What is your Favorite Building or type of Architecture?

[the_new_simman 5]

I like looking at anything Post-Modern or Modern. I also like the classic Eastern Eurpean Style...I'll post osme pics later.

[crazypinoy 0]

I grew up in the Bay Area, so I'm more accustomed to anything Pacific Coast: spanish/franciscan contemporary mostly. Anything else seems alien to me, especially going down to Angeles, with factories next to residential areas and such.

[amal81 3]

There are many great building/architectural styles around us in all kind of cultures and civs.

But the grecko-roman style takes the cake. the principals or architecture, decoration, space making, scales, proportions is absolutely fantastic in that particualr style.

GR style is the most original and creative architectural style there can ever be. gothic, romanesque, neo classical barouque, roccoco, bau haus, arts and crafts, modernism, minimalism, post modernism, or even for that matter 'de constructionism' have all taken inspiration/emulation from the grecko-roman style.

the only other unique styles i can think of are all individual and unique to the resepctive culture. for example chinese architecture during 500BC to 16th century, or japanese architecture 11th to 17th century, Indian hindu architecture 200BC to 12th century, islamic architecture 600ad till today and mayan/aztec architecture in south america.

[NintendoMaster128 30]

Words can't describe her...

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//IMG_4844.jpg align=baseline>

[twigs326 1]

i really like art noveau architechture and pretty much most european building styles

this is probably my favorite skyscraper -moscow state university-

or ceasescu's palace

and the grand kremlin palace

and of coure the slottet (oslo royal palace)

[Bach2Baroque 168]

I Like Weird And Creative Type, Like: (Isozaki)

My Favoutite Building is The Bilbao Pedestrian Bridge.(A Bridge is Considered a 'Building' Right??)

[Glenni 1,447]

Date: 7/16/2005 1:05:05 PM Author: twigs326

i really like art noveau architechture and pretty much most european building styles

this is probably my favorite skyscraper -moscow state university-

or ceasescu's palace

and the grand kremlin palace

and of coure the slottet (oslo royal palace)

 

 

heh good to see you like the Norwegian royal palace.

 

 

 

EDIT:oops.my post got in the quote

[Odainsaker 2,137]

New York's Chrysler Building and the Bank of China tower in Hong Kong will always be my ultimate skyscrapers.  The Taj Mahal will always be the ultimate vision of Paradise.

 

However, I must admit to a few guilty favorites of mine.

 

The first guilty pleasure is the Smolny Cathedral and monastery complex in Saint Petersburg, Russia.  In this building, architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli perfectly fused the dramatic Baroque and Rococco styles with traditional Russian Orthodoxy to produce something entirely original.  Forget pious solemnity, every cathedral should be so brightly exuberant and cheerful.

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//smolny1.jpg align=baseline>

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//smolny2.jpg align=baseline>

 

I know it is the luck of the photographers, but with a whimsical building like this, can the sky be anything other than heavenly?  Even the snowiest Russian weather makes this look good.

 

The next fun building is Kirin Plaza Osaka, a quirky little building designed by Shin Takamatsu with his signature stylized-machine look.  On a prime spot in Osaka's densely busy Dotombori, this building is of a commercial type seemingly peculiar to Japan:  a showcase building as public art for immersive product advertisement.  In this case, the product is Kirin brand beer.  The lower 3 floors is a micro-brewery/bar with tours of the production process and tasting gallery.  The upper 3 floors contain a contemporary art museum.  Somewhere inside are even lecture halls and auditoriums for beer seminars!  Other similar showcase buildings of this type include various Sony Towers with the latest electronics, and Tokyo's universally recognized glittery San-ai Building in Ginza.  So peculiar are these buildings, that they are more recognized than the products they showcase.

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//kirinosaka1.jpg align=baseline>https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//kirinosaka2.jpg align=baseline>

 

I wonder if those Osakans on the canal bridge are admiring the urban sights, or actually still working off their beer seminar.

 

For a more sobering experience, a short trainride to the northeast in the town of Uji south of Kyoto lies the ancient Byodo-in temple with its spectacular Hoo-do (Pheonix Hall).  Japan has many traditional temples, many of which are larger, more intricate, or more sacred, but this one in the formal Heian style seems so much more precious and jewel-like.

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//hoodo1.jpg align=baseline>

 

With a stageset of this much quiet dignity and transcendant solemnity, all we need is an irate Kagome sending clueless dog-demon Inuyasha face flat into the sand (sorry, plug for silly anime).

