I have seen the opposite as well. Building an efficiently laid out, beautiful building doesn't take that much more raw material, it just requires more thought. Big US cities used to also have copypaste mass housing even a century ago, built with a strong eye towards cost efficiency, but designers also kept aesthetics and livability in mind.
And since they were basically identical to each other, they had to figure this out only once, and they could build the same t
The 'cheap and nasty' design school usually succeeds at the latter, not so much the former.
And this supposed efficiency of modern architecture often doesn't really show up. The Empire State Building was famously built in a year. Nowadays the most utilitarian housing project takes longer.
It is designed to be this way for investors more than consumers. Investors want these units to be as fungible as possible so they can better compare local market dynamics. Commodity trading has a lot of advantages for the investor after all. The consumers have no choice really but to be in this market if they want to be sheltered at all. It isn't like you really can exercise free market selection for something necessary like shelter. You have to take what has been made available and you cannot do without.
There is therefore no incentive to make a smart building that is favoring the tenant since this doesn't grow the potential pool of tenants in the area, that pool remains the same size as it was. It is unlike a lot of other markets where having a better product might actually grow the customer base of the product segment overall.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Lot of the finance machine works on standardization, like the are some building techniques, like spray-on insulation that work perfectly fine, but banks wont approve a loan on a building like that because its hard to inspect and repair.
This ironically makes these crappy buildings built to investor standards expensive, since banks will give cheap loans for it, on account of having low maintenance costs.
Of course all this exists only on paper.
My other question that I've never found a good answer to, is with mechanization, how is it that "cheap" modern buildings are so expensive. Or were old, traditional buildings super expensive? What is the cost of a unit of beauty per year, then and now...?
Old buildings were often expensive to their inhabitants because people were very poor. The cheap ones were largely torn down, because they fell apart because... they were cheap. Also, people largely lived in comparative squalor to today. Only about 50% of homes in America had an indoor flush toilet in 1926, and most of those were the urban north east. In 1926, the average home was <1k sqft (avg >2k in 2026). The modern idea of insulating a home wasn't around 100 years ago - houses were small, and cold, and you had to shit in a hut in the yard or in a bucket you threw out the window after.
Like cars, we've upgraded our standards of comfort and safety a lot. HVAC, electricity + internet networking, running water and bathrooms and water heaters, insulation, double paned windows, more and bigger appliances, safer standards for things like like staircase dimensions, increased fire/earthquake/hurricane/etc resistance, etc - there are a lot of things that just didn't get included in old homes.
Old houses were literally boxes made of wood, and now they're complex and mechanically rich in many subtle dimensions. Houses also have gotten bigger, so even as the price-per-sqft grows, so does the total size of the home.
Homes still aren’t really mechanized. I’ve seen attempts but they haven’t worked well yet. Labor and materials are so expensive!
And most new homes are built by one of a few big groups. Oligopoly issues again.
I'd say yes. Reading fairy tales and historical records, we see just how huge were the prices. A pair of boots could be worth a year's income of a peasant.
The land is far more expensive now. Plus legal liability insurance costs. And costs of permitting/zoning/bureaucracy is much higher.
We have not made any progress, and perhaps we don’t need to, when it comes to architecture since World War I. There have been a few projects like La Sagrada Família, but those are exceptionally rare.
Suburban homes. What a disaster and embarrassment to the human race.
If you like neoclassicism and hate brutalism, then I would say you are very strange too. To me, brutalism hits the same things neoclassicism does but much more organically and better.
Separately it's always peculiar to me that folks go on to defend some art, but I bet if I went around saying neoclassic art is terrible I'd not get much opposition. I wonder why.
> If you like neoclassicism and hate brutalism, then I would say you are very strange too.
What artworks would you compare here?
Both paintings you cited are very much on the traditional and representative end of the spectrum. None of them seem to be on the more abstract 20th century styles.
Well why would you discard the intention? I think there is more to compare as well than just the ability of the architecture to humble someone. What does the architecture say? Who does it glorify (in these cases)? How difficult is it to make?
You can also say they're similar but one is good and done well (neoclassicism as you mentioned but there are others) and one is done very poorly (brutalism).
Part of how you could argue that is something like number of visitors. Nobody visits brutalist architecture. It's extremely unpopular outside of academic circles or art establishment points of view.
> Both paintings you cited are very much on the traditional and representative end of the spectrum. None of them seem to be on the more abstract 20th century styles.
I have a hard disagreement here but I'm not sure what there is to really talk about.
I am neither an academic nor a member of the art establishment. I find neoclassicism nakedly fake in an irritating manner. Brutalism is a more honest and organic execution of what people try to do with neoclassical buildings.
>I have a hard disagreement here but I'm not sure what there is to really talk about.
You were the one who put Bansky among "weird and ridiculous" art movements which is frankly absurd as Bansky does very traditional and representative art. Did you have any trouble recognizing what Girl with a balloon was? It is a very clear and representational style of painting that has absolutely nothing to do with the more abstract art movements of the 20th century. Do you know of Woman with a towel? Do you consider it normal or "weird"? Girl with a balloon is no more "abstract" roughly than girl with a balloon. If you think one is and the other isn't then you have a really absurd and incorrect view.
But to your point about the effect that some building has on people, we have things we can measure about that effect. You can look at number of visitors, or perhaps price on the market.
> You were the one who put Bansky among "weird and ridiculous" art movements which is frankly absurd as Bansky does very traditional and representative art.
Well it's ridiculous (worthy of ridicule) in part because of the poor quality and craftsmanship. It's poor art because it fails to express meaning in a way that, for example, you can clearly see if you are to compare it to Woman with a Towel. There is much more depth. Individual brushstrokes, intent.
Popular and modern art today lacks the ability to evoke meaning and depth in the same way. This is measurable. There's a reason that IKEA sells Andy Warhol prints and not Women with a Towel prints - yet many more visit and covet visiting the great masters. Modern art requires an industry to convince you that it is art and worthy of praise while the others draw people in without needing marketing. One is a faucet of the degradation of modern culture post-World War I/II (which we can rebound from of course) and is easily made and easily reproduced. The other, isn't.
