Painful architecture - it hurts to look at it

[unloadonme]

This is the Leeds International Swimming Pool in Leeds, England. It was designed by the disgraced architect John Poulson and opened in 1966.

In 2009 it met the fate hopefully awaiting many of the buildings in this thread.

 

[pat grimshaw]

One would have thought a National Theatre would be a haven of imagination and magic. It's a utilitarian pile surrounded by a joyless wind-swept space~

And the British Library is a red-brick municipal incinerator, totally lacking in any grandeur!

 

[Kulindahr]

GHOD I hate brutalist architecture.

I have my own reason for hating it, with a touch of amusement. I had classes in a building at OSU that was brutalist. It looked like a parking garage with interesting windows.

One day the lecturing professor noted that the building was the least earthquake-safe structure on the campus. He described what would happen to us if a quake greater than about a 6 hit while we were there.

The class subject? Earthquakes. The building? Geology.

ETA: There's a resemblance NOW, of course...Brutalist buildings look like something nicer has fallen off their outsides.

Heh. At OSU, the art people regularly came up with proposals to do something to the exteriors of our brutalist buildings. I think they finally got to do a mural on one.

That's something I'll say for a lot of brutalist buildings: if you want to do murals, they have a LOT of uninterrupted "canvas" to work with.

 

[pat grimshaw]

This is the Leeds International Swimming Pool in Leeds, England. It was designed by the disgraced architect John Poulson ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poulson
... jailed for five years...an "incalculably evil man"... "I have been a fool, surrounded by a pack of leeches. I took on the world on its own terms, and no one can deny I once had it in my fist"...

even the Methodists have bad apples!

 

[rocabar]

The "modernist" fountain at the Royal Alberta Museum, Edmonton, Alberta.

Constructed in 1967 - There's actually a small jet between the supports that hold up the structure... It's like the water has been imprisoned, or something.

 

[Swellegant]

The pebbled trashcan in the foreground of Pic 2 was prettier. Though I think this would be interesting in a smaller scale, like as an ashtray or something.

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

The "modernist" fountain at the Royal Alberta Museum, Edmonton, Alberta.

urrrrrrh? MERCY!!!!! is SUBMIT IS SUBMIT

can me say?
' SSSSSSH '
GAAH!

 

[godson112]

... a more pervasive eyesore:

.

.

Is that in Florida? I swear that McDonalds was in the car park of the hotel I stayed at when I was on holiday in Kissimmee...

Also, in regards to all these ugly, grey, stone buildings, I kind of like them. I like the grittiness of cities and I think they remind me of that.

 

[TofuEater]

I actually think in terms of architecture and design, it looks pretty cool. But, in terms of where it is and the buildings that surround it, definitely sticks out...in a negative way.

 

[Kulindahr]

The "modernist" fountain at the Royal Alberta Museum, Edmonton, Alberta.

Constructed in 1967 - There's actually a small jet between the supports that hold up the structure... It's like the water has been imprisoned, or something.

Well, if it actually had water spraying out over the top and splashing down, it would be fine. But a fountain should be obviously a fountain, and if you have to hunt for the water, it's about as exiting as setting up for sex with a guy and learning you have to hunt for his dick.

 

[Kulindahr]

Somebody turned a fax machine into a building for their model railroad setup!

 

[bw92116]

About the San Diego skyline,

To add some info, many of these buildings in San Diego are much younger than 40 years. Even 20 years ago the skyline didn't look like this. The ones in front are all hotels and condos, not office buildings. But, I do agree, the San Diego skyline has improved a lot from what it was when I first moved here 28 years ago.

Unfortunately there is a proposal to put a boring building in front of it all:

I thought the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art would have better taste than this, and take this down after a while, but it's been sitting on the building for years:

At least a proposed piece of public art for Spanish Landing Park, very close to the San Diego airport, which would have looked like a plane crashing head first into the ground, was nixed before it even got started.

This notorious piece of sculpture, formerly named Okeanos, but locally and derisively nicknamed "The Turd," sat in front of Scripps Green Hospital in San Diego from 1988 to 2001. The artist, William Tucker, was paid $200,000 for it. It became a local joke and finally Edythe H. Scripps, a philanthopist whose family name adorns not only the hospital but other landmarks in the area, paid $40,000 to have it moved to a much less conspicuous place on the property.

