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Comment by virtualritz | Hacker News Reader

> [...] needlessly ornamental furniture [...]

That ignorance of beauty being a perfectly valid prime objective over function, for everyday objects (or architecture) is why most things and buildings today look straight out of a dystopian sci-fi flic.

And because we love to live in such bland spaces, "decorated" with such furniture, inside such buildings, is probably also why people spend tons of money every year to escape them.

And to e.g. visit picturesque European cities and villages with tiny winding roads and "needlessly" decorated building facades in their holidays.

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Glad someone else caught that. Saying beauty in decoration is “needless” is like saying we should only have non fiction books. Fiction - invention - creativity - fantasy - has its place both in furniture and publishing.

We live in a Bauhaus world.

Architects and product designers saw Bauhaus and thought they could skip the decorations and call it a day, leading to ugly cities and crappy products, but that ain't Bauhaus!

Minimal, aesthetic and functional things remain few and far between; the old iPod was Bauhaus, but most other things? Not so much.

There are many beautiful buildings and objects. I hold the ugliness of the world on the people's behavior rather then the objects of the world.

This is the most profound comment in the section, ie. to each his own to find beauty, and along the way try to treat others with respect.

I feel many people truly misunderstand what the Bauhaus School was about and the Great Leap Forward it brought.

The problem statement that the Bauhaus school was founded under was along the lines of this.

The machine age is upon us. The guilds of the craftsman is holding back the training of the workers. The machine age is providing easy access to materials that are more dynamic than wood or stone. The Arts and Crafts movement is generally given credit as the step between the old world and the machine age production.

The Bauhaus was founded to train architects and designers to work with machine age production. The early days they had a hard time getting the students to understand that a machine couldn't produce a cherub. There was a deep seated belief that culture was dangerous after the Great War and peace could exist through efficient use of resources. The machine age would bring a world of abundance if resources were used efficiently.

Finally my art history teachers would have a conniption if a student referred to Bauhaus style architecture. The proper term is International Style. This name is relevant becuase it was to have no cultural preconceived notions. This would promote peace through understanding. The goal was that a human could be dropped in the space from anywhere in the world and navigate their surroundings. I see it as a worthy goal.

Not every building is successful and I admit to being indoctrinated in design since birth but I find this place people and the knowledge workers seem to thrive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex#/med...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement

> The goal was that a human could be dropped in the space from anywhere in the world and navigate their surroundings. I see it as a worthy goal.

It's funny, because I've often used an expression that's almost a perfect inversion of this in order to describe the world's best places. That you could be dropped into a place and know that you are in exactly that place, and not in any of the innumerable identity-less spaces on the planet.

This goal is dystopian.

I don't believe the inversion is inherent. I believe a unique identity can exist without explicit cultural references. I don't see the split or the inversion.

I would recognize this place as distinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salk_Institute_for_Biological_...

It might be you would describe that as dystopian but I suppose dystopian is in the eye of the beholder.

I guess this is a good as place as any to mention that Corbusier railed against the metric system as anti-human. The reasoning was that human spaces should be defined through human proportions not power of 10 proportioning.

The lack of tolerance for other peoples preferences is considered dystopian in some circles.

> I would recognize this place as distinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salk_Institute_for_Biological_...

It's distinctly... hideous. It looks like a prison block, not a place to encourage human happiness.

> I guess this is a good as place as any to mention that Corbusier railed against the metric system as anti-human. The reasoning was that human spaces should be defined through human proportions not power of 10 proportioning.

That is a silly argument, nothing about the metric system requires you to have power-of-10 proportions in your construction, any more than we have power-of-12 proportions in U.S. construction just because we use feet and inches.

I thought that might be your reaction to the Salk Institute. I have a feeling prisoners would prefer the Salk institute to their current conditions. I don't think you are giving any Creedence to the personality types that might want to work at the Salk Institute.

I'm glad we agree it is distinct.

I guess I didn't make my silly argument articulate enough. Let me try again. I was trying to point on the Modernist architect's obsession with the individual over the industrial age. I was trying to point out that he thought the measurement should be in reference to the form which gets lost if people start trying to have even decimal numbers.