> If you think one is and the other isn't then you have a really absurd and incorrect view.
No, your view is incorrect and absurd.
Its also absurd to try to compare visitor count for Bansky against a museum piece. People go to a museum because that is the only place they can physically see the painting. Banksy's work is done in public spaces so footfall would be whatever millions traverse it over the years. Unless you can mind read and tell me exactly which of them are and aren't fans of the painting how can you compare numbers of people who like it? You tell me where is the 'poor craftsmanship' in Girl with a balloon. Its more detailed if anything, and you seem to judge art based on how detailed and representative it is. Its as good in execution as Woman with a towel, and roughly on the same level on the spectrum between representational and abstract. It has a clear subject that has been painted with a degree of realism, just like Woman with a towel. You can't explain me the exact reason, because you made up nonsense about certain paintings based just on their age in years.
Still waiting for the coordinate by coordinate breakdown of brushstrokes.
You still didn't tell me who those buildings glorify by the way. Why didn't you answer that question?
Idk I didn't find it important or interesting. Even in your case of the Space Needle one could simply argue it's a continuation of western civilization in which Rome and Athens were the founders and stewards of. Maybe the Space Needle is just a big Egyptian Obelisk that the Romans were so fond of. Who is to say it's not a Roman style building?
> Banksy clearly does not belong to any 20th century abstract or modern movement at all.
I think Banksy is very abstract, the specific nature of whether it's more close to some arbitrarily defined time period isn't all that relevant, plus there's some overlap as styles emerge.
But I would actually argue it's pretty close as an offshoot. Most of the 20th century art movement is the result of the post-war psychosis that many experienced. Girl with a Balloon is very similar, in my view, even if it's slightly different stylistically.
Regardless of what it is, it's very mediocre as far as artwork goes. It lacks attention to detail, and where one may want to ascribe importance and meaning it is done so through a lens of modernism (like brutalism) that is still reeling from bunkers and trenches in World War I/II.
You're focused on the style, but I'm focused on much bigger things. My point anyway was that pretty much everything after around 1950 or so is bad. Whether we call certain styles 20th century or modern or post-modern is important for catalog purposes but ultimately unimportant to me. Civilization in the west stopped trying, and you can see that reflected in this shit art.
>I think Banksy is very abstract
Did you have any difficulty knowing what the painting was depicting? Its more detailed than a lot of impressionism that you seem to enjoy. Its clearly not remotely abstract at all. It has absolutely nothing to do with brutalism, brutalism is an architecture movement not a painting movement. This is in not even wrong territory of absurd nonsense. What is the attention to detail you find missing? If you will put any argument, give exact specifics and examples otherwise don't say it. Its more detailed and well executed than Impressionism, and in neither impressionism nor that painting the intent was anyways photographic representation. It is very absurd of you to say because Banksy's style has nothing post 20th century about it at all. The date stamp changes nothing. Civilization is fine. Its not civilization's fault you make up crap in your head about some art periods and refuse to play the game of making up crap about other art movements.
You seem to have mental issues then.
> You were the one who brought up the question of who a building glorifies, not me.
It wasn't a question though, I was just stating a fact. And "who" doesn't have to be a specific person, though it can be. Who can refer to a people, or a culture, or a civilization. "Who did that? The Egyptians did that", for example. There you go, it's justified and still important.
> Did you have any difficulty knowing what the painting was depicting? Its more detailed than a lot of impressionism that you seem to enjoy. Its clearly not remotely abstract at all.
I disagree completely and that is my opinion. You can't argue with my opinion without inviting objective criteria about artwork.
> What is the attention to detail you find missing?
Well partially graffiti-style art is limited by the medium, and as societies degrade we use cheaper and cheaper materials/products and do so with less knowledge until they die out. Look at suburban homes versus surviving residences in the high-end markets in places like London or Paris (there's lots of other cities just those are two obvious ones).
But from just looking at the artwork I think it's lower quality and less thought and attention was put in to it versus other artwork, including your reference point of Woman in a Towel. Girl with a Balloon seems to try to invoke a message about something but that message seems kind of silly and cliche. And then there are just these two colors. Black and red. Boring.
> It is very absurd of you to say because Banksy's style has nothing post 20th century about it at all.
I'm not trying to litigate whether some folks got together and decided that some art should be grouped in some way. That's just their opinion on the grouping, mine is different. I lump the majority of art post-World War II into a single category with the defining feature being a psychotic relationship to humanity driven by post-war psychosis. It's like brutalism. It's built off of bunker designs and fear of humanity.
Level of detail is very objective. Are you saying degas is more detailed than that bansky piece? How is graffiti limited by the medium? What do you think is not possible to paint on a concrete wall that is possible to do on a plywood or wood panel or cloth?
> Look at suburban homes versus surviving residences in the high-end markets in places like London or Paris (there's lots of other cities just those are two obvious ones).
Show me average houses from the same economic class in your preferred era and in modern times.
>I'm not trying to litigate whether some folks got together and decided that some art should be grouped in some way. That's just their opinion on the grouping, mine is different. I lump the majority of art post-World War II into a single category with the defining feature being a psychotic relationship to humanity driven by post-war psychosis. It's like brutalism. It's built off of bunker designs and fear of humanity.
You are entitled to having insane beliefs of course. And to continue to invent statements without even attempting to give any explanation or example. Such as how a girl and a balloon is "fear of humanity" but a nude of some woman in a shower is not. What was the less detail? Give me specifics. Until you give specifics, you are just making up crap.
I can answer any question you have. Just let me know.
> Level of detail is very objective. Are you saying degas is more detailed than that bansky piece? How is graffiti limited by the medium? What do you think is not possible to paint on a concrete wall that is possible to do on a plywood or wood panel or cloth?
You can't get the depth of brushstrokes or color for example.
