After watching Marlin's latest Archinect Travel video of Taliesin West, I began to think about my own experience at FLW's "masterpiece", and how underwhelmed I was by the experience. I don't know if it was the hype built up around it, or something I ate that day, but I was slightly disappointed by my experience there. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a great piece of architecture, but it wasn't as good as I expected it to be.
So, does anyone else have any stories of visiting well known buildings and being disappointed?
What about buildings that suprised you with how great they actually turned out to be?
I've got one, and I may be putting myself out to be hanged for saying so but, oh well.
I was disapointed by the Pantheon. I know, I know, its beautiful, and I did love the wood doors, and the structure of the porch, but the interior space left me cold. I have pondered it to death, and feel the reason it was less exciting to me than other places is because this is now, and we are in structures all the time with the same, or more, open unbroken space. Our stadiums are twice the size and have no columns in the center. So I think I have been spoiled by today's engineering feats. The place was still beautiful, but I'm positive it was better for people seeing it before the industrieal revolution, than it was for me.
from my october trip to london:
30 st mary axe (gherkin) and how it touches the ground (although it does wonders to the london skyline)
this years serpentine gallery (by Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen)
the memorial fountain/park for princess Diana at Hyde Park
Pompadue - it was actualy quite gross in person. Makes much better photographs. The site arrangement was great, but the building was not as powerfull as i thought it would be.
Crown Hall - having been inside it, well, lets just say its a whole lot better looking from the outside looking in. Some one fix that nasty spline clg, it looks like a suburban bank from the 60's.
I was pleasently surprised to wander into Corb's Villa Roche and be rather floored by it. ive never liked any other Corb project, and I think this particular villa is his high point as an architect.
by far, the Barcelona Pavillion (or the recreation of it) by Mies was the most surprising architectural experience. i had never thought much of it, until i visited the structure, and experienced all the nuances of material, light, flux, spaces...i spent 3 rolls of film photographing it, and none of the pictures (by me, or anyone else) come close to capturing the richness of that building;
by far, the richest architectural experience per s.f. i've ever had.
Sarah, I felt the same way when I visited the pantheon. I was excited all the way up to the doorway, but once I stepped inside all that excitement left. It may have been for the same reasons you stated. I also think it was because it has been so haphazardly forced into being a catholic church, totally destroying its original function.
Whatevertech, is today's use really so different? I mean, origionally, it was a temple to the gods, now its a temple to God. Both were worship spaces. I do wonder if it would've been a different experience if the upper part of the walls, above the doors and such, whats that called, anyway, were left in its original condition instead of the revamp done in the 16-1700s. Guess we will never know. Most people don't even know that its not all original anyway.
underwhelming: edinburgh's new scottish parliament (it's awful, words cannot describe it)
overwhelming: edinburgh's old city (it's incredible, words cannot describe it)
Sarah, function was a bad word choice. I think the flow or the use of the space is what has been disrupted the most. Now that it is a church the focus is on the altar directly across from the entrance, and when I was there half the space was roped off and filled with seating. The rest of the space had random displays of saints artifacts. I think it feels like a more awkward space now with all that extra stuff inside, and the shift in focus. Although, who knows exactly what it was like inside originally.
i find that my experience of buildings has a LOT to do with the circumstances.
i was also underwhelmed by tw/bt's folk art museum, but i was hurried and frustrated when i saw it.
strangely, as much as i appreciate them, all the projects by star architects on the university of cincinnati campus leave me sort of cold. there are some wonderful things going on but they just don't have the spark that i really want to feel. no matter, it's still good to take architecture students to see them. maybe it's because i've always seen these projects with a group of students in tow?
guggenheim ny is outstanding with a jazz quartet playing in the bottom of the spiral on a friday night.
both eero saarinen's north christian church and eliel's first christian church in columbus, in, will always stick with me as incredible experientially, largely because the organ tuner was playing bach's toccata & fugue in both of them when i visited them and it changed the dynamic of the spaces entirely. (long story: the surprise of hearing the same music in different places at different times of day, and not knowing the source right away, had something to do with it.)
