Like a domestic utensil, as though to be held in some giant hand

“The typical starchitect building is without a façade or an orientation that it shares with its neighbours. It often seems to be modelled like a domestic utensil, as though to be held in some giant hand. It does not fit into a street or stand happily next to other buildings. In fact, it is designed as waste: throwaway architecture, involving vast quantities of energy-intensive materials, which will be demolished within 20 years.

Townscapes built from such architecture resemble landfill sites: scattered heaps of plastic junk from which the eye turns away in dejection. Gadget architecture is dropped in the townscape like litter, and neither faces the passer-by nor includes him. It may offer shelter, but it cannot make a home. And by becoming habituated to it we lose one fundamental component in our respect for the earth.”

—Roger Scruton

Scruton’s commentary sums up many of my own thoughts on contemporary iconic buildings fairly well. His description of these buildings as ‘domestic utensils’ is brilliant, but I do take issue with his listing of Adams or Terry as the alternative. Style is not the problem— the problem is our infatuation with ‘cool’ as a product of a scaleless object.

Nanjing Sifang Art Museum by Stephen Holl, photo by Iwan Baan

The inhumanity of these buildings derives from the same source as their appeal: scalelessness. Ultimately, we will look back at these structures in the same way we look at brutalist concrete from the 1970s, with the obvious and glaring exception that our newer materials are less durable.

Hotel in Tunisia via ArquitecturB

In the next generation, will our newest expensive and alienating structures be thrown away, or will they will consume more resources to maintain their alien appearance?