Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

I guess it’s becoming painfully apparent that architecture gets me riled up. Who knows why. I guess it’s because unlike other forms of art, architecture is something that we all have to engage and be exposed to every day. You can manage to go through your whole life and do a good job avoiding, say, Jo Baer’s Primary Light Group (please, for the love of God, if you don’t have a sense of humor and perspective, don’t click on this link. It will make you want to smash things!) But the building you work in? You come into contact with that architecture every day.

So, courtesy of Ezra Klein, we’ve got Travel+Leisure magazine’s list of the world’s ugliest buildings. I’m not going to repeat what EK said, suffice it to say that I agree with him. I will mention two things, though:

1) The Port Authority Bus Terminal is not on the list. Here’s a picture of its pretty side. That’s the right cross against this list’s credibility…

2) …and here’s the crippling uppercut: Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim is on T+L’s list of the world’s coolest buildings. Regular readers of DD&U know how I feel about Frank Gehry’s work. It’s lame. And ugly.

Ugh. Why can’t people just appreciate things that look cool?

Tags: architects don't know a damn thing about what looks cool, architecture, Ezra Klein, lists

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.