This reminds me of GTA and probably a few Hollywood movies.
Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
21–30 of 71 posts
Re: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
#22I'm surprised that this construction is considered a "river".
What would you call it? Half-pipe ?
Re: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
#23It frustrates me that so many people hate brutalist architecture. I definitely wouldn't want every building to be brutalist but I'm glad that some are. I also much prefer brutalism to soulless glass and concrete skyscrapers or nondescript office buildings. At least brutalist buildings look like something.
Some brutalist architecture is just a can of spray paint and pair of googley eyes away from beauty.
http://seriss.com/people/erco/fovicks/roll1/pic00026-mod.jpg
Re: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
#24Brings me back to the good times on Flood Control Dam #3 in Zork.
https://www.thezorklibrary.com/history/flood_control_dam3.ht...
The underground Flood Control Dam #3 is a staggering engineering feat that must be seen to be believed. It was constructed in year 783 of the Great Underground Empire to harness the mighty destructive power of the Frigid River. This work was supported by a grant of 37 million zorkmids from the Central Bureaucracy and the local omnipotent tyrant of the era, Lord Dimwit Flathead the Excessive. This impressive structure is composed of 370,000 cubic feet of concrete, is 256 feet tall at the center, and 193 feet wide at the top. The huge reservoir created behind the dam has a volume of 1.7 billion cubic feet (an ancient document, perhaps in error, records that the volume of the reservoir is 37 billion cubic feet), an area of 12 million square feet, and a shore line of 36 thousand feet (an alternate dam guide book found in 1067 GUE states that the shore line is only 35 thousand feet).
Re: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
#25Does Pyramid of Tirana, Albania qualify as Kafkaesque? I was there half a decade ago. Fascinating building especially with it's dilapidated state at the time.
Edit: Looks like they have recently struck a deal to turn it into a "tech center" - seems like brutalism + tech overlap in this case. Edit 2: Changed to Pyramid of Tirana instead of Enver Hoxha's Pyramid
Re: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
#26Boston City Hall routinely ranks as one of the ugliest buildings on earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_City_Hall Brutalist concrete building straight out of 1984. Really gets you mentally prepared for the labyrinth, dispassionate and uncaring bureaucracy that awaits you inside. > The building has been subject to nearly universal public condemnation, and is often called one of the world's ugliest buildings. Ca…
Preparing you for the soulless bureaucracy is probably good form-following-function, unless of course it is also helping to create that soullessness.
Re: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
#27It frustrates me that so many people hate brutalist architecture. I definitely wouldn't want every building to be brutalist but I'm glad that some are. I also much prefer brutalism to soulless glass and concrete skyscrapers or nondescript office buildings. At least brutalist buildings look like something.
Why are you glad some are? Signed, A Brutalist Hater
Human beings are physical creatures and our physical environment can communicate messages that are more powerful than if you just read them in a book. I find that brutalist buildings often communicate a visceral sense of power, profundity, inhuman scale, etc.
A Brutalist library can give one the sense that it houses the knowledge of hundreds of generations. From a time when the gigantic heroes of myth necessitated the building's inhuman size.
Entering a Brutalist courthouse might feel like walking into a fortress where the forces of law and order make their stand to protect society from the forces of chaos.
In short, I agree, at least in part, with the critics of Brutalism who say that it creates in the viewer a feeling of insignificance and the sense that the environment was not fully built for you. Where I disagree is when they say that we should never feel that way. At a time when the comforts of modern technology allow people to live divorced from nature and where social media allows everyone to be at the center of their own world, I think its valuable to occasionally be reminded that we are each a very small part of a world that is very large.
Re: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
#28It frustrates me that so many people hate brutalist architecture. I definitely wouldn't want every building to be brutalist but I'm glad that some are. I also much prefer brutalism to soulless glass and concrete skyscrapers or nondescript office buildings. At least brutalist buildings look like something.
Why are you glad some are? Signed, A Brutalist Hater
Less poetically, I like the fact that there are different types of architecture which communicate different messages.
Re: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
#29It frustrates me that so many people hate brutalist architecture. I definitely wouldn't want every building to be brutalist but I'm glad that some are. I also much prefer brutalism to soulless glass and concrete skyscrapers or nondescript office buildings. At least brutalist buildings look like something.
Why are you glad some are? Signed, A Brutalist Hater
I also disliked brutalist from spending too much time in Ontario University campuses which just did a boring job of brutalist. Then i visited the barbican in London and fell in love. There are very good examples of brutalist out there
Re: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
#30Boston City Hall routinely ranks as one of the ugliest buildings on earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_City_Hall Brutalist concrete building straight out of 1984. Really gets you mentally prepared for the labyrinth, dispassionate and uncaring bureaucracy that awaits you inside. > The building has been subject to nearly universal public condemnation, and is often called one of the world's ugliest buildings. Ca…
is the red brick construction in front of it [1] part of the original design? i could appreciate it if it were a purely brutalist concrete design, but it's the mishmash of bare concrete and brick in weird shapes that makes this truly ugly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_City_Hall#/media/File:2...
