicked when they saw it, and when they abandoned the tower they also abandoned the idea of a high-density sustainable city. Because they exiled all future high rises to some far neighborhood like La Défense, they were segregating growth. Parisians reacted aesthetically, as they are wont to do, but they failed to consider the consequences of what it means to be a vital, living city versus a museum city. People sentimentalize their notions of the city, but with the carbon footprint, the waste of resources, our shrinking capacity, we have no choice but to build good high-rise buildings that are affordable. It’s not by coincidence that people are going to London now not just for work but for the available space. No young company can afford Paris. Maybe Tour Montparnasse is not a work of genius, but it signified a notion of what the city of the future will have to be." I can't help but mentally find & replace Paris -> San Francisco.
- qiqing 11y ago
  I just wish there was some neighborhood like La Défense where 'all future high rises' in the Bay Area are exiled, where people prefer a vital, living, high-density, sustainable city to the preservation of the aesthetic of their sentimental notions of the city.
  - arebop 11y ago
    Also, it's a false dichotomy that we must have either no development, or a building everyone (other than the architect himself) hates. For most of history, architects sought a graceful balance between art and practical considerations. It seems to be a recent development that they have split into separate groups, one of which focuses solely on cutting costs, and the other of which focuses solely on building monuments to their own genius.
    - someone7x 11y ago
      I wish I could find a link, but I recall years ago an interview on NPR with an architect that designed some building in LA (for paying parking tickets or something). Anyway, during the interview he accidentally admitted to not actually caring about the people that would end up using the space. He then followed up by back-pedaling of course, but I've always remembered that as a moment when my cynicism about "modern" architecture felt validated.
      - benihana 11y ago
        I'm struck by the parallel between architecture in your example and software engineering. You could say the same about the engineers who don't ever consider the humans who will be using their software.
        mercer 11y ago
        I don't really see the parallel. There's a big difference between not understanding the end user (which I'd say is usually the case with bad software interfaces), and actively no caring about the end user or even intentionally creating a negative experience. I don't recall ever using software where I thought the creator intentionally made things difficult.
      - ashark 11y ago
        You may be interested in the Alexander/Eisenman debate[1], if you've not encountered it before. On the one side, an architect who believes in designing buildings largely as a means of communicating artistic messages—even, and perhaps especially, designing the building to make people uncomfortable[2], because to make a building that comforts and reassures is a bit like lying about the state of the world, or doing a broader disservice by reinforcing the status quo. Buildings as statements, buildings as jokes[3], even. On the other, an architect who finds this view practically psychopathic, since, after all, people will live their lives in these places. Buildings, in his view, should serve people over communicating a message and, above all, should please the humans who will look at them and crawl around in them. [1] http://www.katarxis3.com/Alexander_Eisenman_Debate.htm http://www.katarxis3.com/Alexander_Eisenman_Debate.htm [2] http://socks-studio.com/img/blog/eisenman-alexander-01-800x600.jpg http://socks-studio.com/img/blog/eisenman-alexander-01-800x6... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eisenman#/media/File:Greater_Columbus_Convention_Center.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eisenman#/media/File:Grea...
  - dalke 11y ago
    Even better, the non-high rises in Paris are five or six stories tall. Most of SF is zoned for max 40 feet.
    - throwaway9324 11y ago
      For reference the height restriction in Paris between 1977 and 2008 was 102 feet for the center and 121 feet further out.
  - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
    > vital, living, high-density, sustainable city I get what you mean, but La Défense is more or less the opposite of that. The people responsible should be shot, as it taints the ideals of what you mentioned. Tour Montparnasse should be loaded from cellar to attic with excessive amounts of explosives and be put out of its misery.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    Isn't that what SoMa is? No (or significantly lesser) height restrictions, where the Salesforce tower is going up, and bordered by Bart, Caltrain, and the Embarcadero line.
  - mvid 11y ago
    Isn't Mission Bay and Hunter's Point less regulated? I know they are building a few high rises and hospital buildings that are quite tall. No NIMBYs live there to shoot down development plans yet.
- jayvanguard 11y ago
  > they also abandoned the idea of a high-density sustainable city Paris is very dense. All of the places in the top 30 mentioned below are actually neighborhoods of Paris: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popula...
  - jacquesgt 11y ago
    That's the point. Paris is the second-lowest on that list. The other places listed are all Parisian suburbs. "Because they exiled all future high rises to some far neighborhood like La Défense, they were segregating growth."
    - vacri 11y ago
      But the only Anglo city in the list is Union City. Nowhere in the UK is listed.
    - TheCoelacanth 11y ago
