Here we were operating on the metaphysical given that nothing on this great earth is certain except for death, taxes, and the somewhat universal ire toward architect Daniel Libeskind. And yet this weekend the Times alerted the world to yet another tax loophole (it involves dubious "museums") and Blouin Art Info is now saying that architecture's most reviled purveyor of fancy jagged things is now just a big ol' bore.
In its review for Libeskind's latest piece of deconstructivism, the International Congress Xperience building in Mons, Belgium, Blouin Art Info calls the single-story conference center, as asymmetric and pointy as ever Libeskind hath decreed, "a familiar, dull architecture" with "a calcified formal language whose shock-factor and novelty has worn away." Author Anna Kats calls the angles "arbitrary."
Fair points.
Kats also points out the tiredness of Libeskind's long-standing grandiloquence—the kind that has reared project titles like "18.36.54 House" and "el Masterpiece."
But really: "Xperience"? He's not even trying anymore. As Kats writes, "even the conference center's name contains a random formal gesture; it's not clear why the institution chose to drop the first letter." It "recalls counterculture circa 1992."
Thoughts?
· Another Year, Another Libeskind Building [Blouin Art Info]
· That Time Libeskind Was Called a 'No-Talent Ass Clown' [Curbed National]
· All Daniel Libeskind posts [Curbed National]