Thoughts on Albany... pic.twitter.com/60BSmY2VNT
— Joe Pera (@JosephPera) October 11, 2022
ADDED: If you've forgotten "ciao, bella," refresh your recollection here.
Also, as suggested by someone over at Twitter:
October 12, 2022
Thoughts on Albany.
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22 comments:
Rockefeller's edifice complex.
Those buildings - done in the style of high East Germany architecture. Shades of Boston City Hall.
The video clip was good, the architecture is horrible and Cuomo is and was an arrogant ass.
Sat for the New York bar exam in Albany. Worst city I had ever been in. There was a crack pipe in my motel room nightstand drawer. Worste two days of my life. Passed the exam but decided to stick with the Mass bar instead to avoid having to take CLE.
I encountered the Albany government architecture in 2009, blogged here.
"There was a crack pipe in my motel room nightstand drawer."
Placed by the Gideons.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Albany or Constantinople?
Hard to put into words and stay pithy...I so appreciate the eclectic nature of some of your posts. Just watched some YouTube bits featuring Joe Pera. He is funny in that droll and unpredictable way where you wonder how he chose to make the leap to being a professional comedian and yet it works.
Brutalist Architecture is so... Democratic.
The wiki is worth reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_State_Plaza
It is an interesting plaza to visit. Worth a stop if you are into architecture and in the area.
Mussolini would have been proud.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Albany and Brasília were the negative, nightmare centerpieces of Robert Hughes's television history of modern art, The Shock of the New. Rocky as one with Mussolini and Albert Speer is certainly a novel take on the once-famous politician. The series was excellent. Hughes is an arrogant jerk and a monstrous snob, but I suppose that goes with the art critic's job.
A blog post that is a link to Twitter which is a link to a video. I didn't watch the video, does it have embedded links to Facebook and/or Pinterest?
Paul Goldberger: "Ultimately, of course, one realizes that the entire mall complex is not so much a vision of the future as of the past. The ideas here were dead before they left the drawing board, and every design decision, from the space allocations to the overall concept, emerges from an outdated notion of what modern architecture, not to mention modern government, should stand for."
Martin Filler: “There is no relationship at all between buildings and site, neither at grade nor atop the podium, since all vestiges of the existing site have been so totally obliterated. Thus, as one stands on the Plaza itself, there is an eerie feeling of detachment. The Mall buildings loom menacingly, like aliens from another galaxy set down on this marble landing strip."
Well now I want to see Pena on one of his concert dates. I see he has already sold out the venue closest to me, The Orange Peel in Asheville, which is not a small place.
Italian is such a beautiful language.
And yes, those buildings are horrible! Don't describe them as Nazi-like, Hitler had good taste.
I had the displeasure to visit Albany 25 years ago.
It was a boring, bleak, depressing dump.
A perfect place for politicians...
"There was a crack pipe in my motel room nightstand drawer."
Stayed at a hotel/casino on the border of Utah-Nevada during the Salt Lake City Olympics.
There was a huge knife in the nightstand drawer.
I immediately checked for a dead hooker under the bed.
Hint: not the Four Seasons...
rcocean said...
Italian is such a beautiful language.
And yes, those buildings are horrible! Don't describe them as Nazi-like, Hitler had good taste.
**************
Such monstrosities were the product of a architectural school called "Brutalism"
Sometimes called "Mussolini Modern".
I disagree with the idea that Hitler had good taste in architecture. Speer was there to squelch many of his ideas.
https://www.magellantv.com/articles/nazi-architecture-hitlers-grandiose-plans-for-imperial-berlin
The Egg has always reminded me of a toilet bowl, minus the seat. But it's way better than anything else on the Mall (that I remember).
The Egg has always reminded me of a toilet bowl, minus the seat.
OMG! I clicked on the Althouse link to the prior post and found that I had commented twice on the post from 2009! And, in the thick of things, not after the party was over (as here and most of my more recent posts). Mostly to yank Titus's chain (so to speak) for erroneously conflating the bulldozing of Boston's West End with the bulldozing of Scollay Square. Plus a nod or two to the situation in Chicago (where the proposed/aborted demolition of the Glessner House on Prairie Avenue, designed by H.H. Richardson, a family friend, sparked the formation of a conservation movement in the late 60s).
Only saw a few commenters who are still here (hi, Wince; hi, Freeman Hunt; hi, MadisonMan; hi, Big Mike; hi, Lem Ozuna; hi, Balfegor). And one trashing Vicki from Pasadena with much the same reaction I had to her pro-Brutalist posts. Didn't recall a lot of the other commenters and didn't see a number that I recall at least vaguely from the past.
--gpm
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