> Show me average houses from the same economic class in your preferred era and in modern times.
Why would I do that? What would be the point?
> You are entitled to having insane beliefs of course.
Your belief is insane also.
> And to continue to invent statements without even attempting to give any explanation or example. Such as how a girl and a balloon is "fear of humanity" but a nude of some woman in a shower is not. What was the less detail? Give me specifics. Until you give specifics, you are just making up crap.
There's no detail or specifics to provide that you would entertain or accept. So there's no point. It doesn't matter anyway because not only are the technical details subpar, the point of the artwork itself is, in my opinion, stupid.
Who or what does (a) the CN Tower, (b) the Space Needle, (c) the Empire State Building, (d) your house glorify?
>You can't get the depth of brushstrokes or color for example.
In what way do you think they can't? Do you know what priming or not was applied to the concrete in his graffitis? And likewise to the wood panels of the artists you admire?
> Why would I do that? What would be the point?
Why shouldn't we compare average houses of like economic classes if you claim one style is so much better?
>There's no detail or specifics to provide that you would entertain or accept. So there's no point. It doesn't matter anyway because not only are the technical details subpar, the point of the artwork itself is, in my opinion, stupid.
Because you can't. You never yet presented a single example, detail or argument in favor of anything you stated other than "Because I feel so!!!".
A - CN Tower I'm not sure. It's just tall
B - Space Needle - I'm not sure it's just tall.
C - Empire State Building - meaning there, Empire (it's in the name) business, commerce, American ingenuity, prosperity, and wealth.
D - My house probably doesn't glorify much. Most suburban houses by design I'd say they just glorify the car that's parked in front of the driveway while the front door is hidden. This is a vestige of the psychosis of post-war architecture which hides away things like windows or doors less an intruder easily find the entrance.
> In what way do you think they can't? Do you know what priming or not was applied to the concrete in his graffitis? And likewise to the wood panels of the artists you admire?
Well I just look at it. Look at it up close, look at pictures of it. It's less technically sound and older artists were much more skilled.
> Why shouldn't we compare average houses of like economic classes if you claim one style is so much better?
Why are we comparing the average house instead of the best made houses where folks had the funds to take creative liberty?
> Because you can't. You never yet presented a single example, detail or argument in favor of anything you stated other than "Because I feel so!!!".
I think the colors are poorly done and muted, the outline of the girl is really boring and euro-centric, and the intended message falls short. The medium used (graffiti) is one of the least challenging and limits the ability of the artist to focus on details which require a lot of time and effort to perfect.
Ok so you can no longer make this argument that I haven't provided a single example. It doesn't matter anyway because art is subjective and all opinions on it are equally valid.
> The medium used (graffiti) is one of the least challenging and limits the ability of the artist to focus on details which require a lot of time and effort to perfect.
Again how do you feel concrete admits of less detail than plywood or wood or cloth, which is what most older painters used?
>It doesn't matter anyway because art is subjective and all opinions on it are equally valid.
I am glad we could get down to tacks and admit neither of us are artists or art scholars and both our opinions are equally irrelevant on this topic.
I didn't claim that photographic representation was the point. Colorful for the sake of colorful wasn't the point either, but impressionists artists (since that's what we're talking about) utilized color to a far more expert extent and then you can see that in the artwork. This is in part due to the poor medium, and in part due to the inability for the artist to do anything technically worthwhile with light and color.
There's nothing realistic about Balloon Girl for example when compared to Renoir's painting of Two Sisters. It's kind of like a silhouette or something. There really isn't anything there that would separate it from everyday graffiti or something like that.
Take a look: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/14655/two-sisters-on-the-terr...
Here you can see the masterful use of color and very precise paint strokes to illustrate different forms of lightning and how the colors interplay with each other.
The Banksy piece is kind of like, idk how to describe it in comparison without being too offensive. Even the girl's face in the Banksy work looks a little like a girl ogre or like he is a try hard trying to make some political point or something. It's really jarring and weird to look at. When folks are like "omg this is art, it speaks to me" I'm like, did you have an aneurysm?
> I would need you to explain in what sense you think it is euro centric as I have no idea how that is applicable here.
Happy to, the outline of the girl is western. It's not an asian girl, for example. You can clearly see that. The use of a heart balloon is arguably a European interpretation. Not that I think that's necessarily a bad thing I guess, I do think European art prior to the wars was the best that has been created but others may think differently.
> Again how do you feel concrete admits of less detail than plywood or wood or cloth, which is what most older painters used?
It absorbs paint differently. Can you identify an example where concrete is used paint something such as the Mona Lisa or perhaps something that Renoir created as I mentioned above?
> I am glad we could get down to tacks and admit neither of us are artists or art scholars and both our opinions are equally irrelevant on this topic.
I'm still confused as to why you are asking me to justify my thoughts here. It's just my opinion and if you believe art is subjective you simply have to accept my opinion and that it's just as valid as yours might be. There isn't any possible substance to debate unless you want to also argue there is objective criteria in which we can evaluate art. Is that your position?
Pre-WW1 had already abandoned representational styles to a much larger extent than Banksy ever did, eg Cubism and Futurism so you are bullshitting. I don't see much difference in detail level between the painting you gave and the Banksy painting. Muted colors is a stylistic choice. You didn't tell me why charcoal is or isn't a valid medium. Charcoal has even less color.
I don't have to or care to answer the question?
> and list what media you think your favorite paintings were
I don't have to give you anything other than "no it's not as good". Art is subjective. Balloon Girl is one of the worst pieces of art I've ever seen and anyone off the street could make something that lame and pointless.
> Pre-WW1 had already abandoned representational styles to a much larger extent than Banksy ever did, eg Cubism and Futurism so you are bullshitting.
No you are bullshitting
This is true, but usually fewer people die in the construction of those utilitarian housing projects
Justice delayed is justice denied, and housing that takes years to build because of stupid NIMBY bullsh*t is just an indirect way for the haves to tell the rest of us to kys.
