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October 2013

Behold the conceptual rendering for this year’s official Flint, Michigan, public art project.

Oct eyesore 1

Behold the conceptual rendering for this year’s official Flint, Michigan, public art project. Titled Mark’s House, this exercise in techno-narcissistic stunt-craft was the winner of a $25,000 competition prize administered by the Flint chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The winners were a London, UK, team calling itself Two Islands.

Got that? Now, below, behold the finished project on-site. Notice, no people there. The official website explains the metaphysical “back-story” of the stunt thusly: “The winning proposal, Mark’s House, tells the story of an imagined Flint resident, Mark Hamilton, whose family loses a home to foreclosure.”  They might have said it tells the story of a city named Flint, Michigan,  getting hosed by self-important art scamsters.

Oct eyesore 2
Thanks to Brian Buchalski for sending it in.

 

 

About James Howard Kunstler

View all posts by James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

13 Responses to “October 2013”

  1. richardguerin October 7, 2013 at 8:16 am #

    I love how this POS is handicapped accessible.

    • asocia October 7, 2013 at 10:10 am #

      as a flint resident, what’s a shame is the difference in how this installation looks in person and the photoshopped photo the artists have circulated.

      • kevinb October 9, 2013 at 8:57 am #

        This is pretty typical for most architectural renderings…but this one is very interesting. They always have people and 20 year landscaping to bring it to “life” because the architecture itself is typically so lifeless.

        This rendering has an added layer of telling an awesome story…some trolls set off a nuclear device in the background and are running away quickly. Meanwhile Elvis and his son have already been blasted and are heading toward the great tanning bed in the sky to join the others who have just arrived to pray to get into heaven. The tall building behind it is heaven, because heaven is living in a tower in a parking lot.

    • carstars October 18, 2013 at 1:12 pm #

      The public and the handicapped are herded under the thing then something happens and they are crushed. Next.

  2. keiths281 October 7, 2013 at 11:11 am #

    So am I the only one who noticed the frightening figures in the bottom left corner?

    Maybe they represent the winning architects!

  3. thesimpleengineer October 8, 2013 at 3:06 am #

    Only $25,000 ? That’s a steal!

    Compare to this public art piece in Toronto, where the building developer may have paid around $5 million.

    http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2012/05/zhang-huans-astounding-rising-unveiled-living-shangri-la

    Fortunately, there’s lots of foot-traffic near this piece on University Avenue in Toronto (as long as no-one gets poked!). In Flint, I don’t understand why they chose that isolated location — who’s actually going to walk up the stairs? It’s an act of desperation if it needs to be put on a pedestal to make it “seem” like art, or like an experiential space.

  4. mow October 8, 2013 at 12:43 pm #

    if this is art , then what i left in the toilet is a masterpiece

  5. kevinb October 9, 2013 at 8:40 am #

    This is why I don’t pay dues to my local AIA chapter.

    Remember when monuments were built for winning wars and remembering former great leaders. So now we are building monuments to people getting kicked out of their homes?

    Sorry, took a minute, I get it now…this is a victory monument in the war between corporations and individuals.

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    • GoLightRail October 19, 2013 at 2:06 am #

      Agreed: I’m an AIA member who no longer goes to the meetings (too full of self-absorbed, esoteric, wannabe environmentalists) and flip through the monthly ‘Architect’ magazine in about 50 seconds because it’s too full of articles and photos of “award winning” work like this thing in Flint.

  6. Hard_Work23 November 3, 2018 at 1:54 am #

    Hey, if you are on the way to fix connections for bluetooth audio devices and wireless displays in windows 10 but somehow facing some problems so you may clarify all from this platform as it is known to be hub of information.Try out for once.

  7. kayleig January 7, 2020 at 10:40 pm #

    When I believed in forever, and everything would stay the same
    Now my heart feel like December when somebody say your name.
    surviv io

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. urban intelligence — What on God’s green Earth…? - October 9, 2013

    […] horrendous new “Eyesore of the Month” offered by James Howard Kunstler – public art in Flint, Michigan. This thing is about as […]

  2. Concept VS Reality: A Metaphor | Caelum Et Terra - October 22, 2013

    […] tip to James Howard Kunstler’s Eyesore of the Month blog (http://kunstler.com/eyesore-of-the-month/october-2013) […]