Cleveland needs to look north for inspiration - the Puglies

TOIstudio heads up to Toronto next week. I know I just returned from New York but the spring travel bug has bitten. I haven't been to Toronto since I was 13 or so and while a part of me wants to hunt down Steven Fong and complain about Kent's floundering ways I would rather walk the waterfront, compare the Condo situation with Cleveland's own and remiss not putting the journey off until May.

I will also attempt to tap into the vibrant and seemingly vocal local criticism of local architecture. Something that may be just starting to coagulate in Cleveland. While there have been some attempts to criticize and critique perhaps it should be taken a step further and openly judge.

The MarJ sent me a fine website called The People's Choice Awards for Architecture or the Puglies for short. There some of Toronto's architectural projects receive the dubious award of being shortlisted on a website where the public can chose which particular project is more offensive. The website is amazingly easy to navigate, offers quite a huge selection of choices and imagery and really does a fine job of driving the point home that the public has some discerning taste and it would be nice for developers to recognize that.

While I think the options in Cleveland may not be as varied (due to the same particular group of people churning out the same particularly poorly designed product) it would be nice to collect and disseminate imagery of the debacle, if only to share with the world and hopefully incite a revolution of good taste and proper decorum.

Viva la Revolucion!