Buildings many people didn't even know they were existing

[GoKingsGo 342]

another building I see every work day:

 

 

and I almost forgot "Bad Dog"

 

 

[SteveMSim 275]

 

The Exhibit Hall of the Tarrant County Convention Center, Fort Worth, Texas.

 

This is the only remaining portion of the original convention center.  The rest of the old convention center was demolished in a major expansion project, so I'm happy they saved this.

[airman15 4,115]

I guess evil really does have a name. This is the Shell Building in San Francisco:

 

 

I'm sure this building has caused much frustration among mayors.

[mrsmartman 200]

Whac-A-Mole!

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Krzywy Domek (The Crooked House),  Sopot, Poland

 

 

No fake this time.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

I guess evil really does have a name. This is the Shell Building in San Francisco:

 

 

I'm sure this building has caused much frustration among mayors.

 

Go away, Wren! You're invading San Fransisco!

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Uniroyal Tire Logo, Dearborn, MI

 

 

 

For those who need some tires ...

[TekindusT 3,809]

 

 

He's got a cousin next to Bilbao's Guggenheim museum:

 

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Goetheanum, Dornach, SO, Switzerland

 

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp, Ronchamp, France

 

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Sanya Beauty Crown Hotel, Sanya, Hainan, China

 

 

[Compdude787 916]

Sanya Beauty Crown Hotel, Sanya, Hainan, China

 [snip]

Whoa, that building looks cool, especially at night!

[TekindusT 3,809]

I'm spending these days in Leuven, on a conference in structural analysis, and I'm still wondering why the city hall isn't a more well-known building. It is plain mindblowing!

[airman15 4,115]

The Skinny House located in Boston, Mass.

 

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France

 

[Odainsaker 2,137]

Chartres Cathedral is rather famous, as is Le Corbusier's Ronchamp.  Well, at least to architecture students...
 
My own hometown of San Antonio, Texas, is so provincial and out-of-the way that almost every major building except the famous Alamo is unknown.
 
Drury Plaza Hotel, former Alamo National Bank Building:
 


1929 Art Deco headquarters for the former Alamo National Bank.  Much of the gilt and stained glass detailing of the old bank was preserved and restored when it was renovated in 2007 into a modern hotel, giving it a handsomely formal and stately feel as the bank offices were turned into guest suites, and you can even still visit the basement banking vaults.  The rooftop with its Art Deco parapets gained new swimming pools, but I like that Drury restored the Art Deco weather vane with its colorful looped spire illuminated at night.  Before Drury took over, the rooftop sign screamed "ALAMO NATIONAL BANK."




 
The renovation into a hotel brought an addition that expanded the building all the way to the River Walk, where a boat landing was added one level below street level:
 
 

Of course, it just looks pretty when paired with its nearby contemporary, the 1929 Tower Life Building...


 
Within weeks of these two buildings opening, the New York Stock Market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression and the end of San Antonio's 1920s skyscraper building boom.
 
In contrast, not too far is San Antonio's most prominent version of late Brutalism/International Style...

Frost Bank Tower


 
The stern headquarters of the largest bank based in Texas.  However, Frost Bank has outgrown this 1975 building and is currently working with the City on a complex package of land swaps that would transfer this tower to City ownership and allow Frost Bank to construct a new landmark tower in one of these neighboring flat parking lots.  City Council and administration would then consolidate into the old Frost Bank building.  This is not without precedent, for in the background is the former historic Frost Bank building, now the Municipal Plaza Building, which City took over after Frost Bank moved into the current '70s box and whose loftily grandiose banking hall is the current City Council Chamber.
 
There was some surprise when the modern Frost Bank Tower opened in 2004 in nearby Austin, eclipsing the San Antonio headquarters in flashy style and ushering in a downtown building boom in Austin that spectacularly changed that city's once-humble skyline.  Frost promises that the new headquarters tower being planned for San Antonio will be equally prominent and a new city tallest.  It is hoped that in conjunction with the concurrently planned neighboring Weston Urban tower and a CPS Energy headquarters tower that a similar downtown building boom can be launched in San Antonio.  I'm just going to hope that City Council doesn't drop the opportunity due to overly-conservative naysayers suspiciously fishing for conspiracies in the complicated land swaps, and that Frost doesn't build a building quite as crassly ugly as the one they built in Austin.
 
I will admit, I do like the severity of the current San Antonio headquarters:
 

 
Of course, let's be honest, San Antonio is a sunbelt suburban sprawl city, giving us highway landmarks such as...

The Pyramid Building



Built in 1980 by a Dallas architectural firm, and it does indeed scream "1980s." Originally the home of the San Antonio Savings Association, a savings & loan outfit that dramatically crashed along with all the other S&L pyramid schemes in the Reagan/Bush era "Savings and Loan Crisis" of the late '80s and early '90s, the aptly named Pyramid is now Bank of America.  It's déjà vu:  criminally lax deregulation of S&L "thrift" banks with unsound foundations allowed them to act like real banks without the normal underwriting protections and restrictions governing normal banks, and thousands of these Ponzi banks all eventually collapsed nationwide in a wildfire financial crisis, bringing the economy into recession.  "It's the economy, stupid!"
 
The ziggurat terraces were designed with overhanging planters to recall the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but it was soon found that rooftop landscape gardens are a corporate maintenance nightmare of stained concrete, high water bills, and leaky roofs.  Still, the building is often paired with its 1982 office park neighbor, the mirror-glass Spectrum Building, as a local highway landmark, "The Pyramid and Spectrum":
 
 

They are so '80s corporate looking...I keep thinking Skynet is being developed in there.  Ah well, at least they are noteworthy enough to actually have names...many of these development are so anonymous and banal that they don't even have real names.  Further down the highway loop from these two is a square, mirror-glass building simply labeled "Corporate Square," which I am not sure should be called a name, a description, or a dull joke:
 
 
 
...c'mon, really?

