Delaram Art & Design

While we see the growing focus on sustainability and climate resilience in architecture, with many cities around the world searching for greener and healthier dwelling alternatives, we also see the opposite.

Out of a reckless bravado, a wish to impress no matter what, a client dictating the rules even if they make little sense, developers going off the leash, a world lacking taste, name your own reason, absurd architecture is not going anywhere. And the more we dive into the part of the internet ruled by architecture aficionados, the more of a treasure box for crazy buildings it turns out to be.

This Twitter page that goes by a laconic title “Bizarre Buildings” is no exception. It’s basically a collection of what it sounds like, weird-looking structures that make you question everything you know about function, common sense and aesthetics. Not to say it’s not fun, we all have a kind of fascination with such buildings!#1 

To find out more about our fascination with bizarre buildings and structures, we reached out to Lisa Yaszek, a Regents Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech where she researches and teaches science fiction as a global language crossing centuries, continents, and cultures. Lisa was happy to share some very interesting insights into the cultural significance of such buildings, and why they never cease to capture our imagination.#2 

“We’re fascinated by strange-looking human-made structures because they remind us that, as humans, we don’t just create buildings to shelter ourselves from bad weather and dangerous animals. Rather, our buildings are also always expressions of our cultural values. When a building looks bizarre to us, it’s because it somehow challenges or defies those values,” Lisa explained.#4 

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The professor of science fiction studies argues that for the past two hundred years, many of us across the world have lived in cultures informed by the rhythms of industrial and mass production. It turns out that there are two specific values associated with these patterns of production that clearly inform most of the structures built in that time, Lisa said.#7 

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