In China buildings are built faster.
I'm thinking of something like a violin. You can't pick up a violin and judge the perfection of the fitting between the wood surfaces that are glued together. If that work isn't perfect, the instrument will eventually fly apart. But you can look at the "scroll" and "bees sting" which are unforgiving of tiny errors. These kinds of features persist to this day due to traditionalism, but have disappeared from most industrial products.
Today, I don't expect an ornamented house to be of any better quality than a plain house.
I read someone's argument that the ugliness results in market failure. Because the ugly results in not only local opposition to building renewable it results in everyone in the area being opposed. And they then use the political process to block new construction.
What really bad is after a 100 years of this the construction industry no longer knows how to design attractive buildings. Starts with architecture where 2/3 of the architects are aesthetically blind. And the remaining 1/3 had it beaten out of the in school. Ends with manufactures that have long since stopped manufacturing pleasing materials for construction.
The Dana-Thomas House, designed and executed by Frank-Lloyd Wright, spared no expense in an age when skilled craftsmen were affordable.
Are there seeds of the Guggenheim in New York between these two buildings?
https://www.ourchanginglives.com/springfields-dana-thomas-ho...
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60763-d108687...
The is hopefully the high watermark of Apple fans thinking Apple invented something they didn't.
Not the case for all of them (the brick-built viaduct proposal for example looks like it would be a nightmare to build and maintain), but most of the buildings shown, the ‘traditional’ variant just uses less visible steel and glass, in favor of ‘layer cake’ designs with stone cladding panels on the lowest level.
It’s like people visit the remains of the forum in Rome and picture the colours being as they are today instead of the ridiculously bright/strong colours they would have been when erected/used.
No one else on my street has followed my lead though.
I think some of it is because people are obsessed with treating housing as an investment, and so anything outside the norm is a financial risk.
It’s easy to sell grey, white, and black cars. So it’s what you buy.
This assumes no purchase is longterm. Which is its own indictment.
I should add: I love that you broke this idea. Can you (safely for the internet) share any photos?
Standing out doesn't really help if it isn't more desirable than the boring normal.
What I personally dislike is the recent trend of all black siding and trim. I have no idea why people are doing this on new construction near me, other than perhaps cooling is cheaper than heating in our climate. It's certainly (IMHO) hideous though.
I love modern architecture (and art); I find many older forms to be garish, focused on pointless decoration and on wealth display, rather than on the beauty of function and form. The imagination of [some] modern architecture, starting from those fundamentals, is stunning.
You don't like it, which is just as valid, but trying to turn your preference into a universal truth for humanity is not valid. Can't it be just your preference?
Why is it so important? I think the real subtext for most such comments is culture war: A reactionary take on modernism and postmodernism, trying to make them outre, outside norms, attached to political liberalism which is often the real target.
Innovation is usually greeted by reactionary responses; what's odd is that, in our world of modern double-speak, reactionary has become seen as cutting edge instead of a lack of imagination and progress, of retreat and regression. Let's go back to what we were doing 100+ years ago!
Instead it just feels like some knowledge was lost to time and we lost the plot along the way, because there is a refusal or inability to just do what used to be done all the time in the past. Yes building codes are different, but stuff like trim or brick work or generally curb appeal shouldn't affect that. No one is asking for no sprinkler system or no hvac, just a better looking building from the outside. Many of those old buildings do get gutted and end up modern inside but maintain the old facade. People want more of that facade I think without it being a diminishing resource.
I think the cause may be that most real estate developers are not students of architecture and also are looking to minimize costs and time. Even if the developer wants to build something beautiful, cash flow (burn rate) is a big problem: You borrow millions or more, and have no revenue for the entire time it takes to build the building. Getting credit is hard enough. Do you go more in debt, and possibly for longer, for the nice trim? Does the banker also care about architecture and see that as a good investment?
Also, the trim then and trim now probably were designed with the same thing in mind: Whatever is least expensive with current technology. For example, an architect once explained to me that interior trim, for example where the wall meets the ceiling, has a purpose - it covers flaws in the join. Modern techniques and materials allowed us to eliminate it.
Most importantly, speaking of innovation and technology generally, IMHE what you say is an almost universal experience: Often it's not the new thing that is the problem, it's that the old seems carelessly discarded. All its benefits and nuance; all the skill and expertise; all the deep understanding and appreciation that comes from generations and lifetimes spent developing and using it, that enriched our lives; all lost. Think of poetry, which used to be far more popular - now people barely read it much less have any deep understanding of it. People who would have been poets are now doing something else; who could even mentor you if you wanted to be a poet?
It very much does, unfortunately. In the US, the places with the highest housing shortages are mired with endless red tape, discretionary reviews, parking requirements etc. that substantially increase costs. This leaves little room for anything else, including aesthetics.
Developers have gotten very good at navigating this, but it has also led to them sticking to basic "good enough" designs like the five-over-ones we see when new apartments are built.
But what I notice in the housing crisis cities is that this is almost irrelevant. Whatever the actual limits of the zoning are, that is pretty much what you see built. Regulation be damned, it will get bulldozed through and built if it is allowed to be built in these cities. And the real only dam preventing the flood of development becomes these zoning laws that finally say "no" to development happening at all. The red tape is just cost add that gets passed to the buyer. It isn't like there are a glut of homes too expensive to sell in these places (what you'd see if red tape were really the issue), quite the opposite, after all.
Parking minimums are how we ended up with cities that are substantially composed of car storage, instead of housing which people need to live. There's little reason to force developers to build car storage when what people need is housing. People in cities get along just fine without a car, and it's possible to adopt a similar model to Japan that requires people to prove they have a parking spot available before they can register a car.
>Whatever the actual limits of the zoning are, that is pretty much what you see built.
Exactly, the limits are set very low, and so much red tape, that so little housing gets built, which is why we have a shortage.
It's not "fascism" to wince and shrug at the taped banana. It's just common sense. But if you insist that everyone who does so is secretly motivated by some kind of bigotry, you end up pushing them towards the right wingers anyway.
