November 2016 | James Howard Kunstler

Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif.

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

Nov. 2, 2016

Behold the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Caltech in Pasadena, California, designed by Thom Maynes’ Morphoses team.

I’d call the style “Bizarro Corbu” after the early Modernist, Le Corbusier (human name: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret). Bizarro derives from the trope in the old Superman comics, “Bizarro World: an alternative universe of industrial madness populated by sub-humanoids with crystalline bodies.

Note the surpassing dreariness of the ground floor with its squashed down entrance portico, dull concrete “pilotis” and ghastly chain-link fencing (a material that should be relegated to dog kennels and prison yards.) Horizontal windows, of course! And that’s a great color choice: monkey-shit orange!

Thanks to Patrick T. Lynch for the nomination.

Le Corbusier 1933

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James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.