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jacobus

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US-Marine - Naval Base in Coronado... :ohmy:

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http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,979172,00.jpg

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http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,979169,00.jpg
 
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This was on CNN last night. Apparently no one has brought this up until someone saw it on Google Earth, it's been like this since the 60's. They say they noticed when they broke ground but claimed no one would notice once it's erected. I find that pretty hard to believe. The plans would have been very clear! Plus there's a helipad right nextdoor, no one would have recognised that?

I have a hard time believing the original designer didn't know what they were doing, it's not as if it's an efficient floorplan.

They say they are going to start a remodel in order to change the footprint of the building.
 
Yes that's extremely unfortunate, but I would imagine it wasn't intentional and that people don't consider what the design would look like from the air when photographed when they design it. Maybe they do, I know nothing about architecture. What was far more offensive to me was the swastikas cut into cornfields in New Jersey, that was clearly intentional.



Back behind the towering corn is a message that can only be seen from the air.

It is one of the most infamous symbols of hate -- a swastika -- cut into acres of cornfields in Washington Township, Mercer County.

A New Jersey State Police helicopter on a routine maintenance mission made the discovery Friday.

The swastika was located off of Hankins Road, near where similar swastikas were found in July 1998 and June 1999.

No arrests were made in the previous cases.

Investigators found that the most recent swastika appeared to have been hand-cut and covered an area of several acres.

"This should be in the past, and we should have learned from our mistakes, and to bring up something that brings back such awful memories, I think, is disgusting," said Joe Pica, whose property is one of many that border the fields.

Monday, neighbors said they hope it was kids who didn't know any better.

"If it's kids and they get caught, I hope that they are made to sit down for three or four days and research the history of the meaning of that symbol. Maybe they'll learn something from it," Pica said.

Neighbor Anthony Carin was stunned that someone would cause this entire furor carving a massive symbol that's only visible from the air.

"There's no point in making something that size in a place that's not even seen," he said.

The case is being investigated by the Washington Township Police Department, the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office, and the New Jersey State Division of Criminal Justice.

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MrsSpringsteen said:
Yes that's extremely unfortunate, but I would imagine it wasn't intentional and that people don't consider what the design would look like from the air when photographed when they design it.

Many architects would argue that the plan, though may not always be viewed from that angle should be felt when navigating through the building.

Most of the great Cathedrals in Europe are done in Cruciform, which is in the shape of the cross, in order that God would see the cross and so that the congregation would be "living" in a cross.
 
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The architect would have known, it would be clearly seen on blueprints or any floorplan:shrug:

I can't see it being anything but intentional, it's too perfect a swastika.
 
They were aware of this shortly after the groundbreaking and decided to do nothing, because they were in use and in a no fly zone.

NYTimes

The Navy plans to spend $600,000 for “camouflage” landscaping and rooftop adjustments so that 1960s-era barracks at the Naval Base Coronado near San Diego will no longer look like a Nazi swastika from the air.

The resemblance went unnoticed by the public for decades until it was spotted in aerial views on Google Earth.

But Navy officials said they became aware of it shortly after the 1967 groundbreaking, and had decided not to do anything.

“There was no reason to redo the buildings because they were in use,” a spokeswoman for the base, Angelic Dolan, said. She added that the buildings were in a no-fly zone that is off limits to commercial airlines, so most people would not see them from the air.

“You have to realize back in the ’60s we did not have the Internet,” Ms. Dolan said. “We don’t want to offend anyone, and we don’t want to be associated with the symbol.”

The Navy’s plans were reported Monday in The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Anti-Defamation League in San Diego has objected to the shape of the buildings.

“We told the Navy this was an incredibly inappropriate shape for a structure on a military installation,” said Morris S. Casuto, regional director of the organization. He added, however, that his group “never ascribed evil intent to the structures’ design.”

Mr. Casuto praised the Navy for recognizing the problem and “doing the right thing.”

The $600,000 for the changes is included in the Navy’s approved 2008 budget.
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
They were aware of this shortly after the groundbreaking and decided to do nothing, because they were in use and in a no fly zone.


Shortly after the groundbreaking? Then they had either never looked at the construction documents(which I've worked with the military and I doubt), or they had the worse contractor in the world and they built it to look nothing like the plans.

I don't buy that excuse one bit!!!
 
martha said:
What would be the motivation for the architect, and all the others for doing this purposefully?


Who knows? Maybe he was just an anti-semite...

There are clock towers that are purposely phallic shaped, there are campus buildings that have rival mascots "hidden" on them, there are all kinds of symbolism that have been snuck into buildings throughout history(churches of other faiths having the faith of the designer snuck in).

I'm just suprised this one got "snuck" in...
 
It seems like such a useless waste of space to me. It looks like it would be extremely inefficient to get from one end of the building to another because of the way it's built. I can't imagine how anyone would think it's a good use of space, but I don't necessarily believe it's a big conspiracy either.
 
I'd be interested to know if it was designed by the same architect as the ones (I'm assuming they are barracks also) just to the left in the second picture, and if they were all built at the same time, or several years apart.

I do find it hard to believe no one in the military in the 60's -- at the most only 25 years from the end of WWII -- noticed before the groundbreaking that this thing looked like a swastika. A mighty perceptive lot indeed. :rolleyes:
 
All of the buildings on that second shot look mighty convoluted.

And my understanding is the swastika predates the Nazis by millenia, and used to have positive connotations, until co-opted by the National Socialists.
 
blueeyedgirl said:
And my understanding is the swastika predates the Nazis by millenia, and used to have positive connotations, until co-opted by the National Socialists.

It's all over American Indian and Buddhist art. The Nazis rearranged its orientation. The Indians' swastika is usually straight and the Nazis made theirs crooked.
 
martha said:

Or that was the most efficient use of the space.
Architectural speaking it's a horrible use of space and wayfinding... It would be hard to explain without diagrams, but if you consider point a and point b as being the furthest 2 points from each other the time traveled to get there is ridiculously stupid. And given this is the military and it's all about efficiency rather than aesthetic or design makes it even more questionable.
 
blueeyedgirl said:
All of the buildings on that second shot look mighty convoluted.

And my understanding is the swastika predates the Nazis by millenia, and used to have positive connotations, until co-opted by the National Socialists.

Yep. And that military buildings swastika is a right facing one, like Hinduis and Buddhists use and is an auspicious symbol.

The Nazi swastika faces the left hand side and is titled 90o. ie not like this building. (Mind you some Buddhist temples have the left facing one as well as they might do a swastika on one door and the reverse on the matching door, so they match. (That didnt make sense did it? )

As its a military building perhaps the architect purposely designed the building in the shape of a symbol of life. Thats a rather beautiful concept actually. :up:

PS Im a bit of a City of Troy nut as well, and there were swastikas on Troy as well. ie the symbol has been used by many cultures for thousands of years and just because some knobhead used it as his logo of death doesnt wreck it for everyone else.

PPS If you ever take your WWII era aunt into a Buddhist temple perhaps warn her about the swastikas BEFORE you go in.
 
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