The San Jose Oak Hill Tower is unique in a number of ways. This particular concrete brutalist design appears not to have been used anywhere else; it seems to have been site-specific. It sits atop an underground switching center (that was partly used for a military contract), which explains the relatively hardened design.
Today the underground switch is still there, owned by AT&T, but the tower space is leased to land mobile and cellular providers. The old horn antennas at top are disconnected.
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Matt Blaze
In response to this postWith a few exceptions (mostly towers atop downtown switching offices in populated areas), no one was trying to make any of this utilitarian communications infrastructure *beautiful*. It was form strictly following function, built to be reliable and rugged.
But there was, I think, quite a bit of beauty to find in it. I wonder if we'll look at our current neighborhood cellular towers, now often regarded as a visual blight, the same way decades after they're (inevitably) also gone.
@mattblaze Before BT (in the UK) went to fibre, they had a wide variety of towers for MW backbone/trunk data/voice comms. Many were utilitarian extended metal tetrahedra or trihedra, but some were quite unique - perhaps the most obvious being the former Post Office Tower in London.
Many of them are now shadow of their former selves, with very few antennae attached.
by greem ;
@mattblaze I do wonder, with the angles of the concrete at the top of the tower, if there was at least *some* consideration for the aesthetics of the structure
either way, this tower is dope as hell
by Nate Vack 🍴 ;
@mattblaze The Eiffel Tower was considered among other things, "a wart on the face of Paris." You never know what people are going to think is nice once they get used to it.
For everyone hating clean lines as "brutalist" there's someone despising ornamentation as "gingerbread."
by Jon Callas 烏 ;
@mattblaze
Some cellular towers are made to resemble trees, as I'm sure you've noticed. The effect is... not better.
by Bruce Heerssen ;
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