Who can possibly defend this? And if there’s something clearly wrong with it, which there is, what is it and why don’t we talk about it more in other cases? Such an inhospitable building sends a very clear message, which is: the government wants its lowly supplicants to feel confused, alienated, and afraid. Kennedy Building, for example-featurelessly grim on the outside, infuriatingly unnavigable on the inside-is where, among other things, terrified immigrants attend their deportation hearings, and where traumatized veterans come to apply for benefits. There’s a whole additional complex of equally unpleasant federal buildings attached to the same plaza, designed by Walter Gropius, an architect whose chuckle-inducing surname belies the utter cheerlessness of his designs. In the 1960s, before the first batch of concrete had even dried in the mold, people were already begging preemptively for the damn thing to be torn down. But Boston’s City Hall is a hideous concrete edifice of mind-bogglingly inscrutable shape, like an ominous component found left over after you’ve painstakingly assembled a complicated household appliance. Downtown Boston is generally an attractive place, with old buildings and a waterfront and a beautiful public garden. Parisians hated it so much that the city was subsequently forced to enact an ordinance forbidding any further skyscrapers higher than 36 meters. Take the Tour Montparnasse, a black, slickly glass-panelled skyscraper, looming over the beautiful Paris cityscape like a giant domino waiting to fall. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of special effort.” Sadly, this truth is not applicable merely to airports: it can also be said of most contemporary architecture. The British author Douglas Adams had this to say about airports: “Airports are ugly.
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