Back to Best Of

Dud on arrival: why important buildings flop (Slate)

Slate has a nice slide show by the famed architecture critic Witold_Rybczynski about major works of architecture that were big failures. It’s a good runthrough of some large scale works, with Cliff’s notes like commentary from Rybczynski on where things went wrong.

I don’t agree with his opinions on some (I’ve been to half of them): EMP is ugly, but still breathtaking. The Montreal stadium is a functional failure, but has amazing aesthetics, and the Getty museum rocks a free escape from the USA, a magic otherworldly garden up on a huge hill, looking down on LA.

I wonder what a slide show of greatest software duds might include? And what would we say about each one?