Design: FAIL

Infrastructurist has a new top ten list of the worst designs of the last 25 years including several personal favorite punching bags like the Ordos Ghost City in China, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and the building that fell over in one piece in China. Also, making the list were CitiField, the Mets new stadium, which I had no idea had as many problems as it did post-construction and this:



Good ol' Frank. Littering the world with his crumplestiltskins.

Mickey Mouse Club

In a recent email discussion revolving around the conceptual understanding of vernacular architecture, architect/urbanist/professor John Massengale of the blog Veritas y Venustas, brought the notion of nature and nurture to bear. An excerpt:

I've been to Bilbao, which is a good urban and architectural experience. It appeals to most people experientially. One can analyze its urban and architectural qualities and discuss why that is, but it's not necessary to articulate those to experience them. One can also explain why one prefers Classical buildings, without insisting that Bilbao is poorly done.

I could crit Bilbao about what would make the experience of it as an urban building, for example, better or worse.

I've never been to a Zaha building that works on the same experiential level as Bilbao. I would find it impossible to be on a jury for a Zaha building and to make comments about what would make it better.

They seem to me to function on two levels. An intellectual, esoteric one which ignores the senses. An experiential level like Libeskind's designed to produce an uncomfortable and unhappy experience.

Leon (Krier) believes there are modern buildings like this that we experience as bad -- but then the New York Times tells us it is good, and we become reverse Pavlovian dogs. Something makes us feel bad and we say "that's good."

This is not the same as wanting to feel bad - it's confused signals.

On top of that, when you spend your life in beautiful surroundings (if you live in Venice, for example), beauty becomes your norm - you see and make beauty more easily, and are turned off by ugliness.

When you live in north Dallas amid the WalMarts, ugliness becomes your norm, and ugly eventually becomes good.

Oh snap! Wait. That was us that caught the stinging end of the whip.

I posted this picture on twitter yesterday as I wandered through uptown and the Arts District. FortWorthology responded:

Every time we criticize that Koolhaas...thing we're written off as "anti-Dallas" or "anti-modern." At least we're not alone.

I expect to receive some of the same scorn, "ahhh, I'm insulting their heroez. Oh noez!" The thing is that the building isn't about modernism or Dallas. In fact, it is an insult to both.

(Although I do have to make one correction. The building is more the work of my good buddy the Prince than it is Rem's handiwork. In fact, they even sued each other and split firms.)

Those people are a clique. They want to feel like they are in some exclusive club. Unfortunately, it is one defined by the cult of personality, an insulated profession. One where critics fawn over. One where the professionals create their own imperceptible language to intentionally isolate and build a wall between themselves and their audience. Since buildings are part of a city and used by its citizenry, the audience is the entire City.

The wall is understanding and that is exactly how they want it.

Noooo, you just don't get it, maaaaann.

No, broheim. You don't get the way of the world. This building represents the worst of what the Architectural or City Building professions have become, utterly disconnected from their customers. Any profession that reviles its own audience is doomed to failure.

They no longer can defend their work so they pretend it is on some higher plane and speak in gibberish in order to selfishly experiment with whatever intellectual dead end they feel like wandering down and bringing us with them, littering the world with themselves.

Boston is contemplating destroying their City Hall. A building that won numerous awards and critical acclaim at the time. The problem? It's bloody heinous.


Remind you of any other nearby Municipal Seats, looming ominously over a barren "plaza?" For a building housing representative government, the message here is loudly and clearly, "stay away."

Of course, Boston is filled with wonderfully walkable urban neighborhoods adorned with buildings and places designed for the pedestrian, the human. As Massengale said, perhaps we are just too used used to the ugly.

I once again maintain that the Wyly has been designed as a very literal prison cell. one in which we are all trapped, as we worship the designer and designer, the designer, the nihilist, is laughing at the trap of a city we have built for ourselves.

And as long as starchitects and their combative sycophantic troop choose NOT to speak and work for the city-at-large, the profession is headed for exile along with the credibility of anyone devoted to city building. Once again, the experts are failing cities and it is time for the citizens to define their own future.

Life demands that only one thing matters, usefulness and beauty. But, what is useful is perpetually changing. The Wyly is a novelty act. Meaning we are likely to quickly discard it. I'm sure it is spectacular inside to see a show. However, that is not the point. It is as insular as the profession that birthed it. It is anti-urban, which given its location, means it is anti-Dallas. So let's pick it up and move it to Grand Prairie, next to the Nokia and Horse Track in a drive-thru context where it belongs.

Architects Can Blither On Aimlessly Too

Heretofore, you are to be made aware that forms like this will sweep across the world like an architectural nerve gas. Suspension of disbelief necessary before proceeding.

These are always fun. You may have read my point-counterpoint responses to literal tools (of the sprawl industry/status quo) like Randall O'Toole before, but there are a strain of architects out there still wandering down dead ends while the rest of us move down the path towards more logical and coherent cities for the people, rather than bestowed upon them.

The following is over at Architects Journal and is written by Patrik Schumacher, an unfortunate soul who still thinks that style matters. Not coincidentally he toils under Zaha Hadid, unabashed fashion designer as far as the city building world is concerned.

In my Parametricist Manifesto of 2008, I first communicated that a new, profound style has been maturing within the avant-garde segment of architecture during the last 10 years.

Red flag: "We're the avant garde. Therefore you are inferior and must listen to us." This is precisely how they see themselves. It is a dying breed as cities move towards crowd-sourcing based placemaking. The idea of the singular genius has failed miserably. Quit reading the Fountainhead. Unless of course, you suffer from insomnia and desperately are in need of a 200-page soliloquy in place of sheep.

The term ‘parametricism’ has since been gathering momentum within architectural discourse and its critical questioning has strengthened it. So far, knowledge of the new style has remained largely confined within architecture, but I suspect news will spread quickly once it is picked up by the mass media. Outside architectural circles, ‘style’ is virtually the only category through which architecture is observed and recognised. A named style needs to be put forward in order to stake its claim to act in the name of architecture.

Holy patronizing Batman. First of all, an unknown word has been strengthened through criticism. Fair enough, we'll take your word for it. And we should, because he knows that once we are touched with the divinity of his understanding of such a profound concept (of something so superficial as style), it will take over the world and all of the great cities of the world will be replaced with the singularity of his vision.

Not to jump too far ahead of myself, but this really highlights the fundamental problem facing architecture: its disconnection from reality. The willful exclusion of the rest of society to work solely within a select peer group and only FOR that select peer group. Where the goal is to get a building on the cover of Architecture Record rather than a place that nourishes and supports its users, the City.

Can we please bring in REX or OMA again to defile our City? These people despise their customers. They look down upon them. This is the death nail of any profession turned insular.

The concept of style deserves to be defended

Does it?

