Maggie's Farm

Al Maviva ... I suspect that a lot of architects took drugs in the 1960s, just as everybody else seemed to [except me -- never got around to it] but bad architecture has always been with us, and still is. Take Frank Gehry, for instance. He's being revered currently for deconstructing traditional ideas about buildings. But he has some massive flaws of his own. His buildings, many of them, leak and crack and sustain visible structural damage, because they defy the laws of gravity and the simple commandments of building a structure that is water tight and comfortable to occupy..

Take the Stata Center at M.I.T. which opened in 2004 at a cost of $300 million. the four-year-old structure is suffering from massive cracks, pervasive leaks and visible structural damage which have already cost the University $1.3 million to repair. Then there's the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain... interesting and flashy at first glance, but not, I think, designed with as much care for its stated purpose, the careful display of artworks, as the Guggenheim Museum in New York City was.

There are far better buildings in the world than Gehry's. Philip Johnson's, for instance, or Louis Kahn's. Le Corbusier's and many other less well-known designers in the various schools of architectural thought. But a building which doesn't shelter and comfort its occupants while serving its stated purpose isn't worth much, no matter how flashy it is.

Sorry for the rant. You can probably tell, Al, that I'm a lifetime building watcher, and, as usual, pretty opinionated about it.

Marianne

KRW ... There's a famous condo building on Chicago's Lake Shore Drive by some famous architect or other [could be Le Corbusier--can't remember] but it was "hot stuff" back in the 1960s. They had already almost completed the building when -- hello! -- they realized that they had only one elevator shaft, not two, which a large residential building should have. OOpsie! They quickly took the shaft they had intended for garbage/waste disposal and turned it into a second elevator shaft. I'm imagining the endless curses by housekeepers and other maintenance workers that were lofted to the skies over the years.

And yes, you're right. The engineers don't get nearly enough credit for the embarrassing mistakes they save the famous architects from Maybe I feel this way because in my youth I edited and wrote for an engineering magazine, which is where I got my interest in architecture, and why Frank Gehry offends my sensibilities so much.

Marianne

KRW ... it was the Engineering Society of Milwaukee's publication, Milwaukee Engineering. A few years later I moved to D.C. and edited a national trade magazine, Electrical Contractor, until I met my future husband and moved to Texas.

Buddy ... I don't think it was Frank Lloyd Wright that designed the Lake Shore Drive condo. My faulty memory says it was an admired French architect, but the name escapes me. The Midwest is strewn with FLW designs. many of them in Wisconsin and Illinois. By the way, speaking of FLW, have you ever seen Falling Water, his famous residence design which is intimately involved with water [of course]. Fascinating design. But damp ... definitely constantly damp.

Marianne