 

Thinking back again to shopping as an experience greater than Wal-Mart, here is another continual favorite of mine, Los Angeles' Art Deco Bullock's Wilshire Department Store.  Today, the building is a university law school and is not open to the public, but originally, it was the icon of high-end retailing for the stylish Hollywood elite.  Inside, individual departments and boutiques looked more like salons and art galleries, complete with vast artistic murals and bas-reliefs depicting technological progress and transportation.  Seeing the automobile as the future, Bullock's Wilshire was among the earliest large urban retailers to accomodate both pedestrians and motoristists through a heroic sidewalk entry on the steetfront and a spacious porte cochere and driveway behind, making either form of arrival equally grand.  This building was never quite completed to its original conception, resulting in an Art Deco pile of dramatic asymmetry.  Sadly, the overhead for such nostaglic yet expensive department stores like this could not compete against the tide of big-box retail.  Someday I'll try to BAT this, if I ever finish my other projects.

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//bullockswilshire1.jpg align=baseline>https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//bullockswilshire2.jpg align=baseline>

 

 

Aside from the apparent frivolousness of the buildings and their singular nature as self-referential objects-all-to-themselves, there seems something physically similar about all of the them.  Makes me wonder...

 

[tracer1138 1]

I like...

• Post Modernism (clean glass structures with geometric edges and reflective surfaces many examples of which can be found in cities like Tokyo and Osaka, but also Italian Revival like in Providence).
• 19 Century American (3-4 story buildings found along main streets in town across America but especially in the midwest and northeast, also ornate, tall comercial skyscrapers and hotels from that time period... looks really good revitalized/redeveloped)
• Art Deco Interiors
• Classical Architecture (found in places like Athens, Rome, London and especially Paris with limestone and marble decorated finishes and columns).
• Neo Classical Architecutre (especially as found in Washington DC)
• Beaux Arts and Decorative Industrial (French Beaux Arts and Early 20th Century American Industrial with lots and lots of geometric curves and rivets)
• Colonial American (as found in Boston and Philadelphia)
• Suburban Cookie Cutter Residential (they're killing our cities but they look Damn Good)
• Matching European Rooftops (found along the mediteranian)
• University Gothic (as well as other old school Univerisity Buildings)
• Most Stuff by Albert Kahn
• Clean Geometric Glass/Stainless Steel, Clean Quality Brick and Cast Iron
• Himeji Castle (as seen below)
• Stuff with lots of Greenery/Natural Areas

 

I DON'T like...

• Brutalism
• Modernism
• Just about anything built in the late 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s
• Most Urban Renewal
• Anything designed by Le Corbusier
• The Renaisance Center (Detroit)
• Concrete, Stainless Steel with strange Curves
• Massive Super Highways that lack Greenery of Any Kind
• Too much of the Color Grey or Black

That pretty much sums it up. When I become an architect/urban planner, i will promote, design and build the stuff in the first list (or revivals therof) and do everything in my power to destroy and demolish everything in the second list.

 

[tracer1138 1]

hdorriker gives examples of all of the stuff i will destroy on the first page of this thread.  Join me in my quest for Urban beauty by becomming a militan architect! FIGHT FOR AESTHETICS!!!

[ah123ah123 26]

I like New York buildings but especially the styles art dec

[Alabaster 0]

My favorite building of all time is the Bank of America Corp. Center in Charlotte, NC.

 

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Favorite International is the Commerzbank in Frankfurt, Germany.

 

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I like just about any tall building with a few setbacks. The building has to be clean and sleek as well.

 

I guess my favorite architectural styles would have to be modern styles. Asthetic appearance means everything to me, so I really only like buildings that are symmetrical.

 

Another of my favorites is the Library Tower in Los Angeles. Maybe it's because I live near LA, and I get to see this building when commuting to school just about every week (unless it's hidden by smog). 

 

width=640 align=baseline>

 

http://img327.imageshack.us/img327/5440/librarytowernighttime1jj.jpg width=300 align=baseline>

[Compromise 1]

I am a real fan of modern buildings which use a lot of glass and/or exposed steel.

[MrVegetable 2]

I really like the London Gherkin in London! It rocks! It is also known as the Swiss RE Caliban building or somat like that.

[Compromise 1]

Date: 7/17/2005 10:43:33 AM Author: MrVegetable I really like the London Gherkin in London! It rocks! It is also known as the Swiss RE Caliban building or somat like that.

quote>

Yes I like it as well. Why do peaple say it is ugly?

