“...
Architectural postmodernism is about defying the citizen’s expectations of what a building should be, but the unfortunate effect is that crass or crazy additions to deeply conventional older buildings are themselves a cliché. Why don’t architects notice that their daring bolshie audacity is itself faded and tiresome? Frank Gehry is 87 years old, guys, and, news flash, this box with the whimsical aleatoric windows isn’t a Gehry. It’s some subfusc practitioner trying to put his “signature” on a structure at modest expense, and creating an impression of cheapness.
Hear, O Ottawa, the warnings from Edmonton: cheapness is something a grand hotel cannot afford, in the hard-cash, bottom-line sense of “afford.” And sometimes, when you are told, “You’ll learn to love it,” the correct answer is, “Not likely, pal.”
I don’t mean to diminish the challenge of adding respectfully to a building whose decorative features may not be reproducible in 2016 at any price. The railway hotels were moonshot-scale projects ... And we have largely ceased to build for permanence in any context. When we build a city hall or a hockey rink, we know it will probably have to be changed like a diaper in 50 years.
Perhaps architects, knowing that their work is unlikely to outlive a parrot, cannot be entirely faulted for retreating into self-indulgence. But why leave taste behind?”
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/colb...-from-the-west
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