Word: cobbs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Cobb is optimistic about his current project, a design for an art museum in Portland, Maine. Again, the urban context complicates the demands of the program. Cobb's design is an attempt to assimilate the new building into the site: a large brick facade encloses a public square; the stepped levels of the rear connect the vast new structure with the smaller existing museum building. Red brick was chosen to match the vernacular buildings of the city...
...citing examples of his own work, Cobb emphasizes his desire to make designs fit existing structural and social contexts. One of his designs, the John Hancock Insurance Company building, has been one of Boston's most controversial structures. Located in Copley Square, the Hancock tower in famous for the structural defect which resulted in huge planes of glass exploding off its facade exterior. Even before that catastrophe, citizens were outraged by the arrogance of a private corporation erecting a 60-story office building adjacent to the city's historic heart; the tower stands next to H.H. Richardson's Trinity Church...
...Cobb makes no apologies for the Hancock tower. He admits that it was finally approved for economic and not aesthetic reasons. "It served the vital economic interests of the community that this company should stay in Boston," he states, adding that he "adopted a strategy of minimalism because the situation demanded it. We excluded everything that didn't contribute, in an effort to temper the inherent arrogance of such a building...
...Cobb sees architecture as a moral endeavor. He is frustrated by the flippant attitude inherent in much post-modern architecture. In reaction to the strict terms of the modern style, many architects now indulge in haphazard eclectisism. He welcomes the return of the figurative in architecture, the use of forms inbued with cultural meaning and associations. He approves, to a certain degree, of the wit and irony of post-modern designs. He worries, however, that an excess of such levity will weaken the impact of the figurative, resulting in "an unconscious trivialization of meaning." He senses a dangerous carelessness...
...CREATION of architecturally significant designs goes beyond logical construction and beyond self-conscious intellectualized aesthetics. One must consult one's intuition to understand "the essential distinction between architecture and mere building," Cobb says. His emphasis on architecture as investigation and exploration perhaps best explains why he came to Harvard. His final message is that there is no prescriptive guide to understanding--or discovering--architecture. "You learn architecture by doing it. The process is long, arduous, difficult, and expensive--and absolutely indispensable...