Bring Your Wrecking Balls

[Agathon]

Don't be a hater.

Robarts is an abortion. There aren't enough elevators and it is dank, brutal and horrible.

Worst: from the side it looks like a giant fowl.

[Az]

Why people hate modernist "boxes" is beyond me. Same goes with brutalism. They have shape and thought, and are fascinating.


Freeform, otoh, ala frank Gary sucks ass. :vomit:

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
Where do people find such ugly Wal-Marts?

Most strip malls are so ugly that a hole in the ground is better.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Azazel
Why people hate modernist "boxes" is beyond me. Same goes with brutalism. They have shape and thought, and are fascinating.

How fascinating could a large, tall box be? One just looks like another.

[Buck Birdseed]

Except they aren't. The glass ones may be, but the concrete ones you posted were dynamic, almost futurist constructs, with power and movement. Loved the first one with the monstrous ribbing and the second one with the bands of slanted windows.

[Sandman]

This is another box, a delapidated box, at that.

[Spiffor]

Boshko:
I think the fantastic tackiness you showed us is beyond words


Agathon:
I think that YOUR WINnER !1!

[Eli]

The following monstrosity is the main Engineering building in the Tel Aviv university :



How stupid does one has to be to build a building with NO ****ING WINDOWS.

[Traianvs]

Must be depressing if you have a lot of class inside

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Azazel
Why people hate modernist "boxes" is beyond me. Same goes with brutalism. They have shape and thought, and are fascinating.


Freeform, otoh, ala frank Gary sucks ass. :vomit:

Unfortunately it is my experience that architecture, like other disciplines, has too few of the calibre of Gropius, Gilbert Scott, Gaudi, Lloyd Wright, Brunelleschi and Goldfinger, and too many piss weak imitators creeating abortive ill thought out, poorly funded knock-offs for local authorities, governments and speculative developers.


For every Tel Aviv White City (deservedly a World Heritage site) you will get three or four Parisian banlieus full of Sarcellian nightmares or Manchester's ghastly Hulme/Moss Side crescent blocks, laughably named after some of Great Britain's best architects but enshrining the worst aspects of post war housing developments, where honest small scale red brick houses and stable communities were replaced with oppressive non-existent communities in the sky,housed in shoddily built asbestos riddled hellholes.


If form followed function, then their function must have been the institutionalized alienation of the urban poor and the enocuragement of petty street crime, drug dealing and prostitution.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Boshko
All that effort sorting through google image and nobody comments

Don't despair of brick because of one poor relatively recent example- after all the British Library in Euston doesn't make me think less of William Butterfield's great ecclesiastical architecture:

http://www.visitcumbria.com/butfld.htm

http://www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk/history6.htm

How to do polychrome brickwork with style.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Agathon

Don't be a hater.

Robarts is an abortion. There aren't enough elevators and it is dank, brutal and horrible.

Worst: from the side it looks like a giant fowl.

It's actually supposed to look like a Canada goose from the air. I spent two years looking at the thing from across the street - it epitomizes Toronto's love for non-stop concrete and a total lack of context.

Edit: Decent little cafeteria in it, though, as little cafeterias go.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Buck Birdseed
I can't believe how many of you have nominated marvellous béton brut structures from the 60s, surely some of the most exciting and dynamic architecture of the century. Brutalism may well be my favourite movement of the century and I've found the majority of the buildings chosen so far to be marvellous.

In Stockholm, I've got two obvious nominations.

Firstly, Heron City in Kungens Kurva, a cuboid glass monstrosity full of garish consumerism with no redeeming social or artistic values whatsoever; a capitalist equivalent of Csaucsescu's Palace if you will.




Again no good exterior pics, but this should give you a pretty good idea what the problem is (the station is just ahead).

Functionally worst in Stockholm is the central station, which through the associated railway lines has ruined large swathes of prime beachfront parkland. The building is bearable in itself though, but you got to hate that bastard Nils Ericsson having a statue in front. North and South stations forever!

That looks like an inviting shopping environment actually.

[Az]

Originally posted by molly bloom



Unfortunately it is my experience that architecture, like other disciplines, has too few of the calibre of Gropius, Gilbert Scott, Gaudi, Lloyd Wright, Brunelleschi and Goldfinger, and too many piss weak imitators creeating abortive ill thought out, poorly funded knock-offs for local authorities, governments and speculative developers.


For every Tel Aviv White City (deservedly a World Heritage site) you will get three or four Parisian banlieus full of Sarcellian nightmares or Manchester's ghastly Hulme/Moss Side crescent blocks, laughably named after some of Great Britain's best architects but enshrining the worst aspects of post war housing developments, where honest small scale red brick houses and stable communities were replaced with oppressive non-existent communities in the sky,housed in shoddily built asbestos riddled hellholes.


If form followed function, then their function must have been the institutionalized alienation of the urban poor and the enocuragement of petty street crime, drug dealing and prostitution.

I agree that many public housing developements that were designed ( I don't think it deserves the word ) in a modernist fashion are horrors ( and parisian near suburbia is a good example ), but that's indicative of public housing developments, sadly, not modernism. A great proof of that is post-modernist public housing buildings.

How fascinating could a large, tall box be? One just looks like another.

The fact that they look similar, at least for me, doesn't automatically make them distasteful. I find that glass and steel buildings of the international style look spaceous and "free", by reflecting some of the sky, and if the glass is partly see-through, it makes the building look more open. In many cases they're far better than post-modernism's attempts at being ornamental, or free-form's gross looks.

Brutalism is a mixed basket, but most architecture is, really.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Kontiki


It's actually supposed to look like a Canada goose from the air. I spent two years looking at the thing from across the street - it epitomizes Toronto's love for non-stop concrete and a total lack of context.

Bryan Adams's saving grace in my opinion is that he strives to save examples of Vancouver's historic architecture from wanton destruction and speculative redevelopment.

I remember when spending some time with friends in Vancouver we visited Seattle and were shown a rather insensitive semi-sunken carpark near Pioneer Square that had replaced the venerable Hotel Seattle building.

As if the threat of earthquakes wasn't enough....