Sounds like bad news to me

Architect of Unyielding Designs Takes Top Prize.

Consider how the building meets the sidewalk:

Via Modern Art Notes where Tyler Green took the intelligent and all-too-rare step (not to pun) of offering a judgment only after having "walked all the way around Thom Mayne's new Caltrans building." So I'll be the first to offer that I could be all wrong — I haven't been there — and maybe the photo above is of only one eentsy-teensy part of what is actually a great urbane building. I would be happy to be proven wrong and find that the Pritzker is awarded to someone with a city sense. Make my day.

Update: Daily Dose appears to fall for it.

Shin-pei sees through the hype.

Michael Blowhard spends more psychic energy -- and this is to his credit as the issues are crucial -- than could I on exposing the emptiness of the architecture of Thom Mayne.

Alas, PIXEL POINTS also buys into the hype.

Comments

[AF]

You don't approve, right?

[David Sucher]

Right, Alison, I think that that's a fair way of putting it. :)
I do not approve of the Pritzker committee's continuing affirmation of irrelevance.

[Matthew Amster-Burton]

Lord, what a piece of junk.

[AF]

I won't have to guess anymore - just got the mail and your book arrived woohoo!

Am hoping someone at the APA conference in SF shared your ideas :)

[Nick]

I've never been to the site, but every photo of the Diamond Ranch High School that I've seen makes it look like a re-education camp in a sci-fi movie.

Considering the way schools are run these days, though, perhaps that's the point. At least it's a departure from the jailhouse/cellblock style usually utilized over the past four decades.

[Tyler Green]

That side, the side facing a, er, not-so-nice part of downtown and on (I think) a quite steep hill, is absolutely the worst side of the building. And that photo captures it well. However I don't know enough about urban planning and the RFP process to know whether or not Mayne was required to elevate that part of the structure...

[David Sucher]

Alison. I hope you enjoy the book.
Tyler. Even if the client for some reason wanted the bulk of the building above the street, or indeed that was the logical solution because of site grades, there are decent ways to handle (what looks to be) a parking garage at the sidewalk. The photos at Mayne's own site (via your site) seem to justify my derision.

[Tyler Green]

True, I hardly disagree. Actually I think that's the heating/cooling/etc. elements there.

[Janet]

That picture baffles me. It shows the side of Caltrans along 2nd St (the south side of the block), and as far as I know that thoroughfare is as flat (or nearly so) as a pancake.

[David Sucher]

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