The Cranky Professor

Do you really like it? I can't see anything remotely beautiful about it. Actually I find it horrifying and eerie.

.....Well, if one must have sky scrapers one might as well have abstract ones without any touch of irony. Irony on that scale (like the Philip Johnson ATT building that looks like a piece of Chippendale) is eerie. Her firm undoubtedly MEANS the city view scale effects to be a little off; they're tricky customers. I find the pure edges of glass sky scrapers tedious - and not inspiring. I've never found revivalist style skyscrapers very convincing - I much prefer art deco. Reviving art deco isn't very interesting, either (and no one really does the terracotta tile work well any more). I'd like to know more about the structural system - Hadid usually does interesting things with those. But, finally, tastes differ. I like high modern, so long as they keep it to cities. I don't think there's any way to ruin a post-Communist capital. --MCT

It is a bit eerie, but I also think it is beautiful in an otherworldly, futuristic way. I'd much rather have the visual interest of something like that than the metal-and-glass rectangles that dominate so many city skylines.

Reviving old styles for new structures doesn't seem to work well in practice at the moment, if the new structures going up on my campus are anything to judge by (but that could just be poor design by architects who can't keep to one style or blend multiple styles well).

What's eerie about it to me is what is not abstract. It seems almost organic to me. I fear technology approximating biology, and not in irony but deadly seriously.