Secrets of the City

I dig some of our prefab.

I do notice that whenever there is a space available on any city street in Minneapolis, a row of townhomes/condos springs up outta nowhere. There’s a few sets in that whole “near northeast / Riverplace” area which aren’t wholly unattractive, but at least a few resemble eastern bloc residences.

I already said so, but I think the Weisman looks like a melting pile of garbage. Ghery just throws piles of trash together on his table and turns them into buildings. There’s nothing beautiful or brilliant about them. Has anyone even seen the back of this building? It’s a plain box with no windows or details. It’s a hussied-up showboat with its pants down as soon as you see it from anywhere other than washington ave or the bridge. I’m not at all interested in any building foetii that Ghery can manage to abort or would-be buildings that he can shit onto a foundation, because his buildings have no place in a city. There’s absolutely no way to integrate them into any kind of urban fabric unless you bomb your city to ruins (then it can look ilke his awesome project at MIT, UCK!), and so it’s just an expression of his ego and a sign that the UofM desperately wants some kind of attention and has loose pursestrings (what’s up, tution hikes!).

jonny, those townhouses by chute sq. park are horrid! I hate living next to those so much, becuase it’s like they just took their floorplan and made it into a stamp, them stamped it down in any old pattern they wanted for a site plan. almost none of the rows of houses actually follow the street, and most of them are in what’s basically a walled-off parking lot with gates. And can anyone explain the ridiculous setbacks from the street? it’s not a private front lawn and no one ever uses it, so why waste all that space?

God, haven’t they ever heard of an interior courtyard? how can people fork over 350k+ for a townhouse in a parking lot?

I don’t know about you guys, but I love “uildings.”

Just kidding! I’m all punchy today. I mean, “unchy.”

Also, it’s especially painful to look at them knowing that the exposition building used to sit there.

Actually: I am going to pull a DeRusha up in here: I need to find an expert in real estate/urban planning who can talk to me about our changing urban design and the future of the TC in terms of metro communities and dwellings. Anyone know an expert who can talk with me about this?

Do you have the “Lost Twin Cities” book, wayne? As an architecture fan, it will depress you but fascinate you at the same time. There were so many gorgeous buildings torn down — my dad keeps mentioning the METROPOLITAN HOTEL WHICH WAS THE MOST SWEET BUILDING EVAH apparently, and there’s other gems as well.

Hidden beneath the WCCO building on Nicollet, in fact, lurks quite a little gem. Some kind of gorgeous theater, buried under that ugly, not-even-modernist facade!

I blame Jason.

I’m responsible for all sorts of evil. I like Gehry. I think his Seattle EMP building is cool, as is the theater in Millenium Park.

I wish one of our suburbs would carve out a development with flatpaks or modern homes. That would be awesome. But maybe no one but me would buy those homes. So it would be awesomely stupid.

My first job at ALAMN was to provide communications for a green building project called Healthy Design. Unfortunately, the funding never came through, so I shifted to indoor air and outdoor air issues.

I like Gehry, and specifically Millenium Park, too. Yeah — the guy essentiall does make a scribble on a piece of paper and turn it into a building, but I admire the audacity of it.

Ironically, most of Gehry’s designs are the result of putting pennies into the microwave. Most of Prairie School architecture comes from accidentally falling on a cardboard model of a more typical building.

I think I’ve said this before, but I like the circuit court building, the one with the gentle curve and the little mounts with critters out front.

This Ghery ought be duct-tapped to the outside of the Weisman on a cold, rainy day. Plus, he does it all over. Chicago, LA. C’mon man!

IDS is the pinnacle of architecture as far as I’m concerned.

I like that one two. The curve is spectacular.

mounds, that is.

I wasn’t impressed by the Millenium Park thing, but maybe it was because I walked by on a rainy weekday and the whole area looked like a deserted carnival.

One two? What the fuck am I even talking about even?

ok, so the townhouses I was ranting about earlier

this is very sloppy becuase I’m at work, but here is how they are (un)arranged now:

and here is a (very very rough) idea of something that MAKES SENSE in regards to the neighbourhood around it:

my god, they line up with the street! it doesn’t take a professional architect or urban planner to figure that one out!

