Quote:
Originally Posted by AdrianXSands
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! bro... seriously? i very much doubt that.  |
On the contrary, you would be surprised, I think, how many of the people that actually post, as opposed to just browsing, this forum
are architects. Yet you notice that there is almost unanimous derision of this building on this forum. Everyone knows its crap, but through a variety of factors it still gets built.
One reason is that architecture is a melding of hundreds of people on one project, and for a highrise, a design team of at least 10 people. When you have that many people trying to coordinate work, and do it for the least possible price, you end up with the lowest common denominator design. If it weren't for developers with no sense of style, then we'd just have a lot of crappy proto-modernism...but as it is, some architects listen to developers, who think people are more likely to buy faux-old stuff, so we get a little of this too. Mostly it's an artifact of architects listening too much to their clients, for fear of losing work...and of an outdated system of designing buildings that does not scale well to this age of really complex HVAC, mechanical, structural, and other systems. While the architecture of the 20s has its own problems, the system worked much better then when the architect really could lead the design process, because there weren't so many systems to be considered.
Another reason is materials and cost. I have covered this at length before, but ultimately the cheap materials of our time are concrete and (comparatively) glass, and the labor exists to do these trades well. Note how we don't complain about our society's inability to handle the intricacies of a curtain wall...because we're actually pretty good at it. However, our society has lost, as a common skill, stone detailing, and so doing that well costs a lot of money in these times, when the skill can even be found. Therefore, architects and developers, under cost constraints, try to replicate what they are told to make, as best they can, with the materials they can afford in this day and age. That ends up being concrete, because they can't afford stone, and it ends up being crappily detailed, because it would cost too much to do it right. Obviously, you don't have to fake it at all - you could use the materials of our day, the ones our society is good at - but...
...Lucien Lagrange has been doing this for a long time. He's old, rich, and arrogant, and supposedly not a very good designer to start with (like artists, you don't have to be a good designer to become a well-known architect). In addition, he's done a lot of buildings like this, knows people will take it, and knows his firm can make money doing it. Changing his style would mean breaking out of old habits for an old man, so it isn't likely to happen. Some would argue, in addition, that he gives developers exactly what they want - so why change, if it means risking his firm's ability to satisfy its clients, and ultimately the livelihood of some of his employees...especially in an economy where a lot of architectural work is quickly drying up, and we're likely to see a lot of taxi driver architects very soon.
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Another reason you see a lot of people on this forum, that are architects, complaining about things, yet nothing is done, is because many people that use a forum like this are pretty young, and have not yet risen to the point in firms where they hold that level of influence. Many principals in architecture firms don't reach that level until their 40s, 50s, maybe even 60s.
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