Architectural Notes
A couple of interesting architectural stories.
1. A South Korean developer is planning a high-end apartment development in Seoul–in the shape of the exploding Twin Towers. Never let anyone say that crass America is the height of bad taste.
And yes, I know the original links are from the Weekly Standard and Drudge. And note I am not linking to them. Despite the mouthbreathers of those sites, it is a real deal. Evidently, the designers didn’t see the resemblance. Um….
2. Of far greater enjoyment is Ice Cube leading us on a tour of the Eames House in Los Angeles, which is 12 ways of awesome.
This really needs to become its own television show.
3. An interesting critique of Hong Kong’s architecture by Mathias Woo. He believes architecture should be purely art. I do not believe this because this kind of ideology often leads to buildings completely disconnected from how people will use them. In short, Brasilia may be art, but it’s also deeply unpleasant. The Rem Koolhaas designed Seattle Public Library is a wonderful space, but it also fails at certain things a library needs to have (reasonable bathrooms to begin with. But where’s the art in the toilet. And yes, we are back to my toilet obsession). Still, provocative argument worth discussing.
4. I think most of us would agree that hotel rooms should be designed with more desk space and less drawer space. Unless you are staying in a hotel for a week or more, who really uses all the drawers?
5. It’s hardly that groundbreaking to note that climate affects architecture. But I do want that house/gigantic movie screen.
Who uses the desk in a hotel? I travel a lot on business, but I don’t think I’ve ever used a hotel desk as a desk. Drawers, on the other hand, I use.
It’s where I put my laptop.
I always use my laptop on the bed (no jokes, please).
Weird. I use the desk all the time (laptop, primarily) but have never opened a drawer in my life. What does the drawer do for my clothes that the suitcase isn’t already doing?
Separates out your filthy clothes from your clean ones in a way that doesn’t involve simply scattering them around the room?
That’s how I use drawers in a hotel room. All my clean ones go into them at the beginning of the trip. As I use them and they become dirty my suitcase fills back up.
Laundry bag. (The better hotels even give you one, although usually it’s just a plastic bag.)
Put them where you can see them. Keep them from getting wrinkled.
It also puts my clothes where I can’t see them. Leaving something in a closed drawer greatly increases the odds that I’ll forget it when I leave.
Those towers really ought to get that growth looked at …
If you only use a laptop or mobile device when you’re travelling, maybe you can get by without a desk, but a lot of us business travellers either (a) would rather work at a desk, or (b) have other documents, tools, equipment, etc. where we need a workspace.
I use the desk as a hard, unupholstered surface away from the floor to store my suitcase on. That’s what reading an endless supply of stories about bedbugs in hotels will do to you.
Are there really people still asking where is the art in a toilet?
Also, too.
this kind of ideology often leads to buildings completely disconnected from how people will use them.
See Le Corbusier, passim.
That first link credits The Weekly Standard and Drudge, so I’m skeptical.
“Unless you are staying in a hotel for a week or more, who really uses all the drawers?”
I’m pretty sure you can catch AIDS from hotel drawers.
have you considered seeking professional help, for that toilet obsession? oh well, everyone needs a hobby, and as hobbies go, that’s fairly benign.
no doubt (assuming the story to be true), the s. korean developers had no idea of the uncanny resemblance their proposed structure has to the twin towers. after all, the event hardly made a ripple in the news. they are probably just attempting to make a “statement”. what that statement might be is anyone’s guess.
Those towers really ought to have that growth looked at …
It is easier, and more revealing, to study our history through architecture rather than by studying politics,” argues Woo…
In Woo’s mind. You could just as easily study our history through alcoholic beverages rather than by studying politics. Guess it just depends on what your interests are and who your graduate adviser is.
Architecture should only be art, and nothing else, just as cinema should only be art.
Confident in his pronouncements, ain’t he? The idea that in order to be worthy of the word “art” an object must be useless or too precious to be used had always struck me as unnecessarily limiting and has the extra feature of declaring most of what has traditionally been women’s crafts to only be considered “art” after most of the women who made it have been dead for centuries.
What is the meaning of architecture for the human race, without the art of architecture?
I think we’ll get by on that account. My ex-husband grew up in Hong Kong and even before he reached his full height he could touch all four walls in his bedroom while sitting on his bed. The people in Hong Kong need SPACE.
That Ice Cube video is way cool, btw. Intelligent, educated, good-looking, snappy dresser, well b— ahem. Thoughtful and welcome commentary on L.A. Now, I certainly want to take a train there and spend a few days kicking around. Must make long list of must-sees first, though.
You could just as easily study our history through alcoholic beverages rather than by studying politics.
For example, Tom Standage, A History of the World in Six Glasses. Basically the history of beer, wine, distilled spirits, tea, coffee, and soft drinks, including associated politics, economics, religion, and the occasional war.