[madawac 48]

I've got no specific favourite building or style, but I nearly like all styles from the modern times epoch, from Renaissance to Historism(especially in and arroud Berlin ), like the Staatsbibliothek

The Deutsche Staatsoper

The Zeughaus

Hm... funny, all these buildings are located at the boulevard Unter den Linden
Some other nice things are
Schloss Charlottenburg

Or Schloss Sanssouci (Potsdam)

especially the Neues Palais


Hu, many examples...

[wallasey 8]

Date: 7/17/2005 12:57:07 AM Author: tracer1138

I like...

• Post Modernism (clean glass structures with geometric edges and reflective surfaces many examples of which can be found in cities like Tokyo and Osaka, but also Italian Revival like in Providence).
• 19 Century American (3-4 story buildings found along main streets in town across America but especially in the midwest and northeast, also ornate, tall comercial skyscrapers and hotels from that time period... looks really good revitalized/redeveloped)
• Art Deco Interiors
• Classical Architecture (found in places like Athens, Rome, London and especially Paris with limestone and marble decorated finishes and columns).
• Neo Classical Architecutre (especially as found in Washington DC)
• Beaux Arts and Decorative Industrial (French Beaux Arts and Early 20th Century American Industrial with lots and lots of geometric curves and rivets)
• Colonial American (as found in Boston and Philadelphia)
• Suburban Cookie Cutter Residential (they're killing our cities but they look Damn Good)
• Matching European Rooftops (found along the mediteranian)
• University Gothic (as well as other old school Univerisity Buildings)
• Most Stuff by Albert Kahn
• Clean Geometric Glass/Stainless Steel, Clean Quality Brick and Cast Iron
• Himeji Castle (as seen below)
• Stuff with lots of Greenery/Natural Areas

I DON'T like...

• Brutalism
• Modernism
• Just about anything built in the late 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s
• Most Urban Renewal
• Anything designed by Le Corbusier
• The Renaisance Center (Detroit)
• Concrete, Stainless Steel with strange Curves
• Massive Super Highways that lack Greenery of Any Kind
• Too much of the Color Grey or Black

That pretty much sums it up. When I become an architect/urban planner, i will promote, design and build the stuff in the first list (or revivals therof) and do everything in my power to destroy and demolish everything in the second list.

quote>

I dont know if you live in the UK but Mr Prescot seems despirate to demolish much of Northern England and the Midlands and put up plain ,yuppy, box houses.

 

Anyway, I like the buildings that date from the victorian era with decorative features or what modern house builders try to mimick! I especially like the buildings that have red glaze on them. When the sun rises or just hits it, the colour just makes you feel warm inside!

 

OH and when you become a urban planner, dont make the mistake that they made in Liverpool where most of the city was buldozed for rampant housing estates that are now themselves being demolished.

[Chartsengrafs 0]

I wrote a big, long reply to this post, then accidentally deleted it.    I can't be bothered typing it out again.  Suffice it to say, I like most styles, particularly Gothic, Neo-Gothic, some Georgian, some Victorian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Bauhaus, De Stijl, International Style/Modernist (especially by Le Corbusier), Brutalist (particularly by Sir Basil Spence and Gillespie, Kidd & Coia), Post-modern/High-tech by Renzo Piano, and Deconstructivist (especially by Daniel Libeskind and Frank O. Gehry).

I don't like anything that's a watered-down version or a pastiche of something from a bygone age.  I also get hacked off when people attack the various modernist styles...especially when talk of demolition comes into it! 

 

As far as planning goes, I think it's an area where no-one has really devised an effective solution.  That said, radial layouts, as used in Paris and Amsterdam, do seem highly effective, and Dutch New Towns, such as Ijburg and Leidsche Rijn, also appear to be well-planned developments.

 

Many of my favourite buildings are located in Scotland, but I'm going to save them for my Scottish architecture thread, when I get around to making it.  Outside of Scotland, I admire a lot of buildings, particularly those designed by Le Corbusier, Piano, Libeskind and Gehry, and also many of those that have appeared in the 'Brutalist architecture discussion thread'.  I also absolutely adore the Chrysler Building!

[annoyingdan 42]

My favorite building is the Citicorp Center in New York City. I don't know what it is about it but to me it is so captivating. I would have to say my favorite style of architecture would be post modern, especially those with asian and middle eastern influences.

