Comments on: If you lived here, you'd be unheimlich now

If you lived here, you'd be unheimlich now

noway — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 22:42:09 -0800

Computer modeling, along with new materials, has done wonders for contemporary architecture, allowing practitioners to render seemingly organic shapes from inert materials. Mimicking biological shapes could soon cross a threshold: behold Shahira Hammad's proposal for the Westbahnhof train station. Again, before and after.

By: Kevin Street

Kevin Street — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 22:52:29 -0800

Seriously?

By: contraption

contraption — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:09:07 -0800

I note the proposer is credited as a "designer" as opposed to an "architect." Is there more to this proposal than just some rendered elevations?

By: longdaysjourney

longdaysjourney — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:14:16 -0800

James Kunstler is going to stroke out when he sees the Hammad proposal (assuming he hasn't already).

By: moonbiter

moonbiter — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:15:07 -0800

Ach du meine Güte!

By: dhens

dhens — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:30:21 -0800

Hopefully it will have wifi so you can use the new Macbook while waiting for your connection.

By: Gyan

Gyan — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:31:44 -0800

Apparently, she's a newly minted architect. Some WIP pics here.

By: dhens

dhens — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:38:00 -0800

I hope this is just a "food for thought" design and not a real proposal for something that should actually be built. It makes this crime against decency (which, thankfully, did not go ahead) look subdued and noble.

By: niccolo

niccolo — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:53:29 -0800

This is the most genuinely exciting thing I have seen this year.

By: tykky

tykky — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:00:07 -0800

Can't use train, station will devour me.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:22:48 -0800

Oh, why the hell not? It looks like a rococo cathedral that got ripped apart in a magnetic storm -- but hey, compared to brutalist or functionalist 20th century boxes, at least it's ornate.

By: quadog

quadog — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:23:59 -0800

That train station makes me think that architecture has advanced from the post modern to the post apocalyptic phase.

By: justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow

justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:36:47 -0800

According to its designer, Berlin's holocaust memorial was designed "to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason." It's a heap of rectangular concrete blocks (picture). I consider it a failure. Hammad's building achieves that effect. Orderly, rectilinear rail lines disappear into a looming, twisted monstrosity. It is organic but unnatural, inhuman to the point that it looks like it is defiling the ground it sits on. It should be constructed at Dachau. I don't mean that to be insulting. Assuming that Hammad intended to create a profoundly disturbing design she succeeded brilliantly.

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:39:49 -0800

That's supposed to be a train station? Strange, I don't recall any trains in Mad Max. Maybe Ms. Hammad has repurposed a set proposal for a Waterworld sequel?

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:50:21 -0800

Needs kekekeke tag.

By: jcking77

jcking77 — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:59:56 -0800

You have to ask yourself, in today's economic climate is that really what you want to be spending your vespene gas on?

By: kaibutsu

kaibutsu — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 01:30:41 -0800

The issue with the architectural designs that come from such programs is that they're typically silly expensive to build; curves are awesome, but if you're working with steel, you require lots and lots of specialized pieces that are hard to keep track of and precisely assemble. This is a big part of why geodesic domes weren't able to really take off, and geodesic domes are still relatively simple.

By: generichuman

generichuman — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 01:44:12 -0800

You know, I think a lot of the flaw with that is the colour. Choosing a rusty brown makes it look like it's going to eat me, or like it's been on the losing side of a mid-sized nuclear war. If it were the same design but in a gleaming white or grey with purple lighting accents (like a lot of modern London building) it actually could look really cool... while avoiding the sense of dread and panic that building would induce in me. Currently, it's like something out of half-life.

By: sixohsix

sixohsix — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:02:22 -0800

@justsomebody, I agree that Hammad's building achieves a monstrous effect, but is that really what is desirable for a train station? Maybe it's an ironic proposal. I dunno. re: the holocaust memorial; I think it does achieve its aims. The faraway view doesn't show what it's like to be there, but actually walking into it is something else. The ground dips lower and the blocks grow up all around you. If you venture in with friends, you find yourself losing them when they pop around a corner for a picture and seemingly disappear. The stones' edges are sharp, and the stones are unyielding. I know it "works" because when tour groups go through they inevitably develop a kind of hysterical giggle. That strange laughter one makes when one is intensely nervous. This thing is also terrifying and unsettling, but in a different way.