i loved corb's salvation army in paris - even in its current compromised state - because of the process of getting there, finding it, talking to the people that worked there, and the whole bustling activity of the place.
corb's habite in berlin and the olympic stadium near it have the same heavy somber attitude in my memory, both very impressive
mies' tugendhat is very exciting if you're sort of breaking in and afraid you'll get caught.
philip johnson's roofless church in new harmony, in, early morning, with the fog still not burned off the flood plain of the wabash river - sublime.
the biggest positive surprise ever: the bauhaus. you can FEEL that gropius was trained as a classical architect and that this building was all about rewriting the rules from a point-of-view of someone that knew those rules very well, knew what was worth keeping, and knew just which ones to break for greatest impact.
Generally I find that well-known buildings are far more enjoyable in real life. But I remember when I visited Ronchamp the weather was awful, cold and wet. The church was very much like a cold, dark, damp concrete tomb, ugh! At the opposite extreme, when I visited the Parthenon in Athens the weather was ...surprise,surprise ...achingly bakingly hot and the hill was crowded with loud tourists. So no magic there either.
falling water, not that the restoration took away from the experience, but the mediocre garage/guest house that cleverly never appears in any photo destroyed my appreciation for the rest of the place.
was underwhelmed by most roman stuff in rome (including the pantheon) after the delicacy of renzo's modern structures in genoa (but I like the aqueducts).
all gehry buildings from the inside (except his santa monica house), and all but disney hall from the outside bore me.
most of meier's work including the getty meglopolis.
I second Meier's work. I felt the MACBA and Getty were pretty predictable spaces from both the exterior and interior. The details were pretty bare and uninspiring.
I was also disappointed by Moneo's Kursaal Center in San Sebastian, Spain. The scale was a little kooky and the skin was yellowing too much in broad daylight. I much prefer the glowing box at night.
the FOA park in Barcelona.... the materials looked so wonderful in photos, so shoddy in person, especially with the wonderful Miralles park nearby
I was underwhelmed by the FL Wright house in Oak Park, but really loved Fallingwater; moving up the hillside through the rooms, constantly developing the experience of both the rock of the hill and the sound of the water
Similar contrast in being underwhelmed by the Aalto, Gehry and Holl buildings at MIT, then being blown away by Saarinen's chapel
underwhelming: edinburgh's new scottish parliament (it's awful, words cannot describe it)
Wow Ochona, I've yet to go there, but that's just about the most amazing building I've seen pictures of in recent years. Then again, to each their own...
Yeah...in my world, words cannot describe how awesome and perfect Scottish Parliament is (and yes, I have actually been inside it), but like Apu said, Ochona, to each his own.
I'll go with Ochona on the Scottish Parliament: There are some cute bicycle racks and a nice bit of grass, but they forgot that Scotland has a dour and miserable climate, dreich in local dialect. Miralles shorted us on windows to start with and then tacked some planks on the outside of the few windows we did get. Scotland has no solar gain. For ten months of the year Scotland has no sun at all, let alone solar gain. Also, his attempt at contextualising is mirroring some Basil Spence social housing across the road which was pretty awful to start with, like proto-MVRDV, but cheaper, without the Dutchness, and set incongruously among castles and graveyards). In the wave of publicity that accompanied its opening the only critic who could speak about it without sounding mean was Jencks, and he was struggling.
Simples, the Olafur Eliason/Snohetta Serpentine Pavilion was magnificent, one of my best experiences of 2007. It took some of the most basic concepts and continua of Architecture and touched both ends, offered the black and the white. Access and egress, high, low, enclosure, exposure, dark, light, life, death, womb and phallus. Wherever that is re-erected I recommend all to go see.
