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Perry Cofield AIA
Design Ways & Means Architects
Arlington VA
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Forget Rosie. More discouraging is the public reaction to the new AIA NC HQ building in Raleigh, which got the "ugliest new building" plaudit in a local journal. Frank Harmon is a well-meaning, intelligent architect. But the profession is guilty of transferring an aesthetic at one scale to a larger one with less than optimal results. In this case a house in the woods was tranferred to an urban site. It is a case of "we always overdo everything". Same thing happened in the POMO era. We need to be more sensitive. Was this building dissing the street on the north side, while saluting the powers that be (the capital complex) on the south? Anyway, I hope the bust in architecture has been done to death. The last time I checked our seal still required in many cases. But the academy is now relentless in its pusuit of modernism and its discontents, and the kids will pay a price until they get some common sense on how the public preceives our work.