I think the joke shouldn't be intrusive. An addon to the existing structure. As an example, there is this building in my city, which has a morse code made from the windows with the name of the architecture firm and it's workers involved in the project. The discovery was made 30 years later, and I find it really funny.
There’s a story in Boston (possibly apocryphal) about the “McKim” building at the Boston Public Library, where below each arched window the stone is made up of names of great authors, artists, philosophers, poets, etc. The stone cutters were given the list of names and told to fit them, at a certain scale, around the building’s façade. They sketched the names out, revealing their own names as acrostics within the random names. The builders (or the architect or one of the assistants) spotted the clever trick and made them lay them out again without the acrostics. I have always that was a good, funny story.
I think you mean subtle. Windows that can only be placed within a pattern of Morse code definitely IS intrusive to the design and function of the building.
While I like this notion, I'm not an architecture buff and don't like the idea that a joke can only be valid if it's for only people with a specific passion. I like inside jokes as much as the next guy, but I also like goofy exaggerated jokes when they're played in an intelligent way. Humor is for everyone
I think in general that's the issue, but on the other hand those buildings that were made to look like they were already broken honestly remain interesting to this day. I guess the point is that the joke can't be all there is to it, it also has to be interesting on it's own merits.
I lived a few blocks away from the Woolworth building for many years. An elder elevator operator (yes, still existed in the 1980s) struck up a conversation when I marveled at their majestic golden atrium. He took me to the main entrance, which was filled with appropriately decorated neo-medieval bas-reliefs of images of different workers that supported the architecture of the architect Cass Gilbert. My guide pointed to a tiny figure far in the corner, an ornamental gray figure that nearly cost Gilbert his job. It was a carving of a little man holding out -- a nickel, a little in-joke about his boss being a monumental nickel-and-dime operator. So when Gilbert was escorting his commissioner to show his architectural achievement for the first time to Frank Winfield Woolworth himself, Gilbert tried to whisk him through this gothic arch entry. But, Woolworth slowed way down, to admire the craftwork, and to Gilberg’s consternation, eventually saw the little imp statue -- turned around, and smiled at Gilbert. Sometimes, all you need is a good detail.
Early department stores tried very hard to bring a sense of luxury and wonder to the towns, though they weren't as crazy as theaters often were. I love the old picture palaces for their commitment to a theme--they were successfully luxurious but also lighthearted. It's a great combo.
"Philosophers such as Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and others locate the essence of humour in..." I'm trying to work out if this is a subtle meta-joke on (or by) three of the most miserable philosophers in history,😀.
Kant forced his guests at his lunch invitations to tell jokes during dessert. No sincere topics were allowed after the main course in order to part in a good mood. And Schopenhauer's aphorisms are actually quite funny - albeit in a nihilistic way.
I remember Kant being unbelievably boring and sorta uppity, while Schopenhauer was more of a typical Reddit neckbeard, but better in every way since he didn't use Reddit. So, I wouldn't describe either as miserable. Maybe Søren Kierkegaard was miserable, but I really don't know much about his life to tell. Nietzsche was hands down the most miscerable philosopher... of those born in the second millenium...
Just because a philosopher discusses misery at length, and even says that life is misery in some form, does not mean the philosopher is miserable or humorless. Schopenhauer may have said that life was a pendulum between the boring and the horrible, but he also talked at length about how the little things, like humor, are what make life worth living.
So I moved to Los Angeles in the mid 80s and Gehry’s personal home, where he left a bunch of the construction equipment, chain link fence, and piles of dirt on-site as a part of the final design was a hot topic. It was certainly funny, though the neighbors were not thrilled. All I can think now is that he lived in the only neighborhood in LA without a homeowners association😃 So is Phillip Johnson’s AT&T building in New York a joke that didn’t age well or bad taste from the get go. Great video Stewart, makes my Thursday morning.
Friends of ours lived in Santa Monica and were instrumental in persuading Gehry to fence the site to kid-proof it during construction. I was working at an architectural firm (Gensler) and was able to set up a site visit just before the Gehry family moved in. While the other young architects were marvelling at Gehry's innovations, my non-architect and very practical wife pointed out how unsafe the exposed nails in the deconstructed walls would be and how impossible it would be to clean the kitchen's macadam flooring. And I kind of like Johnson's AT&T building. A broken pediment seems as good a way as any to top off a building.
@@willyummiest great story, from someone directly involved, I appreciate you adding it. I was in my last year in New York when the AT&T building was completed, it sort of rubbed my Modernist tendency wrong.
@@aes53 Well, post-modernism was at its height, .and Johnson was - I think - mayne making a little joke at its expense. Still a beautiful building, at least before they got busy with adding commerce to its base.
@@willyummiest I like the idea he was making a joke with the AT&T building. I remember really disliking it at the time but, like so many aesthetic things, it’s settled in to the NY skyline and I guess I would be sorry if it was gone.
As someone who aspires to become an architect, I think it must be really difficult to create funny architectural designs. This kind of joke can easily be outdated while the building keeps standing. But I find it really interesting to turn jokes and memes into architecture. Like the immovable ladder in Jerusalem. Imagine a facade with slightly inclined sections with horizontal intersections, that looks beautiful for the ordinary eye, but kinda funny for those who know the story. And, by living in Brazil, I have experienced some gems of architecture and engineering. Buildings that were doomed to collapse, but were still standing. In the same way, it would be really funny to see exaggerated buildings that seem to be on the verge of collapse, but are, in fact, incredibly steady, by abusing some complex engineering techniques and mechanics. I particularly love this aspect of architecture, the capability of turning ambiguous ideas into concrete shapes, and hope to find more of this.
I came across the Schullin jewelry shop in Vienna during my university study-abroad program. I photographed it and remember it vividly. My interpretation of the inset detail in the facade was that it is looking into the earth where the gold and jewels are discovered. I found it more clever and subtle than amusing.
I try to impart some sort of humor in all the projects im tasked to design. Its always that little odd detail that rewards the person viewing it for discovering it and it just adds a layer to the design that gets deeper the more things you discover. Great video as always Stewart! Keep up the great work!
My favorite "funny moment in architecture" is actually an old cartoon of about 50 years ago that I think came from "The New Yorker." It depicts a glass skyscraper using standard graph paper. At the bottom are crude drawings of door canopies with cartoon people entering and existing the building. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it online.
I really do like playfulness and lighthearted jokes in architecture, but one thing I thought of here is the new Little Caesar's headquarters in Detroit and its Pizza slice shaped windows. The look does end up setting the building apart from other designs with a glass facade, but The windows ended up being harder to produce than thought and delayed the entire project. It also gives me similar vibes to the twitter account UTBAPH (used to be a pizza hut), where the design choices suggest a narrow use of the building and if the building ever changes hands suggests at its old owners.
I think that this building is not really all that hard to change its use or owner, as this triangular shaped windows on front are not really that forcing itself - if I would see that building without knowing that this is headquarter of pizza company, I would just think "nice detail". In General this building is very neomodernist, I see this building as scaled up Masion Citrohan or Bauhaus Dessau workshop building wanna be. Front of this building also gives me the vibe of regional oriented modernist buildings in 70s in central asian republics of Soviet Unions. Modernist architects of that era in different -Stan (like kazachstan, Tajikistan etc.) created a lot of buildings that are modernist in their layout, materials, principles, but add local traditional flavor in facades of them, based on traditional gemetrical patterns of kniting of different nations of central asia. You can Google for example: Hotel Uzbekistan in Tashkent, Exhibition Hall of the Uzbek Union of Artists in Tashkent, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, Ministry of Development and Trade in Dushanbe, House of the Writers union in Dushanbe.