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:19:02 -0800

It feels homey and old timey to me in a deep racial memory sort of way. I can almost see it. My greatⁿ grandfather telling the same old story about how he killed this one big glossotherium with a rock tied to a stick, er, or was it running it off a cliff. Then my greatⁿ grandmother would serve up a hide of steaming mammoth. Then one of the relatives would excuse themselves and on the way the bathroom get devoured by a sabertoothed cat. Ah, those were the days.

By: Red Loop

Red Loop — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:19:39 -0800

It's like a cathedral in the next Aliens movie.

By: gene_machine

gene_machine — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:54:57 -0800

Slightly off-topic, but what really pissed me off when visiting the holocaust memorial was the fact that visitors seemed to think that they could treat it as some sort of urban parkour playground, jumping all over the blocks.

By: RandlePatrickMcMurphy

RandlePatrickMcMurphy — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 03:16:50 -0800

Ugh. Isn't that what it looked like after it was bombed in the second world war?

By: acb

acb — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 03:34:02 -0800

According to its designer, Berlin's holocaust memorial was designed "to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason." It's a heap of rectangular concrete blocks (picture). I consider it a failure. In contrast, the Jewish Museum in Berlin (designed by Daniel Libeskind) works quite well, as far as architecture-as-communication goes; the unevenly inclined corridor and not-quite-right angles do induce a sense of unease.

By: Slap*Happy

Slap*Happy — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:16:59 -0800

It's an attempt to reclaim Brutalism by contrasting it with buildings deliberately designed to engender fight-or-flight panic. "Well, yes, the soul-crushing autocratic monoliths are bad... but at least they're not going to try to digest you as you disembark your train."

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:25:31 -0800

As an exterior, I think it's really cool, but it's hard to take it seriously when you see the interior shot with the roots/branches/tendrils blocking everything and making the entrance hall unusable. At some point, it still has to function, no?

By: Goofyy

Goofyy — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:28:43 -0800

Looks to me like an ill-built bonfire waiting to be ignited. Or the semi-exploded stump of a huge tree. Nothing appealing about it. Except it does remind me of some cuckoo clocks I've seen.

By: bleep

bleep — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:43:59 -0800

At some point, it still has to function, no? Philistine!!

By: loquacious

loquacious — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:47:32 -0800

I'm a huge fan of organic structures and mimicry in architecture, especially when they serve structural purpose, like the Water Cube swimming center in Beijing. This isn't that. A public building really shouldn't be triggering your uncanny valley or arachnophobia glands. And I'm not even easily creeped out. Giger's biomechanical forms aren't even that creepy. That thing looks like aliens came down and deposited an egg cluster covered in strands of goo, just waiting to entrap passerby for food for giant, wriggling larvae that surely will emerge soon. That thing is not only disorienting, confusing and therefore bad public architectural design - it's so creepy that just the renderings are making my skin crawl. Good public architectural design for high traffic places like a train station should really, really not disorient the users. The whole purpose of a building of that genre is to calm traffic, to inform and guide the users to their correct destination and not confuse the fuck out of them. Much less should it induce panic attacks.

By: Segundus

Segundus — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:56:34 -0800

What's brown and sticky? The new Westbahnhof train station.

By: molecicco

molecicco — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:02:28 -0800

I think it's fascinating. Although I imagine the upkeep will be even more ruinous than the build price. Also want to chime in to say that tome, the Holocaust Memorial does exactly what it is meant to do. You walk in. It seems very normal and boring and nondescript. Then suddenly you have lost the people you were with, everything is suddenly taller than you, towering over you, blocking outside sound, and it's all just a bit off in terms of alignment and height and everything, and you realize that this boring, unassuming thing has swallowed you and separated you from your friends and the outside world. And yet, everywhere you look, it is a straightline to the street. I think it's brilliant.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:10:44 -0800

Just for the record and so nobody else is confused:

designboom has received this project from our 'DIY submissions' feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

By: indubitable

indubitable — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:19:12 -0800

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

By: Tom-B

Tom-B — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:39:51 -0800

Just like that physicist commenting on some crackpot theory... this is not even ugly.

