Bad Architecture

Bad Architecture

Today while doing my transit research for the Miami TriRail System I came across Opa-Locka station. Interesting name, I thought as I zoomed into the station on Google Earth. Checking first for handicap accessible egresseses, I found an escalator concealed within a hideous concrete turret and an outer wall of paste-y, pastel-striped patterns. Meanwhile, the station looked as if it had come straight out of Disney’s Aladdin. What the hell was going on? Did SFRTA (South Florida Regional Transportation Authority) blow their budget trying to recreate the Oriental Express?

I zoomed out only to discover that the station was located at 480 Ali Baba Avenue, not far from Sultan Avenue and Sesame Street. Sure Florida is no stranger to kitsch, but I began to wonder if everyone in public works had missed that whole, you know, post-colonial, Edward Saidian discourse about the danger of exoticizing the East.

Wishing to investigate further, I went to the town of Opa-Locka’s site. Despite a lot of broken links, what I learned is that the town was founded in 1926 by 28 registered voters, one of whom was Glen Curtiss. Curtiss’s vision was to develop the town entirely off Arabian Nights. Apparently, the town boasts the largest collection of Moorish Revival architecture in the Western hemisphere (according to Wikipedia) and many of these buildings are recognized and registered by the state as historic places.

It seems to me there is a correlation between warm weather and fantasy architecture. That and the American tendency to take everything literally. I have no idea who Glen Curtiss was, maybe he spent so much time in the Middle East prior to South Florida that the only way he could possible tolerate this new town was to recreate that far away place. But, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it went. In my mind, Opa-Locka is a good example of how the more we try to recreate what we perceive to be reality, the further away from it we become.

There Are No Ghosts Here: The Ethereal New Urbanism

One of my favorite tracks by the Japanese musician Tavito Nano includes a little bit of English:

Ka Ka Ka there are no ghosts here there are no ghosts here

Everything is an illusion, Everything is an illusion, Everything is an i-l-l-u-s-i-on…

That’s kind of how I feel about New Urbanism.

Michel de Certu writes in The Practice of Everyday Life, “Haunted places are the only ones people can live in,”(108). Waxing on a Derrida riff, Zizek echos de Certeau with his comment “There is no reality without the spectre,” (Mapping Ideologies, 21).

“Reading the city” is an overused but relevant metaphor. Walking through the city is a daily reading and writing of experience. But how do we read a place when it has no history, when there are no ghosts?

That was my first thought while touring the new Diridon development project in San Jose, California. Where are the ghosts? All this space, all these buildings, but no people.

The concept of a ghost town refers to there once having been a population. Diridon is a town, but there has yet to be a population.

“Cities can exist before being built,” states French architect Roland Castro in Reidy: A Construcao da Utopia, the terribly edited documentary on the Brazilian modernist architect, Affonso Eduardo Reidy. I find Castro’s statement brilliant. It leads me to wonder if building a city can essentially create a city.

I’d argue it can not.

However, Wayne Chen, Diridon’s attractive Housing Policy Officer who bares an uncanny resemblance to Batman explains that the Diridon project will “Create a cool urban design and a cool culture that will cause people to stay in San Jose.”

At present, San Jose’s cool factor is extremely low due to the fact that it has thousands of workers, but no residents.

Although Silicon valley has a great deal to offer in terms of professional advancement, culturally savvy Googlites will inevitably feel more at home in San Francisco or Oakland and  are willing to commute long distances just to return to an urban environment that is read and written. Nevertheless, this choice presents numerous economic, social, and environmental problems for city planners.

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Mall Cultural

When thinking  of mall culture, the absurdity of David Byrne and John Goodman in Texas immediately comes to mind. Since moving to New York however, events such as Bang on a Can and River to River Festival at the World Financial Center challenge my perception regarding  malls and culture.

Owned by Brookfield Properties Corporation, the Center brands itself as “The premier business address in New York City.” Not exactly the space you’d associate with musical tributes to Pablo Neruda, performances by  Ryuichi Sakamoto, and films like Ballet Mecanique or Entr’acte.

All these events are free, but, given the space, that should be expected. At its core, the World Financial Center is a space of consumption. We consume these free cultural events much in the same way we consume commodities–with open eyes and hungry hearts.

People don’t shop to buy, they buy in order to bring about the emotional euphoria of  shopping. In this way, “hedonic consumption designates those facets of consumer behavior that relate to the multi-sensory, fantasy and emotive aspects of one’s experience with products,”(Hirschman and Holbrook, (1982:92).

That these cultural events are hosted in a corporate mall devalue their meaning? Is musical aesthetic of Sakamoto  nothing more than corporate cultural?

Cities are infamous for corporate sponsored public art (Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc in Federal Plaza). Similarly, museums couldn’t exist without the exhibition patronage of  corporations. To what extent should sponsorship (be it locational, financial, or curitorial)  determine the meaning of a product?

The physical space reflects this indeterminate meaning between culture and commerce. The ceiling is a beautiful tribute to the glass and steel train station architecture of the 19th century. The palm trees could be considered tacky, but again we can associate them with atriums of the past. However, the rest of the interior architecture might as well belong in the set of True Stories.  The columns are bulky and awkward, the slick, polished floor a sick reminder to America’s relationship between capitalism,  sterile environments, and the encouragement of uniformity of group experience.

Bad Architecture

Even Berlin is unsafe from terrible architecture. On our right we have what I guess is a late 90’s prefabricated neo-classical [parody]. Although the airy, glass structure on the left lessons the effect in the actual photograph, it’s hard to ignore just how ugly the yellow stone and faux columns on that squat building truly is. I’m no fan of uniformity, but not only is this building an example of bad architecture, it’s made worse by its inability to integrate into the surroundings.