@@stewarthicks Do you know if this story is true, anyone? I had heard that Christopher Wren was told by a building inspector that the building needed support columns and insisting his design didn't need them. He ended up installing the columns, but if you actually go up the stairs you will notice that the columns are 1-2 inches below ceiling.
I think one of the best jokes in architecture is the Jaoul houses from Le Corbusier. They have very rude joints between the bricks on their walls, and the bricks aren't even really lined up, making it all look like some crappy building made by someone without any knowledge, be it around architecture or construction. Plot twist : Le Corbusier actually asked the masons to work the worst way possible and even required them to switch their place regularly to ensure that the bricks won't line up ! We're quite used to the imperfections on his buildings that gives them much of their personnality, but this goes a step further !
the presentation style on this channel is so pleasing to me. it feels like what I would personally strive for and I really appreciate it also, while I do appreciate this kind of humor, it's better to not be intrusive as another comment has said. it could be a bit insensitive to the functions of the building and is better left where it won't take up so many resources, eg a painting
I'm 1998, as a 5th year architecture student, I had determined to make my thesis project around "humor in architecture." The BEST Products buildings, the Longaberger building, and Frank Gehry's "Binocular Building" were some of the initial examples I could come up with, and I thought this would be a great thesis. Unfortunately, as you point out, architects often take themselves too seriously, and in this case, that manifested itself by most of my cohorts and several of my former professors all taking me out of it. 24 years later, I think yours is the first take in humor in architecture that makes me regret not saying "screw 'em" and just doing it anyway. Thanks for this!
I feel like the problem with humor in architecture is that it needs to be both clever and visually compelling. That's a tall order when you add in all of the practical demands of architecture. There's also the issue of the building still functioning in three dimensions. The best store with offset corner is a great example of all of these ideas done well. It's attractive and interesting. It's unexpected. It looks like it would be fun to move through, and it looks like an idea that would work well from all angles. The peeling façade? Not so much. Even from the front it looks heavy because of the material constraints. I suspect it looks even chunkier and more awkward from the side. I'd also argue that it's not visually interesting enough to really balance out the awkwardness. I think the subjectivity of humor is also an issue. The majority of people can agree that a building "isn't awful." When you introduce humor though, that's a harder sell. What's clever and innovative to one person is an irritating gimmick to another. There's bound to be a lot more variety of opinions.
Lots of fun and jests in architecture. Moshe Safdie's addition to the old Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) City Hall had a tower in the shape of a seat in the design - a reference to the seat of power/authority? Supposedly it was to be descoped due to budget cuts, but he sued to protect the integrity of his design. As a compromise, the structure of the tower was built but not clad, with a promise to clad it some day when budgets allowed. That joke was on Safdie as the City sold the building complex to the Federal government after the City of Ottawa amalgamated with surrounding cities and moved to another building.
My favorite kind of architecture is that which doesn't look like it was planned, like it was organically expanded as the community expanded. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but at my old community college there's a few buildings that look like this. Instead of benches, there are walls that appear to either jut out or have chunks taken out of them, and students can sit there. The planters are designed so they match the contours of the landscape. I think this is why the architecture of Earthships has been so appealing to me.
I think Venturi&DS Brown have employed (or even deployed) a lot of architectural intertextuality that is so playful that it could be considered humorous. Some of it is legible by perusing plans and discovering Corbou or even Palladio (the tartan grid)... However my favorite is probably the elevation of the Sainsbury Wing of National Gallery in London: you have this classicist looking elevation that has clearly been through the postmodernist gauntlet and on one side all the elements are gradually then suddenly bunched up, giving the impression that the facade is a curtain. ...which in fact it is, in a way. Always thought this was delightful, avec sa langue dans sa joue
Love this channel. Can you do a video, based on history or your experience teaching, on best works of architecture designed by students? It would be interesting to see a feature on how students move the industry forward.
I personally really love how builders of a small region in Russia(Suzdal) tended to defy the symmetry of usual russian buildings at the time(around 17th century) and now there's a sort of unique style to its historical heritage with some towers and churches build with very asymertic parts - now it became a differentiating feature of the place. Don't know if that counts, but here's that)
Carlo Scarpa was probably a little of both contraction and expansion. Casa Vecchio in Venice is a good example. Since the structure was for the most part existing, Scarpa could focus on some of details to an almost absurd level, even going as far as to prevent certain concrete elements from lining up together in a singular traced perceptual line.
I think Robert Venturi is a more modern example of the jokey nature that Romano seemed to capture. For the Vanna Venturi House he deliberately breaks rules and subverts expectations. The roof being divided at the peak, the arch over the entry opening being both broken and not resting on the lintel that extends far beyond the opening. I find this house to be a perfect example of the humor you're talking about and in a charming and indirect way that adds to the character of the home.
The Pompidou has an element of humour to it, with its functional parts on the outside not buried within its form. I think Spitting Image may have joked about it once, they engineered Richard Rogers own inner workings an put his heart, lungs, liver and kidneys on the outside.
I`ve made architecture school 7 years ago in Prague, and I`m surprised how all of your videos mention identical stuff we learnt. That manrist courtyard, we discussed it and how its funny. Those postmodern buildings, we were shown those. Exactly same photos. I`m just surprised how academic architecture is consolidated though out the world.
I find the Michael Graves' Team Disney building in California to be an example of "good humor." The Seven Dwarfs as Greek Caryatid's is pretty smart. The dwarfs "hold up" the building pediment providing a house for all of corporate Disney. One could easily argue that, while it may have "all started with a mouse," without the success of Snow White and her little friends the company never would have become the true cultural touch-point it is.
As someone who has spent their year developing a satirical way of analyzing and depicting future facade designs of commercial businesses, this was awesome to watch thank you!
I remember looking closely by the entrance of the Tribune Tower in Chicago and saw these creatures on the walls. They made me smile because of how odd it was that they were there. If I remember correctly, those were creatures from Aesop's fables or something. Anyways, I like to think the architect had a sense of humor being playful with the serious looking building.
A Gehry building that I find quite humorous is the Fish Dance restaurant. I'm not sure of the source of this story but a professor of mine said that allegedly Gehry and the clients had drinks and decided it would be funny if the restaurant was just a giant fish which is exactly how I would've guessed the design was decided.
As you gathered from the philosophers, humor comes from a challenged expectation, and one builds an expectation through rules or experience. For one who knows next to nothing about the discipline, I imagine literal jokes like the M2 building, the Big Basket, or the Best stores work best. Their fun comes from playing with the premise that The Building should aspire to a kind of order. To that notion, those works issue a tongue-in-cheek challenge which is approachable but I imagine not as evergreen as the Schullin storefront. That one has a similar effect on me as a sculpture mentioned in a previous video, the one which drew attention to the ventilation systems in office spaces. Thank you for another thoughtful Thursday!
The Big Basket has become a bit of a trial for the company that owns it because they aren't making much money anymore and no one else wants to have their office there (quelle surprise).
My undergrad thesis was based on parody as an architectural response/ language in contexts such as the vegas strip or gated communities in Mumbai that replicate neo classical architecture. Loyola college - Frank Gehry House VI - Eisenman Vigevano cathedral La Fábrica - Ricardo Bofill Caixa Forum - Herzog & De Meuron And a lot of post modern architecture I’ve been aiming to make a list and possibly come up with a classification as well but you’re so right, “talking about it kills the joke”.
My favorite example is the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. It is said that Wright designed the building with spite. The paintings are displayed at angle similar to an easel rather than the standard way museums display art and the ramp spirals around and up the building’s edge, leaving a massive empty space in the center.
