Architectural Absurdity, or The Unbearable Lightness of Beams

Earlier this month, New York Times Art & Design critic Carol Vogel celebrated Frank Gehry's design for the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi art museum. "Stunning," wrote Ms. Vogel, "a graceful tumble of giant plaster building blocks and translucent blue cones…"

The accompanying artist's rendering not only belied Ms. Vogel's gushing assessment, they made a mockery of the very concept of architecture. Yes, Mr. Gehry has been innovative, even radical, with his  non-linear, non-right-angled designs: Seattle's Experience Music Museum, the Bilbao Guggenheim, and the Spruce Street tower in NYC, to mention but a few. But there comes a point where the envelope can be pushed no farther, where it tears apart from the pressure to outdo the designer's last radical design. The same way art critics seem utterly arbitrary when they turn mushy over works that many of us find meaningless if not plain silly, architecture critics seem to be tripping over one another to rate increasingly bizarre structures as bold statements of architectural vision.

A mere glance at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi's design reveals not a "graceful tumble" but a garbage can's pile of Chinese take-out cartons surrounding what looks like an overturned wicker basket and topped with what looks remarkably like a gigantic ear of corn. A strong enough wind looks like it might scatter this pile of shapes into street litter. There's nothing graceful in this mess, nothing one perceives as visually captivating or aesthetically soothing. Abu Dhabi Guggenheim demonstrates little more than design histrionics, a self-centered attempt to see how far the limits can be pushed before someone calls them on it. One can almost imagine Mr. Gehry sitting in his office, feet up on the desk, laughing at the gullibility of his audience.

Modern materials science continues to open marvelous new doors for structural design, and there's nothing inherently wrong with cutting-edge architectural design. Witness Santiago Calatrava's inspired design for the WTC Transportation Hub, Norman Foster's London Egg, or Tarald Lundevall's Oslo Opera House, each shown below.

  

But there are still limits, and Mr. Gehry's Guggenheim appears substantially to have exceeded them. Then again, given some of the other structures visible in Abu Dhabi, perhaps their tolerance for street litter is just greater than mine.

I swear….

In their relentless effort to infantilize and coarsen American culture, corporate marketers and Madison Avenue agencies have found yet another approach that no doubt garners sophomoric, Beavis-and-Butthead-like chortles from its couch-hugging audiences: the use of "near curse words." Reminiscent of those halcyon middle school years when every near-sound-alike and alternate-meaning word (e.g., abut,  abreast, erection, chit, asinine, edict, etc.) generated eye rolls and barely stifled guffaws from thirteen-year-old boys, the advertising world has reverted its catch-phrases to the level of snickering, pre-adolescent maturity.

So in recents months, Booking.com's marginal tagline, "Booking.dot yeah!" with its faint allusion (in sound and in the actors' behavior) to "Fucking, yeah!" has been joined by Verizon and Draftkings.com. Verizon's latest run of FIOS advertisements has been liberally studded with the ridiculously transparent phrase, "Half-fast," spoken with enough pacing by Mom, Dad, Sis, and little brother to make the whole family look like full asses.

Not to be outdone, the fantasy sports website Draftkings has come up with its own promise that lucky players can win a "shipload of money." More like a shit-load of hypocrisy, but certainly a phrase well-suited to the delayed emotional maturity of its fantasy-sports-playing user base.

It's apparently not enough that American television comedy has largely devolved to bathroom humor, sexual innuendo, and punch lines written by sixth-graders. That race to the bottom, with its nonstop appeal to the pre-adolescent intellect, has now invaded the commercial advertising arena as well. It's comforting to know that the unforgettable tag lines of the past--GE's "We bring good things to light," Gillette's "The best a man can get," Mazda's "Zoom zoom," Allstate's "You're in good hands," Coke's "It's the real thing," Wendy's "Where's the beef?", and Kellogg's (Tony Tiger's) "They're great!"--are being succeeded by "Fucking yeah!", "Half-assed," and "Shit-loads of money?"