General Chat / The Architecture Thread

Recently I passed a really odd building with the bus and I was really interested in hearing some of your opinions on it. Regardless of whether you are a professional architect or not. Although I would love to hear an architects thoughts.

The building is the office of 'Stichting Woonbedrijf SWS' in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. It's basically an oddly-shaped building but within a square glass building. The exterior looks fitting within the city (Eindhoven is quite an ugly, blocky, city), but it seems like they wanted to get creative with the inside. What do you think? Personally, I can't say I like it. Perhaps I prefer functionality over such a gimmick, because this building kinda looks like a waste of space.

Something else I was wondering about with this building was heat retention. It must cost tons to keep a building like this warm, right? Or to keep it cold on a sunny day when it looks like it could double-function as a green-house.

If anyone has other buildings or other architecture-related things they would like to discuss, feel free to use this topic of course.

Just want to mention https://www.facebook...lybelgianhouses...

From the images it looks like shit. So much modern architecture seems to be based around coming up with a 'novelty' form. This genre really is the worst of the worst. Then again, sometimes these things are better encountered in real life and do have quite nuanced spatial/light design.

My favourite kind of architecture is generally structures which are appropriated/recycled/squated or immediate and organic in some way - often built and constructed by a community rather than an architect. (sorry architects)

edit: i do however love some of the post-war social housing projects in Britain like Barbican and Alexandra Road estate in London or Park Hill in Sheffield - its a shame that these either were let to go to shit or became gentrified, but this is more to do with economic factors rather than failings of the projects themselves. And it's very sad that you don't see these projects happen anymore, when cities are in desperate need of such affordable living spaces.

Sort of random but I thought this was interesting: 

'Just Plain Ugly': Proposed Executive Order Takes Aim At Modern Architecture
https://www.npr.org/...rn-architecture

Personally I do infinitely prefer greco-roman styles and other traditional ones over the hodgepodge of "modern" styles used in the last 70 years, especially brutalist (sorry).  Not sure if anything will come of this, or if its still culturally relevant to build in these traditional styles but at least it will look nicer imo.

Modern styles certainly have their appeal and function, but put together in practice it just ends up looking bad over time I guess.

Ew, architecture