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Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Chinese Peasant Hat (‘n’ Boots)

posted by on October 31 at 11:56 AM

pnight.jpg

The Japanese architect Shigeru Ban based his design for the Centre Pompidou-Metz—construction on it begins Tuesday—on a Chinese peasant hat. It also looks like a cathedral, and even has a central “nave.”

There’s something tawdry and gimmicky about wearing your metaphors on your sleeve like this, about all this simplistic free association in architecture. Why do buildings have to be birds and spines and turning torsos and sailboats? Why can’t they just be buildings?

And why, in the face of everything I’ve just said, do I Iike this oversized hut so much?

Scott Lawrimore suggested looking at the building in the context of the 1955 wonder-of-the-world Hat ‘n’ Boots Seattle gas station, which was saved from demolition in 1997 and moved, “hat first, then boots,” on December 13, 2003, to Oxbow Park in Georgetown. According to hatnboots.org, the unfinished restoration of the Hat will require $50,000.

Here’s an early shot of the gorgeous thing.

Hat n Boots Seattle_WA (1).jpg

RSS icon Comments

1

If it bums you out that you like it in spite of its stated resemblance to a hat, would you feel better acknowledging its resemblance to the work of famed 70's album-cover artist Roger Dean?

Posted by flamingbanjo | October 31, 2006 12:01 PM
2

More appropriately: "Chinese Peasant Hat ('n' Bound Feet)."

Posted by Nick | October 31, 2006 12:40 PM
3

Makes me want to re-read "Learning from Las Vegas."

Good point Jen, why can't a building just be a building? Freud?

Posted by TotorT'um | October 31, 2006 1:36 PM
4

But it's PRETTY. Who cares if it's supposed to be a hat? It doesn't really look like one. Let's just ignore the artists from now on...they're good at making things, not saying things. Or they'd be writers or something.

Posted by Jennifer | October 31, 2006 2:33 PM
5

Yeah! Artists should never say things.

Posted by jameyb | October 31, 2006 2:34 PM
6

Huh, looks to me like Ban just copied the American Pavilion from Spokane's Expo '74.

Posted by COMTE | October 31, 2006 4:25 PM
7

If it bums you out that you like it in spite of its stated resemblance to a hat, would you feel better acknowledging its resemblance to the work of famed 70's album-cover artist Roger Dean? I disagree go to http://www.apartments.waw.pl/

Posted by Warsaw apartments | November 15, 2006 8:05 AM

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