Asyouwish/1/28 Chrysler building

Design has always been of interest to me, and thus when traveling I like to stop at the historical structures along the way. I have been to or passed by many of the structures in today’s powerpoint, of which include: the Parthenon, the Paris Opera House, all of Gaudi’s famous works, the Miami beach building, the Louvre, the building in New York City which is now I believe the BMW building, the New York City apartment building, the Pompidou, and the London Train station.  Having been so fortunate as to see these buildings first hand it is hard to pick just one to analyze.  I have therefore chosen to analyze a different work that was not on the slide show because you had already spoken a bit about the above structures and I wanted to start my analysis on a clean slate.

 The building I have chosen to structurally analyze is the Chrysler Building.  Growing up in New York City I saw this building on a regular basis and to this day I still believe it is one of the coolest, most elegant skyscrapers I have ever seen.  The Chrysler Building would probably be categorized as modern, it is a skyscraper as mentioned before and thus fits into this category because it not only serves a function but also has a pretty standard form.  The top part of the building however is more Art Deco than modern because it contains the use of mixed shapes such as triangles and depicts a crown like image.  The top of the building also contains decorative gargoyles.  These various details are what have made the Chrysler Building stand out from the other skyscrapers of the world.  The Chrysler Building was built during the 1920’s, during the peek of art deco architecture.   While writing this post it has also come to my attention that gargoyles are actually not historically an art deco structure but rather more gothic, thus this work could also be categorized as radical eclecticism.  The structure of the building itself is quite modern and the gargoyles are a normally considered a middle-age church ornament.  Thus the Chrysler Building can be called a work of modernism, art deco and radical eclecticism.