jla-x I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds their buildings to be soulless and yes choppy. I've been in several of their buildings and I find them to be downright uncomfortable to be in. The Caltrans is particularly terrible. They design for photographs not for the inhabitants or for the street.
Makingspace, it's hard to explain. I know his work is "good" but It doesn't feel good to me. Like a band or genre of music that you can appreciate but would never listen to in the car...By choppy I mean there is an overall lack of cohesiveness imo. I'm certain it's intentional, but reminds me more of a conglomerate than metamorphic...
I've only been to the Federal Building in San Francisco. I think it's wonderful. It has great varying levels of texture from gigantic to fine, so it works on the skyline and when walking inside it. The site plan is perfect: it holds the corner with a small, accessible cafe, then the plaza gives a large breathing space before the tower starts, and the decision to keep it gravel not paved keeps it connected to the earth. The sky garden or whatever is honestly an incredible space to be in, looking out, and not like any other viewing space I've ever been in.
And, no air conditioning! And it looks super cool.
I kind of understand the "choppy" comments but I think that could also be termed urban and dynamic. I don't think the entire world should look like a Morphosis project but I like that they exist. Let other buildings be calm background buildings.
Are you up to speed on the controversy surrounding the San Francisco building? Reading your post above, I seemed to remember reading about some issues with it, so I searched the web to remind myself. There's lots out there, including this article:
Apparently the passive cooling of the building is not particularly successful:
According to an employee interviewed by BeyondChron.com, "Workers seek to relieve the heat by opening windows, which not only sends papers flying, but, depending on their proximity to the opening, makes creating a stable temperature for all workers near impossible... some employees must use umbrellas to keep the sun out of their cubicles."
Apparently it's not very popular among the people who work there:
"In 2010 the GSA commissioned a survey of employees in 22 federal buildings nationwide, to determine employee satisfaction with their workplaces. The 22 buildings included in the study scored between a low of 13 and a high of 98% employee satisfaction. Seventeen of the 22 buildings scored above 50% employee satisfaction. While incorporating many green concepts more aggressively than other buildings, the lowest ranked building for employee satisfaction was the San Francisco Federal Building, with a rating of just 13%; the next-lowest was considered twice as satisfactory, at 26%. The San Francisco building scored well below the median in the categories of thermal comfort, lighting and acoustics."
And...the very next paragraph of the Wikipedia entry:
"The San Francisco Federal Building won a Design Award from the AIA San Francisco chapter in 2008."
in school I really hated Morphosis work. It is and was choppy and hardly harmonious..........
.. but you get bored after a while so i guess you may want to make interesting moments? with that said though, who is the space for? if you want to make interesting moments its good to have an overall concept that serves the users well, I have not experienced a space by Morphosis that did that.
ok eisenman. its not art.....i am slightly joking. the moments are excellent but you can not ask someone to go running around to understand shit when all they want to do is go to work and go home......is it design or art?
Yeah, I think most people - the vast majority - work in buildings that don't actually work well for them. Which is no excuse for making an intentionally bad building, but one of the goals of the SF Federal building was to make it "green" via reducing the power load. Even in a regular building, in *all* the ones I've worked in, some spaces are freezing while others are hot, and people have gripes and territorial wars over it. Even in 2016 we can't seem to get HVAC right! But I'm glad Morphosis experimented with a new system and now we can learn from it.
Also, frankly, a lot of people see *anything* contemporary (art, music, architecture, film, writing, even medical opinion) and immediately dislike it. Morphosis' work is easy to dislike on those terms, and doesn't mean those people are any more "right" than are those who think the buildings look awesome.
so donna is it art or design? you talk about it like art....was watching Netflix doc on Wolfgang Beltracchi (doc by him and his wife)....to your hvac concerns Fujitsu is pumpin gas into the NYC market on their VRF system, imagine one side being warm and other cold,just move the water around...............
ghwarton have you seen that FedEx commercial (i think) where the guy complains to his boss about the stupid open concept. noise, no privacy, no break out spaces.....
Olaf, I was reading about air conditioning situation in EKE's link and thought, why would you need an HVAC system that costs millions in San Francisco. I just looked up average temperature. I guess everybody knows that already.
