"It's kind of been the ugly duckling that will emerge as the beautiful swan," Will Bruder says of the Dial building he designed.
Years ago, I picked up a phrase that I use quite often . It was coined in Bill Bryson's Book, The Lost Continent. Bryson was describing a hulking, ugly, concrete box of a hotel in downtown Savannah as something that came from the "Fuck You School of Architecture."
You know you've seen buildings such as these. You can be in the most picturesque, gorgeous location, and some whack job architect decides to put his rogue stamp on the terrain.
Enter the new Dial/Henkel Headquarters building in Scottsdale. The building sits on a relatively undeveloped plot of acreage, just off the 101 highway that runs through North Scottsdale. It's about eight miles away from my house, on the way out of town. The first time I saw it, last July, I freaked out.
"What the hell is that blight on the landscape?" were my exact words. The building is glass, and unfinished concrete, but lacks the necessary slickness and clean lines it seems it should have to be deemed modern. It's mid-century, minus the panache. You know what it is? It's where Mike Brady would have worked on The Brady Bunch. He was an architect, right?
I passed the building on the way to a birthday party today. "Mommy, there is the building you hate, " said Maggie. And once again, my aesthetic sensibilities were offended. Today's mental image was of a building in the Frankfurt air park on a grim, rainy day.
When I went looking for pictures of the completed project, I could only find the photos I have posted. One is the artist's rendering of the final result, and the other, which is a shot taken mid-construction. I did find one article on the building. Interestingly enough, it discusses the public reaction to the structure. Maybe the architect wanted to get people talking.
Dial's New Digs Get Mixed Reactions
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