Those of you who've been to ALA in San Francisco may or may not know that there's a huge LED video screen that's *supposed* to travel back and forth along one side of the outside with various images--it's a public art project. Except that, in the 16 years since it was installed, it's only worked for one month. So now the city's taking it down...
bentley
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...and architecture newsletters and the like are suggesting that SF's full of philistines and isn't a proper city because they're failing to appreciate, I dunno, the value of a big black hunk of metal and plastic stuck to the side of a building. That's worked one month out of 16 years--but it's by a local starchitecture firm.
- walt crawford
Delighted to say that John King, the "Places" columnist (like an architecture critic, but not really) for the San Francisco Chronicle, basically called bullshit on this response today, suggesting that architecture has to actually *work*, not just look good. (Need we mention FLW and the virtues of glass joins in places where it ever rains, and wholly non-reconfigurable spaces?)
- walt crawford