Actually, it’s kind of growing on me. Like when you see some accidentally fascinating art in your dentist’s waiting room.
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This building isn’t just bad design or bad architecture, it is so crazy bad that l don’t think anyone put any thought it into it at all. I can imagine the scene: a boiler room real estate guy is pacing the room…
“This SF bubble is just nuts! We need in! [Turning to his high school dropout nephew, playing solitaire on the office computer] Hey, Dummy! Get the floor plans from xyz building; it’s about the same size as this old trash heap. Get on the horn with your cousin Joe Shmoe, the contractor! He owes me! He’ll mash that thing together by the end of the month, and we’ll flip it to some geeks who would pay anything to live in the city. If we get lucky we can roll the profit over into another, and do it a few times before anyone gets wise!”
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You could easily think some fun way to use the beam. The renovators probably just tried unseeing and forgetting that it even existed there.
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Good point - if someone was to buy it as an investment (with no intention of moving in), the stats might be more appealing than usability.
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I suppose any “lucky” owner could mount small shelves onto it (for small potted plants or knick-knacks).
Or a wall could simply have been placed there to enclose/hide the beam, with the wall having openings of various sizes to contain (see above).
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San Francisco. And a structural beam.
That’s the thing you could hide under during an earthquake. They should have advertised it as a feature.
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I started my college life as an Architecture major. I had to change majors because while I was pulling an all-nighter in the studio, I heard two of my classmates yelling back and forth, “Le Corbusier!” “No! Mies van der Rohe!” ad nauseum. I realized at that moment that i could stab any and all of my Architecture classmates straight in the heart and have zero regrets at all.
I was constantly getting C’s on my designs because the professors said I over-designed all of my structures and the cost overruns will kill the hypothetical project. Architects who disregard structural elements aren’t born, they’re made!
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Am currently. Fortunately have yet to hear any similar nonsense. More fortunately, our curricula doesn’t spend much time with them either.
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You could have jumped in yelling “Oscar Niemeyer!”
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Unfortunately, the curricula at that school and at that time (Tulane University at the cusp of the 90’s) were hell-bent on brainwashing us into the cult of Machines For Living and Skyscrapers of Steel and Glass. When we recalcitrant students (the majority) would raise our hands and point out that Steel and Glass were very inefficient to heat and cool, and that the Machines For Living were unlivable would make them red-faced from screaming at us. Whenever I see something about LEED design, I wonder how many of my classmates rebelled and how many wound up drinking the Ugly Kool-Aid of yesterday’s modernism.
We knew who was lost to humanity when they’d return from summer break wearing Corbu glasses, instead of contact lenses:
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the idea was to make some occasional shelves that just stuck out
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I have to guess this was an economic move where it would have just been expensive to rejigger the layout at the point the brace showed up. Respect.
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The Athens Charter was, well, I’m at a loss to find the right word for it. Perhaps “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” applies. Looking at the plans Le Corbusier had for Paris I’d say Paris had a lucky escape.
Another thing I can’t condone, apart from those grotty spectacles, is his flirt with the Vichy regime.
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I keep wanting to attach a swiveling tractor-seat to the top surface of it, at chair-seat height. For the friend who has come over for dinner and is chatting with you while you cook.
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Ours will do it for free.
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An epicure, dining at Crewe
Found quite a large mouse in his stew.
Said the waiter, “Don’t shout
And wave it about -
Or the others will be wanting one too!”
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Hot glue; small rocks. GI Joe doll works out some indoor bouldering routes. Kitchen sponge can be his crash pad, I guess.
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Biljmer, perhaps?
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Something along those lines…
Stephen Fry once wrote a delightful vilification of architects for a newspaper column; re-published in Paperweight. It contains a fake quote by Le Corbusier, “A human is a machine designed to live in one of my buildings.”
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