I've got more important things to worry about that leaving a built legacy. Fuck obsessing about building yourself a podium to ego. You do the best with the conditions you have, anything extra is just that: extra.
Jan 30, 19 7:42 pm ·
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OneLostArchitect
Yea. I just trying to butter my toast too.
Jan 30, 19 7:54 pm ·
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curtkram
i'm building a podium to my client's ego
Jan 30, 19 11:33 pm ·
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geezertect
A paid off house will be my architectural legacy.
Jan 31, 19 7:01 am ·
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bowling_ball
You're going to bed able to pay off your house before you die? No need to show off, baller.
Feb 1, 19 9:30 am ·
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Non Sequitur
^that's not a particular high-bar Bowlin. Mine will likely be paid off a full decade earlier relative to when my parents paid theirs.
Feb 1, 19 9:54 am ·
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bowling_ball
That's true. But I'm still paying off my school debt, which is like 60% of a monthly mortgage payment. I'm on the slow track, unfortunately. (Anyway, I wasn't being serious)
I've been part of teams that have designed buildings that will almost certainly outlast my time breathing, but that's the point. I want my efforts to be a net positive to the places I care about. That's how I choose my employers. It's not about ego, it's about purpose.
You have clearly not seen the level of quality control we put into our work. Sure the buildings that we put together may outlive the construction workers who are building them, but only by mere seconds.
I'm probably going to live another 35 years or so. I've designed hundreds of buildings. The odds are very slim that I'll outlive them all - if I do then I'll celebrate the amazing weirdness of statistics and probability.
Maybe contrive a poetic, Roarkian ending? This time, pushing the TNT plunger while inside the building... none of this "demolish from a safe distance" crap.
You and your building will achieve oneness (and flatness) in the same moment.
Practically speaking a lot of buildings are torn down because they can't be economically maintained. They can't be economically maintained because they were an ego trip for the architect in the first place.
Most buildings are reed for economic reasons, and not because they are too expensive to maintain, but because they have not been developed to their maximum profit potential.
Jan 31, 19 9:17 am ·
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geezertect
Many perfectly "good" buildings are torn down because the land can be put to higher use.
My first job as an intern was for a firm that designed exhibition hall booths. It took a week to design, a week to build, and it stood for three or four days. Then it got torn down in an hour. Great times.
"The Information and Computer Science/Engineering Research Facility (ICS/ERF) at the University of California at Irvine—an early and energetic P/A Award–winning work by Frank Gehry—was completed in 1986 as designed, and has already been demolished.....Leaking roofs, rotting wood, and failing ventilation systems were cited as reasons for the building’s removal."
I have clothes that have lasted longer.
Jan 31, 19 9:38 am ·
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Non Sequitur
Late 80s clothing? Awesome. Besides that, one example is not a rule.
Jan 31, 19 9:40 am ·
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Volunteer
How do you design a building that rots in a semi-arid climate? Come to think of it Gehry's house in New Orleans he designed at the behest of the Bradster is uninhabitable because of the mold. Would you like more?
Jan 31, 19 10:07 am ·
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Non Sequitur
Still all very moot points. We get it, you hate FOG. My original point still stands.
Jan 31, 19 10:21 am ·
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JLC-1
I drove a 1986 SAAB until 2014.
Jan 31, 19 10:46 am ·
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Volunteer
It is not just Gehry. The Brutalists buildings as a class are deteriorating rapidly with severe leaks and concrete chunks falling off of them to the extent some entrances have to be roped closed as in the FBI Building in DC. One 200 pound chunk of concrete fell off the overhead of a Zaha Hadid building less than a year old. That was the second instance for that building. In our age it is more important for the architect to make a design statement that it is to design a building that lasts and can be maintained.
Jan 31, 19 10:46 am ·
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kjdt
I don't think of the vast majority of brutalist buildings as being from "our age". Most are 45-70 years old, their architects are long dead, and most of those buildings did outlast their architects. There are individual examples of dysfunctional buildings that are the result of architect egos run amok. Still most architects will be outlived by most of their work.