I loved your analysis of humour in buildings. It got me thinking about the subversive element of architecture. The example you show of the building with a huuuuuggge Greek column has a particular subversive function. The use of the Greek column in modern architecture traditionally connotes stateliness, importance, tradition, solemnity, judgement. Greek columns are used in Washington DC to characterise the buildings of the state. They are part of the representation of power. Yet, when a Greek column is used farcically, it begs the question. Is this building stately, because it has a Greek column? Obviously not. It is a parody, but also causes the viewer to ask: why does a Greek column make something Government? Perhaps the use of the Greek column in its serious mode is also ridiculous. In other words, the parody serves to debase the pomposity of Washington DC architecture.
Well in the uk we have a place called the lake district, they can only use local materials to build buildings, and they have to use (obviously they can still uses modern tech) traditional techniques to create them, so basically all the houses look like 700 year old stone houses, i mean allot of them are over 700 years old, but i don’t think they are trying to establish anything or make a joke, just that the houses blend in with the landscape.
Great video as always! Although i feel like you forgot about one of the most recent contemporary architects to be in on the joke: robert venturi. The venturi house for his mother was a literal joke and direct countermovement to the exaggerated idealism of modernism and also started its own movement of ironic architecture: post-moderism, in which these classical element such as columns and pilasters are rediculed. There even is an interview on youtube with venturi before he passed away.
I remember a few videos back on how you mentioned about architecture and automobiles, and was reminded how architects would usually mould and create based on the car itself (i.e. mobility, open spaces etc.). I guess here is just another expression of creativity and in a way, mockery to what architecture is deemed as "formal" or "sterile". Really love your videos and how it gives a nice perspective of the architectural world through the many lenses you mentioned over the years :) Though may I give a suggestion, could you do a review based on Blade Runner's architecture and its supposed themes? :)
My favorite was the selection of large sculptures for the addition to the National Art Museum in DC. I. M.Pei, Carter Brown and Jean Dubuffet stood at one end of the room with a scale model of the addition at the other end. Jean Dubuffet crumpled up three pieces of paper and set them in front on the model to simulate his work. The site of Carter Brown rubbing his chin and commenting on how good the art work would work just hit my funny bone. After all the praise the work was moved elsewhere.
In regards to humorous architecture, here in Reykjavík there is a penis shaped shopping center that was quite controversial when it was finished as no-one thought to consider how it might look from above. It was featured on an Icelandic comedy show where the question was raised if there were plans to add spherical buildings to it to complete the look.
James Wines was my thesis professor. Funny guy. Architecture should reflect our society Architecture should absolutely have humor As long as the joke isn’t on us
My favorite architect is Antoni Gaudi, and my favorite artists are Picasso and Dali. Yet, I’m not good at creating abstract work at all!! Something to push towards and get better at.
Spot on with the quote that humor is the "Incongruity between what is expected and what is experienced." Designs like the Best store's fit perfectly into this category though more because they don't fit the economic model for a large chain store perhaps. With bizarre additions to post modern buildings aswell containing a humorous aspect. Such as Daniel Liebskinds add-on to the Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany. Even the Pyramids of Egypt proberly created a few chuckles over the millennia buy visitors after the awe had passed.
Maybe it's just a legend, but for me the funniest architectural joke arises from Bernini and Borromini legendary rivalry at the wonderful fountain of Piazza Navona...
I'd love to see you make a video about architecture in video game, for example Mirror's Edge Catalyst has one of the best (not necessarily good) architecture/city in any game I've ever played.
I think humor in architecture is natural as their is humor in all artistic mediums. It seems perfectly fine, and i think necessary to maintain its artistic value. Like if we cant express ourselves in our art then the creativity would get stifled. Im no architect 'irl' so i see some normal and modern styles of architecture and fine them utterly hilarious. I thought your video about cantilevers was a funny video until the end. I never understood the applicability of that kind of structure. So, in that unique and odd structures will always inspire me creatively. Thats why i dont mind the dated humorous buildings. Honestly the more dated it is the funnier it becomes to me. Like, especially if the goofy building stands the test of time. Humor built proper right there.
Eisenman's House VI, where the architecture implies a split through the middle of the master bedroom-splitting the BED in half-made me laugh out loud when I saw it in a magazine in the 70s.
I have always thought some of Philip Johnson’s later work was full of humor, especially the AT&T building in NYC, (550 Madison Ave. looks like a giant bedstead) and 500 Boylston Street in Boston, with its urns and spheres looking so much like a ball-in-cup child’s toy-just shake the building and try to get the spheres into the urns on top. I actually think a lot of post-modern stuff is funny, even when being serious.
I think there’s a great deal of difference between something being funny and something being a joke. Something overly self-serious can be funny and that column building can be a “joke” and not funny. Building jokes into the environment requires they be good jokes and I think the average person might think that an architect building jokes into the world is not only presumptuous, it presupposes that the joke is a good one. Someone like Wright can design something that’s funny yet tasteful or satisfying. Others look like “jokes” made up by the interior designers of the new family which moves into the Beetlejuice house, just garish and gross.
Great Video! A point about the Seagram Building. I'd argue that the beams aren't just for decoration, but provide horizontal bracing to the facade. Although they're probably exaggerated for that purpose.
i think Frank Furness of Philadelphia was an excellent example of subverting expectations. He's also my favorite architect so I always think of him as a great example of things :P
I would love to see your take on McMansions. Have you seen the McMansion hell blog? It’s all about making fun of the bad, shoddy architecture in McMansion houses. I think you’d enjoy it
Japan has a lot of funny architecture for sure. One thing that comes to mind is the hilariously longwinded project by one man to build the most insane concrete building in Tokyo, the building has little usability but is a fun experiment, just a building that doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's had to miss as it's just opposite Tange Kenzo's impressive Kuwait Embassy. Would love to find out more about this actually, maybe a video for when you inevitably travel to Japan! X-D I guess Japan is great place for experimenting and trying fun things as buildings have a quite short lifespan and people are less attached to things and never too hesitant to tear down and redo. Other fun ones are: the Gunkan Buildign of the metabolism movement that looks like a WWII battleship; the crazy Nagakin capsule towers; that one building in Shibuya that just literally a giant robot, the one that looks like a giant blob with a pool in the middle, Mine Ryuta lives there just google it to find photos.
Japan has some really cool looking domestic houses that will, absolutely, kill their owners one day. A lot of builders there seem to find railings on stairs superfluous. I'm like, come ON, you could at least tolerate a glass panel. But no. None. Straight fall, sometimes 20+ feet.
This is an interesting take. I am a contraction kind of guy, so never really gave this much thought. Can't think of a funny piece of architecture right now.
Please forgive my memory, as the building I'm about to cite was a church I performed at 20 years ago. I was a member of Millikin University Choir, and somewhere on our winter tour, I think in Iowa, we gave a concert in a sanctuary that screamed 70s. It had dark wood pews, dark slate blue paint slathered upon it's vertical, flat, plaster walls sliced with narrow, rectangular, stained glass windows. What struck me as funny was that this clearly modern structure had inverted flying buttresses spanning the aisles and landing on buttresses between the pews. They clearly served no structural purpose, interfered with sight lines, and shortened the pews adjacent to them.
Saratoga Battle Monument. The empty niche, facing south toward the battlefield, was originally for a statue of American General Benedict Arnold. Also nearby monument to his leg too.
Humor plays an important role in my architecture reviews as it helps explains, flaws, irony and occasionally genius. But it is rare when the architect's intent was to be humorous.