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:51:34 -0800

That's just it's larval stage.

By: CaseyB

CaseyB — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:00:41 -0800

It looks like the end of Blood Music.

By: AwkwardPause

AwkwardPause — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:12:02 -0800

Nope.

By: parudox

parudox — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:20:28 -0800

This is a commentary on how ridiculous the field of brand-name architecture has become, right? How it's gotten so far removed from the real, on-the-ground needs for effective and pleasant use of spaces to instead focus on design-from-far-away, to the extent that it's forgotten that buildings are meant to be used?

By: ThatCanadianGirl

ThatCanadianGirl — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:27:33 -0800

It looks like the handful of leaves and twigs and crap I used to pull out the skimmer when I vacuumed our swimming pool as a kid.

By: unknowncommand

unknowncommand — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:35:04 -0800

Huh, I was expecting vagina.

By: incandissonance

incandissonance — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:04:37 -0800

looks like a god took a dump...

By: spitefulcrow

spitefulcrow — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:05:05 -0800

This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

By: Kitty Stardust

Kitty Stardust — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:29:24 -0800

It looks like Rivendell after an outbreak of tree fungus and a hurricane or two.

By: yoink

yoink — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:34:11 -0800

Interesting. It's a kind of nouveau art nouveau. I've been wondering when art nouveau would get another go-round--it's such a craft-intensive aesthetic that it became cost-prohibitive almost as soon as it appeared, but perhaps we're finally approaching that long predicted and never-arriving moment where machine production can rival artisanal craftsmanship in richness and complexity but at economic scales for large projects. Art Nouveau (and its various local manifestations--Jugendstil, Secession, Spanish Modernisme etc) has always struck me as unparalleled in being both so hugely influential--one of the first truly "global" styles that wasn't simply historicist in nature--and yet so short-lived. I think it is due some kind of reinvention/revival.

By: cmoj

cmoj — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:45:26 -0800

That's so amazingly good that I knew instantly that most people would hate it and it'll never be built. This is what progress in Art looks like.

By: pdxpogo

pdxpogo — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:46:43 -0800

Zergling nest would be a hit in Seoul or perhaps as a Scientology retreat in Death Valley. I can't see it as part of Vienna's architectural heritage. As an artistic effort it has interest but I have a hard time seeing it as a public building. Gaudi was not warmly embraced in his time but his work is magical today.

By: Kabanos

Kabanos — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:13:52 -0800

It'll look awesome once all the standard Helvetica wayfinding signage is installed.

By: vogon_poet

vogon_poet — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:37:19 -0800

That's so amazingly good that I knew instantly that most people would hate it and it'll never be built. This is what progress in Art looks like. Does progress necessarily have to be unfriendly? Like, they could have gone for "grotto" rather than "lair" and still made it organic and progressive and all that. Now, I'm pretty much a philistine, but I think it would be nicer without spikes everywhere. They read as threatening; as somebody mentioned above, this looks like the Yucca Mountain warning site, which is all about spikes. You might say, "art isn't supposed to be nice", but I have to wonder whether people need to be challenged every day on their daily commute. Particularly when trains are probably the best transit option, in terms of safety and environmental impact.

By: moonbiter

moonbiter — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 09:01:01 -0800

As a pedant, this has been bothering me for hours, so I'm just going to throw this out there even if it is a bit of a derail (and no disrespect to the original authors): "Westbahnhof train station" is, when directly translated, "West train station train station." Also, here is how the Vienna West train station complex currently looks.

By: cmoj

cmoj — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 09:10:32 -0800

Does progress necessarily have to be unfriendly? I'm not saying it should be built... I don't think it should. It's proposals like this that are intriguing, but just way to far out that make the subsequent proposal of the "grotto" seem feasible to the people with the money. Really, you could probably just change the colors of this design.

By: monospace

monospace — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 09:46:30 -0800

I would take that over Penn Station any day.

