Painful architecture - it hurts to look at it

[Sha-Rok]

City Center In Las Vegas..It seems like Vegas is moving away from the glitz of the old strip into a more conservative idea..What I means is Vegas is turning from "It looks amazing" to "It looks expensive."

 

[belamyi]

Bodegas Güell, which is inside the beautiful Gaudí designed Park Güell

What? That is the building in which you could stomp your car as you drive along the curvy seaside road from Barcelona to Sitges... http://www.gaudiallgaudi.com/AA013.htm
The road is on the far left of the picture, very close to the eave of the roof, and you can peek at the blue sea in the background through the arch on the bottom right..

 

[belamyi]

Doesn't Barcelona have one of those gherkin buildings too? I seem to remember a large dildo looking building there.....

A huge dildolight.

 

[pixie77]

What a fascinating thread thanks to all those to have contributed

 

[Críostóir]

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.

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

 

[belamyi]

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

Proving once again how you are blinded by your self-sufficient prejudices in art, history, Asimov and even in mathematics, and how you are hurt by them, rather than by me.

Pain continued: http://www.cambridge2000.com/gallery/html/PC1110469e.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/acula/393219554/lightbox/

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

You know, it seems that there are an awful lot of people in the world who believe that aesthetics is purely subjective, and that functionality is the antithesis of art.

That's simply not true. There are such things as perfect forms, there are such things as universal beauties; all art should have a function, and that function should be served before the muse... and maybe I'm an idealist, but I do believe that if an object's only function is to provoke thought, the thought it provokes should not be "what the hell is that?"

Fashion becomes a problem with art when the people who are looking at it aren't trained to see it, they're only trained to either see what they expect to see and become enraged when their expectations are challenged or else to nod knowingly and say "I don't understand it, so it must be profound."

There are modern buildings that are breathtakingly beautiful; there are ancient buildings that are unforgivably ugly. There are buildings which depend completely on their context in order to be beautiful (think of the Forbidden City, bog-standard Chinese architecture elevated to the sublime by sheer scale) and buildings that are so pleasing to the eye that they look good anywhere (your basic Palladian four-square house, for example, suitable for town or country and any size you like).

There are shapes so beautiful that they come to symbolize entire cultures--the pyramids of Egypt, the temples of Greece and Rome, the cathedrals of medieval Europe, the pagodas of Asia, the teepees of the native American tribes--even though those forms do not represent the common architecture of those cultures.

There are things you can do with buildings that never ever look good... they certainly challenge the eye, but they do so with discomfort rather than stability: feats of engineering that make the building appear to float weightless are fascinating, but they're also terrifying to anyone who has to go up in them. They make the people who look at it every day uneasy, even if they don't know why.

For example, at SFMOMA there is a bridge over the central atrium that is made of transparent steel mesh... you walk out, you look down, and you see eighty feet of empty space terminating in a floor; and though you logically know you're perfectly safe, your body reacts anyway... it's the coolest thing I ever saw. But if I had to walk across that bridge every fucking day to get from my office to the potty, I'd be a basket case within the year.

Anyway, I could go on at this forever, but what I want to get across is that making a building a certain shape just because you can, or to challenge perception, is a waste of material. It might be terribly interesting to look at, but living in it would be a nightmare. Buildings are meant to be lived in, not just to be looked at... no matter how beautiful or interesting the form, if you can't live and work comfortably inside, then what in the world is the point?

I mean, I love a utility object that has been so cunningly designed that it is art; but an artistic dish-scrubber that doesn't scrub the dishes is useless.

ya very verys verys poilte ans nice little read

but symbolize not understand what it mean you mind

but thankyou fa a read of worth ins da porn site is kind you

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

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

no tell me it fa da perosn Mamma fa happy birthday? marrigae is bliss

ZONNG ZONNG yes comin master! it alien megphone callin all da take ova da planet?

-

PSSSST! anyone wanna by huge spreadin tree? very organic ya know ans latest in Kool thangs ta do

 

[Ellybelly909]

This is an example of architecture that isn't brutal and doesn't hurt...it's VERY pleasing to the eye, although it may lack color....

 

[shainski]

no tell me it fa da perosn Mamma fa happy birthday? marrigae is bliss

ZONNG ZONNG yes comin master! it alien megphone callin all da take ova da planet?

-

PSSSST! anyone wanna by huge spreadin tree? very organic ya know ans latest in Kool thangs ta do

Ha Ha, I never thought of it as a huge megaphone. But now that you mention it, it does look like that. Aliens taking over the planet! well that explains a lot!

 

[LilBit]

^^That makes me want to erect a lovely structure.

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

Ha Ha, I never thought of it as a huge megaphone. But now that you mention it, it does look like that. Aliens taking over the planet! well that explains a lot!

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! '

 

[belamyi]

^^That makes me want to erect a lovely structure.

You mean this

 

[LilBit]

You mean this

You make me want to erect a lovely structure too.

 

[gsdx]

Well, I was enjoying this thread.

It's becoming very painful to look at now.

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

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

da connection lost ons da general public

but then when general public matta if see a drifts

or general publics care of many tadays great cultures true

anyway Hi MONA!
' SMILE '
you too!

 

[belamyi]

Well, I was enjoying this thread.

It's becoming very painful to look at now.

That's what happens when you simply look at, without reading, understanding what you have in front of you... with this thread as with a building.

 

[BearBoi]

BearBoi, listen to yourself! I'd hate to visit an efficient museum. That sounds like a recipe for ugliness right there. No museum worth visiting has ever billed itself as "Now able to fit 13% more paintings on the gallery walls. And now lit with refurbished IKEA compact fluorescents!" What a glum hopeless world that would be. I want museums with pointless angles and dubious floor plans and convoluted dead-end pathways that don't make sense and force you just for a moment to actually confront and experience the building you're in, instead of drifting through without awareness or interaction.

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 quite like this one too:

The one in Melbourne reminds me of it. I wonder if it is by the same architect. This one is Ontario College of Art by Alsop.

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

Not that you could tell, of course.

 

[rocabar]

The Legislature Annex Building.

Originally Built as a 6-storey building in 1953, and later expanded with the addition of another 6 in 1963-64.

Dubbed "The Green Monster" by many, it is to be demolished, when the renovations to the Art-Deco Federal Building are compleated, in 2012.

 

[pat grimshaw]

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?