CNN, Daniel Libeskind: why are architects so f'ing whacky?

[Eurobabe]

Caveat: I studied architectural history as my graduate degree. I majored in 19th century American Architecture and non-Western Architecture.

Some of the shit that passes for 'architecture' nowadays is disgusting garbage. IM Pei should be drawn and quartered for putting that POS pyramid next to the Louvre. Frank Gehry is another one whose buildings leave me cold. Libeskind's art museum in Denver is atrocious. Can't wait to see what the World Trade Center is going to look like?! (insert sarcasm here)

No references to history, to the past, just some guy's over the top 'creative genius.' "Well, I was flying over the Rockies and thought of mountains and techtonic plates."

Give me a break.

[xchrom]

1. i don't think either gehry or pei would say they don't

draw from the past or use it in their buildings.

gehry draws frow sculpture as much as he does from architecture -- and for a reason.
to create buildings that are ''new''.

i'm no fan of the bauhause mindset or version of modernity -- but i have few arguments with pei or gehry.

[Eurobabe]

3. My not referencing the past annoyance is more directed at Libeskind

not IM Pei who was paying homage to Egyptian arch. at the Louvre. re: Pei, I just don't like the way that building was crammed into the courtyard of the Louvre, violating the processional space. Gehry's kitchy references and Postmodernism do-dads are just weird. Just a personal preference.

And we need more women architects BTW, to design houses, to design buildings. Alot of the stuff men put out there are nothing more than Howard Roark's wet dreams.

[xchrom]

5. can't help you out -- i love the pyramid --

and i think gehry is one of the greatest architects ever.

both are great breakaways from the dominance of the bauhause and minimalism -- and make -- you won't like this -- an architect like libeskind possible. who i also like.

i'm one of those who has a real love hate with a lot contemporary art and architecture -- but not so much with these examples.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Yah, the pyramid by the Louvre leaves me cold. just doesn't fit there

[Ignacio Upton]

4. Libeskind technically didn't design the actual buildings for the WTC

He designed the master plan for the site, and those buildings featured in the renderings were intended as place-holders.

Here's what the site will look like:
http://www.wtc.com/index.aspx

...Can't say I'm terribly impressed. There are only two buildings I like in that plan, and the "Freedom Tower" is not one of them.

...BTW, I agree that Libeskind is a primadonna.

[Johnny Noshoes]

10. First off

I'm not crazy about the name "Freedom Tower" - please any other name it just sounds too jingoistic. So much of modern architecture seems soulless to me. There is the Conde Nast building in Times Square that looks like it was designed by monkeys playing with a cad program. All that steel and glass and huge empty plazas. Hell sorry to offend but the twin towers were ugly and soulless as well. I'm a New Yorker and yeah the skyline of lower Manhattan is empty but do we have to fill the void with more ugly steel and glass. If the damn real estate weren't so valuable I'd say make the whole space a memorial park. Downtown sure could use the green space but that ain't gonna happen.


"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, no matter how satisfying and reassuring."
- Carl Sagan

[Ignacio Upton]

28. I agree except for leaving the site empty

The land is extremely valuable, and unfortunately Silverstein & Co. is willing to build buildings that look like crap (with the exception of the one designed by Richard Rogers, which I actually like) instead of good architecture.

BTW, here's a really old rebuilding proposal from late 2001. It could be modified a bit to accomodate the memorial site, and the buildings would look a lot nicer on the site:

http://www.flmarchitects.com/wtc.htm

http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_4_what_should_rise.html

Here's a picture from that proposal:

[Johnny Noshoes]

37. I know

they can't leave the site "undeveloped" it was just a nice thought seeing as how Manhattan could use the green space. The buildings in that sketch would've fit very nicely with some of the older style financial district architecture.

"To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." - Dr. Carl Sagan

[JeffR]

6. The Denver museum is a dry run for the ROM expansion in Toronto

This was shot May 1.



Most of the structure now has cladding, but I can't find more recent pics I know I have somewhere.

If you feel for the people who are going to have to look at this building, imagine the engineers and construction workers who have to try to make Libeskind's napkin scribbles a reality. They're the ones I'm most sorry for.:crazy:

[rockymountaindem]

11. I live a block from the ROM and see it almost every day

This ROM thing looks horrible, is proceeding at a snail's pace, and has been widely condemned by the powers that be in Toronto, as well as the general public. I haven't met one person who thinks it's going to look good when its finished.

[JeffR]

12. Condolences

I'm seldom in that neighborhood, but I try to go by periodically to watch the progress of the construction (very slow, as you noted). I sure wouldn't want to be confronted with it every day.

I am a big fan of Will Alsop's OCAD building, though, so maybe I'm just crazy...

[rockymountaindem]

17. Is that the one down by the AGO?

I manage to ignore the ROM mostly, but it's hard sometimes. It looks like some crystal formation is growing over the perfectly nice old-fashioned building. It's rediculous.

