Philaphilia's profane architecture critic GroJLart does not like Jill Sablosky's I.M. Pei Sculpture Garden: A Tribute one bit—it's his Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week pick. As an admirer of Pei's, Gro doesn't think the garden pays "appropriate" tribute to the architect who built the Society Hill Towers:
So how do we honor Pei? How did we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Society Hill Towers? BY NAMING A BUNCH OF FUCKED UP ROCKS AFTER HIM!!! Somehow, these hunks of marble are supposed to honor Pei in some way. The rectangular rock is supposed to be a bench and the other couple of rocks are supposed to be a sundial. It looks more like an iron trying to get wrinkles out of the slate or whatever the fuck that is below. Oh, dear.
I propose a statue of Pei taking a shit on a typical Society Hill NIMBY... think about it. Society Hill was a slum when Pei found it... he helped the folks taking a risk to bring the neighborhood back by designing these kick-ass towers (in an era of terrible, terrible architecture). Now, almost 50 years later, that same neighborhood carries some of the biggest anti-development Super-NIMBYs-- the most powerful in the city. Had these morons lived there when the Towers were built, they would have demanded silly design change after silly design change, and would have finally lawsuited the developer to death. Newmarket anyone?
Therefore, my idea of a giant I.M. Pei taking a big dump on a NIMBY would be 700 nonillion times more appropriate than a bunch of shitty marble.
· Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week [Philaphilia]