      That's just an inevitable result of regression to the mean. Paris is 40 square miles while the largest of the denser French cities is less than 1 square mile. Paris has areas with much higher density, but it's impossible to sustain that level of density over the whole city. For instance, the 11th arrondissement of Paris has more than 50% higher population density of any of the other French cities (while still having a larger area than any of them). In fact, 9 of the 20 arrondissements have a higher population density than any of the other French cities[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrondissements_of_Paris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrondissements_of_Paris
- pesenti 11y ago
  London is 2 to 3 times more expensive than Paris at the moment. And Paris is denser than London. Kinda kills the argument.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Paris density is far less than London. Paris has fewer people in a larger metro area. London: 13,614,409 people in 8,382.00 km2 Paris: 12,161,542 people in 17,174.4 km2
    - mapt 11y ago
      These comparisons are rarely informative, because they're based on arbitrary municipal lines in the sand, rather than at a steady place on the CBD -> Urban -> Inner Suburban -> Outer Suburban -> Exurban -> Rural spectrum A more informative 1-dimensional 1-variable consideration, though imperfect, might be to take every person in the municipality and ask 'How many other people live within 1km of this person?', and take the median of that distribution.
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    It's more expensive because it was successful and people moved there.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
nja 11y ago
Nobody defending the brutalist city hall building in Boston, I see... > I somehow think that if you could populate the Plaza with more gardens, and make it feel more part of everyday life — which they’ve tried to do with farmers’ markets and using the basin for ice skating — then it wouldn’t feel so hostile. Seems eerily familiar to the sentiment surrounding the plaza by the city hall in Boston.
- kazagistar 11y ago
  For some reason, people seem to be opposed to brutalism. Personally, I love it... the powerful, stark lines, clean geometry, abstract shapes. (http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/ http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/). It sounds like this building is disliked more for its painful layout though.
  - bane 11y ago
    It's almost always because they're almost all expensive maintenance nightmares decaying and crumbling to dust and rubble after just a few years of use resulting in unpleasant, dirty looking buildings and public spaces around them. I would be highly surprised if even 10% of brutalist era buildings survive their first 50 years without being torn down. They're almost universally poorly designed and built, feeling more like a parking garage or a public restroom, with interior floor layouts based on mental hospitals or mazes. There are beautiful brutalist buildings. But I'd argue that even only a small percentage of those on the fuckyeahbrutalism blog would be considered so by the public. FYB even calls out City Hall in Boston as an example of great architecture, but it's pretty much reviled by anybody who's even come in cursory contact with it and the surrounding square. There's lots of terrible public spaces on that blog to be honest, clever photography is what makes most of them passable.
  - gertef 11y ago
    That's the point. The buildings are aesthetically interesting (at least, the first one you see is), but they are horrible environments to spend your time in
USNetizen 11y ago
Having grown up just down the road from the second building on this list and having tried to navigate its dilapidated, maze-like corridors and awkwardly arranged "open" spaces, I can testify to its horrendous design. It routinely shows up on these types of "most hated" lists both nationally and globally for good reason. I wish I could understand the mindset of the original architect or, better yet, the local bureaucrats back in the day who thought it was a great idea to build something so large seemingly modeled on a random stack of toddler's play toys. Now it just serves to suck the county coffers dry due to ludicrously exorbitant maintenance costs (I mean, come on, "80 roofs?"). A soon-to-be-demolished, barely-used monument to bad government decisions and a complete lack of foresight of the late 1960's and early 1970's.
- wildwood 11y ago
  What you're describing reminds me a lot of Padelford Hall at University of Washington, another product of the late 60s. (http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/june07/content/view/69/39/ http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/june07/content/view...) It was awful, actually several "wings" in one building. It was possible to get locked out of the building on a walkway between two wings, with no other exits. You would sometimes have to go through one person's office to get to another office. The theory when I was a student there was that university construction in the late 60s was obsessed with dealing with civil unrest - psych buildings with riot-proof windows, admin buildings with confusing layouts, an open square covered in bricks that get slippery when hosed down, etc.
perfTerm 11y ago
I was very surprised Albany's plaza was on the list. Having grown up there I have many memories of staring in awe at its monolithic towers as they soar up from the plaza. I always really liked it and the plaza's great. They put shows on there and small festivals I believe.
- leejoramo 11y ago
  I visited Albany two years ago, and very much enjoyed the Plaza.
- cowsandmilk 11y ago
  I like it to. I would much more expect to see Boston's Government Center on the list.
rayiner 11y ago
We finally managed to get rid of this monstrosity last year in Chicago: http://www.landmarks.org/images/ten_most_2011_press/Prentice%20Women's%20Hospital.jpg http://www.landmarks.org/images/ten_most_2011_press/Prentice.... Also relevant: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/the-7-most-heinously-ugly-government-buildings-in-washington#.xbYDyMOxBW http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/the-7-most-heinously-ug... ("There are many gorgeous buildings in D.C. Unfortunately for us, in the ’60s and ’70s, the federal government only hired architects with early onset glaucoma.")