[JeffR]

23. Yeah, the "flying tabletop"

Best view is from Grange Park, if you're down there sometime.

The ROM expansion will probably stand or fall on its value as a place to display objects, and I've read some less-than-enthusiastic assesments of the Denver museum's value as a display space. Inefficient inside and ugly outside were the rationales for tearing down Kinoshita's "old" ROM expansion - this could end up being unfortunately ironic when Libeskind's is finished.

[Ignacio Upton]

7. Unfortunately, so-called "experts" in architecture

Feel that anything built before WWII can't ever be built again because it is simply repeating the past and not trying something new. Well...classical structures were used over and over again. Does that make the people from the 1700's or 1800's imitators without originallity?

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Well, no

The rise of that form of arcjitecture in the 17th and 18th century was a reaction to previous styles and part of a general cultural movement towards science, mathematics, and formal logic. Enlightenment architecture found its models in classical design because it represented itself as a return to classical reason, with all its trappings. At least, that's the usual story. I don't see any problem with trying to create new designs in architecture. Why not? Because it's "ugly." Who's to say. Create new types of spaces in the world. Good. Realign the eye, rewrite the skyline. I don't get the problem with any of this. It seems a bit reactionary, if anything.

[Eurobabe]

13. Ha! And we all know now what happens when people don't mind their history

lessons.

Anyone in particular come to mind? Like the knuckle-dragger in charge?

[Ignacio Upton]

24. I'm tired of a bunch of architectural elitists saying that anything post-war

I just awesome, while anything built before that is/was decadent or not worthing building again...unless it comes in the form of some cheesy post-modern shit, like what was built in the '80s and early '90s.

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. I like all three you named

But I guess I'm not a traditionalist on these things. I want to see the creation of new human beings through architecture. Liebeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin is a masterpiece, in my view. Do you like the Bilbao Guggenheim, or is that atrocious too?

[Eurobabe]

14. I just don't really like modern architecture

Bilbao Guggenheim is also hideous, IMHO. Looks like something out of a scrapyard that someone flung together with a welding torch.

Now, the Alhambra? Or the Mosque of Cordoba? Those are beautiful, timeless. It's all personal taste really.

[alcibiades_mystery]

18. Yeah, I understand

Definitely personal taste. I think the Alhambra and Mosque of Cordoba are wonderful as well, but I wouldn't call them timeless. They are beautiful, in some ways, because they condense the assumptions of their time and culture, not because they transcend them. But yes, personal taste. But taste has a history, too.

[Rabrrrrrr]

26. And the Mosque of Cordoba was new at one time,

and I bet drew a lot of ire for being hideous. And likely also the Parthenon. And probably most major structures through time have had their critics and detractors at the time they were built.

Time is the true critic.

[Ignacio Upton]

32. "Modern" architecture has been around for more than 60+ years

It's hard new now, and it's hardly attracting throngs of people outside the architectural elites.

[IntravenousDemilo]

15. You know what's ugly...

Buildings that look like this:

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Save us from the effects of Mies van der Rohe and other architects like him, and their minimalist buildings that look alternatively like electric shavers or ice-cube trays, as if they came from Ikea. The Twin Towers were genuinely ugly and boring as far as I am concerned (which of course is no reason to fly planes into them -- I'm just speaking aesthetically).

Give me gargoyles, spires, and flying buttresses. I admire buildings that are unusual, such as Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Sagrada_Familia.html), or the upcoming "Marilyn Monroe" condo development in Mississauga, Ontario (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2006/03/29/tor-condo-tower060329.html).

[Eurobabe]

16. Aye-freakin-men!

I have this thing for skeletons, like this:

[IntravenousDemilo]

22. Testify!

Nice pic.

I suspect my taste in architecture may be affected somewhat by my love of Tim Burton movies. You remember Vincent Price's estate in Edward Scissorhands? Absolutely beautiful! Compare it with the clean, manicured lawns of the suburban houses, which came across to me as kind of evil in their orderliness and sterility -- they were "all made out of ticky-tacky and they all looked just the same," much like most skyscrapers today, which are monolithic symbols of inhuman corporatism.

[Shakespeare]

19. Pei's design of the east building of the National Gallery is brilliant.

Have you seen that building in person? And not just from the sidewalk, but walked right up to those sharp corners and look up, look out, look at the planes Pei is playing with?

I may not like every single building he or Gehry has designed, but they're unquestionably innovative and occasionally brilliant.

I was skeptical of Gehry's design for the Disney concert hall in LA....until I saw it in person. It takes my breath away every time.

[Eurobabe]

30. Yes, I don' like the way it violates the processional space

of the courtyard of the Louvre. Had it been placed on its own somewhere, I might have liked it. Just don't like it THERE.

[Shakespeare]

31. I'm not talking about the Louvre, I'm talking about the National Gallery in DC. n/t

[Eurobabe]

34. Sorry it's late in Europe, 11pm, didn't catch that DC reference n/t

[Initech]

20. I work with architects. He's not that far off, actually.

[never cry wolf]

21. As an architect, I agree with you

I am fairly disgusted with the "Starchitects" that most see as representing my profession. Creativity is good, sculpture as a building is not. Being different just for the sake of being different is not good.

