Loose Planning

I am spending this week in Nashville, Tennessee working at a storage facility which provides me with ample time to job hunt, read, surf the internet and, of course, blog post. I have been noticing Nashville's architecture since I have been here and have decided that i hate it. Utterly and completely hate it. This cities renaissances have come during unfortunately disparate times in architectural style. The first came in the late 1890's giving us the Victorian Union Station and Gothic Revival Customs House, another came in the 1970's giving the city dozens of classic modern structures, and finally from the 90's to today with the Post-Modern LP Field and AT&T Buildings and the Neo-classic Schermerhorn Center. In addition to this public confusion, Nashville is also the state capital of Tennessee, so there is a large Federal/Beaux Arts civic center right in the middle of it all. To top it all off, Nashville has a 1-1 scale reproduction of the Parthenon in a neighboring park.

Obviously every city in the country has a jumble of disparate architectural styles that can be loosely associated with the rise and fall of successful economic conditions within the cities, but Nashville has so poorly integrated and planned each build cycle, the resident is left totally distracted by the situation. Just about every architectural style I know of is represented in a city that is not big enough to disperse the effects of the competing aesthetics. Every time I look up I just want to bulldoze half of what I see to make my eyes stop burning. Ponder the following photos...

The final image is the propsed mixed-use tower that will add to the calamity. I encourage you to Google image search for more pictures before you make a judgment. Also bear in mind that all of the above pictures encompass about 8 square blocks...

Tighten it up Nashville city planners. It looks gross.