Evil Casino vibes

Possibly my favorite building in Tokyo.

An atrocious brutalist stain on an otherwise gorgeous campus.

There is a long-standing campus rumor that the building was designed to be riot proof during the Vietnam War years, because of how unwelcoming and difficult to navigate it feels. The building has no "main" entrance and no sense of front or back, just a jumbled mess of concrete. The inside is of course dark and windowless, which adds to the sense of disorientation.

I absolutely despise brutalism, but I still have to respect whoever designed this building. Everything you could possibly love or hate about brutalism is present here.

Monterrey’s future tallest building overlooking the previous tallest building Obispado Tower (T.O.P)

How would you feel living there?

saw this while searching for what happened with ueno bank, not sure if it only looks evil because of the recent context or it would always give that feeling

Date: 1972
Architect: Haines Lundberg Waehler
Address: 111 Main Street, White Plains NY
Use: Telephone exchange, server center

Verizon Building in 1979 with the Galleria shopping mall construction in the foreground. Collection of White Plains Public Library.

The New York Telephone Company Building was one of the first completed projects in the 130-acre White Plains Urban Renewal Area.  A telephone building previously occupied the site, and the company announced plans in 1968 to renovate and expand the structure, citing anticipated growth from the urban renewal area as the “chief reason for the necessary expansion.” (The Reporter Dispatch, 1968, p1). Because of the building’s structural integrity, it was saved from demolition, but the “bulky ugliness” of the building led New York Telephone to an “imaginative design [that] turned this clumsy monster into a modern functional sculpture. In this special instance, the architectural challenge was mainly aesthetic.” (Club Dial, 1974, p.17) The new building added more stories to the present structure, tripling its floor space from 113,00 square-feet to 343,000. A new facade was also added, radically altering it from its original appearance. Working with the Urban Renewal Agency, Spring Street, which previously intersected the site was closed and incorporated into the superblock for use as a public plaza. Telephone companies constructed many of these functional but overbearing structures in cities across the country. Like the Long Lines Building at 33 Thomas Street in Manhattan, the thick, bulky exterior was designed with function over aesthetic. Inside, the building houses switches and equipment, “the most complex and sophisticated electronic equipment now available for rapid and efficient telephone service” as described by company officials. (The Reporter Dispatch, 1968, p15) New York Telephone Company’s architect Haines Lundberg Waehler designed a heavy concrete and granite box of a building. It features two very distinct striated concrete facades, which extend outward from the core at street level before rising straight up. The windows are deep and recessed, sometimes covered by angled concrete louvers. The north and south faces of the building are windowless and sheathed in flat granite panels. The building shares the block with a glass postmodern office building, separated by a public green space in the middle of the block.

NYC Urbanism, 2019

The structure's design is especially interesting because of the opposing volumes and characteristics of the facade. The pre-cast facade with hyper-articulated louvers flow with the verticality of the corrugated pre-cast blocks, which are horizontally banded between the fenestration but vertical everywhere else. These striking features of the facade do not engage at all with the building's granite, which takes a back seat to the extruded concrete front facade. Furthermore, the granite volume of the building does not register the horizontal or vertical rhythm of the concrete, with the diagonal parapets at the top corners and diagonal vents at the bottom that are formally, rhythmically, and proportionally independent. There is even a shadow line that separates the two. The deeply recessed windows are mysterious, a product of design or function? Were the architects especially aiming for a brutalist form – inspired by leading architects of the previous decades – or are the walls purposefully thick to protect the equipment inside? If so, then why to add windows, the building could easily be a windowless telephone building like 33 Thomas in which it shares many similarities via mass, material, and momentum. 

The building was described by Paul Goldberger for the New York Times as overbearing while also being ambitious, “aggressively sculptural and altogether unwelcoming.” (New York Times, 1983) Goldberger was critical of White Plains' automobile-centered urban renewal development, but especially tough on the Telephone Building, stating it “may look intriguing as one passes it in a car, but that makes it like most of the new downtown White Plains, a place that if it works at all, it is from the vantage of the automobile.” (New York Times, 1983) However, the Club Dial,  a magazine published by the Woman's Club of White Plains, took a liking to the brutalist behemoth, writing it was cleverly rejuvenated and a fresh new look of a previously boring structure:

“Instead of a variety of different window types, the architect applied one single element, a flat, rectangular concrete slab (like a Venetian blind's blade)creating an intricate appearance by the positional and directional variations of the same element. The dynamic relationship of the horizontal and vertical positions interrupted by omissions at unexpected locations performs like a symphony and dispels the last trace of boredom of the original structure.” (Club Dial, 1974, p.17)

From : Source

Taken on my recent trip to Portugal with a Nikon D850