April 2019 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Behold the new world headquarters for the Danish clothing firm Bestseller in the tiny town of Brande (pop. 7,000): set to be the tallest building in Europe. What a breathtakingly stupid idea! I suppose they think it will minimize the human footprint on the terrain. Wrong. (Typical “gadget green” fallacy.) It only distorts that footprint by stacking too many people in a vertical box that will have no capacity for adaptive re-use when Bestseller’s best days are over. It will be visible from 40 miles away on Denmark’s pancake-flat landscape, making it impossible to escape its despotic presence. In essence, the project is a half-assed update of LeCorbusier’s idiotic Ville Radieuse — the original “towers-in-a-park” fiasco that ended up being the model for America’s ghastly public housing “projects.” Thanks to many who nominated this latest exercise in techno-narcissism.