The color scheme of the window is golden, and red lanterns have been hung on the street lamps, and the Spring Festival is coming.
Somehow, whenever this festive season comes, I can't help but think of the Chinese internet-famous building "Fulu Shou Building". This colorful hotel located in Yanjiao, Hebei Province, once won the Guinness Book of World Records for "the largest pictographic building" and won the Guinness Book of The Best Project Award, which really makes people feel red-hot trance:
There are many ugly buildings in this world, and those that force pictograms are particularly funny. They are not only the bottom of architectural aesthetics, the nightmare of designers, but also the most typical negative teaching materials of modernist architecture - pictographic buildings usually give people the impression of "over-emphasizing appearance", which is indeed not in line with the basic principle of "form following function" of modern architectural design.
But, of course, not all pictographic buildings are bad. Whether the material is suitable, whether the appearance is in harmony with the surrounding environment, whether the appearance matches the internal function, and whether it is competent for the role it assumes are all important criteria for judging architectural aesthetics. There are still many cute and meaningful pictographic buildings in the world, and people can't help but stop or stop, and they want to take a picture with it.
The buildings described in this article are accompanied by detailed addresses. One day in the future, when you have the opportunity to make a special trip or happen to pass by, you can shout wow ヽ (°▽°) ノ
coffee pot
Coffee Pot
Pennsylvania, USA
Bedford
Pitt st. crosses under 220
Cute pictographic buildings have the potential to become popular punch points, and the "coffee pot" in Bedford, Pennsylvania, is a good example.
In 1927, David Kootz built this oddly shaped little shop, which was originally used to sell meals and coffee, and ten years later it became a bar, and then abandoned. In the 90s, it was only a little bit about to be demolished.
Luckily, locals have a lot of affection for the Big Pot, and in 2003 the Bedford County Fairgrounds Association rescued the building for $1 and moved it across the street.
Although it no longer serves coffee, why not stop and take a picture with it?
donut
The Donut Hole
California, USA
City of La Pointe
15300 Amar Rd
If you like American cop comedies, you've probably seen the store in the movie Dragnet starring Tom Hanks. This is La Puente, the "most photographed donut shop in the United States," but not known for its delicious donuts.
The shape of the building is exactly this famous Western dim sum, but it is not known exactly what year it was built. Even among the locals, there are various theories, and from 1947 to 1962, the time span reached an outrageous fifteen years. The only thing that is clear is that the architecture of this donut is an important urban memory for the locals.
The designers of this building have no way of knowing, but its design is very clever. As a single-storey commercial building, the huge fiberglass doughnuts at both ends can obviously be used to promote the store's products and also make passers-by shine. The hole in the donut splits it in two, forming a lane in the middle, so that customers don't have to get out of the car and can drive directly past to buy and pick up the goods. The newlyweds drive through this donut to pray for sweet luck in their future life, which is also an indispensable tradition in the hearts of the locals.
Milk bottle
Hood Milk Bottle
Massachusetts, USA
Boston
29 Court Square
Hood Bottle is an ice cream stall and snack bar located in the plaza in front of the Boston Children's Museum.
This large bottle is 40 feet tall (about 12 meters), 18 feet (about 5.5 meters) in diameter, and weighs 15,000 pounds (about 6800 kilograms). If it were a real milk bottle, it could hold 58,620 gallons (about 221,900 liters) of milk, enough for a million people to have a cup per person. Because it is snow-white, it also has another responsibility, if the museum next to it hosts an event, this milk bottle can become a ready-made projection screen.
Many pictographic buildings have the responsibility of conveying the brand image, and the same is true of Hood bottles. Originally born in 1933 in Taunton, Massachusetts, the pictogram was arthur Gagner, but it was quickly abandoned. Until it was discovered by the Boston Director of Urban Design, who persuaded the local dairy giant Hood to give it a new lease of life. On April 20, 1977, Hood transported the huge bottle to Boston by ferry, known as "The Great Voyage of a Big Bottle," a local sensational brand marketing event. (Speaking of which, this year happens to be the 50th anniversary of its rebirth?) ）
Maple basket
Longaberger basket building
Ohio, USA
Newark
1360 E. Main St.
Longaberger Basket HQ
This big basket is even more heavyweight. It is the headquarters of the American home furnishing brand Longaberger and is a well-known pictographic architectural classic representative in the history of architecture. If the Hood bottle is just a marketing event, Longaberger's basket is a true brand symbol. In the case of brands that use architecture as a means of publicity, this big basket cannot be bypassed in any way.
