The OCAD is a sting statement and committed to its whimsy. That gloppy tower with gloppy window openings looks like a halfway commitment to a blobfish!
there is something inherently sinister about conical form buildings (I use the term loosely) - cooling towers, smokestacks, the Rio de Janeiro Cathedral. That weird colored Helmut Jahn building in Chicago.
I think that's what I like about this one. It has a strong presence, and defies you to ignore it. But it does so with a little dignity, not too garish on the outside. Just cheap looking, trying not to be as harsh as it really is.
I'm going to say this one's just ahead of its time. One day LA really will look like it did in Blade Runner, and everyone will admire this as progenitor of the style.
Also, all brick plaza = beautiful everywhere. I think I would love it here. Too bad its for police.
La will never be so vertical except in downtown. I think snow crash would be a better hypothetical future. Walled compounds and fortified ethnic enclaves. All connected by extremely dangerous anti pedestrian streets patrolled by private security guards and an overbearing government police force.
i think this building has to be looked at as a guard tower, or a panopticon as gwharton suggested.
it's too tall, and being a thin cylinder makes it stand out even more. i think the windows are designed to break up the height. the first level has no windows. it's secure, dark, scary, uninviting, just like a guard tower should be. it's divided into 5 sections above that, sort of like a wedding cake. if it was uniform, i think the height would make the tower stand out even more. of course the windows aren't very effective at breaking up the vertical height, since they're just punched openings in brick rather than something that would more clearly divide one section from the next.
i assume the flare out at the bottom is a nod to how tall brick structures used to be built, like the monadnock tower with it's 6' thick walls at the base. or, perhaps the concpet was guided by rossi or daleks. either way, it's the flare out at the base that makes the simple and regular punched openings look offset and kind of stupid.
the attempt at a concrete column dressed up as a doric column supporting a steel beam sums up what this building is. there are a lot of good ideas here. they should have picked one and stuck with it.
i think this building has to be looked at as a guard tower, or a panopticon as gwharton suggested.
I said earlier in this thread but I'll reinforce it: that is such a bullshit explanation. It's not that I don't believe it, but I wholly reject it.
Art can be subversive, art can be satire and undercut power. Architecture can be subversive but never satirical/ironic.
If Nouvel thinks he's being clever by designing a dystopian structure for what he thinks is a dystopian institution, he's woefully naive. That building isn't a witty undercutting of dystopia, it's merely an incarnation of it. The built environment becomes our reality, it has no other choice.
it might not have been nouvel. maybe the client asked for that. it doesn't look like a tall cylinder was a site restriction, or a programmatic one. it doesn't look like it's trying to reflect a lighthouse or a skyscraper or anything else that i can think of. maybe it isn't supposed to be dystopian either. i suppose it's possible that it was a practical consideration, or it could be that the police view surveillance as a positive thing to keep the public safe.
of course i could be far off too. i'm guessing at the intent, and don't have the time or patience right now to see if anything was published along those lines. i just don't see how this could be anything other than a guard tower of some sort.
I love the Guthrie! Each window frames a postcard image (Nouvel used a crane during design to help pick the views), and on a rainy night the reflections of the water trickling across the windows on the crome/mirrored deep frame&sill is quite magical. The homage to the areas industrial past is a nice gesture and the view with Gold Medal Park (Oslund) is a nice photo image. The cantilever arm, I believe, is to get the best views along the Mississippi (almost 270 degrees) as the air rights over the park were available for use while they couldn't build near the ground to get it.
Can't say I like this tower though - I suppose it looked great in model...
I'm not suggesting that making the tower like a panopticon guard tower was whimsical or satirical in any way. I'm suggesting it was deadly serious, and it shows. Anyone familiar with UK policing procedures knows they are highly dependent on extensive use of surveillance technology and highly dystopian in their enforcement priorities. This tower is the perfect embodiment of that.
The idea of a panopticon doesn't apply here. Its a tower. State surveillance isn't done from windows these days, it takes the form of CCTV cameras.
