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Diller Scofidio Renfro downtown Los Angeles...

aldorossi7

I drove by the under-construction Broad today, and, understanding that as many of us had suspected/known all along that the truly great idea of a structural exterior matrix could not be accommodated given Eli Broad's budget, I marveled at the uber-conventional technology being utilized to assemble Eli's latest self-aggrandizing bauble.


I know that Diller Scofidio Renfro are the Latest and the Greatest, so I am committing grand Heresy in speaking the least bit ill of one of the Darlings of the Parametric Set....


...however...


Before Christopher Hawthorne et al pen their fawning elegies to the Conventional Wisdom Avant Garde, it would be instructive for architecture students and practitioners to see how utterly conventional the technology is in the construction of the new Broad Museum; in fact, it is the same technology used to construct Grand Central Station in New York one hundred years ago. Metal framework and expanded metal lath, pre-cast bric-a-brac…


It you’d like to see a truly modern exposition of structural integrity, see the American Cement Building on Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, built 1959, where the elegant concrete matrix is vertical structure as well.


(Google, kids)

Insofar as I will be hiring enthusiatic young architects in the coming year, I look forward to gauging the general awareness of technology vis-a-vis  rendering-effect, and hope to hear some insightful comments with regard to the state of construction technology and architectural result...

(I also look forward to adolescent smackisms, truly I do...)


Enlighten me!

 
Mar 13, 13 1:49 am
boy in a well

pics or didnt happen old man!

i thought they were just gonna spray ceramics excreting nanobots all over LA and hope for the best?

aldo rossi 7, huh?

sounds like aldo rossi 3 is in a bad mood and shits rolling downhill.

thank you, goodnight!

Mar 13, 13 2:41 am  · 
 · 
chatter of clouds

 structurally, it differs from the Grand Central and the comparison seems random to me. and, as for technology, i'm sure the site logistics and facilities have changed in a century's time.

also, the designers are not "Darlings of the Parametric Set". you have the wrong people and your eyes deceive you. if they're using parametricism, they're using it as an intermediate post-concept design tool and not as a beginning , an end and a philosophy. your eye/mind is not differentiating.  

i do understand what the sensibility behind your post is ("you (D&S/Parametric Set(sic)) guys are not as novel or clever as you think you are" sort of thing) but threre is a lack of substance in your criticism. no one is pretending to invent structural systems.

Mar 13, 13 2:55 am  · 
 · 
t a z

Did my original post vanish?  Anyway - construction info, lots of GFRC and GFRG.  Seele is the cladding contractor:

http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=6529

Webcam:

http://broadartfoundation.org/construction_webcam.html

Mar 13, 13 5:48 pm  · 
 · 

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