Shitty architects like Gehry and Zaha notwithstanding, the driving force behind demolition is economics. You argument ignores the rapid and massive gentrification of US cities where perfectly serviceable building are being replaced with upscale condos.
Jan 31, 19 11:29 am ·
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Volunteer
Well, tearing down the JP Morgan Chase building, designed by a woman no less, is a crime. If the women want to march about something credible that would be a place to start. In many smaller cities they are running out of old buildings to convert to condos so they are designing new ones to look like old buildings that
have been converted.
Jan 31, 19 11:48 am ·
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Non Sequitur
Must be nice to be so easily swayed by so little.
Jan 31, 19 12:01 pm ·
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SneakyPete
Volunteer, your chauvinism
is showing.
Jan 31, 19 12:10 pm ·
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Volunteer
Why? I would join them. The building was originally the Union Carbide Building and is gorgeous. No point in tearing it down.
Jan 31, 19 12:21 pm ·
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TIQM
If the building were lovable, someone might have tried to correct its deficiencies and save it. But no one could find a reason to make the effort.
The average lifespan of a building is about 70 years. The average architect's time in the workforce spans approximately 40 years. Even if architects were known for long retirements and exceptional lifespans, it would still be likely that most architects would be outlived by most of their work - whether it's significant work, or even any good, or not.
The project, so far, that I'm most proud of is a 60' long sidewalk. It connects a bus stop on a very busy street to the entry gate to the museum destination. It replaced what had been a muddy stretch of grass leading to an always-locked human gate, a path so bad and thwarting that walkers were constantly forced to walk in the street instead, and turned it into a path where a human being can process with dignity.
I don't know whether or not I'll outlive that stretch of sidewalk, but I'm pretty sure the *accommodation* of being able to walk there will remain now that it's been asserted. So yeah, I'm proud. But no one will remember I did it and that's totally ok.
Jan 31, 19 4:04 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
If that sidewalk is not a monument to your ego Donna, then
i don’t know what is. I bet it leaks all over too.
Jan 31, 19 4:25 pm ·
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Wilma Buttfit
I'm working on a big sidewalk project now. Nothing but sidewalks!
Not that it matters but I'm sure some of the projects I've worked on will outlive me, especially since they are still years away from even getting close to execution and will take years if not decades to finish.
I have several projects that are now gone, the needs of the client changed, the business folded or other things happened and the built environment I had worked on was no longer useful. This is normal and a lot of work is going to be renovated or demolished because needs change. How many decently designed video stores are now gone, or university housing buildings that are now gone because they do not offer accessible accommodations. The best architecture is achieved when a client's needs are meet with a certain degree of economy while obtaining the best possible aesthetic result. Also taste change as is evident in the demolition of a lot of brutalist architecture. We are not the buildings we design there should be a little more detachment from our work and our sens of identity.
I read an article about a Beaux Arts building on a university campus. It started out as a home for Romance Languages. After a few years it was given over to the Architecture School. Then it was transferred to the College of Engineering. A few years later it became an Administration Building. Now it is back to a Romance Languages building. It was there long before 'brutalism', 'post-modernism', 'deconstructivism', 'parametricism', et al., and hopefully will be there for a long time after those 'isms' are yellowed pages in a forgotten text.
So far one of my projects is gone - a renovation of a single family house, sold and torn down to make way for a much larger lakefront home. It's just as well - I got my pretty photos, but knowing what I now know a few decades later, it wasn't really based on good building science. There are so many more projects though that even if I live another 50-some years there will probably be a few left, unless maybe I attract a serial killer of architecture, who systematically goes after my buildings, leaving some signature pattern of destruction. That would be fun.
Feb 1, 19 2:26 pm ·
·
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You will outlive any building you design and not be remembered.
Is the effort, time and struggle to design that very significant building worth the effort?
