We know -- a tribute to the rear end of the '57 Chevy!

A Hershey's Kiss with heartburn?

Where's the doohickey on top?

Let's see: We've already displayed a house made of Lego bricks. Now we have a designer log cabin made of what look like designer railroad ties. When does somebody design a building made of toothpicks?

We have neglected the great ARCH of late but we do intend to make snide remarks on some very recent masterpieces over the next few days. As Capt. Kirk said, "Promise!"

Architecture for POSTAL WORKERS.

Although it does seem to be missing "1st Floor", "2nd Floor"....

Didn't Eero Saarinen think up something like this before?



Okay Beijing Patent Office, what's the significance of the letters W and M? We were about to say this would make a great HQ for the William Morris Agency except its old trademark resembled an implement for cutting off hands, and besides it's changed its name.

And when do STARCHITECTS attempt translucent buildings?

What IS with these starchitects? One of these days they'll build an inverted pyramid. "Oh it's perfectly safe," they'll say. Who'll want to occupy it even with anti-gravity forces? If the pharaohs who built the pyramids wanted them that way -- but they had a lot more sense than STARCHITECTS.

You can sex it up with starchitects and sprinkle on some perfume and dress it in a diamond bracelet, but public housing will always look like public housing.

We celebrate that ARCHDaily! has "made it to the shortlist for Best Online Magazine at the Open Web Awards" [!!!!!] with...



...a new quonset hut in Rotterdam!

No wait, we got it: A PLATFORM HORSESHOE!

Why does the world need a kilometer-tall artificial mountain?!?!?

Produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg?

Not only can STARCHITECTS come up with pretentious buildings, they come up with pretentious reasons:

The big dilema [SIC] of this kind of project in the city is the public space, most of the times only approached at ground level. Francisco Mangado’s strategy includes public program along the tower, as a vertical boulevard.

After the residences on the first levels, we find a public lobby on floor 27th, with public services and restaurants, where the tower varies in section as you can see on the drawings below. We find more public facilities at the top, continuing with this openness of the program as the tower develops.

TRANSLATION: The sky's the limit if they're selling condos -- and how many of the owners will want the PUBLIC in on their fun?

Now here is a rarity: modern architecture that is humble, that strikes a new note while bowing to the past.

On the other hand:



A fine old building grows a third-rate factory and balcony-shaped zits.

Not too long ago we posted on some Depression-era designs for synagogues that suggested a library, or a bank, or a train station. This is the HIP! modern equivalent: the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. It says nothing except that we could afford a sexy starchitect.

Take out all the HIP! angles and it's perfectly banal.

SUPERTWEEZERS!!!!!



Doesn't this building look bureaucratic - in an award-winning way?



Where's the other speaker?

ARCHDaily! presents an INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE AWARDS WINNER!



OR: This is what happens when an accordion player tries fixing an HVAC system.

We call this one -- "A Starchitect Cracks His Knuckles!" (In DUBAI, natch -- and from an outfit called Graft Lab.)



How about, "Starchitects Rebuild the Berlin Wall"....



How about, "The Burger King Museum"!



And last but not least, Kazakhstan builds a tribute to the rotary electric shaver!

ARCHDaily! announces Hasbro Films is having a competition to design buildings for a new Monopoly® interactive game -- and presumably for the film version.



The moveemakers in Pawtucket could start with this one -- it looks like a HIP Monopoly® house!

Frozen Bird's Nest!

Overgrown lampshades in China!



1. Some League of Nations conference center; 2. A skateboarding rink -- look out for those cliffs; or 3. Twelve Fingers from the Dead (or possibly all three).



That Lego house may be gone but its...spirit lives on.

This is PRECISELY what that OLD FOGIE the Prince always has in mind.

This is also the formerly Great Britain's version of TILTED ARC.

And it's named DARWIN CENTER, which proves STARCHITECTS continue to DEVOLVE.

AwwwwwwwwSHUCKS! ARCHDaily! says that Lego house has to be demolished because the owner couldn't find a buyer.

Not even PEOPLE WARNER?

Well at least the bricks didn't go to waste; they're heading to charity.

