Featured Eyesore of the Month

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And thanks to all my Patrons for your support

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Behold The Moon Resort and Casino proposed as the next big Wow for Las Vegas in global capital’s never-ending search for titillating alternatives to reality. The usual superlatives apply to this $5-billion project: 5,000 suites, 2,500-seat theater, an attached shopping mall, and, double-Wow, a planetarium. Developers Moon World Resorts Inc. say the 750-foot-tall moon building will contain an indoor “lunar surface.” They plan to charge $500 for 90 minute sessions cavorting around in it. Better bring a book. Or, better yet, rent a car and drive thirty miles outside Las Vegas into the desert where, at least, the tarantulas and gila monsters will keep you company in the desolate landscape.

Do you have any idea how badly Las Vegas has decrepitated in the past two years? I get regular reports from someone employed in retail right on the Strip. Since Covid came to visit, the fat cats and Asian “whale” gamblers of yesteryear have been largely replaced by west coast gang-bangers. The result: stupendous impromptu pageants of street violence: stabbings, shootings, beat-downs, stompings, often in broad daylight. With restaurant closings, visitors have had to get their meals from the CVS snack shelves. A new class of homeless addicts and psychotics appeared and formed LA-style campgrounds in the parking lots and nebulous zones between the massive casino properties. The grafitti cleaners can’t get ahead of the taggers. This is certainly not Bugsy Siegel’s town, nor even Steve Wynn’s. Las Vegas has entered the Blade Runner phase of its destined-to-be rather brief existence. If the capital markets tank as expected this fall, the Moon Resort and Casino won’t make it past the proposal stage. But I guess it’s the thought that counts.

Thanks to Mike Cather for the nomination!

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Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support Behold The Moon Resort and Casino proposed as the next big Wow for Las Vegas in global capital’s never-ending search for titillating alternatives to reality. The usual superlatives apply to this $5-billion project: 5,000 suites, 2,500-seat theater, an attached more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support! Welcome to the new annex (gray thing, right side) for Liljevalchs, Stockholm’s Museum of Contemporary Art, an above-ground version of Berlin’s Fuhrerbunker, (circa 1943). Notice how well-harmonized and proportioned (not) every element between the two structures is — scale, cladding, more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support! Behold the Brøndby Garden City in Denmark, an experiment that has been around since 1964, but worth discussing in these day of hysterical Green-O-mania, the social response to climate change activism aggravated by worsening resource and capital scarcity, plus more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support!   Behold, the Luma Arts Tower, Arles, France; architects: Frank Gehry Anabelle Selldorf, Selldorf Architects. Arles, you recall, was the headquarters of the painter Vincent Van Gogh in his prime (1888-89). And so the idea in recent years has more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support! Behold, the “Little Island” mini-park in the Hudson River, occupying the former site of Pier 54, now demolished, where survivors of the Titanic landed in 1912. This is the second big public art statement installed around the lower Manhattan more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support!   Behold the CopenHill Energy Plant and Urban Recreation Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, Arch-Daily’s “Building-of-the-Year,” designed by the super-hot Bjarke Ingels Group… embodying all the tragic contradictions of the contemporary condition: the desperate desire to connect to “nature” (and to have more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support!   Behold: Blockchain City, Nevada, proposed for a wasteland outside Reno. Styling itself as a new “cryptocurrency-powered smart city,” the project un-smartly (i.e. stupidly)  incorporates every techno-narcissistic trope possible: megastructures, “green” everything in the desert, a continuation of car-dependency, more »

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support! Behold the Helix,  Amazon’s new East Coast headquarters proposed for Arlington, Virginia, across the river from that great National Swamp of grift and favors known as the District of Columbia. You know what’s going on here, right? Trick question more »

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 »