Imo, 1WTC, it's a nice looking tower and all but honestly, it doesn't deserve all the praise it's getting, specially considering the amount of skyscrapers being built all over the world, 1WTC is mediocre at best.
The Shard in london also seems a little overrated, there's nothing impressive about it imo, it's height is underwhelming and the pyramid shape has become tiresome at this point.
Many of you might disagree but I think, IMO, the most overrated building in the world is the Oriental Pearl Tower.
I hate it with a passion, everything about it. There's only one building in the world uglier than this that I know of, but that one deserves the hate it gets, so it's not overrated.
I said it :cheers:
As for Burj, I don't think people say "wow, it's gorgeous !" but rather "wow it's bigger than unemployment in Poland !" :nuts:
In terms of height it's certainly not overrated, because it is impressive in that aspect.
I personally love Burj not for its height but for its design. Height means almost nothing to me since I only used to be interested in low-rise architecture.
Some of the buildings mentioned here are actually worthy of their praise and glory and its easy for people to say a certain building is overrated if it doesn't fit to their liking.
Seen from the street below the balconies on Aqua in Chicago look brilliant, but other then that it's just one big value engineered box. Having it seen from the inside out I'd pick this one as quite overrated. Actually from a resident perspective, the balconies themselves can be unpractical in their shape, some of the wider ones are supported by bars on top of the deck. The building has a running track on the podium roof while it sits next to beautiful running tracks along Lake Michigan.
Shanghai Tower. The forms are clumsy and the proportions are terrible. It looks like a 2,000 ft. tall damaged muffler.
1 WTC ...although I haven't encountered much "praise" for this awful David Childs mediocrity, aside from its height.
The Shard. Renzo Piano might execute cladding masterfully but the massing of this tower is almost childish in its crass geometricity. Fortunately his horrific NY Times Tower isn't on this list...because it was never rated highly to begin with.
Anything by Foster+Partners. They suck in too many ways to enumerate in a single thread, much less a post. This was not always the case.
Anything by Raphael Vinoly. I cringe each time this tasteless hack wins another plum commission. This has always been the case.
^^I don't think Chrysler Building is overrated, it's often mentioned here but most of the people outside the US don't even know about it. While it has better style then ESB.
They are irreplaceable classics and deserve all the attention they get.
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