I can tell you haven't been there, which is okay, but I have to try to explain it.

The Salk Institute is inarguably one of the most beautiful man made places in southern California. It was built with the explicit intent to attract and cluster the best and brightest minds in the world so they could work together to eliminate human disease. It's all human scale, calm, focused ... the concrete is somehow warm. It masterfully directs the sunlight around it and creates contrasting shadowy nooks where people can chat and take refuge from the heat on hot days. It's inspiring. You can feel the creative power within its walls.

Brilliant people from every corner of the globe still uproot their lives just to work there. There are many awful examples of brutalist architecture, but this building isn't one.

Cube is cube.

Shapes can support skilled expressions of beauty. The least effort spent on drawing a curve, by hand or mathematically, has more beauty than cube.

You know what else provides shade in hot days? Trees. Shade cloth. Umbrellas. Sails. Statues. Market stalls. Extrusions. ext.

Cube is cube.

You can feel anything when it's written. If it's a cold day and your dog just died (or whatever is enough in your personal life to make you slightly unhappy), I'd prefer to be anywhere else in the world than huddled for warmth behind a grey Cube, with the ever present discomfort of infectious disease protocols in the back of my mind.

Cube is completely submitted to the purpose of the building, it has no relation to the human body or experience.

Cube is cube.

A cell is as Robert Hooke noticed is also a cube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)#/media/File:Wil...

Okay yes true. Cube shapes are everywhere. And reductionism, minimalism and brutalism have their virtues. I am content to die on the hill that Cube is ugly, if my concession is pleasing.

You're entitled to your opinion.

As you with your opinion that it is a beautiful construction in the first place. Difference is the Parent’s opinion was suppressed in modern architecture and yours was imposed.

That Salk space reminds me of the Karnak template in Luxor.

https://lonelyplanetimages.imgix.net/a/g/hi/t/a19a8469295279...

That reference is interesting because we only know that location absent the original inhabitants. What we understand as that structure is a view unique to a point in time. I think the timeless was a major design goal.

To me, a lot of the better International (Bauhaus) style architecture seems to evoke that timelessness.

I have to agree here. I'm all for different architectural styles, so they can embody the local environment, culture, history. Yet that style is the embodiment of an idea more than anything. I know it is linked to a zeitgeist of somewhere in the not distant past, and to ideas of funcionalism, maybe minimalism etc but I fail to see local/regional culture there. I fail to see any interaction with nature there. Looking at it... oh man, does it look hideous to me. Maybe it's because I lived for many years in Brasília, the most car centric city I've ever been to, the butt of many jokes to people who went to live there. "The city with no street corners." Also no sidewalks, a city where blocks have names such as "Entertainment Sector South", "Hotel Sector North", etc. Ugh...

But... hey, I have some friends who still live there and enjoy it. I know people who really enjoy life there, so that's why I'm all for different architectural/urbanism styles. Too bad I also know some people who would love to move from there but can't. Life is complicated.

I would love to visit Brasilia. I understand that the planning stage was a little too utopian. I think that they have been working to mold it into a functional city. What is interesting is the thought of a city needing to be worn in like blue jeans.

That is certainly a post industrialization idea. Life is complicated I only know what works for me.

To share a different perspective from the sibling comment, I love brutalist architecture. My interest for design sparked largely from seeing these structures around my old university town, e.g. Killam library. These days I'm more interested in new urbanism, but I have endless joy in telling people who believe their aesthetics universal that I've never enjoyed another library more than that big lightless cube. This especially bothered people compared to the halifax central library, with its modern glass walls and open spaces, which I couldn't stand.

This is to say, I believe a foundation to design thought is being able to accept differing aesthetics. I'm not sure if I can find a positive reference for people who simply call everything they don't like ugly, but hopefully, my acts of schadenfreude have opened a mind or two to the same perspective.