I am a consulting engineer and one of the projects that I worked on a few years ago was a new building for a homeless assistance organization. One of the organization's comments during the design was that the homeless often urinated on their old building and the architect should take that into account in the new building design. The new design called for round, exposed columns around the building perimeter with the main facade pushed in to create a covered area for some protection from the weather. The architect had the columns painted yellow. Coincidence?
I enjoy the uniqueness of the designs. There are far too many uninteresting buildings, so even if I don't find all visually appealing, they break up the monotony.
Don’t work that hard on the videos. Enjoy yourself. Express the quotidian life of architect and your architect friends. Why architects in US tend to be under appreciated, why builders are legally separated from architects and how it impacts creativity of design in US…. million of funny things a cool architect can address… thanks for doing this channel. I enjoy watching, even though I would prefer a higher level of abstraction.
Thank you for the video. Is it funny that I often found humor in architecture where maybe humor wasn’t the intention? Locally, an I.M. Pei designed building cuts across a courtyard and terminates at an acute angle that is quite obviously not usable. The first time I visited, I told my friends I wanted to be “cut” by the structure. Sadly, it seemed to have a 1-2” radius on the edge, so it was quite dull, deflating the humor of the building for me. Likewise, the first time I saw the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, soon after it was constructed, I imagined it would be this perfect amalgamation of geometric shapes bent and melted into amorphous blobs and facets with clean, crisp lines delineating them. While it all seemed to be a funny design, I was saddened to find joints that varied in size, shape, and spacing. The technicality of such a building seemed like it would be amazing, but it was more like a domestic truck built in Alabama or Mississippi than a German made Porsche or a Japanese made car with exacting dimensions. Maybe it was because I had just left the Getty, where everything was so clean and crisp and ordered -so much so that I felt uncomfortable in the cafe if my food wasn’t in line with the grid- but I felt underwhelmed by the curvaceous concert hall’s technical construction. In its own way, I felt maybe the joke was on me: Gehry’s and Pei’s designs looked quite technical, but failed to be precise.
Great video, as always! Fun fact: Giulio Romano actually painted some erotic paintings in the Villa Lante Sul Gianicolo (calling it Gian-Carlo could be a good joke though 😉) that the nuns of the sacred heart had to remove manually, probably by scratching them away, when they bought the villa in the 17’th century! Now THAT would be worthy of becoming a meme😂
Googie buildings shaped like giant hamburgers, pies and other objects from the mid 20th century are great examples of comedic architecture. They are still funny to see as jokes that are sarcastic and stating the obvious is always funny. Funny in various time of history and cultures.
Sometimes the builders are in on the joke... or maybe it was the architect? An engineering building for Conestoga (it was new when I went there) had three upper floors with the exact same hallway layout; the bathrooms in the middle, which were the walk-in style where you step forward and then left or right depending on whether you were a guy or girl (no doors). The second floor switched the genders, so I (and many others) would enter the wrong one by mistake (depending on which floors one was used to visiting most often if we happened to be in a rush and not remembering which floor we were on for a second). I wonder if they've been forced to change it back by now?
I Love Young-Architect projects, Like the Architectonic group that birthed something like the Pompidou Center. It shows the playfullness of a young heart, and willingness to break with tradition. As a young fan of Kengo Kuma in college I was shocked at his early work, but also had no problem Takasaki Makaharu, who designed a building that looked like the Kamen Rider. Or consider any famouse architect now and their early projects or their own houses seem more free and less stuffy than their current work: see Frank Gherry or Tadao Ando.
A joke in architecture should be more of an in joke for other architects to find. Like you said the joke can outlast the humor in it and after that it's an eyesore that will be torn down quickly as soon there is a change in management to ensure they don't get stuck with a historically listed building. So not only will you not be funny anymore you will be wasteful as well which the worst thing you can be for sustainable living.
Favorites I’ve visited that fit this category hands down anything by Antoni Guadi, but in modern architecture The Shard in London is sharp, and the The Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi is twisted. :^)
Have thought about this a lot too. The hegemony of 'good taste', conformity, respectability and seriousness in architecture. How you're expected to 'hate Hundertwasser' if you're an architect etc. What do you think about FAT architecture in that regard? Would love to hear your thoughts on 'taste' in architecture, necessary or unimportant, a marker of responsible consumption of resources or just boring? Maybe because the point of a joke is to catch you by surprise, it is in essence ephemeral, so when you try to solidify it in architecture, it invariably dies.
I wonder whether Hans Hollein's Schullin Jewelry Shop, could also be seen as an example of Japanese Kintsugi. Making a feature of the repairs to a broken pot by highlighting them in gold.
The Spanish steps are pretty funny. They’re so uncomfortably and oddly placed that you need to look down to keep from tripping, so that you don’t notice the view until you’re at the top, and then the view hits you all at once. It’s as if Michelangelo trolls you the whole way up ( made you look , made you look, NOW LOOK!). For the record, he appears to have had no sense of humor.
I think whimsy is something that could be greater explored in buildings . I agree with your observation that "funny" architecture is tied and limited to time and place.
Funny is fine, but it's more important for architecture, and the practice thereof, to be FUN. That was the hope I saw in Venturi and others. It was sorely lacking for a very long time before that.
I about spit my food out when I saw the basket. Growing up next to the basket and the legacy of longaberger was just the normal around here. Never really even considered the architecture of the building beyond anything more than a joke. No but seriously though they planned on putting banners up between the arches until one of the local guys said he was going to fly his plane through them. Sure enough he actually did it though!
Maybe it's not so much about architecture, but more about the clients - I always laugh about the competition for the tallest skyscraper. Those spires and stuff, just to get another 100 meters, I think that's funny.
I moved to a new city after architecture school and learned a Best building was located there. As soon as possible, I located the building and drove to see it's whimsical design! Nothing but a square box painted with different colored strips, just like all the other buildings in the strip mall. I was really disappointed.
I think the joke shouldn't be intrusive. An addon to the existing structure. As an example, there is this building in my city, which has a morse code made from the windows with the name of the architecture firm and it's workers involved in the project. The discovery was made 30 years later, and I find it really funny.
I would love to see that.
There’s a story in Boston (possibly apocryphal) about the “McKim” building at the Boston Public Library, where below each arched window the stone is made up of names of great authors, artists, philosophers, poets, etc. The stone cutters were given the list of names and told to fit them, at a certain scale, around the building’s façade. They sketched the names out, revealing their own names as acrostics within the random names. The builders (or the architect or one of the assistants) spotted the clever trick and made them lay them out again without the acrostics. I have always that was a good, funny story.
I think you mean subtle. Windows that can only be placed within a pattern of Morse code definitely IS intrusive to the design and function of the building.
While I like this notion, I'm not an architecture buff and don't like the idea that a joke can only be valid if it's for only people with a specific passion. I like inside jokes as much as the next guy, but I also like goofy exaggerated jokes when they're played in an intelligent way.
Humor is for everyone
I think in general that's the issue, but on the other hand those buildings that were made to look like they were already broken honestly remain interesting to this day. I guess the point is that the joke can't be all there is to it, it also has to be interesting on it's own merits.
I lived a few blocks away from the Woolworth building for many years. An elder elevator operator (yes, still existed in the 1980s) struck up a conversation when I marveled at their majestic golden atrium. He took me to the main entrance, which was filled with appropriately decorated neo-medieval bas-reliefs of images of different workers that supported the architecture of the architect Cass Gilbert. My guide pointed to a tiny figure far in the corner, an ornamental gray figure that nearly cost Gilbert his job. It was a carving of a little man holding out -- a nickel, a little in-joke about his boss being a monumental nickel-and-dime operator. So when Gilbert was escorting his commissioner to show his architectural achievement for the first time to Frank Winfield Woolworth himself, Gilbert tried to whisk him through this gothic arch entry. But, Woolworth slowed way down, to admire the craftwork, and to Gilberg’s consternation, eventually saw the little imp statue -- turned around, and smiled at Gilbert.