I've got more important things to worry about that leaving a built legacy. Fuck obsessing about building yourself a podium to ego. You do the best with the conditions you have, anything extra is just that: extra.
Yea. I just trying to butter my toast too.
i'm building a podium to my client's ego
A paid off house will be my architectural legacy.
You're going to bed able to pay off your house before you die? No need to show off, baller.
^that's not a particular high-bar Bowlin. Mine will likely be paid off a full decade earlier relative to when my parents paid theirs.
That's true. But I'm still paying off my school debt, which is like 60% of a monthly mortgage payment. I'm on the slow track, unfortunately. (Anyway, I wasn't being serious)
I've been part of teams that have designed buildings that will almost certainly outlast my time breathing, but that's the point. I want my efforts to be a net positive to the places I care about. That's how I choose my employers. It's not about ego, it's about purpose.
You have clearly not seen the level of quality control we put into our work. Sure the buildings that we put together may outlive the construction workers who are building them, but only by mere seconds.
You will outlive any building you design and not be remembered.
You are speaking for yourself.
I'm probably going to live another 35 years or so. I've designed hundreds of buildings. The odds are very slim that I'll outlive them all - if I do then I'll celebrate the amazing weirdness of statistics and probability.
Maybe contrive a poetic, Roarkian ending? This time, pushing the TNT plunger while inside the building... none of this "demolish from a safe distance" crap.
You and your building will achieve oneness (and flatness) in the same moment.
Practically speaking a lot of buildings are torn down because they can't be economically maintained. They can't be economically maintained because they were an ego trip for the architect in the first place.
That’s a very small minority of buildings.
Most buildings are reed for economic reasons, and not because they are too expensive to maintain, but because they have not been developed to their maximum profit potential.
Many perfectly "good" buildings are torn down because the land can be put to higher use.
*razed
My first job as an intern was for a firm that designed exhibition hall booths. It took a week to design, a week to build, and it stood for three or four days. Then it got torn down in an hour. Great times.
Even the pyramids are just a blip in cosmic time.
"The Information and Computer Science/Engineering Research Facility (ICS/ERF) at the University of California at Irvine—an early and energetic P/A Award–winning work by Frank Gehry—was completed in 1986 as designed, and has already been demolished.....Leaking roofs, rotting wood, and failing ventilation systems were cited as reasons for the building’s removal."
I have clothes that have lasted longer.
Late 80s clothing? Awesome. Besides that, one example is not a rule.
How do you design a building that rots in a semi-arid climate? Come to think of it Gehry's house in New Orleans he designed at the behest of the Bradster is uninhabitable because of the mold. Would you like more?
Still all very moot points. We get it, you hate FOG. My original point still stands.
I drove a 1986 SAAB until 2014.
It is not just Gehry. The Brutalists buildings as a class are deteriorating rapidly with severe leaks and concrete chunks falling off of them to the extent some entrances have to be roped closed as in the FBI Building in DC. One 200 pound chunk of concrete fell off the overhead of a Zaha Hadid building less than a year old. That was the second instance for that building. In our age it is more important for the architect to make a design statement that it is to design a building that lasts and can be maintained.
I don't think of the vast majority of brutalist buildings as being from "our age". Most are 45-70 years old, their architects are long dead, and most of those buildings did outlast their architects. There are individual examples of dysfunctional buildings that are the result of architect egos run amok. Still most architects will be outlived by most of their work.
Shitty architects like Gehry and Zaha notwithstanding, the driving force behind demolition is economics. You argument ignores the rapid and massive gentrification of US cities where perfectly serviceable building are being replaced with upscale condos.
Well, tearing down the JP Morgan Chase building, designed by a woman no less, is a crime. If the women want to march about something credible that would be a place to start. In many smaller cities they are running out of old buildings to convert to condos so they are designing new ones to look like old buildings that have been converted.
Must be nice to be so easily swayed by so little.