The concept of style has for a long time been losing traction within architectural discourse. To let this concept wither away would only impoverish the discourse, and a powerful asset for communicating architecture to society would be lost. However, the resuscitation of this drained and battered concept requires conceptual reconstruction in terms that are intellectually credible today.

Perhaps its withering should tell you something. People have grown weary of these "style wars" driven by little more than ideology so utterly disconnected from reality. And their cities have suffered for it.

What stands in the way of this is the tendency to regard style as merely a matter of appearance, as well as the related tendency to confuse styles with superficial, short-lived fashions. Although aesthetic appearance matters enormously in architecture and design, neither architecture nor its styles can be reduced to mere matters of appearance. Neither must the phenomenon of styles be assimilated to the phenomenon of fashion.

Even if, at its absolute, very best, style was a direct response to a timely problem; the physical manifestation of a deeper underlying genome resolving some ill. It is still responding to the issues of that particular time. And times change. Therefore, once again IF (big if) "style" is a response to the needs and demands of the day (should-do rather than can-do), then style would have to adapt to changing times. Perpetually changing. Once again, the idea of timeless "style" is moot. And frankly, irresponsible if not intellectually dishonest.

The concept of style must therefore be sharply distinguished and cleansed of these trivialising and distracting connotations. It denotes the unity of the difference between the architectural epochs of gothic, renaissance, baroque, classicism, historicism and modernism. The historical self-consciousness of architecture demands the revitalisation of the concept of style as a profound historical phenomenon that can be projected into the future. For this purpose I have proposed that architectural styles are best understood as design-research programmes, conceived in analogy to the way paradigms frame scientific research programmes.

Fair enough. It has taken us an awfully long time to get to this point in the article hasn't it?

A new style in architecture and design is akin to a new paradigm in science; it redefines the fundamental categories, purposes and methods of a coherent collective endeavour. Innovation in architecture proceeds via the progression of styles so understood. This implies the alternation between periods of cumulative advancement within a style, and revolutionary periods of transition between styles. Styles represent long, sustained cycles of innovation, gathering design-research efforts into a collective movement so that individual efforts are mutually relevant,spurning and enhancing.

I can't disagree with this either. However, before we get started, let us also understand that adopting one style means the rejection of all others. Although changes in style predates this notion, inherent within "style" is the cynical notion of planned obsolescence. The acceleration of the metabolic rate at which one style devours another to a speed that exceeds all and any response to the world around it. To me, suggests that the pushing of any certain style wouldn't be directly responsive to the needs and demands of the people, but rather the selfish, grandiose visions of those pushing it. If you are really responding to an actual need, just say that and the style (as long as it is beautiful or lovable) should speak for itself.

Parametricism offers a credible, sustainable answer to the crisis of modernism that resulted in 25 years of stylistic searching

OK. Prove it, but I'll say right now that I'm skeptical of any outgrowth of an architectural movement based solely on "out-weirding" each other until a personal stake has been claimed on one particular outcome of ideological experimentation.

From the inside, within architecture, the identification of parametricism demarcates and further galvanises a maturing avant-garde movement, and thus might serve to accelerate its progress and potential hegemony as a collective research and development effort. As a piece of retrospective description and interpretation, the announcement of parametricism seems justified after 10 years of consistent, cumulative design research. Prospectively, the announcement of the style should further consolidate the attained achievements and prepare the transition from avant-garde to mainstream hegemony. Parametricism finally offers a credible, sustainable answer to the drawn-out crisis of modernism that resulted in 25 years of stylistic searching.

But if it goes from avant-garde to mainstream will you immediately reject it like any hipster might the mass adoption of any particular meme?

Parametricism is the great new style after modernism

Declarative. I'll give him that. Despite passive sentence after passive sentence within the text.

Post-modernism and deconstructivism were mere transitional episodes, similar to art nouveau and expressionism as transitions from historicism to modernism. The distinction of epochal styles from transitional styles is important. In a period of transition there might emerge a rapid succession of styles, or even a plurality of simultaneous, competing styles. The crisis and demise of modernism lead to a deep and protracted transitional period, but there is no reason to believe that this pluralism cannot be overcome by the hegemony of a new unified style.

This is all very true. Let me guess, that style will be yours...

The potential for such a unification is indeed what we are witnessing.

Oh for F's sake.

Beyond the modernist paradigm of separation and repetition

The modernist order of separation and repetition is being supplanted by the parametricist order of continuous differentiation and intensive correlation. Within the broad new paradigm of parametricism, many subsidiary styles might be expected to enrich and progress the coming epoch of parametricism.

We need a Jules from Pulp Fiction appearance, "ENGLISH M-Fer! DO YOU SPEAK IT?"

Modernism’s crisis does not mean an end to unified styles

Modernism’s crisis and its architectural aftermath has led many critics to believe we can no longer be expected to forge a unified style. Did the profound developmental role of styles in the history of architecture, as evidenced in the gothic-renaissance baroque historicism- modernism sequence, come to an end? Did history come to an end? Or did it fragment into criss-crossing and contradictory trajectories? Are we to celebrate this fragmentation of efforts under the slogan of pluralism?

Aimless rambling. /irritatingly tapping fingers on desk.

Architecture today is world architecture

Every architectural project is immediately exposed and assessed in comparison to all other projects. Global convergences are possible. This does not mean homogenisation and monotony.

Quickly, he comes to the defense of what he must realize is the obvious weakness in his statement towards a hegemony of style somehow not equating to homogeny. Perhaps, sub-consciously aware of a shift back towards regionalism (sourcing local materials and responsive to local climates and cultures) and away from global architecture where you can't tell whether a building (or more importantly place) is in Dubai or Dallas?

It merely implies a consistency of principles,ambitions and values to build upon so that different efforts add up, are relevant to each other and compete constructively with each other, to establish the conditions for progress rather than pursuing contradictory efforts that battle over fundamentals.

True. I could have said the same thing, which is why I often state that style is irrelevant. So that doesn't define a style.

This is the idea of a unified style;

ummmm...

initially as a unified avant-garde design-research programme, and eventually as a unified system of principles, ambitions and values that constitute global best practice.

Ok, but how is that a style rather than a set of objective criteria or a pattern?

The new generation

The consistency of the style as a collective design-research programme depends upon the unfailing adherence to the strictures and impositions of parametricism. The good news is that a whole generation of young architects is already adhering to this.

obey.

Actually, I see a "whole generation" desiring to be more socially responsible and responsive. I think outside of measurable objective criteria found within urbanism, space syntax, et al., that may be all that is necessary. Once again, let style be as adaptable as your rigid notion of adaptability as style (I peaked ahead).

Many theorists - like Charles Jencks, for example - presume that the demise of modernism ushered in an era of stylistic pluralism.

