July 2004 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Welcome to the new student housing complex at Harvard's Business School, designed by cutting edgers Rudolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti. Notice the attempt to make this despotic corporate box sporty and playful with the arbitrary placement of windows. Interestingly the home page of the building's website, doesn't even show a picture of the building. What they're really proud of is the "green space and courtyard." Check it out:

Is that welcoming or what? Just take a seat under a 300-ton slab of concrete and steel and relax. . . like a pill bug under a hiking boot.

Oh, by the way, under these new and innovative seats are the complex's heat, ventilation, and air conditioning exhaust outlets. The human race's previous attempts to invent seats have apparently all been failures. The cutting edge regards all prior innovation as inadequate. However, it looks like they've done a pretty good job of perfectly emulating a 1953 federal low income housing project.

A big thank you Marcel Parnas of Cambridge, Mass. for alerting me to this specimen.