road report

So I'm down here in Dallas (okay, actually Plano, Texas) for the wedding of a couple of friends of ours. One thing I've noticed, architects down here are very odd - or perhaps their clients are. I've seen two of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen - unfortunately, the batteries died on our camera before I could get good (bad) pictures. (Then again, around here there's simply no place that isn't five freeways on top of one another, so it's not as if I could have found anywhere to photograph from anyway.)

I'm forced, therefore, to use images I've found online which don't convey anywhere near the full horror of these buildings. First up is the Embassy Suite near DFW, which looks rather as if ten to twenty Mediterranean villas perished in a terrifying multi-villa pileup. You know how a rhinoceros might look cute from, oh, half a mile away? (Actually, baby rhinos look rather like large, ambulatory footballs - and in fact are quite cute.) Then imagine that as you get closer, its hideous rhinocerocity becomes more and more apparent, until you're face to face with a big, pachydermous, dropkick argument against "Intelligent Design." Something similar is the case as one approaches this hotel - except there's never even a chance you'd think the building is attractive. And the closer you get, the more its full horror comes into view, until you're wishing you had lots and lots of dynamite on hand to improve its appearance.

Second is the Frisco RoughRiders' (already getting points off for the oh-so-modern intercapitalization) baseball stadium (Frisco's a northern Dallas burb). The Renaissance, as is well known, arose when artists rediscovered the glory of classical design, its form, order, and utility, and strove to emulate it in their own work, even while deeply believing they could never achieve its full glory. This stadium instead makes one imagine that its architects believed wholeheartedly that the utter pinacle of architectural genius and inspiration breathes forth from the sacred architectonics of the suburban McMansion - and that, all Modernist-like, the essence of the McMansion form is a quality known by the ancient Romans as fuckinghugiosity, and that their sworn duties were to strive to achieve that form. So, the Frisco minor league ballpark looks rather like the most gargantuan, horrifying suburban monstrosity every conceived. What you can't see in this picture is the multiplying series of - I dunno, buttresses, cornices, flanges, offhandles (despite this blog's title, I'm no architect) - that imbricate in horripilating complexity beyond reason. It's like a Godzilla-type movie with a nuclear-irradiated gigantic mutated Cape Cod or something. Just terrifying.