But they were apparently still too stupid to. Thanks, jerks.

There is definitely a lot of sloppy condo layout.

When I think of ugly buildings in the twin cities the one that pops into mind is the green 80’s blocky building (which I think is called the Spruce Tree Centre) on University and Snelling.

talk about gross, plus the only thing I know of occupying the place is Applebees.

It’s like a big restroom turned inside out.

I’ve always been partial to the Brede building.

Exactly! I used to ride past that everyday and think “public restroom.”

I really like the Wells Fargo Center in St. Paul.

Actually, the Spruce Tree Centre has the most outstanding physical therapy center in the metro. It may be ugly, but it houses a phenominal program, ugliest building… The Arcana building Lowry and Central.

Nice to see that there’s some loathing of Frank Gehry. The fact that they’re non-contextual eyesores that have nothing to do with the location, purpose, or structure of the building would be completely forgivable if there was anything attractive about his work. From monochromatic scribbles like Disney Hall, to dissonant blobs like EMP, I have only seen one Gehry design that struck me as interesting.

Dubai is planning on building a massive skyscraper with that kind of twist.

http://www.minnescraper.com/content/index.php

Here’s another place to chat about local architecture.

preach it, champs!

pop architecture is every bit as insipid as pop music.

Having sort of instigated the thread, I feel bad for not having contributed yet.

I’ll come to the defense of the Weisman, which is unusual because I’m not a huge Gehry fan. The Weisman is an important early building in Gehry’s career. Tmay’s claim that the Weisman was a “me too” by the U of M ignores the chronology of events. The Weisman was one of the buildings that staked Gehry’s claim to a place in the pantheon.

Also, it’s interesting because with the Weisman, Gehry didn’t have the funding or high tech tools that he’d have available to him in later buildings. If the look at the Weisman, there aren’t any complex curves (all curves occur in only 2 dimensions), and it’s built with fairly pedestrian techniques.

As for the rear of the building being a cop out, I have to disagree. I love the sharp contrast between the restrained, rectilinear brick on the back and the wild curves of the front. It’s like a reverse mullet.

And my favorite building in Minneapolis is the chapel at the Lakewood Cemetery, seen here, here, and here.

wait, so the U bought that piece of crap *without* the famous name behind it, even?

good lord, they’re dumber than I thought!

Reverse mullet. Heh.

Wasn’t the brick back end of the Weisman a compromise between Gehry and University rules? (X% of a building’s exterior must be brick or stone, or something like that.)

Also, that Lakewood chapel is amazing.

The bashing of the Weisman reminds me of indie jerkoffs that badmouth bands because someone other than them have actually heard of them.

Yeah I liked the Weisman but now Gehry has sold out and is working for Disney.

Yeah I liked the Shins then they sold out and were on the Garden State sound track.

Reverse mullet. Heh.

Thanks for the acknowledgment.

As for other stuff around town…

The Walker — I’ve seen other Herzog and DeMeuron stuff, and I don’t think that we got their best work here.

The Guthrie — An amazing building, and one that I love more every time I visit. It makes you look at the city in a completely different way, forces you to rethink things that you thought you knew. Smart, muscular, mysterious. Top notch.

I’m no architecture buff, but I will say that the Guthrie is growing on me, too. It’s a lot more wowing on the inside, at first. I was last down there a about a month ago, not having been in a while or in the daylight, and could not stop taking pictures of it. I’m no photographer, either, but it grabbed me. Once you get used to it, it’s pretty cool.

uh, simpleton, I was dissing ALL of ghery’s work. I think the weisman is a pile of turds, and every other building he’s ever done sucks too.

I’m starting to kind of like the new guthrie too. Once I got all the IKEA jokes out of my system, it’s really kind of appropriate for the location.

Oh, and the walker … it’s a giant robot grimacing at the church across the street! Doesn’t anyone else see that? I think that’s fantastic because it represents an antagonism between modern art and religion!

Just kidding about the representation, but it really does look like an angry robot glaring at the church.

I think of it more as a “robot space monkey.” I think I got that from mnspeak, too.