[mrsmartman 200]

Art deco tower is like corporate palace. Modern companies don't want to use money to decorate buildings.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Speaking about corporate parks:

 

I'd like to introduce Reston, Virginia. Originally built as a planned city along the Highway between Washington D.C. and Dulles Airport. It's well known for its city center and it's vast corporate parks in the middle of nowhere

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim14409 448]

Art deco tower is like corporate palace. Modern companies don't want to use money to decorate buildings.

...and that is a shame. IMO modern companies have forsaken their responsibility to community, customers, and especially employees. They squeeze more and more, produce shoddier products (if they produce anything at all), and pay themselves ever bigger bonuses. Shameful greed it seems to me, but the dear reader may get different mileage. My view may be "warped" since I remember when things were different.

 

Most of these modern buildings will be torn down someday with no one batting an eye or even considering listing them as an historic landmark.

[mrsmartman 200]

The modern buildings often lack their personality as they are designed to maximize developers' return.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Hill of Crosses near Siauliai, Lithuania

 

[IRE505 109]

Riverpoint and the Clarion hotel of Limerick

 

 

Not the most exciting buildings, but I think they compliment the river nicely. They are the most promanent buildings in Limerick, being the tallest as well as some of the newest.

 

 

Sadly Riverpoint remains mostly empty as it was completed just as the recession started.

 

Some Others Accross the Town;

 

The strand Hotel, Limerick

 

The Absolute Hotel, Limerick

 

Sarsfield Bridge, the building on the bridge is the Shannon Rowing Club club house

 

The University is home to many fine examples of modern architecture such as this brand new building

 

Some more from the University;

 

 

[TekindusT 3,809]

Hill of Crosses near Siauliai, Lithuania

 

Speaking of Lithuania... I couldn't get enough of these brutalist beauties when I was in Vilnius this last Summer. According to my Lithuanian friend, one of them hosts some national radio and the other some international university.

 

 

 

I will admit, I do like the severity of the current San Antonio headquarters:

 

 

It reminds me quite a bit the Interationales Handelszentrum building in Berlin.

 

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Speaking of Berlin, many people didn't know the European Headquarters of Sony, Sony Center:

 

 

 

 

 

[IRE505 109]

Speaking of Berlin, many people didn't know the European Headquarters of Sony, Sony Center:

(images)

Wow! That is really nice, very modern and colourful

[TekindusT 3,809]

Really cool pics! Well, I wouldn't call the Sony Center an unknown building. It is usually on the Top Ten of Things to See List all tourists bring, together with Checkpoint Charlie (really?) and "the Wall" (I promise I have had to answer to the question "Well, but where's the wall?").

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Really cool pics! Well, I wouldn't call the Sony Center an unknown building. It is usually on the Top Ten of Things to See List all tourists bring, together with Checkpoint Charlie (really?) and "the Wall".

 

Nah, I wouldn't say so. Most of the people are rather interested in historical things like Checkpoint Charlie (as you said), Brandenburger Tor, Siegessäule, Reichstag etc. Additionally, there are many museums people take a look at. Also, Berlin has its famous TV Tower, Holiday Inn, DB Headquarters, the Alexanderplatz, the Charité, the Arkaden, Potsdamer Platz, the Spree area, the Olylmpiastadion, Hotel Adlon, Berlin Tiergarten/Tierparpk, Weltzeituhr (world clock), Rotes Rathaus, Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedram) and so much more. So it's no mystery many people forget about the nexer, modern building including the Sony Center. 

 

Let's stay in Germany. Hamburg is a beautiful city. However, this is one of the ugliest buildings in Hamburg and I'm not very proud of it. The Geomatikum of Hamburg University, well known for being a building where many suicides happen to be. 

 

[IRE505 109]

Phibsboro Shopping Centre, Dublin, Ireland

Even the name is terrible

[SteveMSim 275]

Art deco tower is like corporate palace. Modern companies don't want to use money to decorate buildings.

 

Fort Worth, Texas is fortunate to have several of those.  Perhaps the most notable is the Texas and Pacific Station, which, not only did it serve as a train station, but as the headquarters of the Texas and Pacific Railroad.  Today, the building is the T&P Lofts and it still serves as a train station, being the Fort Worth terminal of the Trinity Railway Express.

 

 

 

 

 

Other Art Deco buildings include the Blackstone Hotel:

 

Even a few newer buildings have been built in the Art Deco style.  This is the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame and Museum, built in 2001-2002:

[Jim14409 448]

 

Art deco tower is like corporate palace. Modern companies don't want to use money to decorate buildings.

 

Fort Worth, Texas is fortunate to have several of those.  Perhaps the most notable is the Texas and Pacific Station, which, not only did it serve as a train station, but as the headquarters of the Texas and Pacific Railroad.  Today, the building is the T&P Lofts and it still serves as a train station, being the Fort Worth terminal of the Trinity Railway Express.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other Art Deco buildings include the Blackstone Hotel:

 

 

Even a few newer buildings have been built in the Art Deco style.  This is the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame and Museum, built in 2001-2002:

 

 

I had forgotten about the T&P building. In the late 1960's I got a polaroid camera for Christmas (black & white pics) and I took some pics of that building. Actually Fort Worth gets overlooked for a lot of its architecture. Some of the cattle barons and oil tycoons built some very elaborate homes there back in the heydays.

Fort Worth also has some wonderful museums, botanical gardens, water gardens, and green houses full of exotics. Sometimes I wish I still lived there except that I don't want to be in any city except SC4 ones of course.