JHK’s Three-Act Play
Behold the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Caltech in Pasadena, California, designed by Thom Maynes’ Morphoses team. I’d call the style “Bizarro Corbu” after the early Modernist, Le Corbusier (human name: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret). Bizarro derives from the trope in the old Superman comics, “Bizarro World: an alternative universe of industrial madness populated by sub-humanoids with crystalline bodies. Note the surpassing dreariness of the ground floor with its squashed down entrance portico, dull concrete “pilotis” and ghastly chain-link fencing (a material that should be relegated to dog kennels and prison yards.) Horizontal windows, of course! And that’s a great color choice: monkey-shit orange!
Thanks to Patrick T. Lynch for the nomination.
Corbu
The greater marvel, or horror, is all the various parties that signed off on its construction in the first place!
How do freakshows like this get all the necessary approvals before the first nail is driven? And who actually funds this after seeing the proposals?
It is more disturbing to ponder the sociopathic proclivities of the bourgeois group mind that celebrates such visual dissonance than Mr. Jeanneret’s audacity for offering it up in the first place.
I am travelling to India in early December. My first stop after flying into Delhi is to head west to Chandigarh, capital of the Punjab. Here is what Wikipedia says about the place: “Chandigarh was one of the early planned cities in the post-independence India and is internationally known for its architecture and urban design. The master plan of the city was prepared by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, which transformed from earlier plans created by the Polish architect Maciej Nowicki and the American planner Albert Mayer. Most of the government buildings and housing in the city, were designed by the Chandigarh Capital Project Team headed by Le Corbusier, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry. In 2015, an article published by BBC named Chandigarh as one of the perfect cities of the world in terms of architecture, cultural growth and modernisation.”
I will let you know what I think!
Inspired by the sand crawlers from Star Wars, no doubt. Jawas will emerge at any moment to zap some droids.
the metal cladding color was imposed on them by a local review board. it’s supposed to match the color of the monotonous spanish style stucco buildings around it.
having personally visited this building it sits very quietly within the site and is a good neighbor. the entrance is easy to find and leads to a fantastic staircase that gives views into adjacent spaces.
the classrooms etc are also well appointed and in good condition. overall this building is a winner despite the extreme design conservativism in pasadena.
Pasadena actually has some very nice older buildings. The city hall with its drive-through dome and the public library (beaux artes) are outstanding!
No, no, don’t you see, you’ve got it all wrong. It’s an astronomy building. I was designed by people who think that space is not Euclidean (parallel lines actually meet or diverge if you follow them out far enough);-) But of course it still is an eyesore.
It looks like an earthquake already happened.
Most people are not aware of this – in his later years Picasso held most of those who sang his praises and bought his execrable paintings in utter contempt. In fact, he said he deliberately painted worthless rubbish just to demonstrate how devoid of genuine appreciation of the arts they actually were. I remember years ago reading an article in a British paper how Picasso made no secret of his disdain, yet the customers of the rubbish still paid astronomical prices for the crap – because they wanted to brag they owned “a Picasso.”
What should we expect from people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Perhaps this explains at least some of the Eyesores of the Month. They are jokes.
The spoilers/trimtabs are curious. I wouldn’t have thought the building was capable of reaching liftoff velocity.
It is the perfect architectural representation of our financialized ‘economy’ and stock market – soaring while collapsing into nothingness, and the color of the monkey shit they are. Bravo!
Timo
That’s harmless enough surely. Some of your eyesores are really dreadful. That’s just like something the council might come up with; a box build with a slightly angular corner
Interesting that they didn’t have enough engineering to get rid of that huge concrete pillar blocking the entrance
Maybe they could have clad it LOL
Hmmm…
To quote Jim;
“it will never be renovated”