The biological search engine. This is no different than any other field establishing that the status quo is no longer adequately serving the needs of society and like worker bees we all go off in different directions looking for the new patch of honey. Once we found our particular "honey patch" or style, we come back to the swarm and sing and dance about how great it is. We create a competition between them to find the most useful. Eventually, perhaps after a few wrong turns via overly-convincing shysters, we eventually find the most useful. Until that is no longer useful.

I'm getting the sense that we have a worker bee version of a used car salesman here.

Accordingly, the search for a new, unified style is seen as an anachronism. Any style today - so it seems - can only be one among many other simultaneously operating styles, thus adding one more voice to the prevailing cacophony of voices.

What did I just say?

The idea of a pluralism of styles is just one symptom of the more general trivialisation and denigration of the concept of style. I repudiate the complacent acceptance (and even celebration) of the apparent pluralism of styles as a supposed sign of our times. A unified style has many advantages over a condition of stylistic fragmentation.

The need for pluralism, however is the necessary constant testing of the usefulness of any current paradigm. Therefore it is necessary.

Parametricism aims for hegemony and combats all other styles.

What about all that "not homogenous" talk? My way or the highway. We'll be the judge of that. Of course, you don't want us to be. You want YOU to be. Sorry. I'm afraid that isn't how the world works.

While I agree that there are rules for how cities function, how buildings merely look is related specifically to the aesthetic tastes of ever-changing demographics.

Parametricism’s crucial ability to set up continuities and correspondences across diverse and distant elements relies on its principles holding uninterrupted sway. The admixture of a post-modernist, deconstructivist or minimalist design can only disrupt the penetrating and far-reaching parametricist continuity. The reverse does not hold, because there is no equivalent degree of continuity in post-modernist, deconstructivist or minimalist urbanism.In fact, parametricism can take up vernacular, classical, modernist, post-modernist, deconstructivist and minimalist urban conditions, and forge a new network of affiliations and continuities between and beyond any number of urban fragments and conditions.

I have a headache. Please state how. Please. I can just as easily state that I can leap the tallest buildings (even in Dubai).

Preparing for the style war

What are the current styles that must be combated by parametricism? Is there really still some kind of stylistic pluralism, as posited by Jencks?

Well, you have just spent a thousand words stating that there is. At this point, I would presume so.

In fact, post-modernism has disappeared, and the contributions and advances of deconstructivism have been incorporated within parametricism. The mainstream has, in fact, returned to a form of pragmatic modernism with a slightly enriched palette; a form of eclecticism mixing and matching elements from all modernism’s subsidiary styles. The inability of post-modernism and deconstructivism to formulate a new viable paradigm led to the return of modernism in the guise of minimalism as the only consistent, ideologically stringent style that confronts parametricism today.

So now you're telling me that there isn't a preponderance of competing styles? Why did I just read the last thousand words?

The primary confrontation in the struggle for stylistic hegemony is thus between parametricism and minimalism.

Parametricism claims universal validity.

It cannot be dismissed as eccentric signature work that only fits high-brow cultural icons.

Sounds defensive. I'm guessing that it absolutely can.

Parametricism is able to deliver all the components for a high-performance contemporary life process. All moments of contemporary life become uniquely individuated within a continuous, ordered texture.

HOW?!?!

The latest built works from Zaha Hadid Architects are much more than experimental manifesto projects; they succeed as high performance projects in the real world.

Please tell me how Hadid projects can help the affordable, urban housing crisis in this country? Or this dislocative qualities of unlivable cities perpetuated by hostile transportation systems?

The Nordpark Cable Railway stations in Innsbruck are a good example. No other style could have achieved this coincidence of adaptive variation to the different site conditions with genotypical coherence across those phenotypical variants. Parametricism is ready to go mainstream. The style war has begun.

No, it hasn't. It has always been on-going. Often pointlessly.

Patrik Schumacher is a partner at Zaha Hadid Architects

Ahh. Now I see. This, in fact, IS an entire pointless rambling screen masking its true intentions of advertising to the well-to-do and want-to-be intelligentsia. Of course, it is full of as much doo-doo as my doggie after a long night's sleep.

What is parametricism?

Parametricism implies that all architectural elements and complexes are parametrically malleable. This implies a fundamental ontological shift within the basic, constituent elements of architecture. Instead of classical and modern reliance on rigid geometrical figures - rectangles, cubes, cylinders, pyramids and spheres - the new primitives of parametricism are animate geometrical entities - splines, nurbs and subdivs. These are fundamental geometrical building blocks for dynamical systems like ‘hair’, ‘cloth’, ‘blobs’ and ‘metaballs’ that react to ‘attractors’ and can be made to resonate with each other via scripts.

Parametricism aims to organise and articulate the increasing diversity and complexity of social institutions and life processes within the most advanced centre of post-Fordist network society. It aims to establish a complex variegated spatial order, using scripting to differentiate and correlate all elements and subsystems of a design. The goal is to intensify the internal interdependencies within an architectural design, as well as the external affiliations and continuities within complex, urban contexts.

The avoidance of parametricist taboos and adherence to the dogmas delivers complex order for complex social institutions.

Negative principles (taboos)

• Avoid rigid forms (lack of malleability)
• Avoid simple repetition (lack of variety)
• Avoid collage of isolated, unrelated elements (lack of order)
• Avoid rigid functional stereotypes
• Avoid segregative functional zoning

Positive principles (dogmas)

• All forms must be soft
• All systems must be differentiated (gradients) and interdependent (correlations)
• All functions are parametric activity scenarios
• All activities communicate with each other

While I like the general philosophy behind it, the idea of flexibility and adaptability, perhaps we are taking it a little too literally? Can malleable forms provide predictability? While humans need responsiveness, more often than not they can provide that themselves. Because times change at a slower, more adaptable rate than these malleable building forms can and do.

Humans also demand predictability the psychological necessitation for the permanence of more rigid, stable forms. In many ways an empty box, a building as a shell is a more malleable, usable, stable, and adaptable form than these crazy (and crazy expensive) techniques.

Critiquing the Critiquer

Over at the Design Observer, they have decided to take on Nikolai Ourousoff, NYT architectural critic du jour. Over the years, we've had our fun with him as well, but agree with his general assessment of the benevolent tortoise, Jerry World. Furthermore, we've been impressed with his maturation that not coincidentally dovetailed with the economic collapse. He began to ridicule the same ridiculousness that he once bowed before. But, perhaps that is the problem:

He might have been the perfect critic for the boom years, when looks were the selling point, but this formal, global approach seems incongruous in a downturn. His evaluative criterion was never clear to me until I embarked on this essay; in re-reading him, I found frequent defenses of one quality: the new.

True. Further:

Local residency should be a requirement for the Times architecture critic as it is for city police officers and politicians. Ouroussoff must have moved here in 2004, when he was hired from the Los Angeles Times to replace Herbert Muschamp, but I don’t recall him ever referring to his neighborhood, to a favorite park or plaza or to the pedestrian everyday city that the rest of us occupy.

