I`ve been trying to do some research on this, it´s a bit hard since history meanss,, lott and lots of years to ponder on...
though, i`ve managed to come up with some newer ones..
how could one gain a decent approach through history... I mean, I am absolutely sure that even the great masters of architecture and the star architects are flawed, but goshhhhhhh.. My mind is clouded at this specific point in time...
i shall keep looking..
Might you want to add some limits? This seems like one of those all encompassing thesis projects that is far too broad to be of any use. Actual structural failure, mere humiliation for the designer, economic repurcussions. Otherwise this will be a long list of humorous comments that will do you no good. Also, what exactly are you using this for?
I am doing an intership for a local publication called the objetc... the next number theme is failure object and I was ask to research on the top 10 design failures in history... though I agree with you that the topic is way too broad and most of the examples I can find are pretty modern, I was thinking on subdiving it to top 10 in modern history including those who were a failure in function and economy and those whose outcome did not fulfill the general public expectations... for the other division I was thinking of maybe doing something regarding those whose design and architectural failure became their signature and made them even more valuable...
Pruitt Igoe is allegedly a myth. Peter Hall has a book on great planning disasters. BTW, how do you differentiate one level of failures from the next for your top 10 list? What are the criteria for saying one failure is greater than the next?
Intuitively, I think the entire history of design is one successive wave of failure after the next for there is no need for design in success. One can say that design fails when it no longer provides the same affordance as the past due to change and unpredictability.
Pruitt Igoe is allegedly a myth. Peter Hall has a book on great planning disasters. BTW, how do you differentiate one level of failures from the next for your top 10 list? What are the criteria for saying one failure is greater than the next?
Intuitively, I think the entire history of design is one successive wave of failure after the next for there is no need for design in success. One can say that design fails when it no longer provides the same affordance as the past due to change and unpredictability.
.. its not just a failure, it was a complete disaster.. it could be in your list of "whose design and architectural failure became their signature and made them even more valuable"..
in this case, maybe not valuable, but, at least, recognizable.
I dont think that there would be a scale from 1 to 10, but just a list of the greatest failures... the example I was given is the vw beetle, how it created so much expectation and then it was not so well received, though I dont think it was a total failure...
the first thing after this that came to my mind is barcelona`s forum... but i`m still trying to work my way through more
millenium bidge and millenium dome in london.
(structural failure)
richards laboratory, university of pennsylvania, by kahn.
(failure to fullfill the clients expectations, a building that it's not propertly designed for laboratories)
lake shore drive apt by mies van der rohe.
(failure with internal bad thermal and acoustic isolation plus leakage in bathrooms)
reichstag by foster.
(failure with the glass cupola...leakage)
brasilia urban plan by niemeyer.
(bad planning, high costs)
ennis brown house by wright.
(failure using local soil for its concrete blocks, water infiltration)
actually the Barcelona Forum never created too much expectation in the sense of being something great but as what we call a "Maragallada" (a nickname derived from the last BCN mayor, Maragall, who was in charge during the Olympics)..
we've coined that term to name extravagant ideas applied to big urban transformations, events of different proportions and even political ideas or public declarations...
while the Olympics worked pretty well, most people -before and after the summer of 2004- are still trying to understand what was the FOrum all about and what has the city gained with it... and the answer is usually either nothing or bad things (like bad urbanism = the Fòrum area, some dull high-rises imported from places far away -physically and culturally- from Barcelona, and a new kind of itnernational event, now trasplanted to Monterrey, MX, that included some extravaganzas like Mikhail Gorbachev discussing about the importance of water in the present world... weird)
But I wouldn't consider it a failure (yet)... as an urban operation you'll need at least 10 years to see if the area's working or not, and at least the Monterrey Forum and the next one somewhere else, to see if the cultural, itinerant event means something and its useful at all..
Before the exposition Modernism (or at least its precursors) had been progressing quite nicely in the US, especially in Chicago. The exposition changed all that and set us back a couple thousand years. We still haven't fully recovered. Its effects on urban planning are still being felt too.
pruitt igoe was not great design, but as such it was alright, even if it did suffer severly from value engineering.
the fact that pruitt igoe was eventually destroyed was as much a matter of poolitical failure as anything. the complex had a budget for construction but NONE for maintenance, and then became a dumping ground for problem families individuals, criminals and other insane folk...
