Each story takes us closer to God!
Mississauga,
the little city that could, is growing by leaps and bounds. About two
blocks from where we live there is a group of buildings called Absolute Condos coming up. The fifth building in this group will have over 50 stories, and there is a vote to choose which of the six proposed designs is the best.
These designs depict the state of modern architecture pretty well: there are four gigantic pieces of crap, one relative tolerable design (although it would completely wrong for its surroundings in that location) and one stylish and tasteful design. So we can take a guess which one of these will win.
Speaking of architecture, I have for a long time wondered why the wheel must constantly be re-invented so that each building is designed from scratch. If some architect comes up with a beautiful design for a building, couldn't the same design just as well be used to construct several identical beautiful buildings all over the world? Think of the savings! As long as these buildings are not withing the sighting distance from each other I don't see what the problem is. Architectural designs are just information and bits, and information wants to be free. Why do they keep building bad and ugly buildings when there are lots of designs for good and beautiful buildings? What am I missing here?
These designs depict the state of modern architecture pretty well: there are four gigantic pieces of crap, one relative tolerable design (although it would completely wrong for its surroundings in that location) and one stylish and tasteful design. So we can take a guess which one of these will win.
Speaking of architecture, I have for a long time wondered why the wheel must constantly be re-invented so that each building is designed from scratch. If some architect comes up with a beautiful design for a building, couldn't the same design just as well be used to construct several identical beautiful buildings all over the world? Think of the savings! As long as these buildings are not withing the sighting distance from each other I don't see what the problem is. Architectural designs are just information and bits, and information wants to be free. Why do they keep building bad and ugly buildings when there are lots of designs for good and beautiful buildings? What am I missing here?
Somehow we are trapped in a world where architectural designs are only reused when the identical buildings are within sighting distance of each other. Argh.
Posted by Sean | 3:07 AM
Actually architecture used to be like that before modernism came. In 19th century there used to be pattern books full of different architectural patterns that could be combined (even by mediocrite designer) and the result would be pretty good.
You can notice that very well when you walk in some part of city that has been built in 19th century and observing facades of buildings.
Posted by Anonymous | 3:49 AM
Like designs number 2 and 5. Number 6 is okay, but it's very basic. Others are crap. Guess I've fucked up my brain with architecture.
Posted by Jari | 6:52 AM
Here is a project about the same size by Santiago Calatrava at Malmö, Sweden.
I visited Malmö last fall and I kinda liked the building though it was not completed back then.
Posted by Jari | 7:02 AM
Number 6 is the only building I would ever want to see erected around anywhere near where I live. The rest are simply horrible, except 3, which might fit into a suitable city enviroment in downtown Toronto.
Fortunately, the two new Capital towers that are just being finished behind the city are truly beautiful. And they look much better live than in pictures.
Posted by Ilkka | 12:39 PM
Number one looks bad, number two terrible, number three is good, number four is probably bad (it's difficult to see distinguish the shape of the building), number five is cheap trickery and quite ugly and number six is ok but awfully plain and not suitable for a landmark building (if that's what is wanted). I'd vote for number three.
Posted by Anonymous | 7:40 AM