• Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
    2·
    3 days ago

    The San Jose Oak Hill Tower is unique in a number of ways. The concrete brutalist design appears not to have been replicated anywhere else; it seems to have been site-specific. It sits atop an underground switching center (that was partly used for a military contract), which explains the relatively hardened design.

    Today the underground switch is still there, owned by AT&T, but the tower space is leased to land mobile and cellular providers. The old horn antennas at top are disconnected.

    • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
      1·
      3 days ago

      With a few exceptions (mostly towers atop downtown switching offices in populated areas), no one was trying to make any of this utilitarian communications infrastructure beautiful. It was form strictly following function, built to be reliable and rugged.

      But there was, I think, quite a bit of beauty to find in it. I wonder if we’ll look at our current neighborhood cellular towers, now often regarded as a visual blight, the same way decades after they’re (inevitably) also gone.

      • Clive Thompson@saturation.social
        2·
        3 days ago

        @[email protected]

        I’m pretty sure we will

        The brownstones of Brooklyn – over which these days Wall Street guys frantically try to outbid one another with $3-$4 million offers – because they’re regarded as gorgeous and iconic …

        … were, when they were first built in the 19th century, utterly loathed by veddy propah citizens as being hideously ugly eyesores

        While recognizing that horrible contemporary design does indeed exist, I have trouble fully trusting here-and-now aesthetic judgements