Writes Oliver Wainwright, in "‘A gas-guzzling villain’s lair’: welcome to LA’s grotesque new high-rise/Inspired by Yeats, Wagner and French realist painting, the (W)rapper tower was meant to reawaken the city skyline. But is this monstrous erection just a monument to its designer’s ego?" (The Guardian)
March 17, 2023
"It goes back to a poem by Yeats," said the architect Eric Owen Moss...
"... citing The Second Coming, which includes the line 'the centre cannot hold.' It is one of the many references he casually invokes throughout our conversation, from Moby-Dick to Dionysus and Apollo, the paintings of Gustave Courbet and Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. I ask him about deconstructivism, the 1980s style of architecture with which he is associated, to which he responds that he prefers the term 'dialectical lyric.'... Moss may like to operate on a higher conceptual plane, but why should we care about the hermetic theories behind his big steel pile? 'That’s a fair question,' he shrugs. 'Does anybody give a shit? Is anybody listening? Maybe three people we know, one in London, one in Shanghai. But I think the effect of it is what interests me. It’s an opportunity to show there are other ways to imagine.' He narrows his eyes, as if summoning a momentous truth. 'What you see isn’t all there is to see. Can you listen for things you haven’t heard?'... Moss is right: there is more to see than we have seen. But it might be better for all of us if it remained unseen...."
Writes Oliver Wainwright, in "‘A gas-guzzling villain’s lair’: welcome to LA’s grotesque new high-rise/Inspired by Yeats, Wagner and French realist painting, the (W)rapper tower was meant to reawaken the city skyline. But is this monstrous erection just a monument to its designer’s ego?" (The Guardian)
Writes Oliver Wainwright, in "‘A gas-guzzling villain’s lair’: welcome to LA’s grotesque new high-rise/Inspired by Yeats, Wagner and French realist painting, the (W)rapper tower was meant to reawaken the city skyline. But is this monstrous erection just a monument to its designer’s ego?" (The Guardian)
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43 comments:
Penis envy? Gender dysphoria? Architectural displacement?
"rapper tower"? Really?! This has diverse diversitist connotations.
What's lurking in your palette?
reawaken the city skyline. But is this monstrous erection
Reawoken? Masculine pride alliance. Gender politics.
Sheesh. Could that thing be any uglier?
That's a lot of leather.
I can almost see the Christian ichthys symbol wrapped around the building.
I’ll bet that’d get the heathens in Cali to tear it down.
A client paid for it. That’s all that matters.
I live close to that building and it has been fun seeing it go up. About half the people in LA think it's ugly and the other half think it's cool. I am in the second camp. The eastern terminus of the Ballona Creek bike is at its base and looking up from the path you see this menacing tower.
Not exactly "location, location, location" by the looks of the photograph.
More of a mid-rise, and not all that striking.
I take back my comment. After reading the whole article, I am much more impressed by the building.
It looks like a homeless person's cart, a homeless building with its various layers held together with strings and knots and tape. You expect it to ask for money for a bus ride home.
Garbage by any other name would smell as putrid. "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
I love it!
Wow. An architect who reads poetry!
I'm an architect and this building is just bad. All the descriptions are post hoc attempts at rationalizing the stupidity. Take the "wrapper" off and it's a mediocre office block.
The Guardian. Enough said.
The Samitaur Tower in LA looks like someone dragged one of the rusting funnels of the Titanic out of the ocean and left it on a street corner. When I was a kid, LA was gorgeous.
I was a Theatre (yes, we spelled it that way at W&M) major in the 1970s, and we fully believed that indulging artistic expression justified anything. I no longer believe that. Do you want us to listen for something we haven't heard before? There are other choices beyond you.
Dress it up in hoity-toity allusions to literature and philosophy all you want, it's still butt ugly.
Anyone who quotes The Second Coming is unserious. It's the Harry Potter of poetry and has been for years.
Most of the post WWII architecture I have seen is either monument to the architect's ego or a statement to his hatred of humanity.
Pretentious twat.
Already scheduled as an urban renewal project.
Hard to believe that they had to explain the Yeats quote: the poem is (or should be) part of any literate person’s basic toolkit.
That's one ugly-ass building.
No doubt it will win prizes.
It's the only poem by Yeats that anyone ever "goes back to," and they always choose one of the same handful of lines to cite.
Louis MacNeice, anyone?
Reminds me of Rosie O'Donnell in that movie she wore the lovely bondage outfit!
Not to my taste- it looks like it is held together with duct tape.
I'd say it looks like a poorly wrapped package held together by surgical tape or pallet straps.
Architects influenced by Yeats, Wagner, Melville, and Courbet might not be a bad thing.
Architects who talk about it are.
What do you get people who have everything?
Something they may hate. At the very least, it's something they won't ignore.
Yowza! The Planning & Zoning Commission was smoking some bad doobie on the day this one came up for approval. Like some agitated kid went berserk with ductape on his brother's Lego building.
It was my pleasure to listen to a disc jockey on the only station that comes in in the barn talk about the ugly new buildings going up in Burlington. Who is designing all of these Soviet-style, block-shaped, shit buildings? Lol I paraphrase, a tad.
I think it’s a friend’s nephew, tbh. Not afraid to invest, to go big. Yet, gitter dun, eh?
Romance is dead. They talk green smack, yet these beehive, wrapped, twisted buildings are whst their imagination comes up w/?
Waste.
The article is poorly written,too. Almost as pretentious as the building.
It mirrors our decline... plus it's strange and ugly.
"Can you listen for things you haven’t heard?'..."
An ounce of pretension equals a pound of manure.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
It looks like the center cannot hold and someone has wrapped it with scaffolding to keep it together.
First, it's not very high for a high-rise.
Second, I'd be pretty pissed off if the window of my $10M apartment was blocked by a metal belt.
YMMV...
recall the scene in the movie "Idiocracy" where the buildings are cracking in half and held together with giant ropes?
It's hideous, but I think I like it, and glad it's 3000 miles away.
Heard the overture to Tannhauser on WCPE today.
The architect (Moss) was my parents’ next-door neighbor. He lived in his “708 House “ at 708 El Medio Ave.
So at least the guy is willing to eat his own dog food.
Yeah. No. It doesn't look structural. It looks like an afterthought. Big thumbs down.
Misandry or envy?
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