woops
is not like other people
this is fine example. of the litrerary jonra called psycho geography.
Ballardian architecture thread
- Thread starter chava
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- tropical brutalism
Saudi Arabia reveals plans for 100-mile-long linear city named 'The Line'
World Architecture Community News - Saudi Arabia reveals plans for 100-mile-long linear city named 'The Line'worldarchitecture.org
I'm sure I saw an advert for this on TV the other day.
I saw it too and uttered a sub-lingual "hunh?"
The Unexpectedly Tropical History of Brutalism (Published 2019)
Long associated with European cities, the style has plenty of history in other parts of the world, too. In Brazil, it reached a surprising apotheosis.
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When it was completed in Lower Manhattan in 1974, 33 Thomas Street, formerly known as the AT&T Long Lines Building, was intended as the world’s largest facility for connecting long-distance telephone calls. Standing 532 feet — roughly equivalent to a 45-story building — it’s a mugshot for Brutalism, windowless and nearly featureless. Its only apertures are a series of ventilation hoods meant to hide microwave-satellite arrays, which communicate with ground-based relay stations and satellites in space. One of several long lines buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke for the New York Telephone Company, a subsidiary of AT&T, 33 Thomas Street is perhaps the most visually striking project in the architect’s long and influential career. Embodying postwar American economic and military hegemony, the tower broadcasts inscrutability and imperviousness. It was conceived, according to the architect, to be a “skyscraper inhabited by machines.”
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Would be interesting to watch this become reappropriated as chic housing by the brooklyn cultural mafia.When it was completed in Lower Manhattan in 1974, 33 Thomas Street, formerly known as the AT&T Long Lines Building, was intended as the world’s largest facility for connecting long-distance telephone calls. Standing 532 feet — roughly equivalent to a 45-story building — it’s a mugshot for Brutalism, windowless and nearly featureless. Its only apertures are a series of ventilation hoods meant to hide microwave-satellite arrays, which communicate with ground-based relay stations and satellites in space. One of several long lines buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke for the New York Telephone Company, a subsidiary of AT&T, 33 Thomas Street is perhaps the most visually striking project in the architect’s long and influential career. Embodying postwar American economic and military hegemony, the tower broadcasts inscrutability and imperviousness. It was conceived, according to the architect, to be a “skyscraper inhabited by machines.”
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Moving to Sheffield has really made me think more about architecture and what (if any) subconscious impact it has on you. Cambridge is basically psychogeography on easy mode in that respect: it's mostly quite conventionally pretty and it's also very affluent, it's not that there aren't social problems but it's basically pretty clean and tidy and there are very few boarded up shops or any of that sort of stuff. Sheffield has much more of a mix of architecture and much more of a mix of bustling bits and run down bits and much more of a mix of places where you'd voluntarily spend time and places where you wouldn't and trying to untangle why is nontrivial.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Moving to Sheffield has really made me think more about architecture and what (if any) subconscious impact it has on you. Cambridge is basically psychogeography on easy mode in that respect: it's mostly quite conventionally pretty and it's also very affluent, it's not that there aren't social problems but it's basically pretty clean and tidy and there are very few boarded up shops or any of that sort of stuff. Sheffield has much more of a mix of architecture and much more of a mix of bustling bits and run down bits and much more of a mix of places where you'd voluntarily spend time and places where you wouldn't and trying to untangle why is nontrivial.
Same thing here in East Berlin with all the Soviet stuff. Can't help but think someone in a boardroom was thinking how do we make this place as uninspiring as possible?
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I don't think there's a direct link between architectural style and niceness, though. Tentative hypothesis is that it's basically the perceived density of public-oriented activity that makes places feel welcome. Normal shops, coffee shops, pubs, markets etc feel positive. Traffic, car parks, big blank walls, empty foyers of offices and housing developments tend to feel like the city telling the individual pedestrian to piss off. And swinging back around, I think that's the stuff that feels more Ballardian, too - it might be raw brutalism or it might have all the trappings of superficial attractiveness but at its heart it's anti-human.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
That's how a lot of the residential areas feel here. Even down to the colors they painted the tower blocks with. They're often muted, energy sucking pastels or dirty yellows that feel like they knew they had to paint it something so as not to appear totally inhuman - there is color there - but still weild the same deadening effect. Every now and then there's something a bit livelier and immediately the area feels more human and alive.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
I mean, I get the whole socialist, everyone's equal, working man's values, throw things up fast as possible deal. But did everyone have to be equally depressed as well? They could have put some nice colors in the mix. Or God forbid a non 90° angle.