Sometimes, all you need is a good detail.
Early department stores tried very hard to bring a sense of luxury and wonder to the towns, though they weren't as crazy as theaters often were. I love the old picture palaces for their commitment to a theme--they were successfully luxurious but also lighthearted. It's a great combo.
"Philosophers such as Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and others locate the essence of humour in..." I'm trying to work out if this is a subtle meta-joke on (or by) three of the most miserable philosophers in history,😀.
Hume and Nietzsche would need to be added for that....
Kant forced his guests at his lunch invitations to tell jokes during dessert. No sincere topics were allowed after the main course in order to part in a good mood. And Schopenhauer's aphorisms are actually quite funny - albeit in a nihilistic way.
I remember Kant being unbelievably boring and sorta uppity, while Schopenhauer was more of a typical Reddit neckbeard, but better in every way since he didn't use Reddit.
So, I wouldn't describe either as miserable. Maybe Søren Kierkegaard was miserable, but I really don't know much about his life to tell.
Nietzsche was hands down the most miscerable philosopher... of those born in the second millenium...
@@DonVigaDeFierro ah yes, Freddy Nieztche the 21 yo gen-Z
Just because a philosopher discusses misery at length, and even says that life is misery in some form, does not mean the philosopher is miserable or humorless. Schopenhauer may have said that life was a pendulum between the boring and the horrible, but he also talked at length about how the little things, like humor, are what make life worth living.
So I moved to Los Angeles in the mid 80s and Gehry’s personal home, where he left a bunch of the construction equipment, chain link fence, and piles of dirt on-site as a part of the final design was a hot topic. It was certainly funny, though the neighbors were not thrilled. All I can think now is that he lived in the only neighborhood in LA without a homeowners association😃 So is Phillip Johnson’s AT&T building in New York a joke that didn’t age well or bad taste from the get go. Great video Stewart, makes my Thursday morning.
Friends of ours lived in Santa Monica and were instrumental in persuading Gehry to fence the site to kid-proof it during construction. I was working at an architectural firm (Gensler) and was able to set up a site visit just before the Gehry family moved in. While the other young architects were marvelling at Gehry's innovations, my non-architect and very practical wife pointed out how unsafe the exposed nails in the deconstructed walls would be and how impossible it would be to clean the kitchen's macadam flooring. And I kind of like Johnson's AT&T building. A broken pediment seems as good a way as any to top off a building.
@@willyummiest great story, from someone directly involved, I appreciate you adding it. I was in my last year in New York when the AT&T building was completed, it sort of rubbed my Modernist tendency wrong.
@@aes53 Well, post-modernism was at its height, .and Johnson was - I think - mayne making a little joke at its expense. Still a beautiful building, at least before they got busy with adding commerce to its base.
@@willyummiest I like the idea he was making a joke with the AT&T building. I remember really disliking it at the time but, like so many aesthetic things, it’s settled in to the NY skyline and I guess I would be sorry if it was gone.
The gargoyle made to look like a zenomorph strikes me as pretty hilarious.
All gargoyles are a bit funny.
As someone who aspires to become an architect, I think it must be really difficult to create funny architectural designs. This kind of joke can easily be outdated while the building keeps standing. But I find it really interesting to turn jokes and memes into architecture. Like the immovable ladder in Jerusalem. Imagine a facade with slightly inclined sections with horizontal intersections, that looks beautiful for the ordinary eye, but kinda funny for those who know the story. And, by living in Brazil, I have experienced some gems of architecture and engineering. Buildings that were doomed to collapse, but were still standing. In the same way, it would be really funny to see exaggerated buildings that seem to be on the verge of collapse, but are, in fact, incredibly steady, by abusing some complex engineering techniques and mechanics. I particularly love this aspect of architecture, the capability of turning ambiguous ideas into concrete shapes, and hope to find more of this.
Don't give them more excuses for pointless cantilevers! Architects can't resist cantilevers as it is. It's some kind of serious addiction. ;)
I came across the Schullin jewelry shop in Vienna during my university study-abroad program. I photographed it and remember it vividly. My interpretation of the inset detail in the facade was that it is looking into the earth where the gold and jewels are discovered. I found it more clever and subtle than amusing.
As long Hollein designed two Schullin shops, the one with the crack is Schullin I :)
Yes, it's a vein of gold through the wall--and it's tastefully done for a jewelry shop. Very appropriate and striking.
I try to impart some sort of humor in all the projects im tasked to design. Its always that little odd detail that rewards the person viewing it for discovering it and it just adds a layer to the design that gets deeper the more things you discover. Great video as always Stewart! Keep up the great work!
Thanks Dorian! Hope you’re doing well.
My favorite "funny moment in architecture" is actually an old cartoon of about 50 years ago that I think came from "The New Yorker." It depicts a glass skyscraper using standard graph paper. At the bottom are crude drawings of door canopies with cartoon people entering and existing the building. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it online.
Sounds like Saul Steinberg. Try adding that to your search.
@@rsablosky Thanks!
@@rsablosky Yup. That's the one.
Thanks for mentioning the SITE buildings for Best. Saw them in a book decades ago and haven't been able to remember the names since. Brilliant vids
I really do like playfulness and lighthearted jokes in architecture, but one thing I thought of here is the new Little Caesar's headquarters in Detroit and its Pizza slice shaped windows. The look does end up setting the building apart from other designs with a glass facade, but The windows ended up being harder to produce than thought and delayed the entire project. It also gives me similar vibes to the twitter account UTBAPH (used to be a pizza hut), where the design choices suggest a narrow use of the building and if the building ever changes hands suggests at its old owners.
Great example
I think that this building is not really all that hard to change its use or owner, as this triangular shaped windows on front are not really that forcing itself - if I would see that building without knowing that this is headquarter of pizza company, I would just think "nice detail". In General this building is very neomodernist, I see this building as scaled up Masion Citrohan or Bauhaus Dessau workshop building wanna be.
Front of this building also gives me the vibe of regional oriented modernist buildings in 70s in central asian republics of Soviet Unions. Modernist architects of that era in different -Stan (like kazachstan, Tajikistan etc.) created a lot of buildings that are modernist in their layout, materials, principles, but add local traditional flavor in facades of them, based on traditional gemetrical patterns of kniting of different nations of central asia. You can Google for example: Hotel Uzbekistan in Tashkent, Exhibition Hall of the Uzbek Union of Artists in Tashkent, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, Ministry of Development and Trade in Dushanbe, House of the Writers union in Dushanbe.
@@stewarthicks Do you know if this story is true, anyone? I had heard that Christopher Wren was told by a building inspector that the building needed support columns and insisting his design didn't need them. He ended up installing the columns, but if you actually go up the stairs you will notice that the columns are 1-2 inches below ceiling.
"Strategically undertheorized" is my new favorite phrase.
That DankLloydWright shout out. Felt. They really help open my eyes to the industry for a young person.
I think one of the best jokes in architecture is the Jaoul houses from Le Corbusier. They have very rude joints between the bricks on their walls, and the bricks aren't even really lined up, making it all look like some crappy building made by someone without any knowledge, be it around architecture or construction.
