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Comment by nemo44x | Hacker News Reader

Winston Churchill famously said, "We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us."

I agree with this and believe we should make beautiful structures. I’m not sure much architecture since the 1950s in the west really does this. Modernism was the last consistently great style imo. Post Modern styles just seem so temporary and self indulgent which I suppose reflects our time.

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Churchill in that quote was making an argument to rebuild the House of Commons exactly as it was before getting destructed, rejecting new ideas.

If anything, I think the 50s architecture opened the door to new ideas, helped us see what works and what doesn’t. Villa Savoye is a bit from before the 50s, but it basically feels like it could be built today it wouldn’t be out of place in any bit.

TBH I’m glad the 50s architects opened the future instead of clinging to the past.

Kind of weird you make a statement that values post modernist/international architecture while using modernist architecture as an example of why it’s good. Even still I’d say that was getting to the beginning of the end in many ways. Glass houses are stupid for numerous reasons.

Even your extremely arrogant musing on “clinging to the past” sums up the problem with post modernist ideas. You think we suddenly know better than thousands of years of experience. That much of what was done in architecture (and everything else) wasn’t just old ideas that were stubbornly held onto but rather the result of thousands of years of refinement about what works and has meaning.

Yes, it was a weird way to put it, I was expressing that the modernist/international architecture trend stood the test of time and is still valued today. It's not just some fad in reaction to other trends.

> Glass houses are stupid for numerous reasons.

I don't know how much glass you see in "Glass houses", so I'd agree there can be extremes (same as for any style). Now, normal houses I've seen built in modern style are very pleasant to live in, highly practical and I wouldn't want to get back to a 19th century house short of getting paid millions to do so.

> You think we suddenly know better than thousands of years of experience.

Those thousands of years of experience brought us new techniques, new insights on what works and what doesn't. Builders have constantly moved forward for these thousands of years. People in the 12th century didn't stop innovating telling themselves "why would we know better than the 3 thousands of years of experience that led us here".

We stand on the shoulder of giants, to me it's our duty to push the envelope and not stand there ordering buildings to be exact replicas of what came before.

When I look at the Gare du Nord in Paris, I'm not lamenting that they didn't keep the dark and gloomy roof panels that used to be there for decades. I'm super glad it became a warm, luminous and welcoming place instead.

Yeah I hear you, building on the shoulders of giants is best. But I do feel like a lot of post modern stuff changes the way we think of buildings by designing from the inside out. So we are left with ugly structures (like the majority of houses built since 1950) and corporate offices, etc.

It feels like we optimize for the wrong things because the tech allows us to. We build bigger at the expense of quality. Seeing 3000 sq foot homes with a small number of vinyl windows, vinyl siding, laminate flooring, etc is weird. But engineered wood and trusses let us build big, ugly spaces for cheap.

Before I cone off as too much a crank there is a lot of great post modern stuff. Especially more recently.

"On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please."

--Thomas Jefferson

"The ideologists of socialist realism understood perfectly well the role played by architecture in the creation of human consciousness; they realised that the right architectural ‘setting’ can influence one’s way of life and perception of reality."

https://culture.pl/en/article/polands-surprising-socialist-r...

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