- platz 11y ago
  some more images of brutalist buildings in chicago (including the prentice hospital): http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/5667743710/campbell-u-s-courthouse-annex-chicago-illinois http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/5667743710/campbell... http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8260917974/prentice-womens-hospital-chicago-illinois http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8260917974/prentice... http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/2935927750/laboratory-for-geophysical-sciences-chicago http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/2935927750/laborato... http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8300999834/raymond-hillard-homes-chicago-illinois-1966 http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8300999834/raymond-...
  - meatysnapper 11y ago
    That looks like the kind of circle-jerk le-Corbusier-bukake my architect friends touch themselves to at night. I don't get brutalism at all.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    A few years ago, two bank robbers managed to escape from the MCC (your first picture) by climbing down a rope made from sheets. The building (across the street from our old office) is, if anything, even more forbidding in person. Still blows me away.
    - platz 11y ago
      Yeah, that would take some stones for sure
vacri 11y ago
I remember when Melbourne wanted to build a new 'city square' sort of area, which required knocking down an existing building. The building was the Gas & Fuel Corporation Towers, which was a pretty boring orange-brick high-rise[1]. A Melburnian all my life, I'd never heard anyone posit an opinion on the building, good or bad, in person or in media. It was boring. It wasn't pretty, but it was just there. But then they wanted to knock it down, and out came a media campaign where all the newspapers were talking about how ugly it was and what a blight, and suddenly people were ferociously hateful towards it. "Don't you just hate that building?" Well, no. And neither did you until you read about it in the paper. The weird thing was that the campaign was unnecessary (IMO) because people didn't care one way or another. It's not like people treasured the aesthetics or it had some historical tie... They replaced it with a building that looks like a pile of glass at the recyclers [2]. Admittedly it's not boring, but neither is it attractive. [1]http://www.walkingmelbourne.com/building465_gas-and-fuel-corporation-towers.html http://www.walkingmelbourne.com/building465_gas-and-fuel-cor... [2]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Federation_Square_%28SBS_Building%29.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Federatio... [2a]http://www.loftoncollins.com.au/images/gallery/800px-Federation-Square-Melbourne.jpg http://www.loftoncollins.com.au/images/gallery/800px-Federat...
- cgio 11y ago
  As a non-Melbournian, I felt like this was one of the most unwelcoming parts of the city, especially for someone pushing a stroller with all the different levels and a pub closing the passage way with bouncers even for passers by. Apparently there are some events happening there, but it feels very esoteric and not compelling.
  - vacri 11y ago
    I think the plaza is an awful public space, building aesthetics aside. Rough cobbles on a sloped surface? I was wondering if it was perhaps intended to keep skateboarders out, however the cost is that infirm people have less access. If the development wasn't right outside the central train station, I reckon it would be a wasteland that wouldn't attract (enough) people.
- 11y ago
pivo 11y ago
I know people hate Centre Pompidou but I do not share that hate. As a child my parents took me there many times and for years I would have wild, beautiful architectural dreams about it. It's what made me realize that architecture is not just a historical thing but something that people who are living in the present can do as well, and that it is something that can be shocking and beautiful at the same time.
- Osmium 11y ago
  > I know people hate Centre Pompidou but I do not share that hate. I had no idea. I absolutely adore the Pompidou. I've only visited once, a few years back, but I remember it vividly. Colourful and full of joy.
- cam_l 11y ago
  There is a great story I heard about the architects winning the competition. The jury had to do an inspection of their offices to ensure the architects were established enough to take on the project. So Rogers & Piano hired out a floor of an office building and got all their friends to 'staff' it for the week the jury was visiting. I can't understand why anyone would hate this building, I would love to visit it. But beyond personal preference, the success of the building is not merely about beauty but in how it functions both practically and phenomenologically. Judging architecture on looks alone is like judging, i don't know, twitter for its logo.. The pompidou centre made a large plaza based on classical proportions ie.the same size as the façade—in an area of paris without public space. And with the symbolism of the inner workings being exposed—transparency was a strong political statement to which the public responded. Rogers:"The whole idea of Pompidou was that it is a place for the meeting of all people. And the success of it was that the French took it over and it became the most visited building in Europe."
erispoe 11y ago
What legacy will we pass on, what heritage will we build if all we do is imitating the past? Why don't we go and burn old books in our libraries and paintings in our museums because we think they're 'ugly'? Heritage is more that today's sense of prettiness.
zyxley 11y ago
The Zaha Hadid, Ada Tolla, and Norman Foster seem to have the connecting thread of visibly stained concrete, making them look dirty on top of any other aesthetic flaws.
mtVessel 11y ago
Apparently no one wanted to defend 432 Park.
- gertef 11y ago
  Ugh. Is anyone going to live there, or is it a money-laundering/storage machine for investors?

