Get Out The Dynamite! You Get To Blow Up One Building!

Trump Tower

Can I trade for all the works of one architect?

In which case: Edward Durrell Stone

^ The GM building is so much better than a lot of stuff built at the time

R2 No, you may not. We're already off track on the second response. You get to pick one building and dynamite it.

No. 1: Salesforce Tower in San Francisco. It looks like a giant uncircumsized dick, and not in a good way. No. 2: The Shard in London.

OP You’d make more people happy if you took out City Hall. People have been complaining about it since before it was built.

The Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square.

The tore down three great theaters and a lovely small hotel to build that monstrosity. I'd love to see it go.

Photo of Boston City Hall in all its Brutalist glory.

R5 One! One building!

R6, R8 It's never coming down now. It's become so widely identified. The first City Hall is a steakhouse now. Maybe a hot dog stand?

Dump Las Vegas

Mar-A-Lago.

That horrid Trump Tower in Chicago, right on the river, a garish eyesore that destroyed the city skyline.

The Russian Embassy in Havana

Let's go international and do the Kremlin.

R12 Mar-a-lago is a national treasure. It can only be dynamited if the owner is inside.

The Tour Montparnasse. I unfortunately saw it for the first time the first time I was in Paris. I mean how fucking corrupt can a city be? Nobody can be as corrupt as the French. Great language, food, and culture but the shittiest people.

Ernst Lubitsch the great German filmmaker who settled in Hollywood had the best line. 'I've been to Paris, France and Paris, Paramount. I prefer Paris, Paramount.'

[quote] Mar-a-lago is a national treasure. It can only be dynamited if the owner is inside.

Well, yes. I thought that didn't need to be stated.

[quote]It can only be dynamited if the owner is inside.

That would be Putin, not that I'd object.

[quote]The Tour Montparnasse. I unfortunately saw it for the first time the first time I was in Paris. I mean how fucking corrupt can a city be? Nobody can be as corrupt as the French. Great language, food, and culture but the shittiest people.

WHAT?

Most of Paris has been lovingly preserved.

Are you American by any chance?

RAND PAUL'S HOUSE!!!!!

R11 R13 Scrape the assholes name off. The Chicago building would look so much better. The Vegas building deserves it.

R17 You get to blow up one building. If you're gonna have a stroke, you should contact somebody.

In Paris, I would implode the hideous Grande Arche of La Defense.

The Chicago building is an eyesore even without the name. The aesthetic is strictly Las Vegas -- or Toronto.

This is local and most people outside of Portland haven't seen it, but I hate this idiotic apartment building so much. It's mind bogglingly ugly and out of place. The interior is even worse.

I'd dynamite it with the architect inside, then salt the rubble.

Then I'd dynamite the salted rubble.

Ladies and gentlemen of DL may I present "The Yard"

So ugly Larry himself would have depressed the plunger.

R20 thinks that "most of Paris" has been "lovingly preserved."

R20 knows shit about Paris and the enormity of what has been destroyed, without the excuse of a fire such as London had.

Philip Johnson made nothing good after 1965.

[quote]In Paris, I would implode the hideous Grande Arche of La Defense.

I’ve always liked the La Defense arch and its austere, minimalist presence.

Gracie Mansion, with Eric Adams in it.

R28 Haussmann's renovation of Paris is gorgeous.

[quote] I unfortunately saw it for the first time the first time I was in Paris. I mean how fucking corrupt can a city be?

For that eyesore? Have you ever by chance visited NYC? London?

[quote]Scrape the assholes name off. The Chicago building would look so much better.

It's an extremely popular photo op for tourists to take selfies while flipping off the sign. Seriously, it's a near constant sight at the corner of Wacker and Wabash.

R2, Stone produced his share of clunkers, but the early works are superb.

