Quote:
Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
Which is probably why any new building that attempts to look "classical" that is constructed in the United States these days looks like complete shit. They are all a bunch of architects who are trained how to build a modern interior who are trying to still make the exterior look all "Ye Olde Haus". So what they end up doing is designing a super efficient and modern interior layout and then just tacking sloped roofs and finials and shit to the outside to make it look olde. That tends to look like complete shit. Its just like the Pomo office block. You can't just take a giant 3D rectangle and add a pointy roof and actually pass it off as "classical", it just doesn't work, the massing would be entirely different, but the rectangular floor plate is sacred to the developer and the tenant, so the architect adds stupid things to try to make it look old.
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Well I think it's worth adding that classically styled buildings the likes of which you described are designed to be classically styled because of the paradoxical needs of the client to have a modern building with efficient floorplates and utilities but with a superficially 'classical' appearance. Bad classicism in this country doesn't come from dogmatic modernists; it comes from idiot clients and architects with licenses but no education and no standards for greatness.