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The smoke stack at the Old Joliet Prison reminds me of that a bit. We were even commenting about it while we were there last weekend.
Friend: "What album does that remind you of?" Me: "Animals, of course." https://i.imgur.com/lBydJa2.jpg?1 https://i.imgur.com/oRNgfzj.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joliet...ctional_Center That bulge towards the top is deterioration and there are bricks that fall every now and then, so they've closed off the area around below it somewhat. Other structures are failing as well. The roof of the west administration building on the property has collapsed, and the cost of renovation is over $1M. The east facing façade of it is bowing outward and ready to fall, but if they get funding and do manage to fix it before it falls it'll save them from having to bull doze the entire thing. I met the structural engineer in charge of renovation while I was there last weekend. Great guy. https://i.imgur.com/si6hzGc.png?1 You can see the damage through the windows of the top two floors. When we first started doing events there 2 years ago, quite a few of the players were up on those floors exploring when they weren't supposed to be. They had it fenced off for a reason. We're talking about having the course open for an entire week next year, where people buy one-week passes, which will allow more people to be able to experience being within the confines of this awesome piece of history. I just hope they can manage to get the funding to keep it safe. We're helping with our events, but it's a drop in the bucket. http://i.imgur.com/ad4tRMp.png?1 |
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__________________________________________________ _________ The ex-penitentiary of the city I live in now has been converted into government offices. With a wide pedestrianized street and a park opposite (out of sight to the photographer's right) it makes for a pleasant corner of the city. https://live.staticflickr.com/7299/2...475ec8c9_b.jpg Meanwhile, in London, two views of a working prison: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...wfPSg&usqp=CAU.....https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...ts-xw&usqp=CAU Fancy entrance, but this is a special kind of grim that London is good at: the cold Victorian-built institution; in this case, it's Wormwood Scrubs, whose very name strikes a foreboding chill in the heart.... |
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That's an impressive, disciplined example of how to do classic! It's the Lincoln Memorial, isn't it?
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...and the building is such a good example of the Doric Order that it reminds me of illustrations I used to pour over in pre-internet days:- https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...UIjdw&usqp=CAU....https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...8F-dA&usqp=CAU The same way a doctor learns a zillion different words in anatomy, architecture also has a name for every bit of classical building: the volutes, the dentils, the ovolu moldings! What's your favourite Order? If pushed, I'd probably break the rules and do some mix and match: a Doric entablature on Ionic columns. In fact, I just noticed that the L M is also an exercise in mix-and-match: Doric columns outside, Ionic columns inside:- https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...RwAQQ&usqp=CAU |
Some good info Lisna. I've never gotten that far into those terms and styles. I did happen to visit that very same monument in 1976 though. A family trip to our nations capital during the bicentennial year.
We visited quite a few notable places there during that trip, but the most vivid memory of it was getting lost and separated from my family. My brother and me were told to run ahead to catch the tour bus for the White House, and I got on the wrong one. I ended up sitting in a park watching someone sing and play guitar when a few secret service men came up to me and asked me my name. Boom! They swarmed me and escorted me to a different location where I met up with my hysterical Mom. We were cleared and went on with the rest of our trip, but the shock waves from that day resonated for years to come. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...outh_sides.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House |
Music has a bewildering number of genres and subgenres, and if anything, architecture has even more. Why? Because on top of all the historical and stylistic variations that music and architecture have, with buildings there is the additional factor: availability of local building materials.
Two buildings of local stone in Dundee, Scotland:- https://www.dundee.com/sites/default...?itok=PFX-bizD The McManus Gallery, a Scottish Gothic Revival art gallery and public library, opened in 1895. https://www.youssoufobe.com/blog_ima...5652045887.jpg The Morgan Academy, a Scottish Baronial Revival boarding school, opened in 1866. |
Thanks Mindfulness!
Your photo of the inside of a dome was impressive, with its geometry and perspective. I even worked out where it was from: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c8/b6...e4d29b1ecb.jpg Not so different in style, here are some perfectly detailed Corinthian columns for you: tightly packed in two rows, supporting the front of the Supreme Court building: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/supr...o-41702124.jpg |
A Tale of Two Cities:
Maybe it's my mood, but these two places both seem to have a sad beauty about them. Why not spend 5 mins in each place? In Detroit, it's the photos and circumstances of abandonment. In Shaftesbury, it's the music, first of Dvorak, then of Vaughan Williams, and a nostalgia for an England that once was. |
^^ Thanks for that second video Lisna, that was lovely. Is that really the most famous view in England? If yes, why?
