Painful architecture - it hurts to look at it

[roadtripboy]

^ We have plenty of ugly 1970 era brick and concrete boxes in most every town.

This is the new courthouse in the county where I live.



Built pretty recently....it has hit with 97 fines for not not meeting The Americans with Disabilities Act. It cost almost as much to fix it as build it.

 

[bankside]

I'm not talking about functionality over aesthetics in a building of this nature.

I'm talking about creating a building that is so up its own ass about being "new" and "edgy" that much of the interior space literally becomes unusable. You can't hang paintings on the walls, you can't put exhibits against them, you can't even use the central hallways for most displays, the ceilings will not support anything because they are just flimsy panels to contrast the track-lighting... These are complaints from a couple of the museum curators I've spoken with. They weren’t consulted prior to the abomination being constructed, and apparently it is kind of difficult to do a lot with circular walls...

You'd think an architect would realize that, but then, if I were being paid millions to drop a glass-and-steel abortion on some foreign city, I may not give a shit either. Actually, that's a lie. I take pride in my work and I don't have to be edgy for the sake of being edgy. Good art speaks for itself; it does not rely on shock value for headlines, IMO.

I live in this city. I drive by this thing quite often, and I've been inside it. It isn't art; it is vast, empty hallways with cockeyed floors and little-to-no flow-through or empty cavernous spaces that leave people saying, "Why did I pay to walk around in this?"

(Pictures originally posted by gsdx)

I'd put on a sculpture exhibit in that space. It would be a spectacular setting for the bronzes of Leo Mol.

I was told it was designed by some of the students.

...and I would let them teach the course.


I don't think the opposite of your arguments; I agree with you that "different for the sake of different" is usually pointless, and I can't even call it original...something based on being the opposite of something else (be it the use of space, the use of colour or form, or the overall aesthetics of it or whatever) is still based on imitating something else in the inverse.

But I also don't think the spaces you've criticized are unworkable or even unpleasant to look at. The ROM would be out of luck if they tried to exhibit the Group of 7 there, because you can't hang paintings on oblique walls. Or is that ceilings? But is that their mandate?

 

[Kulindahr]

Proving once again that you're equally ignorant on the topics of art, history, mathematics, and Asimov.

No kidding. The mathematics involved in making the Parthenon appear simple are anything but that. It looks like LEGOs, but to get that requires more math than 98% of Americans ever dabble in.

 

[BearBoi]

But I also don't think the spaces you've criticized are unworkable or even unpleasant to look at. The ROM would be out of luck if they tried to exhibit the Group of 7 there, because you can't hang paintings on oblique walls. Or is that ceilings? But is that their mandate?

The way the rest of the ROM is set up, exhibits are against the walls for ease of viewing and flow-through. When you have walls that pitch at extreme angels, there isn't a way to really do that, short of having then run the center of the halls, but many halls are narrow or bent around curving walls in the upper levels where the exhibits mostly are, so even that isn't really an option.

Part of what you are hearing from me is disappointment. I was super-excited to hear about my beloved ROM (I attended Saturday Morning Enrichment classes there when I was a wee lil'Queerling), and then we got... that.

I think I mentioned earlier about how the roof overhangs part of the street/road and in the winter the city has to pay for deicers to prevent falling ice from breaking windshields/skulls, right? And the ROM is downtown, around major universities and roadways.

My gripe isn't just with the aesthetics. I think it represents all-around bad planning.

God... $250 Million. Just imagine what we could have had.

 

[belamyi]

This thread is making me think feeling there are LESS painful buildings in the USA —'per capita'— than in Canada, UK and Australia.



Do you agree?

What you mean is that in the US you don't notice so much the difference between extraordinarily painful and ordinarily painful.

 

[shainski]

oops dat was classified OOH NOO
wanna know how it work?
@ ZAAAAAAP @

' ooh what decor! ooh what dat? '
alien finger!
' ooh soooo long ans thick '
HA yes ans we is gonna
' let me guess? Probe me?
YEEEES HA HAAAAA you will feel our finger!!!!!
'ooh is no see ya in movie what it a call? '
SSSSSSH! toooo WORK!
' what wanna me do while ya stickin it about? '
QUIET CREATURE!
' ooh ya so kind '

wish public alls da sympathys a got live with stuff like dat

UNLESSSSSS!!!!!!!
' SSSSSH! '

Wow, i'm never going to look at that piece of art the same way again.

On second thought, i guess i kind of like it.

(Are you doing some kind of mind control?)

 

[belamyi]

No kidding. The mathematics involved in making the Parthenon appear simple are anything but that. It looks like LEGOs, but to get that requires more math than 98% of Americans ever dabble in.

As far as my comment is concerned,

1. I wasn't judging the Parthenon so much as its overestimated status as the absolute architectonic masterpiece ever.

2. But if we were talking maths, the Parthenon is shit compared to what is involved in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_des_Invalides or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapels_of_Versailles , not to speak of the knowledge and skills involved in erecting supertall skyscrapers, which requires 980% of the applied math than the speculative Greek ever avail themselves of dabbling in but, of course, all that is simply not the divine Ancient Greek;

3. The complexity of the maths "involved in making the Parthenon" are only a part of the complexity of the whole work and, relative to the size of the Parthenon, there is not much of that whole complexity to add on that math, for whatever it's worth. According to that math you refer to, a grander temple like that of Arthemis at Ephesus, or even the Temple of Venus and Rome in Rome, should vastly overpass that involved in the building of the Athenian Parthenon.

4. The Parthenon is just a colonnade, used to wrap a plain masonry , with a lot of trimming here and there, overestimated friezes included. "Overestimated" not in relation to their own quality, which is not "bad", simply inferior to overblown epithets and praises, as anything will be under those conditions.

 

[rocabar]

This thread is making me think feeling there are LESS painful buildings in the USA —'per capita'— than in Canada, UK and Australia.



Do you agree?

No, I do not.

I lived in the U.S. for the first thirty years of my life, and there as many (if not more) 'painful' buildings there.
It's just that most posters from the Commonwealth have posted examples from their own backyards, where as Americans have chosen examples from elsewhere.