Ugly is in the right of the beholder when it comes to individuals, but societies also have collective preferences.
Agreed, though your comment does much more than wince and shrug:
> too ridiculous to be seriously defended
Humans are very social animals and we follow social norms, like a herd moving together. Look how similar everyone's clothing is: Nobody is on 5th Avenue in a loin cloth or Elizabethan outfits (unless intentionally violating norms). Why do we all chose to wear the same things? We follow norms.
How do we signal and punish things outside norms, or shape norms to exclude something? Ridicule. Sophisticated public communicators consciously use it - you can see it in the way some conservative publications depict trans people. Their intent, through ridicule, is to push them outside norms - a foundation of facism, normalizing persecution and even brutality and murder. Facists also did/do that to art - it's the same thinking (though not everyone who ridicules art is a fascist - the fascists take advantage of that bit of human nature.)
In your comment you aren't just wincing and shrugging, but literally ridiculing (to be clear, I'm not calling you a fascist in any sense)
> It's just common sense.
Which means, common norms. There's nothing special about them; it's just a social phenomenon. Every innovator, including in tech, faces the usual response:
- First they laugh at you (ridicule you)
- Then they say it's not in the orthodoxy (if ridicule fails,
you go from being ridiculous to being a threat to norms)
- Then they say they knew it all along (you're now within norms)
The same happens with social change, like women working - Ridicule, then a threat to norms, then normalized. What was absurd becomes normalized. In art, Impressionists were once objects of ridicule; now of course it's arguably the most popular style of painting in human history.> societies also have collective preferences
They don't. People try to make preferences look more universal to justify their own beliefs or simplify thinking, but it's always far more diverse. Look at how the Democratic party attempts to lump simple demographic groups (e.g., black men) into one stereotype of political thinking - and ~25% voted for Trump in 2024.
Societies do have norms, which are very changeable. Look how the far right has changed norms around the world in just a short time. It's not by accident - I've seen guides on how to normalize antisemitism, for example. The leading fascists in history, the Nazi party, had very consciously designed propaganda to do the same.
If someone wants to be an innovator (and have a truly free mind, IMHO), they need to step back and see norms, their dynamics, and what's beyond them, and learn to see what's outside without the filters, to treasure it as potential future innovation. To look at things on their merits, not at whether they are inside or outside.
At the debut of the first play by Harold Pinter, The Homecoming, much of the audience booed and left at intermission. Pinter, the great innovator, booed the audience. (Or so the story goes.)
And yes, common norms are a social phenomenon (and that is exactly what the "collective preference" of society is). And yes they do change. However they are not completely random, either. And if you have had something being pushed on people for well over a century, to the point where most experts insist that it's better, but your average person from the street still thinks it's ridiculous, I think the reasonable conclusion is that it's not completely random.
As a Satanist, I am very much in favor of rejecting norms in general. But that doesn't mean that literally anything that is outside of the norm is better!
What if it's almost everyone's preference? Except for the high priests of architecture who have their own agenda. Then we end up living in a world full of buildings they design for themselves that most of us dislike.
> Why is it so important?
Because the rest of us have to live with it at street level, every day.
> A reactionary take on modernism and postmodernism, trying to make them outre, outside norms, attached to political liberalism which is often the real target.
But they are the norm and have been for some time. It's time to challenge that norm.
If we go back to (for example) Le Corbusier, we see this sort of thing thrown around in discussions all the time - you just don't accept innovation, you're hung up on traditionalism, get with the way of the future. Only it's not the future, it's one part of the past, and for all there was noble intent behind some of this stuff, we've had adequate time to judge the outcomes as lacking.
1. I think the onus is on you to prove that it's not a minority, in the face of people overwhelmingly favouring older, more ornamented designs.
2. Beauty does not have to feel 'fake' and ugliness can be very authentic indeed, especially when it comes to concrete. I'd take a faux-neogothic revival over another period of brutalism without even blinking.
I used to live near-ish to this eyesore - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyndham_Court#/media/File:East...
It's a hideous blot on the landscape, the wind blows through mercilessly and constantly, it feels desolate and dystopian to be around. It smells of piss and depression. It's notorious for drug dealing. But someone managed to get it listed and protected anyway so now the town's stuck with it permanently.
> I do not understand this movement to rob concrete, steel and plywood of it's natural voice and force it to conform to design styles made for different substances and tech.
Perhaps we don't have to force it to be 'traditional' but it's clear that the 'natural voice' afforded by these materials and the current set of design languages in architecture result in ugly buildings that the large majority of people just do not like.
We don't have to look at the overwhelming preference for traditional buildings and take away from that "We must go back to exactly that", but we should at least take away "People don't like what's being made now, we can do better"
And if there is no way for concrete, steel and plywood to express more beauty then perhaps we could think about using other things that might. Either way, ploughing on with creating spaces and edifices that the majority think are ugly and worse than what came before, either because of a professional disdain for what humans actually like to be around, or some high-minded ideas about material expression seems ... well, pretty pig-headed.
Its not about high mindedness. Tell me suppose you took steel started making cuboids out of it and sanding it rough then stacking it with cement. Does that in any way do justice to steel or is it a complete waste and misuse of the substance? What these people are trying to imagine as their ideal are not as extreme as forcing steel to behave like brick but it is on the same spectrum. Neoclassical buildings are another good example. They are completely fake. I would bet they mix wildly different centuries apart greek and roman designs. And we know they are steel and concrete structures internally just facaded over with marble, not structural load bearing all-marble like the original greek stuff. Brutalism is just a more honest form of those massive neoclassical buildgings, the scale and power of it minus the fake marble nonsense. But I am not even saying you have to be brutalist, it's just one example of an honest medium.
If I only have hand tools and solid wood, I would make Colonial furniture for example. If I have stainless steel tubing and plywood I would make bent tube legs and plywood rests.
