"Yeah. And the presumption is that I wouldn’t be able to stay on budget, which is the opposite of the truth. Every one of our buildings hits the budget."

MIT Stata Center was budgeted at $100M. It was well over 4x that cost before it was even finished (http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2003/09...). The costs went up from there, as when it rained outside, it also rained inside, and there were all sorts of other unforeseen problems. There were litigation, which Gehry shrugged off.

The inside of the building was a train wreck. You had walls at odd angle, where you couldn't fit a standard bookcase or file cabinet. The acoustics meant that you could hear conversations as far as a different floor. All the issues to make it a practical place to work still haven't been addressed.

But as much as it sucks as a place to work, it's a great monument to faculty and administrator egos.

I once worked on the second floor of a two floor geodesic dome and the outside walls had that problem. Nothing insurmountable but it was a bit annoying. Here's a little more on that [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29301072

I happen to live in a neighborhood where Frank Lloyd Wright built a few homes. The homeowner experience is terrible, but the buildings are wonderful.

The building also stood out substantially for quite some time. That part of campus was mainly comprised of buildings from the early 1900's. Today, a lot of new construction has sprung up around that area so it's not quite as jarring, but like any Gehry building, it still stands out.

A building shouldn't be designed to facilitate giving concealment/cover to people who expect their entrance to be violently opposed. I would argue that if you're going to give design consideration to that it should be in the opposite direction.

I was aware of the shooting nightmare that took place there and specifically remember how odd it was hearing the song "Pumped Up Kicks" playing inside of that building.

“Every tower in New York comes from a different planet, everybody is competing with each other. With Forma, I’m trying to create community”

Look at this garbage:

https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/projects/2022/0...

Only a modern starchitect could think that any sort of community could arise out of towering glass boxes (ah, yes, the yale box[1], wow, amazingly original) that look like they are about to fall over on top of you.

At least the brutalists were honest about wanting to alienate people.

The damage done by modern architecture will take a millenia to fix.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Bauhaus_to_Our_House

https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5850/5b9b/e58e/ce32/8...

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/191120080400-04-zara-h...

https://desmoinesartcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/IM...

Personally, I'm tired of architecture being treated as a grotesque form of sculpture.

I've been in a few IM Pei buildings, and even worked in one. They were pleasant places to be and functional. I have the utmost respect for him. He's had a few buildings where the function was art (e.g. galleries), so they didn't follow that, but it made sense. He's had a few failures too.

But on the whole, I have the utmost respect for him as an architect.

Form over function.

https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/3...

I think that while the building uses a lot of elements of brutalist style, it also does a good job incorporating natural light. The art in the picture below doesn't isn't particularly compelling to me, but I like the architecture:

https://live.staticflickr.com/1742/42628537001_fe8a195275_b....

https://desmoinesartcenter.org/about/architecture/i-m-pei/

The criticisms of modernism in the 70s were already very precise and perceptive. See also for example Jane Jacobs or Christopher Alexander. However, instead, it pushed us into the pageantry of post-modernism, which, even though less bad, didn't really create a paradigm shift. It still conceived the building-proper as a sculpture, with all the idiocy that implies.

Prince Charles is hated on by architects for the same reason. His book “harmony” is a deliberation about the types of buildings and town structures that produce vitality. I was skeptical but it is a great read.

“That’s, like, just your opinion, man”.

I for one think if you’re hoping to build X number of apartments in Y space, where Y is priced at downtown Toronto land prices, then you’re going to make variations of a box (or a Gherkin, but then it’d be a gherkin).

Of course, Forma isn’t a cube, there’s a lot of texture there; there’s contrast and light.

But, that just, like, my opinion, man

Distinctive architecture is risky. At elite levels it amounts to signing up to live, or work, in a major artist's work of sculpture, made with novel methods and materials. Repair becomes equivalent to art conservation. Budget accordingly.

The MIT campus is full of similar stories, not just Building 32 (Stata Center).

Nitpicking, but surely this title must go to Frank Lloyd Wright[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMXK_KtUVm4

Frank Lloyd Wright homes sell for much less than they you might think based on their looks, because they're maintenance nightmares. Lots of newspaper articles about this over the last 50 years.

He was designing buildings back in the late 1800s. While there is obviously a good deal work required in maintaining buildings from that era, I don't think that Wright's work has required a disproportionate amount of attention.

The Imperial Hotel in Japan survived a massive 1923 Tokyo earthquake due to several design decisions made by Wright.

As long as you stay on top of it, the maintenance is totally reasonable. Putting a new roof on is identical to any other house. Ditto siding, ditto paint (minus having to worry about lead).

I recently replaced >20 original windows on one of them. They were just held in with trim. Honestly it was easier than taking out an 80s era aluminum window.

In many ways they’re better than modern construction. The lumber they used is miles ahead of anything on the market today. Lots of old growth redwood and cedar that give you some natural rot protection.

I know little about the maintenance challenges of Wright buildings, but generally speaking old wood houses are not crazy expensive to maintain. But my house is a pretty standard shape, and it doesn’t have a waterfall running underneath it.

Your supposition runs counter to what has been documented many times by many industry publications and general purpose newspapers.

I know about ten very good architects who work on very large projects around the world. Two of whom would deserve to be called "starchitects," if they were interested in self-promotion. Wright is well-known in the professional architecture world as someone whose buildings are great when the go up, but quickly reveal their flaws once lived in and used.

The Imperial Hotel in Japan survived a massive 1923 Tokyo earthquake due to several design decisions made by Wright

One building out of over a thousand. Oak Park, Illinois has no shortage of homes that have become well-publicized money pits because of Mr. Wright's choices.

Heck, his very famous Fallingwater house is considered one of his crowning achievements, but is also a spectacular failure. He built it over a waterfall, and didn't take humidity into consideration. He built it in Pennsylvania and didn't take winter into consideration. Defects in the concrete floor designs were noted even during construction. Nothing to do with age.

Compared to a Gehry building that's flawed before the first occupant even steps foot inside, that sounds pretty good :)

Promises 25 places on the map.

Okay, here’s one about the latest in a long tradition of remodelling:

https://www.oakpark.com/2022/02/16/how-do-you-remodel-wright...

Alludes to longstanding issues with adapting prarie-inspired visuals to the local climate.

newspapers.com is your resource for stuff that's not on The Google. Searching is much harder, though. You kinda need to know the dates things were published.

I'm the weirdo who actually reads our local newspapers, for what it's worth. Like I said, I actually live here.

The Johnson labs, for example, was designed to allow in lots of natural light through glass and glass block walls. Great for reading. Terrible if the people inside work with substances that react to light.

Again, great concept. Visually wonderful. But not well thought out.

They are still working there. It took a lot of post-construction work to make it usable and rainproof. And it's beautiful, which you certainly can't say about 99% of the corporate buildings in use nowadays.

Wright was always pushing boundaries in construction technology and ended up using a lot of techniques and materials that weren't quite ready for production.

I'd bet that almost every design of his could be made today with no long-term maintenance issues whatsoever.

He was certainly an arrogant asshole. Like Steve Jobs, he inspired a lot of people who thought that just being an arrogant asshole was the secret sauce.

His buildings were also poorly made and required endless renovation just to be usable. But they were beautiful, and they integrated with their surroundings (OK, except for Taliesyn, which was uninhabitable in the winter). Those two things are not true for Gehry.

I went with my brother (not a builder or architect) to Taliesyn. The first thing he noticed was how the glass wall corners didn't meet flush.