October 2010 | Eyesore

Architectural Abortions from the USA and Around the World (And Sometimes Other Miscellany Infecting the Landscape)

Presenting the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, brought to you by real estate impressario Bruce Ratner. This basketball arena, designed to look like a Little Debbie Peanut Butter and Coconut Snack Cake, was designed by Ellerbe Becket and SHoP Architects. (Notice the "playfulness" of the SHoP logo (subtext: "...we're all babies now...!"). Perhaps basketball players live on Little Debbie Cakes. I don't know. But the cherry-on-top of the whole deal is the so-called "plaza" in the foreground -- a leftover triangular scrap of undevelopable real estate that Mr. Ratner threw to the people of Brooklyn as a bone to dogs. Lovely spot, huh, sandwiched, as it is, between about eleven lanes of traffic.