THEN they stopped servicing the place altogether. i can't remember the details but the tenants eventually went on a rent strike because the garbage wasn't being picked up or the water had been shit off, or something like that...really stupid stuff.
but apparently the first 5 years or so it was quite ok as a place to live...the failure was political not planning/architectural. hence the myth that modernism is inherently culture-destroying.
i actually live in a pruitt-igoe/ville radieuse type place (in tokyo) and while it is not even remotely beautiful it is also incredibly comfortable. I have windows opening to both sides of the flat (north/south) for natural ventilation, and about 12 meters of sliding glass doors fronting a balcony of the same length, all facing south. cherry trees fill the complex so looks quite alright from the window, and no need to worry about cars with my youngest. all in all the vibe is more new urbanist than anything. so while i was taught that corbu fucked up the world with his ideas i gotta say it all comes down to political will and culture more than anything. architects just ain't got that kind of power to influence society...that's the myth.
ten: the mullett...unless u r missing a front tooth
nine: edible panties...i know its st. valentine's day and many of you will be either giving or receiving this item. but jeepers they just don't taste as good as you'd expect.
eight: sissy bars...well, they make ya look like a sissy.
seven: bow ties...i wore one once and after feeling so proud that i actually was able to tie, almost got my ass kicked by some no neck who almost lost an eye while touring an eisenman building.
six: the in car phonograph...talk about f'd up records. no amount of disc cleaner gonna help that.
five: the number five...
four: my back...it doesnt work worth a damn anymore...
three: bell bottoms...they were bad enough the first time around. and then they happened again. in twenty years they'll be back.
two: the dodo bird... Admit it God. You mailed that one in...
one: flying cars...they are not affordable and the ones that are buzzing around scare my dog and sometimes peer into my apartment when i am entertaining the ladies. they should be banned.
ahh, i thought you meant it wasn't a failure. Honestly though the ville-radieuse type place you are describing does sound much better designed than what i've seen of the pruitt igoe design--don't think you can rule design entire out of that one.
anyway if you are going to be picky about fault of these various failure's than you have to partly discount the john hancock as well--le messurier has pretty much admitted it was entirely his fault as engineer. you also have to wonder about the WTC, as well... since a lot of the failure there so far seems to be political in nature as well...
yeh totally, though som's design for wtc is seriously piss poor.
thing is about pruitt-igoe though that it really was never meant to be high end architecture, just functional and safe, and cheaply built. there are issues, but not as many as charles jencks (for one) would have us believe. and certainly the idea that the architecture turned people evil is absurd, though so many people seem to want to believe it...
first of all, YIKES, I actually made the mistake I hate the MOST: "failure's" should be "failures". yipes!
secondly: yeah, I agree, architecture does not turn people evil. I don't think dark corners of hallways are safe, however, nor are dead outdoor spaces really conducive to happy temperaments... There is also the question of V-E: how much control (and responsibility) over it does the architect have? Does it *really* save that much money to have a skip-stop elevator? Was whats-his-face not at all responsible for allowing those to be V-E'd into the buildings?
also, yeah, som's design blows. it makes me shudder in dismay.
i think one of the root problems of the WTC proposal is simply its program: MORE office space, none of which even has committed leases yet? --In a city absolutely desperate for housing, and where vacant office space is easier to come by than a $200/month couch-that-folds-out-to-a-bed rent?
yeah myriam those are pretty much the issues in question. i am not sure who did it first, goldfinger or yamasaki but the skip floor elevator still boggles. but then again at least one of goldfinger's buildings is STILL considered a modernist masterpiece even with the skip floors and all the rest. i guess it is all about context, in the end.
but what i would love to hear about is examples of failures that made things better. like the hermitage where the dilapidation and lack of funding has turned the experience into something incredibly personal, immediate and unique; fine art without the haute cuisine buffer so to speak; lost in most every other museum in the world. no wonder rem wants to protect the current messed up state of things there. brilliant.
i'm interested...what precisely is the major failure of philip
johnson's addition to the boston public library? seemingly
to me johnson's addition added some much needed shelf
space a major entrance for the library...increased circulation
space. are you arguing against it aesthetically?