43 points by c-slice 11y ago

From the article: "It’s legendary for being the most hated building in Paris. I want to defend it not because it’s a particularly beautiful tower, but because of the idea it represents. Parisians panicked when they saw it, and when they abandoned the tower they also abandoned the idea of a high-density sustainable city. Because they exiled all future high rises to some far neighborhood like La Défense, they were segregating growth. Parisians reacted aesthetically, as they are wont to do, but they failed to consider the consequences of what it means to be a vital, living city versus a museum city. People sentimentalize their notions of the city, but with the carbon footprint, the waste of resources, our shrinking capacity, we have no choice but to build good high-rise buildings that are affordable. It’s not by coincidence that people are going to London now not just for work but for the available space. No young company can afford Paris. Maybe Tour Montparnasse is not a work of genius, but it signified a notion of what the city of the future will have to be." I can't help but mentally find & replace Paris -> San Francisco.

qiqing 11y ago
I just wish there was some neighborhood like La Défense where 'all future high rises' in the Bay Area are exiled, where people prefer a vital, living, high-density, sustainable city to the preservation of the aesthetic of their sentimental notions of the city.
- arebop 11y ago
  Also, it's a false dichotomy that we must have either no development, or a building everyone (other than the architect himself) hates. For most of history, architects sought a graceful balance between art and practical considerations. It seems to be a recent development that they have split into separate groups, one of which focuses solely on cutting costs, and the other of which focuses solely on building monuments to their own genius.
  - someone7x 11y ago
    I wish I could find a link, but I recall years ago an interview on NPR with an architect that designed some building in LA (for paying parking tickets or something). Anyway, during the interview he accidentally admitted to not actually caring about the people that would end up using the space. He then followed up by back-pedaling of course, but I've always remembered that as a moment when my cynicism about "modern" architecture felt validated.
    - benihana 11y ago
      I'm struck by the parallel between architecture in your example and software engineering. You could say the same about the engineers who don't ever consider the humans who will be using their software.
      - mercer 11y ago
        I don't really see the parallel. There's a big difference between not understanding the end user (which I'd say is usually the case with bad software interfaces), and actively no caring about the end user or even intentionally creating a negative experience. I don't recall ever using software where I thought the creator intentionally made things difficult.
    - ashark 11y ago
      You may be interested in the Alexander/Eisenman debate[1], if you've not encountered it before. On the one side, an architect who believes in designing buildings largely as a means of communicating artistic messages—even, and perhaps especially, designing the building to make people uncomfortable[2], because to make a building that comforts and reassures is a bit like lying about the state of the world, or doing a broader disservice by reinforcing the status quo. Buildings as statements, buildings as jokes[3], even. On the other, an architect who finds this view practically psychopathic, since, after all, people will live their lives in these places. Buildings, in his view, should serve people over communicating a message and, above all, should please the humans who will look at them and crawl around in them. [1] http://www.katarxis3.com/Alexander_Eisenman_Debate.htm http://www.katarxis3.com/Alexander_Eisenman_Debate.htm [2] http://socks-studio.com/img/blog/eisenman-alexander-01-800x600.jpg http://socks-studio.com/img/blog/eisenman-alexander-01-800x6... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eisenman#/media/File:Greater_Columbus_Convention_Center.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eisenman#/media/File:Grea...
