Witold Rybczynski, the architecture columnist at Slate.com and Oxford author, noted in a column yesterday a disturbing trend towards “conspicuous architecture” in very exclusive zip codes. On a recent trip to Palm Beach, FL, Rybczynski was shocked to find its posh beachfront filled with “some of the least graceful buildings [he'd] seen in a long time.”
He continues:
There were balconies, of course, but they were shallow and uninviting, a grudging acknowledgment that the ocean might, after all, be worth an occasional glance. The façades were regularly punctuated by roll-down hurricane shutters, which looked like garage doors. The architectural style was neither comfortably stodgy, like the nearby Breakers Hotel, nor fashionably chic; no one would mistake this for South Beach. Instead, the architecture veered from no-frills, Days Inn functionalism to a forced tropical glamour that verged on kitsch. It was, in a word, ugly. One ungainly building followed another.
Rybczynski concludes that while “‘good design’ has become a mass phenomenon,” the wealthy have been forced to show off their splendor in new ways. In other words, bad is the new good.
LINK to the story at Slate.com.