However, the Diana memorial is truly dismal: Has no action, no reveal, no focus and no vista. Underwhelming in every way. Even the granite chosen for the pissoir lacks the iron pyrites that makes Aberdeen, the granite city, glisten silver golden in the sun.
I'll also go with Ochona on Edinburgh's old town. The consistency in material and form, and the easy reading of the incremental advances in methods and fashions make walking through it, round it, up and out of it, a very narrative, informative aesthechnological experience.
i was really underwhelmed by maya lin's vietnam veteran's memorial in washington dc. maybe it's because i wasn't in the armed forces and didn't fight in vietnam...but seeing a bunch of crippled old men in army fatigues crying was just pathetic and i couldn't help but have a hearty laugh at their sad asses. i mean, i'm supposed to be thankful to these guys for my freedom, yeah right. at any rate, the memorial hardly reminded me of anything and it certainly didn't look like vietnam either...totally underwhelming
The renovated NY Moma, not so great. It had some moments, but for the most part, pretty underwhelming...and crowded.
Actually same goes for the SF moma...I like me some Botta, but it seemed a little halting. You move from Botta space to not Botta space, to botta space, to not botta space...weird.
Both of those underwhelming architourist museum space are more than compensated for by the deYoung though.
Most underwhelming for me probably goes to the gugenheim in nyc. though i liked it at first impression... the more i thought about it and looked back on my hours there, the more kitchy and gimmicky i found it... though the exhibit we saw was incredible...
most overwhelming (in recent days)
steven hall's bloch addition to the nelson atkins in Kansas City of all places...
absolutely incredible... honestly, i have no idea how to describe it and still do it justice... absolutely worth a trip to see it.
evilp, always read puddles' posts with <sarcasm> in mind.
PsyArch, I definitely bow to your greater depth of experience with which to critique the Parliament building, especially of it not taking advantage of what little sun the Edinburgh skies have to offer. I was at the building on a sunny day in May, I imagine the experience of it in grey December is vastly different. That said, I don't think the building is, or need be, *about* natural light, and I still think it's a fantastic building. It's so beautifully crafted, it looks wild at first glance but is actually finely tuned and intelligent, which in my mind is a great and romantic representation of the Scottish persona. (Again, keep in mind I'm a dumb yank, which you're obviously not.)
flw's taking a beating here. i feel the opposite. everytime i go to an flw i expect to hate it, but end up being completely awed. his work has aura. maybe it's the patina of age. dunno. i do get disappointed with the way some of his work has been treated, particularly fallingwater. it's such a tourist trap now. if i were a member of the kaufman family i would be truly saddened by what has become of a family home.
but the guggenheim, taliesin west, ennis house, etc. are absolutely great...
that's not ignorant. the thread asks for descriptions of underwhelming architecture experiences...and that was my experience at the vietnam veteran's memorial.
puddles post bugged me cuz i grew up army (yes even canadians can be goofy over the military) and i know enough about seeing people die violently that the lin memorial probably would speak to me...but then LB reminded me i shouldn't care. a bit of empathy for the soldiers might be nice though ya wee scunner, mind. the memorial is just a trigger for emotions so who cares, but the people who react don't deserve scorn....tongue in cheek or not.
anyway....underwhelming architecture? ando's suntory museum in osaka didn't impress me so much, though it is well built. i had just come from the church of the light and enjoyed it, so it was a surprise to realise that ando's big buildings are just blown up versions of his houses - scale matters and the delicate facades of the houses turned into blank walls don't have the same human touch for me...but then again it is much hundred times better than say walmart, and as a public place the whole works quite well.
i did not care for the FLW buildings i hae been to. not cuz they were bad, but cuz i expected more than reality could offer. so it was my fault. nowadays i tend to not care so much about buildings out of context and enjoy them as places more than objects. the ones that don't work that way tend not to impress me. for instance ito's tods building is just graphic design, while herzog and demeuron's prada in tokyo has a spatial depth and public place that i quite like. flw tends to fit into the former type for me so far, though i imagine a guy with that kinda reputation must hae done some nice things somewhere...
