Lots of chat today on Twitter about a new building that has recently been erected on the corner of Herndon and Blackstone. It's for a national business called Stanton Optical, and, in this humble blogger's opinion, it is ugly as hell:
It looks like a 3-year old's building block. There is no character to the building; it makes an already ugly corner even worse.
I hate the orange accents. I hate how poorly the company's logo aligns with the inexplicable orange lines. I hate that the old sign for the previous business is still on the corner, and I really hate that the building that housed the previous business has been moved a few yards back, and is now resting on blocks behind Stanton Optical. I hate everything about the existence of this building (notice I said building, and not business; I have no beef with Stanton Optical itself).
But that's me. Take a look at some more photos and judge for yourself.
[Thanks to Bryan at Dumb Drum for the blog idea]
Thats hiliarious! I was just talking about how ugly that building is this morning. I can picture a commercial with a cheezy radio voice about how they "smash the competition!!" haha.
Ditto. But I bet the River Parkers love it - look at all that parking!
What's a River Parker?
Parker, the Grizzlies mascot, playing Chris in a "Stand By Me" swede.
San Joaquin Parker...the crazy younger brother of River Parker...
Nice catch, Mike.
River Parker = someone who lives in Pinedale.
That's a lot of Hate concentrated in just one person! After all it's just a building, and for a change a good looking one compared to the Neo-Tuscan crap that passes for Architecture these days that has been infesting Fresno, and has been replacing valuable modern architectural structures in Blackstone Avenue recently. It has my thumbs up!
Wait, it's good 'cuz it a less crappy turd?
I want to fill it up with Coors Light and float down the San Joaquin River Parker Lewis & Clarke Kent
No. In my view it's good because unlike many of the pseudo-tuscan buildings that have taken the place of fantastic Googie architecture that Blackstone used to have, it actually fits relatively well into the roadside Modernist context that the strip was (and still is) known for.
By the way, agree with Bryan that placement could be better, and with Ryan that some design details should have taken more attention.
I dunno. Up close it doesn't look too bad, but it definitely looks ugly from far away.
The people that walk into that place probably don't care.
P.S. I take credit for starting this discussion on Twitter. :)
Hear, hear!
Credit to you, sir.
It could be worse, like brown... Just gets a m'eh from moi...
I think it's all wrong for that corner though, and that's what giving people that ugly feeling.
They could have gone another direction with it and it would have looked cool. That same shape but with glass instead of stucco. It would have looked really sharp. Instead, they built a big stucco box. Does it even have a 2nd story, or is that just "filler" up there?
I think the main problem is that it's monolithic design is is a bit harsh and doesn't blend in with the surrounding area. The second picture down really shows how it sticks out like a sore thumb.
I'm hoping that when the landscaping matures a bit that it will soften up the look of the building. But I doubt it. What kills me is since this is a national corporation, they most likely have an architect that designs all their stores and it's all the same design. I could be wrong though, but I did a Google image search for Stanton Optical stores and the same cubism form popped up a few times.
Not an excuse, just trying to figure out the crappy design.
I actually like it, it's modern-y. I haven't seen it in person but will check it out next time i'm in Fresno.
The old building however, looks like crap!! Why wouldn't they demolish that junk? The sign too!
It looks like a cheap, Apple Store knock-off but I really don't think it's the ugliest building in Fresno. Out of the other buildings on the intersection that one is by far the least offensive to my eye.
What do you mean by "There is no character to the building."? What is architectural character in your opinion?
Ans this whole time I thought it was going to be a AT&T store...huh.
I agree with Heather. It's hideously ugly. I absolutely *HATE* it!
What bugs me most about the building is the lack of consistency in the blocks. The center tiles are vertical rectangles instead of squares and it just seems sloppy, or at worst, a design accident. The orange is ugly too.
However, I agree with Miguel about seeing a variance from the boring Tuscan look that's populating Fresno more and more.
The inconsistency of the grid bothers me as well. I'm ok with them being different as long as there was some rhythm. But there is not. It looks like they squished their prototype to fit the site.
hard to call one building ugly when there's nothing but liquor stores and fast foods on every street in town.
