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Jeremy Fiance

Verified account The House Fund

@jfiance

🍄 capitalist lost in Berkeley

🏠 founder @thehousefund 7 first-round investments in Cal 🦄changing the world

🤖 AI builder since '12

🐻 helping Bears Go!
Berkeley, CA youtube.com/watch?v=x5WSKj… Joined March 2011
921 Following 3.2K Followers 3.8K Posts

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Jeremy Fiance Verified account @jfiance
Spent a lot of time in Wurster Hall as a student. Can attest that mostly serious things (& sleepless nights) happen in this serious building

That was until we snuck an idea-stage startup accelerator into one of its room. Big ideas were not constrained by concrete. @FreeVentures
Patrick Collison Verified account @patrickc Oct 24
I visited Wurster Hall at UC Berkeley today. It was designed by, and currently houses, the architecture faculty.

The UC Berkeley website notes that "Wurster is often voted Berkeley's ugliest building."

I visited because I was curious about whether it would in person seem as unattractive as it does in photos. And, in short: it does. It's gaunt, austere, and filmed in grime. On an elysian campus, it stands out for its bleak hostility. It reminds me of the German submarine base in Bordeaux.

The UC Berkeley page agrees that it was never designed to be attractive, quoting the curator of their design archives: “Wurster and his handpicked architects didn’t want anything romantic, or sentimental — they hated the idea of ‘making pretty buildings. They wanted a serious building.”

I guess we have to concede success relative to their stated goals, but it does make one wonder what it all says about architecture as a discipline.
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