SPONtaneous Stupidity

Speigel Online’s English Edition could not wait to call the US Embassy, the product of the usual European process of asking everyone and their pet Beagle what you’re allowed to do with your property, “banal”. This brings me to arrive to one conclusion: bite me, you hypocrites.

O.M. Ungers’ demonstrably banal play on Italian Fasci styling was built in DC without objection, and obviously without taking any advice judging by its’ present condition. The dim-witted German habit (which just barely works in the climate of northern Germany) of applying a thin, polymer-modified Portland cement plaster was over crappy masonry work doesn’t work in the challenging climate of the mid-Atlantic, where you need some actual technical ability, not just a condescending attitude, anal-retention problems, and looking good in a lab-coat.

The plaster is trapping condensate coming through the joints, and it’s visible on the entire surface of the façade. It looks like neglected concrete block garage that hasn’t been painted in 23 years.

The notion of doing a basic study on which way the vapor is travelling in winter and summer, a basic exercise that every architect can do in his sleep, would have beneath the man’s firm which is, after all from a nation populated entirely by experts.

It is also, by the way, a hideous and tragically dull. You’ll note how few photos of any size are available of the thing.