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Comment: this might not be that common outside of the Chicago area, but it's very familiar within the Windy City. Our skyline includes a prominent diamond-shaped building that people refer to as "The Y" or with less subtlety as "The Vagina Building." (It was featured in the film "Adventures in Babysitting.") The story goes that a female architect, fed up with skylines dominated by what she thought were multiple phallic symbols, decided to design a high-rise with a more feminine appearance. I've heard this repeated over and over, and some friends insist that they heard it on an architecture tour. I looked up the name online, and found out it's called the Smurfit-Stone Building. Here's some info -- http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=116680Posts: 36029 | From: Admin | Registered: Feb 2000
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The building isn't really any less phallic than any other standard skyscraper. If a female architect really wanted a female genitalia inspired building, she should design an underground structure with a center courtyard.
-------------------- "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." - G.K. Chesterton Posts: 1514 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: May 2005
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quote: Now, before calling the Smurfit-Stone building a symbol for feminism, I had to call A. Epstein & Sons International, Inc., the architectural firm who designed the building back in 1984. According to Sid Epstein, one of the original architects, the building was designed to take advantage of the space on 150 North Michigan Avenue and to maximize the view overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan. When asked about any feminist or anti-phallic intention, he grew perplexed and almost annoyed, saying he had never heard of that claim before.
“[The designers] never had that thought in mind. It was never their intention. I assure you, absolutely not,” he repeated.
quote:Originally posted by Milhouse Van Houten: The building isn't really any less phallic than any other standard skyscraper. If a female architect really wanted a female genitalia inspired building, she should design an underground structure with a center courtyard.
Don't know how "female" this building is, but it's definitely not phallic:
buf 'aka The Toilet Bowl' ungla
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George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra Posts: 4847 | From: Washington, DC | Registered: Jun 2001
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-------------------- A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view. -Sophia Loren Posts: 1835 | From: Toronto | Registered: Nov 2000
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I think it's silly the way people have such a tendency to try to make every single shape fit into the context of sexual organs. And as has been noted, if you're going to look for a building that looks like a vagina, long towers jutting into the air are generally not your best bet.
(The set on the top, of course.) Although that could also be seen as an eye, particularly the one on the bottom right.
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Some peole think the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art building looks like a vagina.
Posts: 1344 | From: San Francisco | Registered: Feb 2001
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Snafucated
The Red and the Green Stamps
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The "Big O" in Montreal. Vulval?
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I love that building. Our first trip to Chicago I was just mesmerized by it in the night skyline. Beleive me I have one of the "dirtiest" minds ever and I saw nothing sexual in it just creative architecture that stood out in a city with a lot of creative architecture.
in case you can't tell we really loved Chicago. MMMMM Giadarno's
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If anything, I find that building even more phallic than most others...the diamond-shaped part at the top with the little slot in it looks like a very stylized representation of the glans penis, with urethral opening.
Nonny
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I used to attend this church in Mesa, AZ for a short time right after this building opened. The architecture is supposed to be reminiscent of the orange groves that used to be there, but when you approach it from certain angles it looks like, well, boobs.
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The nuclear power plant in San Onofre has always looked like boobs to me. My friends and I call it the "Ode to Dolly Parton".
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One of the Naked Gun films uses the mammary-like appearance of the San Onofre nuke plant as the punchline to a joke.
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The 16-sided Nott Memorial at Union College in Schenectady was known as either the Tit of Tutelage or the Nipple of Knowledge.
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quote:Originally posted by MOWOG: The 16-sided Nott Memorial at Union College in Schenectady was known as either the Tit of Tutelage or the Nipple of Knowledge.
It was just known as "Nott's Nipple" when I was there.
-------------------- "You hold the Prince so I can duct tape his bottom to keep the bugs out." - My Mom Posts: 193 | From: The Fabulous Finger Lakes, New York | Registered: Aug 2005
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