Plot twist : Le Corbusier actually asked the masons to work the worst way possible and even required them to switch their place regularly to ensure that the bricks won't line up ! We're quite used to the imperfections on his buildings that gives them much of their personnality, but this goes a step further !
the presentation style on this channel is so pleasing to me. it feels like what I would personally strive for and I really appreciate it
also, while I do appreciate this kind of humor, it's better to not be intrusive as another comment has said. it could be a bit insensitive to the functions of the building and is better left where it won't take up so many resources, eg a painting
I'm 1998, as a 5th year architecture student, I had determined to make my thesis project around "humor in architecture." The BEST Products buildings, the Longaberger building, and Frank Gehry's "Binocular Building" were some of the initial examples I could come up with, and I thought this would be a great thesis.
Unfortunately, as you point out, architects often take themselves too seriously, and in this case, that manifested itself by most of my cohorts and several of my former professors all taking me out of it.
24 years later, I think yours is the first take in humor in architecture that makes me regret not saying "screw 'em" and just doing it anyway.
Thanks for this!
I feel like the problem with humor in architecture is that it needs to be both clever and visually compelling. That's a tall order when you add in all of the practical demands of architecture. There's also the issue of the building still functioning in three dimensions. The best store with offset corner is a great example of all of these ideas done well. It's attractive and interesting. It's unexpected. It looks like it would be fun to move through, and it looks like an idea that would work well from all angles. The peeling façade? Not so much. Even from the front it looks heavy because of the material constraints. I suspect it looks even chunkier and more awkward from the side. I'd also argue that it's not visually interesting enough to really balance out the awkwardness.
I think the subjectivity of humor is also an issue. The majority of people can agree that a building "isn't awful." When you introduce humor though, that's a harder sell. What's clever and innovative to one person is an irritating gimmick to another. There's bound to be a lot more variety of opinions.
Lots of fun and jests in architecture. Moshe Safdie's addition to the old Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) City Hall had a tower in the shape of a seat in the design - a reference to the seat of power/authority? Supposedly it was to be descoped due to budget cuts, but he sued to protect the integrity of his design. As a compromise, the structure of the tower was built but not clad, with a promise to clad it some day when budgets allowed. That joke was on Safdie as the City sold the building complex to the Federal government after the City of Ottawa amalgamated with surrounding cities and moved to another building.
My favorite kind of architecture is that which doesn't look like it was planned, like it was organically expanded as the community expanded. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but at my old community college there's a few buildings that look like this. Instead of benches, there are walls that appear to either jut out or have chunks taken out of them, and students can sit there. The planters are designed so they match the contours of the landscape. I think this is why the architecture of Earthships has been so appealing to me.
I think Venturi&DS Brown have employed (or even deployed) a lot of architectural intertextuality that is so playful that it could be considered humorous. Some of it is legible by perusing plans and discovering Corbou or even Palladio (the tartan grid)... However my favorite is probably the elevation of the Sainsbury Wing of National Gallery in London: you have this classicist looking elevation that has clearly been through the postmodernist gauntlet and on one side all the elements are gradually then suddenly bunched up, giving the impression that the facade is a curtain. ...which in fact it is, in a way. Always thought this was delightful, avec sa langue dans sa joue
Love this channel.
Can you do a video, based on history or your experience teaching, on best works of architecture designed by students?
It would be interesting to see a feature on how students move the industry forward.
That's a great idea.
I personally really love how builders of a small region in Russia(Suzdal) tended to defy the symmetry of usual russian buildings at the time(around 17th century) and now there's a sort of unique style to its historical heritage with some towers and churches build with very asymertic parts - now it became a differentiating feature of the place. Don't know if that counts, but here's that)
Having lived in Columbus, I wondered if you'd bring the Laudenberger Baskets Building into this conversation... You didn't disappoint!
Carlo Scarpa was probably a little of both contraction and expansion. Casa Vecchio in Venice is a good example. Since the structure was for the most part existing, Scarpa could focus on some of details to an almost absurd level, even going as far as to prevent certain concrete elements from lining up together in a singular traced perceptual line.
I think Robert Venturi is a more modern example of the jokey nature that Romano seemed to capture. For the Vanna Venturi House he deliberately breaks rules and subverts expectations. The roof being divided at the peak, the arch over the entry opening being both broken and not resting on the lintel that extends far beyond the opening. I find this house to be a perfect example of the humor you're talking about and in a charming and indirect way that adds to the character of the home.
Definitely.
The Pompidou has an element of humour to it, with its functional parts on the outside not buried within its form. I think Spitting Image may have joked about it once, they engineered Richard Rogers own inner workings an put his heart, lungs, liver and kidneys on the outside.
Definitely!
I`ve made architecture school 7 years ago in Prague, and I`m surprised how all of your videos mention identical stuff we learnt. That manrist courtyard, we discussed it and how its funny. Those postmodern buildings, we were shown those. Exactly same photos. I`m just surprised how academic architecture is consolidated though out the world.
Yeah, I'm not always original. But I guess that's why I thought it would be good to commit to TH-cam.
@@stewarthicks No you are original! One of few architects on TH-cam! And this is great video !
I find the Michael Graves' Team Disney building in California to be an example of "good humor."
The Seven Dwarfs as Greek Caryatid's is pretty smart. The dwarfs "hold up" the building pediment providing a house for all of corporate Disney.
One could easily argue that, while it may have "all started with a mouse," without the success of Snow White and her little friends the company never would have become the true cultural touch-point it is.
just found the channel and i love it! keep up the great work Stewart! 😊
As someone who has spent their year developing a satirical way of analyzing and depicting future facade designs of commercial businesses, this was awesome to watch thank you!
I remember looking closely by the entrance of the Tribune Tower in Chicago and saw these creatures on the walls. They made me smile because of how odd it was that they were there. If I remember correctly, those were creatures from Aesop's fables or something. Anyways, I like to think the architect had a sense of humor being playful with the serious looking building.
A Gehry building that I find quite humorous is the Fish Dance restaurant. I'm not sure of the source of this story but a professor of mine said that allegedly Gehry and the clients had drinks and decided it would be funny if the restaurant was just a giant fish which is exactly how I would've guessed the design was decided.
I've never looked at design in this way you have opened my eyes to a new route in design thank you for this beautiful video
These videos satisfy an interest I didn't even know I had. Thanks for such amazing content!
As you gathered from the philosophers, humor comes from a challenged expectation, and one builds an expectation through rules or experience. For one who knows next to nothing about the discipline, I imagine literal jokes like the M2 building, the Big Basket, or the Best stores work best. Their fun comes from playing with the premise that The Building should aspire to a kind of order. To that notion, those works issue a tongue-in-cheek challenge which is approachable but I imagine not as evergreen as the Schullin storefront. That one has a similar effect on me as a sculpture mentioned in a previous video, the one which drew attention to the ventilation systems in office spaces. Thank you for another thoughtful Thursday!
The Big Basket has become a bit of a trial for the company that owns it because they aren't making much money anymore and no one else wants to have their office there (quelle surprise).
My undergrad thesis was based on parody as an architectural response/ language in contexts such as the vegas strip or gated communities in Mumbai that replicate neo classical architecture.
Loyola college - Frank Gehry
House VI - Eisenman
Vigevano cathedral
La Fábrica - Ricardo Bofill
Caixa Forum - Herzog & De Meuron
And a lot of post modern architecture
I’ve been aiming to make a list and possibly come up with a classification as well but you’re so right, “talking about it kills the joke”.
My favorite example is the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. It is said that Wright designed the building with spite. The paintings are displayed at angle similar to an easel rather than the standard way museums display art and the ramp spirals around and up the building’s edge, leaving a massive empty space in the center.
