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Comment by vonneumannstan | Hacker News Reader

Maoist Apartment blocks and hideous concrete monstrosities win you Architecture Prizes? Wtf is wrong with out society. Complete disdain for actual beauty that can add to human flourishing...

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The Pritzker Prize leans modernist. If you prefer classical architecture, check out the Driehaus Prize [1]. The 2025 laureate is Liam O'Connor.

[1] https://driehausprize.nd.edu

Leans might be an understatement. But thanks, some faith has been restored in humanity.

I don't know where you're getting that. I opened the link with a heart full of skepticism, ready to scoff at some hideous, inhumane modern weirdness, but found instead pleasant environments, reasonable choices, and graceful use of practical materials. I doubt I'll ever go to China, but if I did, I can imagine enjoying a visit to some of those places.

Whats monstrous about it?

These look very nice and livable. https://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/liu-jiakun#laureate-...

The first one looks very homely. Good greenery, good sense of shades, cool gray concrete textures. ( https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/styles/max... )

This one doesn't look Maoist to me, looks very like a traditional hut. https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/styles/max...

>The first one looks very homely. Good greenery, good sense of shades, cool gray concrete textures. ( https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/styles/max... )

It looks like poorly poured concrete...

>This one doesn't look Maoist to me, looks very like a traditional hut. https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/styles/max...

It looks like a bomb shelter...

https://www.theplan.it/images/stories/gallery91318/design-de...

That is objectively one of the bleakest pictures I have ever seen.

This is supposed to be International Architecture Award Winning Quality?

https://i.insider.com/5d409233100a247279644dd4?width=1000&fo...

Who knew that half the buildings in Mirny, Siberia were considered works of art worthy of International Architecture Prizes lol.

Are you from a country where houses are made of wood?

Brick and concrete is the common house building material in many parts of the world.

The Siberian buildings look much different from the examples you gave. They look like generic rectangular apartment blocks.

Whereas this for example looks not much different from the old European tile roof houses https://www.theplan.it/images/stories/gallery91318/design-de...

I genuinely weep for the soul of anyone who sees this: https://www.theplan.it/images/stories/gallery91318/design-de... and thinks "Ah yes this is worthy of an International Award in Architecture"

The "poorly poured" looks like board formed concrete, which IMO looks better than a single form. It's also for a stone sculpture museum, so fits the theme?

They have their beauty as objects of art, but certainly not as a place that I would enjoy occupying or being around. Brutalist architecture with a Chinese flair.

Most of it doesn't look brutalist to me. See this for example: https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/styles/max...

It looks like a normal house just without paint.

I bet you live in SF and find the Tenderloin 'pleasant' and 'not so bad if you don't go out at night or alone' too.

I looked up Tenderloin and it all looks quite normal traditional architecture? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenderloin,_San_Francisco#/med...

Whats the problem there?

Ah yes when I'm surrounded by active drug users and the mentally ill my first thought is to architecture as well.

And why do you think that matters to this topic at all? I don't live in SF I don't know about its crime rate. How on earth is the architectural quality in any way shape of form related to crime rates? Why even bring up such a ridiculous unrelated point?

Its about aesthetics and if you can't figure that out then its obvious why you find bleak soviet apartment blocks appealing and concrete bomb shelters.

That location in SF then isn't an example of brutalism or soviet aesthetics either if I go by the photos I found on the internet. It was a totally irrelevant example.

I don't live there so I can't comment on level of crime. But architecturally I find no fault here.

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