Clone, Sweet Clone by Carl Yadkin, Architecture Editor Among architects, there are those who quote, those who copy, and those who pay homage. Some do two of the three, some do all three at the same time. Practitioners of the entertaining recent variant known as Post-modernism, were big on quoting. Developers would say, "Put me some architecture on that thang!" and next thing you know, your local skyline would proudly feature squibs of 25th-Dynasty Egpyt, or 18th-Century Paris. Quoting, however questionable (or cute), is one thing. Cloning is something entirely different. Cloning is where your friendly architect either 1) so admires a building that he/she can't resist running off a more or less accurate copy, or 2) is so bereft of inspiration and/or talent that he/she defaults back to sophomore art history and thinks, "You can never have too many Parthenons in the world!" My home base, Houston, known in some circles as "Los Angeles, Jr.", prides itself on--indeed preens considerably over--its not-bad collection of skyscrapers. Indeed, taken together, Houston's various skylines do amount to a fairly high-quality museum of mid- to late-20th-century highrise modernism, with just an occasional pinch of "post-" thrown in for taste. However (isn't it strange how, in this world, there's always a "however"), if you look closely in the understory of Houston's highrise forest, you will find some surprising (sorry, there's no nice way to put this) out-and-out clones. As with all human endeavors, there are good architectural clones and bad architectural clones. I leave judgment to you, Reader, as you peruse my mini-collection of Houson's architectural clones. Some are simply awful, some are a bit witty, and some, well, some are beyond words. You decide in which direction beyond words: 1. Germany / Houston* *In the pairs of photos, the one on the left is always the original. END
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