me, i say st. steven's church in budapest, maybe; the old wing of westminster PALACE (ie not the abbey, but the building that the houses of parliament were built onto) because it is straight up viking mode, and maybe the new parliament house in canberra, which i never went into but i used to go jogging up the side of it at nights. i like running up the side of important national buildings.



there are very few hills in canberra.
i'm at work so no photos but so there.

The Chrysler Building, it takes my breath away every time I see it and I've seen it a million times over the last 30 years. It's a message to New York from a future we won't ever see. Well the top of the Chrysler building, but wadda top, nowadda mean?

The Peter B. Lewis Building

Not my favorite, but certainly fascinating. And I walk past it every day.

It never crossed Frank Gehry's mind, I guess, that a building with a deeply sloping metal roof in Cleveland might not be the best idea. They have to set up barriers every year around it to prevent people from getting hit with the ice sheets that slide off the roof.

I totally second the Chrysler.

I also like that one in Chicago that bends with the river and is all reflective and it compels you to take a picture of it while you are on the "river" architecture tour with your parents. Sorry no link!

I've always liked the Nelson Fine Arts Center at Arizona State University in Tempe. It looks like a giant pinball machine (from another perspective, not the one in the picture) and we used to wander around in it late, late, late at night.

St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which I walk past every day as well.

Sciurus - Deer Hunter, no?

The old Executive Office Building.

How about my favorite buildings in Maine?

Let's start with Portland City Hall. It's... an edifice.

And ye old Customs House.

Also, the UUC church. There's also a beautiful (inside and out) former chapel on the Bowdoin Campus.

Then there's Spring Point Lighthouse. Does that count as a building?

Great buildings that aren't in Maine:

The UVa Rotunda.

Hospitalfield House.

Cathedral of Saint Mungo.

But the single most impressive building I've ever seen has got to be the Chateau Frontenac. If that building could talk, it would say, "Suck it, haters."

Yep amro, a lot of Deer Hunter was shot in Tremont. So was a lot of A Christmas Story.

The Dancing House!!!!!

The Black Diamond

Obviously the Chrystler Building.

safetyfork, do you mean Lake Point Tower? I love that building too.

Selfnoise: That has got to be the ugliest building I have ever seen. And yet, you describe its attitude perfectly.

I know! It's totally like "Serve me, pitiful scuttling peons! Waste away as I devour and disgorge tourists with too much disposable income!"

goatdog, close (reflective curves) and it's a great building... but the one I'm thinking of was definitely viewable from the boat tour on the river (rather than being more lake oriented).

I'm pretty sure this is it: Reflective, at right hand side. BIG. And another view.

Unfortunately, the folks taking these pictures didn't identify the building.

Wow, selfnoise, Chateau Frontenac is absolutely beautiful. The dancing house is pretty damn cool too jrossi4r.

My favourites are City Hall and The Dildo.

i do not like buildings.

Damnit, I had a nice post and loaded some fucking Java page and Firefox got borked on me. I hate Java with a passion.

safetyfork, those are two different buildings. The one with the nice bow curve on the "corner" of the river is 333 Wacker (1983, Kohn Pederson Fox); the one with the concave curves on both sides (and not much else to recommend it) is Gateway Center IV (1983, Skidmore Owings Merrill). Both sort of the last burst of modernism, with the former looking forward to postmodernism and the latter looking backward to tired Miesian classicism.

I don't especially like either building, although 333 is a very nice use of its site.

My favorite Chicago 'scraper is still the Hancock, also SOM, with its bold, unconventional modernism and an almost constructivist attention to the steel frame. But I love many other Chicago buildings, from the Rookery (the steel frame hadn't been perfected, so they built enormously fat brick walls), to the Thompson Center. The Tribune and Wrigley buildings are lovely, the Jewelers Building, even the black-walled Miesian Daley Center and Federal courthouse and the red in-your-face version of the CNA building (I worked in that one).

Chrysler is certainly one of the most wonderful skyscrapers ever built (and it isn't just the spire, it has a lovely interior lobby as well). The Flatiron is a classic. I loved coming into Grand Central Terminal every morning (for a while). I loved the World Trade Center (commuted through it, even worked in it briefly), despite its faults.

Of recent world buildings, I like the Burj al-Arab the best, and definitely have a soft spot for the Taipei 101 with its "Chinese box" allusions. I also liked the Bank of China Tower. I like the Grand Arche at La Defense in Paris, which plays on the Arche de Triomphe at the other end of a long avenue. What else? Hm, Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, the CN Tower (nicer than Seattle's, sorry), the TransAmerica Bank building in SF ...

I really like the Rookery. There are a lot of buildings around here with that really crusty ornamental accumulation of detail on the walls.

hey, flopsy, i've heard that city hall has bizarely weird acoustics inside. i've got some great panoramic film shots of it at home somwhere -- that and tower bridge were lit up something incredible one night with the sunset.

stilicho, thanks for the name and the corrections! The one I'm keen on is the first (and last, no?) one I linked to (and thought the other -middle- pictures were close ups of -- I just searched on chicago architectural boat tour and started guessing! Looking at the photos again, especially after looking at your link, I can even see how it wouldn't really be possible.). So, 333 Wacker Drive, it is.

There are more buildings I like, but I'm about as good at remembering and identifying* them all by name as I was in this example. :(

* The Chysler I see all the time, so it's easy.

I like our city hall. It looks like some kind of cake.

I also like these two strange buildings out behind a strip mall in Towson, Maryland. One is a red cube, a perfect gigantic cube, and the other one is a smaller, completely mirrored cube. They have no visible doors or windows. I have no idea what they are or where they came from (they kind of look like they just landed, or were dropped by some gigantic baby playing with blocks) but I like them.

The Handley Library. Mmmmmn! Beaux Arts.

The Church of Resurrection (Savior on Spilled Blood) in St. Petersburg

steef are you from winchester, va? apple capital of the world?
seriously what's the deal here. i am all of a sudden freaked out. that would imply the world is too weirdly small.

Probably one of my favorite local buildings is Altgeld Hall on the UIUC campus. I love it only because it is completely disfuncional. Because of the additions over the years it has some problems. There are 33 different floor levels, a stairway that goes nowhere, and coridors that wind around with little sense.

But my absolutely favorite part is the stacks in the Math Library. The floors (as I remember them) are a sort of translucent, milky glass that glows because of the lighting below. You can see what I mean in some of the pictures. I feel like I'm in something out of the X Files.

Freshmen on this campus are properly warned about this building.

Hey, Sbutler! There's a library in Farmington, Maine that has (I swear) the exact same glass floors! It must have been a design trend at some point.

Here's the outside of the library. For some reason I hadn't thought of it as a favorite building, but it is. Actually, Maine has a lot of really cool library buildings... just not in Portland/SoPo, sadly.

sam~ Judges or Colonels? I wish I could claim I hailed from the bustling Metropolis that is Funchester but, in truth, I only spent some formative years in B-ville, down on the river. That is weird, made weirder by the fact that I'm a total lurker, and almost never click Post!

handley's finest, c. 1999.


this is weird and now i have to go be freaked out. for all others, i shall point out that the handley library now has renovated its glass floors.