The FCB building looks dated and misplaced. In my architectural-unawareness-opinion, it lacks imagination or style. To me glass and steel don’t equal style, the Cristal Cathedral being an exception. Most glass and steel structures remind me of Legos and erector set, fun to play with but soon destroyed to build something better.

The Senior Center looks great compared with City Hall or FCB which isn’t saying much. Like the detective bureau building attached to the PD. It’s like buying a mobile home and attaching it to your 5000sqft house; they just don’t work well together. The recent addition to the PD looks pretty good though. I know, I know; apples and oranges; new construction vs. addition/remodel.

I am open to the notion that there may be architecture that you would consider modern and aesthetically pleasing that I would also enjoy. What that building would like is unimaginable to me. Perhaps it’s my lack of imagination. I never could enjoy the impressionist paintings but I always loved those realistic Dutch paintings. I considered those classics until my art professor “corrected” me and explained how unimaginative and unoriginal they were and that real artists pooh-pooh on those. She used some artsy-fartsy words to convey the message, so forgive me if I am butchering the subject. Art is not my forte.

Anyway, if you want to see more modern architecture in the downtown area, please explain to me why the Foxblock is a bad architectural idea. It certainly doesn’t resemble anything we have now and it looks modern.

I’ve never thought of the blog as necessarily getting into what Average Joe does with his or her own house –however no doubt Admin and others have opinions!

But what “Admin” has always tried to do is look at how the public dollars for the same project might be directed differently to promote sensible, environmentally sustainable architecture that serves a functional purpose, is a benchmark for the times, and is also aesthetically pleasing.

The issue seems to be that we get into a mindset of what is aesthetically pleasing. So what someone “within the wire” inevitably does is bring in something like Disney Hall, which is a unique building!! But we don’t have to go that far to see more commonplace examples.

As Harpoonaroni has pointed out, the Fullerton Community Bank has been sitting there all along –steel and glass. Sure, it was “different” when it was built in the 60’s, but we’ve grown accustomed to it.

(Btw, there’s another great little gem –glass and steele i-beams, over on La Habra Boulevard in the old part of La HabraI think it’s got junk in it. Completely under appreciated. Admin, if you don’t own it yet, talk to me.)

Granted, aesthetics change over time. What’s cool now, might be horrifying 40 years from now and vice versa. But the issue now is trying to make Fullerton into something that it isn’t. Sure, we have old buildings with charm, but putting up publicly built buildings with veneers that fall off make it look –cheap!

Isn’t this a waste of public tax dollars? And, if we are using public money, shouldn’t we be looking at quality? And isn’t this a chance to up the ante, not settle for “Rancho Santa Margarita,” but really rock and get excited about the architecture of today and tomorrow?

I’ll take a Martini, shaken, not stirred.

It’s totally reactionary, and your admitting
“I don’t know much about the building or its construction, nor do I care to”
show an aesthetic bigotry that most of us are trying to push past.