Longaberger is known for its exquisitely handmade maple baskets. At the end of 1997, 500 of the company's employees moved into a new headquarters worth $30 million— an exact replica of 160 times the company's best-selling product. The seven-story building was designed by Longaberger himself and performed by NBBJ and Korda Nemeth Engineering. Excellence was made during the design and construction process: for example, the basket handle weighing up to 150 tons has automatic heating function to prevent freezing in winter; the building is affixed with two product labels, completely reproducing the unique gold leaf label on Longaberger products; and the interior is also very gorgeous. The attention to detail and quality made the building inexpensive at all and became a local legend.
"I think if Walt Disney can build an empire around a rat, then Longaberger's office building would have to be like a basket." The company's founder, Dave Longaberger, wrote this in his memoirs. He had ambitions to have all of Longaberger's buildings like baskets, but since his death, the company has deteriorated and eventually had to move out of this particular building.
There was once a capital that wanted to turn it into a luxury hotel, but unfortunately, the arrival of the epidemic broke this plan. Now, this big basket is still waiting alone in the same place for its fate.
Community bookshelves
Bookshelf
Missouri, USA
Kansas
Central Library parking lot
In 2004, Kansas City's Central Library acquired a new landmark, the Library District Parking Lot. The pictographic wall extends along the south wall of the central library parking lot, forming a huge bookshelf. The concept of turning a parking lot into a bookshelf gives the neighborhood a unique character and is part of the city's cultural construction.
The spine is about 7.6 meters high and is made of polyester film spread on concrete panels and aluminum bases. This huge shelves, which display 22 books, were solicited from kansas readers and then selected by the Kansas City Public Library board of directors to represent the city's book taste.
Looking at the list of contents, I have to say that the content is quite extensive and classic, such as "The Republic", "Romeo and Juliet", "The Lord of the Rings", "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and many other famous works, and even includes Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" (the first book in the picture above).
Great White Duck
Big Duck
New York, USA
Flanders
1012 Flanders Rd
The ones above are all everyday objects, and the use of animals as architectural shapes is even rarer, but there are some excellent cases, such as flanders' great white duck.
This 28-foot timber-framed concrete great white duck is almost synonymous with the locals. In 1931, duck farmer Martin Maurer had a whim to sell processed ducks and eggs as a base for a "big duck", and george Reeve, a local carpenter, completed the graphic design of the building. To better recreate the Great White Duck, Maurer also brought in the stage designers William and Samuel Collins brothers, a model of the design with a duck tied to a porch with a rope, and they dissected a cooked chicken to create a sturdy, precise bird skeleton for the building (although it sounds hard to study cooked chickens without doubting their purpose).
The completed building is snow-white, cute and cute, and the appearance of nesting in the grass is very compatible with the surrounding environment. Today it is a local gift shop and visitor welcome center.
Why use the Great White Duck to finalize? Not only because it's cute, but its importance as architecture is probably beyond your imagination.
It can be said that all the buildings in this article can be called "duck architecture", that is, highly sculptural buildings, and the discussion of this type of architectural problem also begins with this great white duck.
In the 1920s and 1930s, pictographic architecture was all the rage, mostly designed to match the actual function of the building. But not everyone likes highly sculptural pictographic architecture, believing that this style is frivolous and rough, and is the laziness and aesthetic lack of the designer. Indeed, we can find many pictographic examples of failure, and fashionable modern architecture proves the charm of geometry. But at some point, do you also look at the elegant city skyline in a daze and feel that they lack a little bit of fun to jump out?
The famous architect James Wines has made his own point about "duck architecture", one of which is particularly impressive: "Form follows fantasy rather than function, because architecture that cannot provide fantasy cannot realize the dreams that human beings need." ”
Occasionally, The City of Wishing is Alice's wandering wonderland, mixed with a little bit of bizarre fantasy and playfulness in reality.