What is your favourite piece of architecture

[Porky Gorky]

As a builder of virtual structures I really enjoy looking at architecture on the web, in my RL and in SL and other virtual worlds and games. I like new age modern and wierd concept buildings. 

So I was wondering what is your favourite piece are architecture? It can be real, virtual or concept. Please post a pic or link if possible and a brief explanation of why it appeals to you.

 

[Alazarin Mondrian]

I quite like the projects designed by Vincent Callabaut. Very futuristic, organic and imaginitive:

 Vincent Callebaut Projects.

[Porky Gorky]

I absolutely love Callebaut, his work just blows me away. Thanks for sharing :matte-motes-big-grin:

[Coby Foden]

Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.

I find it's shape very pleasant to look at.  And its construction is really amazing.  Like some 3D cobweb.

[Porky Gorky]

I'm not a big fan of the Eiffel Tower. I visited it when I was 18 and was excited about it beforehand but felt underwhelmed when I arrived. I didn't like the feel of the place and felt it was better to look at it from a distance rather than to be inside it.

Saying that, in the evening, after visiting the tower I went and camped the night at Jim Morrison's gravestone because I was "so into the music, man" so that shows what sort of mentality I had when I was 18.

I am taking the kids to Disneyland Paris in May so I will be visiting it again and I'm hoping that now I am slightly more mature I will appreciate it more.

[Dillon Levenque]

This will be a fun thread to watch. I'm still trying to narrow a list of favorites down to a reasonable number but given where we are I have an interesting one. Recently (last summer, I think) my sister was on a trip that included a tour of Fallingwater, a very famous house built by Frank Lloyd Wright. As it happens, Inara Pey has built a replica in SL; pictures and a video are here. I still have not seen it, but hopefully it is still there.

[Porky Gorky]

Yes, Fallingwater is definitely a classic and I am a fan. I have seen a number of builders attempt to replicate this house in SL including the version you linked to, it seems a popular choice. 

There used to be a Frank Lloyd Wright museum in SL with lots of official replicas licensed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Pretty sure it is gone now though.

A few prefab brands in SL have definitely been heavily influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright over the years especially some of the early designs by Aariss.

Good choice :matte-motes-big-grin:

[ImaTest1488314069]

I think I'd have to say my favorite pieces of, well anything, would be nature made. Don't get me wrong I do love man made architecture. It can be exquisite, beautiful and very thought provoking. But few man made anything will leave me breathless the way nature does. Just stunning. I'm a sucker for natural beauty.

I'll have to find some links of my favorite photos, not sure I have them saved on this pc.

[Dillon Levenque]

Here's a couple of examples, if not of my favorite PIECE of architecture, one of my favorite styles. I've spent a lot of time visiting the missions of California. The first picture is of my favorite, La Purisima (de la Conception). It is in the countryside, surrounded by the rolling hills and oak trees that define that part of the world. Being there when it isn't crowded is like falling back two hundred years in time. When I was a kid it was more remote than it is now (suburban sprawl, you know) but even today it's easy to imagine you are at a remote outpost.

More elaborate and much better known is Mission Carmel. The picture is of the basilica. It's a very impressive place to attend a wedding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

Here's my favorite example of Mission style. Though, as it's in Polynesia (Hawaii), maybe it should be called Missionary Style. If you believe Twain, that would be far worse than Missionary Position...

I like lighthouses (my first SL creation was a lighthouse and I currently live in one), I like nature and I like style. Here's all three in one... 

[Dillon Levenque]

I was thinking of lighthouses, but I had a feeling someone would get in ahead of me. I've always liked them: the utilitarian build. The loneliness of the keeper. The job of warning ships in such an anonymous way—there is no conversation, just the light. Also,  they are a frequent sight in SL (as well they shoud be given the amount of dangerous coastline) plus a very good friend of mine lives in a Second Life lighthouse.

I've spent the greater part of my life in fairly close range to three. I've never toured any of them although all three are available for tours. I've spent time just sitting on the bluffs looking at each of them.  Multiple times, in all cases. Mostly in daylight, sometimes at night. The night time is the right time to be with a lighthouse.

Piedras Blancas

Big Sur Point

The lightouse is kind of hard to see in this view: that speck of red is its roof. The other pictures I saw didn't have this good view of the point and the Santa Lucia range in the background.

Pigeon Point, often called Ano Nuevo these days because it is part of the state park of the same name, a famous elephant seal breeding ground. Pigeon Point is the corrrect name. That's a great blue heron getting underway in the foreground.

 

 

[Attica Bekkers]

i had to think a lot about this. Mostly i adore art deco, but i really love local 1960s architect called neighbour's  houses.. but i decided my vote goes to one of my local libraries. Marion cultural centre. Just for being a work of art that is practical as well as fun that has made my life better just because I was inside it once and it is just an inspiring space. In the end I think architecture doesnt have to be experienced to be enjoyed, but there is something just lovely about a space that you feel changes something about you when you enter it.