Personally, I would like to work in an office where people are pitching beach umbrellas to cut the direct sunlight and opening their windows to get fresh air and such. Most office environments are sterile corporate spaces lacking any kind of interactivity with outside world. It would be very revealing to see the places those complainers live their lives. When architects start to manipulate normative programs, they also invite slow societal change. There are those kinds of subtleties in those buildings' configurations I pay attention.
I'd like to amend my previous comment and say that I think the great fault of Morphosis is that they design for the camera and for other architects and skip concerning themselves with the actual users.
The late great John Chase made an observation years ago that has colored my understanding of their work ever since. What Chase pointed out is that Thom Mayne, Eric Moss, and others in that generation came of age in the disco era and the machismo "look at me" aesthetic of the disc era very much continues to rear its head in their architecture. The Caltrans neon lobby couldn't be a clearer illustration of this!
Their work is "futuristic" looking as if designed for the the set of some "not to distant future sci-fi film" I'm a huge fan of sci fi movies and sci-fi set design in general...just not of fictional sci fi architecture. The illusion of futurism is to lazy. Props for the experimental use of passive heating and cooling though. Getting people to go for something like that in and of itself is a huge feat... The building felt thermally comfortable to me from my brief visit...just dystopian, cold, and overwhelming/underwhelming.
I have to say that the plaza at the LA Caltrans building is one of the most dreadful outdoor spaces I have ever visited. It's relentless and forbidding as hell - the ground floor cafe patio is recessed into a dark crevice-like hole in the building, as if to hide the humans away from sight.
And can anyone tell me what these galvanized steel noodle appendages in the plaza are? I have tried my best to reconcile them as seating, or bike racks, or... I don't know. I swear Mayne put them there just to confuse and terrify us.
I think that Architecture - it is not only function, rationalization, design (function-form)....Architecture is Art too. We become boring , surrounding himself with only functional things. Our fantasy ossified. The basis of art contains irrationality. just that it makes us think , and not purely utilitarian. Now more and more architecture merges with design. Therefore, I believe that art (= irrational) has the right to exist in the architecture as well as a functional program, rationalization, design and etc. For me it is also important the space, spirit of place (and space), image, integrity and relationship rational with the irrational. Whole can not be equal to the sum of terms. It is my opinion. Sorry for my english please.
And I agree completely that Architecture is art as well as function. In a successful work of architecture, I think it needs to be both. I believe that we should judge architecture on both its success as a work of art, and as a work designed to serve a set of functions for people. It should succeed in both arenas, otherwise it's sculpture, or building, but not Architecture.
I didn't say the plaza was "inhumane" - that's your word. I wouldn't disagree with that descriptor, actually, but I certainly don't think that anyone who thinks the plaza is a great space is "inhuman".
I think it fails as an inviting urban plaza for several reasons. There's almost no landscape planting at all, just a few stick-like trees in round concrete planters, which look like an afterthought. I'll bet they weren't part of Mayne's plan. They look like they were placed there by the administrators of the building in an attempt to soften up the place a bit. The bench seating is cold and hard. As I said, the cafe is recessed deeply under the building in a dark crevasse, that feels like a maintenance garage. The space in there is pretty bleak, and the cafe tables look lonely and dwarfed in there. If I worked there, there's no way I'd spend my lunch hour in that industrial cave. I'd walk across the street and have lunch in the park in front of City Hall.
My biggest problem with the plaza is that there is no "there" there. There's no real focus to the planning of it, no hierarchy, No place where you feel like you have arrived anywhere special. Mayne's design aesthetic seems to be creating overlapping "fields" of forms, almost like energy fields of streaming data. The lovers on the facade, the noodle bollards in the plaza, the layout of the benches. They're like the green streaming digits on the computer screen in "The Matrix". They are all overlapping fields that have no hierarchy or center, no focus. They just interact with each other in different ways, creating visual effects. This is interesting in an abstract way, and I understand why this appeals to some people, especially to modern artists. But I think the average person looks at a plaza like this and sees a sea of concrete, with randomly placed objects. I think most people see it as a place to pass through when coming, or going, and the "streaming data" aesthetic of the place encourages that reading. Look at the photos of the place on the web. You almost never see anyone out there. Usually one or two lonely people...probably architecture students.
