The Awl features Sublime Sci-Fi Buildings That Communism Built:
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‘Sublime,’ of course, is in the eye of the beholder:
More here.
And for a take on what it’s actually like to live in modernists masterpieces, check out this post on David Prowler’s blog:
Modern Design: The kind you don’t bring home to mother
For a great source of miserable looking modern design victims, you can’t do any better than the website Unhappy Hipsters and their book, It’s Lonely in the Modern World. Their team captions photos from Dwell and other design magazines. In their impeccable homes, they all look triste.
These buildings may be brutal, although I don’t think so, but they aren’t brutalism. Brutalism is characterized by raw, poured-in-place concrete and some of the late modernism forms of the 60’s and 70’s. Vancouver examples would be the MacMillan Bloedel building on Georgia, the Vancouver Academy of Music and the concrete highrise at Broadway and Willow (google maps calls it the “Frank Stanzl Building” but I’ve never heard of that before). Some of the late modernist forms – moving away from the rectangles of modernism and decorating with shapes – can make for oppressive, unfriendly buildings like the Boston City Hall, but not always. The Planetarium and the Law Courts are of the same idea and they mostly good buildings.
The first building reminds me of this building on Davie: http://goo.gl/maps/3oq3F
Not sure how I feel about the first one, but the other two are pretty neat.
I would be very interested in reviewing the encroachment agreement over the public right of way for the photo three flying saucer building. The light poles on either side look like alien antennas, certainly a nice touch.
Or never want to see again