I'll assume many of you are not familiar with the New York based architecture firm SHoP, so feel free to click their name and learn a bit about them, because this post is about their work just a few miles north of where I am staying this semester.
It seems the concept of the building was to create a community front porch that would be filled with the patrons of the businesses residing inside, and I love the idea. Often when I think of living in the south I think of porches, both small and large, and it is very interesting to see another take on the porch, but at the scale of a community. Unfortunately, the building has never really been able to keep tenants, outside of the non-profit organization that it was originally designed around. Yet anytime I have visited this building, and it has been many times now, it sits just as it is in the picture above; uninhabited. No real signs of life, just a porch with furniture anticipating the day it will be used to its' potential.
Only having been here a few weeks now, I cannot fairly say why this building sits unused, but I think I can make some fair guesses. Throughout the entire state of Mississippi, there are no real urban elements, so a car is almost mandatory if you wish to go anywhere; and as such, I think it's a little hard to ask people to leave the comfort of their own porch to be on display to any passersby. Maybe, more simply, no one is on the porch because there is no business under the porch, which could also be a result of the turbulent economy that we are in. But even still, directly behind this building sits a smaller building housing a laundromat, where on more than one occasion I've seen people using, but they insist sitting beside the noisy machines with their paper or book rather than walking the thirty steps it takes to sit outside in comfortable conditions.
I would say that most would agree that this building is well-designed, but ultimately, and maybe just for this small moment, it is unsuccessful. Which to me raises the question, "Can unsuccessful architecture still be good architecture?" Please feel free to respond with your answers to the question.
And now the porn.
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