Quote:
Originally Posted by gopokes21
My whole life I've watched people tear down "ugly" and "unwalkable" Art Deco, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, modernist, mid-century modern, postmodern, brutalist, etc. Because it was different and challenged normativity. I'm from Dallas and those rich hicks despise anything that's "different" and "quirky." To the extent that Dallas has lost its soul during my lifetime, I consistently oppose the Dallasization of Denver. It blows my mind that YIMBY types actually DO want Denver to basically become Dallas.
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At some point you need to acknowledge that you came here for the mountains and the lifestyle and you want other people to stop moving here and don't want Denver to urbanize. It would be really helpful for everyone in Denver advocating for "historical preservation" of every mediocre bungalow and near-ruin to just admit they want to preserve the city in amber and take the consequences (e.g. even higher prices and people just moving further and further out onto the plains) You don't actually care about brutalism or urban design or the architecture of the Denver 7 building, you just don't want more apartments in the neighborhood. You don't want more traffic or people or more 1 bedroom comp rentals at outrageous prices. You would rather force the preservation of a near-useless, ugly building than let it be torn down for more density. You've chosen to salt the earth to preserve your lifestyle rather than allow the city to grow. And you've created an imaginary worldview where a decrepit building no one likes is suddenly fit to sit alongside architectural masterpieces.
I mean, I realize you just threw out some starchitects and popular architectural styles to try to draw a connection to the Denver 7 building, so it's silly to even argue about it, but here we are.
Because unless you're 80 years old, or live in tourist/neo-nazi trap Whitefish Montana, you haven't experienced anyone seriously discuss tearing down a Frank Lloyd building, and no one in a city has done it in 50 years. More importantly, this building is nowhere close to the level of a Wright building. Maybe it features some colored faux-stone textured concrete, but that's about it.
And Le Corbusier's terrible and generally anti-urban urban design ideas may be an influence on the lack of pedestrian interaction, but I don't think invoking his (anti-semitic, fascist, racist) name has the power you think it does. Especially when it comes to the context of preservation and the built urban environment. Pruitt-Igoe was built to his three principles and didn't work with the surrounding neighborhood, should that have been saved? And this building doesn't even have any greenery, so it's like two of his three principles.
Overall, I think Odo of Metz is a better comparative architect for this building than Wright or Le Corbusier - it's built like a thick-walled fortress to house the special interior and follows no positive urban design principles of the last half century. (The only thing it lacks is 1000 years of history.)
In truth, I could just as easily mention that I have watched and celebrated people tearing down prisons, Nazi bunkers, Soviet military bases, and 50s public housing and that it blows my mind that NIMBYs prefer Denver to look like Volgograd.
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but definitely like the engineering building.
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