I passed by Abdoun circle and saw yet another ‘atrocity’ being committed against contemporary architecture in Jordan. This commercial building was designed by renowned architect Khaled Nahhas. It is a really nice building as far as commercial buildings go. What do the owners do after hiring a star architect?
They allow their tenants to plaster all kinds of utterly ugly signs over the building. Notice the bank signs that stick over the edge and the black and orange ‘artwork’.
It is clear: as a culture (yes even that segment of society that builds in the posh Abdoun area) we don’t deserve good architecture. All what we deserve is dumb boxes with the maximum number of commercial signs on, above and preferably also inside them.
Comments
12 responses to “Abdoun Circle: Not even buildings by star architects are safe from ugly signs!”
mahoo ya a7mad, art is relative, and the service an architect sells is very immature, he sells great artistic buildings that make everything look good, i trust him to do that, but thats it, i dont trust (or cant trust) him in giving me a way to help my tenants reveal their names… maybe if the architectural house DOES offer the service of coming up with solutions for these kind of “problems for architects” “requirements for others”, things can get in a win-win situation… wanna things to get better, either teach people or help them help themselves.
Ahmad didn’t they draft laws for that in Amman recently? Still good or struck out?
Art is relative, ugly is not.
oooh yes Sid, ugliness is relative as well, what u might think as ugly, regular people see as “Hip!”
The building doesn’t look that nice to start with. With the white-blocks-facade, it looks very regular building. I find the signs very normal.
What exactly do you expect companies to do after they rent offices? not put signs?
Would you show me an example of a good sign on a building?
I think I totally miss your point.
Okay then, let’s slap a bumper sticker on The Thinker and see how “Hip” that is.
sid, go to http://www.talasim.com to see that ALREADY happening!
Hey, I’m an American student doing research on transportation and car culture in Amman. I’ve enjoyed reading some of what you’ve written about Abdoun Bridge and infrastructure in general and was wondering if you could give me any further insights into why cars are dominant and what accomodations the city makes for them.
I find advertisment as additions to the scene. Yes, the bank sign isn’t attractive, but the Bless sign is nice.
We need to inject more colors in our surroundings. It is quite dull to have all of our buildings while without other colors. Ads can give the missing colors.
I think its the architects fault, shouldnt things like signs be concidered when designing the facade to any commercial building? Especialy in jordan. You cant blame “the society” they are simply reacting to a design that was not articulated in accordance to their needs: big big 2armat!
You cant design a building and expect the tenants to adjust to it, the design would be altered: it would fail. But what a good architect should be doing is adjust the design according to the tenants and their need background,,, in this case: Jordanian business owners who rate sucess by the size of their signs!
who the **** uses orange and black for an ice cream store? what they have petrol flavor?
mmm, sorry, but who is that STAR architect
!!