I loved your analysis of humour in buildings. It got me thinking about the subversive element of architecture. The example you show of the building with a huuuuuggge Greek column has a particular subversive function. The use of the Greek column in modern architecture traditionally connotes stateliness, importance, tradition, solemnity, judgement. Greek columns are used in Washington DC to characterise the buildings of the state. They are part of the representation of power. Yet, when a Greek column is used farcically, it begs the question. Is this building stately, because it has a Greek column? Obviously not. It is a parody, but also causes the viewer to ask: why does a Greek column make something Government? Perhaps the use of the Greek column in its serious mode is also ridiculous. In other words, the parody serves to debase the pomposity of Washington DC architecture.
Great explaination
Well in the uk we have a place called the lake district, they can only use local materials to build buildings, and they have to use (obviously they can still uses modern tech) traditional techniques to create them, so basically all the houses look like 700 year old stone houses, i mean allot of them are over 700 years old, but i don’t think they are trying to establish anything or make a joke, just that the houses blend in with the landscape.
The Best stores are some of the best things I’ve ever seen. Wish they were still around...
Great video as always!
Although i feel like you forgot about one of the most recent contemporary architects to be in on the joke: robert venturi.
The venturi house for his mother was a literal joke and direct countermovement to the exaggerated idealism of modernism and also started its own movement of ironic architecture: post-moderism, in which these classical element such as columns and pilasters are rediculed. There even is an interview on youtube with venturi before he passed away.
I remember a few videos back on how you mentioned about architecture and automobiles, and was reminded how architects would usually mould and create based on the car itself (i.e. mobility, open spaces etc.). I guess here is just another expression of creativity and in a way, mockery to what architecture is deemed as "formal" or "sterile".
Really love your videos and how it gives a nice perspective of the architectural world through the many lenses you mentioned over the years :)
Though may I give a suggestion, could you do a review based on Blade Runner's architecture and its supposed themes? :)
My favorite was the selection of large sculptures for the addition to the National Art Museum in DC. I. M.Pei, Carter Brown and Jean Dubuffet stood at one end of the room with a scale model of the addition at the other end. Jean Dubuffet crumpled up three pieces of paper and set them in front on the model to simulate his work. The site of Carter Brown rubbing his chin and commenting on how good the art work would work just hit my funny bone. After all the praise the work was moved elsewhere.
Excellent subject and explanation Stewart! Thanks again!!
In regards to humorous architecture, here in Reykjavík there is a penis shaped shopping center that was quite controversial when it was finished as no-one thought to consider how it might look from above.
It was featured on an Icelandic comedy show where the question was raised if there were plans to add spherical buildings to it to complete the look.
James Wines was my thesis professor. Funny guy.
Architecture should reflect our society
Architecture should absolutely have humor
As long as the joke isn’t on us
Interesting! I find your videos always engaging and thought-provoking. Thank you
Happy to hear that!
My favorite architect is Antoni Gaudi, and my favorite artists are Picasso and Dali. Yet, I’m not good at creating abstract work at all!! Something to push towards and get better at.
Spot on with the quote that humor is the "Incongruity between what is expected and what is experienced."
Designs like the Best store's fit perfectly into this category though more because they don't fit the economic model for a large chain store perhaps.
With bizarre additions to post modern buildings aswell containing a humorous aspect. Such as Daniel Liebskinds add-on to the Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany.
Even the Pyramids of Egypt proberly created a few chuckles over the millennia buy visitors after the awe had passed.
Maybe it's just a legend, but for me the funniest architectural joke arises from Bernini and Borromini legendary rivalry at the wonderful fountain of Piazza Navona...
I'd love to see you make a video about architecture in video game, for example Mirror's Edge Catalyst has one of the best (not necessarily good) architecture/city in any game I've ever played.
I think humor in architecture is natural as their is humor in all artistic mediums. It seems perfectly fine, and i think necessary to maintain its artistic value. Like if we cant express ourselves in our art then the creativity would get stifled. Im no architect 'irl' so i see some normal and modern styles of architecture and fine them utterly hilarious. I thought your video about cantilevers was a funny video until the end. I never understood the applicability of that kind of structure. So, in that unique and odd structures will always inspire me creatively. Thats why i dont mind the dated humorous buildings. Honestly the more dated it is the funnier it becomes to me. Like, especially if the goofy building stands the test of time. Humor built proper right there.
The Stata Center at M. I. T. is one of my all time favorite buildings. It was designed to look almost like it’s falling down. Very cool!
That's funny. I also commented about the Stata Center.
Eisenman's House VI, where the architecture implies a split through the middle of the master bedroom-splitting the BED in half-made me laugh out loud when I saw it in a magazine in the 70s.
I have always thought some of Philip Johnson’s later work was full of humor, especially the AT&T building in NYC, (550 Madison Ave. looks like a giant bedstead) and 500 Boylston Street in Boston, with its urns and spheres looking so much like a ball-in-cup child’s toy-just shake the building and try to get the spheres into the urns on top. I actually think a lot of post-modern stuff is funny, even when being serious.
My dad was a framer for a good bit of his life. He always said Architects were the guys you called when form was more important than function.
I think there’s a great deal of difference between something being funny and something being a joke. Something overly self-serious can be funny and that column building can be a “joke” and not funny. Building jokes into the environment requires they be good jokes and I think the average person might think that an architect building jokes into the world is not only presumptuous, it presupposes that the joke is a good one. Someone like Wright can design something that’s funny yet tasteful or satisfying. Others look like “jokes” made up by the interior designers of the new family which moves into the Beetlejuice house, just garish and gross.
Great Video! A point about the Seagram Building. I'd argue that the beams aren't just for decoration, but provide
horizontal bracing to the facade. Although they're probably exaggerated for that purpose.
The Beehive in Wellington, New Zealand, is worth a look.
Your videos are really educational, great job plus, you kinda look like a typical undercover cop in movies I’ve watched during my infancy lol
i think Frank Furness of Philadelphia was an excellent example of subverting expectations. He's also my favorite architect so I always think of him as a great example of things :P
Ok that's the first time I understood mannerism..I can recognize it but could never explain it
Love your work Stewart!
Peter Eisenman's Nunotani office building is an s-tier architectural meme
I would love to see your take on McMansions. Have you seen the McMansion hell blog? It’s all about making fun of the bad, shoddy architecture in McMansion houses. I think you’d enjoy it
Definitely familiar. Thanks for the suggestion!!
I loved those SITE Best stores back in the 80s as a budding aesthete teen.
Hi, love your videos. One of the funniest moments could be Adolf Loos entry for the 1922 Chicago tribune competition.
Good one!
Japan has a lot of funny architecture for sure. One thing that comes to mind is the hilariously longwinded project by one man to build the most insane concrete building in Tokyo, the building has little usability but is a fun experiment, just a building that doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's had to miss as it's just opposite Tange Kenzo's impressive Kuwait Embassy. Would love to find out more about this actually, maybe a video for when you inevitably travel to Japan! X-D
I guess Japan is great place for experimenting and trying fun things as buildings have a quite short lifespan and people are less attached to things and never too hesitant to tear down and redo.
Other fun ones are: the Gunkan Buildign of the metabolism movement that looks like a WWII battleship; the crazy Nagakin capsule towers; that one building in Shibuya that just literally a giant robot, the one that looks like a giant blob with a pool in the middle, Mine Ryuta lives there just google it to find photos.
Great points
Japan has some really cool looking domestic houses that will, absolutely, kill their owners one day. A lot of builders there seem to find railings on stairs superfluous. I'm like, come ON, you could at least tolerate a glass panel. But no. None. Straight fall, sometimes 20+ feet.
@@genli5603 Oh, yes, the Darwin model, great aesthetic choice!
This is an interesting take. I am a contraction kind of guy, so never really gave this much thought. Can't think of a funny piece of architecture right now.