Yes, the country is not surreal enough already. Enough with the landscaping with kids playing among the flowers, fountains, grass, and trees, and people lounging about getting some rays and actually enjoying themselves. More concrete, more spaces that look like Blimp hangars - that's what we need!
a lot of this thread ended up being a criticism of how as Thom Mayne's commissions grew in scale, they decreased in their appeal and usability by inhabitants and the surround built context.
this leads me to ask, what architects have successfully worked at the "XL" scale and met any of your criteria, such as having an enticing fountain crawling with spanish moss ("human scaled"), or an environmental control system that rates well with users, and perhaps as an after thought, are formally challenging or experimental.
Feb 24, 16 3:11 am ·
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Morphosis
Would like to hear what people think is Morphosis/Thom Mayne's best building in LA. Or elsewhere if you've a different opinion.
disney concert hall
I hate his work. It's soulless and choppy
15 years later it's going to look like a factory; a desperate attempt to show the power and energy of the city.
Morphosis has done a few good projects, but the better ones are older, from before they got Starchitect Syndrome and lapsed into pure self-indulgence.
Also, CALTRANS has a few nice moments.
jla-x I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds their buildings to be soulless and yes choppy. I've been in several of their buildings and I find them to be downright uncomfortable to be in. The Caltrans is particularly terrible. They design for photographs not for the inhabitants or for the street.
Makingspace, it's hard to explain. I know his work is "good" but It doesn't feel good to me. Like a band or genre of music that you can appreciate but would never listen to in the car...By choppy I mean there is an overall lack of cohesiveness imo. I'm certain it's intentional, but reminds me more of a conglomerate than metamorphic...
I've only been to the Federal Building in San Francisco. I think it's wonderful. It has great varying levels of texture from gigantic to fine, so it works on the skyline and when walking inside it. The site plan is perfect: it holds the corner with a small, accessible cafe, then the plaza gives a large breathing space before the tower starts, and the decision to keep it gravel not paved keeps it connected to the earth. The sky garden or whatever is honestly an incredible space to be in, looking out, and not like any other viewing space I've ever been in.
And, no air conditioning! And it looks super cool.
I kind of understand the "choppy" comments but I think that could also be termed urban and dynamic. I don't think the entire world should look like a Morphosis project but I like that they exist. Let other buildings be calm background buildings.
Hi, Donna-
Are you up to speed on the controversy surrounding the San Francisco building? Reading your post above, I seemed to remember reading about some issues with it, so I searched the web to remind myself. There's lots out there, including this article:
http://www.beyondchron.org/san-franciscos-green-building-nightmare/
The Wikipedia page has a nice summary of the criticism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Federal_Building
Apparently the passive cooling of the building is not particularly successful:
According to an employee interviewed by BeyondChron.com, "Workers seek to relieve the heat by opening windows, which not only sends papers flying, but, depending on their proximity to the opening, makes creating a stable temperature for all workers near impossible... some employees must use umbrellas to keep the sun out of their cubicles."
Apparently it's not very popular among the people who work there:
"In 2010 the GSA commissioned a survey of employees in 22 federal buildings nationwide, to determine employee satisfaction with their workplaces. The 22 buildings included in the study scored between a low of 13 and a high of 98% employee satisfaction. Seventeen of the 22 buildings scored above 50% employee satisfaction. While incorporating many green concepts more aggressively than other buildings, the lowest ranked building for employee satisfaction was the San Francisco Federal Building, with a rating of just 13%; the next-lowest was considered twice as satisfactory, at 26%. The San Francisco building scored well below the median in the categories of thermal comfort, lighting and acoustics."
And...the very next paragraph of the Wikipedia entry:
"The San Francisco Federal Building won a Design Award from the AIA San Francisco chapter in 2008."
I like all of their projects. Distinctly west coast, thoroughly engaging, and very well conceived. Despite the lazy bureaucrats in SF.
How well conceived can a building be said to be, if the people who use it dislike it so much?
in school I really hated Morphosis work. It is and was choppy and hardly harmonious.......... .. but you get bored after a while so i guess you may want to make interesting moments? with that said though, who is the space for? if you want to make interesting moments its good to have an overall concept that serves the users well, I have not experienced a space by Morphosis that did that.
I love Morphosis' work.