- dalke 11y ago
  Even better, the non-high rises in Paris are five or six stories tall. Most of SF is zoned for max 40 feet.
  - throwaway9324 11y ago
    For reference the height restriction in Paris between 1977 and 2008 was 102 feet for the center and 121 feet further out.
- MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
  > vital, living, high-density, sustainable city I get what you mean, but La Défense is more or less the opposite of that. The people responsible should be shot, as it taints the ideals of what you mentioned. Tour Montparnasse should be loaded from cellar to attic with excessive amounts of explosives and be put out of its misery.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Isn't that what SoMa is? No (or significantly lesser) height restrictions, where the Salesforce tower is going up, and bordered by Bart, Caltrain, and the Embarcadero line.
- mvid 11y ago
  Isn't Mission Bay and Hunter's Point less regulated? I know they are building a few high rises and hospital buildings that are quite tall. No NIMBYs live there to shoot down development plans yet.
jayvanguard 11y ago
> they also abandoned the idea of a high-density sustainable city Paris is very dense. All of the places in the top 30 mentioned below are actually neighborhoods of Paris: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popula...
- jacquesgt 11y ago
  That's the point. Paris is the second-lowest on that list. The other places listed are all Parisian suburbs. "Because they exiled all future high rises to some far neighborhood like La Défense, they were segregating growth."
  - vacri 11y ago
    But the only Anglo city in the list is Union City. Nowhere in the UK is listed.
  - TheCoelacanth 11y ago
    That's just an inevitable result of regression to the mean. Paris is 40 square miles while the largest of the denser French cities is less than 1 square mile. Paris has areas with much higher density, but it's impossible to sustain that level of density over the whole city. For instance, the 11th arrondissement of Paris has more than 50% higher population density of any of the other French cities (while still having a larger area than any of them). In fact, 9 of the 20 arrondissements have a higher population density than any of the other French cities[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrondissements_of_Paris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrondissements_of_Paris
pesenti 11y ago
London is 2 to 3 times more expensive than Paris at the moment. And Paris is denser than London. Kinda kills the argument.
- Retric 11y ago
  Paris density is far less than London. Paris has fewer people in a larger metro area. London: 13,614,409 people in 8,382.00 km2 Paris: 12,161,542 people in 17,174.4 km2
  - mapt 11y ago
    These comparisons are rarely informative, because they're based on arbitrary municipal lines in the sand, rather than at a steady place on the CBD -> Urban -> Inner Suburban -> Outer Suburban -> Exurban -> Rural spectrum A more informative 1-dimensional 1-variable consideration, though imperfect, might be to take every person in the municipality and ask 'How many other people live within 1km of this person?', and take the median of that distribution.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  It's more expensive because it was successful and people moved there.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

nja 11y ago

Nobody defending the brutalist city hall building in Boston, I see... > I somehow think that if you could populate the Plaza with more gardens, and make it feel more part of everyday life — which they’ve tried to do with farmers’ markets and using the basin for ice skating — then it wouldn’t feel so hostile. Seems eerily familiar to the sentiment surrounding the plaza by the city hall in Boston.

