bink drove me out to a suburban World Market (like Pier 1 or other import shops) to buy gifts for Auntie Vi, and I asked her to stop when we drove past my favorite modernist office park, so I could take pictures.
Pentagon Park in Edina, MN, was completed 1967, in time to coincide with Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers––surely not the direction the designers thought the future was going to go.
Now empty, it looks like a movie set for a dys- or a u-topian tale, take your pick.
Below: one of the park's buildings, its steel peeling, from an era that envisioned we would never want to open windows again.
Pentagon Park in Edina, MN, was completed 1967, in time to coincide with Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers––surely not the direction the designers thought the future was going to go.
Now empty, it looks like a movie set for a dys- or a u-topian tale, take your pick.
Below: one of the park's buildings, its steel peeling, from an era that envisioned we would never want to open windows again.
Very striking, magnificent and stern. Kind of repulsive somehow or scary but in the end impressive. You can see the galactic humanist ambition in a building like this. Then you look at Victorian or an art deco building....different state of mind! Now we can't keep things straight--- tilted architecture with mixed textures for the age of the Internet.
ReplyDeleteSomewhat brutalist architecture which ended around this time. I actually like this type of architecture rather than the all glass buildings.
ReplyDeleteKirsten
MARZ: Yes, magnificent and somewhat scary ---could be a prison... or, a very cool & fun home with lots of interactive play toys inside!
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of the 1960's futuristic buildings in Star Trek "Operation Annihilate"--the Deneva Colony was meant to be utopian becomes instead the sterile setting for an alien plague--repulsive indeed!
I looked it up--you may know--it was filmed at the TRW Space and Defense Park in Redondo Beach, CA, which opened in 1961:
"Known as Space Park, the site was built at the height of the Cold War after the launch of Sputnik for engineers to develop a high-powered rocket that could deliver a nuclear warhead 6,000 miles away in less than an hour to virtually wipe out an entire city:
the intercontinental ballistic missile."
www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2011-dec-14-la-fi-space-park-20111214-story.html
Right--and now we are in the Age of Everything, all jumbled up.
KIRSTEN: I definitely like this better than featureless glass blocks too!
These buildings look cool on the outside but twice I worked in such buildings (UIC art library, SMU classroom/office) and I hated being inside them. They felt prison-like. Not only did the windows not open but they were so narrow they barely let in light and afforded a broken view at best. So while these look cooler from the outside, I would rather work inside a glass block building with their giant windows and great views. Also, I don't know if it's the norm...but all the UIC buildings seemed to leak around the windows: I think it was due the flat ledges collecting snow and water. My preference is always for any building whose windows open, which usually means going back pre-1960's. I want fresh air!
ReplyDeleteBINK: I remember what a drag these buildings were to be INSIDE---I too would definitely choose fresh air over cool exteriors!!!
ReplyDelete