Blair Kamin pans the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield, IL, designed by HOK and set to open this weekend. (alt. link for Kamin article and more news at the Chicago Tribune)
Get your appetites ready. McDonald's new two-story "flagship" in Chicago's River North opens for business Friday. Would you like a clunky building with that?
James Howard Kunstler's latest Eyesore of the Month is a lesson not only in bad architecture, but also extremely bad circulation.
And Design Observer tackles the latest unfortunate trend in Southern Californian residential design: Tuscan.
The McDonald's building is actually a replica of the first ever McDonalds.
ReplyDeleteOnly four times bigger.
With three storey high glazing.
The Tuscan epidemic is not just southern California based. Their are usually three or four syle variations available from builders, tuscan, country french and something like clunky American 40's. Tuscan is the best of the lot.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't architects use the Tuscan thing as an INSPIRATION, rather than making the house look like a movie set.
ReplyDeleteThe main common thread in all of these appears to be a lack of subtelty
I don't think any of these four buildings tried its hardest to complete is surrounding neighborhoods. I think that's important.
ReplyDeleteThat Mickey D's is a complete waste of urban space. The core of a city shouldn't allow single use establishments.
Oh my lord...disturbing, all of them.
ReplyDeleteThe McDonalds is of course better 4 times bigger as anything is, like a carton of fries or your ass.
ReplyDeleteThe aesthetically challenged McDonald's was [and now always will be] a black hole where the city's urban fabric ceases to exist. It is an icon of hideous architecture and substandard suburban-like planning. Unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteOne of the oddr opinions I have heard on the McD's neighborhood is that people want to fight the "Manhattan-ization" of the neighborhood. As if rows of high rise buildings in a city are a negative thing?
ReplyDeleteTremont Towers in Houston should be added to the list of bad building- what a nightmare of a condominium. The bad architecture has allowed leaks/ mold to breed. Now a $20 million 76-unit condo building sits vacant on prime real estate. Word is builder is claiming bankruptcy.
ReplyDeleteTo address the Tuscan design, I must disagree with the posts. The idea of Old-World elegance revealed in the modern repetition of Tuscan architecture simply reflects a lifestyle foreign to city dwellers. Tuscan design incorporated it's environment and is designed specifically to blend with it's surroundings much more than modernist design. In this era of environmental sensitivity and renewal, clearly natural stone is better than concrete and glass. What arrogance would suggest otherwise? I adore modernist design such as Frank Lloyd Wright and evolutions thereof for my offices but I prefer the charm and time-valued elegance of Tuscan architecture for my leisure as do many more well informed individuals.
ReplyDelete