All in all, I think that this project is pretty good. The reuse element (cafeteria especially) seems strong. Donna might be right about the sloped walls making uncomfortable working spaces, though. I haven't been to Charleroi (that's Belgium, not the UK, gwharton) but playing around in google maps, it seems appropriate for where it is.
It's easy to bash starchitects, and for the most part, they deserve it. Think about what cop shops usually look like though - this project, IMHO, is a whole lot better than most.
It's what's being symbolized, not it's practical function. Architecture reifies and embodies the values of the people who create it. Towers are always statements about power. Always. And this one was not only created for an instrument of state power (the police, with everything that goes along with police towers), but the designers and all the client-side reviewers chose to create this particular police facility in this particular way, and responded positively to all the hugely negative symbolism embodied in this thing. That's not accidental, though they may not have done it totally conscious of what they were doing.
It's clear evidence of how sick Western societies and cultures have become. They did that and are promoting it as if it was a positive thing.
Great, this thread is a perfect embodiment of what most architects do best. Trash talk other architect's buildings. Go on please, the check is in the mail.
Well-played, anonitect! But I do agree with gwharton that towers are always about power. If nothing else a water tower is a way of controlling the availability of water, no?
Donna - water towers are a community service, not government control. I like running water.
We're living in a post PoMo world - no need to assign meaning to form without looking at the project holistically - in this case, there's no threat inherent in the design.
The thing more offensive to me than this tower is the fact that the designer of it is widely considered among the best in the world (especially by the designer himself).
You might want to familiarize yourself with the role of public utilities and infrastructure in social and political control systems before digging too much deeper on the water tower thing. You can start with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_empire
I agree with the comments above that read the Nouvel project as a symbol of abusive power, of a police state that is out of control. The question to me is his intention - was he trying to be ironic? If so, huge miss, because it just looks oppressive. Was he directed to do this? Probably not, most police don't want to admit to their actions. Was it an accidental allusion? Good God I hope someone wouldn't have missed that, but possible I guess. I am kind of at a loss.
I would argue the water tower is a sign of power (despite the smiling paint job) just like a grain silo, a church steeple, an obelisk, a Manhattan super tall residential tower.
Gee, thanks for the tip, Gwhart, now I know a little more about the how the Ajuran State maintained control. Doesn't have a lot to do with utilities in developed western nations, though. Municipal infrastructure is a public good, not totalitarian control.
You folk who are interpreting the building as oppressive because it is a tower are being way too simplistic. Do you brake to a halt whenever you see a red car? Red means stop, right?
Intent is insignificant. The physical object, and the message it conveys is all that matters. Irony is an irresponsible, foolish, and frivilous use of a commission because it intentionally sabatoges the immediate context and program to satisfy some detached academic objective.
gwhart, I didn't say that water towers weren't associated with systems of power, I said that they were a public good. Water, as a requirement for life, is of course a resource that could be used coercively - but Ol' Smiley above is not a threat to your liberty.
Policing is a public good too. And water control very definitely can be a threat to your liberty, as history has shown repeatedly. So what exactly is your point?
Gwhart- My point, as stated above, is simply that a tower is not inherently a symbol of oppression.
Your sweeping statement that the building under discussion is "clear evidence of how sick Western societies and cultures have become," is ludicrous. You don't give us evidence for your opinion, which means that your posts are only angry rants, and not part of a productive discussion.
It would seem that, regardless of Nouvel or the clients intention, almost everyone here automatically reads the buidling as a symbol of oppression simply by its imposing mass and visual style.
jla-x: I agree, intent is insignificant to a reading of the building. However, I am curious about the design process, and if Nouvel (or the architect in his office) ever discussed the concept of a tower in this specific context being read as an instrument of oppression or not, whether that is positive or not, etc. Does the intent matter to a critique though? It seems like if an architect has good intentions and botches it the perception of the project would be different than an architect with malicious intentions and gets it right.
anonitect: I can think of more tall structures that are physical and actual manifestations of power than not. Or put more simply, no one without power can or does build something tall. And when they do, like Watts Towers, it feels like a folk miracle. It may be a simplification, but I think it holds up when looking at other functions in tall structures. It's not just the height though, but the height and proportion in this context and for this client and in a CCTV surveilled state.