Lars..If you have ever moved from the old building to the new building there is no transition. And yes the asethetics suck, asthey did back in 1973-76 when I worked in Copley Square.
"mhence the myth that modernism is inherently culture-destroying."
yeah. monoculture is inherently self destroying.
vw beetle, a failure? it was outdated by the mid 60's, but you mean the "new beetle", right?
bells aren't so bad... i don't have a pair anymore. they fit well if you're slim with nice leg muscles. I don't think anyone is yet selling bells to fit men.
chrysler airstream sales failure due to being a superior (? allegedly) design.
god (though this evaluation depends on the intentions of god's creator)
Gremlins weren't so bad. they sold pretty well. they suffered from being old school and so too heavy.
"ten: the mullett...unless u r missing a front tooth"
The haircut, or the architect?
Come to think of it, to an overzealous early c20 modernist, this *would* have been considered a catastrophic design failure.
dyson vac.....Just finished tearing around the house with the Purple animal....it does pic up alot of stuff,but it is hell to clean afterwards.
All those ins and outs which are like a magnet for fine dirt.
Architecture: How about Ronan Point, a typical block of 1960's flats near the London Docklands. Just after it was completed in 1968, a gas explosion on the 18th floor collapsed an entire corner of the building. A turningn point in the UK's housing policy.
Card Design: De Lorean Motor Compnay and there rubbish, badly made, poorly performing gull-winged car, £100million of government money and the factory lasted one year!
that recent architect in Japan that falsified structural reports and built and built - all with the knowledge that the buildings couldn't withstand an earthquake. That's terrifying.
modernist repitition can be bad but i dont believe it is inherently a problem.
this is a shot of my neighborhood in tokyo, with corbusien low rise buildings and towers all over the place; it is surprisingly comfortable, and the community culture is very very strong. It is totally repetitious and ugly in many places, but the way it is inhabitated more than makes up for it.
This is not great architecture, quite the opposite, really, but the residents grow their own flowers and vegetables instead of just having fields of unused open space and the place is bubblin with activity most times.
These flats are all for sale (going for half a million during the bubble if you can believe it), and were mid-middle class housing back in the housing crisis era, so the inhabitants make a huge difference.
I suspect by now no two flats are the same on the inside, and people are constantly redoing the flats judging by the number of contractors parked out front most days. After 30 years the place is still filled with kids (and old people) so it isn't turning into a retirement slum or anything through disinterest. after living here a while i am quite convinced the architecture is only a small part of the problem in places like pruitt-igoe and cetera...
special situation, perhaps, but if you prefer a less anecdotal voice for modernist housing check out peter hall's writing. anything by him is worth reading...
by "monoculture" i didn't mean aesthetics, i meant that it was the ghettoization of people that was the monoculture. all of the public housing recipients are packed in with only public housing recipients. non-housing recipients never live near public housing recipients.
bussing in the US was an attempt to fix this monoculture problem.
that kind of monoculture happens naturally enough though, planned or not people want to live with people just like themselves (in general).
not sure if it is a good thing or not yet. i have been talking with a post-doc friend who is studying the issue as a researcher (rather than as architect) and now i am not so certain what role/value architecture has in that context. or if anyone can actually fix the problems associated with it...a tuf problem.
failures in design´s history...
I`m setting up a list of the top ten failures in design`s history (architectura and non)..
any thoughts...
what do you think deserves it??
the tacoma narrows, pruitt igo, kansas city hyatt disaster, victor gruen, new urbanism
I`ve been trying to do some research on this, it´s a bit hard since history meanss,, lott and lots of years to ponder on...
though, i`ve managed to come up with some newer ones..
wtc libeskind
nagakin capsule
vw beetle
any more ideas ??
hindenburg(sp?)
how could one gain a decent approach through history... I mean, I am absolutely sure that even the great masters of architecture and the star architects are flawed, but goshhhhhhh.. My mind is clouded at this specific point in time...
i shall keep looking..
Frost Bank building in downtown Austin.
guggenheim bilbao
Might you want to add some limits? This seems like one of those all encompassing thesis projects that is far too broad to be of any use. Actual structural failure, mere humiliation for the designer, economic repurcussions. Otherwise this will be a long list of humorous comments that will do you no good. Also, what exactly are you using this for?
