Daniel Libeskind

[Grant]

As much as I'm not a fan of all of his work, I've always been very intrigued by some of Daniel Libeskind's work.

The sharp angles. The strong and proud accents.

[Gary Brenner]

I wonder what Louis "Form Follows Function" Sullivan or Howard Roark would think of this can opener.

[KendallJ]

That is a georgeous building.

[D'kian]

That is a georgeous building.

Sort of. Aside from the fact it looks like an "N," it looks as though it would take considerable time getting from one side of the building to the other. It's hard to say whether any single floor runs the full width of the building. In short it seems rather impractical design.

[KendallJ]

Sort of. Aside from the fact it looks like an "N," it looks as though it would take considerable time getting from one side of the building to the other. It's hard to say whether any single floor runs the full width of the building. In short it seems rather impractical design.

Whether one actually needed to get from one side to the other would depend on it's purpose and its specific configuration. Impracticaltity is contextual.

I wonder what Louis "Form Follows Function" Sullivan or Howard Roark would think of this can opener.

Yeah. I've never been a fan of the sort crystalline shapes, but they do show what sort of interesting, non-traditional shapes can be built today. The overhanging "spear tip" is dramatic, but I'd like to see as a more fully integrated design.

The building is the Denver Art Museum, but I'm not sure that provides any more useful context to understand the design.

[volco]

Actually Libeskind, and Zaha Hadid, are sort of deconstructionists. I love their work, and I've met Zaha (incidentally inside a Libeskind's building!) but I've often thought that their architecture would be considered entirely haram under objectivism.

For a new take on form follows function I'd suggest Shoei Yoh.

service station rooftop

Zaha's future performing arts center in Abu Dhabi

Edited April 8, 2008 by volco

[K-Mac]

I wonder what Louis "Form Follows Function" Sullivan or Howard Roark would think of this can opener.

I think this building is awful. I saw it when I was in Denver a few weeks ago and not only is it ugly, but people are getting motion sickness inside the building.

[D'kian]

Whether one actually needed to get from one side to the other would depend on it's purpose and its specific configuration. Impracticaltity is contextual.

You'd think in office buildings people just go to their offices, visitors just go to the offices they ahve business in, and as long as you know the access point and which elevators to take, everything else is irrelevant.

That's true only to a certain point. Visitors tend to get lost and take the wrong side of a building more often than not. Correcting that mistake can take a long time when there's no easy way to get accross. Cleaning staff, maintenance staff and security staff often need to cover the entire building. In such cases either the employees waste too much time getting around, or you need to hire more of them; either way costs go up. There may also be ventilation and lighting issues, heating and cooling issues, even wind issues. The latter, however, also depend largely on the building's site, including what's around it.

I'm all in favor of unconventional shapes. the classical elongated rectangle carries problems of its own. Wind is an issue for any high rise regardless of any other considerations (the force wind can exert in the side of a building is hard to believe)., and unusual shapes can help in some case (curves being less resistant to air movement than flat sides, for example). But a shape unusual for its own sake strikes me as pointless. To this day I wish Ayn Rand had issued an illustrated version fo The Fountainhead.

[NineInfinity]

The problem I have with Libeskind is the way he treats buildings as if their sculptures with no regard to the practicality of it. It may have appealing aesthetics on the exterior, but the building has had a multitude of problems ranging from trying to hang art on sloping walls, constant leaks in the roof, and head room issues meeting ADA requirements. It's as if he assembled a jumble of random planes and then tried to stuff an art museum inside. This "outside-in" approach is where so many architects fail. From The Fountainhead I think it's clear that Rand agreed with the axiom "form follows function" in that a building can challenge one's conceptions through interesting forms only if those forms are derived from the building serving its function. An art museum certainly could arouse a particular sensation in its visitors, but it better damn well function as an art museum first.