You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘serpentine’ tag.
One of life’s lesser disappointments is how boring everything here in America looks. I am not sure if this is a result of banal & puritanical tastes of home buyers or if the regulatory capture which is such an aspect of life here has allowed developers and zoning boards to prevent everything but prefab ranches and ugly co-ops. Probably it is a result of a combination of these things (along with a real desire by builders to keep people safe and an equal desire to make things that appeal to everyone). Anyway I am looking forward to a future of wilder and more eclectic buildings and we can already see inklings of such possibilities by looking abroad.
For example this is “Quetzalcoatl’s Nest” a complex of ten different apartments built by renowned Mexican architect Javier Senosiain in Naucalpan, Mexico. Senosiain is an advocate of organic architecture, which takes its inspiration from a combination of preexisting landscape features and natural forms. Quetzalcoatl’s Nest is built in a hilly landscape of natural caverns, serpentine ridges and old oak groves. looking at this landscape, Senosiain saw the shape of a colossal mythological serpent. He incorporated a large cave into the building as the snake’s head and then set out to build other textures of snake ribs and scales and serpentine patterns into the compound.
The fantastical lair includes water gardens, strange modern hideaways, and fantastic stained glass show spaces in a hard-to-describe architectural tour-de-force which spreads over 16,500 square feet. I have included a selection of pictures here, but you should really find a video somewhere so you can get a better sense of what is going on. Why couldn’t the Barclay’s Center people hire this guy so that their rattlesnake could look awesome instead of sinister and corporate.
ferrebeekeeper 