The future of classicism | Hacker News Reader

The future of classicism

newcriterion.com

45 pointstintinnabula8 comments

The author seems to have a been around a while, I is probably right that we'll see more classical architecture. Here in Norway has there simply not been build an apartment building in the classic style since before world war 2, with the exception of a few post modernist buildings in the 1980's. Compared to graphic designers, which uses classical typefaces all the time, architects seems to be very limited when the only finds inspirations in buildings from the last 50 years. In Norway there has been some cases where old baroque churches have burnt down, and the church has been replaced by a modernist design. Norway probably has the worst urban sprawl in Europe. It would be a huge advantage to get more commuters in to the cities. May be more people would like to move to cities, if there were more newly build classical apartments available?

More people would move to the cities of there were more buildings built, full stop. The housing prices in Norway are absurd, in particular in the cities.

And much of that comes from leaving the market up to the banks, resulting in few but expensive buildings being built each year to maintain high price and the hot potato loan market.

Seriously, if you graph out the house prices and household debt, they line up perfectly.

On a different note though, different political parties have different stances on where people should live. Some wants everyone to clump around the cities, while others wants people to live more dispersed.

End result is that the rural population is turning gray and male, as the younger generations (particular females) move to cities to get higher educations and end up staying there.

Many stay in the city but move out to the burbs the moment they have a baby on the way (some stay in the city with kids of course, but few). The reason is both that it's kind of expected and that there's very few affordable apartments suitable for families with more than one kid. Other reasons like that the city is unsafe for children etc, is just a result of few families in the cities and bad urban planning.

So how do you prevent people from disapperaing out in the burbs after receiving their first baby?

> Norway probably has the worst urban sprawl in Europe.

In Finland, the dispersed nature of residental communities – along with strong public transportation links to allow people to commute elsewhere – is an intentional choice: the idea is that quality of life is higher if there is more greenery and open space. Does Norway not have a similar approach?

Yes and no. The suburb to city center links are strong, but most of the nation basically demand a car.

We sadly have a political party that more or less glorify USA, and by extension car culture, and stonewall anything that smells of public transportation etc.

Many architects are not anti-classical buildings/designs. Architects are relatively powerless at reestablishing classic motifs and construction styles because of the economic reality of building in the old tradition.

ie. Labor costs have risen dramatically, while labor quality (craftsmanship) has declined. New buildings are more like an assembly of products than a collected effort of artisans to make a lasting, beautiful structure.

“Even the great Lutyens, than whom no architect more beguiles, was crushed by the expectations of commercial clients such as the Midland Bank.”

What a great sentence!

I hope and expect that “whom” will be deprecated within my lifetime, but it will be a shame to miss out on sentences like this one.

It is very satisfying to see the passive voice used so irreproachably too.

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