[italic]*casually watches thread*

If I could pick a second building, I'd nominate NYU's Bobst Library, designed by Philip Johnson. I often studied there during grad school and it's the only building I would describe as evil. There was something deeply wrong with it, a kind of alienating menace pervaded it

So I'd dynamite it then douse the cinders with holy water

Ok this makes sense (I looked up the Wiki entry for Bobst)

"Suicides:

In late 2003, the library was the site of two suicides. In separate incidents, students jumped from the open-air crosswalks inside the library and fell to the stereogram-patterned marble floor below. After the second suicide, the university installed Plexiglas barricades on each level and along the stairways to prevent further jumping. In 2009, a third student jumped to his death from the tenth floor, apparently scaling the plexiglas barricade.

The library has since added floor-to-ceiling metal barriers to prevent any future suicide attempts. The barrier is made of randomly perforated aluminum screens that evoke the zeros and ones of a digital waterfall."

(I wonder if their souls ever escaped Bobst)

Rafael Viñoly's 20 Fenchurch Street, London, completed 2015. In a city that seems to insist that skyscrapers be hideous, from Centre Point (1966) or earlier, the 'Walkie-Talkie Building' is surely a top contender for the prize as worst. The unfortunate fire-starter aspect aside, it's a hideous form and hideous cheap cladding and fugly from every angle.

If r6 has already taken down Boston City Hall (thank you for your service) then I'm gonna pivot to Gehry's Fondation Louis Vuitton, which looks like the crusty, wadded-up Kleenex he masturbated onto.

R38, I honestly love it. As modern architecture goes, it is very elegant.

Funny, I've always liked the Bobst Library. Like it a lot. Love the color of the stone, the scale, the sculpturing, it's classical, it's elegant, it manages to fit in

R20 That fucking building has totally ruined the skyline. I won't even mention the ghastly pyramid at the Louvre. And La Defense!!! Have you ever been to it?!! I think not. It is the coldest most sterile most horrifying place I have ever been in. Completely dystopian. You clearly haven't seen A Bout de Soufle. And if you half to ask me what that has to do with it you clearly haven't seen it. Or you just don't remember it.

R42 Wow. You've mentioned one building. One structure. And one modern business zone that's far from the city proper.

432 Park Avenue.

The first and least imaginative of the supertall residential skyscrapers in Manhattan. Built only so Russian oligarchs would have spectacular views, it's apparently an engineering disaster and no one enjoys living in it. No one likes looking at it from the outside either.

The fact that hateful fascist billionaire and mega-narcissist Bill Ackman co-owns the top unit makes me hate it all the more.

Two buildings, but someone beat me to them.

Loved the Twin Towers and their modern/ancient aesthetic.

Yes, 432 Park and hoping that some debris takes out the Philip Johnson crap next to it.

Any of the Billionaire towers between 57 and 59th street. They are primarily for foreign multi-millionaires to park their money in the US. These buildings should never have been allowed to go up (thank to Mike Bloomberg and his zoning laws changes). I wish to dismantle them though, not blow them up.

Blues Point Tower in Sydney. Built on a spectacular location on Sydney Harbour, water on three sides and facing the Sydney Opera House, so let’s make sure that there are no balconies and the windows are tiny slots.

Thanks for nothing, Harry Seidler.

R42 you seem like such a cliché Parisien. Are you a mime?

And you seem like such a clichéd (note correct spelling) American, R50. “Cliché” is a noun. “Clichéd” is an adjective.

Americans often make this mistake.

r42 "Have you ever been to it?!! I think not!"

Line, please!

A first runner up for ugliest building in Sydney - University of Technology Tower which can unfortunately be seen from the entire Central Business District.

Fucking ugly.

432 Park Ave, NYC

R50 How can you expect him to answer that on a website?

R55, he could post a picture of himself in full makeup and trying to be funny and fucking sucking.

[quote]And La Defense!!! Have you ever been to it?!! I think not. It is the coldest most sterile most horrifying place I have ever been in.

Yes I have, actually. I remember looking up at that arch gleaming against a a bright blue sky and it seemed so elegant and so inscrutable. It captivated me in a way I can’t explain.

