MicShazam

I really like medieval looking architecture and thankfully, the city I live in has a fair bit of very old buildings. The midtown area of Aalborg is a curious mix of hundreds of years old architechture and modern architechture. I tried to find a picture from Aalborg that would show how it's a mix of old and new. This was the best I could find:


A couple more pics of old and new in my town:



I'm not religious, but I really like churches. Here's the Budolfi Church at the heart of Aalborg. The white chalk paint is typical of old Danish churches. There's usually a lot of wood work inside, but these churches aren't as amazingly illustrated inside as the ones you often see further south in Europe.

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard

back in grade school we made a trip to Vieux Quebec, a lot of really cool older style buildings there.

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MicShazam

Really great. Especially the castle with the snow covered ground.

Wpnfire

Asia wins for me.

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MicShazam

There's this group of Indian temples that display literally thousands of hand painted statues. This is the most incredible buildings ever for my money:






I think it's named the Gopuram temples.

Cuthbert

A fantastic building.

OccultHawk

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Lisnaholic

^ Thanks, MLM, but I'd give the win to your Birmingham Law Courts to be honest.
More importantly, thanks for opening this thread; I also love walking around looking at buildings, so when I saw this thread I thought, "Aha! A true kindred spirit!"

^ Yes, this building is wonderful. I love it when an architect uses colours but not paint. Here the natural colours of the materials compliment each other so well; the brick, the stone and the copper(?) of the roof.

^ Absolutely extraordinary, MicShazam,although for some reason the phrase "over the top" springs to mind when I look at your pics.

I was also very interested in your photos of Aarlborg with it's mixture of old and new. It looks like an attractive city, and to me that's one of the big challenges for architects today; putting something that is clearly new into a city of old buildings and making a kind of harmonious contrast.

On that count, I'm sorry to say that I don't share MLM's opinion of London's "Gerkin." Sorry, MLM, but it's actually one of my least favourite additions to London; the drab surface of glass, the lack of interesting detail, but mostly the shape. Bad enough that everyone immediately thinks "penis", what's worse is that it disregards all the language of straight lines with which it is surrounded. The size of it is also an issue with me; if it was shrunk down to the size of a telephone box, I think I could live with it appearing on a streetcorner, or as an ATM kiosk in front of a bank.

If you're going to put curves into buildings, I prefer to see them used more discreetly. This building, for example, has quite simple geometry that neatly accomodates just a couple of curves within its straight lines:-

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Lisnaholic

Nice buildings, Occult Hawk...EDIT: Sorry, Wpnfire, but for some reason the oriental style has never appealed to me - apart from the Great Wall of China, which is undecorated of course.

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MicShazam

Oh I agree for sure. It would look crazy if you put one of those buildings in the middle of London. They work in the context of a different, more colorful culture, I'd say. Indian aesthetics are quite far from European aesthetics. Just look at traditional indian garments. The supremely colorful and detailed buildings above are architechture less as something stylish and subtle, and more like a fireworks explosion. I'm pretty sure my jaw would drop to the floor if I was standing in front of one of those temples.

It's an attractive enough city in the downtown area. I'm excited about some recently revealed plans to make the down town area way more green, with more leisure areas and fewer cars. More trees, green rooftops, etc. I hope they're going to go as far as the presentation I saw of their plans.