Culture

Phallus-shaped high-rise offends San Diegans

by Snelgrove Bottomly | July 9, 2007 at 01:03 pm

2051 views | 2 Recommendations | 3 comments

Look at the photo: does this remind you of a flower or a phallus?
Sandor Shapery is an architect with the San Diego-based design firm C.W. Kim and believes the 40-story tower with the blubous top is floral in character, but this is disputed by a consultant hired by a downtown San Diego development agency to review the project .

But there have been several buildings which hare more phallic than this one, and some magazines have even run contests to get nominations for this distinction.

For example, the German cultural digest Telopolis ran a contest back in 2003. Its entries show a range of more phallic buildings than this one.

I am looking for photos to accompany this story of buildings that seem to have a phallic intent (some might believe that all buildings over one story are monuments to our desire to conquer nature, btw).

If you have a photo you'd like to contribute, please do.

In the meantime, please read the article below and add your comment to it. Thanks for all the photos coming in!

Gwynne Pugh, a Santa Monica architect hired by the downtown redevelopment agency to review building designs, has questioned whether the design is right for the city. The location, at 11th Avenue and A Street, is a prominent spot as a downtown entrance from state Route 163.

“With its rounded forms and swelling of the uppermost floors . . . this building structure is very phallic,” Pugh wrote in his critique of the project.

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underthebridge.abovethewater

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 13:47 on July 9th, 2007

Snelgrove Bottomly, I like this story. It's good stuff. This reminds me of a story I posted about the erection of the world's largest penis. Ha ha. I think the building only looks like a penis if you have that type of mindset, you know what I mean...haha. I think it's cool though. Go for it, build it!