What exactly is horrible about them? These have a lot more grace than the buildings behind them in the renderings, and look better than 95% of the new buildings going up in Seattle. More info or opinion, please.

JP: taste is subjective, but I am confident that you are out of your mind.

Dancing? More like strutting.

both do look like knockoffs of this:

http://www.khm.at/system2E.html?/staticE/page2857.html

but i still like all of them. (and am happy then to be out of my mind:)

They're moving the Freedom Tower to Moscow, as well?

Charles - these are clearly both inspired by the double-helix of our DNA. In other posts, you have eschewed other designs with organic inspirations, even calling one (as I recall) 'womblike' in a way that suggested that to be a negative connotation. Instead, you seem to enjoy boxy cubist architecture like that funky (Danish?) lego-looking building that entered your dreams a few weeks ago.

So then, Charles - why do you renounce your own organic origins in favor of the sterile and artificial? Do you have some problem with your mother?

I fear for you when the Berserker machines come, Charles. I feel sure you'll be among the first to sell out our race.

Man, that's twisted...

ya, i immediately thought of the double-helix and am excited by these designs.

That design reminds me of these:
http://www.advertisingballoons.com/images/dancer15ftneonnowleasing.jpg
Doing it's annoying little dance in the skyline, beckoning you to invest in the city.

i simply prefer buildings with shapes that do not exist in nature. any old tree can twist like those towers. when a building has a shape that can only exist in theory, then it is supremely human. As Marx wrote in volume three of Das Capital: "[W]hat distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality."

As for wombs and my mom, I offer this scene from Blade Runner:

Holden: Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... your mother.
Leon: My mother?
Holden: Yeah.
Leon: Let me tell you about my mother.
[Shoots him]

It would be a keen headquarters for the Cameltoe Corporation.

Whatever its inspiration, it's a pretty gimmicky concept and seems destined to feel as dated as most Northwest architecture of the '90s.

When will the foreign fools learn? Everyone should live in McMansions and all public builds should look like Wal-Mart - LIKE AMERICA!

Nicely played, Charles. You win... this round. But at what cost?

Oh people, grow up. It's beautiful. I'm sorry you are so conformist and old. Get outta my world. Blah.

It looks like a broken drill bit to me, as if some giant had started to drill very large hole in the concrete only to have the drill bit snap off and get stuck there.
I wonder, will they follow it up with a bent-nail building, or maybe snapped-off-hacksaw-blade-stuck-in-pipe?
The Infinity tower looks better to me. It seems to gesture toward an indefinite extension into space, while the sweep of the building does seeem to reach some sort of repose. Given the size of arab women though, it nees larger hips.

I like them, the second particularly. Visually interesting yet still elegant. Not pushing the boundaries of weird just to make a name for themselves. And nothing is preventing the rooms inside from consisting of nicely functional 90 degree angles. Assuming their roofs don't leak -- something a surprising number of snootily famous buildings can't claim -- they look like perfectly livable structures.

They are beautiful. I like big pretty towers to climb on.

Look at 'em! They're gorgeous!

Once again, Charles, I think you are focussing on things so personal and subjective -- a pretty-picture -- that you are missing entirely what is important about urban buildings: what happens at their base, at the sidewalk level.

all are indebted to santiago calatrava's "turning torso" tower in sweden. they are best viewed as a variant of the "boy band" phenomena of the 1990's.

i was wondering david sucher, is the base of the empire state buiding or the chrysler building what matters?

Now Charles I do remember you complaining once about how Seattlite's get too upset about new development and building's being torn down. In this instance I really don't see the difference between you and the Seattlite's. It's just a really trendy design that will be as cool as the Space Needle one day...

Simple: Who cares!

interesting comments