Aesthetic confusion in Denver

"Bad" architecture in Denver, according to Denver FUGLY. Via CityLab.

The FUGLY Movement

Citylab airs a complaint about new high-density housing in Denver. The city is booming but some hate the design of new construction.

Most of the examples put up for the horror show don't actually look all that bad to me. For one thing, they are overtly "modern". Oops! The self-styled "Center for Advanced Research in Traditional Architecture" (CARTA) at Denver's school of architecture isn't happy about that. Some of the multi-family housing is even, believe it or not, nominally "Deconstructivist", imitating gimmicks from Peter Eisenman's IBA housing in Berlin. Wow! But yes, a mistake.

Left: "Decon" redux in Denver. Funky, yes, no? Denver FUGLY. Via CityLab.

In architecture, if not in economics, everything, and I mean everything, does indeed eventually trickle down.

Perhaps many of these projects do give modernism a bad name. But I think it's because they are so quickly thrown together. The problem is American development, not the particular architectural style employed. It's all about cheating the suckers with cheap lures and making a buck. Theme park glitz.

The accusers in Denver:

 'Every building going up is tan, brown, red or burnt red,' says Brad Evans, moderator of the Denver FUGLY Facebook page. 'That’s every color.' 

The developers' supposed defense, as critiqued by Christine Franck, Director of CARTA:

'Developers would say "this is what we have to do, this is what’s selling, this is what people want.' 

But look at what Evans likes:

 'My favorite building is probably the Michael Graves library, it feels like this institutional building but then it’s totally whimsical about it,' Evans says. 'And everybody hated that, when they first built it, everyone thought it was fugly.' ”

Yes, everyone hated it when it went up. Makes you think, maybe, yes, no?

Evans should just flash-forward himself 30 years, catch up with what's going on in architecture, and everything getting built now will look fine to him. Or almost.

Michael Graves, Denver Public Library (1995). Source: Archidaily, Estate of Michael Graves.

"Good" architecture in Denver as per CARTA (yawn). Swallow Hill Residences (2003) by Tryba Architects.

 I think a big part of the problem, as is pointed out in the article, is density. These are multi-unit buildings going up in neighborhoods formerly of single-family houses. I imagine that new developer single-family houses in the US are still in "traditional" styles. Do these "modern" apartment buildings respond to the new demographic of young urban dwellers across the country?

Amanda Pampuro 

Denver Battles With Its 'Fugly' New Housing  

CityLab (The Atlantic) 

March 14, 2017

Whither Architecture?

Elbephilharmonie by Herzog & De Meuron. Photo © Iwan Baan

I just got another disheartening headline from Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times – about parks in Chicago and Philadelphia – and remembered Alex Gorlin's recent Facebook comment that  writing about architecture is disappearing.

Gorlin was responding to Mark Lamster's observation that all the books that come across his desk now are about cities and urbanism.  Gorlin attributes this to the dominance of photos quickly consumed on web pages like Archidaily and Dezeen.

Could it be something more serious? I really think architecture is in a deep crisis, within itself and with the public.

It always was.

But then there was the romance of the icon-builders. The Elbephilarmonie is its last gasp.

For a long time, though, in places like Spain, China, Azerbaijan or Dubai, its been an embarrassment. The romance is over.  Just last year Helsinki turned down the chance to build another Guggenheim. It seems like a smart move.

On this latest Michael Kimmelman post: It's all very well and PC and much more important than la-de-da old architecture, but….


Mark Lamster's FB entry, March 7, 2017:
"Sign of the times: bookstore shelfspace that once went to architecture now goes to books about cities. i'm glad we're all thinking about urbanism now, but as an ex-architecture book editor i can't say i'm excited about this development, especially as so many of these "city" books are just repackagings of the same faddish conventional wisdom. it seems i get one or more in the mail every week. i find most of them are well intentioned but not particularly well grounded in history and naive. i also wonder if anyone is actually reading them."

Alexander Gorlin comments,. March 8, 2017:
"I think architecture has been reduced or distilled to images online - reading about it has shriveled to nothing - The NY Times and the New Yorker simply have withdrawn from writing about architecture - thank God for Dallas ! And the NYRB."