February 2015 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Here come the borgs! Introducing the new US Federal Courthouse in Salt lake City designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners. They’ve really caught that old security state spirit in a building that looks uncannily like the computer server that contains your credit record, your tax filings, your phone log, your internet purchase trail, the drone photos taken outside your girlfriend’s bedroom window, and all the other nifty data-crumbs that the world’s greatest democracy is harvesting in order to maximally coerce you. Note, they didn’t even bother to airbrush in the theoretical pedestrians but opted to show the street in its actual glorious entropic deadness.

Below is the lobby after a neutron bomb eliminated all the humans cluttering up this high art monument to techno-necrophilia. The tiny security checkpoint at lower right denotes the scale. Comfy, huh?