Plywood is an amazing substance why do people hate it? It uses wood to make large panels that lack the directional weakness of wood and to quite an extent the movement issues of wood are also avoided. Concrete is pourable rock. Steel is a flexible and easy to cut and join structural substance. You may disagree with certain design ideas that use these substances snd cwn say we could try different designs but I think its ridiculous to cargo cult brick and mortar or marble for instance (which are perfectly fine materials for their tooling and design) and wholly reject modern substances.
Brick cuboids don't grown on trees or are found in nature either. I would say the funniest one is people calling structures like hypar shaped halls as unnatural. That's as natural as it gets, nature itself leaves the hypar the only shape that is optimal to be supported atop a grid of columns, not the flat roof. These curves are more natural that flat and square walls. At least people should be wrested of the naturalist argument if they use it against designs like this.
You have cause and effect backwards IMHO. The brutalist housing monstrosities in the UK, with the notable exception of the Barbican which is more gentrified, create the conditions that encourage this. They create grim, cold, bleak, colourless liminal spaces. Their look of decay doesn't inspire community, care for the place you live or happiness, instead they are dull, oppressive monoliths that people piss on. And the story is repeated across the country.
> Does that in any way do justice to steel
Who cares? Is "justice to steel" a design goal? Why?
> Neoclassical buildings are another good example. They are completely fake.
And?
> Brutalism is just a more honest form of those massive neoclassical buildgings, the scale and power of it minus the fake marble nonsense. But I am not even saying you have to be brutalist, it's just one example of an honest medium.
And again, who cares? Is "honesty" a design goal? Why is that more important than creating human-friendly spaces with a bit of beauty to them?
I'm not arguing against the use of specific materials, I am arguing against allowing the materials to dictate a heavily disliked outcome. Are we really saying "Everyone hates what we build now but we actually can't do any better"?
Because that's not what I get from discussions like these. What I get is "Everyone hates what we build because <insert piece of philosophical sophism that explains why everyone else is wrong>"
I find crttain kinds of fakeness disgusting. I am entitled ot my opinion as are you to yours if you prefer fakeness.
I think McMansions are honest. Stick framing and plywood is a functional, affordable and most people seem to find it looks okay.
If people disagree with steel and concrete, nothing is stopping them from pooling money to build a brick building. I don't think zoning should be an issue, if a place allows skyscrapers it probably will allow your brick multistorey building. If its liked so much why aren't people funding it?
Either this design is too expensive or its not liked enough.
And I disagree, I find neoclassical buildings cold and inhuman, I think its actually its itnended design too, to overwhelm with sheer scale and induce despair. But I see it as just a design choice not a religion ir existential theory. Gothic is even more deliberately hostile looking.
The barrier to entry for interior is even lower, who is stopping you from buying tools or commisining a cabinet shop to build your vision?
Brutalism is perfectly human friendly, its a building, its meant to house people and take them in and out of their office or apartment. If anything I'd say brutalist structures are probably more walkabale than other multi storey structures. What you make of the interior is up to you. Paint your home as you want, put any furniture you like, as with any other building.
What specific way do you think brutalism or any other building style you would prefer as example is not human friendly?
The concrete voids, semi-open outdoor stairwells and other weird half-hidden spaces in many of these buildings appear to encourage a lot of antisocial behaviour like drug-dealing and urination.
The greyness and water-staining leaves an area looking deprived, and against a (usually) grey and water-stained sky it makes these areas feel lifeless and barren. Especially where the wind constantly whistles through their straight-lined, hard-surfaced open plazas.
The general ugliness of them just depresses the human spirit, kills community cohesion. People don't care about them. So they come to expect the lifts to smell of piss and the stairways to be full of dealers.
The fact that you don't think building design could have such an effect is deeply weird. Have you ever had to live near any brutalist buildings? They take down your mood just by being near them.
> >I find crttain kinds of fakeness disgusting > And I disagree, I find neoclassical buildings cold and inhuman
We've already established you're the voice of the minority here.
> If its liked so much why aren't people funding it?
That's a very interesting question, why are we stuck in a world where governments and large companies are building modernist stuff that people in general don't like? I think partly it's probably cost, I think partly it's down to the overwhelming majority of architects being taught this particular gospel. But beyond that I don't know.
(The idea that it's a choice of the same individuals expressing their preferences is somewhat silly, most people will never in their lifetimes have any sort of meaningful impact on new buildings in a city)
> What specific eay do you think brutalism or any other building style you would prefer as example is not human friendly?
The whole philosophy of form following function is misdirected from the outset. Beauty, attractiveness is an important part of function in human habitation.
And you still haven't answered my question - why is 'honesty' or 'justice to steel' in the slightest bit important? Why should we prioritise that over things like happiness? Why should we not use artifice and skill to make spaces that are attractive, warm and friendly, regardless of material?
I like warm and humane spaces..i would need to see specific examples to see how brutalism violates it. I think if the situation in your locality is so bad that any public space will be taken over by druggies is not the buildings fault. You should say then that you need highly enclosed and guarded structures to prevent this problem.
Cool, then we’ll blame it on the choice of how and where to use those materials? So when there’s an architectural style that for example is very heavy on chunky raw concrete, is pretty universally despised and has negative social consequences, it’s fair to say “we should probably stop doing that, it seems like a bad idea” rather than some abstract verbiage about doing justice to the raw materials?
Because to be clear - I don’t care about the materials, I care about the outcomes. If someone can use concrete/steel/ply to make something attractive that isn’t going to degrade is a short handful of years, go for it.
> I think if the situation in your locality is so bad that any public space will be taken over by druggies is not the buildings fault.
Nope, repeated pattern across the whole country, for reasons given and now explained multiple times.
Do you believe architecture can have any effect on a place? How people feel in that place, how that then translates into how they act in those spaces, positive or negative?
If yes, then perhaps it’s time to admit that some styles can be on the negative side.
If no, then why are we even bothering?