I am doing an intership for a local publication called the objetc... the next number theme is failure object and I was ask to research on the top 10 design failures in history... though I agree with you that the topic is way too broad and most of the examples I can find are pretty modern, I was thinking on subdiving it to top 10 in modern history including those who were a failure in function and economy and those whose outcome did not fulfill the general public expectations... for the other division I was thinking of maybe doing something regarding those whose design and architectural failure became their signature and made them even more valuable...
in Boston
Pruitt Igoe is allegedly a myth. Peter Hall has a book on great planning disasters. BTW, how do you differentiate one level of failures from the next for your top 10 list? What are the criteria for saying one failure is greater than the next?
Intuitively, I think the entire history of design is one successive wave of failure after the next for there is no need for design in success. One can say that design fails when it no longer provides the same affordance as the past due to change and unpredictability.
Pruitt Igoe is allegedly a myth. Peter Hall has a book on great planning disasters. BTW, how do you differentiate one level of failures from the next for your top 10 list? What are the criteria for saying one failure is greater than the next?
Intuitively, I think the entire history of design is one successive wave of failure after the next for there is no need for design in success. One can say that design fails when it no longer provides the same affordance as the past due to change and unpredictability.
.. its not just a failure, it was a complete disaster.. it could be in your list of "whose design and architectural failure became their signature and made them even more valuable"..
in this case, maybe not valuable, but, at least, recognizable.
I dont think that there would be a scale from 1 to 10, but just a list of the greatest failures... the example I was given is the vw beetle, how it created so much expectation and then it was not so well received, though I dont think it was a total failure...
the first thing after this that came to my mind is barcelona`s forum... but i`m still trying to work my way through more
in the theme of cars,
check out the Ford Edsel.
millenium bidge and millenium dome in london.
(structural failure)
richards laboratory, university of pennsylvania, by kahn.
(failure to fullfill the clients expectations, a building that it's not propertly designed for laboratories)
lake shore drive apt by mies van der rohe.
(failure with internal bad thermal and acoustic isolation plus leakage in bathrooms)
reichstag by foster.
(failure with the glass cupola...leakage)
brasilia urban plan by niemeyer.
(bad planning, high costs)
ennis brown house by wright.
(failure using local soil for its concrete blocks, water infiltration)
actually the Barcelona Forum never created too much expectation in the sense of being something great but as what we call a "Maragallada" (a nickname derived from the last BCN mayor, Maragall, who was in charge during the Olympics)..
we've coined that term to name extravagant ideas applied to big urban transformations, events of different proportions and even political ideas or public declarations...
while the Olympics worked pretty well, most people -before and after the summer of 2004- are still trying to understand what was the FOrum all about and what has the city gained with it... and the answer is usually either nothing or bad things (like bad urbanism = the Fòrum area, some dull high-rises imported from places far away -physically and culturally- from Barcelona, and a new kind of itnernational event, now trasplanted to Monterrey, MX, that included some extravaganzas like Mikhail Gorbachev discussing about the importance of water in the present world... weird)
But I wouldn't consider it a failure (yet)... as an urban operation you'll need at least 10 years to see if the area's working or not, and at least the Monterrey Forum and the next one somewhere else, to see if the cultural, itinerant event means something and its useful at all..
1893 World's Columbian Exposition
Before the exposition Modernism (or at least its precursors) had been progressing quite nicely in the US, especially in Chicago. The exposition changed all that and set us back a couple thousand years. We still haven't fully recovered. Its effects on urban planning are still being felt too.
Wait, Pruitt Igoe is a myth? In what way?
pruitt igoe was not great design, but as such it was alright, even if it did suffer severly from value engineering.
the fact that pruitt igoe was eventually destroyed was as much a matter of poolitical failure as anything. the complex had a budget for construction but NONE for maintenance, and then became a dumping ground for problem families individuals, criminals and other insane folk...