The users will always complain, unless you give them a stupid box, which most of the corporate firms specialize in.
ok eisenman. its not art.....i am slightly joking. the moments are excellent but you can not ask someone to go running around to understand shit when all they want to do is go to work and go home......is it design or art?
Yeah, I think most people - the vast majority - work in buildings that don't actually work well for them. Which is no excuse for making an intentionally bad building, but one of the goals of the SF Federal building was to make it "green" via reducing the power load. Even in a regular building, in *all* the ones I've worked in, some spaces are freezing while others are hot, and people have gripes and territorial wars over it. Even in 2016 we can't seem to get HVAC right! But I'm glad Morphosis experimented with a new system and now we can learn from it.
Also, frankly, a lot of people see *anything* contemporary (art, music, architecture, film, writing, even medical opinion) and immediately dislike it. Morphosis' work is easy to dislike on those terms, and doesn't mean those people are any more "right" than are those who think the buildings look awesome.
"Yeah, I think most people - the vast majority - work in buildings that don't actually work well for them."
This is most obvious with the corporate/workplace designers' fetish for open-office plans, which most people hate and make them less productive.
so donna is it art or design? you talk about it like art....was watching Netflix doc on Wolfgang Beltracchi (doc by him and his wife)....to your hvac concerns Fujitsu is pumpin gas into the NYC market on their VRF system, imagine one side being warm and other cold,just move the water around............... ghwarton have you seen that FedEx commercial (i think) where the guy complains to his boss about the stupid open concept. noise, no privacy, no break out spaces.....
Climate San Francisco - California
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Average high in °F: 57 60 62 63 64 66
Average low in °F: 46 47 49 49 51 53
Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Average high in °F: 67 68 70 69 63 57
Average low in °F: 54 55 55 54 50 46
A case of over articulation leading to inarticulation. Perhaps the same could be said of the architecture
yes. agree.
Orhan can you elaborate for us?
Olaf, I was reading about air conditioning situation in EKE's link and thought, why would you need an HVAC system that costs millions in San Francisco. I just looked up average temperature. I guess everybody knows that already.
Personally, I would like to work in an office where people are pitching beach umbrellas to cut the direct sunlight and opening their windows to get fresh air and such. Most office environments are sterile corporate spaces lacking any kind of interactivity with outside world. It would be very revealing to see the places those complainers live their lives.
When architects start to manipulate normative programs, they also invite slow societal change. There are those kinds of subtleties in those buildings' configurations I pay attention.
my guess, just throwing this out there - Morphisis is an architecture firm and not a Mechanical Engineering firm?
I'd like to amend my previous comment and say that I think the great fault of Morphosis is that they design for the camera and for other architects and skip concerning themselves with the actual users.
The late great John Chase made an observation years ago that has colored my understanding of their work ever since. What Chase pointed out is that Thom Mayne, Eric Moss, and others in that generation came of age in the disco era and the machismo "look at me" aesthetic of the disc era very much continues to rear its head in their architecture. The Caltrans neon lobby couldn't be a clearer illustration of this!
haruki: I strongly agree that all of Morphosis' large-scale work is extremely inhumane. It's almost anti-humane.
Their work is "futuristic" looking as if designed for the the set of some "not to distant future sci-fi film" I'm a huge fan of sci fi movies and sci-fi set design in general...just not of fictional sci fi architecture. The illusion of futurism is to lazy. Props for the experimental use of passive heating and cooling though. Getting people to go for something like that in and of itself is a huge feat... The building felt thermally comfortable to me from my brief visit...just dystopian, cold, and overwhelming/underwhelming.
Quite frankly, almost all contemporary large-scale work is quite inhumane.
I have to say that the plaza at the LA Caltrans building is one of the most dreadful outdoor spaces I have ever visited. It's relentless and forbidding as hell - the ground floor cafe patio is recessed into a dark crevice-like hole in the building, as if to hide the humans away from sight.
And can anyone tell me what these galvanized steel noodle appendages in the plaza are? I have tried my best to reconcile them as seating, or bike racks, or... I don't know. I swear Mayne put them there just to confuse and terrify us.
