Why is there a lack of sci fi architecture?

Why is there a lack of sci fi architecture?

Real estate bootlicker here

The problem with them, ESPESH with shit like Gehry's work, is that more often than not, they don't properly drain rainfall or snow melt, which leads to astronomically faster rates of decay and even failure, due to the odd shapes having a tendency to collect and pool water without any proper drainage or even... just an angle for shit to roll off of.

So all this water pools up every season and shit starts leaking and most construction is all prefabbed these days, while shite like OP pic is built from thousands of custom built and atrociously expensive bits of glass, steel and sheetrock that gotta be specially designed and fabbed for the unrealistic vision of a jagoff arkeetek who ain't got no real field experience and can't envision trapped runoff or smooth HVAC airflow to be an issue in the first place because he keeps his head firmly ensconced within his ass next the workstation running a copy of autoCAD he's been renting for ten grand a month so's he can continue spitting out blueprints for disney attractions that can't actually hack it outside of the virtual world that comprises 90% of his jobsite experience.

Surely you could design something with a futuristic aesthetic but also consider actual practical architecture in the process.

You could, it's just that people who design these futuristic joints don't have the real world experience that a builder in the field. They live in a world of meaningless data that doesn't matter in all sorts of extenuating circumstance. They don't design around "obsolete" concepts such as redundant structural supports. They use concrete according to tolerances prescribed in a lil' handbook that was written by a computer and doesn't take rainfall or cement blends into its listed failure tolerance ranges, which are shit anyway because IRL those values are all over the map and the handbook's numbers are just an average value gleaned from multiple tests.

Basically, there's a huge cultural and experiential divide between limp wristed image obsessed architect who live in a lukewarm bathtub filled by aesthetics, theory, assholes like Le Corbusier, too much Derrida, way too much self importance and education costs on par with your mom's weekly outlay on crack and St. Ides special brews (she loves the guava/passionfruit shit, get her some on the way home next time).

Actual builders are the socio-cultural opposite of this, and they kinda want to kick the architect in the head half the time because he invariably proposes the impossible on account he liked the look of it when he was on E last weekend.

It's very cost and labor prohibitive due to experimentation with materials, i.e. it would require very unique production to make such a thing as that picture that would price it out of being feasible.

I'm sensing a lot of emotional unrest from our bootlicker friend, but that aside, I suppose there could be more of such things if the demograohics of talented architects and installation artists were vast enough to have large overlapping populations and if the people who design these things were hired based on their overall talent rather than on their connections, wowpower, and cost efficiency as interpreted by people who aren't talented artists or engineers. Of course, maybe we just need to look harder for the few gems that are aesthetically and structurally sound.

It'll come to pass over time, but time will make some degree of this futurism the norm rather than the exception.

And lord, managing these sortsa buildings is a nightmare.

I don't 100% agree with this, but you're mostly on point.

I think another major issue is that as much as architects and fans/press circlejerk over this stuff, it doesn't really make functional sense and most clients seem to realize that. All these crazy shapes look super cool in a vacuum but they result in tons of wasted space where furniture doesn't work, and the second you start filling the place with the trappings of a real home or workplace the sci-fi illusion is shattered.

Most clients who ARE willing to spend stupid amounts of money on a huge impractical building seem to trend toward dictator-style tacky pseudo-"old world" clusterfucks and not sci-fi minimalism, too.

I take it you’re a builder of some description? I can see where you’re coming from for sure, I’ve worked on construction sites where it seemed as though no one really thought the plans out at all and everything was just done to look fancy.

>no one really thought the plans out at all and everything was just done to look fancy.

Exactly.

I started in construction, then into period renovations, then real estate. From being on the job - you could kinda feel the split between the builders and the architect, right? I mean, ofc nobody cared. It firs my memories of the labor-design dichotomy.

Yeah, wasted space and middling functionality.

>super cool
>in a vacuum

Couldn't have said it better.

That crazy building Frankie G. did for MIT or whomever a few years back?

Well, that and his other works as of late... are all starting to literally fall apart less than a decade after they were built. Dripping ceilings, failing HVAC, shorted wires from the rain permeating the structure and pooling snow melt on roof tops built without drainage or guttering.

Imagine you work on the board of some college. Your organization just spent hundreds of millions putting that building up, when you could have been diverting the cash to campus healthcare, refurbishing existing dorms and equipment, buy new components for the school network, hiring new teachers or giving a cost of living raise to the ones that are already employed and in need of every dime they can get... Times being what they are and all.

I dunno about you but I'd be pissed off.