To put it simply, if I was unfortunate enough to have never used a urinal of that description or be familiar with Duchamp’s work, which incidentally is named “The Fountain” … would I be able to follow what you mean? Sometimes, to subject a piece of work to a levelled plane is fair, but it’s the “level” that I want to be mindful of. Anyway, Duchamp likes word games and is an artist, far from what challenges the work of an architect, in my opinion.

Well, it’s interesting to see how the world is deciphered and interpreted. However, I prefer to seek out its quality.

There is nothing incoherent in pointing out that scale of the project has an impact. However, taking scale entirely out of the equation there remains the brand question of why anyone would want to create the connotation of an enormous urinal for a hotel project (referenced to the Swedish hotel project previously posted).

Finally, I strongly disagree that architectural expression is confined to its “time”. Actually, worthwhile architecture ought to transcend its time. This is what is so satisfying about modern architecture. Modern architecture in its highest expression traced its roots to the architectural traditions of the early Greeks, certainly to the romans, and definitely to its “neo” moment in the renaissance. The modernism of Mies was merely the latest expressive abstraction of classical thinking.

Terry Glenn Phipps

Just look at that overhang. It says “I’m there, and you can’t do a damn thing about it.” Maybe effective. But pretty much the opposite of sympathetic. I sure wouldn’t want to drive past that on the autobahn.

Heavy, diagonal shapes always end up in nightmarish proportions.

Bo, “our world”? “One man’s meat: another man’s poison” perhaps? I happen to like Googie and nostalgia. Your statement submit to Terry’s statement that the factory is Googie referencing.

I am confused.

My interpretation is that there is a strong nod here to “Googie” (or roadside) architecture of the mid twentieth century, where the form of the structure became the meta-brand of the business it represented. There is an excellent book by Jim Heimann called Googie that was one of the first appreciations, explorations, and documentations of this particular meme.

Certainly here the form meets the Googie criteria nicely, especially given that it seems that this structure is visible from the nearby autobahn. Likewise, since the function of the building is trans-modal it seems to me that the the form is consistent with past examples of railhead architecture that often have a soaring and emblematic quality.

After all, this is just a warehouse. However, there is no reason it shouldn’t look a little outrageous. Expressive form works at this scale. When it gets blown up to the size of a skyscraper or a museum then it starts to look ridiculous; case in point the hotel “homage to Marcel Duchamp” in Sweden or any recent project of O.M.A.

Terry Glenn Phipps