Stanton Optical.
Hmmm.
I would've placed two geodesic domes side by side....and painted them to look like eyeballs.
Heather, I've been trying to figure out what you mean about the bad placement of the logo, but it looks correct to me (centered vertically & horizontally). I'm more offended that the logo uses two different typefaces... and that it doesn't seem to match the one on their website.
Ugly or not (I'm in the "it's ok/nice to see something different" camp), the fact that it has gotten this much attention makes it successful in my opinion.
I mean that the orange lines and some of the letters (the "t" in Stanton, the "p" in Optical) blend in, or maybe compete with, the orange grid lines. Perhaps if the grid was consistent, as Ryan pointed out, this wouldn't bug me as much.
It took me a while to get used it. Having left and come back to see it completed I sorta dig the building. Not my personal styling, but different. Then again I think Riverbluff II is the epitome of typical fugly and most would probably like that.
I wholeheartedly agreed. My wife and I passed the building a couple of weeks ago and the first words out of my mouth were: "Oh my gosh, what an ugly building! The City really approved that design?!!" What it might be getting attention, it would be difficult for me to go to an establishment that built and approved such a monstrosity.
Just curious, do you go into Costco, or Walgreens?
Maybe it's an optical illusion.........
Maybe we could put a bow on top and it could look like a big present.
Maybe the city approved it because they wanted to distract us from the other crap you have to look at while driving down Blackstone.
My wife hates it. I don't think it's bad. Though I really hope they are planning to tear the old sign down.
Looks just like the newer parts of Fresno.Fits right in !
If I've learned anything from reading the Beehive, all this hate and controversy can mean only one thing: it's art!
Would you rather have a old garbage empty lot there like it was full of junk cars . Get real whats the problem no one has open mind to be modern.look at the previous building old garbage looked like a old Milk house . Why didn't someone else come up with a better idea.
Why did you capitalize milk in the middle of your sentence?
When you view the building from a corner, the two corner halves equal one of the squares, the photo doesn't show that view.....though I agree about the center rectangle (must be smushed to fit the lot) the sign is ok as well, but as a building it is what they (the company) want, distinctive, modern and clean, and now all of us know what Stanton Optical is!
Happy to see a new business in Fresno, paying taxes and improving a major eyesore on an major intersection...
is it to everyone's taste? Nah, but so what....it is new, clean and maybe more new businesses will come to Fresno....
Different strokes....
It is pretty ugly, but it does have two positive things going for it:
-The entrance actually connects to the sidewalk
-The front is not 10 miles of parking.
There are uglier buildings in Fresno, you just can't see them because someone in the 50's decided it made good business sense to hide stores as far away from the road as possible and instead highlight a 20% full parking lot.
Seriously, Fresno is packed with small mom and pop stores that nobody knows about because they're all the way at the back of the lot.
Retail should always be in front, with parking at the back. For some reason, only fast food places have seemed to figure out how important visibility is. That is, until Stanton Optical came in.
You may not like how it looks, but they're getting a lot more exposure than the random store that shares a parking lot with savemart.
On a separate note, what was the old business? It looks like a burger king. Why on earth did they save it? Seems like it would have been cheaper to knock it over and build a brand new one.
JJJ, I totally agree that we need to return to traditional forms of planning, with parking separate from walking spaces. (You know, when people had to park in the rear of a business, or even better, park in a centrally located lot and then be able to walk from business to business. Imagine how nice River Park would be without all that ugly huge lot in the middle? That said, it's still a very unappealing building. It could have been the beginning of some decent architecture on that god-forsaken street, but it just added to the mishmash of fail on that street.
If my dog craps on my lawn I don't just roll the poo back for my dog to crap again. Clean up the mess that was there. Don't treat it like a historic building.
What would Howard Rorke say?
I know this is late in the run, but I must be honest.... Fresno citizens will go anywhere to get the best deal. Stanton Optical has been advertising heavily for the last 6 weeks, especially w/fullpage ads in the Sunday Fresno Bee.
They don't care what anyone thinks about ttheir "architecture", they just aimed to get the structure up in time to make some profits..