140 William Street (formerly BHP House), Melbourne, Australia

Architect: Yuncken Freeman, Skidmore Owings & Merril, 1967

Ok, so this one is probably more widely ‘known’ than the previous example that I raised of international works of architecture that bear strong resemblance to buildings that we might find on our own Wellington streets, but it is worth Read the rest of this entry »

Shaklee Terraces, 444 Market Street, San Francisco CA, United States

Architect: Skidmore Owings Merrill, 1979

Isn’t this somewhat eerily familiar, in this pic at least (and a whole bunch of others by Thomas Hawk, which can be seen here)? While any similarities to a certain green building, completed in our own city almost a decade later (and with a consequent PoMo twist), are no doubt only superficial, the resemblance is nevertheless striking. Our example is noted by local authors as “a tour de force of stylish design” (Hodgson), and as making a “clear reference to the undulating facade of Gummer’s 1940 State Insurance Building” (Shaw), which means of course, that any similarities to SOM’s Shaklee Terraces are entirely incidental…

Comments welcome (and please feel free to email in any other projects for the Similarity Files…)

m-d