most surprising building ever for me was rossi's hall in genoa. i went to see renzo piano give a speech there (fantastic, btw) and assumed rossi's building would be poorly built and executed pomo...but it was brilliant. almost made me a fan, even (though not quite).
but steven has it aright. architecture is about the viewer as much as the building, so being underwhelmed may say less about the architect or the architecture than the person feeling ripped off for crimes against his/her expectations.
i was really underwhelmed by maya lin's vietnam veteran's memorial in washington dc. maybe it's because I am a sociopath that I can't empathise with those who signed up to join the armed forces and didn't know they would have to fight a worthless war in vietnam...but my emotional responses to seeing a bunch of crippled old men in army fatigues crying was just pathetic and i couldn't help but have a hearty laugh at their sad asses. It's OK, I'm having therapy for this and expect, one day, to be able to love and cry, show empathy and feeling for those less fortunate than myself. i mean, i'm supposed to be thankful to these guys for my freedom, for giving their lives and those of the children they didn't have, and yeah right the memorial hardly reminded me of anything because I don't have any associative abilities, the ones that would allow me to transpose my life through an abstraction of life, and thus increase my humanity. it certainly didn't look like vietnam which was a surprise because I thought this was a theme park...totally underwhelming
I stand corrected you're not an idiot, you're an asshole.
pet peeve...
personally, i'm more likely to be overwhelmed by an experience (architectural or otherwise). i don't tend to build things up in the moments preceding an experience, maybe as a subconscious defense against disappointment. some things can't be helped, and when you're about to enter Zumthor's Thermal Baths with a group of friends and your new romantic interest, it's hard not to get worked up...but of course the Baths do not disappoint.
i can think of a few projects that i enjoyed as images but not especially as experiences, but we come to these things with so much baggage (as Steven pointed out) that it wouldn't be fair for me to list them without also explaining my mood that day, my background knowledge of the project in question, etc. maybe later...
back to the entertaining sarcasm and quick retorts!
AP - Have you read Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation? It's a hilarious book for those of us who get irked by such apostrophe errors.
I've consistently been underwhelmed by Frank Lloyd Wright's work. And I hate it when people at parties try to start a conversation about architecture and the only thing they can talk about is Frank Lloyd Wright and the Fountainhead, as if all architects revere these two somewhat overrated things.
Re: personal experiences influencing our impressions of architecture:
I went to the Vietnam Memorial with my dad, a Vietnam Vet. We looked up the names of two close friends of his who died (one of whom was killed by a landmine in front of my dad.) It was incredibly incredibly powerful and moving to see my dad's response to the memorial itself. I couldn't imagine a more fitting gesture than this very abstract fissure in which you see yourself reflected.
And I visited Ronchamp in a winter whiteout. We trudged up the hill and the building only came into view as a white apparition a few feet away from us. Inside, the candles were flickering and it was warm. Two nuns in black habits were visiting at the same time. I felt like I was in some tiny, sacrosanct cave of god. Again, a very powerful experience.
Underwhelming Architectural Experiences
After watching Marlin's latest Archinect Travel video of Taliesin West, I began to think about my own experience at FLW's "masterpiece", and how underwhelmed I was by the experience. I don't know if it was the hype built up around it, or something I ate that day, but I was slightly disappointed by my experience there. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a great piece of architecture, but it wasn't as good as I expected it to be.
So, does anyone else have any stories of visiting well known buildings and being disappointed?
What about buildings that suprised you with how great they actually turned out to be?
I've got one, and I may be putting myself out to be hanged for saying so but, oh well.
I was disapointed by the Pantheon. I know, I know, its beautiful, and I did love the wood doors, and the structure of the porch, but the interior space left me cold. I have pondered it to death, and feel the reason it was less exciting to me than other places is because this is now, and we are in structures all the time with the same, or more, open unbroken space. Our stadiums are twice the size and have no columns in the center. So I think I have been spoiled by today's engineering feats. The place was still beautiful, but I'm positive it was better for people seeing it before the industrieal revolution, than it was for me.
