JoB
cjboffoli and wingme..
the play of color and light is what interests me about the EMP… from the hill you can see jimmy’s smashed guitar.. which is why i like that perspective…but isn’t that more a matter of material than architecture? I am fascinated with it as a huge piece of public art.. but it fails me as a building.
The art museum by Frank Geahry in Minneapolis is an example of that interplay of light and materials that actually manages to also work as a building from nearly every perspective… though it is definately more imaginative from the outside than from the inside.
The “new” Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is equally impressive both inside and out… for that interplay you mention.. though neither it nor the art museum are colorful. That would be too “interesting’ for the good folks of Minnesota:)
http://www.pbase.com/mmingo/image/49345281
The new library in Minneapolis by Cesar Pelli is an example of the kind of interplay of planes that is the hallmark of our new library.. yet it functions as a library… creating intimate nooks and welcoming public spaces inside.
BTW.. it is far more impressive than the photographs would lead you to expect..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Public_Library
I use Minneapolis examples because that is where i was last on foot for any protracted amount of time and because architecture was one of the delights of finding myself marooned there:)
BTW.. none of those buildings is human in scale… except that they all manage to pull off the same resonance that the Chrysler building evokes… and i agree it is one of my favorite buildings…
i even like it better than Frank Lloyd Wright’s work … and he produced some architecture that definately meets every criteria for me except human occupation ;~>
Perhaps they are appropriately out of scale?
now there’s an interesting question.. what makes a building appropriately out of scale? Is it something to do with symmetry.. or a homage to nature? I know that is what is working in the public spaces in the Pearl in Portland.
The new Guthrie center in Minneapolis is another one of those public spaces that confuses me. I still don’t know what to think of it. It is intentionally not human in scale nor human in experience.
While at first glance it is approachable enough… once inside the architects choice to make you feel that you had to ascend to new heights to encounter art… through the use of one of the steepest 2 + story escalators i have even been on.. and his intentional evoking of mystery through the use of interior spaces that really do need numerous signs to navigate from one space that to another.. even though you can easily see where you need to go… and his cantilevered structure over the Mississippi.. at the end of an intentionally long journey.. leave me flat… tho the theaters themselves are well done.
but Minnesotans love it.. i think because it invokes just enough of a feeling of grandeur for them without making them unduly uncomfortable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guthrie_Theater
I don’t know that i want a building to be that much experience… but perhaps buildings that offer novel experiences are the new aesthetic…
i can’t imagine how uncomfortable the sweeping excesses of modern architecture must have made those who first stepped into their cavernous spaces feel….
i can just imagine some woman walking along saying that progress was all well and good but one shouldn’t feel as though they were on an amusement park ride in a building ;~>