Re: Re: High Rise Building

so apparently everything in our cities should conform to the idea of beauty espoused by the majority? or is it by the expert minority? of maybe the government? or the church? i’m happy that in this country everything in a city isn’t made to conform to a certain outdated vision like it is in paris. i’m glad that we can throw stuff up that some people like and some people hate. the biggest blight on our cities is the uniformity of so much of what is being built nowadays, and the wider uniformity of cities throughout the british isles. it’s comforting to have some buildings which are so imposing which challenge the dominant idea of beauty or harmony current in people’s tastes. hawkins house isn’t a crafted or deliberate challenge to the architectural context thrown down by things like the guggenheim or the jewish museum in berlin. this is a more natural and organic type of challenge, one which arose out of largely functional motivations, and which takes on the status of a more radical challenge because it didn’t buy into the kind of aesthetic games which the guggenheim inadvertently bolstered by recognizing them in its challenge. whereas the guggenheim is merely the extension of nineteenth century planning control freakery, something like hawkins house doesn’t mesh with that kind of thinking of any level whatsoever, and enables us to glimpse how architecture can rip a hole in the complacency of its environment, and challenge the human need for order with the more primitive human need to destroy it.