Fourth death at "The Vessel" sculpture in New York City's Hudson Yards

[beschizza]

Originally published at: Fourth death at "The Vessel" sculpture in New York City's Hudson Yards | Boing Boing

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[Mister44]

the ostentatiously pointless building

They probably said that about the Eiffel Tower at one point. Now it is a national treasure.

I don’t have a problem with art like this, but yeah, they should make an effort to make it safe. Maybe those thin wire railings would do the trick with out being too obvious for viewers.

ETA - found a few articles - here is just one of many showing lost of people hated it. And being made for the worlds fair, defines “ostentatious”.

And the protesters conclude by mocking this “tower of ridiculous vertiginous height, dominating Paris just like " a gigantic black factory chimney, ” spreading across the whole city “ like a dark ink stain, the odious shadow of this odious column of bolted metal. ”

The artists who protested the Eiffel Tower

[Grey_Devil]

A 14-year-old boy fell Thursday

This report i read earlier words it as the person having jumped.

Teenager jumps to his death from the Vessel at NYC’s Hudson Yards

Setting that aside i do think money should be spent on tangible projects that are meant to help low income NYC families instead of vanity architectural projects

[Melizmatic]

Bad, ugly design is bad and ugly.

Unlike the Eiffel Tower, that hideous thing serves no actual purpose, aside from “taking selfies.”

[fuzzyfungus]

Would it be uncharitable of me to suspect that only fear of litigation keeps the sort of people who would design, build or fund such a monument to grinding futility from seeing periodic deaths as a feature rather than a bug?

[Melizmatic]

Nope; not at all.

[euansmith]

Not to be outdone, London has spent a pile of money on its own pointless staircase.

[Mister44]

Well, it is no London Eye. How did they shape the earth with angles?

[euansmith]

They found that, if they applied smoothing, the city’s frame rate dropped through the floor.

[Akimbo_NOT]

[Otherbrother]

@Mister44

They probably said that about the Eiffel Tower at one point. Now it is a national treasure.

You’ve got that right. There was quite a bit of criticism about the tower when it was first built. From the history section of the official website:

Even before the end of its construction, the Tower was already at the heart of much debate. Enveloped in criticism from the biggest names in the world of Art and Literature, the Tower managed to stand its ground and achieve the success it deserved.

Various pamphlets and articles were published throughout the year of 1886, le 14 février 1887, la protestation des Artistes.

The “Protest against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel”, published in the newspaper Le Temps, is addressed to the World’s Fair’s director of works, Monsieur Alphand. It is signed by several big names from the world of literature and the arts : Charles Gounod, Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas junior, François Coppée, Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme, William Bouguereau, Ernest Meissonier, Victorien Sardou, Charles Garnier and others to whom posterity has been less kind.

Other satirists pushed the violent diatribe even further, hurling insults like : “this truly tragic street lamp” (Léon Bloy), “this belfry skeleton” (Paul Verlaine), “this mast of iron gymnasium apparatus, incomplete, confused and deformed” (François Coppée), “this high and skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant ungainly skeleton upon a base that looks built to carry a colossal monument of Cyclops, but which just peters out into a ridiculous thin shape like a factory chimney” (Maupassant), “a half-built factory pipe, a carcass waiting to be fleshed out with freestone or brick, a funnel-shaped grill, a hole-riddled suppository” (Joris-Karl Huysmans).

[gracchus]

@fuzzyfungus

Would it be uncharitable of me to suspect that only fear of litigation keeps the sort of people who would design, build or fund such a monument to grinding futility from seeing periodic deaths as a feature rather than a bug?

Not at all. As I noted a few years ago, “The Vessel” is

@gracchus

not for the plutocrats who live and work in this enclave to climb; instead, they’ll observe from their hermetically sealed towers as a constant stream of rubes re-enact the striving and endless climb to nowhere that is the dance of the American temporarily embarrassed millionaire. And they’ll laugh and laugh and laugh …

In a spin on the Facebook business model, if you’re not a museum patron, you’re part of the exhibit.

[KathyPartdeux]

Crying out for an ADA and OSHA review.

[generic_name]

Fence it off, plant vines, voila-- hanging gardens.

[MikeR]

Another massively-overbudget, monstrous, pointless Heatherwick Studios commission to join ‘The B of the Bang’ (demolished after bits kept falling off), the new London Routemaster bus (too many defects to list), Thames Garden Bridge (£50 million and never built) and he’s rumoured to be a shoo-in for the UK Covid memorial.

[MikeR]

“We are aware that elements of the Marble Arch Mound are not yet ready for visitors,” said the council.

Council suspends bookings to MVDRV's Marble Arch Mound

[MrShiv]

I believe there is scaffolding of some kind underneath the “hill”

[Papasan]

So it’s a “death spiral”. Makes sense to me…

[KathyPartdeux]

The sexual selection theory suggests that art is a display of fitness for mating by signaling how much energy a guy has that he can use in non survival activities. This doesn’t look like this - maybe it’s pre-wanking.

I don’t remember them applying this to women back in the day.

[fuzzyfungus]

I’ve incompetently flocked a few tabletop model hills in my time; can I be an award-winning hip architect now?