Towers are not always about power. A lighthouse tower can be quite beautiful and graceful and a symbol of hope and and a safe journey's end. People collect lighthouse paintings and even scale models of various lighthouses.
Aesthetic considerations aside, I think a lighthouse is a good example of a tall structure that isn't explicitly about power in the present day, though control of the high seas militarily and commercially has some bearing on this discussion. Are there any other examples of tall structures that aren't symbolic of power, especially when they were built?
How beautiful someone perceives something isn't really relevant to whether a structure is a manifestation of power, right? If the Nouvel 'tower' that OP posted was a more delicate massing, that met the ground appropriately, with apertures that were well-proportioned and a comfortable spacing, and everyone agreed was a well-designed object, doesn't the context make all of that moot? Because we don't just sculpt things, buildings are a reflection of our values.
The NSA building everyone thinks of is fairly low-lying and is not a tower, as is the Pentagon and Langley. Counter examples to tall power structures abound I guess, but only because power is mostly exerted through control of data now.
Let's talk about a building
^ Which was exactly my point about Nouvel. These guys should be doing backdrops and stage sets, real architecture is beyond their reach.
Donna, I'll let you know what Wil Alsop is a genius and a modern prodigy, look at this for instance > http://www.arcspace.com/CropUp/-/media/10271/1ocad.jpg
just as contextual as Nouvels building.
kill whitey!
the view from inside the gruyere.....
there is something inherently sinister about conical form buildings (I use the term loosely) - cooling towers, smokestacks, the Rio de Janeiro Cathedral. That weird colored Helmut Jahn building in Chicago.
I think that's what I like about this one. It has a strong presence, and defies you to ignore it. But it does so with a little dignity, not too garish on the outside. Just cheap looking, trying not to be as harsh as it really is.
I'm going to say this one's just ahead of its time. One day LA really will look like it did in Blade Runner, and everyone will admire this as progenitor of the style.
Also, all brick plaza = beautiful everywhere. I think I would love it here. Too bad its for police.
i think this building has to be looked at as a guard tower, or a panopticon as gwharton suggested.
it's too tall, and being a thin cylinder makes it stand out even more. i think the windows are designed to break up the height. the first level has no windows. it's secure, dark, scary, uninviting, just like a guard tower should be. it's divided into 5 sections above that, sort of like a wedding cake. if it was uniform, i think the height would make the tower stand out even more. of course the windows aren't very effective at breaking up the vertical height, since they're just punched openings in brick rather than something that would more clearly divide one section from the next.
i assume the flare out at the bottom is a nod to how tall brick structures used to be built, like the monadnock tower with it's 6' thick walls at the base. or, perhaps the concpet was guided by rossi or daleks. either way, it's the flare out at the base that makes the simple and regular punched openings look offset and kind of stupid.
the attempt at a concrete column dressed up as a doric column supporting a steel beam sums up what this building is. there are a lot of good ideas here. they should have picked one and stuck with it.
i think this building has to be looked at as a guard tower, or a panopticon as gwharton suggested.
I said earlier in this thread but I'll reinforce it: that is such a bullshit explanation. It's not that I don't believe it, but I wholly reject it.
Art can be subversive, art can be satire and undercut power. Architecture can be subversive but never satirical/ironic.
If Nouvel thinks he's being clever by designing a dystopian structure for what he thinks is a dystopian institution, he's woefully naive. That building isn't a witty undercutting of dystopia, it's merely an incarnation of it. The built environment becomes our reality, it has no other choice.
The built environment becomes our reality, it has no other choice.
I like this, tduds.
it might not have been nouvel. maybe the client asked for that. it doesn't look like a tall cylinder was a site restriction, or a programmatic one. it doesn't look like it's trying to reflect a lighthouse or a skyscraper or anything else that i can think of. maybe it isn't supposed to be dystopian either. i suppose it's possible that it was a practical consideration, or it could be that the police view surveillance as a positive thing to keep the public safe.
of course i could be far off too. i'm guessing at the intent, and don't have the time or patience right now to see if anything was published along those lines. i just don't see how this could be anything other than a guard tower of some sort.