Didn't watch much of the first video, too sad. The U.S. really resembles the third world a lot of the time. The wealth disparity is incomprehensible. |
Thanks for the response, adidasss.
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Thanks for the info. :)
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It's obvious when you think about it.
The other day I mentioned how architecture has a limitless number of styles, and very often a label is slapped on that relates to a time period. In Britain, Tudor, Georgian, Victorian are commonly used adjectives, which of course refer to the monarchs of the time. In Russia, in a basement in Ekaterinburg, they drew a brutal line under their their monarchal dynasty, so how do they label post-revolution architectural styles? Logically enough, by the dictator of the day - and if you watch this video you can learn the differences between a Stalinka , a Khrushchyvoka and a Breshnev commieblock. 11 mins, thick accent, but I found it a very interesting insight into Russian public housing, plus great photos of sad-looking buildings:- |
That's interesting, Mindfulness! Like any big, old building, I feel that it needs a book full of diagrams to explain properly what has gone on with Penn Station, and what New Yorkers have there now.
https://rpa-org.imgix.net/work/Repor...&ratio=&w=500& Do you think this is the new Penn Station, with 3 separate buildings? Or is Penn South underground? And how about the impressive original: has it been completely destroyed? I'm going to go all-out ballistic, with a "mad" emoji for the 1963 planners: :mad: |
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__________________________________________________ _____________ Here's a CNN article, "New Buildings Set To Shape 2021": https://edition.cnn.com/style/articl...021/index.html If your taste in buildings resembles mine in any way, be ready for some visually disappointing projects for the brave new 2021. Of the eight featured designs, there were only a couple I liked. My fave: https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/q_...nt-housing.jpg A little imagination and colour adds interest to a building that still fits in well with the conventional building, bottom left. Design fails imo:- https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/q_...rts-center.jpg A building so drab and utilitarian that it it resembles an electrical substation, barely distinguishable from the streetlighting poles in front of it. Tacking on a gimmick that looks as grossly out of place as a goitre does nothing to redeem it. https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/q_...ay-library.jpg Great - if you want buildings that look like they were designed 50 years ago, when stuff like this was a little more cutting edge. |
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I was very surprised when I first realised that you were in England until very recently. The minute I found out, I wanted to ask where you were exactly, but felt that it wasn't a very discreet question on an open forum. But you were at university, right? so that narrows it down. (*googles UK university towns*) |
Yep I'm at university. I usually talk more openly about these things on discord because it's less public but I'll pm you
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OK, thanks Marie.
Change of topic, Rudolf Steiner is an Austrian architect who doesn't get the attention he deserves, imo. His buildings, from the 1920s, look surprisingly modern. They were innovative, but didn't spawn any real movements or immitators the way Corb and FLWright did, and so he has been largely forgotten. Perhaps that's Steiner's own fault, because he only designed 17 buildings, being otherwise busy as an all-round oddball. Theosophy, Anthroposophical Medicine, and Biodynamic Agriculture were some of the ideas that he explored or promoted. The last one, Biodynamic Agriculture, sounded like a sensible idea, or so I thought until I read this, courtesy of wikipedia: " He taught that mushrooms were "very harmful" because "they contain hindering lunar forces, and everything that arose on the old Moon signifies rigidification." Not sure about that, but his buildings are nice: |
^it's cool that you mention that! Rudolf Steiner spawned a pretty nutty, ****ed up cult, but his architecture is nice and does have some followers to this day. Actually I know just one, but he's pretty established in Holland and did some big projects, one of which I know well:
https://bijlmervoorbeginners.files.w...ofdkantoor.jpg https://images0.persgroep.net/rcs/ZN...redformat=webp not as good-looking as the original work by Steiner, but still pretty nice, particularly irl |
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I think the architect has got the lesson of Steiner just right; buildings that are both sensible and strange. I would just love to walk around that whole complex myself. If I was in your company at the time, yeah, I could live with that. ;) __________________________________________________ __________ So yours is a difficult post to follow, Marie! I've been scratching my head for a day or two, but haven't come up with much. There's a video for anyone curious about Washington's civic buildings: __________________________________________________ ___________ And an old stand-by of eccentric British architecture to fall back on, Portmeirion, which Plankton and I have both enthused about in the past:- A village on the coast of North Wales, it became famous as the setting for that stylish tv series of the 60s, The Prisoner: |
That village looks lovely in the thumbnail already! I'll definitely watch those videos later.