Architecture obviously impacts a person's mood and behavior, eg unwalkable architecture would force a lot of driving. I just am not certain if brutalism can be said to cause whatever negative issues you are claiming it does. At least I am sure the movement wasn't designed to be anti human in any way.
That's purely a utilitarian take. You don't believe that design language could ever have an effect on mood?
You said yourself you find neoclassical and gothic styles induce despair. What do you think would be the long term effect of living somewhere that induced despair in you?
> At least I am sure the movement wasn't designed to be anti human in any way.
A system is what it does, not what it was designed to do. The thinking behind it was often utopian, there was high-minded talk of "streets in the sky" and the idea of giving everyone their own front door to the outside, as if they had their own private house on a raised terrace.
The results were not in line with the expectations.
I understand what you are trying to get at, its just that I simply am unable to understand the mood of despair as associated with brutalism. Maybe others feel otherwise.
We've established that your view is the minority position and that people in general prefer more ornamented architecture (that's what the article is about). We've established that you understand the premise of feelings of despair caused by architecture.
If you can't put two and two together to understand that other people feel that way when confronted with brutalist architecture, and that being in/around it might affect their lives, it feels like either a lack of imagination or simple obstinacy.
As I said earlier, I doubt you've had to live near many of these architectural tumours, or you might have more insight.
That's how they sold it, but it's not true. By the end of the 19th century, all the building ornamentation that you can still see in European capitals, had been stadardized and was mass-produced, while the construction techniques using brick and mortar had been further refined, yielding building designs that were cheap to construct and easy to maintain.
Modernist buildings were, at the same time, more expensive to build and less durable because of the reinforced concrete which has a much shorter lifespan than stone or brick plus mortar. The only advantage they had was that of increased height, but that was only an issue due to the restrictive zoning in Anglo countries. Without NIMBYism that pushed towards sky-scrapers, NYC could well have ended up like Paris: replacing 1-3 stories buildings with 8-10 stories, but allowing mixed commercial/residential space everywhere.
If there is money left over, then you decorate. But you’ve probably bought into a new housing development with an HOA that doesn’t allow exterior modifications without approval.
This is a really interesting argument and very much not the story I've heard. Can you cite any sources for any of your statements at all?
– Cheaper: than what? Is it that premodern architects had the same technology and materials available but chose not to use them <because they had a higher aesth-ethical integrity>?
– What is a 'side effect' in architecture in a way that's unique from the necessary compromising that the needs of occupants, material constraints, longevity, cost, time, labor, aesthetics, and etc. which essentially is architecture?
> given {cheap material, not the good stuff / I don't feel like it / measuring sucks / I just want to cram people that will ruin your neighborhood everywhere}, the average roll of the dice yields simpler geometry with less ornamentation.
But simpler geometry is structurally stronger and allows more spacious airflow / less heat trapping. The cost of materials is not inert, the demand for them affects the cost obviously. Energy efficiency is beneficial to all. Open floor plans are less prohibitive on use cases. Large window sectioning allows for more light/efficiency and also keeps the street level perspective from seeming insular.
The logic doesn't follow for me that capital was plainly more benevolent, then around some time or another they began the project of "educating" people into accepting their cheap and accidental aesthetic standard.
What survives the past are its most accomplished projects, and thus maybe per capita it appears of higher quality than modern. And more importantly re: the submitted article, it has informed centuries of signing what "home", safe, hospitable, threatening, and etc. mean. So the whole measurement of who prefers what says something but I don't think it speaks to natural perception.
One consequence of this was the decimation of skilled craftsmen. Millions of them were sent off to become machine-gun fodder, to never return to their respective trades.
Along with them was their craft. The next generation of apprentices never had the mentors they needed, hence that was that, the end of what you might call traditional architecture.
There was another minor disagreement that began at various times depending on one's nationality. In the UK this meant 1939, and with it a second 'double tap' on the skilled craftsmen that the building trade used to rely on.
Many of the survivors did get to work on war memorials, and every village has one, carved in stone, and often kept in immaculate condition to this day.
In my local station there are two memorials, and I struggle to hold it in as I walk past. Needless to say, we lost a lot of good railway workers too. Sad.
There wasn't a lot of money after each of these minor disagreements and heavily blitzed cities still bear the scars. There can be a wonderful parade of shops with flats above, with wonderful craftsmenship, which is truly wonderful considering they didn't have motorised vehicles as we know them, or cherry pickers, or any machine that is big and yellow (JCB in the UK).
Nowadays there can be a huge 1870s building, with four storeys, all with big rooms and high ceilings, next to some 'rubbish' that was built in the post-disagreement years.
Some places were physically removed from the map. A 500 bomber raid on the special crane used to hoist big guns onto the ships of the Royal Navy happened one night. They completely missed the crane to destroy the entirety of Clydebank, a district of Glasgow. People are sore about that to this day.
The crane still stands, albeit idle, since shipbuilding went to Asia in the post-disagreement years. That crane, once the largest and most capable in the world, has a soul. It speaks of sorrow to me.
So yes, you are correct, but there is more to the story than just a Modernist story of cheap mass production. The limit was not resources as you can see the quarries that were abandoned after the first minor disagreement, and there is enough stone in any given mountain to make millions of homes. The limit was the loss of men as well as the loss of European colonies, on which the wealth of European cities came from.
Moving swiftly on, I am no Ferrari fan under normal circumstances, however, Lewis Hamilton currently drives for their Formula One team and he is a hero of mine. Hence I am willing to defend the loathed Luce!
The Luce does have Mr Ive's design input and I don't think anyone is critical of the interior. It is well understood that serious tax avoidance vehicles need to stay away from having big screens on the dashboard since they are not going to age well (and F1 cars don't have such things). Having four seats rather than just the two makes sense to me, since the car needs to have some length to it for high speed stability and there is no need for a massive red V12 engine in the middle of the car.
The Luce brings much from the world of F1, including high performance cooling systems that cost 100x the price of the radiators in your car. People like older cars because they can tune them, the Luce is the first EV that is what you might call tune-able, with the owner able to set the car up for a given track or just the road, with them also able to do what they want with it.