It was still pretty cool to see, though.
OMA's Seattle Central Library...
guggenheim bilbao...and any other gehry building for that matter
guggenheim manhattan
ronchamp was boring.
Except for Sarah's, I'm pretty underwhelmed by everyone's descriptions of their underwhelming architectural experiences.
i watched a starchitect cry @ ronchamp.
i liked it, but not that much. he didn't seem very fond of the giggling that arose once we noticed.
i was really underwhelmed w/ TWBTA's folk art museum, especially after all the raves and such.
LB - I'll write more when I get home from work!
from my october trip to london:
30 st mary axe (gherkin) and how it touches the ground (although it does wonders to the london skyline)
this years serpentine gallery (by Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen)
the memorial fountain/park for princess Diana at Hyde Park
Pompadue - it was actualy quite gross in person. Makes much better photographs. The site arrangement was great, but the building was not as powerfull as i thought it would be.
Crown Hall - having been inside it, well, lets just say its a whole lot better looking from the outside looking in. Some one fix that nasty spline clg, it looks like a suburban bank from the 60's.
I was pleasently surprised to wander into Corb's Villa Roche and be rather floored by it. ive never liked any other Corb project, and I think this particular villa is his high point as an architect.
by far, the Barcelona Pavillion (or the recreation of it) by Mies was the most surprising architectural experience. i had never thought much of it, until i visited the structure, and experienced all the nuances of material, light, flux, spaces...i spent 3 rolls of film photographing it, and none of the pictures (by me, or anyone else) come close to capturing the richness of that building;
by far, the richest architectural experience per s.f. i've ever had.
Sarah, I felt the same way when I visited the pantheon. I was excited all the way up to the doorway, but once I stepped inside all that excitement left. It may have been for the same reasons you stated. I also think it was because it has been so haphazardly forced into being a catholic church, totally destroying its original function.
i have one everyday from about 8:30 til 5:30. with an hour off for underwhelming lunch.
Polshek's WGBH in Boston, it's cool from the outside and a nice mix of materials on the interior but in the end, it's just an office buidling.
Ando's Church of the Light was the extreme opposite. I've always loved the pictures, but being in the space was way better than I thought it'd be.
def not impressed by the east wing of the national gallery of art
Whatevertech, is today's use really so different? I mean, origionally, it was a temple to the gods, now its a temple to God. Both were worship spaces. I do wonder if it would've been a different experience if the upper part of the walls, above the doors and such, whats that called, anyway, were left in its original condition instead of the revamp done in the 16-1700s. Guess we will never know. Most people don't even know that its not all original anyway.
underwhelming: edinburgh's new scottish parliament (it's awful, words cannot describe it)
overwhelming: edinburgh's old city (it's incredible, words cannot describe it)
Sarah, function was a bad word choice. I think the flow or the use of the space is what has been disrupted the most. Now that it is a church the focus is on the altar directly across from the entrance, and when I was there half the space was roped off and filled with seating. The rest of the space had random displays of saints artifacts. I think it feels like a more awkward space now with all that extra stuff inside, and the shift in focus. Although, who knows exactly what it was like inside originally.
i find that my experience of buildings has a LOT to do with the circumstances.
i was also underwhelmed by tw/bt's folk art museum, but i was hurried and frustrated when i saw it.
strangely, as much as i appreciate them, all the projects by star architects on the university of cincinnati campus leave me sort of cold. there are some wonderful things going on but they just don't have the spark that i really want to feel. no matter, it's still good to take architecture students to see them. maybe it's because i've always seen these projects with a group of students in tow?
guggenheim ny is outstanding with a jazz quartet playing in the bottom of the spiral on a friday night.