[robpark 0]

Wow, asking to pick a favourite is quite difficult. It seems easier to list what I dislike. First off, North American suburban architecture/home design has much to be desired, especially from the 60's, 70's and 80's. It all looks the same and is not designed to last. Vinyl siding and stucco at best only last 25 years, same with asphalt shingles.  It is basically a form of architecture that rose from mass production/consumerist principles where the lowest prices and highest profit became the focus of architecture, not interesting form, art and function.  I also hate Modernism....Straight, clean lines, flat surfaces and boring finish materials. If anyone has ever seen a picture of the Calgary skyline, it is easy to pick out which skyscrapers were built in the 70's/80's petro-boom. If you want to see an urban core done properly (from a planning and architectural perspective) have a look at Canary Wharf in London. It is a commercial office centre, but it is laced with canals that are lined with waterside cafes, features detailed, interesting commercial architecture (Norman Foster & Partners) and is connected via the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) and the Tube network... Fantastic. It is a well thought out, supremely planned project, especially compared with the haphazard auto-centric development patterns seen in Western North America.

 

I also happen to love Art Nouveau, Gothic, Roman/Greek, Baroque/Rococo, Neo-classical, Renaissance, Post Modern..... Almost anything that incorporates form, art and function.....

 

That's my two cents...

 

Rob.

[crazyarchitect 7]

my favorite building would have to be the Bank of America Center in Houston, by Philip Johnson, I pretty much love all of his work, Gothic, with a flair of postmodern, and I love the Asian/ Middle East type architecture

 

[dustychicken 0]

I'm quite fond of American buildings from the 1920s to about the mid-1950s, especially the old Sears/Roebuck prefabricated houses.  There are actually quite a few left in my neighborhood, between the more modern houses and such.  There are a lot of those houses in old town Orange, where there's a massive chunk of the city stuck in the 1940s and 50s.  Really fun to drive there.

Essentially, anything that's post-war American suburb or big city.

[HONG KONG 74]

It would blow up the framework all my favorites to call here.

Which Skyscraper concerns divides two the first place for me.

 

Bank of China Tower (Structural Expressionism)

Chrysler Building (Art Deco)

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//Chrysler.jpeg align=baseline>

[zhupan 1]

1930's and modern ...

 

 

Kolizej music theater, Ljubljana, Slovenia - plans ....... it's pure kitsch but somehow I like it ...

 

[zhupan 1]

 

[hdorriker 190]

Militant architecture.

That's what SC4 is for.

 

Indeed, however depending on where you live, it IS the postmodernism/revival-reductionism that lines the ungreened highways and suburban places rushed through construction throughout the nineties and even today.

 

I do like the eastern stuff too, and there are many classical styles I like as well.

Like Art Deco and the Napoleonic Parisien buildings. I love pagodas, (although I'm not too fond of the pagoda-shaped Taipei 101)

But anyways, I think I may have been generalizing a bit when I said: I despise Postmodernism.

I don't hate all of it, just the vast majority of it.

I should clarify what I it is I dislike about postmodernism:

 

The lower density structures:
1. They are not original

2. They exagerrate and overuse a style ad nauseum

3. They look like someone just threw together random elements from random period styles on a computer and plastered them over a steel and concrete box.

4. They rarely ever work with their environment (be it urban or natural) and often mock it or clash with it.

(Example: Colorado has a lot of this)

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//hampton%20Inn%20I25.jpg width=349 align=baseline> width=527 align=baseline>
http://www.windsorchamber.net/images/windsor%20photo%20king%20soopers.jpg align=baseline>

Small service commerce structures, in my opinion, shouldn't pretend to be classic, small-town American street-side shops (or rustic when they clearly are not). Because they are not, and there is no way they will ever be. Unforetuneately, that part of our nation's history only lives in new-urbanist communities and historical downtown areas. Not in the suburbs as these pitched-roofs and hints of period styles reduced to oblivion try to deceive the consumer into believing. For the massive parking lot and cold isolating distance between things (not to mention the utter homogeny of it) tells us otherwise.

 

 

 

 

The skyscrapers

1. Most are okay, its just that all-to-often they manage to look really awkward.

(Examples of what I consider awkward: Phillip Johnson's AT&T building, JP Morgan Chase Tower in Dallas.)
2. When awkward, they tend to draw so much attention to themselves because of their often mismatched period elements, that it usually breaks the aesthetic continuity of the skyline. (imagine if the AT&T building were 100 stories tall and how much that would NOT fit with Manhattan's Gothic/Art Deco/Early Modern feel.)

