The library was responsible for the Iraq war?

So. Quirkiness is bad because it's meaningless. Except it's bad because one bad person was quirky. Even though lots of good people are quirky.

No, that's a dead end argument that doesn't prove your point. How about we just accept the premise that "quirkiness is meaningless" without support. Just for shits n giggles.

That means that quirkiness in architecture is bad because quirkiness is meaningless. Therefore, architecture is only good when it has meaning.

I don't buy it. Meaninglessness is a neutral quality, not a bad one. So if the architecture of the Beacon Hill Library is meaningless, then it's a structure which should arouse only neutral reactions, like any average forgettable building. If your reactions are not neutral, then the qualities arousing them can not be neutral either. So there must be some other explanation.

why don't you call up Don Carlson and ask him about it?

AAAAAUUUUUGH

Speaking of university excellence, the artist in question, Miles Pepper, is a longtime engineering tech at WSU. He knows how to do things and make things, including kinetic sculptures.

But writing a series of increasingly quirky blog posts? I don't know if he's "excellent" enough to manage such a thing.

The term that rankles my hackles with its essential meaninglessness (especially in how it's used nowadays) is "freedom(s)."

I blame the manga-enabled Beacon Hill Library and it's happy kids for the overseas wars ...

I'm not sure that war crimes and architecture you don't like are the same thing. But maybe you are just quirky that way.

I remember now Kundera's last chapter of the Unbearable lightness, and his notion of kitsch. this along with the faux multi culturalism has made me take a second look at the library, but, I still don't fully grasp the ugliness. part 5?

Quirky means offbeat or unexpected.

The presence or absence of meaning is not involved in quirkyness in the slightest.
There are completely profound quirks, and completely meaningless ones, just as there are red quirks, quirks made of wood, and quirky flavors in any national cuisine.

In Seattle, particularly, a boat shaped windvane is not quirky in any way shape or form. Boat shaped windvanes are actually traditional, not quirky, particularly in maritime locations.

And the graphic designer, not Rumsfield, put Rummy on the package- which, maybe, could mean the designer was using quirkiness to sell something, but has absolutely nothing to do with bombing, innocence, or politics.

So, in summary- we have a fundamental misunderstanding of a word definition, a misreading of whether the word applies to this particular situation, and an analogy that wont hold water.

Next?

Good Lord.... give it a rest already, would you?

Ugh.

I don't always agree with you, Charles, but this time you've hit the nail on the head. Though this thing is nowhere near the most horrible public art around; let me direct your attention to the Ballard Mushrooms. Or the thingamabobs on the Ballard Bridge. Or, worst of all, the Epicenter Apartments in Fremont, above the PCC, covered with that hideous hammered-aluminum viney crap. What is it with hammered aluminum these days?

Sadly for all concerned, "quirky" (or "whimsical") is the opposite of "creative", no matter how devoutly the quirky ones wish it was the same.