utilitarian buildings designed by famous architects

[Bedhead]

Fantastic.

Returning to the Norman Foster / automotive theme, the Renault Distribution Centre (car showroom/warehouse) in Swindon.






my pics

[huggkruka]

Reading this thread, I can't help thinking of Gary Cooper gazing into the camera in that cheesy Fountainhead adaptation. "I'll build anything, for anyone". Keep it up!

[vandelay]

Rescue Company 3, NYC by Polshek Partners:

nymag

[vandelay]

Fagus Factory, Alfeld on the Leine, Germany by Walter Gropius


Sternewald


wikipedia

[Bedhead]

That's the daddy.

I've drive past this Herman Miller Distribution Centre every day on my way to to work, and have often remarked on how... blue it is. I just found out it was designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, who did the Eden Project.






my pics

[TarHeelJ]

I.M. Pei's first building in the U.S. - the 1951 Gulf Oil Building in Atlanta:


http://www.preserveatlanta.com/endangered07_04.htm


Brookwood Station in Atlanta, a 1908 Neel Reid structure, is now Atlanta's Amtrak station:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/xpkranger/3091708792/

[amor de cosmos]

home lumber sales office by arthur erickson (the only pic i could find...):

http://www.homelumber.net/

Originally Posted by vandelay

Fagus Factory, Alfeld on the Leine, Germany by Walter Gropius

i can't believe it's taken this long for someone to post that one! i completely forgot about it

[vandelay]

BMW Factory, Munich - Zaha Hadid


maurizio_mwg

doctorcasino

Mclaren Automotive, Woking - Foster and Partners
http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Pro...5/Default.aspx

judygr

andymac53

[Bedhead]

Continuing an earlier theme of effluence, I recently found out about Joseph Bazalgette and Charles Driver's 'Cathedrals to Sewage' in east London, the Abbey Mills pumping station:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...g_Station3.jpg
Gordon Joly, Wiki

and the Crossness pumping station:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ng_Station.jpg
Wiki, Steve Cadman

Bazalgette, an engineer, designed numerous other bridges and embankments in London, whilst Driver designed the Estação da Luz in Sao Paulo.

[amor de cosmos]

GM Tech Centre by Eero Saarinen:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mishpo/3659654141/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/mishpo/3659654143/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/mishpo/3721703302/

[slide_rule]

^these buildings may be utilitarian, but they certainly weren't done on the cheap.

i'm a huge fan of foster's renault distribution center. maybe it's the combination of compression and tension elements? maybe it's the mass duplication of elements? akin to seemingly infinite moorish arches?

yet the renault distribution center has one quality which has forced it to be.. expensive. it has a lot of structural members that are exposed to the elements. they're pretty, but they also have to be made of rustproof materials, or more pragmatically, constantly painted.

[slide_rule]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nica_Place.jpg


here's frank gehry's santa monica place. it might be an unfashionable 1980s mall of pastel colors, but its architect was frank gehry. mind you, frank gehry was just an anonymous architect back then and designing for the gruen company. *shudders*

but he became rich and famous later on, and his CATIA-aided squiggles received widespread acclaim from lots of critics.

[Bedhead]

^^^^ Wow, that's a real 'before they were famous' example.

Originally Posted by slide_rule

maybe it's the combination of compression and tension elements? maybe it's the mass duplication of elements? akin to seemingly infinite moorish arches?

Yes, you've put it better than I ever could!

That repetition of arches also reminds me of Victorian train sheds. The Great Western Railway runs through Swindon, where the Renault distribution
centre is based, and I have wondered if that's where some of the inspiration comes from:

my pics



That's also a really interesting point you made about maintenance. The building stood empty for a long time a few years back, and it has stood empty
for quite a while since the last tenant left. I guess it could be that the cost of keeping it up pushes rents up, and makes it hard to lease. Plus, the unique
layout probably means it's harder to occupy efficiently than bog standard office/industrial space.

[TimCity2000]

louis kahn's trenton bathhouse:

[slide_rule]

^norman foster's designs have changed from a more standardized 'kit of repeating parts' to a more organic approach. buildings like the swiss re and the cambridge library now have a tapering approach, reminiscent of phyllotaxis and sunflowers, cacti, acorns, etc.

they may be pretty and have advantages in circulation (i'm speculating about this last point), but construction techniques haven't developed to the point of making bespoke parts economical.

wasn't paxton's crystal palace the seminal example of an industrialized shed roof?

[Bedhead]

That is true - the Crystal Palace was built in 1851, and the Paddington train shed (in my post above) was built by the same contractors a few years later. The first great iron and glass building in London, though, was the Palm House at Kew, built in the 1840s.

[amor de cosmos]

Preston Bus Station, designed by Keith Ingham & Charles Wilson with Arup is in the news:

Architecture Minister Margaret Hodge has again gone against English Heritage (EH) advice and turned down a second bid to list Preston’s 1969 bus station

Having rejected calls to give heritage protection status to John Madin’s 1970s brutalist Birmingham library last in November, the minister has now decided that the impressive, ‘neo-Corbusian’ concrete BDP bus station does not merit a Grade II listing. On both occasions EH had recommended the buildings for listing, hailing them as ‘nationally important’.

Hodge, who is known for her ambivalence towards post-war architecture said ‘neither the design of the building nor the methods used in its construction have the qualities of innovative planning or structural interest.’

She added: ‘[There] are significant aspects of Preston Central Bus Station and Car Park that have never functioned or operated as intended.’

The rejection will be welcomed by the team behind the £650 million retail-led Tithebarn town centre regeneration project, which ironically is also designed by BDP. The 41-year-old bus station is due to be demolished and replaced by a John Lewis department store - although the progress of the project is unclear following developer Grosvenor’s departure from the scheme last year.

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/n...213555.article


http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoneroberts/39179114/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/36509327@N04/3645646059/

[Bedhead]

^^^^ Yes, it's very sad. With a bit of imagination, you'd think that they could have incorporated the best bits of the bus station into a new building and given it a new lease of life. I read somewhere that the concrete was a bit thin in places, which made maintenance expensive, which is probably the real reason why it's being torn down.

Interestingly, the replacement for the building, which rejoices under the spectacularly phony-sounding name of the 'Tithebarn' project was criticised by planners for appearing:

'to bring back something of the approach of 1960’s style comprehensive redevelopment, rather than integrating the proposed and existing buildings into a truly distinctive new future for Preston city centre.'

There is a very interesting and often hilarious facebook page where locals discuss the building and its future at:

http://ro-ro.facebook.com/group.php?...id=56857333974

[amor de cosmos]

not sure how famous the architects are but here's a cool-looking water-treatment plant near venice, italy by C&S Associati anyway:




http://www.archdaily.com/48454/water...-cs-associati/

[Bedhead]

Herzog and de Meron, Signal Box


http://www.flickr.com/photos/lido_6006/136045686/
Lido 6006, Flickr

This is what the Pritzker Prize jury had to say about it:

"The beginnings of most architects’ practices consists by necessity of small projects with budgets to match. It is these early buildings with great constraints that test an architect’s talent for original solutions to often ordinary and utilitarian commissions."