X Marks the Spot

Read this article in the International Herald Tribue while I was in Morocco about the efforts of George Ferguson of the Royal Institute of British Architects to create a building grade of "X." Buildings assigned a Grade X would be deemed ugly and worthy of destruction. This might fly in the face of other conspicuous efforts ('Ullo Prince Charlie) to preserve the nation's architecture, but actually its purpose would be not to highlight older, more elegant buildings for destruction, but the newer more utlilitarian buildings which resemble little more than immense concrete blocks.

Seems there's some validity to the idea to me, and, boy, do I have a candidate for an X here in Charlotte should the grading ever catch on from across the pond. The remarkably hideous salmon-colored effort depicted here, the Arlington. The building is broadly reviled--chiefly for its godawfully colored glass--and it's rather prominently placed across the Brookshire freeway from "uptown" Charlotte on South Boulevard, a primary Charlotte thoroughfare. Stories circulate about how the glass got there in the first place, the most common one being something along the lines of the incorrect color glass purposely being ordered by a contractor as an act of vengeance against the developer (or something like that), but I believe the stories are nothing more than urban legend unfotunately. The more likely scenario would be that a developer thought the color eye-catching.

In the 2001 article I link to above, Dan Morrill, consulting director for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, says, "It is an extremely insensitive thing [the developer Jim Gross] has done. It's very insensitive, and not only that, it's extremely unsophisticated. It really is an intrusion into the cityscape, there's no doubt about that."

My own thought: If they ever (god forbid) film a remake of Fight Club, I can think of a very useful way the Arlinton could be used to create a tremendous sense of realism near the end of the movie.

Also somewhat disliked here in Charlotte is a building I quite like, The Westin Charlotte. Sure, it's a bit like a giant razor blade set against the taller, more conservative banking buildings "uptown" (I keep putting quotes around that word because I find the term so pretentious. "Uptown" Charlotte is Charlotte's downtown; it just happens to have a higher elevation, hence the silly moniker), but I admire its clean sharp lines and its less conventional, more modern profile. Obviously, not all that is modern deserves a grade X.