Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station is the largest in the world, about the size of two Empire State Buildings. This may seem surprising considering about 1.3M people live in Tel Aviv, 8M in Israel as a whole. What's interesting about the Central Bus Station is it was privately funded; whilst we expect the Port Authority to remodel, well, the Port Authority Bus Station, this entire project was conceived by a businessman, Arieh Filtz. To make it economically viable, Filtz had to sell shop space, which is why this became a monolith that towers over Tel Aviv. The Central Bus Station is now known as a place of squalor. Not all the stores were sold, and those that were discovered there simply were not enough customers and went bankrupt. It's become a symbol of greed and hubris.

But I think it's massive size is not the only problem: The architect, Ram Karmi, was instructed to "build a city under a roof." He said a good city is one you get lost in, and he deliberately made this place as confusing as possible. That is a massively dick move. Imagine coming in from Binghamton to the Port Authority and you have fifteen minutes to transfer to a bus to DC. Now, I complain about the lack of information about what gate my bus is, but if I ask an attendant I can figure out from there where I have to go. But now imagine you have no fucking idea where that gate is. And as you're looking for it, you find yourself hopelessly lost as you pass by three movie theaters, a Yiddish bookstore, matchmakers, whatever.

Architecture is an art. You can't gaze upon St. Peter's Basilica, the Chrysler Building, or Himeji Castle and believe that statement to be false. But I feel sometimes architects fail to remember they're not like sculptors or painters and their purpose is first and foremost function. Ram Karmi thought that a good city is a place to get lost in, but he never thought a lot of people wouldn't agree with that and probably just want to get from point A to point B. There's harassed and harried. Maybe some people like to head to a random city and just wander about, taking in the sights. But a lot aren't. And the primary purpose of the Central Bus Station is passengers boarding buses. Again, there were other reasons why that structure ultimately failed, but at its fundamentals it's meant to be confusing and annoying. Why would you ever think that's a good idea?