Fair enough, but why?

Alice Twemlow argued recently on Design Observer that the best design criticism is based on user experience and unpretentious language, and the same standard can be applied to architecture criticism.

Ahh. Now we have a point (and a trap that I admittedly have fallen into). Beyond simply critique, we have to change the frame of who the audience is. Architects have long since taken a wrong turn down a windy, path as each races past the other to be "more different," while the rest of us are still trudging along on Main Street wondering, "where the hell are those guys going?!"

Buildings are components of cities. Cities are lived in and operated by its citizenry. No building can be judged without its context and how it relates to that context. Design for the people, not for Architectural Record and the architectural sycophants fellating the novel rather than the good.

Does the novel element serve a purpose? Is it a physical representation of a problem-solved or is it pointless? If it is the latter it is doomed to fade away and be forgotten. If it is an effective solution, then it will be repeated. And isn't that what we all really want anyway, flattery?

Short Post on "Creativity"

Some things just leave me in stitches. Like this idea at CNN.

Apparently, we all need to stay in hotels in the sky. Are our cities so deplorable that it defines luxury to get away from them? I don't think so. It's not like we're in Beirut or Baghdad here. Certainly not at exactly the same time that value and demand is returning to urban cores while poverty and crime is making its way to the suburbs.

Efforts like these are tremendously funny for their over the top ridiculousness, typically when they are efforts to distinguish class. Or they can also be incredibly offensive, like when they are experiments on the poor, most often explored and made visible after a disaster.

This isn't exploring new territory really. It is walking down an intellectual cul-de-sac masquerading as real problem solving. You don't get very far down the road until you realize no one is following you and have to turn back.

It is what I often call, unapologetically, "starchitectural douchebaggery," only a far more malignant strain of the virus. These efforts often aren't so much conducted by an established starchitect as it is by a wannabe starchitect, looking to make their mark. They are constructing their efforts for fame and glory on the same logic we are seeing discarded throughout the world (or in some cases, even washed back out to the seas of uselessness).

I'm gonna make a zoo in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean! Won't it be great?!

(City Center in Las Vegas, Burj Dubai, Jersey Shore, and these guys, moderately NSFW - all popping bottles of Grey Goose, seeking acceptance within a higher echelon. Looking to capitalize on a mass movement that has already moved on by, now open to mockery and scorn. Tragic figures really, the lot of them.)

The problem evident here is that the architects responsible (and the cheerleaders/sycophants) are mistaking novelty for creativity. I expect this problem is at least two-fold: first is the ideological bent that has transformed architectural schools into factories sculpters (both real and digital) rather than problem solvers through building. Second, is the financial engineering that created boat loads of funny money.

Ever notice how stupid both individual and group decision-making can get when money loses its value? See all of the above.

As for the implications, Bill Hillier wrote in Space is the Machine (an analytical counter-examination to Le Corbusier's building as machine):

Because theories can be wrong, architects need to be able to evaluate how good their theories are in practice, since the repetition of theoretical error - as in much of the modernist housing programme - will inevitably lead to the curtailment of architectural freedom.

The way to prevent losing freedoms in the real world is to grow up and act like an adult.

Adherents to the cult-like obsession with self-indulgent novelty seeking, like to cast this as "neo-traditional," because in their mind, there is no worse insult in the world than to be considered repetitive of the past. In reality, what is important is empiricism (or the objective application of what has proven to work) and that style is often rather unimportant. Douches, architectural or those found at your nearest club, all interested in novelty and the superfluous. Vapid vestiges of a disposed collective husk of our former selves.

When it comes to shaping the world around us and that which we operate within, architects are our representatives. We seek comfort first, then beauty. This is hard wired into our DNA. We know it when we see it. Or, I should say, when we are within it, because of the digital sleight of hand architects and designers so adept with their renderings.

Hey look! Tons of people, that must be how it's gonna be! And, they're all young, healthy, thin and white! This building will create a magical dreamland!

(author of this blog does not endorse any of this quote)

However, as always, there is a necessity for creativity. The difference between novelty and creativity however is similar to that between comedy and slapstick. It is Chappelle show vs. Mind of Mencia. It is Extras vs the American Office. It's David Cross vs Dane Cook. One lives through subtlety and nuance and exists in the first part of the bell curve/timeline above; the other on the back half. One leads, the other tags along.

The difference comes with what is useful, particularly now. Perhaps rather than thinking about how we can make hotels in the sky, or colonize the moon, or casinos under the sea, we should be qualitatively improving that world within which we live rather than seeking to quantitively expand that world:

How can city building respond to a difficult market in a difficult time?

How can I address the problem of sprawl with infill housing, when conventional building methods/materials or existing financial mechanisms prove antiquated or preventative?

How can I be green and still build affordably?

How do we address the issue of mobility in a sprawled out, unwalkable city without suffacating the project's design AND budget in "required parking"?

How do we repurpose our hyper-efficient dying, assembly line industries to meet the massive pent up and as yet unmet demand for in-town affordable housing with access to choice of transportation mode?

How can we overcome the financial instruments behind real estate and their demand for quick return on investments when the best buildings and cities are long-term, shared benefits?

How can I meet market demand for all of the above and still execute it elegantly?

I find this to be the fundamental problem with ReVision Dallas. The entries, at least the winning ones, look like science projects; amateur attempts at problem solving. Many are clunky because they lack identity. They are bad amalgamations of the quest for the future meme (sustainable and community-oriented), but designed by the hand and ambition of the past (superficial, expensive, self-indulgent).

Someday soon, we might grow up and embrace subtlety. Or perhaps, these are all necessary experiments to find the boundaries of what is ridiculous as we're caught in the tidal shift of two memes.

Steven Holl Does Urbanism

Exactly the way you would expect it be done. Hollystyle: immaturish and child-like.

I came across this new book on Urbanism, by architect Steven Holl, and have yet to purchase it. I doubt I will, after reading this product description from Amazon:

(description in black/interpretation in red):

Contemporary urban development is increasingly characterized by a reliance on diagrams to convey the rational statistical point of view of the professional urban planner. In his new book Urbanisms architect Steven Holl suggests that just as modern medicine has recognized the power of the irrational psyche urban planners need to realize that the experiential power of cities cannot be completely rationalized and must be studied subjectively. (You silly people with your facts, figures, and insistence upon empiricism should let me do the kind of self-indulgent "exploration" of my own choosing, because you see it is way to complex for you to understand.)

With a selection of urban and architectural projects from his thirty year practice Holl stretches urban planning into the domain of uncertainty. Analyzing a wide range of matters from everyday experiences to spatial data Urbanisms examines how perception and the senses are intertwined with the material space and light of urban form. (I thought you said data was too rational? Or how about you are just dealing with the incomprehensive nature of statistical abstractions and incalculable "externalities" like an adolescent?)

