<p>^^ I READ ABOUT THAT?? wait i don’t think its done… i thought it was just a concept… given i read this months ago in pop sci… i think or an autocad magazine…</p>
<p>No Frank Gehry fans here? I have to admit, I’m a sucker for his organic, swoopy designs, even small scale projects like Chicago’s Millennium Park. Somewhat less a fan of other designs, like the leaky MIT building that’s in litigation.</p>
<p>Calatrava’s stuff is cool, too, and I agree about Gaudi. Gaudi’s stuff is a lot more fun than the modernist stuff that emerged later - too bad there’s not more of it! If Gaudi had the tools that Gehry has exploited, I bet we’d see some real fantasy buildings.</p>
<p>I’d love to get to Dubai, although as an architecture destination Shanghai looks like it might be even better. Slightly more restrained and elegant, but still highly creative.</p>
<p>I like Frank Gehry’s newer designs. Admittedly, he, too, had produced a bunch of trashy architecture. And I believe the aerospace museum right across the road from the USC campus is a major architectural ugliness, which ironically located not very distant from his alma mater. </p>
<p>Speaking of Shanghai, the city government forbids any design of new buildings to be used more than once. So, this may actually contribute to the architectural diversity of the city. But the sadness is, most of those new buildings in Shanghai, particularly in Pudong, are the products of foreign firms. This just shows how weak Chinese architects are, except a few solid ones.</p>
<p>China right now is still rapidly developing and in a period of transition after decades of cultural destruction, which explains why there are so few talented architects but the number of talented chinese-born architects currently is growing fast. architects like yung ho chang, qingyun ma (both already deans of MIT and USC respectively) are already gaining a lot of international exposure. At this rate, China in 10 years will probably take lead in the design stage once it matures and develops its own identity.</p>
<p>i personally am not a fan of ghery…i think he’s more an artist than an architect though that’s arguable. if i produced works that looked like ghery in my school i’d get shot…</p>
<p>I have admired the Chrysler Building in NYC for many years. I think it is beautiful, as is the Williamsburg Bridge.</p>
<p>Sashimi, your last statement is the exact reason why I drastically switched my major from architecture to psychology. I am an intuitive person with no particular interest in designing practical architecture, not to mention sitting in a corporate firm like SOM, (totally unimaginable!)</p>
<p>Gehry is, according to himself, an artist and then an architect. In fact, he originally came to USC as an art major and was more involved within the art community than in architecture. There was a period in his career that he was hugely influenced by the Modernist Movement, but he sharply rejected it as he realized his childhood experience (the carps, seeing Alvar Aalto etc.) played an irreplaceable in his development as a person. That eventually led him to reject things he learned at USC and Harvard.He gave a talk at USC last semester, sayinng that all architects thought he was insane, it was his artist friends who gave him a hand and offered him the emotional supports he needed. </p>
<p>I am Chinese (born and mostly raised in China) and I actually came Dean Qingyun Ma’s hometown. From my perspective, Chinese architects will not be a group of stellar new comers for they have no unique theoretical basis whatsoever. While they are producing some interesting pieces, their major problem is their over-reliance on the western schools of thoughts. For example, Dean Ma’s firm, MADA s.p.a.m is inevitably influenced by OMA. They are merely trendy, not steady. If they can produce some impressive monographs, their status may be improved. Otherwise, they are just a bunch of starlet architects on their way to become starchitects, which probably will never get there.Just some random thoughts.</p>
<p>Cultural destruction? Well, Chinese are as strong as Jewish people, despite the traumas we went through, the civilization is perpetuated in a proper way. The so-called culture is just like architecture, there aren’t that many who can both appreciate it and master it!</p>
<p>to clarify, “cultural destruction” i mean by the traditions that mao destroyed during the cultural revolution. that is why there isn’t much of an identity stemming from the chinese past in chinese contemporary culture and why chinese people today are so open to foreign ideas and exchange after people soon realized that mao’s communist ideals have failed and are incompatible with the contemporary world. </p>