In the late 1980s the city of Carlsbad, California, 30 miles north of San Diego, paid New York artist Andrea Blum $20,000 to design a public space on a triangular piece of oceanfront property. Her design, called "Split Pavilion," was installed in 1992 and instantly divided the public. Many seemed to like it, but a greater number pronounced it "hideous" and a "bummer," with many of the complaints centered on the prison-like fence of steel bars that surrounded it as cutting the public off from the ocean views.

Personally I though it was merely dull and uninspired, not hideous. But in 1998, the city put it to a public vote, and voted to remove it, so the entire thing was torn down. Today, the site is just a flat grass area with a few concrete benches:

Interestingly... if you go to Andrea Blum's web site, she still shows "Split Pavilion" as one of her projects, and makes no mention of the fact that it was demolished by her customer. In fact, even though it doesn't exist, a picture of it is the first thing you see when you go to her web site!

 

[gsdx]

This 'Toilet' house is painful only if you laugh 'til it hurts. (It's somewhere in South Korea, I believe.)

 

[shainski]

Unfortunately there is a proposal to put a boring building in front of it all:

Good news! you don't even have to build that building. We have one similar to it in Milwaukee. We can just pack it up and ship it off to you.

and while you are at it, you can take our big orange statue:"The calling"?

which blocks our beautiful Art Museum by Calatrava:

 

[bw92116]

The only pictures I could find of Andrea Blum's design were on her own web site. I didn't want to hotlink to her site, and the photos were copyrighted so I couldn't just copy them over. If you go to her site, it is shown on the main page, even though it was torn down by the customer. I don't think it was as awful as some people were claiming; to me it was just plain old boring. I just think it's ironic that the city of Carlsbad voted to dismantle her art, yet she features it on the front page of her site.

 

[Kulindahr]

In the late 1980s the city of Carlsbad, California, 30 miles north of San Diego, paid New York artist Andrea Blum $20,000 to design a public space on a triangular piece of oceanfront property. Her design, called "Split Pavilion," was installed in 1992 and instantly divided the public. Many seemed to like it, but a greater number pronounced it "hideous" and a "bummer," with many of the complaints centered on the prison-like fence of steel bars that surrounded it as cutting the public off from the ocean views.

Personally I though it was merely dull and uninspired, not hideous. But in 1998, the city put it to a public vote, and voted to remove it, so the entire thing was torn down. Today, the site is just a flat grass area with a few concrete benches:

Interestingly... if you go to Andrea Blum's web site, she still shows "Split Pavilion" as one of her projects, and makes no mention of the fact that it was demolished by her customer. In fact, even though it doesn't exist, a picture of it is the first thing you see when you go to her web site!

"Split Pavilion" was plainly designed by someone who disdains the public.

The site today is dull, but at least it's actually public space again. I could design something better than both.

 

[Kulindahr]

The only pictures I could find of Andrea Blum's design were on her own web site. I didn't want to hotlink to her site, and the photos were copyrighted so I couldn't just copy them over. If you go to her site, it is shown on the main page, even though it was torn down by the customer. I don't think it was as awful as some people were claiming; to me it was just plain old boring. I just think it's ironic that the city of Carlsbad voted to dismantle her art, yet she features it on the front page of her site.

Yeah, those pics aren't helpful in visualizing it -- they look like they were taken to show off to other architects. From what I can tell, though, they could have just taken down the fence and left the rest, and it would have been fine.

 

[belamyi]

 

[belamyi]

I never understood what was so special about the Parthenon, sure it can stand it's ground through time, but it's so very basic.

There is not much to understand: it's just one of those myths inherited from the Dark Age of the Sensibility in the XIXth century: the visual refinements discovered in it were just one more excuse to dodderingly praise anything related to A PART of the civilization of the Ancient Greek, particularly of the golden age of Athens.
I remember reading the idiotic texts of Asimov's universal pseudohistory praising the supreme greatness of the Parthenon, dictated by that infused decadent Victorian sensibility that is STILL the foundation of mainstream aesthetic values of the Western world.

 

[belamyi]

this is truly fugly...it does not belong at the Louvre

sure, like what was there before was more fitting...
http://www.GreatBuildings.com/cgi-bin/gbi.cgi/The_Louvre.html/6a22805-Louvre_Pano-s.html

you might be more used to that sort of crap, but that does not make it "belong at the Louvre".

So is the Cour Marly, which is basically the same but capping an old courtyard instead of popping from it, something that doesn't belong either?

The Louvre of Lescot, du Cerceau, Lemercier, Le Vau, Perrault, Percier&Fontaine Lefuel and Visconti was crappy enough before Mitterrand and Pei pitched in.


More pain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Building_(New_York)