kazagistar 11y ago
For some reason, people seem to be opposed to brutalism. Personally, I love it... the powerful, stark lines, clean geometry, abstract shapes. (http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/ http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/). It sounds like this building is disliked more for its painful layout though.
- bane 11y ago
  It's almost always because they're almost all expensive maintenance nightmares decaying and crumbling to dust and rubble after just a few years of use resulting in unpleasant, dirty looking buildings and public spaces around them. I would be highly surprised if even 10% of brutalist era buildings survive their first 50 years without being torn down. They're almost universally poorly designed and built, feeling more like a parking garage or a public restroom, with interior floor layouts based on mental hospitals or mazes. There are beautiful brutalist buildings. But I'd argue that even only a small percentage of those on the fuckyeahbrutalism blog would be considered so by the public. FYB even calls out City Hall in Boston as an example of great architecture, but it's pretty much reviled by anybody who's even come in cursory contact with it and the surrounding square. There's lots of terrible public spaces on that blog to be honest, clever photography is what makes most of them passable.
- gertef 11y ago
  That's the point. The buildings are aesthetically interesting (at least, the first one you see is), but they are horrible environments to spend your time in

USNetizen 11y ago

Having grown up just down the road from the second building on this list and having tried to navigate its dilapidated, maze-like corridors and awkwardly arranged "open" spaces, I can testify to its horrendous design. It routinely shows up on these types of "most hated" lists both nationally and globally for good reason. I wish I could understand the mindset of the original architect or, better yet, the local bureaucrats back in the day who thought it was a great idea to build something so large seemingly modeled on a random stack of toddler's play toys. Now it just serves to suck the county coffers dry due to ludicrously exorbitant maintenance costs (I mean, come on, "80 roofs?"). A soon-to-be-demolished, barely-used monument to bad government decisions and a complete lack of foresight of the late 1960's and early 1970's.

wildwood 11y ago
What you're describing reminds me a lot of Padelford Hall at University of Washington, another product of the late 60s. (http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/june07/content/view/69/39/ http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/june07/content/view...) It was awful, actually several "wings" in one building. It was possible to get locked out of the building on a walkway between two wings, with no other exits. You would sometimes have to go through one person's office to get to another office. The theory when I was a student there was that university construction in the late 60s was obsessed with dealing with civil unrest - psych buildings with riot-proof windows, admin buildings with confusing layouts, an open square covered in bricks that get slippery when hosed down, etc.

perfTerm 11y ago

I was very surprised Albany's plaza was on the list. Having grown up there I have many memories of staring in awe at its monolithic towers as they soar up from the plaza. I always really liked it and the plaza's great. They put shows on there and small festivals I believe.

leejoramo 11y ago
I visited Albany two years ago, and very much enjoyed the Plaza.
cowsandmilk 11y ago
I like it to. I would much more expect to see Boston's Government Center on the list.

rayiner 11y ago

We finally managed to get rid of this monstrosity last year in Chicago: http://www.landmarks.org/images/ten_most_2011_press/Prentice%20Women's%20Hospital.jpg http://www.landmarks.org/images/ten_most_2011_press/Prentice.... Also relevant: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/the-7-most-heinously-ugly-government-buildings-in-washington#.xbYDyMOxBW http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/the-7-most-heinously-ug... ("There are many gorgeous buildings in D.C. Unfortunately for us, in the ’60s and ’70s, the federal government only hired architects with early onset glaucoma.")

