[MERIT]

The city built this HORRENDOUS art piece outside of the city's library. What is it, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine. A gigantic waste of tax dollars comes to mind.

rostasi

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I'd only fault its placement.

Lisnaholic

^ Yes, rostasi, you're right. The sculpture itself isn't so horrendous imo, in fact I rather like the bright yellow colour. The problem is that it's right in front of a complicated, mildly interesting bit of facade.

Here's a worse case of blocking the view of a building: for decades, this London station had an uncluttered entrance yard, so that even though it was set back from the road, it was clearly visible, as a station should be. At a glance you could take in the symmetry of the facade with its 3 arches, and the bit on top, with all its references to classical architecture. It may not be spectacular, but it has a lot of carefully worked-out details in terracota and stone:-



In the 1980s, the station was refurbished by an arrogant architect, and his idea was to dump a clumsy post-modern kiosk right in front of the old building:-



You can no longer appreciate the old facade in full, and from the street it takes a second to realise that there's a station trying to peek out from behind a florist's shop. The whole space is dominated by a graceless building with zero finesse which is little more than a disproportionate roof stuck on disproportionate columns. It doesn't have a single detail of any interest, charm or "art" imo, unless you want to count the gutter that's already bent out of shape at the left-hand corner. Furthurmore, selling flowers is traditionally accomplished by an old lady standing to one side on the pavement, surrounded by buckets. Now she has been awarded a shop that obscures the actual reason that people are there at all - to catch a bl**dy train, you stupid architect.

And now I am angry enough to sympathise with [MERIT] - the unneccesary waste of public money that actually makes our environment uglier.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953