If you don’t find the phrases “property developer” and “tasteless buffoon with powerful connections” completely incompatible, you might enjoy mab’s series on Moscow’s unfettered construction frenzy. They’re called “Photos To Make You Puke “.
This ugly grey box might be located anywhere:
and look at this, across the street:
For some reason the developer wasn’t able to destroy the pink building, so they’ve just built around it. The architect created a groovy bricolage of old and new, and thoughtfully tied it all together with grid-lines in brown brick; perhaps as a metaphor, or simply as a reminder of brown shiny unbreakable plastic parcel-tape.
Addendum by Mab:
And this is just one outrage of many. Sometimes protected buildings disappeared from the list and were torn down in the night. What I call pan-European glass office buildings went up in their place. In two cases they tore down the old buildings and “rebuilt them” according to the old plans with modern materials. Everyone thinks this was just a way to steal more money. In other cases they’ve done this kind of thing — smashing a new building on top of and around and old one. Or they leave the first and second floor walls and build up, adding “modern” glass turrets that are supposed to look “olde.”
What kills me is that they’ve destroyed what was Moscow’s “selling point.” After the Stalinist-era changes and a few under Khrushchev, the center of the city wasn’t touched. Walking down little streets was like an architectural tour of the ages: a little classical city manor house, a 19th century style moderne apartment house, a turn of the century old Russian revival mansion… lots of little squares and pocket parks, trees and bushes and flowers. And they’ve destroyed that to make it look like any European city.
A Bad Guide 
Don’t ever visit Odense. You’ll have a heart attack seeing what was levelled in the sixties.
And the new station is an unsurpassed eyesore.
The last two photos are incredible!
I’m sorry for that pink building… It has survived but at what cost?
Bad taste is coming and will kill us all!
(I should show you some photos from around here).
Good outlooks for the plot of the Muromtsev Dacha.
The best idea for the British millenium celebration was that the budget should be spent knocking down eyesores. Instead they built the Dome.
My guess is that the pink building is a protected one — and one that couldn’t magically be excised from the list as many others have been — so in return for the rights to build on that property, the developer had to “incorporate” it into the new building. There is one example of that incorporation that worked pretty well — it’s a former city mansion that is now the Museum of Private Collections. The courtyard in the center is now a glass-roofed atrium. The building looks more or less the same on the outside, but inside it’s a decent gallery.
But this is just an abomination! There is absolutely no connection between the two parts of the structure. A round wall on one side, open section that looks like a carport on the other… slick brown and beige. It makes me weep.
It’s really the architect’s fault, not just the developer (the biggest problem with this kind of scheme is: what happens in that gap above the old building? Here the designers haven’t addressed it at all) . But it is a city’s responsibility to prevent such things from occurring.
Incredible, I have never seen such an awful combinatiion of old and new architecture. Really incredible, the new building looks like a monster crushing the old poor little one
And this is just one outrage of many. Sometimes protected buildings disappeared from the list and were torn down in the night. What I call pan-European glass office buildings went up in their place. In two cases they tore down the old buildings and “rebuilt them” according to the old plans with modern materials. Everyone thinks this was just a way to steal more money. In other cases they’ve done this kind of thing — smashing a new building on top of and around and old one. Or they leave the first and second floor walls and build up, adding “modern” glass turrets that are supposed to look “olde.”
What kills me is that they’ve destroyed what was Moscow’s “selling point.” After the Stalinist-era changes and a few under Khrushchev, the center of the city wasn’t touched. Walking down little streets was like an architectural tour of the ages: a little classical city manor house, a 19th century style moderne apartment house, a turn of the century old Russian revival mansion… lots of little squares and pocket parks, trees and bushes and flowers. And they’ve destroyed that to make it look like any European city.
Julia: I should show you some photos from around here
Yes please. Bad taste is sometimes as interesting as good taste, especially if it has a local quality.
Here you are http://melioralatent.blogspot.com/2010/03/mal-gusto.html
(Tus deseos son órdenes)
Oh jeez. Julia, is the first building really a church? Yikes.
Yes! Can you imagine? Is the city cathedral.
I love that little pink building, it looks like Wedgwood propped up on marble. Even better is that low building to the left of the gray box–are those caryatids on either side of the window? It reminds me of our cultural center
that was almost knocked down, only three floors high, wasting all that real estate space on the most expensive street in the city.
Don’t think that these lapses only occur on a grand scale. The Old House Journal has a regular column at the back titled, “Remuddling,” featuring reader photos of (usually) single family renovations gone wrong. Here‘s a quick sample; lots more in Google Books.
Yes, Nij, those are caryatids, and very pretty ones, too. Your cultural center is quite lovely. I can’t believe the house transformations. Or Julia’s churches. Don’t you wonder how someone could look at it all and think: Great job! Looks terrific now!
MMcM,I just got around to looking at those “Remuddling” articles. Thanks. They would make an interesting book.
[…] picture here to mention her article, and so I came across this one that mab herself took for this post last March. It’s a brilliant, disturbing photo. Vorsprung durch Technik, […]