4/21/11

Hauptstadt der DDR - Danz Danz Reffolution

Postcard time, once again. This one is really cool probably because there's something wrong with me. Why are the buildings and structures of old East Germany appealing to me. An affinity for Brutalist architecture is something one does not brag about. The name Brutalist architecture sounds like an epithet that one would be tarred and feathered with, very much against one's will. You don't embrace the word. It's like saying "Have you tried having a prolapsed anus? Oh, you should. It's the best! In fact, I'm a prolapsed anus booster!"
But here I sit, admiring the clean, geometric simplicity and straight lines to be found in buildings beyond the iron curtain. I like the super tall street daisy lamps, and the merciless rectangles of buildings that could take a chunk out of your shin if you tripped on them. I like the communication tower that looks like an olive on a toothpick. I promise you, each of those buildings was filled with telephones that were olive green and weighed twelve pounds.

This postcard, if it were in color, and filmed in Supermarionation, would make a great set for The Thunderbirds., with the addition of some cars with too many wheels and a conveyor belt sky for shooting the chase scenes.
That Disney  concert hall designed by Frank Gehry? I frikkin hate the thing. I want to beat it up. I don't like swirly wave shapes that don't know what direction they want to go in. Usually they go nowhere. It looks like a smashed cake. Therefore, I am an inhuman  monster.




 So, I can look forward to more and more public structures that make my stomach turn, as more and more modern buildings are torn down to make room for them. I get what I deserve, because I am a terrible person for liking awful things. Shield your eyes, I may take on other forms.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Frank Gehry sucks. Wasted space. If you could put offices in those shapes, they'd all have a kooky curved wall with no windows that you couldn't hang a picture on. That guy's a jerk.

I stayed in one of those giant dormitories in the former East Germany. It was converted into a "luxury hotel." "Luxury" in this context meant "having a futon and a 12" black and white television." It was like sleeping in a telephone booth.

And when I came home drunk, I couldn't find the place because all the buildings looked the same. They had the appearance of being poured out of a gigantic machine, like "The Works" that the cat has to go though in that Warner Bros cartoon. "NO, NO, not the Works! Anything but the Works!"

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