Modern Chinese architecture; built to last a thousand minutes

It's like the same business model as the cheap fashion and electronics rip-offs you get from China, but with architecture... it's not a real building, but it looks JUST LIKE a building! you can even go inside! ..until you can't.

It's a sad thing that many Americans' first introduction to Europe is Charles de Gaulle airport, which serves the same purpose in European transportation as Hell does in Christian theology. CDG is how France punishes Americans for telling World War 2 jokes.

When you're landing at CDG, the pilot says "We are now arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Please prepare to weep tears of blood and rage." That's when you realize the scenes below of people running in circles and screaming in panic is just the line for passport control. It gets worse from there and differs from Dante's Inferno only in that Dante' got out within a single human lifetime.

(Story: I got lost in that place once -- and by 'once', I mean 'every single fucking time' -- and couldn't figure out how to get to the taxi stand. Since no one will give you help at CDG like no one will give you ice water in Hell, I approached this French military guy toting what looked a lot like a MP-5.

"Bonjour, Monsieur," I began, "je ne parle pas français; parlez-vous Anglais?" and I'm trying to scrape together enough of the infantile French I know into some semblance of "how the fuck do I get out of this failure of architectural design and vacancy of God's mercy to get a taxi?", which came out as "Taxi, S'il vous plaît?", probably much to my advantage.

The dude with the MP-5 gives me the Gallic stink-eye, shakes his head slowly, and then points directly up.

"Taxi -->" said the giant sign directly above his head.

"Ah, merci!" I said brightly while he, my mortified wife and pretty much the entire nation of France rolled their eyes.

I so fucking love France!)

Your video, Architectural Models, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Damn it Denmark, you're making the rest of us look bad....again. You take pollution and make clean energy, we use dirty energy to make more pollution.
*doublepromote *quality architectural engineering.

Architecture Professor? If they wanted the real reason, they should have interviewed Jeff Bezos.

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This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 225 Badge!

It's a huge architectural loss, but I wish they would consider taking the insane amount of money it will take to rebuild and spending it on the needy instead of opulent and ostentatious buildings.

Yupp...it’s a serious architectural fail in design even a straight & qualified contractor couldn’t fix.

Interesting unconscious progression of Whoa-ness: He starts off "object oriented" (architecture & landmarks), and ends with more cultural and experiential shots.

So to address the actual video/concept....

First up, brutalist architecture is fucking awful. There was a bunch of it in Christchurch and if the earthquake did one good thing, it was to get rid of most of those god-awful buildings.

Second, the web isn't about words; it's about information.
How that information is conveyed depends on the target audience and the information being presented.

Sometimes the information is simple and the target audience is actually a machine, in which case we have things like REST and SOAP.

Other times the information is complex, and best represented visually. Can anyone honestly tell me that a site like this (http://thetruesize.com) would be better brutalised?

That's not to say there aren't problems with web bloat. Of course there are. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

the meaning was figurative: Architecture design that ignores precedent (neighbors, site conditions, history, ...) is considered arrogant and bad form. But we were all training to be hotshot designers, so...

Gak! My Senior Thesis in Architecture (and they told me you can't design in a vacuum...true story, led to my snarky thesis...FU establishment)

*promote some *quality fear inducing architecture.