Award-winning

[supergee]

Design is an autoantonym, meaning both "clear thinking made visible" (Edward Tufte) and "prettiness with as little concession to the needs of users as possible." Today’s Horrible Example of the latter is a $41 million dollar library with three floors it can’t use.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Another reminder of why I admire Erno Goldfinger as an architect- he always realised that his buildings would have end users and spent time living in all of them.

[arlie]

My Go-To example of poor design remains Apple Park, aka The MotherShip, aka Apple Panopticon.

The Wikipedia article doesn't mention most of what's wrong with it, but they've recently been retrofitting the bathrooms - ground floor only - to make it possible for certain disabled people to open their doors. (E.g. folks in wheelchairs.) (None of the other doors have any kind of automatic opener; disabled people require escort to their desks, since everything's behind a badge-operated door lock, and the doors don't simply open themselves when they read the badge.) The "cafes" draw complaints from their barristas about a stupid design with inconvenient sinks (in their back room); those are the only sinks on the ground floor, except for the bathrooms. Lots of money was paid for specially designed chairs - about $1200 a pop - their main feature, other than aesthetics, is fixed-in-place arms that can neither be adjusted nor removed. Like other Apple buildings, it's equipped with sit-stand desks - but these ones aren't tall enough for about 1/3 of the staff. Signs are rare; instead, they have security people on duty giving directions etc. (E.g. the shuttle bus stop from the too-far-away "South Parking" is completely unmarked.)

On the good side, there are elevators, and those who can't climb stairs can enter at the parking level - unfortunately missing the security people who give directions, but only at the first floor entrances. They also have people with motorized carts that can give rides to the mobility impaired - though they don't tell employees about this feature unless they happen to ask the right person (or, presumably, show up on crutches, and get the information volunteered by security).