Comment by qiqing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qiqing | Hacker News Reader

From the article: "It’s legendary for being the most hated building in Paris. I want to defend it not because it’s a particularly beautiful tower, but because of the idea it represents. Parisians panicked when they saw it, and when they abandoned the tower they also abandoned the idea of a high-density sustainable city. Because they exiled all future high rises to some far neighborhood like La Défense, they were segregating growth. Parisians reacted aesthetically, as they are wont to do, but they failed to consider the consequences of what it means to be a vital, living city versus a museum city. People sentimentalize their notions of the city, but with the carbon footprint, the waste of resources, our shrinking capacity, we have no choice but to build good high-rise buildings that are affordable. It’s not by coincidence that people are going to London now not just for work but for the available space. No young company can afford Paris. Maybe Tour Montparnasse is not a work of genius, but it signified a notion of what the city of the future will have to be."

I can't help but mentally find & replace Paris -> San Francisco.

I just wish there was some neighborhood like La Défense where 'all future high rises' in the Bay Area are exiled, where people prefer a vital, living, high-density, sustainable city to the preservation of the aesthetic of their sentimental notions of the city.

Even better, the non-high rises in Paris are five or six stories tall. Most of SF is zoned for max 40 feet.

For reference the height restriction in Paris between 1977 and 2008 was 102 feet for the center and 121 feet further out.

Also, it's a false dichotomy that we must have either no development, or a building everyone (other than the architect himself) hates.

For most of history, architects sought a graceful balance between art and practical considerations. It seems to be a recent development that they have split into separate groups, one of which focuses solely on cutting costs, and the other of which focuses solely on building monuments to their own genius.

I wish I could find a link, but I recall years ago an interview on NPR with an architect that designed some building in LA (for paying parking tickets or something). Anyway, during the interview he accidentally admitted to not actually caring about the people that would end up using the space.

He then followed up by back-pedaling of course, but I've always remembered that as a moment when my cynicism about "modern" architecture felt validated.

I'm struck by the parallel between architecture in your example and software engineering. You could say the same about the engineers who don't ever consider the humans who will be using their software.

I don't really see the parallel. There's a big difference between not understanding the end user (which I'd say is usually the case with bad software interfaces), and actively no caring about the end user or even intentionally creating a negative experience.

I don't recall ever using software where I thought the creator intentionally made things difficult.

You may be interested in the Alexander/Eisenman debate[1], if you've not encountered it before.

On the one side, an architect who believes in designing buildings largely as a means of communicating artistic messages—even, and perhaps especially, designing the building to make people uncomfortable[2], because to make a building that comforts and reassures is a bit like lying about the state of the world, or doing a broader disservice by reinforcing the status quo. Buildings as statements, buildings as jokes[3], even.

On the other, an architect who finds this view practically psychopathic, since, after all, people will live their lives in these places. Buildings, in his view, should serve people over communicating a message and, above all, should please the humans who will look at them and crawl around in them.

[1] http://www.katarxis3.com/Alexander_Eisenman_Debate.htm

[2] http://socks-studio.com/img/blog/eisenman-alexander-01-800x6...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eisenman#/media/File:Grea...

Architects who purposefully design buildings to be uncomfortable seem like people who I would find extremely annoying or even infuriating to deal with. Except in very special cases, an architect's job is "design buildings for people to use", not just "design buildings".

>On the one side, an architect who believes in designing buildings largely as a means of communicating artistic messages—even, and perhaps especially, designing the building to make people uncomfortable, because to make a building that comforts and reassures is a bit like lying about the state of the world, or doing a broader disservice by reinforcing the status quo. Buildings as statements, buildings as jokes, even.

Yeah, that's pretty much the premise of brutalism [1]. Actually I think there's a place for that kind of thing and some of the best examples in London are really awe-inspiring and interesting places to hang out (e.g. the National Theatre, the Barbican). But of course there are some 'concrete monstrosities' as well.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture

I don't think that brutalism goes as far as that. It does try to be 'honest' but it does not deliberately try to be uncomfortable.

FWIW, I'm not making the argument that high-rises have to be hated. I'm saying that categorically hating high-rises is bad for everyone who wants to live in that city and can't.

> vital, living, high-density, sustainable city

I get what you mean, but La Défense is more or less the opposite of that. The people responsible should be shot, as it taints the ideals of what you mentioned. Tour Montparnasse should be loaded from cellar to attic with excessive amounts of explosives and be put out of its misery.

Isn't that what SoMa is? No (or significantly lesser) height restrictions, where the Salesforce tower is going up, and bordered by Bart, Caltrain, and the Embarcadero line.

Isn't Mission Bay and Hunter's Point less regulated? I know they are building a few high rises and hospital buildings that are quite tall. No NIMBYs live there to shoot down development plans yet.

> they also abandoned the idea of a high-density sustainable city

Paris is very dense. All of the places in the top 30 mentioned below are actually neighborhoods of Paris:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popula...

That's the point. Paris is the second-lowest on that list. The other places listed are all Parisian suburbs.

"Because they exiled all future high rises to some far neighborhood like La Défense, they were segregating growth."

But the only Anglo city in the list is Union City. Nowhere in the UK is listed.

That's just an inevitable result of regression to the mean. Paris is 40 square miles while the largest of the denser French cities is less than 1 square mile. Paris has areas with much higher density, but it's impossible to sustain that level of density over the whole city. For instance, the 11th arrondissement of Paris has more than 50% higher population density of any of the other French cities (while still having a larger area than any of them). In fact, 9 of the 20 arrondissements have a higher population density than any of the other French cities[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrondissements_of_Paris

London is 2 to 3 times more expensive than Paris at the moment. And Paris is denser than London. Kinda kills the argument.

It's more expensive because it was successful and people moved there.

Paris density is far less than London. Paris has fewer people in a larger metro area.

  London: 13,614,409 people in 8,382.00 km2
  Paris: 12,161,542 people in 17,174.4 km2

These comparisons are rarely informative, because they're based on arbitrary municipal lines in the sand, rather than at a steady place on the CBD -> Urban -> Inner Suburban -> Outer Suburban -> Exurban -> Rural spectrum

A more informative 1-dimensional 1-variable consideration, though imperfect, might be to take every person in the municipality and ask 'How many other people live within 1km of this person?', and take the median of that distribution.

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