A comprehensive exploration of each project illustrates this much-celebrated and influential architect's perspective on large-scale planning. (Because I, being Stephen Holl, am the embodiment of Neitzsche's overman. The only human capable of harnessing the power of the irrational and administering it upon all of you lesser beings.)

Say no more Steven, pictures sometimes say a thousand words. This one says, "ugh."

A City of Zombies

Looooooook into my eyyyyyessssss....hisssssssssssssssss


[You will buy all the mumbo jumbo I say and accept my gift of pure genius at 1/100th scale model form bestowed unto you...because I'm so giving like that]


[biggity boggity boo]

[Warning: HGH levels of snarkiness learned at the feet of such contemporary cranks as James Howard Kunstler and David Simon, or as I like to call them, fire-fingered, truth-telling, flamethrowers.]

So it has been a long time coming, but the design for the proposed Museum of Nature and Science have been unveiled by Morphosis ie Thom Mayne aka Pritzker Prize winning architect (you thought Dallas would hire anything but? We want WORLD CLASS!!!!111!!!) And...they are predictable, if I may somehow be the most flattering AND insulting as I possibly can at the same time.

And away we go, a merry and fawning people, kissing pigs and contracting a swine flu of the mind.

The press release is absolutely hilarious. I copy and paste cuz I can:

Invoking Roman ruins, he said the aim was to demonstrate "Nature taking over building" and that the hope was to include plants and living material in the exterior finish. Talley Associate's landscape design already incorporates a grove of trees, native Texas plantings, and, as Mayne described it, "a savannah" on the north side of the building.

...so lemme translate. In this dreamt post-apocalyptic world when all of our silly messiness of humanity is extricated from their beautiful works of art can this place exist as it is meant. They're so ahead of our time. By the way, a "savannah" has nothing to do with local Dallas ecology. Why don't we just make it a cotton field and get it over with.

In the world of nihilists, the world will be better when we're gone and American society is the equivalent of Rome during Nero or Caligula, a morally and culturally bankrupt empire, at the onset of a new Dark Age. While there may be some truth there, I personally refuse to participate in the fiddling. It's easy to ride the freefall side of the rollercoaster.

The design is conscious of its proximity to downtown, with a transparent atrium on the corner of the building providing dramatic views of the skyline. The semi-exposed elevator shaft on the outside of the building encourages visitors to ascend vertically and then work their way back down through the Museum. (Shades of the Guggenheim, maybe?)

It is very conscious of being near downtown. Perhaps too self-aware, like a Highland Park tourist periodically stopping by the Neiman Marcus flagship. There are views, the building can see downtown, but not be a part of, and is distinctly seperate. As in at least an arm's length away at all times from that messiness that is true urbanity.

But, maybe we don't want that in Dallas. Perhaps we don't want places where we actually can all come together and coexist. We want divergent socio-economic classes and 21st century apartheid. If so, we better be aware of the repercussions and prepared to pay for the taxes to support the physical disconnects and the policing to preserve such divisions. We want to be able to talk about our great city but not mean it. We want to live in our McMansion, but we don't want the hour commute, the surly neighbors, or the fat, stupid kids that we ignorantly weren't aware came as a side helping.

Simply put, we pretend we are addressing problems, throwing money at them, but not really be honest with ourselves about the underlying issues. Sounds like the hubristic lexicon of starchitecture-ese, no?

Drilling out the cavities so to speak. I can donate the money, if it's enough maybe get my name on a brick or something, drive into the city, park in the garage, see a show, and never step foot outside. Aint it great? Now step on it before these city folk spread their diseases, like diversity and tolerance!

And good grief...the Guggenheim? Really? You know what the Guggenheim has? It has New York City around it, providing the life, the vitality, the interaction, and the backdrop for something different to stand out and be outstanding. Without city fabric, something merely stands. And furthermore, the City (and the people) were there first and the City then arose to the point culturally demanding such facilities; the horse appropriately ahead of the cart.

There is still work to be done. (The Museum estimates that it needs to raise another $60 million or so.) But it is clear that we have another dramatic work of architecture on our horizon.

Sidenote: why does every museum have to be so literally representative of the displays inside these days anyway? Yet, remarkably they all manage to look the same yet with each particular architect's not-so-subtle accoutrements.

As for it being "another dramatic piece of architecture," any singular piece of architecture aka object is not and can never be dramatic. It is by definition static, a postcard. The life of a place, the genius loci, alchemically induced by the city fabric is dramatic when appropriately orchestrated to allow the "city" aka the residents to instill their own lives into the place. Places live when they adapt over time. Or we can falsely imply the passage of time and the fate of civilization

The spaceship has landed...on a moonscape apparently

The site is at a critical key nexus where West End portion of Downtown, Victory, and LoMac version of McKinney/Uptown converge yet are each isolated by a bizarre vortex of vacant properties, tangled spaghetti of inhumane roads, highways, and off-ramps, and buildings that (potentially rightly so) want nothing to do with the pedestrian UN-friendly streets on which they sit. Cities are formed by complexity. It is what makes them great; makes them hum. They are about connecting disparate things to allow for said complexity.

The fundamental failings of modernism conceptually is that it was a movement based on minimizing complexity, which had its purpose when disease and pollution wreaked havoc in 19th and early 20th cities. That mentality has since pervaded in all aspects of life. When writ large, we get two-dimensional zoning or when transposed upon singular buildings it minimizes complexity and becomes simple: an object to be unmolested by its context or surroundings and contribute back to the street scene in equal proportion.

Singular buildings are anti-urban, disconnected, not part of this culture, like any person left behind by contemporary post-modern society, their only impulse is to act out against that system that has alienated them. And act out these buildings do.

There is an appropriate place for standing out as any Guggenheim does, but it does so by being plugged into its context. Furthermore, do things really stand out when they all look the same? As part of a fleeting fashion movement? Fashion is inherently ephemeral. Contrasted, cities are timeless. Similarly, these buildings quickly go out of style and soon look aged like a members only jacket:



Any fashion is ultimately devoid of anything meaningful but merely its difference from the previous. "Pea green is in style this season? Oh, I just bought a pair of sea green underoos. I better toss them out and get some new ones."

That is the 20th century economy as expressed through sun belt cities and our prevailing attitudes to all that is around us is it not? Toss it out and get another. So we cast aside Fair Park in favor of Victory, this decade's flavor of the month.



The above image says it all: a view of a loading dock. Presumably however, we're supposed to notice the super clever faux geologic layers of local Dallas topography. What I see is a barrier. Another wall meant to divide, not bring people together and "the prairie" to give ample distance for which to admire another borg cube.

