On Sunday, September 16, 2001, at 12:16 PM, John Young wrote:
>
> Ok, daring is needed, that is the architect's drug of choice
> and sale, but recall the building code of Vitruvius: commodity,
> firmness and delight. The architectural delight drug needs the
> other two or why bother building at all, just take a pill. The
> skyscraper bounty of which is in short supply downtown
> these days. No matter, it will come raging back like a bull
> on Monday, or will that market crash too.
This is an interesting thread, touching on architecture, safety,
insurance, aesthetics, symbolism, and libertarian issues of whether
coerced-funding approaches should be used (of course not...).
The Getty Center. This is the marble-and-steel art museum built by the
Getty Foundation on a hill overlooking L.A.
I've been meaning to talk about this for the last several of these
"Symbol" posts. The Getty Center in Los Angeles is the most amazing
building/complext of buildings I have seen in many years. It was built
totally with private funding (Getty, obviously), it has magnificent
lines, it's open, and it looks to be very safe.
(Safe from fire, partly by being low enough to be evacuable. Maybe safe
from an earthquake at the three sigma level of probability...time will
tell.)
This may be a matter of personal aeshetics, as I have since I was a kid
disliked the "concrete canyons" of Manhattan. The looming Bauhaus boxes
of the World Trade Center never inspired me in the slightest way. By
contrast, the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis in Athens
really _did_ inspire me. I guess this is why I like the Getty Center so
much.
Your mileage may vary.
I would never stop anyone from living and working in one of these
concrete canyon anthills. They can commute in from Westchester County,
ride elevators for 20 minutes, and then turn into crispy critters in
their towering infernos. No skin off my nose.
Some years ago (mid 1960s), IBM decided to move the bulk of its
headquarters operations _out_ of Manhattan to places like Armonk and
Yorktown Heights, north of NYC. They found many of their execs were
already living in those areas, and younger workers could buy actual
homes in the suburban areas.
Likewise, my old company, Intel, decided 30 years ago to embark on a
strategy of decentralizing operations so that a disaster in one area (an
earthquake, most likely) would not cripple the company. They
decentralized to Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico, and now many other sites.
Antheaps are for ants.
--Tim May
