Buildings where you think you're in VR

[sufi]

Big images please

[sufi]

Temple Works Leeds

[droid]

Tianjin Binhai Library

[luka]

i thought the first building i ever described as looking like cgi superimposed on the skyline was the swiss re building/gherkin. but now im confused because wikipedia is telling me city hall opened in '02, the gherkin in '03, and city hall and the landscaping around it gave me that feeling very strongly and still does.

city hall and the space around it i think of being the blueprint for new space and new london. the model for developments like bloomberg building on cannon street for instance. (both are also 'smart buildings' although that's not apparent by looking at them)
pedestrianised and privatised space. what are the pavements there made out of? granite? that expensive corporate grey colour. that's a hallmark of new space. the shops under the office blocks. the private security.

it's reproducing itself all over the city. it's formed a strategic alliance with the new breed of hipster corporations. franco manca, crosstown doughnuts, notes coffee, homeslice pizza, bleeker burger, byron etc etc.

these brands which emerged from that hipster/foodie convergence. street food. 3rd wave coffee. craft beer. borough market. maltby street. broadway market. the willingness to pay £7 for a pint. $5 for a coffe. £10 for a burger. etc etc

[luka]

i suppose all the spaces around canary wharf were really the first to give a clue to this future (in london that is(

[Mr. Tea]

Elbphilharmonie_Großer-Saal_c_Iwan_Baan-14.jpg

Edit: the new concert hall in Hamburg that opened a year or two ago - think I posted here about it at the time. Designed by algorithm, it has 10,000 acoustic panels, each of which has 100 dimples in it. No two panels are identical.

[luka]

obviously a lot of the new-space is owned by Qatar etc.

[CORP$EY]

One Blackfriars



This is concept art which gives you a good idea of what they're going for

A cloaked building, indivisible from the sky

Probably not actually inhabited with any real people (other than cleaners etc.) too so very virtual indeed

[CORP$EY]

I quite like skyscrapers, and I like imagining people in the distant future discovering them in the wilderness and not knowing why they were built...

in reality of course they're very boring, full of offices or oligarch apartments

Still, and I feel like prince charles for saying so, I don't think we build anything as great as they built in e.g. the gothic era anymore

It's like CGI - incredibly impressive but never actually impressive.

These buildings look like they were designed and built by computers.

[luka]

These buildings look like they were designed and built by computers.

they sort of were. that's largely the point isnt it. it's the equivalent of electronic/computer music.
you get effects you couldnt acheive before. which is why there's an aesthetic argument for leaning into
the difference. pushing it as far as it can go. that's what i would like to see happen i think, if we are going
to have these buildings (and the alternative is to be a museum like paris)

[luka]

and again people live inside computer enviroments now. they go to work in a compter building to work inside a computer.
there's a pleasing symmetry to it.

[CORP$EY]

https://www.architecture.com/awards-...ng-page/awards

Seems like wood is big in architecture these days

[CORP$EY]

It's an interesting question actually, if - despite living in the computer age - we are entirely comfortable with the idea of being modern anymore. I feel an anxiety about it, and about the smoothing out of human foibles by AI. I don't feel any affection towards these big skyscrapers. I feel a sense of awe, of awe towards capital. That wears off quite quickly.

Mind you this applies to grandiose structures of olde, too - St. Peter's, for example. Blows your mind when you walk in but its all a bit much after a few minutes.

[CORP$EY]

Architecture as expressive of power alone - the Egyptian ruins I visited were similarly awe-inspiring and boring.

[CORP$EY]

Why, too, is minimalism and abstraction the default mode of modernity? What once was the shock of the new is the now the bland of the now.

There isn't a belief driving society left except in money and (for many) science. Banal as it is to say, we only have temples to the stock market left.