Drawing a Blank Downtown - TIME

Drawing a Blank Downtown - TIME

From 1983, but still relevant 25 years later: "Although the tide has turned and bankers and developers are again investing in downtown, the shiny new megastructures of the '70s and '80s are often still as destructive of its 'remarkable intricacy and liveliness' as the bulldozers of the '50s and '60s.... As Whyte's photos make clear, the worst offenders are convention centers, like the one in the Seattle Sheraton Hotel, and the new megastructure office, hotel and shopping centers, such as the Bonaventure Hotel and Atlantic Richfield Plaza in Los Angeles, the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco and Omni International in Atlanta. Architecturally, these structures often have an awesome and arrogant beauty. Socially, they set themselves deliberately and offensively apart from the city around them."