"Los Angeles... Enough Said"

For the past three weeks, I have been on the road. A great American road trip called my name, and I gladly hopped on the peace train headed south. Traveling from Oregon to the southern California, I saw the beauty of Lake Tahoe, the gorgeous beaches of Santa Barbara, and....don don don... the smog clogged city of Los Angeles. My favorite treat? The hour and a half trek from Santa Monica to Hollywood. Sprawl is truly the downfall of LA. Sorry Cali residents, but taxes need to rise, public transportation needs to be seriously implemented, and those precious BMWs need to be put away. LA is not a city for people, it is a city designed for the car. You can't walk to the grocery store, work, or even to a bar without fear of getting run over or  ingesting heavy exhaust from a bleach blonde's Lexus as she swerves around you. It is time for a serious makeover, LA. Superficiality is not a reality.

"Turning Torso...The bo01 Blemish"

Bo01 in Malmö, Sweden is an incredible and livable mixed-use development that is a prime example of forward thinking Scandinavian design. "It is like they took regular rows of housing and gave it a good kick," said a Danish architect describing to me its jumbled yet cohesive master plan. Each home is individual, of different types, and still a part of the whole picture. The spaces in between the housing units are rich and active. Yet there rest one scar on the face of Bo01....The Turning Torso! Beware, ladies and gentlemen! At a whopping 190 meters it stands high above the quiet village only to cast an unsightly reflection upon the rainwater catchment system. It twists, it turns, and ruins the overall concept of a human scaled environment. True, it is an engineering masterpiece...but not a place for people. It was meant to originally be a temporary pavilion, and wow, did the architect, Santiago Calatrava Valls, take it too far.  

wikipedia.com

 

"Sorry, Portland"

wikipedia.com

Postmodernism...it turns out, is not much better than modernism for the progression of good design. I'm very sorry to bring down the city of bike friendly streets, hip transit-oriented development, and sustainably driven firms, but this one had to be slapped down on the table...and beaten. The Portland Building, designed by Michael Graves, is a 15-story hard-featured beast. The mini-windows dappled around the geometric oddities are far from boring and far from visually appealing. Although there is no other like it, it taints the flavor of Portland with a bitter bite.  

Warning sign, warning sign,I see it but I pay it no mind.

"Tetris Comes Alive"

Minnesota, a Scandinavian second home, but unfortunately, they only picked up the cold weather and weird sounding words because their architecture sure took a hit with the Spruce Tree Center. The hodgepodge of rectangles and squares brings to mind the riveting game of tetris on a cold winter's night. It is completely devoid of any detail or design for that matter. A six year and a bag of block could have made this one. I can't even image how the workers inside the building survive in an air tight box of cubes. What avoid in the Twin Cities? This building.

"Tower of Doom"

Frank Lloyd Wright's protegé and son-in-law, William Wesley Peters, sure embarrassed the lord of architecture in this god-awful design. The Kaden Tower, gracing Kentucky with its masculine presence, sits awkwardly hovering above the ground of the adjacent parking lot. The facade, an intricate lacework pattern, does little to mask the out of proportion building with its surround. Although this suspended facade may act as a shading device, it acts more like jail bars on the interior. A plaque attached to the building regards the structure as a 'jewel'...huh...a jewel under the label of disgraceful design is most likely what they meant. Mr. Wright should have looked over his son-in-law's shoulder on this one. The chick was obviously not ready to fly.

wikipedia.com

Beer...Beer Foam...Turd"

 turd/tərd/Noun1. A lump of excrement.

Who doesn't enjoy an ice cold pint of beer? Sometimes even a little foam at the top doesn't bother me...but a turd floating near the surface surely does. The Asahi Beer Hall designed by the French architect, Philippe Starck, very vividly displays a delightful golden turd upon the roof of the modern office structure in Tokyo, Japan. Supposedly, the building itself is a beer glass and the 'turd' is the foam, but I would say a swing and a miss, Mr. Starck. Weighing in around 300 tons, that is one large nightmare of a turd. Can you spot the resemblance below?

Turd One

Turd Two

"Lovely party, Jeffrey, but there's a turd in the punch bowl"

"Back to the Future"

This past weekend I sat down with some weird friends and an espresso stout to watch the 1985 cinema masterpiece, Back to the Future.I couldn't help but notice the barren mall parking lot in which Dr. Emmett Brown, the mad scientist, tests his time traveling car. And so, today is the day that the mall and its daunting lots receive the label of 'bad architecture'. Although the interior of the shopping mall does have its merits- walkability, skylights, places to eat, rest, spontaneously interact... the mall in its entirety is a disgrace to human development. Simply put, the car is one of our greatest downfalls in the scheme of a well designed city, one in which people love to be in. The mall only caters to that downfall and encourages driving and consumerism. It feeds off a suburban lifestyle and traps its users in a controlled environment of chain stores. There is nothing unique or sustainable about it. Let's BACK out of the big box mall and move in TO THE FUTURE.

Scene from Back to the Future, 'No pine' mall is more accurate

Marty McFly: Doc, we better back up. We don't have enough road to get up to 88.
Dr. Emmett Brown: Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.

This will happen to you if you support the big box mall...

