Featured Eyesore of the Month

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Behold, a proposal to redevelop the block around St. Lucy’s Church, Jersey City, NJ.  Yet another exercise in misunderstanding the future counterposes a human-scaled ensemble of traditional buildings squashed underneath a despotic death Borg of computer-assisted banality designed by the firm MVMK (Minervini Vandermark Melia Kelly). You see, property development projects must follow rather long timelines. It usually takes years from initial inspiration to completed construction, what with applying for permits and approvals, completing design, arranging finance, greasing the politicians and mobsters, and scoping out the contractors. Alas, the last couple of years have put modern life through some unexpected ch-ch-ch-changes. The office building has gone suddenly and strangely obsolete as Covid-19 prompts the new work-from-home paradigm (and even that might not last long in the epic contraction and collapse of our techno-industrial economy). Likewise, the residential mega-structure is but an accessory dormitory for the office mega-structure. So, what do you do with the plan for this 444-unit building conceived under a way-of-life that no longer exists? Kiss goodbye a rather large nut of investment-to-date. Sorry, the cosmic pinball display reads TILT. Or else, make a more modest investment in redeveloping the original buildings on the block. That’s what the future actually requires. What a fine old thing the St. Lucy’s is, it’s towers and turrets aspiring to the heavens!

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Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page   Behold, a proposal to redevelop the block around St. Lucy’s Church, Jersey City, NJ.  Yet another exercise in misunderstanding the future counterposes a human-scaled ensemble of traditional buildings squashed underneath a despotic death Borg of computer-assisted banality designed by the firm MVMK (Minervini Vandermark Melia Kelly). You more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support!   Behold, the fabulous sculpture called “Jubilee!” installed next to the Home Suites 2 by Hilton (a hotel, if you’re wondering) at the Sea Shells Collections Shopping Center in Gulf Breeze Florida . It is supposed to represent three more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold: the proposal for a 160-story, 2418-foot tall “carbon neutral” skyscraper from the French architecture firm Rescubika on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. It incorporates 36 wind turbines, 8,300 shrubs, 1,600 trees, 83,000 square feet of plant walls, and nearly 23,000 square feet of solar panels. The project is more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Architect Sir David Adjaye becomes the first back-to-back winner (Oct, Nov) at the Eyesore of the Month with this unfortunate and misconceived humdinger for lower Manhattan at 130 William Street. Unfortunate because this kind of residential mega-tower was the-thing-to-do just a year ago, before Covid-19 rang out around more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold: the New Princeton University Art Museum!  Or is that the box that it came in??? Yeah, I know, an old gag, but it still works. What you get here is just another exercise in fake originality. How many of these floating boxes are there in the world? more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold, the second coming of St. Thomas Parish Church Washington, DC (1517 18th Street NW, off Dupont Circle). Kind of looks like the musical instrument that the space aliens flew down to Earth in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977) to play the dumb-ass tune that more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold the “Shipwreck Tower” in Prague, proposed to be the Czech Republic’s tallest building at 440 feet, about 40 stories. This humdinger was conceived, obviously, before Covid-19 raced around the world. What you get is another colossal art stunt incorporated into an office building, a virtue-signaling gag telling more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold: the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in downtown Dallas, Texas — if you can even call this inchoate mash-up of low-rise crapola, parking lots, and freeway ramps a downtown. The building was designed by Eyesore of the Month All-time Champeen, Thom Mayne (countless humdingers over the more »

The Eyesore of the Month! Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold, the Grand Castle Apartment Homes, Granville, Michigan. “Live like a King!! the brochure says. Well, fer sure, because America is going medieval after the New Great Depression is through with us. Actually, there are federal penitentiaries that have better-designed neo-medieval details than more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page   Architect Thom Mayne and his Morphosis firm are great favorites here, year after year, and they’ve come up with a new humdinger expressing every trope of techno-narcisismo idiocy in circulation — at least until the corona virus put the schnitz on what used to be considered our more »