Quote Originally Posted by Detroitnerd View Post
You may be interested in Stewart Brand's remarks about "magazine architecture" -- buildings that architects design to look good in photographs rather than being practical, adaptable structures aimed at pleasing their inhabitants. That may account for the from-a-distance almost branding-like designs that recall an architect's other works.
DN, few buildings in the world hold truer to that statement than the Sydney Opera House... probably the most famous in the world, after the Paris's Garnier Opera House.

However it belies several very unflattering secrets.... it was built at 10 times its' original budget, And when it was finished... the larger hall intended for Opera had some technical problems, so it became the symphonic hall, and the smaller hall became the actual opera house. If that weren't enough... they can only do "truck and coach" traveling operas... not full blown operas like most famous opera houses.... and the acoustics required some modifications. And then about 15 years after it was finally completed [[long after the architect stormed off) it required $90 million in maintenance, because the roof tiles, the bond that holds them together, and other items were deteriorating). So they can't even hold a full opera at the Sydney Opera House... regardless of how photogenic it is from the outside.

And I don't really care if MOCAD is being redesigned by outside architects. Where would Detroit be without Daniel Burnham [[downtown towers), Stanford White [[Silvers Building), Paul Phillip Cret [[DIA) and Gilbert Cass [[Main Library) work.

One fortunate thing about C. Howard Crane [[there was no such thing as "the Crane style"), is that with most other major theatre architects... having a large number of their commissions close at hand would have been monotonous.... [[you can always spot a Rapp & Rapp, or a Thomas Lamb, or a John Eberson theatre)... but Crane's output was so varied, it often becomes very difficult to tell that the same architect designed them all.