Architectural gimmicks get old really fast. The first time a visual flourish is used, it’s creative. The second time it’s derivative, and after that it’s just kind of pathetic looking. All the more so because these gimmicks are fundamentally superficial. Mr. Potatohead graphic design gimmicks are emphatically not Modern with a big M, because they don’t tell us anything about the internal divisions of space or about the building’s structure. They’re little more than wallpaper.
Here’s an exercise in superficiality, proposed for a site in North Portland. Let’s clean it up and make the facade a bit less like an 8-bit Tetris game and a bit more like a building…
Order and heirarchy of forms make this conform a lot more to the Vitruvian rule of reflecting the proportions and ratios of the human body. Stripping away the arbitrary flanges and ribbon shapes reveals a form that more clearly conveys a familiar and recognizable pattern language.
