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What in cod’s name was the architect thinking?

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Not only is DuCo01 an expert on jazz, dub, Early Music, the Dead etc etc. He’s also interested in architecture.

Yesterday I got a mail from him with a photo of the Indian National Fisheries Development Board in Hyderabad. It’s a doozy: a gigantic blue fish. Rarely have function and design entwined so harmoniously. I’d love to see some other buildings by the same architect. The Mammography Unit of the local hospital, the Sperm Bank etc etc

Anybody else got a favourite building which stands out due to its unconventional design.

I’d ask on Facebook, but I feel the AW is a far better plaice.

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Comments

  1. I enjoy architecture. I’d read about this house before we went to Prague and was keen to see it for real. Dancing House by Frank Gehry. It’s like a cartoon and looks like it shouldn’t be possible somehow. It’s good that we’ve moved on from the tyrannical ideology of modernism and architecture can be playful.

    https://flic.kr/p/zffSJR

    • I used to work in Ballina and time was you could view the vista from an observation deck situated right behind the prawns right eye. However, due to a surfeit of deluded/mentally ill (choose your adjective) people visiting in the belief the prawn provided a direct communication point with extra-terrestrial beings, it was shut down. Very sad, in more ways than 12.

      • Well, at least it’s still there…it was going to be knocked down until the locals kicked up a fuss and it was saved by Bunnings of all people. They spend $400,000 restoring it when they built a store right beside it.

  11. That’s an impressive piece of seafood, Mike.

    And then of course you’ve got the Sydney Opera House. Where I’ve noticed they seem to have some excellent world music gigs.

  12. When people say ‘I love architecture’ they invariably mean ‘I love looking at fancy buildings’. Nobody loves writing an outline spec for the refurbishment of an amateur football team’s shower block.

    • Not entirely true, I’d say.
      Mrs P is an architect who mostly does social housing; I’ve learnt to enjoy the beauty in what some might consider ‘everyday’ architecture.
      The joy is often in the details – a door handle, door, screw fitting, window reveal, or beautifully designed public khazi.
      I’d say lots of architects I know would see the potential for excellence in the design of a shower block.
      The problem is too often the client – good design costs more than off-the-shelf architectural mediocrity.

    • I’m with @ianp on this. As a fully paid up member of the Twentieth Century Society, I have been on tours of nuclear bunkers, leisure centres and social housing. On a recent trip to Amsterdam, while everyone else was at the Rijksmuseum, I was raving over a block of flats called Het Schip.

  15. I’m less than enthusiastic about the construction of all these in-your-face tall buildings that are popping up everywhere, just waiting to be used in the Mi or Bond film. But it would be churlish not to mention The Shard in That London currently the tallest building in Western Europe.

    It is, I will grudgingly concede, rather impressive.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqibkzSPgNA

  17. Hats off to you Cheshire for going to visit some more “ordinary” buildings rather than just the big flagship ones, I agree with you, they can be just as interesting.

    Small is also beautiful when it comes to architecture. I’m sure there are architects who are coming up with ingenious, attractive designs for something like “an amateur football team’s shower block”.

    Anybody got some more examples of that?

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