Post-modern nihilists either don't believe in revitalizing your city or are too fundamentalistically tied to their singular design style let alone creating a framework for residents to give life to their own city - which is the only way city's revitalize is when the residents take ownership (and responsibility) for their city. But this isn't for you, silly rabbit. These are monuments to their own other worldly cleverness as they watch Rome burn...and they are laughing at you, at us, the City of Dallas, everytime they make another raccoon trap.

...and quite frankly, Dallas is my adopted home and I'm quite sick of being laughed at, and I don't blame the architects. I blame the siting. I blame the lack of a coherent masterplan. I blame Victory and that gawdawful land bank compost heap uhhh, garden apartment complex called the Jefferson. Ultimately, it's our responsibility locally to have a unified vision for a real city.

DPZ: NU or Starchitect in Sheep's Clothing

I found this interesting, at Planetizen: The Quest for a Contemporary Urban Pattern. I haven't deciphered yet as to whether the vainglorious nature of the title comes from the author of the article or DPZ themselves. If it the former, I apologize to DPZ for the remainder of this article and the writer would be not much of a journalist, but of course, he isn't. In fact, he comes across more as a cheerleader.

At worst, I find it wishful of the sort that proposes some roof gardens and windmills will make a skyscraper green somehow, if not whimsical, which is the same accusation we like to hurl at guys like Rem. Perhaps, this is why I rarely give a shit about a particular "style" of a building. It's little more than window dressing. Styles come and styles go, but quality lasts forever. If architects are no more than fashion designers how will we make the difference we claim.

Personally, I find this neverending "quest" rather shallow and arbitrary. It is much the same trap contemporary architects find themselves. Any and every work must be different in some, nay, any manner and the designers heralded for such creativity by their sycophants when underneath the trappings it is really all just more of the same.

In fact, the term "quest" itself really undermines the significant nature of the changes in the mainstream development pattern that need to occur by the underwhelming nature of the "changes" proposed. So, it's for drainage. Say that. It is by no means some radical new form of city that will save they day. In fact, these things aren't concocted. Changes in city form are natural outgrowths of the needs (or wants when abundant wealth makes people act rashly and stupidly) of the day.

So as the city is an outgrowth or the physical manifestation of economies and/or human needs twisting a grid a little bit is preposterously superficial (in juxtaposition to the pompous claims) unless fundamental shifts in the economy occur, coordinated with organized and focused needs and desires of communities.

I understand perfectly well the role as architects and designers we must play in shaping the city and steering this ship in some direction, but as I said, such artificial claims of substantial change without the necessary fundamental shifts diminish the cause. Perhaps, this is why Duany himself, despite all of his fame or notoriety in the city planning world has never broken thru to the real powers that be or designed anything that altered a city's internal functionality in some paradigmatic way despite his incredible rhetorical skills.

Appropriately, out comes Nouriel Roubini warning of a "double dip" recession once the gas (the stimulus) gets put back into the same clunker (the 20th century economy). Commentary by FreeExchange at the Economist (my emphasis in bold):

That may mean that no matter what governments do, oil prices will act as a governor on the world's (or at least America's) economic engine. Growth above a certain rate will be sufficient to boost oil demand and prices up, dampening consumer spending and slowing expansion—potentially keeping the American economy from growing at a rate sufficient to decrease unemployment. That will be the dynamic until dependence on oil is sufficiently wrung out of the economy, which could take some time. This is yet another point arguing in favour of a prolonged and shallow recovery for the American economy.

Every aspect of our economy, and in turn, our cities (and vice versa) are defined by the cheap oil of the 20th century. Cities have lasted so long as the primary organization of human civilizations for so long because they are so inherently durable due to their diversity. A homogenous economy/city defined by one potentially volatile element in the equation is foolhardy. Just ask Detroit.

Kunstler adds, in his exclamation Financial Crisis Called Off!:

They seem to think this mass exercise in pretend will resurrect the great march to the WalMarts, to the new car showrooms, and the cul-de-sac model houses, reignite another round of furious sprawl-building...

Or as the Daily Reckoning adds the words to my worries over the last five years pre-dating the collapse, (once again, my emphasis in bold):

The process of de-leveraging will be slow. Maybe five years. Maybe 15. Maybe 25. It will go up and down…with high unemployment (businesses will cut their wage costs as sales fail to recover)…low prices (at least in real terms)…low profits…and slow growth, or none at all.

Is that bad? No, not at all. It’s good. Economies need to adjust to the new realities of the post-credit bubble world. It will take time. And with the world’s financial authorities fighting it every step of the way…it could take a LONG time.

So I'll end with the oft cited, and over-represented Churchill quote:

We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.

As I stated previously, however, in reality we shape policy, which shapes economies, which then shapes our cities, which then shape us. And that shape is globular and slovenly.

The Crowd is Wise. Occasionally.

In this case, far wiser than the architects who dreamed up this obnoxious recreation of the giant extra-terrestrial communication machine from Contact:

And, this is why architects are designing themselves right into irrelevance.

HT: Will.

Comment All-stars:

Was this another one of Brad Pitts ideas?

Have you people not watched Dollhouse? Your self-contained habitat needs to be built underground. Duh.

Because why should Dubai get all the gargantuan monstrocities?

All these eco-retarded structures that are coming out now are such a waste of time and computing power. As others have pointed out these pieces of crap will never be built, never. And obtw weren't we supposed to be in flying cars by now anyways?

Borrowing and Ranting

From John Massengale's blog:

Frank Gehry experiments on your brain.



This is a sick joke. I don't even blame Frank Gehry at this point because a two-year old can predict (and model) what kind of design he might regurgitate.

I blame the Cleveland Clinic. First of all, you are one of the premier health care providers in the world. Is it really responsible to be paying the millions of dollars in fees that Frank Gehry commands, then passing these along to your customers, in this case those suffering from brain-related maladies?

Relatedly, as we discovered through work with Johns Hopkins, who desired to become the best medical school on the planet, what would take them to that level they found was really what is OUTSIDE the walls: the place, the safety, the activity, the livelihood of a true, authentic place. Where staff can go to a nearby bookstore, or a coffee shop, or visitors can hit a flower shop, or Docs and students can live nearby in suitably priced places for each.

Lastly, this is the center for BRAIN HEALTH. As Libeskind's expansion to the Denver Art Museum shows, "playful" expressions of planes (or blobs) become disorienting. This article further examines the unintended consequences of "Can we build it" architecture vs. Should we do it.

It opens with a quote from Georges Braque:

Art is made to disturb.

But, architects as much as they may wish to be are not artists. Certainly, it is appropriate in some cases, such as the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, the epicenter of such horrifying commands. In that case it can and should disturb. But, a memorial is an artwork. Certain buildings should be celebrated, such as bridges crossing physical barriers, houses of democracy or justice besting our inner barbarism, etc.

