i'm sorry......did you say vision?

yeah i was just trying come up with something catchy.

Speaking of vision, it's not going to have as much of a view as they say, either. It's got a 16 story building in front of it.

My favorite was the quote "Libeskind sees the beauty in every building he designs." I don't think that was qualified on purpose, but it sure seems about right looking at the rendering...

I will reitterate my statement made months ago: "if this building somehow ends up looking like the concept renderings with the sloped glass roofs (the entire presented visual concept via DL) then I'll eat my hat."

i live in indianapolis right now, and with cincy only a few steps away, and with it being about the same size as indianapolis, it leads once again to the question i've always asked of indianapolis... why the hell does cincy have libeskind, mayne, and hadid (plus others) and indy only has graves.
i hate living in a grave(s)yard.

Don't forget, Heterarchy, without the University of Cincinnati's Signature Architecture Program we wouldn't have this stuff either. None of the off-campus stuff started until after Graves' ERC and DAAP were built on campus. at least you have the speedway!!!

i'd take a couple of actual, well-designed buildings (which may or may not include this new libeskind condo) over the speedway anyday.
besides cincy has king's island!

i wish indy had an arch school in town, instead of an hour away in muncie...

I would give UC a lot of credit for jump-starting things, but not all. There has been lots of good architecture in Cincy for years, mostly residential, but going back pretty much to the beginning of modernism. It's just that the stuff downtown has started to blend in - the Hadid building is great, but no greater in its time than the Cass Gilbert or Ernest Flagg buildings were in theirs (or Carew, or Union Terminal). And in the suburbs there is a PJ glass house, an early Gwathmey house, a Neutra, an Ellwood...

heterarchy, call me a sucker, but i prefer the speedway to libeskind and eisenman. Zaha is another story though

see, i'm not a big racing fan (which can get me killed for saying that around here), so i'd take a mcdonalds over the speedway frankly. granted, it's a great thing for the city and all, but i'm just speaking personally here.
where would the soon to be student center by morphosis rank then?

OOoooohh, the Morphosis student center, when finished, should rank right up there with Zaha's CAC (which I really like).

I'm willing to hold off judgement on the condo building until it starts to take shape. I really hope they can pull it off and not VE it to death....

the image i saw looked awfully ve'd already... but like wonderk, i'm willing to wait a little while before i start criticizing it. :)

tangeman is open, steger is open--you're just waiting on the sports complex (starship enterprise) to judge the whole morphosis project?

zaha's building is nice, and looks great downtown, but I have two issues 1. she built perfect quarter pipes right out on the sidewalk, which has invited plenty of skaters and bikers (no problem with me, but with cops, maintenance, pedestrians, ambulances, it is) 2. the steps in the damn place are like 2" vert per foot. they are impossible to walk comfortably on.

as for the libeskind, I hope a strong west wind knocks the crane that builds it onto that faux copper shit down there.

don't worry Libeskind's vision will probably get hacked down to just another cheap coroporate owned condo complex anyway....

as it stands, it looks like a cheap developer condo with trashy makeup....if it gets hacked down (read value engineered) it will be horrific.

Has anyone seen Libeskinds designs for the two high rise developer condos in Sacramento? If you have I would be curious in your comments as well.

post some pics!!!!!

plexus
the site where I found the design is offline, I will try sending once it comes back up. The name of the site is skyscrapercity.com

shucks.

five: hadn't heard that parts of the student center were open yet. do you know where we could find pics of the completed parts? morph's website only has construction photos.

I am so unimpressed with most of what Libeskind has done or proposed. He is highly overrated and just today's trend. His buildings are laughable today, they will be very laughable in ten years.

his project in sf looks like it was done by a bad first year student.

If anyone is interested, I tried to get the link for the projects Libeskin is doing in Sacramento but Im not sure exactly how.
The site is Skyscraperpage.com- Forums, Projects and Construction, 50 stories Libeskind does Sacramento.

He has designed two high-rise condos called the Aura and the Epic.

