Your post caught my eye. You’ve made some excellent architectural observations of a building I’ve never been to. I wanted to say thanks and reply with some criticism of my own about the architecture. The post ends with some positive thoughts on the situation in regards to the urban fabric this building contributes to.
it’s hideous, it’s uninviting, it’s unsettling when you are walking near it on the sidewalk.
It’s not even clear to me walking by where the proper entrance is. Everything looks like a back entrance that’s not intended for public use.
This comment is subjective but can also ring true for certain areas in my experience. That the building is uninviting probably has something to do with the lack of a clear main entrance in your estimation. All believable. Architectural research suggest “unsettling” might be quantifiable with the right type of wearable tech.
It doesn’t shed rain properly, the rain runs off in random places, sometimes right on people walking by or right at an entrance.
This is a really good observation and I appreciate you noting it here. It’s a bit complex how to address the severity of such building characteristics and the degree of effort that was put in to avoid it. However, the fact remains I’m personally aware of structural engineering firms that have expertise in dealing with the rain loads experienced by unconventional high design high concept buildings. These types of behaviours are also most completely avoidable. What the cost/benefit was in the FG design studio the day this was discussed, I have no clue. Does this make him overrated? If there is a pattern of this in his architecture perhaps.
In summer the sun shines off at odd angles and somehow is always in your eyes no matter where you’re looking from.
Like the rain hitting pedestrians; these are edge case behaviours of a building that are extremely hard to design for (speaking as someone who works in a design studio of a high-design / high concept firm). We ask our buildings to do so many things, I’m just not sure “perfection” should be one of them.
Where I think Gehry is sensitive to criticism is the lack of place in his architecture. This is philosophical opinion only. An aggressive augment can be made that when architectural design is demanded to submit to a branded visual style, irrespective of the environment or community, that can be a problem.
On the other hand, and to end on a positive note, cities are vibrant places and the pull of time works very differently on each people and buildings. There’s lots of interesting research, in part based on economics, but also other health factors, that show what ingredients make cities economic and cultural powerhouses; and one factor is stimulating architecture; creative architecture. Depending on how far one wants to push the interpretation, an argument could be made this pattern stretches through millennia. That’s amazing! Think about it: that you even had the free time? the energy? the education? to form such complex detailed thoughts about a building. People centuries ago ploughed the fields for 40 years and then died. Appreciating the time scales at play, the wider selection of buildings at play that suggests it could be far far worse, I don’t know, but I hope you pass by it 100 more times is safety and good health and the building itself as part of the neighbourhood grows on you.
