115 Federal St. (Winthrop Square)

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The Barcelona penis looks circumcised which is unusual for Spain since most European men are not circumcised. I wonder if the architect was an American.
 
atlantaden said:
The Barcelona penis looks circumcised which is unusual for Spain since most European men are not circumcised. I wonder if the architect was an American.
French.

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Torre Akbar architect, Jean Nouvel (left).
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Would one call these penis shaped?

I really, really feel bad for the girlfriend of any guy who has a penis shaped like that.

...that's if you were talking about the Empire State Building. But if you were talking about Dr. Evil and Torre Akbar -- then, yes, they do appear to be penis-shaped to me.
 
guys, almost all skyscrapers are penis shaped because they are all tall long things.
 
I second the sympathy for the girlfriend of any guy with an ESB-like penis
 
Ha ha. Now that is phallic.

That architect had some seriously repressed gay tendencies, and this was his only outlet I'm guessing.

As for the New York picture, I don't get it at all. I've never seen a penis that is square headed like those apt. buildings, nor pointy like the Empire SB. If I did, I'd be quite scared.

Ok i'm digressing way too much here. Sorry. Moving on.[/i][/b]
 
This may be the most phallic building in the US. I mean, really, there is a statue of a sower throwing seed from the top of its dome, which is on top of a 30 story tower.
 
It's amazing how you guys take such an interest in all things phallic. :shock:
 
aHigherBoston78 said:
Ha ha. Now that is phallic.

That architect had some seriously repressed gay tendencies, and this was his only outlet I'm guessing.

As for the New York picture, I don't get it at all. I've never seen a penis that is square headed like those apt. buildings, nor pointy like the Empire SB. If I did, I'd be quite scared.

Ok i'm digressing way too much here. Sorry. Moving on.[/i][/b]

Could have been a woman architect. But who knows, maybe it was a gay guy. or perhaps a self portrait..
 
Roxxma said:
This may be the most phallic building in the US. I mean, really, there is a statue of a sower throwing seed from the top of its dome, which is on top of a 30 story tower.

that building takes the prize....c'mon what IS THAT? how did they expect to get away with that? but i guess they did.
 
ZenZen said:
It's amazing how you guys take such an interest in all things phallic. :shock:

I guess we are all homosexuals. know of any good gay forums so i dont have to hide my true feeling sby discussing buildings that remind me of other things? :lol:

All things phallic is a bit of a stretch, i find these buildings to be rather funny to post. if only because their similarity to other things is so blatant and obvious..
 
Patrick said:
ZenZen said:
It's amazing how you guys take such an interest in all things phallic. :shock:

I guess we are all homosexuals. know of any good gay forums so i dont have to hide my true feeling sby discussing buildings that remind me of other things? :lol:

All things phallic is a bit of a stretch, i find these buildings to be rather funny to post. if only because their similarity to other things is so blatant and obvious..

Does the State House dome look like a boobie to anyone?
 
Moving City Hall

January 11, 2007

WHY DOES Robert Campbell conflate the Winthrop Square tower proposal with that of relocating City Hall to the South Boston Waterfront? ("Fighting (About) City Hall," Page N3, Arts & Entertainment, Jan. 7). The tower site, now home to a city-owned parking garage, is on major transit hubs, zoned for tall construction, and destined to hold the greenest, most energy-efficient building in the city. It will keep Boston competitive with other major business centers permitting numerous such facilities worldwide.

Rather than move City Hall to a less reachable area, Mayor Menino should use the substantial proceeds from the garage's sale to launch fund-raising for a complete renovation of City Hall and its plaza to keep City Hall downtown, where it belongs. Meanwhile, the South Boston Waterfront needs more housing. It can easily accommodate rows of townhouse blocks and apartment buildings similar to those in the Back Bay.

MICHAEL J. TYRRELL
Boston



that was in response to this article:

1168260886_9116.jpg


Fighting (about) City Hall

Mayor should reconsider plans for downtown

By Robert Campbell, Globe Correspondent | January 7, 2007

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is giving another speech. Is he going to drop another development bombshell?

