seeing yourself seeing.

Friday, December 08, 2006

 
Why Toyo Ito would disown Vivo City.
I think many people will say that vivocity is forced. To explain the problem a lot of people have with it; it's like saying you paint a bracelet with gold nippon paint and say its some 24 karat gold masterpiece; it's a fake-o. If you look at Toyo Ito's Taichung Opera in Taiwan, now that is probably what vivocity would have been, had Ito had his way. Take a look:





images courtesy of Taichung City

Even early renderings of the design looked promising:


Well instead this is what Vivocity looks like now,

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting


basically a slab structure with a 'skin' wrapped around it; very much your typical singaporean shopping mall. You could very well wrap Tampines Mall or Suntec City in this and it would look similar. Now that's a no-no; there's no integrity now, is there? Look, you can see the metal structure holding it up, what's worse is that the finishing and workmanship is dismal. It's like they let threads dangle from Jeremy Poh's Hugo Boss suit. (now WHAT an analogy.)

I've heard a rumour that Ito and his associates had to do an A&A (Addition&Alteration) job, after the former architects pulled out of the project when the american developer went bust or something. So in retrospect i guess Ito had no choice. Well that's my two cents for now.





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