Controversy is surrounding the latest design of the 400 meter tower for Gazprom, a Russian energy company. Designed by RMJM, the tower, known as Okhta Center, will dominate the skyline, towering over the spire of St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. The new design may actually become the tallest building in Europe, which begs the question that even though we have the capability of building taller and larger, should that be our priority?

The time will come when STARCHITECTS will design towers 10,000 feet high and a block square. Likely only STARCHITECTS will want to inhabit them.

Somebody tried to build a Moebius strip and got caught!

Hey kids! Y'wanna play with that house on the right?

Scary: the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, in Jeddah. It would have to look like a place where...never mind.

Now see, in the dark, some modern architecture doesn't look so bad.

Of course other modern architecture should remain as dark as possible.

I believe I can FLYYYYYYYyyyyyyyyYYYYYYYyyyyyyyyyyyyyYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY....

(Yep, another Shanghai expo pavilion!)

AND:



I'll take 300 Big Macs, 400 large fries, and...how about a couple hundred Quarter Pounders for my little friend here!

(A police station in Taipei!)

SO, when the team wins the championship we'll have the confetti already in place!

We've said before that our age can't honor the past because we've systematically taken our collective memory and tossed it overboard. New York's on-site memorial to 9-11 is a dead end you'd never be stuck in at night. I know it has to be below ground but what's wrong with some light, and air, and hopefulness?

Here we thought we had something new poking fun at ARCHDaily and the Brits have a trade journal that's been doing the same thing for four years!



This was NOT the winner of the Carbuncle Cup, but there is something so very -- British in its...whimsy.

Woodlands Manor in Belfast by Coogan & Co also had architectural aspirations, said the judges, but they rather wished it hadn’t.

We KNOW, we know.

(First link via the usual AHTSJournal)

Okay, this is a decent looking farmhouse -- but who ever spent $200 million on a farmhouse?

OHHHH, this is East Hampton! Don't a lot of brokers live there?

Someone painted over the ricky-ticky-stickies!

This will be the Chinese pavilion at that Shanghai expo. It is fraught with unintended symbolism. Consider how the Chinese government rules. Then look at this structure. Consider further that China frequently has earthquakes. NUF SAID.

AND:



This would be a better building for Iceland than that KFC.

Yep, that's a KFC in Iceland, and the design is apt because it looks like an Arte Moderne igloo, and it's black in honor of the country the Icelanders burned to the ground.

A spaceship? A boat for Mars? An airplane? Or just MORE BAD STARCHITECTURE?

Here's a house built from Legos. Considering how much Legos cost the owner can never sell it at a profit.

Unless the TWXSTERS feature it in their LEGO MOVIE.

You know, you didn't have to put the fence that high up.

The Hungarian exhibit at this Shanghai expo -- OR: COMMUNISM IS BACK!!!!!

Hungary inveiled the design for their pavillion for next year’s Shanghai World Expo, designed by Tamás Lévai. Gömböc, as a hungarian invention, is the central element of the exhibition, a two meter high solid plexiglass moving object.

What is Gömböc (pronounced as ‘goemboets‘)? [How about gumbo for honorary Cajun country? --ED] ‘Gömböc’ is the first known homogenous object with one stable and one unstable equilibrium point, thus with two equilibria altogether on a horizontal surface. It can be proven that no object with less than two equilibria exists. The discovery of the inaccessible path has led to the idea of GÖMBÖC. The pavilion as wood is intended to represent this path, and since it is of immaterial nature [unless one of those sticks falls down vertically], we are trying to evoke it with non materials: empty space, light and sounds.

TRANSLATION: COMMUNISM IS BACK!!!!!

The other day we mentioned synagogues that weren't built thanks to the Great Depression, and how they looked like anything. This -- building could be a what? A factory? A library? A research lab? It's a school, actually. Part if the problem with starchitecture is that starchitects are so enamored of themselves they leave no sense of place, and their buildings could be anything.

The visa section of the Swiss Embassy in Beijing? The automotive section of a Kmart!

Keeping in mind this is optimally photographed, we'll admit not EVERYTHING from the starchitect crowd has to be a practical joke.