both eero saarinen's north christian church and eliel's first christian church in columbus, in, will always stick with me as incredible experientially, largely because the organ tuner was playing bach's toccata & fugue in both of them when i visited them and it changed the dynamic of the spaces entirely. (long story: the surprise of hearing the same music in different places at different times of day, and not knowing the source right away, had something to do with it.)
i loved corb's salvation army in paris - even in its current compromised state - because of the process of getting there, finding it, talking to the people that worked there, and the whole bustling activity of the place.
corb's habite in berlin and the olympic stadium near it have the same heavy somber attitude in my memory, both very impressive
mies' tugendhat is very exciting if you're sort of breaking in and afraid you'll get caught.
philip johnson's roofless church in new harmony, in, early morning, with the fog still not burned off the flood plain of the wabash river - sublime.
the biggest positive surprise ever: the bauhaus. you can FEEL that gropius was trained as a classical architect and that this building was all about rewriting the rules from a point-of-view of someone that knew those rules very well, knew what was worth keeping, and knew just which ones to break for greatest impact.
Generally I find that well-known buildings are far more enjoyable in real life. But I remember when I visited Ronchamp the weather was awful, cold and wet. The church was very much like a cold, dark, damp concrete tomb, ugh! At the opposite extreme, when I visited the Parthenon in Athens the weather was ...surprise,surprise ...achingly bakingly hot and the hill was crowded with loud tourists. So no magic there either.
Tempe Center for the Arts
YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE THE DISSAPOINTMENT WHEN I FINALLY DISCOVERED MY ANCESTORS CASTLE.....
falling water, not that the restoration took away from the experience, but the mediocre garage/guest house that cleverly never appears in any photo destroyed my appreciation for the rest of the place.
was underwhelmed by most roman stuff in rome (including the pantheon) after the delicacy of renzo's modern structures in genoa (but I like the aqueducts).
all gehry buildings from the inside (except his santa monica house), and all but disney hall from the outside bore me.
most of meier's work including the getty meglopolis.
(to be continued)
I second Meier's work. I felt the MACBA and Getty were pretty predictable spaces from both the exterior and interior. The details were pretty bare and uninspiring.
I was also disappointed by Moneo's Kursaal Center in San Sebastian, Spain. The scale was a little kooky and the skin was yellowing too much in broad daylight. I much prefer the glowing box at night.
my job...
that one tetris building in the red square in russia.... with all the colors/etc..... st. something....damn...brain fart......
looks cool from far but inside was a bit weak...
der
the FOA park in Barcelona.... the materials looked so wonderful in photos, so shoddy in person, especially with the wonderful Miralles park nearby
I was underwhelmed by the FL Wright house in Oak Park, but really loved Fallingwater; moving up the hillside through the rooms, constantly developing the experience of both the rock of the hill and the sound of the water
Similar contrast in being underwhelmed by the Aalto, Gehry and Holl buildings at MIT, then being blown away by Saarinen's chapel
we are so hard to please... and until we loosen up a little, we will always destroy each other and our profession.
Archinect.
Wow Ochona, I've yet to go there, but that's just about the most amazing building I've seen pictures of in recent years. Then again, to each their own...
Yeah...in my world, words cannot describe how awesome and perfect Scottish Parliament is (and yes, I have actually been inside it), but like Apu said, Ochona, to each his own.
Notre Dame in paris: the exterior promises a lot but the interior fails to deliver: narrow, dingy, dark and pokey
I'll go with Ochona on the Scottish Parliament: There are some cute bicycle racks and a nice bit of grass, but they forgot that Scotland has a dour and miserable climate, dreich in local dialect. Miralles shorted us on windows to start with and then tacked some planks on the outside of the few windows we did get. Scotland has no solar gain. For ten months of the year Scotland has no sun at all, let alone solar gain. Also, his attempt at contextualising is mirroring some Basil Spence social housing across the road which was pretty awful to start with, like proto-MVRDV, but cheaper, without the Dutchness, and set incongruously among castles and graveyards). In the wave of publicity that accompanied its opening the only critic who could speak about it without sounding mean was Jencks, and he was struggling.
