May 2018 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Behold: Seattle’s new Nordic Museum. (Museum of White Privilege?). Or is that just the box that the museum came in? Designed by Mithun architects. It comes with the usual symbolic narrative: “The new museum is organized around a linear ‘fjord’ that weaves together stories of homeland and the Nordic American experience,” the Mithun web-page declares. I’m sure. All the wearisome canonical tropes of Modernism are on-board: flat roof (check), horizontal windows (check), glass curtain wall (check), blank facades (check), industrial cladding (check). What a roster of original ideas! Perfect for a city of cubicle serfs (Microsoft… Amazon). Excellent opportunity here for BLM / Antifa activists to apply some spray-painted decoration to the otherwise boring building… if they don’t just burn it down. Thanks to Keven N. for the nomination!