More On The TCC Facade

I wrote this response to somebody on another site who professed to liking the TCC’s concrete slab facade I posted the photo of yesterday - and used it as a chance to ding modern-day traditional architecture (represented by the Carnegie now under construction in Sundance Square). Thought I’d share. Warning: anti-modernist screed ahead. Proceed with caution.

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Cleanliness and simplicity? I think I’d put more “coldness and sterility.” As was posted before, it looks like a close relative of an interstate retaining wall.

It’s this kind of stuff that ruins the public realm. I thought we learned our lesson from the ’70s, but apparently I was wrong. The “cutting edge” stuff still looks like inhuman bunkers.

Sorry. I’ll take the Carnegie over a million of these concrete monstrosities. The Carnegie doesn’t shut out the street with blank concrete panels - it invites people up close with detailing and friendly brick & stone and big windows to let people see in. It isn’t swathed in random strips. It’s the sort of place people will want to go. The Carnegie honors the public realm - it’s warm and inviting. The TCC facade thus far looks to be a dishonor to the public realm. This looks to be the kind of place that only architecture students will love.

(There’s nothing wrong with a “wannabe” old building. Modernists call them “pastiche” - as if that’s inherently bad - but they’re a pastiche of *good ideas.* Nobody seems to want to admit that so much of today’s “progressive” architecture is just as much a pastiche - a pastiche of *bad* ideas from the post-war scam artists of the International Style, brutalism, and others.)

The Carnegie’s no failure - the only failure here is the “Emperor’s New Clothes” nature of so-called “progressive” architecture.

Humanly detailed, friendly, approachable buildings shouldn’t be cast aside in the name of “variety.” That’s not to say that every building should be the same style - just that these buildings look thus far to have been the wrong way to go. Not only does it look to be a dishonor to the street, it looks like a dishonor to nature. This location could have given us something that harmonized with the bluff. Instead, they destroyed the bluff and plunked some concrete boxes down into it. So much potential. This could have been Fort Worth’s “Fallingwater.” In fact, it’s a shame Frank Lloyd Wright died - he could have pulled it off. This, on the other hand…