By: yoink

yoink — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 09:49:01 -0800

Not that it will ever get built, but if it did it would become a huge tourist draw almost instantly. My guess is that it would fairly quickly become a beloved icon of the city--much in the way that the Eiffel tower was completely reviled as a hideous eyesore when it opened (and for some time after) and then became both locally and internationally beloved. Or, for that matter, the way Gaudi's work in Barcelona was originally seen as weird and ugly and is now the main reason tourists visit Barcelona.

By: yoink

yoink — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 09:49:32 -0800

I would take that over Penn Station any day. That might be setting the bar a tad low.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:10:22 -0800

"Westbahnhof train station" is, when directly translated, "West train station train station." That's the train you take when you want to go see The Los Angeles Angels play baseball.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:11:09 -0800

And from your train window, you can see the high Sierra Alta mountains.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:25:49 -0800

I am a huge fan of bizarro fantasy art so I vote for "hope it gets built." And if she turns out to have what it takes to sell this design to the building committee and get the commission and push it through to completion I predict she will have a huge, huge career. > "Well, yes, the soul-crushing autocratic monoliths are bad... but at least they're not > going to try to digest you as you disembark your train." Digest me! Digest me!

By: jfuller

jfuller — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:30:25 -0800

> I think it's fascinating. Although I imagine the upkeep will be even more ruinous than the build price. We need to move on from "building." Think "continuous secretion."

By: postcommunism

postcommunism — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:43:40 -0800

I keep looking at this and thinking how great it would be both to see it get built and to have something so unexpected become part of your daily commute. It looks like it's crawling all over itself and dangling off of itself at the same time. I quite like it.

By: yoink

yoink — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:58:41 -0800

That's the train you take when you want to go see The Los Angeles Angels play baseball. You mean after your visit to the La Brea Tar Pits?

By: vogon_poet

vogon_poet — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 11:00:18 -0800

I'm not saying it should be built... I don't think it should. It's proposals like this that are intriguing, but just way to far out that make the subsequent proposal of the "grotto" seem feasible to the people with the money. Really, you could probably just change the colors of this design. So like the Overton Window for architecture? I'm okay with this. Particularly if it gives us more bizarre future buildings. And now that you point it out, the decaying brown is a lot of what makes it creepy. It evokes both rust and bodily secretions. In a different color, it could look like something from the Mirrodin Magic the Gathering cards. Which would still be deeply unsettling, but maybe in a cool way rather than a nauseating way.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 11:09:47 -0800

You mean after your visit to the La Brea Tar Pits? If you lived in the lovely La Loma Linda Hills, you'd be home by now!

By: doobiedoo

doobiedoo — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 11:31:34 -0800

all that effort and they go for bank gothic on the annotations? for shame.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:34:19 -0800

Now, I'm pretty much a philistine, but I think it would be nicer without spikes everywhere. They read as threatening; as somebody mentioned above, this looks like the Yucca Mountain warning site, which is all about spikes. I see leafless tree limbs rather than spikes. Could work well as scaffolding for climbing vines of some sort.

By: prize bull octorok

prize bull octorok — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:51:12 -0800

When you go inside, the background music should be the maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:52:54 -0800

Yeah, I looked through the pictures again, in the light of day, and they have an organic undergrowth thing -- roots, twigs, leaf mulch, etc. that I'm beginning to warm up to, really. I think it'd be pretty astounding to see, like an Edward James' Las Posas to the 10th power. I would also really like to see the look on the builders faces when they're handed the blueprints for the first time.

By: glasseyes

glasseyes — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:19:02 -0800

Well, that's interesting. It reminded me of nothing so much as some of Suzanne Wenger's structures in the Osun Gove, Nigeria - clay built on a wooden scaffold. She was originally Austrian, and I suspect the architect here has used her work as a resource. An obituary here. Can't find that much online about the grove, but a real-world library search would pay dividends for anybody interested enough to follow it up.

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:40:21 -0800

It's a kind of nouveau art nouveau. Art Nouveau celebrated triumphant nature: spring and summer. If you look at an Art Nouveau building (as I've done quite often: I've lived in Brussels), you'll notice vivid flowers, green leaves and shots all over the place. This building, on the other hand, reflects organic decay, broken twigs, rotting leaves. It's late autumn and winter, the very opposite of Art Nouveau.