Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold the renovated Edmonton, Alberta, downtown main library… or is an alien invasion under way? It’s hard to imagine a more aggressively menacing building than this intergalactic war-wagon. Message: Surrender, you miserable earthlings! Your way-of-life is over. So it goes with the unending quest for cutting edge novelty in more »
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July 2019
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold, the stupid fucking idea du jour! The Penn15 Tower proposed for mid-Manhattan — as if the city needs another megastructure that will be transformed from an asset to a liability overnight in the long emergency ahead. Penn15 will be nearly the same height as the Empire State more »
June 2019
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold, the Vancouver House condominiums by the Bjarke Ingels Group (“BIG,” as they style themselves — no grandiosity there). Does the building appear to want to topple over and crush you? Isn’t that cute? Beware of what you wish for, especially with the Cascadia Fault lurking in the more »
May 2019
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page The real estate website Zillow sez: “this contemporary home has a European flare with a Manhattan feel. Perfect for entertaining….” Actually, I’d say it has a Soviet flare with a recycling bin feel, perfect for opening a large vein in a warm tub. It’s in a Hudson Valley more »
April 2019
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page 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 more »
March 2019
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold, the new $100,000-per-night hotel suite at The Palms resort in Las Vegas, featuring artworks by the international art-and-design maestro Damien Hirst, plus design motifs by same to liven up the despondency-inducing gray color scheme and the nausea-inducing view of a city that is composed of at least more »
February 2019
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold the Burj al Babas, a $200 million ensemble of wannabe French castles in the Turkish town of Mudurnu, about 150 miles east of Istanbul. The castle-ettes are all empty. (No cassoulet for you!) The project, by a money-laundering outfit, called the Sarot Group pulled the plug on more »
January 2019
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold, the new San Diego Superior Court tombstone… er, light box… er, hydroponic grow station… er, Pez dispenser (remember them?)? Nominator Joshua Hardgrove says: “It ironically consolidates San Diego County’s criminal trial, family, and civil courts into a 25-story monstrosity. Bringing all your problems into one central location, more »
December 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold London’s latest shwingin’ skyscraper, the proposed “Tulip” designed by starchitect Norman Foster as a companion for the already-built “Gherkin” and “The Shard.” London has decided to make itself a freak show city in these waning days of techno-industrial narcissmo. Obviously, the Tulip’s slender stem does not allow more »
November 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold, the zippy new sidewalk treatment in downtown Austin, Texas, outside a corporate parking lot that is empty much of the day. Since there will never be any human pedestrians here to liven up the scene, the zig-zag pavement will have to provide all the excitement. (I get a more »
October 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold the proposal for Boston University’s new Data Sciences Center (corporate naming rights TBD). Seventeen stories of stacked boxes — meant to signify a pile of books, according to the BU Public Relations office — it will be the tallest structure on the campus. Well, yahoo for that. more »
September 2018
Behold the new SanFrancisco Transit Hub fully loaded with “geek green” tech and LEED bullshit, as befits Internet Narcissism Central. It’s actually officially named the “Salesforce Transit Center” for the company that bought the naming rights (no advertising or PR niche can remain unoccupied!). The 5.5 acre “park” on the roof is a disaster-in-the-making (“green” more »
August 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold, proposed apartment tower / water feature from the drawing boards (actually, the CAD studios) of China. Further proof that whatever might be done , will be done, no matter how fucking stupid. The list of things that might go wrong with this scheme is too long to more »
July 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold the new Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, by architect Steven Holl (multiple winner at EOTM!). Whatcha got here: ever a new way to present blank walls to the street. Along with new ways for designing large structured masses to feel like they more »
June 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold the new Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Cleveland, Ohio, designed by Iranian-born, London-based, Farshid Moussavi. Yet another borg building? Why, of course. That is how museums of the newest “art” must be designed, as decreed by the hive-mind of the High Culture insiders. They must be entirely and more »
May 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold: Seattle’s new Nordic Museum. (Museum of White Privilege?). Or is that just the box that the museum came in? Designed by Mithun architects. It comes with the usual symbolic narrative: “The new museum is organized around a linear ‘fjord’ that weaves together stories of homeland and the more »
April 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold the US Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, Minnesota, future home of the Minnesota Vikings, clocking in at $1.1 billion (with $500 million from the taxpayers.) Wah-hoo, and pass the lutefisk tacos, honey…. Joshua Hardgrove, who nominated this humdinger, wrote: “….according to [architects] HKS, Inc., who built stadiums across more »
March 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold the proposed new “W-350” tower, a 70-story skyscraper proposed for the center of Tokyo, Japan. The neat gimmick: it’s made of wood! In the tofu-filled minds of many environmental activists (and the techno-narcissist opportunists who prey on them), this is supposed to be a “green” building. Let’s more »
February 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Well, now… here’s something we haven’t seen before: a glass Borg Box with some jaunty angles to liven the darn thing up. This humdinger is slated for downtown Mankato, Minnesota, a town with about as much architectural charm as a 1956 Norge Refrigerator. Note the screenshot below of more »
January 2018
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page Behold, the new US Embassy in London, clocking in at $1 billion, a fortified borg-hive sporting a facade straight out of the 1964 World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows. Kind of a super high-tech Bowling-Trophy-on-Thames. The Times of London tells it thusly: The riverside embassy, described by British media as more »
December 2017
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page! Behold, the site of Bill Gates’s City of the Future! No, that’s not Mars. That’s 25,000 acres of barrel cactus and scorpions in the neighborhood of Tonopah, Arizona, about fifty miles from Phoenix. I suppose it seems a smart place for a city if you think water comes from more »
November 2017
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page! Behold the “Dubai Frame,” a lavish, gilded adornment for the tourist mecca, business hub, and glistening pearl of of the Middle East, scheduled to open this month! The vanity project of the emir’s Emaar development company, designed by Mexican architect Fernando Donis, stands 50 stories high and is expected more »
October 2017
Behold, the Morningside Church, Blue Eye, Missouri. Run by the not-yet-late and still-great Jim Bakker — remember Jim and Tammy Faye, who ran the PTL Club (Praise the Lord) out of their Heritage USA theme park in South Carolina back in the 1980s? Ole Jim got hisself in a whole mess o’trouble when a cutie more »
September 2017
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page! Behold the Children’s Splish Splash Garden, downtown Omaha, Nebraska. This lame gesture of a play area for kids is tucked behind what looks like a forensic pathology lab, with excellent views to the four-laner twenty feet away. It was actually put there to assuage the consciences of the more »
August 2017
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page! Behold this rendering of the proposed 40-story Nexus Tower for downtown Seattle. The home-base city for Bill Gates’ Microsoft colossus is crazy for buildings that look like they’re liable to topple over on you or disorient you — sort of like Bill’s Windows operating system. In fact, Seattle more »
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Too Much Magic
Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation
The nationally best-selling author of "The Long Emergency" expands on his alarming argument that our oil-addicted, technology-dependent society is on the brink of collapse—that the long emergency has already begun. Published by the Atlantic Monthly Press.
Read JHK's entertaining chapter "The Zombies of Gund Hall Go Forth to Eat America's Brains" In the new book: Landscape Urbanism and Its Discontents