 

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/architecture/images/dynamic/style/sty_lev2_post_modern.jpg align=baseline> width=396 align=baseline>

The AT&T building, in my opinon, is nothing more than a standard international-style skyscraper with a gratuitous, aesthetically distracting and totally out-of-place neo-georgian pediment on top. And I really don't like the JP Morgan Chase tower in Dallas. I just don't like it.

 

 

The Iconic buildings:

1. Often what is considered to be the best of the postmodern movement is what I consider to be the worst.

(Venturi Vanna House, The Portland Building, The Denver Public Library)

2. The logic behind the concepts of most of the iconic buildings in this movement seems to be: 

I did it this way because that other guy did it too, so it must be okay. Except I decided to stick roman columns in front of the randomly placed, colorful 'modern' shapes... OMG, it's a paradigm shift!

or

I put bows on it because nobody else does it. Perhaps it is because it doesn't look very good on a blue and white striped box, or maybe it's because it's *too much* for them to handle! It's all the establishment's fault.

or
History has ended, there won't be any more styles after this point, don't be angry at me for designing this albatross, for I am just the messenger

 

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jnilprab/arch610/images/2.2place.jpg align=baseline> width=599 align=baseline>http://photos.fasick.net/albums/denver/dpl.jpg width=639 align=baseline>

I have to say, the primary reason why I prefer something as cold and minimal as brutalism to this is because brutalism forces the architect to work with form in a way that postmodernism seems to simply dismiss as an unnecessary element, as is evident in these pictures. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of thought, or talent put into making these buildings have an interesting form that actually holds it's own (aesthetically).

It seems all of the effort is used up on making it stand-out. Which results in uninspired minimalism (The Portland Building, on the left), sheer ugliness and absurdity (Venturi's Gordon Hall in the middle), or primitive geometry thrown together in a way that looks like a computer with no sense of style actually created the building (The Denver Public Library, on the right).

 

 

As for anything else in postmodernism. I don't mind it at all. It's just I find that this movement, in particular, seems to produce some pretty ugly buildings, and in larger quantity than any other style (in my opinion).

 

Although I do agree very much with Chartsandgraphs.

I too, find structures that are nothing more than a watered-down pastiche of some historical style to be tremendously irritating, and in my opinion, aesthetically bankrupt due to lack of conceptual creativity (or maybe even talent). Which contrary to the PoMo theory that says, there are no new ideas, there certainly are. Fewer of them, perhaps. But Deconstructivism shows us that there are indeed, new ideas.

 

 

 

 

[DuskTrooper 316]

^^ Exactly.

The ones that are simply thrown together or half jobs, which tend to pass as real architecture are the ones I loathe, as well. If you're going to do it, do it right, and tastefully so.

[sovietpower91 2]

My Favourite building is the Tower Russia its not built yet but when its finished it will be the tallest building in the world. My favourite arch is Old Soviet building even if they do look all the same lol

[p2h5 3]

I like a lot of different architecture.  I like very much the 1930s-1950s period 'New Modern Movement', with architects like Mies Van Der Rohe and le Corbusier and their very simplistic, angular buildings.

 

Seagram building, Park Ave NYC

 

 

le Corbusier house

 

Also i like 1960s retro, almost space age, and Brutalist architeture, like the Barbican Centre in London, the London Telecom Tower and Eero Saarieen's JFK Airport terminal:

 

 

 

Being British, i do admire the work of British architects like Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. 

 

I love the gherkin/30 St Mary Axe, and also what Foster has done for the British museum, and almost all of Norman Foster's other projects.  I think that he must be the best current architect in the world

 

The BM:

 

 

 

And Richard Rogers' tower which is going up in London:

 

 

I like classic buildings too, like the Chrysler in NYC and the Trump and American International buildings.  Trump Building:

 

 

The final style which i like, and a lot of people hate, is sort of 1980s-90s oppulence, like the Trump Tower (below) and the house which is on my Avatar, and is incidentally for sale for in London, for around 86 million dollars.

 

 

 

 

http://images.primelocation.com/GLGR/Images/GLsa999000233.jpg width=200 border=0>

 

I have posted loads, i hope not too much.  I can't think what really defines the sort of architecture i like, especially as i like really old stuff too, like the Cathedral in Florence.  At the moment i hate the Trump towers in Toronto and Chicago, the Burj Dubai, and Taipei 101, because they have no style or elegance.

 

 

 

 

 

[p2h5 3]

Oh and also one of my absolute favourite buildings, for some weird reason, is the Citygroup Centre in New York:

 

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It is elevated off the ground on 10 storey high pillars.  I think that it is a very simple but elegant design, and it really fits well into the New York skyline, against the older more decorative buildings