verticality: icon or eyesore
ok so its been 3 months since my last post and i remember promising a "real" post so here it is i suppose. i haven't been paying much attention to architecture since i started working because i hate it now but i've seen a tower or two here n there i don't even know what or where they are but i know they're by calatrava. i think he just took a rectangle and twisted it a couple times vertically along the axis. big whoop. ok so here he creates something that has irked me since my senior studio and that is in creating something of verticality, the possiblity of achieving instantaneous iconic status is possible. but we have to ask ourselves, why does one become an icon so quickly, immediately, and without proper reason? the simple fact of the matter is, in my humble opinion, that you can put up a piece of crap building make it tall and have somewhat sexy renderings and then bam! its an instant icon. case in point, the freedom tower. currently it is a piece of shit. it started as something that was quite possibly very intriguing in the conceptual phase but as a result of childs n liebskind bickering it is just a super tall generic glass box which will receive monster iconic status no matter how functional the spaces created in and around it are. so what was my point. oh right. um when does functionality and the humanistic aspects of building a vertical structure begin to be sacrficied for the self-contained sexy object tower which is most likely reverse engineered and post-rationalized like many formalistic projects are today? no doubt calatrava's buildings are based on structural principals/sculptures but where does the architecture really originate from? making something cool from a sculpture that mimics the human spine? isn't that a little too literal? whatever the case, i really think its an ongoing debate, anyone agree with me? thoughts? let's hear it
posted by Anonymous @ 1:18 PM
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