GoKawiilPost date: March 15, 2026
If buildings are meant to be for everybody, then everybody is surely entitled to have an opinion on them and any aspect of them – goes one line of reasoning. However, trying to identify buildings that have a degree of public recognition independent of their degree of architectural recognition is like trying to detect neutrinos in that all influencing factors first have to be negated and that’s next to impossible. Given my history, I’m an imperfect documenter, or even identifier of buildings that endear themselves to a general public and not necessarily to architects. Nevertheless, I’ll call them meme buildings because it best describes the ripples these buildings cause.
Face House , 1974 Kazumasa Yamashita
On a recent trip to Japan, a student showed me the December–January issue of Architectural Review that had Kazumasa Yamashita’s 1974 Face House on the cover. I wasn’t shocked at that as much as I was at seeing a current architecture magazine being passed around a university architecture studio. Japanese universities and/or their students may or may not be different but there’s definitely a different and functioning architectural media ecosystem even if the issue I saw forsook editorial for many full-page images. If that same studio subscribes to AR, then it probably also has a group subscription to https://data.shinkenchiku.online/en – the online archive of Japan Architect – with “photos, drawings, explanatory texts, and data sheets for over 23,500 architectural projects published in both back and current issues of Japan Architect, Housing Special Issue and a&u.” Or, even if it didn’t, a single-student, yearly subscription costs JP¥3,680 (US$23.36, STG£17.49) which is less than a single issue of AR even without ithe postage.
I’m mildly curious about what “new things to say” were said and about what adaptive re-use in suburban Beijing looks like. In passing though, I suspect the term “adaptive re-use” already sounds as dated as “sustainability” because potentially useful terms have to make way for all those new things to say. The unfortunate thing is that, whatever the format, we’re endlessly distracted by the new and incapable of engaging with anything for any length of time , let alone improve it.
Face House has a popularity that goes beyond architecture magazines and their readers but, as your imperfect documenter, I can’t tell how far. Face House is more than half a century old now and this is extraordinary for a residential buildling in Tokyo. Its owner still lives there and never felt a need to redeveop. Face House is easy enough to find if you’re in Koromonodara-dori, Tatedaionjicho, Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto. Anthropomorphism and buildings is a subject not often discussed yet, any time you see a pair of circular windows, you’re going to think of eyes and a sentience inside looking out. The opposite, looking into eyes still holds true but even only metaphorically is sufficient. We don’t overthink apparent noses and mouths. We don’t see people visiting the entry-level spaces as entering and leaving from the building’s mouth. We don’t worry about the Face House “nose” being open at the top and providing indirect light to a bedroom. Or the “nostrils” being open top and bottom. It doesn’t matter as the improbable nose and mouth direct our attention and our emotions to the eyes and make us feel we know this building. Or at least its facade. Nobody cares about the internal layout or how this building is used.
I should’ve titled this post Random Musings on the Theme of Meme Buildings. If nothing else, I hope to find out what a meme building isn’t. They’re not well-known buildings or those buildings some people like to call iconic, and they’re definitely not must-see buildings for the architectural tourist. They’re not historically significant although a building can be a meme building despite being part of that thing known or taught as the history of architecture. These are easy to identify because, although we’re told they’re historically significant, fewer people remember and fewer still care why. Meme buildings are spared this fate because they’re just known for what they are. They’re part of a shared public remembrance rather than a history. They may be evocative of a time and place but it makes no more sense to visit the place than it does the time as they exist outside of both. I’m not sure if The Big Duck is a good example because – I keep saying – I’m an imperfect documenter. Did this building really endear itself to the general public? It’s all history now, but could the entire history of post-modernism be based on a statistically unverifiable academic assertion? Can the moniker “popular” really be conflated with the number of people pulling over to purchase duck-related produce in some corner of Long Island back in the day? I’ll save my doubts for some other post.
The Big Duck, 1931 Martin Maurer
Thie image above is the oldest I could find. Guessing the age from the car in the distance (above) and the New York Times newspaper cutting (below, left) from 1931, it looks like it’s the same car and the same year it opened, viz. a photoshoot. Four decades later, the architectural fraternity was to care little about who designed it and had it built, and only tangentially about why. The building’s been moved a few times and no longer sells duck-related produce but none of this matters.
It’s been claimed The Big Duck was the precursor to Googie architecture that, driven by commercial intent, existed to make people look at it. Directly related further down the line are post-modernism and pretty-much everything that happened after. I’ll choose the 1959-1961 LAX Theme Building to represent Googie and the Sydney Opera House to represent the rest. If it appears on a tea-towel, it’s probably a souvenir and not a meme. You can buy Sydney Opera House salt and pepper shakers but I can’t bring myself to post an image().
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