Fair point. I'd be very interested in hearing a short narrative from Nouvel at some point. Until then the best we can do is speculate.
I love the Guthrie! Each window frames a postcard image (Nouvel used a crane during design to help pick the views), and on a rainy night the reflections of the water trickling across the windows on the crome/mirrored deep frame&sill is quite magical. The homage to the areas industrial past is a nice gesture and the view with Gold Medal Park (Oslund) is a nice photo image. The cantilever arm, I believe, is to get the best views along the Mississippi (almost 270 degrees) as the air rights over the park were available for use while they couldn't build near the ground to get it.
Can't say I like this tower though - I suppose it looked great in model...
Some narrative bullshit is suddenly going to open the heavens and magically turn this building into a great work?
One of the problems with architectural school is they tend to think that bullshit is at least - if not more - important than the building.
I'm not suggesting that making the tower like a panopticon guard tower was whimsical or satirical in any way. I'm suggesting it was deadly serious, and it shows. Anyone familiar with UK policing procedures knows they are highly dependent on extensive use of surveillance technology and highly dystopian in their enforcement priorities. This tower is the perfect embodiment of that.
Isn't that worse? Nouvel already looks like Dr. Evil, he should be wary of inviting any further comparison.
Some narrative bullshit is suddenly going to open the heavens and magically turn this building into a great work?
Not at all, just that it will give us a basis on which to criticize him for what he actually meant, not what we think he may have meant.
or perhaps the building is a failed reference to a triumphant collumn or obelisk sometimes found at the center of a plaza or square.
s
http://harryallen.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/jean_nouvel_dr_evil.jpg
The idea of a panopticon doesn't apply here. Its a tower. State surveillance isn't done from windows these days, it takes the form of CCTV cameras.
All in all, I think that this project is pretty good. The reuse element (cafeteria especially) seems strong. Donna might be right about the sloped walls making uncomfortable working spaces, though. I haven't been to Charleroi (that's Belgium, not the UK, gwharton) but playing around in google maps, it seems appropriate for where it is.
It's easy to bash starchitects, and for the most part, they deserve it. Think about what cop shops usually look like though - this project, IMHO, is a whole lot better than most.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3730/2066/1600/hadidursula.0.jpg
It's what's being symbolized, not it's practical function. Architecture reifies and embodies the values of the people who create it. Towers are always statements about power. Always. And this one was not only created for an instrument of state power (the police, with everything that goes along with police towers), but the designers and all the client-side reviewers chose to create this particular police facility in this particular way, and responded positively to all the hugely negative symbolism embodied in this thing. That's not accidental, though they may not have done it totally conscious of what they were doing.
It's clear evidence of how sick Western societies and cultures have become. They did that and are promoting it as if it was a positive thing.
Towers are always statements about power. Always.
Great, this thread is a perfect embodiment of what most architects do best. Trash talk other architect's buildings. Go on please, the check is in the mail.
*cheque
Well-played, anonitect! But I do agree with gwharton that towers are always about power. If nothing else a water tower is a way of controlling the availability of water, no?
Sometimes you have to call a piece of shit what it is. Especially when it's being put out there by a famous self-promoter as not-shit.
Emperor has no clothes, etc., etc.
Donna - water towers are a community service, not government control. I like running water.
We're living in a post PoMo world - no need to assign meaning to form without looking at the project holistically - in this case, there's no threat inherent in the design.
I have only visited one of Nouvels buildings...the Reina Sofia in Madrid...I actually kinda liked it. Thought the entrance was weird though...
gwharton: I can definitely agree with that.
The thing more offensive to me than this tower is the fact that the designer of it is widely considered among the best in the world (especially by the designer himself).
anonitect,
You might want to familiarize yourself with the role of public utilities and infrastructure in social and political control systems before digging too much deeper on the water tower thing. You can start with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_empire
I agree with the comments above that read the Nouvel project as a symbol of abusive power, of a police state that is out of control. The question to me is his intention - was he trying to be ironic? If so, huge miss, because it just looks oppressive. Was he directed to do this? Probably not, most police don't want to admit to their actions. Was it an accidental allusion? Good God I hope someone wouldn't have missed that, but possible I guess. I am kind of at a loss.