platz 11y ago
some more images of brutalist buildings in chicago (including the prentice hospital): http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/5667743710/campbell-u-s-courthouse-annex-chicago-illinois http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/5667743710/campbell... http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8260917974/prentice-womens-hospital-chicago-illinois http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8260917974/prentice... http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/2935927750/laboratory-for-geophysical-sciences-chicago http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/2935927750/laborato... http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8300999834/raymond-hillard-homes-chicago-illinois-1966 http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8300999834/raymond-...
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  That looks like the kind of circle-jerk le-Corbusier-bukake my architect friends touch themselves to at night. I don't get brutalism at all.
- tptacek 11y ago
  A few years ago, two bank robbers managed to escape from the MCC (your first picture) by climbing down a rope made from sheets. The building (across the street from our old office) is, if anything, even more forbidding in person. Still blows me away.
  - platz 11y ago
    Yeah, that would take some stones for sure

vacri 11y ago

I remember when Melbourne wanted to build a new 'city square' sort of area, which required knocking down an existing building. The building was the Gas & Fuel Corporation Towers, which was a pretty boring orange-brick high-rise[1]. A Melburnian all my life, I'd never heard anyone posit an opinion on the building, good or bad, in person or in media. It was boring. It wasn't pretty, but it was just there. But then they wanted to knock it down, and out came a media campaign where all the newspapers were talking about how ugly it was and what a blight, and suddenly people were ferociously hateful towards it. "Don't you just hate that building?" Well, no. And neither did you until you read about it in the paper. The weird thing was that the campaign was unnecessary (IMO) because people didn't care one way or another. It's not like people treasured the aesthetics or it had some historical tie... They replaced it with a building that looks like a pile of glass at the recyclers [2]. Admittedly it's not boring, but neither is it attractive. [1]http://www.walkingmelbourne.com/building465_gas-and-fuel-corporation-towers.html http://www.walkingmelbourne.com/building465_gas-and-fuel-cor... [2]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Federation_Square_%28SBS_Building%29.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Federatio... [2a]http://www.loftoncollins.com.au/images/gallery/800px-Federation-Square-Melbourne.jpg http://www.loftoncollins.com.au/images/gallery/800px-Federat...

cgio 11y ago
As a non-Melbournian, I felt like this was one of the most unwelcoming parts of the city, especially for someone pushing a stroller with all the different levels and a pub closing the passage way with bouncers even for passers by. Apparently there are some events happening there, but it feels very esoteric and not compelling.
- vacri 11y ago
  I think the plaza is an awful public space, building aesthetics aside. Rough cobbles on a sloped surface? I was wondering if it was perhaps intended to keep skateboarders out, however the cost is that infirm people have less access. If the development wasn't right outside the central train station, I reckon it would be a wasteland that wouldn't attract (enough) people.
11y ago

pivo 11y ago

I know people hate Centre Pompidou but I do not share that hate. As a child my parents took me there many times and for years I would have wild, beautiful architectural dreams about it. It's what made me realize that architecture is not just a historical thing but something that people who are living in the present can do as well, and that it is something that can be shocking and beautiful at the same time.

Osmium 11y ago
> I know people hate Centre Pompidou but I do not share that hate. I had no idea. I absolutely adore the Pompidou. I've only visited once, a few years back, but I remember it vividly. Colourful and full of joy.
cam_l 11y ago
There is a great story I heard about the architects winning the competition. The jury had to do an inspection of their offices to ensure the architects were established enough to take on the project. So Rogers & Piano hired out a floor of an office building and got all their friends to 'staff' it for the week the jury was visiting. I can't understand why anyone would hate this building, I would love to visit it. But beyond personal preference, the success of the building is not merely about beauty but in how it functions both practically and phenomenologically. Judging architecture on looks alone is like judging, i don't know, twitter for its logo.. The pompidou centre made a large plaza based on classical proportions ie.the same size as the façade—in an area of paris without public space. And with the symbolism of the inner workings being exposed—transparency was a strong political statement to which the public responded. Rogers:"The whole idea of Pompidou was that it is a place for the meeting of all people. And the success of it was that the French took it over and it became the most visited building in Europe."

erispoe 11y ago

What legacy will we pass on, what heritage will we build if all we do is imitating the past? Why don't we go and burn old books in our libraries and paintings in our museums because we think they're 'ugly'? Heritage is more that today's sense of prettiness.

zyxley 11y ago

The Zaha Hadid, Ada Tolla, and Norman Foster seem to have the connecting thread of visibly stained concrete, making them look dirty on top of any other aesthetic flaws.

mtVessel 11y ago

Apparently no one wanted to defend 432 Park.

gertef 11y ago
Ugh. Is anyone going to live there, or is it a money-laundering/storage machine for investors?