The Brash Attack of The Hive

Kerry Flint, writing for Yatzer, reports on the Hive Apartment in Melbourne, Australia. This is a strange, unique residence inspired by hip hop and graffiti. I could be quite critical, but let’s let Kerry guide us through:

Arrows, swooshes and drips have been strikingly incorporated into the brick shell to create a new permanent urban art statement that shakes rather than caresses you upon first sight, like loud hip hop from a boombox.

Translation: This building is not a good neighbor.

Traditional, subtle and pretty this is not; the building has a strong futuristic sci-fi presence with graffiti relief panels making up the external structure, spelling HIVE in ‘wild style’ by Prowla.

Translation: This building is not pleasing to the eye.

Punctuation and the rebellious shapes of the lettering also provide influxes of natural light, exciting viewing platforms and interesting shapes that jut out brashly and attack the eye; encouraging intrigue and a desire to continue to admire this building’s multiple angles.

Translation: This building is not friendly or inviting. In fact it is aggressively provoking. [1]

This is not an offhand modern stylistic whimsy, instead it’s solid and has been built to withstand the test of time; a definite case of substance over style in fact.

Translation: This building is ugly but it’s going to be hard to demolish.

Situated in an exclusive inner city residential suburb this building epitomizes urban rebellion and youthfulness. Belling has thrown caution to the wind creating a building that stands out rather than merely blending into the more conservative architecture in the area.

Translation: Again, this building is not a good neighbor.

I could critique the lack of a human scaled street presence. I could discuss the over-scaled graphic elements and lack of a well composed architectural elevation. I could be quite critical but I think the point has been made. Even the write up struggled to be complimentary.

This building illustrates the fundamental divide between viewing a building as an object in space and viewing a building as a part of a greater whole. This building rejects its duty to be a good neighbor and improve the quality of the neighborhood. Instead it focuses on bringing attention to itself by deliberately eschewing the character of the neighborhood for a rebellious and aggressive aesthetic. As I discussed in Monument Valley - The Failure of the Starchitects, a background building’s first responsibility is to enhance its neighborhood. This building fails that test.

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1. I think I’ll start a series on the aggressive language of modern architecture. So far we’ve had shakes, jut out brashly, and attack and we are only a few sentences in!  ↩