<p>the lack of a theoretical basis will give these new chinese architects the freedom to discover a new identity for chinese contemporary culture. since china’s current unprecedented condition and transformation is unlike anything the western world has seen before, such condition will become an interesting point of departure for chinese architects to establish their own theoretical grounds, as it had for modernists when they were faced with a revolution of their own.</p>
<p>I know I am way off topic here but --Falling Water-- I think you might have the wrong idea about what architecture can be for a person. For one I wouldn’t think of architecture as “practical”-- Instead architecture for me, at its heart, has nothing to do with practicality, but instead how something is its conception. For instance if one thinks of a bedroom then one must be true to what that room is trying to be-- as in it should be able to have a place for a person to rest and it should have enough room so that person feels comfortable in that room and can relax, but that isn’t really about practicality- That is about what you as an architect are trying to create. It is my understanding there are requirements only in relation to the responsibility of what and architect must provide- but that seems much farther away from what you are describing as “practicality”</p>
<p>Speaking of Shanghai…the new Shanghai Financial Center’s original design called for a circular cutout at the top of the building…Chinese government supposedly made the architect change the design because it too closely echoed Japan’s rising sun.</p>
<p>Tzar, your understanding of architecture is the most idealistic one. I was, just like you, believed that the core value of architecture is beyond practicality. The most influential players in the business are brilliant and iconoclastic intellectuals who dedicated their lives to the search of simplicity/complexity, socio-political aspects of architecture. But let’s be realistic here. MONEY STOPS ME FROM DOING WHAT I WANT TO DO.Since you are a student at Cooper Union (tuition-free and thus saves alot of money for your parents/yourself, access to the top-notch faculty, small-sized studio with very talented colleagues etc.), you are, in a sense, belongs to the hyper-elite group of future architects. Whereas at USC, folks are very different from the ones in NYC. They are being money-oriented, practical and intellectually lazy-- in short, they just want job security, which turns out to be a major dissapointment. People come to USC after they were rejected at Cornell and Cooper Union (myself included and I personally know some folks here who had just submitted their transfer applications to elsewhere due to their overall unhappiness at SC. Transfer means they will start over again as a 1st year student!Even though a few of them are on scholarships.)Ask an architecture student here, chances are they’ve never heard of Cooper Union or believe that SC is superior to Cooper, which needless to say, is an ethnocentric if not fully ridiculous statement. Please accept my apologies for being so negative, I just can’t find any particular reason to cheer me up, architecturally.</p>
<p>Sashimi, I sense that you have a background in Chinese history. (Are you an ABC or moved to the US just as me?) Cultural destructrion only applies to the mortal, ( those who are regular human beings with no sense of self, knowledge and the value of individuals) not the immortal! Mao’s movement had destroyed generations of people, but the real contributors to the Chinese society are the ones that just cannot be brainwashed. My grandpa was one of them, I am so proud of him for being wrongfully accused and still believed in what he believed. Theoretical or not, we should at least have an understanding of architecture as an evolutionary subject, not a revolutionary one. I still want to point out China’s lack of original thinkers. Obedience keeps China going, the ones who dare to cross the line will pay for it. That’s all I can say about what is really going on in China now.</p>
<p>umm dancing house = frank gehry… ish</p>
<p>i really don’t know what you mean… because I mentioned Gehry before you…</p>
<p>Frank Gehry’s GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. I had the chance of visiting it last autumn. It REALLY is, by far, the most astonishing building I have ever visited in my entire life. I also visited a hotel designed by Gehry in Elciego, La Rioja (Spain). It’s really cool, I recommend googling it if you’ve never heard of it!!</p>
<p>I love the stata center… XD he’s getting sued…</p>
<p>haha, the stata center, I’ll probably be there next year all the time. I like the Stata Center as something fun to look at, but that is about it.</p>
<p>Hands down, I love Marina City in Chicago,
but The Guggenheim Museum is also gorgeous.</p>