There is an argument to be made for an art museum being a work of "art" itself, but a center for health and rehabilitation? There money would have been better spent on cognitive and spatial awareness specialists, no?

I'm guessing vertigo and nausea weren't goals for the Cleveland Clinic at the outset of the design process. Hardly appropriate for a Brain Health Center, unless of course, you are trying to make new customers, which when you think about it is typically the end goal of a profit-driven health care industry: more customers, i.e. more sick people.

In fact, I think seeing the construction of another Eisenmann, Libeskind, Hadid, or Gehry, et al building will make me crazy as well.

Piling on the Arts District

Truly, my only intent is to improve it and to do so by increasing awareness of the mistakes that have been made. So, with that said, in defense of my critique thus far of the Dallas Arts District, found here and here. Oh, and here and here. Without further ado, here is Alex Marshall in How Cities Work, Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken:

It (ed: San Jose in this context) is an example of what David Barringer, in an article entitled "The New Urban Gamble" (ed: Not as in CNU "New Urban," but more like "New" as in nuevo) in The American Prospect, called "THE CARNIVAL STRATEGY" (my caps).

Cities build a performing arts center, an aquarium, and a sports stadium and hope that the crowds will materialize to fill in the rest of the city. I am extremely dubious about this strategy. Things like art museums and aquariums are great as the capstones to successful places, as amenities and accessories. But trying to make them an economic foundation is to confuse the role of the foundation of a building with that of a decorative window on it.

A museum can be a great reward for a successful region, as can central libraries and other public works. But, even if the crowds appear, they will not replace or even draw the people or businesses that make a center city truly a place.

How many things did he list here that downtown Dallas has: central library, museums, aquarium, sports stadiums, etc. The key here is that American Airlines with as busy as it is, has not saved Victory, or as I like to call it the Potemkin Village. There were just too many mistakes to overcome.

He also goes on to discuss that without successful retail a downtown does not truly function as a center of commerce as it should. It becomes a side act, a novelty. Well, Dallas lost most of its retail despite the Neiman Marcus flagship's stubborness/loyalty.

Retail in still vital downtowns are vestiges, it survived. Dallas is otherwise, and with our knowledge today, retail and commerce follow people. Downtown needs residents and to do so, downtown must be as livable as possible. Things that prevent livability have been discussed ad nauseum on this blog, just do a search.

The other thing preventing livability in downtown AND retail from working is the lack of neighborhood serving transit, ie modern streetcars or trams linking downtown with Oak Cliff as well as near east Dallas, Greenville, and Lakewood. There are healthy neighborhoods there to be served as well as areas in need of revite. New streetcar would mean an incentive for rebuilding bombed out areas such as along Ross and Live Oak, as well as the Zang triangle.

Furthermore, for the stable neighborhoods it means an easy commute into downtown that is potentially preferable, or at least an offer of choice, rather than dealing with traffic and running up to CityPlace or North Park Mall. The key is choice.

The Battle Against Empiricism

In my CNU-NTX summary of the Duany presentation, I quoted him in reference to Civil Engineers and their quest for the perfect Level of Service A street:

"Under what theology does this work?! Where is the empirical evidence that these street designs make for a better place."

Well, there is a similar battle in the architecture field as well. I thought I might cross-post Michael Mehaffy's email to the Professional Urbanist Listserv, where he significantly expands on my riff against tall buildings (well, not so much against, but more as a voice of moderation to the hyper-density crowd -- I'm merely against them as the ONLY solution) to a broader discussion pointing out the obvious flaws (sometimes fatal) in "green" modernism.

Here he is referencing a paper he submitted to a symposium for classicism and sustainability at Notre Dame, and it is quite good:

• Large smooth surfaces. These expanses do not age well over time; small dents and accumulations of dirt detract significantly from the pristine aesthetic at birth. At worst, such structures can become blighted and obsolete, and may have to be torn down prematurely. At best they require frequent, costly and energy-consuming maintenance. Presented to the public realm, they can be exceedingly anti-urban, and disruptive of the pedestrian realm.

• Long unbroken lines, angles and joints. Again, these do not age well and slight imperfections over time show up disproportionately, requiring excessive maintenance and repair -- or, just as bad, suffer a decline in perceived value and appeal. That is clearly not a desirable occurrence when one is seeking sustainability over time. Another potential problem is that the high typical tolerances can be very expensive to produce accurately. A feature that was originally intended to reduce costs (minimalism) can in fact have the opposite effect.

• Glass curtain walls. Even with the most energy-efficient assemblies, the insulation value of these is a fraction of solid assemblies.

• Large-scale, deep-plan buildings. These limit daylight and natural ventilation, sever connections with the outside, and disrupt urban connectivity.

• Large-scale sculptural objects. One key problem is that such structures are difficult to modify and adapt to new uses. This means that obsolescence is more likely if conditions or fashions change not a very ideal strategy if one is seeking resilience and sustainability.

• Tall buildings. Not exclusively a modernist type, but certainly embraced by modernism, they have a number of serious drawbacks: high exposure of exteriors to sun and wind, high ratio of exteriors to common interior walls, tendency to promote heat island effects (which increases cooling demands), inefficient floorplates due to egress requirements, excessive shading of adjacent buildings, undesirable wind effects at ground, high embodied energy in construction, and expensive, high-energy maintenance. Tall residential buildings have also been criticized on social grounds as forming, in effect, vertical gated communities isolated pods that do little to activate the street or energize the larger urban network. While they can provide helpful density, there are more efficient low-rise forms that can deliver suitable densities too.

• Reinforced concrete structures; steel frame structures. Both concrete and steel have high embodied energy and high associated carbon emissions from manufacture. The more exotic modernist structures very tall buildings, very large cantilevers, complex shell structures and the like have a proportionately high reliance on these high-energy materials.

• Limited morphologies of repetition, abstraction, uniformity, and the large scale. Recent cognitive studies have shown that the minimalist form language of modernism, while of interest to other architects and making for dramatic photos in magazines, can be annoying or even stressful to ordinary people going about their daily activities. More research is needed in this area, but there is enough evidence to warrant a much more precautionary approach.

There is also the inherent problem of a continuous tabula-rasa, experimentalist approach, as a sound basis of producing robust and enduring designs - rather like

And I discussed the following advantageous features of what may be called "the traditional family of forms and types:"

• Exteriors with articulation, detail and ornament. These features can hide dirt and wear, and actually improve in appearance with time. They also seem to make important contributions to pedestrian scale and interest, which is necessary if we want to create a functional pedestrian environment and a healthy public realm.

• Complex relation of interior and exterior. The oft-maligned front porch and picket fence actually play sophisticated roles in creating connective layers of private and public, a kind of membrane system spanning between the innermost private spaces of a building, and the most public realms outside. The same is true for galleries, arcades, stoops, colonnades, balconies and other traditional types.