Simples, the Olafur Eliason/Snohetta Serpentine Pavilion was magnificent, one of my best experiences of 2007. It took some of the most basic concepts and continua of Architecture and touched both ends, offered the black and the white. Access and egress, high, low, enclosure, exposure, dark, light, life, death, womb and phallus. Wherever that is re-erected I recommend all to go see.
However, the Diana memorial is truly dismal: Has no action, no reveal, no focus and no vista. Underwhelming in every way. Even the granite chosen for the pissoir lacks the iron pyrites that makes Aberdeen, the granite city, glisten silver golden in the sun.
I'll also go with Ochona on Edinburgh's old town. The consistency in material and form, and the easy reading of the incremental advances in methods and fashions make walking through it, round it, up and out of it, a very narrative, informative aesthechnological experience.
i was really underwhelmed by maya lin's vietnam veteran's memorial in washington dc. maybe it's because i wasn't in the armed forces and didn't fight in vietnam...but seeing a bunch of crippled old men in army fatigues crying was just pathetic and i couldn't help but have a hearty laugh at their sad asses. i mean, i'm supposed to be thankful to these guys for my freedom, yeah right. at any rate, the memorial hardly reminded me of anything and it certainly didn't look like vietnam either...totally underwhelming
The renovated NY Moma, not so great. It had some moments, but for the most part, pretty underwhelming...and crowded.
Actually same goes for the SF moma...I like me some Botta, but it seemed a little halting. You move from Botta space to not Botta space, to botta space, to not botta space...weird.
Both of those underwhelming architourist museum space are more than compensated for by the deYoung though.
Puddles - thats the most ignorant thing Ive ever read on archinect.
Most underwhelming for me probably goes to the gugenheim in nyc. though i liked it at first impression... the more i thought about it and looked back on my hours there, the more kitchy and gimmicky i found it... though the exhibit we saw was incredible...
most overwhelming (in recent days)
steven hall's bloch addition to the nelson atkins in Kansas City of all places...
absolutely incredible... honestly, i have no idea how to describe it and still do it justice... absolutely worth a trip to see it.
what ep said
evilp, always read puddles' posts with <sarcasm> in mind.
PsyArch, I definitely bow to your greater depth of experience with which to critique the Parliament building, especially of it not taking advantage of what little sun the Edinburgh skies have to offer. I was at the building on a sunny day in May, I imagine the experience of it in grey December is vastly different. That said, I don't think the building is, or need be, *about* natural light, and I still think it's a fantastic building. It's so beautifully crafted, it looks wild at first glance but is actually finely tuned and intelligent, which in my mind is a great and romantic representation of the Scottish persona. (Again, keep in mind I'm a dumb yank, which you're obviously not.)
flw's taking a beating here. i feel the opposite. everytime i go to an flw i expect to hate it, but end up being completely awed. his work has aura. maybe it's the patina of age. dunno. i do get disappointed with the way some of his work has been treated, particularly fallingwater. it's such a tourist trap now. if i were a member of the kaufman family i would be truly saddened by what has become of a family home.
but the guggenheim, taliesin west, ennis house, etc. are absolutely great...
that's not ignorant. the thread asks for descriptions of underwhelming architecture experiences...and that was my experience at the vietnam veteran's memorial.