Volunteer, your chauvinism is showing.
Why? I would join them. The building was originally the Union Carbide Building and is gorgeous. No point in tearing it down.
If the building were lovable, someone might have tried to correct its deficiencies and save it. But no one could find a reason to make the effort.
FOG? Orenthal?! nope...Owen...bummer...
hey jawknee, this is not real ,nothing is, we are in an artificial simulation. you ego is an implanted reaction.
Other architects will come and renovate your buildings. Most of the work will not make them better, just different.
The original is so much friendlier for public urination. So many nooks! Definitely a downgrade.
It's not really public if you are in a nook.
What a relief. I can't wait to be forgotten.
++++
Especially 'the incident' of 1989
Shouldn't have thrown the boombox into the ocean.
Rather than all the useless hand-wringing, it might be more useful to try to design better buildings. Commodity, firmness and delight go a long way.
I knew Marcus Vitruvius Pollio and I still remember him fondly, but not his buildings.
The average lifespan of a building is about 70 years. The average architect's time in the workforce spans approximately 40 years. Even if architects were known for long retirements and exceptional lifespans, it would still be likely that most architects would be outlived by most of their work - whether it's significant work, or even any good, or not.
The project, so far, that I'm most proud of is a 60' long sidewalk. It connects a bus stop on a very busy street to the entry gate to the museum destination. It replaced what had been a muddy stretch of grass leading to an always-locked human gate, a path so bad and thwarting that walkers were constantly forced to walk in the street instead, and turned it into a path where a human being can process with dignity.
I don't know whether or not I'll outlive that stretch of sidewalk, but I'm pretty sure the *accommodation* of being able to walk there will remain now that it's been asserted. So yeah, I'm proud. But no one will remember I did it and that's totally ok.
If that sidewalk is not a monument to your ego Donna, then
i don’t know what is. I bet it leaks all over too.
I'm working on a big sidewalk project now. Nothing but sidewalks!
my life
It don’t count for nothing
When I look at this world, I feel so small.
my life
Is only a season
A passing September that no one will recall.
But I gave joy to my mother
I made my lover smile
I can give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting
And I can make it seem better, for awhile.
those whom I've mentored
and those they mentor in kind
... lasting legacy
+++
There's nothing wrong with a job well done...
Not that it matters but I'm sure some of the projects I've worked on will outlive me, especially since they are still years away from even getting close to execution and will take years if not decades to finish.
I think it’s incredibly important for people to understand the cosmological context in which they operate.
I have several projects that are now gone, the needs of the client changed, the business folded or other things happened and the built environment I had worked on was no longer useful. This is normal and a lot of work is going to be renovated or demolished because needs change. How many decently designed video stores are now gone, or university housing buildings that are now gone because they do not offer accessible accommodations. The best architecture is achieved when a client's needs are meet with a certain degree of economy while obtaining the best possible aesthetic result. Also taste change as is evident in the demolition of a lot of brutalist architecture. We are not the buildings we design there should be a little more detachment from our work and our sens of identity.
Over and OUT
Peter N
I read an article about a Beaux Arts building on a university campus. It started out as a home for Romance Languages. After a few years it was given over to the Architecture School. Then it was transferred to the College of Engineering. A few years later it became an Administration Building. Now it is back to a Romance Languages building. It was there long before 'brutalism', 'post-modernism', 'deconstructivism', 'parametricism', et al., and hopefully will be there for a long time after those 'isms' are yellowed pages in a forgotten text.
Eh, probably 4 out of 5...
So far one of my projects is gone - a renovation of a single family house, sold and torn down to make way for a much larger lakefront home. It's just as well - I got my pretty photos, but knowing what I now know a few decades later, it wasn't really based on good building science. There are so many more projects though that even if I live another 50-some years there will probably be a few left, unless maybe I attract a serial killer of architecture, who systematically goes after my buildings, leaving some signature pattern of destruction. That would be fun.
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