Ruskin

Seems like an appropriate quote in the context but a bit long for a strapline...

"see if it looks as if it had been built by strong men; if it has the sort of roughness, and largeness, and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness which seems always to be the sign-manual of the broad vision, and the massy power of men who can see past the work they are doing, and betray here and there something like disdain for it. If the building has this character, it is much already in its favour; it will go hard but it proves a noble one"

John Ruskin, "the nature of gothic" in "stones of venice", 1851-1853 (cut and pasted this from Seier+Seier's Flickr site which is well worth visiting).

Here's another which most architects would probably accept as their epitaph...

'I tried to draw a few simple lines on the sky; and now my will has to support a whole world up there, before I can do it.'

'The Spire', William Golding

The London Eye, Lambeth. Completed 1999/2000.

I'm probably being a snob about this considering how misty eyed I get thinking about the Eiffel Tower but, much as I admire it's execution, I'm not terribly fond of its presence.

Wikipedia tells me it was the highest observation wheel in the world when built, subsequently to be surpassed by this

image taken from giant_laowai's flickr photostream

'The Star of Nanchang'

Which itself was then deuced by....

image taken from thekindofme's photostream on Flickr

'The Singapore Flyer'

The Coral Reef. Mike Nelson at Tate Britain, London.

My only criticism of this stellar installation is that the title (and the discourse around it) seems somehow off target.

New Court, City of London, UK - OMA 2011

I've added that 'UK' to the title above as I note about 50% of the people reading this blog are not based in the UK, although you probably guessed by now that I wasn't talking about City of London, USA, right?

Rem Koolhaas's new HQ for Rothchild's investment bank is, I think - cool - but in a refreshing, dive into a crystal spring kind of way, rather than an aloofly yawning kind of way.

If you look at the OMA web page for the project it looks a bit like a different building and I think it's really more tightly wedged-in amongst the existing buildings than their images imply - although I may have missed a key angle.

Actually I did get one of the building's signature 'box on top'.