R50

And there are plenty of people who hate the Pompidou Center. I can tolerate it because of its scale but it is an amusing junk pile. And the Bastille Opera House. It makes the cold forbidding New Met look like the Palais Garnier. At least it's on the very edge but it would be nice to see all that that glass shatter. With no one around of course. But that Tour Montparnasse is the tallest biggest turd ever put in a city. I can't help but think the Parisians are doing to their own city what Hitler wanted to do to it.

And yes I believe those homes in those billionaire row skyscrapers are mostly for money laundering purposes. I mean very few people would actually want to live in them. Imagine being in a thunderstorm with the building swaying and seeing nothing but darkened clouds and torrential rain beating against your humungous windows. I would honestly rather stay in my small city apartment than in one of those buildings and have everything paid for. They are so tall and skinny they give me the willies. I remember watching as a very young boy the World Trade Towers go up. Even then I thought nothing good could come of them.

[quote]I can't help but think the Parisians are doing to their own city what Hitler wanted to do to it.

The Tour Montparnasse was built over 50 years ago. The Opera House over 35 years ago. The Pompidou Center over 40 years ago. If the plan is to destroy the beauty of the Paris , the Parisians are going about it at a rather slow pace.

[quote]But that Tour Montparnasse is the tallest biggest turd ever put in a city.

You don't travel much.

The building is out of place, but the architecture is in line with hundreds of other skyscrapers built in the 1970s in cities around the world.

I enjoy the Tinker-Toy an Erector Set aspect of some of these buildings.

What kills me are the buildings that look like 70 story parking garages - concrete with slits for balconies.

The Edinburgh W, aka the "poop emoji building."

Always wanted to tear this down

Circus Circus in Las Vegas. Stayed there for a few days. What a shithole.

R26 agreed about the Death Star, hideous.

I do like the little Sponge Bob-esque graphics on the little building behind it.

Madison Square Garden. Tear it down and modernize Penn Station in its place.

I know a woman who bought a penthouse at the Death Star and who thought everyone would admire her for it.

Enclave in downtown Berkeley. I guess one way to try to make housing affordable is to make it fucking hideous.

Moorish design is beautiful. That looks like the faces melting at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie.

Another reason to hate the Trump Tower in Chicago

R68 that’s not downtown Berkeley. And it’s private housing, not campus housing.

The Brutalist structure that needs to be blown up in Berkeley Evans Hall…funnily enough because of earthquake risk they are doing just that.

Taking down 432 would only, alas, leave all the other pencil-like money-laundering towers on Manhattan's once-splendiferous skyline.

Speaking to OP's point, I remember thinking in the postmodernist 80s, who would have believed that the tackiest thing in the world would be a Palladian window?

r68, I'd vote for waiting 'til the thing is actually built before blowing it up. From that illustration, it could go any number of ways wrong (the theme park line in the article is not wrong) but there's a sliiiiiight chance it could turn out cool.

A photo, if much enhanced, of the building in R68's rendering. I like properly Moorish architecture, a/k/a Mozárabe or Mudéjar architecture (of the Arab rule of Spain from the 7th to 15th Centuries), and I like much Moorish Revival architecture, popular in various countries in the 2nd quarter of the 19thC and tehn again in the early 20thC.)

Modern takes on Moorish architecture are usually (ineveitably in the U.S:) a take on the 20thC revival styles popular for cinemas and resort architecture. In Berkeley they borrowed from Mudéjar-Gothic in Spain and from Hollywood Moorish, put them in a blnder and then attenuated the resulted. The Flinstones looking thing in front is a bit Bedouin cave (by way of R69´s Indiana Jones reference) and part Gaudi´s Parque Guell.

What a mess. The cheapness of the construction of flimsy stucco panels of the Moorish bit ruins it, and the horsehoe arch on the right elevation might have been a nice touch but for its heavy-handeness. And the cave part might ahve been interesting if sprayed with moss as a 'living' facade, but it just looks comical paired with the rest of the building. No doubt the architect saw it as some Moorish pile built on some even more ancient foundation. But no.