I stand corrected your not an idiot, your an asshole.
that's the most intelligent thing you've said
nope, just obvious
A Zaha Hadid lecture ....... pretty underwhelming.
lol.
puddles post bugged me cuz i grew up army (yes even canadians can be goofy over the military) and i know enough about seeing people die violently that the lin memorial probably would speak to me...but then LB reminded me i shouldn't care. a bit of empathy for the soldiers might be nice though ya wee scunner, mind. the memorial is just a trigger for emotions so who cares, but the people who react don't deserve scorn....tongue in cheek or not.
anyway....underwhelming architecture? ando's suntory museum in osaka didn't impress me so much, though it is well built. i had just come from the church of the light and enjoyed it, so it was a surprise to realise that ando's big buildings are just blown up versions of his houses - scale matters and the delicate facades of the houses turned into blank walls don't have the same human touch for me...but then again it is much hundred times better than say walmart, and as a public place the whole works quite well.
i did not care for the FLW buildings i hae been to. not cuz they were bad, but cuz i expected more than reality could offer. so it was my fault. nowadays i tend to not care so much about buildings out of context and enjoy them as places more than objects. the ones that don't work that way tend not to impress me. for instance ito's tods building is just graphic design, while herzog and demeuron's prada in tokyo has a spatial depth and public place that i quite like. flw tends to fit into the former type for me so far, though i imagine a guy with that kinda reputation must hae done some nice things somewhere...
most surprising building ever for me was rossi's hall in genoa. i went to see renzo piano give a speech there (fantastic, btw) and assumed rossi's building would be poorly built and executed pomo...but it was brilliant. almost made me a fan, even (though not quite).
but steven has it aright. architecture is about the viewer as much as the building, so being underwhelmed may say less about the architect or the architecture than the person feeling ripped off for crimes against his/her expectations.
The augmented puddles post:
i was really underwhelmed by maya lin's vietnam veteran's memorial in washington dc. maybe it's because I am a sociopath that I can't empathise with those who signed up to join the armed forces and didn't know they would have to fight a worthless war in vietnam...but my emotional responses to seeing a bunch of crippled old men in army fatigues crying was just pathetic and i couldn't help but have a hearty laugh at their sad asses. It's OK, I'm having therapy for this and expect, one day, to be able to love and cry, show empathy and feeling for those less fortunate than myself. i mean, i'm supposed to be thankful to these guys for my freedom, for giving their lives and those of the children they didn't have, and yeah right the memorial hardly reminded me of anything because I don't have any associative abilities, the ones that would allow me to transpose my life through an abstraction of life, and thus increase my humanity. it certainly didn't look like vietnam which was a surprise because I thought this was a theme park...totally underwhelming
pet peeve...
personally, i'm more likely to be overwhelmed by an experience (architectural or otherwise). i don't tend to build things up in the moments preceding an experience, maybe as a subconscious defense against disappointment. some things can't be helped, and when you're about to enter Zumthor's Thermal Baths with a group of friends and your new romantic interest, it's hard not to get worked up...but of course the Baths do not disappoint.
i can think of a few projects that i enjoyed as images but not especially as experiences, but we come to these things with so much baggage (as Steven pointed out) that it wouldn't be fair for me to list them without also explaining my mood that day, my background knowledge of the project in question, etc. maybe later...
back to the entertaining sarcasm and quick retorts!
AP - Have you read Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation? It's a hilarious book for those of us who get irked by such apostrophe errors.
I've consistently been underwhelmed by Frank Lloyd Wright's work. And I hate it when people at parties try to start a conversation about architecture and the only thing they can talk about is Frank Lloyd Wright and the Fountainhead, as if all architects revere these two somewhat overrated things.
Re: personal experiences influencing our impressions of architecture:
I went to the Vietnam Memorial with my dad, a Vietnam Vet. We looked up the names of two close friends of his who died (one of whom was killed by a landmine in front of my dad.) It was incredibly incredibly powerful and moving to see my dad's response to the memorial itself. I couldn't imagine a more fitting gesture than this very abstract fissure in which you see yourself reflected.
And I visited Ronchamp in a winter whiteout. We trudged up the hill and the building only came into view as a white apparition a few feet away from us. Inside, the candles were flickering and it was warm. Two nuns in black habits were visiting at the same time. I felt like I was in some tiny, sacrosanct cave of god. Again, a very powerful experience.
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