I blame the educational establishment, the academia. I read a blurb a few years back about the incoming dean of architecture at Notre Dame. It listed all of his accomplishments, his publications, the competitions he has won. What was glaringly missing was that HE HAD NEVER BUILT A DAMN THING! Nothing, nada, no design of his had ever had a shovel put in the ground.

The newsletter I get from the architecture department at my alma mater, UIC (Illinois-Chicago)is designed by the students. They play with the graphics and fonts and layouts in such crazy ways it is intelligible. They defeated the purpose of the publication in order to be different. This is at what I consider to be one of the more practical minded schools. It is a mile from downtown Chicago and the professors are not ivory tower echo chamber types because almost all are practicing in offices and actually deal with budgets, codes and the red tape on a daily basis.

[alcibiades_mystery]

25. Daniel Liebeskind is not different for the sake of different

And he actually builds buildings as well. He has a particular point of view he is trying to get across. I'm fine with architects who build towards the aesthetics already circulating in society, and even the architects who build purely functional structures with little view towards aesthetics. That's fine with me. I wouldn't want to go to the dentist in a building that looked like the Jewish Museum in Berlin. There's a time and place for everything. But I really don't get some of the reactionary posts on this thread. As much as I'm glad for the "practical" architecture, I'm also glad that there are people out there tweaking it, challenging our spatial aesthetics, and our assumptions of how space should work in architecture. I'm glad there are people experimenting with and exploring new forms. I'm glad there are people out there thinking philosophiocally about how we organize space in building, whether they're reading Liebeskind or Henri Lefevre. I really don't see what's wrotng with that. I'm glad there are people writing experimental poetry, people pushing the boundaries of art, and people building different sorts of buildings. When you look at Libeskind's writing about his own work, it is clear he's not being different for the sake of difference. He's exploring the underlying assumptions of architecture and trying to produce responses to the spaces of our lives. He's saying something about space, with buildings themselves. I think this is admirable. Just as I think the practical workers in architecture are admirable. Without the Libeskind's, we'd never get anything new. Without the practical workers, we'd never get anything solid. There's a place for both.

[Eurobabe]

35. Nobody's arguing with you on that, read my disclaimer: personal taste

It would be a boring world if we just had stagnate design. I agree.

So having said that, you know whose sculpture I absolutely adore? Dale Chihuly. He's brilliant.

And come on, you KNOW we are all reactionary in DU!

[alcibiades_mystery]

36. Some folks are

:-)

[Eurobabe]

33. Starchitect!! Brilliant!

UVA was great because they required the Arch students to take many history courses as part of their degree requirements. Alot of the arch students came in with an attitude that matched their funky glasses and black outfits: Starchitec-wannabees. I bet 95% of them had no clue as to what a livable building design is/was. I think the Arch faculty smacked them into reality pretty quickly. They were required to take Landscape Arch courses (I took a year of LAR as well) so as to respect the relationship of the building to the surroundings. So the building doesn't become some Objet d'Art hanging out there on its own with no community with its 'place.'

The arch history students spent 2 summer sessions in studio, complete with modelling, drawing by hand, designing a building and dreaded crits. I found that part fascinating, and if I had been younger when I started the program (I was 36 at acceptance) I might have seriously considered becoming an architect myself.

One of my old profs from UVA actually left in 1998 to teach at Notre Dame, I think he's the Dept. Chair.

[BlooInBloo]

27. (shrug) I kind of like the DAM. I of course realize that no one in an art-ish...

... field values the opinion of someone not in a (commonly recognized) art-ish field, but that's ok. I think the DAM is interesting to look at.

[Rabrrrrrr]

29. IM Pei's architecture is sublime and intensely spiritual.

His Miho museum is a religious experience just by itself, regardless of the contents.

His bell tower is exquisite.

The pyramid is gorgeous; though I, too, think it looks sort of out of place where it is. But if one simply doesn't like its placement, that's not Pei's fault. It's the fault of the Louvre.

I thank God for the artists who are willing to try new things, push the boundaries, explore in uncharted territory, play with the materials, and try to evolve the art they are involved in.

[Canuckistanian]

38. Look at Frank Lloyd Wright - mad as a hatter

A walking ego trip with a disastrous personal life. His arrogance knew no bounds.

But I heard how he designed Fallingwater, what a work of genius! He picked out a site, had it surveyed down to the last rock and thought about the design for several months. And all this time he never put a single idea down on paper.

Finally, the client asked if he could come over and see the plans. Wright agreed. The meeting was to be the next day. In three hours, working almost entirely from memory, he created the complex cantilevered balconies, the interior with it's natural rock hearth and all the strucural drawings.

Amazing.

[donco6]

39. I love the art museum.

Sorry to disagree, but it's the most spectacular building in town.