I think that Architecture - it is not only function, rationalization, design (function-form)....Architecture is Art too. We become boring , surrounding himself with only functional things. Our fantasy ossified. The basis of art contains irrationality. just that it makes us think , and not purely utilitarian. Now more and more architecture merges with design. Therefore, I believe that art (= irrational) has the right to exist in the architecture as well as a functional program, rationalization, design and etc. For me it is also important the space, spirit of place (and space), image, integrity and relationship rational with the irrational. Whole can not be equal to the sum of terms. It is my opinion. Sorry for my english please.
Your english is just fine, Pavel.
And I agree completely that Architecture is art as well as function. In a successful work of architecture, I think it needs to be both. I believe that we should judge architecture on both its success as a work of art, and as a work designed to serve a set of functions for people. It should succeed in both arenas, otherwise it's sculpture, or building, but not Architecture.
EKE, and i fully agree with you in this term.
EKE, I had though those steel posts were bollards to prevent someone from driving a car up into the plaza.
How can you tell if a place is humane? I visited both CA projects once, and liked the spaces. Does that mean I am inhuman?
when I visited they were filming what looked like a B side sci-fi movie in the plaza. wonder if the future in that flick was bleak or happy?
Midlander-
I didn't say the plaza was "inhumane" - that's your word. I wouldn't disagree with that descriptor, actually, but I certainly don't think that anyone who thinks the plaza is a great space is "inhuman".
I think it fails as an inviting urban plaza for several reasons. There's almost no landscape planting at all, just a few stick-like trees in round concrete planters, which look like an afterthought. I'll bet they weren't part of Mayne's plan. They look like they were placed there by the administrators of the building in an attempt to soften up the place a bit. The bench seating is cold and hard. As I said, the cafe is recessed deeply under the building in a dark crevasse, that feels like a maintenance garage. The space in there is pretty bleak, and the cafe tables look lonely and dwarfed in there. If I worked there, there's no way I'd spend my lunch hour in that industrial cave. I'd walk across the street and have lunch in the park in front of City Hall.
My biggest problem with the plaza is that there is no "there" there. There's no real focus to the planning of it, no hierarchy, No place where you feel like you have arrived anywhere special. Mayne's design aesthetic seems to be creating overlapping "fields" of forms, almost like energy fields of streaming data. The lovers on the facade, the noodle bollards in the plaza, the layout of the benches. They're like the green streaming digits on the computer screen in "The Matrix". They are all overlapping fields that have no hierarchy or center, no focus. They just interact with each other in different ways, creating visual effects. This is interesting in an abstract way, and I understand why this appeals to some people, especially to modern artists. But I think the average person looks at a plaza like this and sees a sea of concrete, with randomly placed objects. I think most people see it as a place to pass through when coming, or going, and the "streaming data" aesthetic of the place encourages that reading. Look at the photos of the place on the web. You almost never see anyone out there. Usually one or two lonely people...probably architecture students.
My 2c
Sometimes she felt sad and lost, adrift in a world she could not understand.
The outdoor cafe dining terrace at Caltrans District 7. Those tiny, galvanized metal objects cowering in the corner are cafe tables and chairs.
"Have you had your Prokofiev?"
OK. I give up.
??????
Could have installed something like this and would have people standing in line to visit the space.
Oh, I get it. It's very clever.
How's that working out for you?
sometimes surreal spaces are better places.
Yes, the country is not surreal enough already. Enough with the landscaping with kids playing among the flowers, fountains, grass, and trees, and people lounging about getting some rays and actually enjoying themselves. More concrete, more spaces that look like Blimp hangars - that's what we need!
Quondam-
I tried to follow you down the rabbit hole of "double theaters" by clicking on your link, but my server software returned this message:
"This domain is blocked due to a phishing threat:
www.quondam.com
Phishing is a fraudulent attempt to get you to provide personal information under false pretenses.
Diagnostic Info:
IP Address....."
So you've stopped phishing?
:)
what does architectural phishing look like quondam?
Perfect fit for a troll. He phishes here, just not for money.
So nobody (other than gwharton) has any thoughts on OP's question re: "best building in LA." by Morphosis?
a lot of this thread ended up being a criticism of how as Thom Mayne's commissions grew in scale, they decreased in their appeal and usability by inhabitants and the surround built context.
this leads me to ask, what architects have successfully worked at the "XL" scale and met any of your criteria, such as having an enticing fountain crawling with spanish moss ("human scaled"), or an environmental control system that rates well with users, and perhaps as an after thought, are formally challenging or experimental.
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