Architectural virility – What is it with today’s skyscrapers?

Recently, the competition for the huge Russian gas company gasprom moved to the next stage – the chosen projects could be voted for on the internet, one vote per domain, so some serious poll. The neighbourhood of new “Gasprom City” calles the winning project by British architects RMJM “Corn on the cob” (German only).

I found it quite interesting to see first of all the projects they chose, and second, how the polls ended.

Honestly, I think that Libeskind thing is just weird

The Koolhaas thing seems rather dull, uninspired and commercial….eh……:

That Libeskind somehow reminds me of another in my opinion rather ridicilous design from OMA for the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, that looks like a stock diagram – image or link will follow as soon as I found one.

But what is it with skyscrapers nowadays? they either look like a phallus such as the Nouvel in Barcelona and the Foster one In London, or they get in all kind of weird shapes such as the HdM one for Gasprom. Truly one of the better designs from all the projects handed in – not that I consider it to be any good, but among the blind the one-eyed is king.

Nouvel:

Foster:

HdM:

But for the votes: Clearly OMA sucked, and I am curious about the voting reasons: Did really the superficiality of the image quality decide, or is it the project in general? Did people vote for the slick renderings of some of the projects, or because they actually liked the projects?

Got some more architectural virility? Post it here!

~ by aboutarchitecture on December 1, 2006.