Architecture - the good, the bad and the ugly

Of the unique accommodations at Tree Hotel in northern Sweden, I present these two for your perusal. You may want to check out the rest.

The mirror cube: Day view



The mirror cube: Night view



The nest: Day view



The nest: Night view

 

--- merged: Feb 18, 2014 at 7:51 PM ---
I took this with a 35mm camera in the early 60's....old farm house in eastern Washington... temporary architecture ...xoxoxoo

 

The Sky Habitat, a new building going up in Singapore. Designed by Moshe Safdie (the same guy who designed Habitat in Montreal).



One of the bridges linking the two towers is a swimming pool.

 

This was built in the 70's in Cantwell AK.
It was supposed to be a hotel but they ran out of money and it was never completely finished.

 

Fuck, I hated going to that place but it was home to Home Despot and I was renovating.

 

I have added this picture to my screen saver collection.

 

what was there before? do you have a 'before' picture?

 

Probably a few houses. Before that, corn fields.

Jane Jacobs has been a major hero of mine since 1970.

The opposite of what she prescribed? Well, let's see. She advocated density, mixed uses, small blocks, a mix of old and new structures. Her orientation was to the concept of street, that is, a space enclosed by buildings on both sides. All of that is absent here.

On the other hand, when she wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she would have been astounded to see new commercial buildings with traditional architectural features like arches and bays and cornices and string courses and gables and towers, buildings deliberately designed with angles and irregularities to simulate a district that was built up over time.

In 1965, all that was absolutely forbidden, and the rectilinear glass or concrete box was the only approved form of architectural expression. An architect who dared to design something like the mall in the photo would have been expelled from the AIA.

(Architect Eero Saarinen was denounced for his Yale dorms, and never again taken seriously by the architectural establishment, not because the dorms weren't Modern, but because the color and texture of the concrete was designed to reflect nearby Gothic buildings. Heresy!)

I suspect Jane Jacobs would have welcomed, at least, the breakdown in the strict and sterile architectural orthodoxy that destroyed so much urban fabric in her time. (Wikipedia: "Her aesthetic can be considered opposite to that of the modernists, upholding redundancy and vibrancy against order and efficiency.")

You see "garish"; I see the end of five grim decades of architectural totalitarianism. The absolutist rejection of ten thousand years of history -- e.g., Gropius discarding the Harvard architectural library, because he thought there was nothing to learn from the past -- has finally receded.

The problem is that architects trained to design glass boxes (as they still are in most architecture schools) are not necessarily very good at creating more interesting and human-scaled structures.

 

As I wrote on the first page of this thread:

 

The issue I have with these Smart Centres is that they are low density and car dependant. We need to build more integrated communities that are mixed use and (largely) walkable.

Interestingly, this neighbourhood will be on the new Crosstown LRT line. In joining the transit system's rail network, it could have stood to be a higher density zone.

 

Yes. That's what I am getting at. Cars are fine, but when an area is designed, it needs to take into consideration that people may want to walk there. This is especially true in an area like this, where there are residential areas directly adjacent.

On the whole, I would rather see a neighbourhood like the Annex, where you can have it all (work, play, shopping, excellent transit access, walkability, etc.). Design wise, the suburbs were a mistake.

That said, I suppose they did serve their political and economic purpose... The suburbs not only created a wealth of consumers who need at least one of everything for their new place (just see Plan9's new house thread), but also home owners. Home owners are much more invested in 'the system' than renters. The US post-war push to subsidize a new way of living, was a clever move at the time (GI Bill, Highway Act, etc.).

 

BG, did you just recently move to Leaside? I live across the Leaside Bridge - over towards Woodbine. When that Smart Centre opened up, I grabbed my son (who was in mid Call of Duty) and walked him counter-clockwise around the stores in that development and had him submit a resume to each one that would accept on the spot. A week later, Home Depot (the large detached building at the top of the horseshoe with the orange sign) called him for an interview. He worked there for a year, which set him back on his COD mind you...

 

This is a picture of the Canada Wire facility from 1955. it is at the corner of Laird and Wicksteed, pretty well exactly where that Smart Centre is now.

compliments of Vintage Toronto facebook album:
Leaside Area / Leaside Airdrome | Facebook

 

Speaking of evolving spaces. Check out this video that someone put together. An evolving Toronto...


View: http://vimeo.com/9733014