About "iconic" architecture and connecting (a/k/a placemaking)

If you build something and it is closed off from the area around it, or it's an object of art-building as scultpture, but not context sensitive, it's more about creating enclaves (think something like a gated communicated disconnected and afraid of the world beyond its walls) and not about revitalization.

For example see "The breakdown of Boomtown" from the Baltimore Sun about the failure of a commercial district abutting Fort Meade--the district has declined as the military base has increased its level of security making it less convenient to go in and out, "Ensure UB building is part of city's life" a letter to the editor also from the Sun, about a new building at the University of Baltimore ("A bright new face for UB law school").

"When Buildings Try Too Hard" by Witold Rybczynski in the Wall Street Journal, also covers this broad issue. The article, subtitled "architects and developers are focused on erecting icons. Why most fall short" looks at how "iconic"buildings don't, for the most part, connect, and as a result they don't accomplish very much in the long term. The last two paragraphs of the story summarize the argument pretty well:

Another example of a building that responds to its setting is Toronto's new opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, designed by Diamond & Schmitt Architects. The traditional horseshoe-shaped auditorium is situated within an unprepossessing blue-black brick box whose chief feature is a glazed lobby facing one of the city's main streets, University Avenue; dramatic, but hardly iconic. "It's easy to do an iconic building," says Jack Diamond, "because it's only solving one issue." The Four Seasons Centre addresses several issues: On the exterior, the building responds to a busy downtown site with transparency and openness; on the interior, it creates a multi-use lobby that includes an informal performance space and a remarkable all-glass stair; and in the 2,000-seat hall, it provides intimacy, excellent sight lines and exemplary acoustics. At $150 million, the cost of the Four Seasons Centre is relatively modest as opera houses go, but more important is how the money was spent -- on the hall and the interiors rather than on exterior architectural effects. There is something very Canadian about this hard-headed reticence.

Buildings such as the Taft dormitory, the Williams College arts complex and the Toronto opera house seek to fit in rather than stand out, and to enhance rather than overwhelm their surroundings. While hardly shy, they don't stand there shouting, "Look at me!" Being in it for the long haul, they approach fashion gingerly, leaning to the conservative and well-tried rather than the experimental. They are handsome, beautiful even, but they don't strive to knock your socks off. Anti-icons, you might call them. Or just good architecture.