The Parthenon

r74 Ohhhhhhhhh! Missed that it was a completed project.

Um.... Yeah.

Blast away, r68!

God forgive them.

The Victor Emmanuel II Monument in Rome aka The Typewriter.

^ It's wild and gorgeous.

It like from a bad Hollywood movie set, size and color is totally wrong and who the fuck was VE II?

R77 hasn’t a clue. It’s a beautiful example of modern architect in situ. The doors are a masterpiece. The interior is spectacular.

R51, if I used quotation marks to indicate my rudimentary understanding of the French language, would that satisfy your cunt bone?

“Cliché Parisien”

I guess your American spelling skills really didn’t catch the nuance.

Wrong again, R82.

To R42, any building that "Paul Manafort" was involving in along with his Billionaire Russian& Ukrainian FRIENDS is a POS.

My Singapore FB Tony had a condo in 432 Park Ave in , 6 months a year in NYC. 2 windows blew into his bedroom, destroying 3 priceless Asian pieces (and his relationship with his NYC bf). Needless to say, he doesn't live there anymore.

Yes—Manafort designed, financed and built it…🙄

Sometimes, OP !!

One World Trade Center. Not that I'd want anyone hurt in the process, or devastation wreaked on Lower Manhattan. I just liked the Empire State Building being the tallest skyscraper in NYC again.

Just because…

[quote] One World Trade Center. Not that I'd want anyone hurt in the process, or devastation wreaked on Lower Manhattan. I just liked the Empire State Building being the tallest skyscraper in NYC again.

Sorry honey. ESB is now 7th tallest in NYC.

Damn, R88. I played some computer geopolitical strategy game once and tried nuking Mecca. Did not go well.

Bigot!^^

I lost the game, global nuclear war ensued.

'It's like from a bad Hollywood movie set, size and color is totally wrong and who the fuck was VE II?'

Which is why it is so Roman bizarre. I know I shouldn't like it but I do. Another I shouldn't like it but I do is the fascist train station in Milan.

River City Condos in Chicago. Same architect as Marina City, but those buildings are aesthetic marvels compared this.

Centrale is not fascista—go to Foro itálico. The station is a mixed blend, with Art Deco as the stand-out.

Good idea for a thread, OP.

[quote] Wrong again, [R82].

No. You’re still a CUNT!

Anything Venturi Scott Brown ever built should be blasted ESPECIALLY the gallery extension.

That University Library in Vienna.

[quote]The Victor Emmanuel II Monument in Rome aka The Typewriter.

There are 100 buildings in Rome that I could name off the top of my head that I like much more, but still I love the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II and can't imagine Rome without it.

It gets a bad rap because for two big reasons: guilt by association with the horrifying traffic semi-circle of the Piazza Venezia onto which it stomps a very heavy foot of marble plazas atop marble plazas onto; and because its fully blown Beaux-Arts backs up to the Foro Romano and beside Santa Maria in Aracoeli and the spectacular Campidoglio. It was long considered too bright, too white, too gauche, too Fin de siècle, but it would be a prize in another city next to less illustrious neighbors.

R110 it would have worked at the Chicago World Exhibition, and it should’ve been torn down afterwards like most of the exhibition’s buildings. It’s too much.

R100 I mean

The Barbican, why not. Points deducted for Brutalism and for difficulty of navigation.

R100 Gets it.

The Millennium Tower in San Francisco. It’s too stressful waiting for it to tip over.

Buildings don’t tip over, they collapse. Have you learned nothing over the years? You must have gone to ‘SC or Uc la.

It's kind of cool to think they tip over as long as no human life is involved. Clear out everyone and then let the fucking thing keel over dead.

But they don’t, so it won’t.

Thread would be nicer if the buildings would be carefully dismantled without loss of life. And maybe put back together in Vegas etc.