THEN they stopped servicing the place altogether. i can't remember the details but the tenants eventually went on a rent strike because the garbage wasn't being picked up or the water had been shit off, or something like that...really stupid stuff.
but apparently the first 5 years or so it was quite ok as a place to live...the failure was political not planning/architectural. hence the myth that modernism is inherently culture-destroying.
i actually live in a pruitt-igoe/ville radieuse type place (in tokyo) and while it is not even remotely beautiful it is also incredibly comfortable. I have windows opening to both sides of the flat (north/south) for natural ventilation, and about 12 meters of sliding glass doors fronting a balcony of the same length, all facing south. cherry trees fill the complex so looks quite alright from the window, and no need to worry about cars with my youngest. all in all the vibe is more new urbanist than anything. so while i was taught that corbu fucked up the world with his ideas i gotta say it all comes down to political will and culture more than anything. architects just ain't got that kind of power to influence society...that's the myth.
amen, jump
ten: the mullett...unless u r missing a front tooth
nine: edible panties...i know its st. valentine's day and many of you will be either giving or receiving this item. but jeepers they just don't taste as good as you'd expect.
eight: sissy bars...well, they make ya look like a sissy.
seven: bow ties...i wore one once and after feeling so proud that i actually was able to tie, almost got my ass kicked by some no neck who almost lost an eye while touring an eisenman building.
six: the in car phonograph...talk about f'd up records. no amount of disc cleaner gonna help that.
five: the number five...
four: my back...it doesnt work worth a damn anymore...
three: bell bottoms...they were bad enough the first time around. and then they happened again. in twenty years they'll be back.
two: the dodo bird... Admit it God. You mailed that one in...
one: flying cars...they are not affordable and the ones that are buzzing around scare my dog and sometimes peer into my apartment when i am entertaining the ladies. they should be banned.
ahh, i thought you meant it wasn't a failure. Honestly though the ville-radieuse type place you are describing does sound much better designed than what i've seen of the pruitt igoe design--don't think you can rule design entire out of that one.
anyway if you are going to be picky about fault of these various failure's than you have to partly discount the john hancock as well--le messurier has pretty much admitted it was entirely his fault as engineer. you also have to wonder about the WTC, as well... since a lot of the failure there so far seems to be political in nature as well...
yeh totally, though som's design for wtc is seriously piss poor.
thing is about pruitt-igoe though that it really was never meant to be high end architecture, just functional and safe, and cheaply built. there are issues, but not as many as charles jencks (for one) would have us believe. and certainly the idea that the architecture turned people evil is absurd, though so many people seem to want to believe it...
first of all, YIKES, I actually made the mistake I hate the MOST: "failure's" should be "failures". yipes!
secondly: yeah, I agree, architecture does not turn people evil. I don't think dark corners of hallways are safe, however, nor are dead outdoor spaces really conducive to happy temperaments... There is also the question of V-E: how much control (and responsibility) over it does the architect have? Does it *really* save that much money to have a skip-stop elevator? Was whats-his-face not at all responsible for allowing those to be V-E'd into the buildings?
also, yeah, som's design blows. it makes me shudder in dismay.
i think one of the root problems of the WTC proposal is simply its program: MORE office space, none of which even has committed leases yet? --In a city absolutely desperate for housing, and where vacant office space is easier to come by than a $200/month couch-that-folds-out-to-a-bed rent?
The Millenium Dome....
I know some of you might have actually liked it ... but I thouht it was all Gas !!!
fireproof matches
underwater hair-drier
and my favourite low weight survival supply...
powdered water (just add water)
yeah myriam those are pretty much the issues in question. i am not sure who did it first, goldfinger or yamasaki but the skip floor elevator still boggles. but then again at least one of goldfinger's buildings is STILL considered a modernist masterpiece even with the skip floors and all the rest. i guess it is all about context, in the end.
but what i would love to hear about is examples of failures that made things better. like the hermitage where the dilapidation and lack of funding has turned the experience into something incredibly personal, immediate and unique; fine art without the haute cuisine buffer so to speak; lost in most every other museum in the world. no wonder rem wants to protect the current messed up state of things there. brilliant.
any others of that sort out there?
the Millenium Dome should never have been put in Greenwich
but it is beautifully corrected
iMac Cube
Pontiac Aztec
That Oriental Pearl Tower in China (that pinkish thingy)
and every single Wal-Mart SUPERstores...
