June 2015 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Behold the “Pterodactyl,” a combination parking garage and office structure designed by Eric Owen Moss for Culver City, California, To this observer, it’s more train wreck than prehistoric flying reptile. It’s also yet another demonstration of how buildings can be torqued and tweaked with computer-aided design (CAD) in order to produce maximum maintenance problems and the inevitable impossibility of adaptive re-use. The building is mostly parking with the office as a kind of minor add-on. What appears to be just plain old visual incoherence is actually a vivid portrait of cultural collapse. A phenomenal waste of resources, they probably think it’s “green.”
Below is a schematic model of this droopy-woopy humdinger.

Thanks to Jer Jenkins for sending it in.