In two speeches last year, he proposed a new 1,000-foot-tall commercial tower on a downtown site already hemmed in by tall buildings. Then he proposed getting rid of City Hall and building a new one on the South Boston waterfront, near the new Institute of Contemporary Art.

On Tuesday comes the annual State of the City address. What will the mayor be suggesting now?

Will he say it's time to demolish the State House and turn that prominent site into a "development opportunity"?

Or will he react to the news that Chicago plans a 2,000-foot tower by doubling his own, in a kind of mayoral soapbox derby?
Related link:
Web Log Exhibitionist: The Globe's Geoff Edgers covers the arts

What's bothersome about the mayor's proposals is their lack of either simple logic or a larger vision.

He says, for example, that a city hall on the South Boston waterfront would stimulate development in that area, where it's been lagging.

Excuse me, but if the goal is to jump-start development in South Boston, isn't that where the 1,000-foot tower should go? Not in crowded downtown? If you build it downtown, won't it only suck activity away from South Boston?

You can't literally build a tower on the South Boston waterfront, to be sure, because height limits there are governed by flight paths out of Logan Airport . But there's plenty of room just the same. You could build a 1,000-foot -long groundscraper. Something like One-Two-Three Center Plaza, which is one of Boston's better buildings.

As for relocating City Hall, that makes even less sense. You'd be moving it away from the great site it now occupies -- near public transportation, near lawyers and businesses, near state and federal government. You'd be isolating it from the people who need it and use it.

My problem with the mayor is that his ideas don't seem to be part of any larger concept about the urban design of the city. They're just independent brainstorms. They have nothing to do with one another.

Last year, the mayor hired a top-notch city planner, Toronto-based Ken Greenberg , to think about the long strip of new land that is being created downtown, where the overhead artery used to be.

That land is owned by the state, and the city has little to say about it. But city land does, of course, come right up to it on both sides. Working with Boston's planning staff, Greenberg came up with a concept he calls the Crossroads Initiative. It will lace the city back together across the scar of the Big Dig. The laces will be green. They will be the key streets that cross the Dig, now to be transformed with tree plantings, wide sidewalks, and other amenities.Continued..

Page 2 of 2 --

It's the kind of thoughtful, humane planning that makes a difference. And the mayor backs it. If it's fully implemented, he'll be leaving the legacy of a great public realm. That will mean more than a mislocated city hall, or a tower that is a mere gesture on the skyline.

From the point of view of urban design, buildings are secondary anyway. A city is made of streets and squares. It's made of spaces. The buildings are there to be the walls that shape the streets and squares. Hopefully, they're interesting walls -- walls with doors and windows that invite your imagination to come inside, walls with architectural detail that speaks of caring owners and artistic designers. But the spaces, not the buildings, are the public city.

We live in a culture that's so fascinated by objects that it ignores spaces. Maybe that's because we're so media-saturated. On a page or a screen, a building can be an icon. It's hard to represent the experience of an urban space so clearly.

It's interesting to recall that after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, more than one commentator predicted that no skyscrapers would ever be built again. They would be seen as potential targets. Nobody would willingly occupy them. Author James Howard Kunstler went as far as to predict that existing skyscrapers would probably be dismantled.

Exactly the opposite has occurred. Skyscrapers are shooting to record heights all over the world. There's something in the human psyche that deliberately chooses to live in dangerous places. We rebuild over the earthquake faults of California, we repopulate the land beneath Mount Vesuvius, we raise an even higher tower where the World Trade Center became a target for an air strike.
Related link:
Web Log Exhibitionist: The Globe's Geoff Edgers covers the arts

Both skyscrapers and city halls are potentially heroic objects. And the mayor is thinking about the city in terms of objects, not spaces. His proposals are the urban design equivalent, in the old but wonderful cliche, of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We need a broader vision of the great public city of the future.

Robert Campbell is the Globe's architecture critic. He can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.
? Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
 
bowesst said:
Anyone feel like photoshoping 115 into this picture?

panorama1.jpg
I kind of have a rendering but I need a site to host it so that it has its original size.
 
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