I love that in secondlife i can experience amazing architecture in a virtual way.

This is a lousy photo but all the photos i can find are lousy . Its in a garbage area but maybe one day they will raze the lot and just let the library stand.

[Dillon Levenque]

I did a bit of googling to learn more about that building. I can see, just looking at the outside, why you like it. I get exactly what you mean about being inside, feeling that it was an inspiring place. That's happened to me also. Sometimes a building/place just seems to reach out.

I don't know what you meant by 1960s 'neighbours houses'. The expression reminded me of a house style that was popular in my part of the world before I was born, and probably after. I was walking past one of those with my mother once and told her it reminded me of my childhood. She called it a 'California Bungalow'; I've seen it since called Craftsman and other names. I may not have gone Trick or Treating at this house, but I have at houses that looked a lot like it.

[Laetizia Coronet]

Having visited Prague in 2011 I must say that the Tancici Dum takes the cake. The Tancici Dum, Fred and Ginger, the Dancing House is the office of a Dutch insurance company in Prague and it was very weird to see it from the other bank of the Moldau river, between the centuries old palaces of the city. Weird, but pleasing, and it didn't look as if it was intruding in any way, outrageous as it is. From up close and personal it seemed smaller than from afar - maybe that is the trick. It stands out from afar but it doesn't impose itself on you from nearby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_House

[Madelaine McMasters]

I'd call that Craftsman style, and I like it!

William Morris was instrumental in the start of the Arts and Crafts movement from which that style evolved. His admonishment to "‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful" is something I should have taken to heart years ago, before I crowded myself out of 3/4ths of my house with furniture I got cheap but never use. I have an armoire that's larger than my first apartment and would benefit from the administrations of a Secretary of Wardrobe.

Years ago I had the chance to step into the adjacent Pixar offices of both Steve Jobs (called by some "a modern William Morris") and director John Lassiter (called by some a "big kid"). Jobs' office was austere and serene. Lassiter's looked like my bedroom, with shelf upon shelf of toys (his are cars, mine are stuffed). I believe that both men, in their way, and I (if only in my bedroom), were adhering to the Morris maxim.

I love Shaker Style architecture and furnishings. I'd love to sweep this staircase (from the Shaker settlement in Pleasant Hill, KY) clean by sliding down the length on a large pillow...

 

[Madeliefste Oh]

I like the works of Gaudi. For example this one.

I like it for the organic shapes.

My favourite architure in SL doesn't exist anymore. It was the Gallery of Reflexive Architecture. The builds were not static, but changed in the presence of an avatar and reacted to avatar movement.

 

 

 

[Qie Niangao]

A blog post about "shell architecture" drifted across my Flipboard maybe a month ago and caught my eye as something that needed to be built in SL.

FLW came up in a couple posts. I'm not actually a fan of Fallingwater, and not so much of FLW in general really, but of his buildings, I think the Johnson Wax headquarters is my favorite:

[Jadeclaw Denfu]

Yes, Johnson Wax was revolutionary in its time and in some of its aspects, it is still today.

Another favorite of mine is the Ennis House in LA,
a well known movie location, e.g. Blade Runner, all movie scenes from Deckards home had been shot there.
And again, Frank Lloyd Wright used new and revolutionary construction techniques in this building.

Ok, back to SL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Plebeja/197/137/289

If you got an unusally formed parcel, don't despair, be creative. Putting up a prim up in the air is simple,
putting out a real inventive design can make the weirdest parcel work:

A home for a James Bond-type villain maybe?

 

[Trinity Yazimoto]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

I like the works of Gaudi. For example this one.

I like it for the organic shapes.

 

 

 

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Woot !!!! you said it before me !!!!

Same same same !

i like his crazyness, Its all pure madness but so beautifull to be seen, so surprising and so free !!! 

(well, not to mention im catalan and so, soooo biased :smileyvery-happy: shhhh)

[Trinity Yazimoto]

Another thing i like is the Stravinsky fountain, just beside Beaubourg Center in Paris. 

Here again i like it for its madness.

its pretty hard to get pics about the whole fountain, so here are 2 pics : 

its so delighful to have a drink on  a sunshine day there. :smileyhappy:

[Jadeclaw Denfu]

And here is one from the 'Cute'-department:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ribeata/13/153/95

 

 

[Dillon Levenque]

Nice. Reminds of a Burning Life camp. I think they were the 'Stilts B****es'. They had an interconnected group of wagons and caravans, all lashed together and all floating 40 or 50 meters above ground, held up by a bunch of ballons. It was really well done.

Also reminds me of an ancient film called 'The Lost Continent'. IMDB begins their article with "This film starts out like the Love Boat on acid...", just to give you an idea. I really liked the way they used history in the plot, which eventually melds modern Europeans with a cutoff and leftover Spanish 17th century culture in the Sargasso Sea (the locals used a harness with ballons to walk across the seaweed mat, hence my recollection). To be honest I'd watch it even without that just to see Suzanna Leigh's cocktail dress.