This is an actual building. It is called the Crooked House in Sopot, Poland!
Polish architect of the Crooked House is Szotynscy Zaleski. It is actually the most photographed building in Poland. The building is 4,000 m2 and it is located in Rezydent shopping center in Sopot, Poland.
Do you appreciate this kind of architecture design?
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
I appreciate it very much. To build such a structure while maintaining its architectural integrity (safe, well-constructed, sturdy), is a real feat! And it has a strange aesthetic appeal visually too.
curiously, after some Vodka, the building seems to have again a straight shape.
It’s amazing what an architect can do with enough vodka. 🙂
I hate this type of architecture. This is what happens when an architect or architectural designer is merely an artist with no sense whatsoever about the engineering & constructability side of things. They only bother about their ‘articulation’. The structural engineering side of things becomes a messy & very tedious affair.
Has anyone seen that office building in UK which was designed to look exactly like a picnic basket complete with handles! Its supposed to tell the people the business line of the company. Utter crap!
to tell the truth….. not really
and I’m generally open to “art”
Actually, that building is in Newark, Ohio about 15 km from my home. It contains the offices of the Longaberger basket company and is, for the most part, beloved by locals
http://www.worldslargestthings.com/easterntour/basketbuilding.htm
… and, yes, I love architecture like this… if it is well executed.
In the late 60’s, a well known architectural Theorist, Robert Venturi, argued that the function of a building is as much to convey a message- that is to “advertise”- as it is to house some activity. To illustrate, he focused his eye on the city of Las Vegas, showing how buildings there are all about message. The most extreme examples of these were donut shops in the shape of donuts, and hot dog stands in the shape of hot dogs, etc. He, somewhat jocularly in my opinion, suggested the ideal of the modern building to be the “decorated shed”, that is, a plain, functional building whose exterior can be changed to suit the changing purposes within. This idea has, as we all know today, had profound influence on common construction. The deocrated shed is not what I would call an example of “well executed” architecture. Functional, yes. Elegant, no.
To my mind it is the buildings whose form and function co-incide in some way, not just superficially, but throughout, that are the most interesting and the most meaningful. In other words, a buidling whose every detail, inside and out, serves some interesting goal or goals (and mere delight is a goal), that is the most interesting to me. If, for instance, if one of the goals is absolute environmental friendliness, then the ideal building uses environmentally friendly materials, takes advantage of changing natural lighting conditions and whatnot… Done well, this would make an ideal building. If one of the goals is whimsy, then the building should be packed with small patterns and unexpected delights.
Brad Hoehne- Columbus, Ohio
Brad Hoehne- Columbus, Ohio
I was referring, with my comment about the basket building, to the statment made by the anonymous poster two posts above my own.
“The structural engineering side of things becomes a messy & very tedious affair.”
you mean the engineers actually have to work out something instead of pluging in the numbers in the same old formulas that they know since they got past their first semester in uni??
i on the other hand, detest an engineer saying “oh, it cant be built” and then you go and see it built someplace else.
(yes, i am an architect… yes, i work with engineers)
I appreciate it as a novelty, much the way I “enjoy” some unsound novelties in chess when other people play them. In other words, it’s interesting to look at, but I don’t think I’d want to walk into the building, much less live or work there.
Reminds me of the “Experience Music Project” (EMP) museum building in Seattle, paid for by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
The EMP looks like a giant guitar was slammed into the roof of the building, like Peter Townshend often did on stage.
G
I think it’s amazing.
What is there to hate about it ?
I assume the person above who hates it has some knowledge of it’s structural integrity?
I for one would not want to live it a world where each building was constructed to be merely “practical”.
I suppose if that were the case we could at least stop paying architects ridiculous amounts of money to design buildings. We could simply copy the most practical design. A very dull world for sure…
Each step away from the purely utilitarian makes a town or city much more interesting.
ça me donne le tourne
when i seeing this picture
I get some vertigo.
But it’s look interesting.
It’s great to have one such building in a city – it’s fun and will attract tourists and children. But any more than that would be totally unnecessary.
I adore it. At least from the outside. It makes me think of Alice in Wonderland and the appeal of nonsense and eccentricities.
-Sara
The truth is that this type of constructions is not difficult to calculate.
For years, maybe ten, there are in the market programs of calculation of structures and of finite elements that help you a lot.I have two.
Some years ago a house like the one that you see has been a technical hell. Today is simply necessary to make a net of finite elements simulating the form(that is what will have taken the architect a lot of time,maybe a month) and later there is software that do everything .Believe it or not.
The problem friends it is not “the engineers cannot do it” but “that house is really more expensive than a normal one because can´t be done so fast, because everything should be handmade”
Would you pay the price? Do you think that somebody would build a house that few people could buy? Come on! Construction is a business!
There is a place called Mystery Spot in California. It allows a tour indie the house – where you can witness some amazing illusions. I trongly recommend everyone to go there and try to figure out how/why the illusions happens. Great Fun!
Photoshop 11.3 Now works on buildings too 🙂
I think it’s a very clever building, although I would hate to bankroll the construction of such a building, depending on the interiors the building would cost at least five to fifteen times as much to construct as a ordinary one of the same size.