Skyline Killers

[Yuri]

I love RenCen. It gives Detroit one of the most unique skylines in the world.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Mister F

lol! Why do Americans have so much trouble with the name of the CN Tower? At least I think that's what you're referring to.

I like the CN Tower. I especially like going all the way up to the skypod. I haven’t been there since they added the glass railing inside. I really enjoyed sitting on the floor and leaning over and looking out the windows one evening. No one else was up there.

Oops! I misread your post. Trouble with the name, not with the tower itself. I guess it’s not fair to my fellow Yanks that I lived up there when the Canadian National Railway built it. Used to watch CN trains from my bedroom window in the northern suburbs.

[Steely Dan]

^ as weird as that thing is, it's hard for it to "kill" the skyline when it alone literally is the skyline all by itself.

[bilbao58]

^It makes the skyline then kills it.

[Hudson11]

looks like an aircraft control tower.

[llamaorama]

That thing in Sault Ste Marie looks like an old communications antenna from the cold war, I would have never guessed it was a church museum.

It reminds me of this freaky looking thing in the middle of a historic neighborhood near my company's office in Seattle. Believe it's an old point to point microwave tower, which are generally obsolete unless maybe it provides a link to a remote location.

Also in Milford, Texas someone thought it would be cool to pick up where Nikola Tesla left off and built some kind of wireless electricity experiment:

https://goo.gl/maps/UirZ55JU8xjmyxcg7

Not a lot of good info on it, hard to tell if it's legit or what.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/civil/whats-really-going-on-at-tesla-tower.htm

[cabasse]

i've got paper models of a few of these brutalist masterpieces from the zupagrafika books. that house of soviets above, trellick tower. so bad they're actually good, lol

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by muppet

Lol, medieval centre? You do know the financial centres sprouted from bombsites right? London was as heavily bombed as Berlin (1.2 million made homeless, 1.1 million buildings destroyed or damaged), but because it was such a large city it took 9 months day and night to destroy a third of it, thus able to 'absorb' the damage.











Same area today - if you look carefully at the buildings they're actually new builds that have incorporated the surviving history into the fabric

Incredible to see the post-bombing damage and the massive and dense infill that has happened since then. Amazing photos! London is very impressive. I would kill for that kind of density and urban planning.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I love RenCen. It gives Detroit one of the most unique skylines in the world.

It IS a very unique and interesting skyscraper complex. But I would have to say that it does not mesh with or compliment it's surroundings very well.

[Gresto]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Brings to mind this sorry looking building in Kaliningrad. Also a skyline maker/killer

Maybe buildings can be friends.

[deja vu]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Brings to mind this sorry looking building in Kaliningrad. Also a skyline maker/killer

Well that's soul-crushing.

I had to research this more and I went down a bit of a wormhole. It was originally supposed to have 7 more stories (28 total) but it started sinking into the ground. Is it still standing? Wikipedia and other sources are quite vague, stating that plans were announced in 2020 for it to be demolished in 2021.

Originally Posted by Austinlee

It IS a very unique and interesting skyscraper complex. But I would have to say that it does not mesh with or compliment it's surroundings very well.

The RenCen is immensely interesting from the interior. I have memories as a young kid running around in there, before GM bought it & remodeled it. It was VERY easy to get lost. Looking back, it's one of the first things that got me interested in architecture. It arguably created more problems than it solved, when built. The GM remodel did a lot to fix that though.

Interesting how so many of these examples are turning out to be Brutalist. RenCen interior, pre-remodel -


Source: Pinterest | nick bianco

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by cabasse

so bad they're actually good, lol

Few styles of architecture are more polarizing than brutalism.

Here is perhaps the most love/hate building in all of Chicago, UIC's University Hall designed by Walter Netsch and completed in 1965.


source: https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/university-hall/13633



I'm hardcore in the LOVE camp.

[GeneralLea]

The RenCenter is one ugly complex. Well, mostly because it's so separate from the skyline. It really just needed some development nearby so it wouldn't be such a sore thumb and be attached to the nearby urban fabric. It stil looks so detached all these years later. Then again, I'm not exactly a big of Detroit. Maybe I will be in a decade or two.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Gresto

Maybe buildings can be friends.

That building killed the skyline. The elephant flattened every other tall building.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Austinlee

Incredible to see the post-bombing damage and the massive and dense infill that has happened since then. Amazing photos! London is very impressive. I would kill for that kind of density and urban planning.

What's even more mind-blowing is that much of those bombed out areas got refilled within a couple of decades. Meanwhile American cities, which were destroyed by self-inflicted wounds, are knocking on a full century of not figuring out how to recover from those bad decisions.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

What's even more mind-blowing is that much of those bombed out areas got refilled within a couple of decades. Meanwhile American cities, which were destroyed by self-inflicted wounds, are knocking on a full century of not figuring out how to recover from those bad decisions.

europeans city-flighters were fleeing active bomb attacks. once the bombs finally stopped falling, many came back.

US city-flighters were running away from something much scarier and more permanent in their minds. many never looked back.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

europeans city-flighters were fleeing active bomb attacks. once the bombs finally stopped falling, many came back.

US city-flighters were running away from something much scarier and more permanent in their minds. many never looked back.

It was more than just racism. Race was weaponized to support extremely bad policies.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

It was more than just racism.

well of course, but my point was that when people were fleeing US cities en masse, it was with a "burn the bridges" mentality.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

well of course, but my point was that when people were fleeing US cities en masse, it was with a "burn the bridges" mentality.

The same thing was also happening in Europe, though. The difference is that their governments addressed it directly, while the tendency in some regions of the U.S. was to deny that it was an issue that required a change in strategy by the government.

[Steely Dan]

and both places being democracies, enough europeans wanted those policy changes to put out the bridge fires, while americans were more inclined to just let 'em burn and never look back.