Whether it's attractive or not is one thing (I'd say architecturally not so much, a few exceptions aside - but the sheer mass of towers, the height, the lights combine to make it into something beautifully gargantuan & chaotic), but I don't see how one could say that Shanghai's skyline
isn't one of the most instantly recognizable in the world. If nothing else the Oriental Pearl Tower is an obvious icon of the city in much the same way as the CN Tower, Berlin Tower, or Space Needle are for their's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
I wonder if we'll ever bring warmth back to large urban architecture again. We don't necessarily have to face our buildings with stone or carve angels into their facades, but we've lost something after the Second World war that we can't seem to get back.
We are lucky that the Americans were able to translate classical architecture into skyscraper designs from 1900-1940.
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There's no reason to think that the style of stripped-down, functional modernism that has ruled the past half-century+ of architecture will continue on unabated forever. That has never been the case with any earlier style. Sooner of later we'll see a popular reaction against it, and armed with computer aided design and new technologies (3D printing and the like), I expect we'll see more and more of this:
Though I don't know if you'd call that "warm" per se - it's still of today's impersonal, supersized scale, most importantly. The warmth that is derived from streetscapes of narrow, human-scaled structures hand-built of earthen materials on the other hand just won't work with modern economic conditions and technology, and individual infill projects aside, is never likely to be repeated again on a mass scale.