
Leading Architects Defend Hated Buildings - c-slice
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/05/t-magazine/architects-libeskind-zaha-hadid-selldorf-norman-foster.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
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qiqing
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
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
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
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.

~~~
ashark
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-01-800x6...](http://socks-studio.com/img/blog/eisenman-
alexander-01-800x600.jpg)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eisenman#/media/File:Grea...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eisenman#/media/File:Greater_Columbus_Convention_Center.jpg)

~~~
widdershins
>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, 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, even.

Yeah, that's pretty much the premise of brutalism [1]. Actually I think
there's a place for that kind of thing and some of the best examples in London
are really awe-inspiring and interesting places to hang out (e.g. the National
Theatre, the Barbican). But of course there are some 'concrete monstrosities'
as well.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture)

~~~
aptwebapps
I don't think that brutalism goes as far as that. It does try to be 'honest'
but it does not deliberately try to be uncomfortable.

------
rayiner
We finally managed to get rid of this monstrosity last year in Chicago:
[http://www.landmarks.org/images/ten_most_2011_press/Prentice...](http://www.landmarks.org/images/ten_most_2011_press/Prentice%20Women's%20Hospital.jpg).

Also relevant: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/the-7-most-heinously-
ug...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/the-7-most-heinously-ugly-
government-buildings-in-washington#.xbYDyMOxBW) ("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
some more images of brutalist buildings in chicago (including the prentice
hospital):

[http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/5667743710/campbell...](http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/5667743710/campbell-
u-s-courthouse-annex-chicago-illinois)

[http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8260917974/prentice...](http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8260917974/prentice-
womens-hospital-chicago-illinois)

[http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/2935927750/laborato...](http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/2935927750/laboratory-
for-geophysical-sciences-chicago)

[http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8300999834/raymond-...](http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/post/8300999834/raymond-
hillard-homes-chicago-illinois-1966)

~~~
tptacek
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
Yeah, that would take some stones for sure

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pivo
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.

~~~
cam_l
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."

------
vacri
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-
cor...](http://www.walkingmelbourne.com/building465_gas-and-fuel-corporation-
towers.html)
[2][http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Federatio...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Federation_Square_%28SBS_Building%29.jpg)
[2a][http://www.loftoncollins.com.au/images/gallery/800px-
Federat...](http://www.loftoncollins.com.au/images/gallery/800px-Federation-
Square-Melbourne.jpg)

~~~
tjradcliffe
Likely a pre-emptive strike. You'd be amazed what people will find they love
when given an opportunity to be against something. People are lazy and stupid,
and opposition rarely gets called to account, so it's a magnet for the
cowardly self-righteous.

I've lived in places where old houses were moved to get around opposition to
their being demolished. On their new locations they were allowed to rot, and
no one cared. _Preventing_ building anything new is interesting and fun for
the kind of Puritan mind that lives in mortal fear that someone, somewhere, is
building something new. Once you take away the locus of prevention--in this
case the "love" of the old building that activists would have discovered had
it not been preempted--they get bored and move on to something else.

~~~
vacri
It's hard to think that the people would have loved those buildings (two local
iconic landmarks were less than 100m away), but you raise a good point in that
perhaps it was about drumming up support for the replacement, as in "
_anything_ but that!".

Also, I wonder if there wasn't a high-level political interest in keeping the
buildings around, and drumming up public discord over them might have helped
seal the backroom deals?

------
USNetizen
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
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...](http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/june07/content/view/69/39/))

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.

------
nja
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
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
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.

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perfTerm
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.

~~~
cowsandmilk
I like it to.

I would much more expect to see Boston's Government Center on the list.

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zyxley
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.

------
erispoe
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.

------
mtVessel
Apparently no one wanted to defend 432 Park.

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