Gremlin cars...American Motor Company
Phillip Johnsons Addition to Mckim Mead and Whites Boston Public Library. I'm surprised it hasn't been tore down.
the vw beetle? are you serious?
a lot of these seem to be people's opinions of good/bad, some of them just reactionary, i.e., people like it so i won't.
a failure might be more like this:
not that they were bad cars. i had one and it was incredible. they were just a flop for ford.
snooker.
i'm interested...what precisely is the major failure of philip
johnson's addition to the boston public library? seemingly
to me johnson's addition added some much needed shelf
space a major entrance for the library...increased circulation
space. are you arguing against it aesthetically?
Why is Victor Gruen on the list? Name a building to Google...
Worse that Pruitt Igo are the projects along the Dan Ryan expressway in Chicago...if they are still standing. Truly a frightening sight. Subhuman.
Lars..If you have ever moved from the old building to the new building there is no transition. And yes the asethetics suck, asthey did back in 1973-76 when I worked in Copley Square.
large, but unimaginative and homely
btw, tacoma narrows is considered a structural engineering oversight (harmonics analysis)
"mhence the myth that modernism is inherently culture-destroying."
yeah. monoculture is inherently self destroying.
vw beetle, a failure? it was outdated by the mid 60's, but you mean the "new beetle", right?
bells aren't so bad... i don't have a pair anymore. they fit well if you're slim with nice leg muscles. I don't think anyone is yet selling bells to fit men.
chrysler airstream sales failure due to being a superior (? allegedly) design.
god (though this evaluation depends on the intentions of god's creator)
Gremlins weren't so bad. they sold pretty well. they suffered from being old school and so too heavy.
post modernism .... too vague and imposing as a concept
actually it worked well in the initial years .. then it just fizlled out too fast !!
"ten: the mullett...unless u r missing a front tooth"
The haircut, or the architect?
Come to think of it, to an overzealous early c20 modernist, this *would* have been considered a catastrophic design failure.
dyson vac.....Just finished tearing around the house with the Purple animal....it does pic up alot of stuff,but it is hell to clean afterwards.
All those ins and outs which are like a magnet for fine dirt.
i would submit my architectural career as a design failure.
Architecture: How about Ronan Point, a typical block of 1960's flats near the London Docklands. Just after it was completed in 1968, a gas explosion on the 18th floor collapsed an entire corner of the building. A turningn point in the UK's housing policy.
Card Design: De Lorean Motor Compnay and there rubbish, badly made, poorly performing gull-winged car, £100million of government money and the factory lasted one year!
that recent architect in Japan that falsified structural reports and built and built - all with the knowledge that the buildings couldn't withstand an earthquake. That's terrifying.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4480944.stm
Post Modernism
Blobbitecture
i dunno e909,
modernist repitition can be bad but i dont believe it is inherently a problem.
this is a shot of my neighborhood in tokyo, with corbusien low rise buildings and towers all over the place; it is surprisingly comfortable, and the community culture is very very strong. It is totally repetitious and ugly in many places, but the way it is inhabitated more than makes up for it.
This is not great architecture, quite the opposite, really, but the residents grow their own flowers and vegetables instead of just having fields of unused open space and the place is bubblin with activity most times.
These flats are all for sale (going for half a million during the bubble if you can believe it), and were mid-middle class housing back in the housing crisis era, so the inhabitants make a huge difference.
I suspect by now no two flats are the same on the inside, and people are constantly redoing the flats judging by the number of contractors parked out front most days. After 30 years the place is still filled with kids (and old people) so it isn't turning into a retirement slum or anything through disinterest. after living here a while i am quite convinced the architecture is only a small part of the problem in places like pruitt-igoe and cetera...
special situation, perhaps, but if you prefer a less anecdotal voice for modernist housing check out peter hall's writing. anything by him is worth reading...
by "monoculture" i didn't mean aesthetics, i meant that it was the ghettoization of people that was the monoculture. all of the public housing recipients are packed in with only public housing recipients. non-housing recipients never live near public housing recipients.
bussing in the US was an attempt to fix this monoculture problem.
see also: "NIMBY" :-)
ah.
well, never mind then....;-)
that kind of monoculture happens naturally enough though, planned or not people want to live with people just like themselves (in general).
not sure if it is a good thing or not yet. i have been talking with a post-doc friend who is studying the issue as a researcher (rather than as architect) and now i am not so certain what role/value architecture has in that context. or if anyone can actually fix the problems associated with it...a tuf problem.
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