The aerodynamic package is ahead of its time, and, as such, it will draw criticism. We have been here before, notably in the UK with the Ford Sierra. This was a 'jelly mould' shaped version of the three-box saloon that had gone before, the Cortina. Initially the press hated on the Sierra and people did have genuine misgivings. However, it did not take long before the Sierra rose to the top of the sales charts to set the trend for the 'jelly mould' look, these being the 'peak car' maintainable vehicles that people wish they had today.
Fortunately I will never be a customer for Ferrari, however, if I was a tax-dodging benevolent dictator with the wealth to put together a motor museum, I would not hesitate to buy a Luxe for the collection, to go alongside an OG Tesla Model S, with the faux grille, and a Xiaomi SU7. I would like to add a Ford Cortina and a Ford Sierra too, however, millions were made and millions rusted away, leaving none for my fantasy museum, particularly in the desired Saluki Bronze colour.
And now it's used for bungee jumping.
The US equivalent is the Hunter's Point crane.[1] This was built to do a very specific job - lifting battleship turrets. It's not used any more.
But the flip side isn't anti-modernism, it's mass-market kitsch, which is at least as ugly.
Minimalism isn't bad on its own, and the best minimal design really is beautiful.
But the abstraction and containment went too far, and the result is often functional (on a good day) and joyless even if it's a prestige product. And claimed efficiency is often purely decorative. (Which is ironic.)
The worst is block sprawl and suburban slop - endless subdued and constrained repetitions of the same thing, with very minor variations.
If bespoke robotic manufacturing becomes a thing it will start being possible to build and make exotic, individual, decorative things at scale. Most of the results will be terrible, but some will stand out as examples of new aesthetics.
It's far more common than it should be.
> The worst is block sprawl and suburban slop - endless subdued and constrained repetitions of the same thing, with very minor variations.
The economic of bathtub curves incentivises designs nobody hates, even if at the cost of nobody loving them.
I mean look at the ecology of our world. What do you see out there when you look outside? Solely some lumbering generalist beast doing not good and not too bad taking up all the energy that comes off our sun?
Absolutely not. The opposite happens. The generalist tends to die out, outcompeted by the litany of specialists who better occupy the specific niches the generalist attempts to fill.
Left to its own devices, the market ought to look like this: hyperspecialized at all scales and levels such that every demand is maximally occupied by the most efficient manner to serve that demand. One might ask instead what artificial constraints are allowing a generalist to emerge and not be swallowed up by the sum weight of the countless specialists who are more optimal at every possible thing?
And if you are against things generally in the sphere of "Bauhaus" interior design then I would say you are engaging in a cargo cult of using modern materials in unnatural ways to copy older designs without eye to how the modern material has its own natural form and manner of usage. I would say, for example if one only has hand tools and solid wood then it is reasonable to follow Colonial design school, but if one has glass, stainless steel and plywood, it is wasteful to force them into a Colonial shape rather than their natural forms. Either style respects the substances and tooling it uses.
You are free to pay four digit prices for every piece of furniture if you truly oppose designs that are aligned toward mass production.
So it had dual pressure, from economics because it was cheaper/efficient and from the cultural reform side.
Stalin pushed classical and actually within the soviet union Stalinst buildings were considered the best. These are called Stalinka.
Khrushchev embarked on a massive post-war building campaign in an effort to improve living conditions within the USSR by providing millions of new housing units.
These were modernist mid-rise and high-rise buildings and were designed for mass production and efficiency above everything else. These were regarded as considerably lower quality buildings than the Stalinka and were called Khrushchyovka. The Krushchyovka were the classic "commie blocks."
Most of this comment, after saying I'm "not informed" just repeated everything I said in my comment with less details.
This seems to be a comment where someone started with a prompt of "no ur wrong" and had AI elaborate it out into something less juvenile.
Which modernism?
1930s modernism was about new materials to allow luxury for the modern man (electricity! large windows! electric oven! washing machines! fridges! indoor toilets!)
1960/70s modernism was about creating new communities, adapting land to fit the modern car based world. No more pokey little shops with only a few items, requiring a trudge along a wobbly high street. NO! drive your car, go to a futuristic supermarket only once a week.
I don't think we see a modernism now, not as a movement. I will now divert to UK building, because in the US its different. Part of the reason why thats the case in the UK is that councils used to build houses, facilities and infrastructure with their own money. This meant they had their own architects. This lead to town plans that were coherent, if not always successful. See Birmingham, milton keynes, roehamton.
Housing wise, council houses were built, or should have been built to a standard. They were, especially in cities much bigger, brighter and luxurious compared to what preceded them. Were they pretty? no, modern is never pretty, because its not what you grew up with. When I was a kid everyone _hated_ victorian terrace houses, because thats what poor people have. They were more pokey compared to executive estate housing, and in some places didn't have a drive for your four door saloon.
Now, those estates are meh and terrace houses are very expensive, despite being cold, draughty, dingey little shitboxes with odd toilet arrangements. (unless you've slapped in a loft conversion and extended over the kitchen/outdoor toilet)
> Dieter Rams as some aesthetic pinnacle rather than soulless mass production.
The problem is, Rams was about bringing the complex new object into the house in a was that was reliable and simple. If we were all about Rams' vision, then we'd have got rid of radiators, had decent windows, insulated the place, had lots of cupboards and cleanly separated living spaces. Not an everything room and a bedroom with inbuilt mould farm (shower + shitter)
Yes the modern apartment is inspired by loft living and dieter rams, but that requires 100sqm/1000sqft and high ceilings. none of which most places have. So you get a kitchen diner because it allows developers to shave off one room from the floorplan and increase density by 1/3rd without extra mateiral costs.
But thats not modernism, thats poor fucking standards, and the lack of competition in the uk in the form new council houses. (a 3 bedroom council house will be at least 90sqm with seperate kitchen, living room)