I read the ice cube piece yesterday a.d it is, indeed, brilliant and i’ve forwarded to several people i know who are eames fans, including two who in their (much) younger days worked there.
The sad thing about the architecture-should-be-art snoots, as well as their polar opposites, the architecture-should-be-all-function stalinists, is that there’s absolutely no reason why architecture can’t be both artistic and functional.
However, taking one of the extreme positions, as patently ridiculous as they are, gets you taken seriously by the emperor’s-new-clothes morons in the lifestyle media as a bold visionary, or whatever.
oddly enough, that loser, frank lloyd wright, managed to design structures that were esthetically pleasing, as well as being quite functional. but what the hell did he know?
That really depends who you talk to.
Art historians can be a very strange breed. As soon as I realized I wasn’t a deb, I changed my major to studio art. (Years later, I realized I didn’t have a trust fund, either.)
ANYWAY— the structuralists are the WORST. I once read a paper going into great deal of detail about a phallus worshiping culture. I mean bowchickawow DETAIL, only to find out in the end that the only thing extant from that culture was a pile of vertical rocks.
You can never tell what will turn those guys on.
As did Daniel Burnham, George Post, and Ralph Walker. Competence transcends style.
Oops. Didn’t mean to be anonymous after Subby snagged me into this.
They also tended to leak. He needed a better CE
Florida Southern. Those buildings were sieves. The president of the university called FLW to complain about a leak right over his desk. FLW told him to move his desk.
Yeah, an architect who can’t design a building that will reliably keep the rain off is failing at a pretty fundamental level. See also: Zaha Hadid, who outdid herself once with a building that not only leaked but whose walls did not meet at the corners. (Had to be refitted.)
I think most of us would agree that hotel rooms should be designed with more desk space and less drawer space
I travel a lot on business, and half-agree, some of the time. Desk space is usually OK. And most places have far more drawers than I will use. But I’ve stayed (multiple times) in the Radisson Blu hotels in Istanbul and Tbilisi, and neither had anywhere near even the minimal drawer-space I needed. In fact, the Istanbul hotel room (always the same one, coincidentally) had no drawers at all. I kept my change of dickey in the in-room safe.
This is not complaint, it is mere observation. The Radisson Blu is less luxurious than some other places our travel office has booked me into, but still much more hotel than I’d ever pay for privately. And, in the case of Istanbul, breakfast right on the Bosphorus more than makes up for having to store my unmentionables in the safe.
No, my complaint is this: I have never, not once, been in a hotel room that had sufficiently bright lights.
Those towers were not designed to look like the Twin Towers on 911. Only you care about the resemblance. Please explain to me why people in South Korea should care what Americans think?
Perhaps not. What does the design suggest to you?
Oh, I don’t know. Last I heard we were allies, and 9/11 was kind of a big deal. I don’t remember anyone saying that South Koreans should care what Americans think, but I believe we have a right to have an opinion about it. If you think that’s overstepping our bounds, pal, then maybe that’s YOUR problem and not ours.
I’m sure if an American architect designed a building that appeared to be celebrating some horror in South Korea’s history that Koreans would have an opinion about it and I, for one, wouldn’t blame ya’ll a bit.
People in South Korea like selling things – including office space and living space – to Americans. You’re welcome!
If you actually believe that, TokyoHiroo, would you like to buy a bridge?
Aside from the 9/11 resemblance, why would anyone want to live in a building the looks as if it’s exploding?
Also, I have quite a few Korean students, so I’ll ask them what they think.
I’m also wondering who would want to live on the floors with the obstructed views and weird light blocking that the “clouds” will create.
The South Korean building has given birth to the most re-usable headline of all the internets:
Towering Stupidity by Jonah Goldberg
Sometimes “LOL” isn’t just an internet tic.
The East Wing (new) of the National Gallery of Art in DC. A bad sculpture in which you can’t see any.
Tear that bunker down
The Toronto Brain-Smashing Centre.
“The Rem Koolhaas designed Seattle Public Library is a wonderful space, ”
Perhaps there is one space in the Library which is good — just like a John Portman Hotel –but there is far more to than one room to an urban building — for example, as how the building meets the sidewalk.
I’d like to nominate “Before I did rap music, I studied architectural drafting” as the gangsta-est statement of all time.
Not only doe climate affect architecture but architecture affects climate.
The Korean towers look more like Safdie’s Habitat on stilts.
He believes architecture should be purely art.
Perhaps just a little engineering…?
It’s a fairly striking design, although I can’t imagine that they’ll get a lot of people who want to live in one of the apartments that’s really hanging out there, given the association. My outrage is confined to the idea that they’ll steal the Flamingo from Chicago, although since Daley didn’t leave Rahm much left to sell off…