What Really Weird Building Does Each City Need?

[Troubadour]

Every city needs a WTF building: Something beautiful and attractivee, but still way off-kilter with the ordinary course of architecture and design. I had been very enthusiastic about the Chicago Spire because I'd felt that it was perfectly appropriate for the city - a shining white narwhal tusk sticking up out of the frozen Northern ground of Chicago. The Beekman (aka New York by Gehry) may turn out to be the WTF building for its part of the city. But we shouldn't treat even these as set in stone. Dream up some WTF buildings that would best fit various cities - New York, LA, SF, Houston, Boston, Paris, Tokyo, Melbourne, etc. etc.

Speaking for LA, I think my city could very much benefit from a pyramid as a WTF building - preferrably a pyramid with actual stone walls rather than glass. The interior could be kept much cooler through completely passive means. What kind of WTF buildings would you envision for your city?

[C.Lan]

I'm of two minds on this. Trying to create an off-kilter structure within a structured design is usually a great way to create progress. To make a city's architecture progressive rather than retrospective, you need to go outside 'the box' in certain ways. Tell philippe nouvel about that: he's already been through the maze with his verre tower. You might think of the chicago 'spire' as a tusk rising from a frozen exterior, but in fact there was careful design in certain aspects of its implementation. How you see a design sometimes doesn't measure to the design elements that are behind how it takes place. I wouldn't say that the beekman is a wtf building, in the way you see it: more an attempt at pushing innovation within its intricate surroundings. Feel about a structure based on its design how you will aesthetically, but there are mechanics behind that design. Through design innovation, we can change aspects of skyline meaning through the future. How that innovation will take place has largely to do with language and engineering simultaneously, and you can read between the lines, if you will. I don't have a great specific example of a 'wtf' building outside the bizarre pyongyang building pictured in another thread: very outside the box, using unusual tactics in design innovation, based around its core structure as an antennae of sorts for telecommunications. See how its capital use works out, and you might see the ways in which innovation might be attempted.

[Kanto]

There are two sides to unconventional design. Unconvential design can either be beautyfull (like SWFC or like 2WTC) or it can be ugly (like Rungyong hotel or Abraj al-Bait). I think that if it's a beautyfull unconventional design, it is an awesome addition to a city. However, developers must be cautios to not build an ugly unconvential design.

[TinnitusClock]

Yes, every building certainly needs its unusual structures to give it distinction as an actual complex and multifaceted entity. I don't know what i'd consider the best wtf building in my city (N.O.). But it might be "Phase 3 of Canal Place" even though that's just a proposal. We don't know how that would actually turn out as a building. (Must they build this when recovery after katrina took so long, and when it opened up retail in november the shopping had been completely renovated?) Together here as a city we look for new and innovative solutions to recover from katrina and "wtf" buildings are certainly part of that, though. Stop building and you might stop city growth, and you have to think about what that city really needs and wants and cares for in its skyline. I don't know if perhaps our wtf building might be the trump one, for example; "wtf" might explain why it's been so long delayed. Miss seeing that construction completed, truly, as it would speed recovery. You raise an interesting point basically.