Can you fail to be impressed by the malignant stupidity
of this building proposed for downtown Louisville, the 61-story
Museum Plaza,designed by Rem Koolhaas's Office of Metropolitan Architecture?
It violates everything that we can reasonably expect about the energy-scarce
future -- most particularly the poor prospects for running skyscrapers
and megastructures. But even if that were not an issue, and even
on its own terms, what a monstrous thing this is! Its attitude to
its urban context -- just off Louisville's Main Street -- is so
disrespectful that the context is left out altogether in the rendering
above. You'd think all that remained of Louisville a few years from
now is a post-atomic-blast hardpan desert. Indeed, the aim of all
Koolhaas's work has been to confound our expectations about how
the city and its buildings ought to work, and to find ever more
innovative ways to make people uncomfortable, while doing
everything possible to disregard the public realm. Is it not evident
by now that the cutting edge of architecture is a razor blade
poised against our society's own throat.
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