• Focus of the building on its public realm. Most buildings prior to 1920 paid close attention to the way they addressed the public realm, with legible entries and ornamental details addressing urban space. These strengthened the relation of the building to its urban context, and strengthened the pedestrian realm around the building a critical need for a low-carbon neighborhood.

• Punched windows. As many have noted, such assemblies reduce the amount of glazing and make it easier to achieve an energy-efficient wall assembly.

• Low-energy, locally adaptable materials. Often traditional buildings have used locally available materials that have not required extensive industrial processing. Wood, for example, was relatively easy to work, and served to capture carbon. Even brick was usually quarried from local clay sources, and fired nearby with relatively modest energy requirements. These materials also made repair and modification easy and efficient, resulting in resilient and long-lasting buildings.

• Thermal mass. Many traditional typologies have used relatively thick wall sections, which allowed for efficient moderation of temperatures.

• Biophilic geometries. This fascinating area of recent research seems to show that for optimum health, human beings need to experience the geometries of nature within their built environments on a daily basis. These include the obvious natural elements like plants, sun and fresh air. But they also seem to include geometries that are characteristic of biological structures, including fractal scales, hierarchical groupings, characteristic proportions, roughness and texture, an optimum mix of unity and variety, spatial layering, a sense of prospect and refuge, and related geometries. Intriguingly, many historic buildings demonstrated rich aggregates of these characteristics. There is reason to believe they may have played a role in the care these buildings received, and their durability their sustainability over time.

That's a Shame

"Paused" projects...until we can recreate the phony money that drove the irrationally exuberant building spree.

Oh Starchitects, How You Just Don't Get It.

First of all, haven't we been over this? Who has the money anymore to build these frivolous monuments to excess? Second, those of us in the real world are trying to make sustainability more attainable, more common, and most importantly, CHEAPER. Just yesterday, we posted about the sustainable nature of slums.

Here is Curbed presenting Stephen Holl's new whatever complex in Shenzhen. HT: my friend Mike in KC, a landscape architect who specializes in green roofs, who added accurately:

A blending of greenwash and Corbusier. This is not a good direction.

But, this is the only way the self-absorbed dinosaur architects representing all that just failed know. And my firm can be part of the problem as well. Check out our website: nothing but flashy, hard to build object buildings. There is nothing more complicated ingrained into the DNA of these places than trying to be different. That is it. They are the opposite of timeless. They are fashion. And, fashions go out of style. Place IS timeless.

And the sycophants of these new, shiny objects are no better than the high schooler wearing a hat with a pot leaf on it or the college kid away from his parents for the first time that keeps all the liquor bottles of peach schnapps and boone's farm that they finally finished and probably spent the rest of the evening praying to the porcelain Gawd. It is not cool. Get over it. It is juvenile.

There is no goal other than appealing to other architects. Other members of the cult. These are NOT our clients. Our clients are people. Our clients are cities. Our mission should be creating a better world to live and exist in. I fail to see how this is progress.

I was struck yesterday on a client tour of Addison Circle and Legacy Town Center, the moment the lay individuals "got it" when one said, "it's amazing how many things you don't know consciously when you're in a place like this, but you know they're there."

It is good to see the majority of people get it. In the comment section:

steven 'hole' just keeps getting worse.

the other building that rem did, and that holl did, as well as most of the new garbage built in china nowadays, should have burned with that fire last week

the chinese motto: if it doesn't suck, we won't do it

Towers-in-the-Park. Hello 1961. Jane Jacobs, never heard of her.

urban planning travesty

Assuming the sun can get through Chinese smog. [ed: LOL]

This is hideous. In the pretentiousness / ugliness stakes, Steven Holl is now giving long-time front-runners like Libeskind and Eisenman a run for their money. [amen]

Believe what you want. Be as optimistic as you like. What should we care if you want to go around fooling yourself that this is anything other than bullshit. It's your life to waste as you please.

Heavy, severe, anti-social, anti-human, scaleless, leaden, joyless, drab, prison-like, ..... these are the words that come to mind when I see this project.

And in their quasi-intellectual pretensions, these are the same words Holl's deluded staff of poseurs will try to say are the project's virtues. - Yes, I forgot cold, inhuman formalism has always been the stuff of great architecture ... right? [ed: This commenter gets my point that this is phony intellectualism. Their language makes no sense if you really break it down. There is no real depth to this other than being different.]

China seems to becoming the dumping ground for these pseudo-theoretical piss artists like Holl and Libeskind. They get suckered into buying ideas that failed in the US. - On the plus side, at least their crap doesn't get built here any more.

Also, when helping a friend search for a new TV, I was also struck by how the customer comments were far more helpful than the consumer reports or site editor's comments. Despite their expertise, there was a sense of uneasiness that it could easily be corrupted or bought off by a product manufacturer; that you could no longer trust their information.

We are leaving a place of mass centralization and control by the few, to a much more democratic and meritocratic place, where companies no longer compete against others, but cooperate and conspire against the customer.

This process is the crowdsourcing of knowledge, experience, and information. This is a good thing.

Arch Record on ToonTown

I mean the Arts District (link):

But Cloepfil (ed. note: the architect of Booker T. Washington High School) says it might be misguided to expect Jane Jacobs-style urbanism to sprout in north Texas, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Dallas might have to accept the arts district as a successful destination, not a way of life. "I'm trying to be a realist to other urban types," he says. "I do think there are other models of urban success that we may not want to believe are successful."

"Other models of urban success," huh? LOL. I guess anything can be a success depending upon what the goals are. If the goal is a vibrant place, it sure as he11 has not and will not achieve it on its current course. I can't decide if he is being glib with the intended (or unintended?) backhanded compliment to Dallas or not...

Bird's Nest to Hatch Western Consumerist Wonderland

Will anybody ever learn? From the LaTimes.

"They wanted to build 'the world's biggest this' and 'the world's biggest that,' but these buildings have almost zero long-term economic benefit," economist Huang said.

Moreover, the makeover of Beijing for the Olympics led to an estimated 1.5 million residents being evicted from their homes, according to the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions.

Project Mayhem?

Burning Koolhaas Down via the New Yorker, Andres Duany fwd this himself to the Pro-Urb listserv, but since I've done my fair share of Rem (and his protege) bashing, it makes sense to include it as well here:

When the architect Andres Duany and his wife and partner, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, recently received the Driehaus Prize, given annually to honor traditional architecture, Duany delivered a talk in which he mocked modern architects for having “explored every shape that could be hyper-cantilevered, crashed, randomized, slashed, perforated, upturned, bent, dematerialized, dissed or otherwise transgressed.” He didn’t say he was thinking of Koolhaas’s CCTV building, but he might have been, since its shape is about as irrational, and as self-consciously bizarre, as you could imagine.