something about hating michael graves makes me feel like an idiot

The O'Reilly Theater (Pittsburgh, PA) Michael Graves 1999 (Should be called the O RLY Theater, IMO)

Do people exist who consider this building strictly beautiful? Serious question. This is not an implication that beauty is or should be the premier objective of architecture (more a bitchy indictment of the above building for being, in this writer's very, very humble and n00bish opinion, actually strictly hideous).

There is something in my viscera that rejects anything and everything Michael Graves. When I see one of his pieces, be it teapot, adobe or skyscraper, my skin crawls. This bothers me for a few reasons. One, it pains me that I find post-modern architecture so intriguing in theory (in fact, reading the architecture chapter in a catch-all book of post-modern theory is what got me into the subject in the first place) yet so often repugnant in practice. Two, I have thought and thought about why this might be, that something as innocuous as a pastel-colored blocky building could fill me with such abhorrence, and come up with essentially nil. Three, this last fact makes me feel like a predictable, spontaneous idiot.

Could it be that I am a child of the 80s, and was glutted with architecture (vaguely) of this type in my youth? Maybe, but that's hardly an explanation in itself. I do find his style unimaginative, often plundering architecture I adore (Art Deco, for example) of everything but its uncanny splendor. Perhaps that's it, just an Art Deco beef blown way out of proportion. In my notes about Graves, I have scrawled "followers have ruined the world, basically." I don't really believe this, but perhaps the fact that every boring, cookie-cutter strip mall in my part of the world looks like a Graves homage explains a kernel of my loathing. I know that none of these "explanations" are fair critiques of Graves or his buildings, but the feeling that he is an evil presence lives on unwounded in the chinks and crannies of my mind.

And something really wrenches my guts about that bromidic pastel blue he repeatedly coats his shit in.

Your Graves opinions? Ever hated an architect's work for no discernible reason?

Kengo Kuma: "Architecture is like sushi."

Recovering postmodernist Kengo Kuma railed against mass production, industrialization and Frank Gehry while speaking at the Royal Academy of Arts this July, stating that contemporary architecture would do well to take a cue from Japanese cuisine: "Sushi is a good metaphor for my architecture. The importance in sushi is to choose the best material from the place, in season. If the journey of the ingredients is too long, the taste of the sushi is compromised. That is a problem that can't be solved by modern technology, and that programme of using local material in season is the secret of good taste, and the secret of my style."

This praise of the natural and inhabitable structure is pretty rich talk coming from the man who once designed this (one can't get much more divorced from day-to-day life than a building shaped like a massive Doric column, can one?), though Kuma's newfound devotion to organic inspiration is clearly apparent in the similarities between his inflatable teahouse (pictured above) and an ika roll.

Full article from The Architects' Journal here.