And yeah, I've come across quite a lot of the Steiner sect through some random circumstances, weird ass people edit: watched the second video, I love how colourful it all looks. It has a bit of a Southern European feeling the first video is really cool and well made, imagine being able to do something like that :o |
here's an insane but also beautiful apartment complex from China. I love all the little oddities you can spot.
Spoiler for large pics:
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Must be a hell of a view from the top of that! I wonder how many people have committed suicide from that building and ended up making a mess on someone else's balcony?
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oh I'm glad that I'm not the only one immediately getting into dark speculations like that lol. The building definitely speaks to the imagination. I think life in a Chinese city is fascinating anyhow; it must be so different from what I'm used to.
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If I lived at that apartment complex and had a couple drones, it'd be a great place to record and film a DJ set. |
Or you deposit your dog's poo on their balcony without it being obvious it was you.
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https://media.tenor.com/images/1ceb9...0186/tenor.gif |
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Two things I like most: that it doesn't take much tweaking of conventional geometric shapes to come up with something completely new, and that the architect is modest enough to let the tenants' choices dictate how his building will ultimately look. Famous for the opposite approach, to the point of bolting furniture to the floor so that tenants wouldn't move pieces around and "spoil" his building, is Frank Lloyd Wright. Plenty of other architects see a commission as an opportunity to thrust their ego and arrogance on others imo. Still, to go back and defend FLW, his designs could be incredible. In this thread, 15 minutes is a long time to spend on one building, but when you see what an absolute jewel this building is, I hope you'll consider it justified: By today's standards, there's perhaps too much inventiveness in this building: decoration everywhere you look, and rather cleverly, the only rest from it all is in the hotel bedrooms. |
Oh cool, I agree with your opinion on FLW. Definitely need to watch this
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https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/l...n/3/147064.jpg.....https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/l.../19/169717.jpg Back in the 1980s I was walking around London one day and saw this unusual building by chance. I had never seen anything like it: a greenhouse right in the centre of London full of little architectural jokes. At the time I didn't even know there was such a thing as an architectural joke - but I had stumbled on the iconic birthplace of the British Post-Modern movement, built by Terry Farrell, and alas, already demolished :( (If it's not clear from the photos, behind the big frontage, there is only half a building, and two of the columns, which should be doing the actual "work" of supporting the glass-roofed building have been turned into purely decorative elements instead. The 3 solid columns on the left, that look like they are doing the heavy lifting, are holding up almost nothing.) The Post-Modern style has come up with a lot of interesting buildings, but not many that are as simple and stylish as this one. |
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You have some nice pics of France there, Dianna, all taken by yourself I presume. Thanks for contributing to this thread.
For technical reasons, I only post photos I can find on google, I'm afraid. Here's one of an art gallery in Eastbourne; a post-script to a dialogue I had here ages ago, about colour in architecture:- https://www.townereastbourne.org.uk/...-Atkins-46.jpg |
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...=175&crop=fill
Local to where we live, typical look of the roads and houses.. A chateau and then a basic house can be next door... https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...molonges_1.jpg both taken from the car, on the move, in same location... https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...Quadal_(2).jpg Guadalest, S. E.Spain near to Benidorm All my pictures this time taken with a phone camera, very pleased with the Guadalest one as it looks very much like one that is on the internet.. the others of churches etc were not mine but off the internet. |
I love your first two pics ! That kind of street, on a wet day, reminds me of a village in Cornwall I used to visit, but of course there are scenes like that all over Europe: old buildings on a crooked street are so attractive.
_________________________________________ But if you're commisioned to build a modern university building, what can you do? This is the busy, brick-clad Queens Building for De Montfort University in Leicester. It seems to look like a different building from each elevation, which makes it unusual. Also striking are the ventilation towers:- |
This link for world wide architecture is good if you have time on your hands....
https://www.e-architect.com/city-buildings this next one includes the local online newspaper we get, quite useful, and the architure of that first one is to me pretty gross...but then I like the old buildings overall...churches I like to wander about in and think stuff..although I am non religious that makes no difference to me. https://www.connexionfrance.com/Mag/...n-architecture |
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If there is such a thing as too much modern architecture, this link may be that too. A week or so ago, I found a really nice building there, but cannot find it again. :( If you are curious about how the Surfside Condo failed, this is a short and clear explanation:- It's a reminder of how all the bits of a structure have to do their job: the failure of one part puts un-designed-for stress on other parts, leading to progressive collapse. |
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