Please forgive my memory, as the building I'm about to cite was a church I performed at 20 years ago. I was a member of Millikin University Choir, and somewhere on our winter tour, I think in Iowa, we gave a concert in a sanctuary that screamed 70s. It had dark wood pews, dark slate blue paint slathered upon it's vertical, flat, plaster walls sliced with narrow, rectangular, stained glass windows. What struck me as funny was that this clearly modern structure had inverted flying buttresses spanning the aisles and landing on buttresses between the pews. They clearly served no structural purpose, interfered with sight lines, and shortened the pews adjacent to them.
Saratoga Battle Monument.
The empty niche, facing south toward the battlefield, was originally for a statue of American General Benedict Arnold.
Also nearby monument to his leg too.
Your thumbnail game is on point with this one.
Architecture is often very whimsical … and the Gehry paper crumpling schtick is something we were doing in architecture school back in the ‘90’s
Humor plays an important role in my architecture reviews as it helps explains, flaws, irony and occasionally genius. But it is rare when the architect's intent was to be humorous.
I am a consulting engineer and one of the projects that I worked on a few years ago was a new building for a homeless assistance organization. One of the organization's comments during the design was that the homeless often urinated on their old building and the architect should take that into account in the new building design. The new design called for round, exposed columns around the building perimeter with the main facade pushed in to create a covered area for some protection from the weather. The architect had the columns painted yellow. Coincidence?
I enjoy the uniqueness of the designs. There are far too many uninteresting buildings, so even if I don't find all visually appealing, they break up the monotony.
Don’t work that hard on the videos. Enjoy yourself. Express the quotidian life of architect and your architect friends. Why architects in US tend to be under appreciated, why builders are legally separated from architects and how it impacts creativity of design in US…. million of funny things a cool architect can address… thanks for doing this channel. I enjoy watching, even though I would prefer a higher level of abstraction.
Working on that video now
Thank you for the video. Is it funny that I often found humor in architecture where maybe humor wasn’t the intention? Locally, an I.M. Pei designed building cuts across a courtyard and terminates at an acute angle that is quite obviously not usable. The first time I visited, I told my friends I wanted to be “cut” by the structure. Sadly, it seemed to have a 1-2” radius on the edge, so it was quite dull, deflating the humor of the building for me. Likewise, the first time I saw the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, soon after it was constructed, I imagined it would be this perfect amalgamation of geometric shapes bent and melted into amorphous blobs and facets with clean, crisp lines delineating them. While it all seemed to be a funny design, I was saddened to find joints that varied in size, shape, and spacing. The technicality of such a building seemed like it would be amazing, but it was more like a domestic truck built in Alabama or Mississippi than a German made Porsche or a Japanese made car with exacting dimensions. Maybe it was because I had just left the Getty, where everything was so clean and crisp and ordered -so much so that I felt uncomfortable in the cafe if my food wasn’t in line with the grid- but I felt underwhelmed by the curvaceous concert hall’s technical construction. In its own way, I felt maybe the joke was on me: Gehry’s and Pei’s designs looked quite technical, but failed to be precise.
This is the most serious explanation of a joke I've ever heard in my life
I genuinely enjoy the SITE Best buildings.
DAMN DLW and Loadbearingcolumn out here getting shoutouts
Great video, as always! Fun fact: Giulio Romano actually painted some erotic paintings in the Villa Lante Sul Gianicolo (calling it Gian-Carlo could be a good joke though 😉) that the nuns of the sacred heart had to remove manually, probably by scratching them away, when they bought the villa in the 17’th century! Now THAT would be worthy of becoming a meme😂
Googie buildings shaped like giant hamburgers, pies and other objects from the mid 20th century are great examples of comedic architecture. They are still funny to see as jokes that are sarcastic and stating the obvious is always funny. Funny in various time of history and cultures.
Michael Graves' Disney Animation Studio, where he uses the Seven Dwarves a column decorations. (Caryatids???)
Loved those Best store buildings!
Sometimes the builders are in on the joke... or maybe it was the architect?
An engineering building for Conestoga (it was new when I went there) had three upper floors with the exact same hallway layout; the bathrooms in the middle, which were the walk-in style where you step forward and then left or right depending on whether you were a guy or girl (no doors).
The second floor switched the genders, so I (and many others) would enter the wrong one by mistake (depending on which floors one was used to visiting most often if we happened to be in a rush and not remembering which floor we were on for a second).
I wonder if they've been forced to change it back by now?
Hello, how about the Stanley Tigerman portfolio! And, don't forget the outlandish Adolph Loos Chicago Tribune Competition entry. Precursor to Kuma?
The Chippendale AT&T building is a bit of a one liner~~
I Love Young-Architect projects, Like the Architectonic group that birthed something like the Pompidou Center. It shows the playfullness of a young heart, and willingness to break with tradition. As a young fan of Kengo Kuma in college I was shocked at his early work, but also had no problem Takasaki Makaharu, who designed a building that looked like the Kamen Rider. Or consider any famouse architect now and their early projects or their own houses seem more free and less stuffy than their current work: see Frank Gherry or Tadao Ando.
A joke in architecture should be more of an in joke for other architects to find. Like you said the joke can outlast the humor in it and after that it's an eyesore that will be torn down quickly as soon there is a change in management to ensure they don't get stuck with a historically listed building. So not only will you not be funny anymore you will be wasteful as well which the worst thing you can be for sustainable living.
Favorites I’ve visited that fit this category hands down anything by Antoni Guadi, but in modern architecture The Shard in London is sharp, and the The Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi is twisted. :^)
Have thought about this a lot too. The hegemony of 'good taste', conformity, respectability and seriousness in architecture. How you're expected to 'hate Hundertwasser' if you're an architect etc. What do you think about FAT architecture in that regard? Would love to hear your thoughts on 'taste' in architecture, necessary or unimportant, a marker of responsible consumption of resources or just boring? Maybe because the point of a joke is to catch you by surprise, it is in essence ephemeral, so when you try to solidify it in architecture, it invariably dies.
Thank you for acknowledging the instagram movement. You can also submit memes with the ton of stories you have
I wonder whether Hans Hollein's Schullin Jewelry Shop, could also be seen as an example of Japanese Kintsugi. Making a feature of the repairs to a broken pot by highlighting them in gold.
The Spanish steps are pretty funny. They’re so uncomfortably and oddly placed that you need to look down to keep from tripping, so that you don’t notice the view until you’re at the top, and then the view hits you all at once. It’s as if Michelangelo trolls you the whole way up ( made you look , made you look, NOW LOOK!).
For the record, he appears to have had no sense of humor.
I think whimsy is something that could be greater explored in buildings . I agree with your observation that "funny" architecture is tied and limited to time and place.
Funny is fine, but it's more important for architecture, and the practice thereof, to be FUN. That was the hope I saw in Venturi and others. It was sorely lacking for a very long time before that.
I about spit my food out when I saw the basket. Growing up next to the basket and the legacy of longaberger was just the normal around here. Never really even considered the architecture of the building beyond anything more than a joke.
No but seriously though they planned on putting banners up between the arches until one of the local guys said he was going to fly his plane through them. Sure enough he actually did it though!
Maybe it's not so much about architecture, but more about the clients - I always laugh about the competition for the tallest skyscraper. Those spires and stuff, just to get another 100 meters, I think that's funny.
I think those Best buildings look really cool, the subversion is refreshing because I never really see cool buildings were I live.
I moved to a new city after architecture school and learned a Best building was located there. As soon as possible, I located the building and drove to see it's whimsical design! Nothing but a square box painted with different colored strips, just like all the other buildings in the strip mall. I was really disappointed.
Phillip Johnson's ATT grandfather clock, 550 Madison Ave, NYC.