I would argue the water tower is a sign of power (despite the smiling paint job) just like a grain silo, a church steeple, an obelisk, a Manhattan super tall residential tower.
I like the color of the brick though...
Gee, thanks for the tip, Gwhart, now I know a little more about the how the Ajuran State maintained control. Doesn't have a lot to do with utilities in developed western nations, though. Municipal infrastructure is a public good, not totalitarian control.
You folk who are interpreting the building as oppressive because it is a tower are being way too simplistic. Do you brake to a halt whenever you see a red car? Red means stop, right?
"ironic"
Intent is insignificant. The physical object, and the message it conveys is all that matters. Irony is an irresponsible, foolish, and frivilous use of a commission because it intentionally sabatoges the immediate context and program to satisfy some detached academic objective.
Municipal infrastructure is a public good, not totalitarian control.
Until it turns scarce.
Try collecting rainwater on your house in most of the US, you'll be amazed how illegal it is.
Right. Because history started in 1968 and ended in 1992?
Do you seriously think that utilities and infrastructure are not associated with systems of power? Seriously?
tduds, I've got a rain barrel in my backyard.
gwhart, I didn't say that water towers weren't associated with systems of power, I said that they were a public good. Water, as a requirement for life, is of course a resource that could be used coercively - but Ol' Smiley above is not a threat to your liberty.
Can we have "let's talk about a buidling" threads be a weekly thing? This is the best discussion on here in a while.
Policing is a public good too. And water control very definitely can be a threat to your liberty, as history has shown repeatedly. So what exactly is your point?
Gwhart- My point, as stated above, is simply that a tower is not inherently a symbol of oppression.
Your sweeping statement that the building under discussion is "clear evidence of how sick Western societies and cultures have become," is ludicrous. You don't give us evidence for your opinion, which means that your posts are only angry rants, and not part of a productive discussion.
It would seem that, regardless of Nouvel or the clients intention, almost everyone here automatically reads the buidling as a symbol of oppression simply by its imposing mass and visual style.
So doesn't that essentially make it one?
Waiting for someone to photoshop the All Seeing a Eye of Mordor on top of it ...
I just found the reference inspirational picture for it!!! .. can you see the common factor? they're all under the same category $$$
jla-x: I agree, intent is insignificant to a reading of the building. However, I am curious about the design process, and if Nouvel (or the architect in his office) ever discussed the concept of a tower in this specific context being read as an instrument of oppression or not, whether that is positive or not, etc. Does the intent matter to a critique though? It seems like if an architect has good intentions and botches it the perception of the project would be different than an architect with malicious intentions and gets it right.
anonitect: I can think of more tall structures that are physical and actual manifestations of power than not. Or put more simply, no one without power can or does build something tall. And when they do, like Watts Towers, it feels like a folk miracle. It may be a simplification, but I think it holds up when looking at other functions in tall structures. It's not just the height though, but the height and proportion in this context and for this client and in a CCTV surveilled state.
Towers are not always about power. A lighthouse tower can be quite beautiful and graceful and a symbol of hope and and a safe journey's end. People collect lighthouse paintings and even scale models of various lighthouses.
Aesthetic considerations aside, I think a lighthouse is a good example of a tall structure that isn't explicitly about power in the present day, though control of the high seas militarily and commercially has some bearing on this discussion. Are there any other examples of tall structures that aren't symbolic of power, especially when they were built?
How beautiful someone perceives something isn't really relevant to whether a structure is a manifestation of power, right? If the Nouvel 'tower' that OP posted was a more delicate massing, that met the ground appropriately, with apertures that were well-proportioned and a comfortable spacing, and everyone agreed was a well-designed object, doesn't the context make all of that moot? Because we don't just sculpt things, buildings are a reflection of our values.
The NSA building everyone thinks of is fairly low-lying and is not a tower, as is the Pentagon and Langley. Counter examples to tall power structures abound I guess, but only because power is mostly exerted through control of data now.
^good points about NSA building
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