Surely you can understand why artists traumatized by WWI might consider cultural uniformity a worthy goal? After watching millions of people slain simply by being from the wrong side of mostly arbitrary national lines, there is an entirely human and humane argument for a design style that deliberately erases cultural lines.

I agree with you that specificity is a worthy goal too: people like to feel their lives are unique and irreplaceable.

Exactly! So much of what the Bauhaus designed was meant to use these new materials and machines to build simple and beautiful products for everyone. It was meant to allow everyone to have access to the same sort of products that used to be reserved for the wealthy. We love more decorative styles, but they're so expensive. Bauhaus was taking a look at those styles and asking, "How can we use modern tools and materials to provide something beautiful for everyone?"

Beauty != ornamentation. While Bauhaus looks dystopian, there are art styles which do away with ornamentation and look beautiful, such as Japanese wabi sabi. See e.g. <https://hypebeast.com/image/2014/11/kyoto-guide-to-wabi-sabi...>

The main thing making Bauhaus dystopian is its alienation of humans from nature. In contrast, wabi sabi emphasises connection with nature, which creates a very different effect, while still being minimal.

Edit: another difference is approach to irregular shapes. Bauhaus bans them, while wabi sabi embraces them. I think that too makes the first dystopian and the latter human.

In the article Art Déco is presented as an explicitly non-naturalistic style with decorations there being based on geometric shapes. Yet, I don't think it's common to describe Déco as a dystopian style.

All but the last photo demonstrating it in the article look pretty dystopian to me. Especially this one: <https://www.archdaily.com/1005570/from-art-nouveau-to-the-ba...>. And if not dystopian, then at least very inhospitable.

Some folks would even say that less ornamentation = more beauty. e.g. Jony Ive.

Isn't that a large ornament of a bird right on top of that house?

I'd argue that scene has _many_ design elements that are there only the sake of aesthetics. Whether you consider them ornamentation or not I guess depends on your perspective, but if you look closely you'll see lots of shapes and textures that would have required significant effort purely to add beauty. Japanese aesthetics also tend to value the uniqueness of hand crafted objects, and architecture that is built with care by a skilled tradesperson.

Whereas Bauhaus and much of modernism in general were often about stripping all non-essential design elements away, whether ornamentation or otherwise. Essentially: the minimum manufacturing effort to produce a building that meets the functional requirements, ideally in such a way that can be mass manufactured. The end result of a lot of Bauhaus designs isn't particularly visually minimalist. Indeed, there are often a lot of contrasting shapes and colours and often lack of symmetry.

Both are a form of minimalism, but very different in philosophy.

The problem is the Bauhaus was school of education not a movement. Bauhaus was totally focused on trying to figure out how not to lose humanity in the machine age.

The Foundation program that was developed for first year students at the Bauhaus is the same Foundation program that I went through in 1987 at my Art university.

Individual instructors had all sorts of ideas that were bananas. The resulting curriculum has stood the test of time for training young minds to deal with new materials and experiences.

I see design as the philosophical use of resources. One can create any aesthetic values one wants. The ultimate design measure from my point of view is the extent the artifact represents a waste of resources.

I think that if you made something look like the Japanese wabi sabi design, but while using industrial materials and methods, a Bauhaus person would probably consider it to be "ornamentation", because they hate everything that hides instead of reveals, and would rather have unnatural things look unnatural.

If a 3D printer makes an irregular shape, it's because it was specifically designed that way for appearance and no other reason, which they would probably consider lying, and the old school Japanese architects might too...

Even if you did make a building however they did in Japan 100 years ago, I would imagine a Bauhaus person might think you were just being extra, and your choice to do that was just a giant unnecessary performance piece, because you didn't just take the shortest path to pure function.

I'm not exactly sure why people all of a sudden really started caring about philosophy in 2009, but it seems to coincide with the rise of the red pill forums and such.

Before that it seemed like there was a lot more things imitating more organic shapes and traditional materials with modern methods, or hiding modern things behind old things.

I'm also not sure why people even like the entire concept of simple functional things, in the digital age. They take active effort to even remember they're there, the shortest path is just to chop the garlic with a knife and take notes on a phone.

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