2008 Olympics

[djswan]

Anyone checking out the architecture in the Olympic 2008 Bejing? It looks a little too Vegas/Dubia to me. The two wierd leaning rectangle things tangled together, why I ask why spend the effort? It's not a moon landing and oil and water might become rare resources if not already. hmmmmmm.

The Birds Nest look kinda cool, but it's been hot there and ahhhhh what's hatching. The Cube. Where's the sense of tommorrow? It's like the USA building a great wall between Canada just to prove it can.

Wasn't there a architecture that worked well there for a few thousand years or so? Just tourist attractions now? Why the intense change?

[starkca3]

haha i guess i can see what you mean but the cctv building has nothing to do with the olympics. But yea it does kind of give the feel of dubai, maybe, but dubai and vegas i think are a step or two above beijing.

The three olympic buildings are definitely there with your statement. Are these things ever really going to be used after the olympics?? Or will they just become old worlds fair relics? O_O

[djswan]

I was thinking about looking up each building I'm casually referring too and pasting, but to busy watching the events. I'm suggesting just my general impression with what's going on over there. And feel free to suggest anything I might be missing on.

It didn't shock and awe me. More of a, Oh, they are doing that stuff too. Doesn't match the communist gray and gray/brown skies, not saying there is anything wrong with it, with no proof on hand. Just looks a little funny to me, maybe a bamboo theme with some panda's would give me different impression.

I was hoping for something other than an experiment of art with billions of dollars. That stuff is get getting a little old.

[SDR]

Um -- no, what's a "little old" is a 600-year-old barn, or maybe the Golden Palace (or whatever) in Beijing !

You can use your techniques to provide enclosures for present-day needs too, can't you ?

Not a 600,000 seat stadium, maybe -- but that Bird's Nest, even if made of four-foot-square steel members, is a lot closer to timber frames of yore than most of what's built these days. Come to think of it, so is the external triangulated bracing on the CCTV building. . .

By the way, how far west are you coming ? Not all the way to China, I suppose ?


SDR

[teamjdc]

So what you're saying is that you're into cliches.


I think the nest is a successful blend of modern and traditional Chinese sensibilities & expression.

The water cube is fantastic in its glowing simplicity -- even though there's nothing simple about the structure.

The "pants" are hideous as is the tower that I can only describe as Dr. Seussian. It looks like a student's feeble attempt at being different... or Philip Johnson on drugs (or different drugs).

I get your point, but I think you might be missing the influences & nuances because the visually successful buildings are the ones that "say" China.

[SDR]

Granted that the three buildings we're discussing -- the Bird's Nest, the Water Cube, and the CCTV tower -- are examples of international design today, and were intentionally chosen by the Chinese authorities to present an internationalist image, none of them is seen as a cliche', other than perhaps to someone who is more comfortable with dismissing them than with engaging them. Each is in fact a unique response to its program, and all are highly creative and fresh designs, in my view.

It is possible to approach any building design on its own terms, if one has an open mind. One needn't be just a traditionalist OR a modernist. To limit oneself to one's "favorite" architecture is to miss out on the possible pleasures of the rest of the wide world of good design, from all ages.

Or so it seems to me.

I just saw an article on Beijing which provided hope that the "owners" of the city are at last waking up to the history which has been destroyed in the headlong rush to modernize. There are still some traditional hutongs (neighborhood alleys) in the downtown which have not been bulldozed, and there will be some attempt to preserve what is left. As is usual, in the history of building, the old and the new will co-exist -- a physical manifestation of the universal fact of human intergenerational co-existence ?

SDR

[djswan]

Thanks for the insight.

Now ya'll got me thinking about was is and is not cliche' and co-existance.

Does architecture get to a point where people are just trying to "out wierd" each other. Like Rock & Roll smashing guitars, and chewing off bats heads, or urinating on stage ect... You can only take this stuff so far and then it's all been done.

"The Pants" has got to be one of the sillier things I've seen.

I want to grow some ivy on the birds nest, a climbing rose would look good too. and reduce smog.

Does the water cube generate power? It looks like it should, I know the gaint damn they are building does, but it's just gray concrete.

[teamjdc]

[djswan]

Time to put my shades back on.

[SDR]

I think so -- it's getting pretty "bright" in here !


There's a lot of wild glitz parading as architecture, I grant you. The restrained sorts of construction found here

http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads.php?id=63183_3400_42_0

(check a few of the previous pages in this long thread as well)

are more to my liking. There is a LOT of respectable new building being done. More, in wood, here

http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads.php?id=66298_0_42_0_C


SDR

[djswan]

In some wierd way I respect Gehry, a shove it in your face attitude, but times changed, awareness of our impact on the planet is now. I've been there for some time, and perhaps shove what I perceive to be aware of on people.

What awareness is gained from the architecture of "the pants" or any of the 2008 Olympics?

Weaving with steel? You can tilt things together and they will stand?

Lots of folks are now aware of the breathing problems.

Watching Blake beat Federer for the first time was awesome.

[SDR]

Structural exhibitionism is alive and well -- as it was in the year that the Eiffel Tower was erected, to the horror and delight of Paris.

The most troubling part of the CCTV tower, to me, is the oddly misaligned surface structural grid near the inside upper corner(s) of the vertical portion(s) of the volume. This doesn't make aesthetic or structural sense to me -- I'm no structural engineer -- but the overall form I find perfectly understandable.

The contrast between the rough and random texture, and the subtle form, is what I look at in the Bird's Nest stadium. And I imagine the heroic scale of the members, seen up close, would be as exciting as those of the Firth of Forth bridge -- or of a great old medieval post and beam structure ?

Gehry is playing with form. You either like it or not. I'm indifferent to his aesthetic but I applaud his audacity. I haven't heard anything to suggest that the buildings don't perform their function well. People apparently like the LA concert hall, and Bilbao has delighted many, and revived the town.

If you don't like something, move on. It isn't necessary to hurl rotten tomatoes when something is not to your taste. . .in my opinion.

SDR

[djswan]

I have to disagree, but will attempt humor, for a combined score of ...

The most troubling part of the "the pants", as I can now pinpoint a new cliche' term, is the fact, that it looks like pants. The Great Wall looks, well, like a great wall.

and Gehry is not playing with form, form is form, he's playing with "make your own function"

I'll take what's behind curtain three. and the clients get a donkey.

No tomatoes, please

So how does "the pants" come off with "drunken robots"?

[SDR]

I love you, and a lot more than Gehry, but this sentence makes no sense:

and Gehry is not playing with form, form is form, he's playing with "make your own function"

Even with allowance for SwanPoetry. . .uh uh. Try again.




No, wait, forget it. Let's talk about giant timbers instead. . .

[djswan]

That was a never seen before quadrupal twist with a double flip, ment to wow them in all directions. Dang, I didn't think I stumbled on the landing that much.

Do we want to get into a playing with form discussion? Well, that would be a function. Form is form, who knows what the heck a function is? and that would be predicting the future... if you knew that...

Outside the box is now replaced with "Outside the blob" just came up with that..... style points?

I should go back to my more direct approach to the pommel horse, easier to judge. Shades on!





Edit: I was trying to keep a straight face, but will except deductions for laughing at my own stupid humor I could just keep editing 'til I get it right. I should get off these forums before I crack a rib or something.