My god, their bad!!!!

and

yikes.

fyi: epic on top, aura on bottom. if that matters. if you prefer doggystyle, contact libeskind.

it looks like architechtonica [sp???] from the 80s.

i think we have ourselves the architecural equivalent of a one hit wonder. and that is only if you thought the jewish museum was good..........

hmmm...i was wondering if some of you have a take on libeskind's technical abilities, which may be influencing his confidence as a designer of high-rise buildings, or perhaps what he went through at freedom tower. it could also have to do with the fact that these structures are not being envisoned by cultural institutions like many of his previous works, and their is a bottom-line issue. i haven't heard what he has to say about them, and i'm not sure if i would call them 'bad,' although they aren't the quality i would expect from someone like libeskind.

incidentally, a lot of great architects have piles and piles of buildings like this that they aren't known for, completed to pay the bills.

i think part of the problem he is having is that his shard like language is difficult to translate in a highly modular/functional structures like his sacromento and ohio river projects. i suspect sf is just plain bad due to VEing.

this work falls well short of the most meager attempt to 'translate' creative ideas into a language or spatial condition......even if he is on a tight budget. i see plenty of developer driven projects designed by average firms that are stronger than this. these projects are nothing more than cartoons..........

heterarchy--

steger


tangeman

UGH, those towers are so predictable.

So I guess I'm just sad that Libeskind is looking more and more like a "one-hit wonder" like aeaa said. I'm one of the people that thought that the Jewish museum is good but I certainly didn't expect the same damn thing to be repeated over and over and over again.....it kind of takes away from the Jewish museum.

I guess I'm thinking that in spite of how it looks on paper, this project that he has planned for Covington looks way better than anything that is already there? Sad but true. At least it doesn't have a bunch of angular slashes on it.

I guess what is most disappointing is that here is someone really high profile that has a chance to do work for any number of well-paying clients, and he is basically just shitting it all away with his own brand of reproducable crap. Just because it's different doesn't make it better. Just because no one has done it before doesn't mean you have to repopulate the earth with a bunch of 'random slash' style buildings.

</end theraputic rant>

he should stick to writing text and his bullcrap poetry

Hey, maybe we shouldn't knock him just yet. He is, after all, one of very few "starchitects" (I hate that word) who works regularly on commercial projects. He clearly knows how to speak the developers' language, which will eventually open the doors for even better buildings. Rome wasn't built in a day. Look at how much better it is than that faux copper shit. If he came to the table with some ground breaking design, there's a chance the people with the money would have said, "thanks, but no thanks." I think this is a good way to do it. Other developers will see it and (if it makes any money), consider whether they should seek out better designs, too. I hope that this is just getting the ball rolling.

was it yet mentioned that he's building in Sacramento, California now too? Another condo high rise in the "mid-west" of California.

I like it when he stays closer to the ground . . .
This is what he is doing for the Denver art musem. There are also some "museum lofts" going up near there that I think he might also be working on.

museum residences

See--there you go. Libeskind is all about developments.

I was driving to work yesterday, and as I emerged on the south side of Roebling's lovely suspension bridge over the Ohio, I noticed this on the parking lot in front of my big pink trashcan (office building):



Can you see it? It's a big fat blue outline spray painted on the parking lot where the Libeskind condo tower is supposed to go. It's not been built yet but it's like a building died there. Like a giant crime scene.

My coworkers were all hoping they would put a pool in the outline.

If you pay attention to the picture you can see me in the window reflection too.

I see you WonderK!!!

Interesting picture. I wonder what prompted the blue paint, is the project coming up for zoning review soon or something?

Honestly, lb, I think they are just being dramatic. I've lived around here for a while and I've never seen anything like this. It doesn't have any stakes or anything for digging, and I don't think they've served notice to the people who use that lot yet. It's just weird.

post a pic of yourself covered in blue paint.

You bring the blue paint, I've got the camera.

:-D

pablo's blue period will have nothing on ours

it looks tacky as hell but ill hold my tongue until i see more. maybe the interior will be better.

I've heard rumor that the associated firm (GBBN, maybe?), designed the building based on a scrappy sketch from Libeskind...and even they're somewhat embarrassed by it.