"The X-Factor"

Oh, University of Oregon...you would think that with one of the top architecture schools in the great nation of the United States of America the university buildings would blow any campus out of the water. This one did...but minus the 'out of the water'. It just blew. The Onyx Bridge that decorates that north side of the campus edge with repugnant x's causes quite the eye sore. Not only is it haphazardly window doused and then covered up awkwardly with giant x's, but it also is the most grimy and ill-lighted hall in the entirety of Eugene. "It is amazing that people can work in there and survive," says a student of the university, "It really just needs to go. Dubai might like it." Cheers to that.

 In fact, tack it on to any of the lovely buildings seen below....

"Boston Shitty...City Hall"

 The brutalist style takes another unfortunate victim. In this overly dramatic, raw, concrete mass, architects Kallmann McKinnell & Wood took the concept of a city hall in a whole new direction and a wretched one at that. It screams corporate modernism. You think in the very least a nice public plaza could be provided. Yet, the dull and empty front looks more like a abandon lot than a city in which people live. I suppose the citizens just couldn't stand the unsightly blemish upon Boston's historical face. Better luck next time.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org

I'm good enough, but I don't care
I'm good enough, but I'm not there
I'm good enough, but I don't care
The sun is out, but I'm not there

"The 84 Million Dollar Sketchup Joke"

Cleveland's 150,000 square-foot Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is an unfortunate massing of blank shapes and odd extensions of glass. This is what some would call "a sketchup disaster" and for good reason. As in the program, sketchup, one is able to push and pull shapes from nothing...it appears that that is exactly what occurred here. It lacks functionality within its artful form (artful...?) and has little to no connection to its incredible setting on the waterfront of Lake Erie. The architect, I.M. Pei, came up with the idea of a tower with a glass pyramid protruding from it...huh. That sure says rock and roll to me.

"It's been a long time since I rock-and-rolled

It's been a long time since I did the Stroll

let me get it back, let me get it back, let me get it back" 

"Santorum...Sanatorium, A Finnish Nightmare"

The modernist has struck again. Trapping TB patients high above the Finnish pines with no escape, he feeds them into a machine aesthetic to which they will never return. Blank, stark walls line the never-ending halls as the bold yellow accents mark places to vomit. Alvar Aalto, what happened?
I have had the pleasure of touring this fine, secluded heap of history in nowhere, Finland, and let me tell you, it was no treat. It appeared more a place to die than a place to heal. With its only merit being the sun deck, one has got to wonder what went wrong...oh, it was the modernist movement in architecture. As much as I respect and admire Aalto's other works such as the Säynätsalo Town Hall or Studio Aalto in Helsinki...this Sanatorium, now a general hospital, is an unnerving, white massed disaster.

http://www.independent.co.uk

I've got a word or two
To say about the things that you do
You're telling all those lies
About the good things that we can have
If we close our eyes

Do what you want to do
And go where you're going to
Think for yourself
'Cause I won't be there with you

"From the Window, to the Party Wall"

par·ty wall

Noun: A wall common to two adjoining buildings or rooms

"Though I understand the owner sees potential in having apartments on 13th, living in those spaces will only create depression and anxiety. People need daylight!! No one wants to live next to a party wall," relays a passerby, Ms. Gambino of the interior architecture program at the University of Oregon. "It's fugly," responds another, gawking at the windowless sides.  And to what are they speaking of? A new apartment shoved into a bar and restaurant strip along 13th St to the west of the UO campus. Gaping windows provide little privacy along the street edge as solid concrete barricades line the east and west sides of the building- the infamous "party" walls. This allows no room for daylight in the already overcast city of Eugene, Oregon. Yes, housing next to bars, coffee shops, school, work, and night life is always a plus, but here, it is merely a "good try", and not good enough. Christopher Alexander states clearly in A Pattern Language that, "...man actually needs daylight, since the cycle of daylight somehow plays a vital role in the maintenance of the body's circadian rhythms..." Wings of light are indeed in order, Mr. Alexander.
A Pattern Language, pg. 529

Below, Ms. Gambino in front of the unsightly blight on 13th Street

"In the light 

Everybody needs the light. 

Oh yeah yeah ooh baby everybody everybody light light light"

"Wayfind...Wayfail"

This building shall remain anonymous.... Those who have graced the barren, concrete halls with their confused steps and jumbled mind can contest to this completely random spatial layout. Halls dead end in cramped rooms, dark spaces fuel sleepy lectures, and despite the attempt to signage the building in neon numbers and titles... frightened students wander hopelessly 'round the constantly shaded courtyard. 

"I have not come, yeah, to testify about our bad, 

bad misfortune. And I ain't here a wond'rin' why, 

but I'll live on and I'll be strong 'cause it just ain't 

my cross to bear" 

 

"Keeping the Humans In"

Eugene, Oregon - A city smart enough to move the garage into the alley in the campus surround and bikes along the river, yet they sure couldn't swing this one...



This tactic, "Keeping the Humans In" as seen on the left, features a quaint four foot guardrail (safety first). Although this clearly disregards Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language Rule 167 of the the six-foot balcony, it adds in an extra treat on the bottom floor of being unable to utilize the 12+ sq ft outside of the apartment... poor college students. As you can see, the space has never been enjoyed, no cocktail gathering nor chess game has graced this awkward space with happiness.

"I know we've come a long way, we're changing day to day... but tell me, where do the children play?"