I shared it before, but idk how they first changed the building to look like this.
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Which is nothing spectacular, but is also a pretty acceptable background building, and then changed it again into the final superturd configuration. One congress is pretty clearly the star of the show here, why throw up a jumbled disaster right at its door step at the last minute?
Background and filler buildings get a lot of hate on architectural forums, but theres definitely a lot of skill required to create something that seamlessly blends into the color pallette and architectural fabric of a city, disappearing in plain view to allow the better buildings to stand out. Its why Dubai’s sheikh zayed road supertalls look like a bag of ass, with every tower screaming look at me, and why nyc’s skyline which arguably has 1000 times more “shitty” filler buildings than Dubai is arguably the best skyline on earth.
Those hundreds of crappy 1950’s brick and concrete towers are anonymous, the correct color/shape etc, and dont try too hard to stand out. The net effect is they create a general white noise that is soft and disarming that allows appropriately crafted spikes in the noise to shine through. This building takes all of that and throws it in the trash. Building this thing directly against the greenway is like placing a permanent trash bin directly in the best sight line of the empire state building, blocking it from view. Its ridiculous. I agree that if they cant get it right the city should take it and build a park.
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