Fail by Design

Bates141 Jakarta for software-asli.com; Michel Gondry meets Photoshop.

Sometimes, when you’re bored at work or that rendering just needs a little something extra, photoshop a panda into the picture.

Did you know there’s a little city inside your TV?? The world would be a better place if we could all start seeing things as we did for the first time.

Truer words have never been spoken, Cathrine Lohanata.

The title of winsomest architectural firm in the world goes to UK office AOC, whose projects are as precious as little kittens.

We can design you a home, write you a book or build you a city.
Or design you a book, build you a home and write you a city.

For the record, AOC can also make you a bouncy castle or style you some furniture out of old phone booths.

Besides proposing a design concept that is sure to boggle the minds of a design jury, architects can enter competitions that have nothing to do with architecture- achieving a fully maximized degree of fail.

Take the William James Foundation, for example. With a vague competition brief posted on idealist.org, the following entry found it’s way into the mix of legitimately “sustainable” projects. (A word to competition organizers: sustainability is a topic that encompasses a wide spectrum of social, economic, and environmental topics.  Specify the one you’re interested in.)

Look! It’s construction scaffolding covered in power-generating turbines! And no, this doesn’t come with a business plan. However, the William James Foundation is full of loving, supportive reviewers who spend more time reviewing a Photoshop rendering than an entrant took time to make it. Here’s some feedback:

Great concept– which needs to be made concrete. The low score reflects the lack of specificity. Engineering feasibility, market, financial feasibility and timeline should be addressed. I’d recommend that they start to network with utility executives, architects and entrepreneurs who might be helpful; [the applicant] needs to develop a team to work with.

Our own mothers wouldn’t care so much. WJF cares, and so will make the world a better place.

AMID (formerly cero9) are a great example of a hip, young architectural firm who don’t care for convention, thank you very much. Though “firm” (aka “commercial enterprise”) may not be the right word to describe the collaboration between partners Cristina Diaz Moreno & Efran Garcia Grinda, they know how to sell a product.  Check out their Magic Mountain proposal for jazzing up an old generator building in Ames, Iowa:

Maybe a building is tucked away in there somewhere, but I don’t really care. Let’s build a Magic Mountain City!

AMID gave what I heard was a rousing spectacle of a presentation during this year’s ACADIA conference. Most male/female architecture partnerships rarely delve into the specifics of their “private practice”, if you know what I mean…  AMID left no doubts about the nature of their relationship after showing a little video of their [naked] pixelated avatars making love and architecture together. I’ve only seen a few still images from this video, but I’m hoping it’s nothing like the video for the Flying Lotus song “Parisian Goldfish”… NSFW, everyone.

This video has made the rounds, making an appearance in my inbox at least once every few months. It reminds me of a carpentry class I took as an undergrad; a classmate of mine would disguise every wood joint with a healthy coat of glue and glitter.

The contractors I work with accomplish something similar with the framing of hollow metal doors.

When I was first learning Photoshop I only bothered to learn 2 or 3 functions, which I used with abandon. My favorite and most abused filter was the “Lens Flare”: the more flare-y, the better! The Flare function seemed to amp up the volume on any image that seemed a little thin on content; what was once empty space is now filled with a quasi-naturalistic sense of light. Like a Michelangelo Antonioni film!

I was delighted to learn that competition darlings PLOT (now JDS and BIG) employed a similar tactic in presentation drawings, making every single rendered view and model pic appear as if the viewer were staring into the sun.  Seriously, it’s out of control.

Let’s start out with some history.

In 1922, the Chicago Tribune staged a competition for the “most beautiful office building in the world.” Unfortunately for them (and despite a field of novel entries from fledgling modernists such as Gropius and Mies) the jury selected a travesty of a building. The exquisite Neo-Gothic corpse proposed by Raymond Hood is kinda like Chartres Cathedral and kinda like a whole lotta bad. Even Louis Sullivan, who was batshit crazy by 1922, decried the winning selection as something that would set the practice of architecture behind by 50 years.

Though Eliel Saarinen’s 2nd place entry is widely understood to be game-changer in terms of design influence in the skyscraper boom of the 1920s, you have to give some props to Adolf Loos: it kind of rhymes with “lose”. Want to get some attention with your design proposal? How about a giant f*ing Doric column? Interestingly enough, the young Adolf (remember: author of “Ornament and Crime”) worked in Sullivan’s Chicago office in the 1890s.