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Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

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Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#51

Post by a-dub »

api wrote: post #4
richliss wrote: post #2

As someone who grew up in a city that did this, it was a terrible idea then and remains so. Town planners who like brutalism and everything modern are insane. Just look at Birmingham, England - they knocked down beautiful buildings to put up brutalist eyesores to then knock down brutalist eyesores and replace them with a different type of modern architecture that will look awful in 20 years. There's a reason that peo…

High modernists are like the somewhat narcissistic recluse programmer who thinks everything is crap. They shut themselves in and rewrite everything in their own superior paradigm without bothering to look at any real world use case or ask anyone anything. Then they're surprised that nobody uses what they built.

"dude. i know that's not what it's supposed to do, but actually it's better. it's a feature, not a bug. no, no. it's not shitty, and no i'm not refactoring it and neither are you. it works better and they'll never be able to fire us. it's like jane jacobs and shit. leave it alone. the bits are happy."

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#52

Post by Zababa »

febeling wrote: post #45
cm2187 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cutoff is the invention of photography. The only way painters could remain relevant is by doing something original rather than beautiful. Then the other arts followed. Modern classical music is impossible to listen to most ears. And architects followed too, more interested in creating an original shape of glass or concrete rather than building anything beautiful and pleasing. There is hardly any piece of…

One problem was that people started believing that there's no such thing as beauty. How do you build a beautiful building, if you think beauty is an illusion anyway? I have the idea that it's related to atheism. Once you believe all of life and all of nature is ultimately some brute atoms buzzing back and forth anyway, then what your imagination creates is likely to look pretty brutalist. If you believe it's angels a…

I'm not sure about that, I'm an atheist myself and I still find religious building beautiful. Even if there is no god there, and even if the buildings were ugly, they are filled with the feelings of lots of people. That is beautiful in itself. Just like I'm not really into sports, but the energy of a stadium is something beautiful to see, and very real. There's something special happening in those places. Same thing with an old house. Many people lived there. That's powerful.

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#53

Post by vidarh »

swayvil wrote: post #47
yywwbbn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a single developed country where to high birth rates are an issue? What? You can’t?

Well usa is getting pretty packed. Visit any big city and it's all giant concrete hives and special roads so we can crawl over each other.

The US is 185th of 248th on Wikipedia's list of countries and dependencies by population density [1], and the US' fertility rate is well below replacement at less than 1.8 [2] (replacement is ca. 2.1), and hasn't exceeded replacement since 1972, which would imply US population growth is down to immigration.

Your statement is also pretty nonsensical. If you visit the highest density spots in a country, then it's naturally going to be high density, and that tells you absolutely nothing about the overall density of the country.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fert...

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#54

Post by davidivadavid »

febeling wrote: post #45
cm2187 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cutoff is the invention of photography. The only way painters could remain relevant is by doing something original rather than beautiful. Then the other arts followed. Modern classical music is impossible to listen to most ears. And architects followed too, more interested in creating an original shape of glass or concrete rather than building anything beautiful and pleasing. There is hardly any piece of…

One problem was that people started believing that there's no such thing as beauty. How do you build a beautiful building, if you think beauty is an illusion anyway? I have the idea that it's related to atheism. Once you believe all of life and all of nature is ultimately some brute atoms buzzing back and forth anyway, then what your imagination creates is likely to look pretty brutalist. If you believe it's angels a…

Nah.

First, I don't think any major aesthetic theory claims there's no such thing as beauty. At best, they question the definition of beauty and the classical canons of beauty.

Second, you can put meaning and symbols into atoms buzzing back and forth (atoms buzzing back and forth are more or less a symbol, anyway).

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#55

Post by inglor_cz »

cm2187 wrote: post #38
rich_sasha wrote: post #25

It should probably be pointed out that Paris has a history of "knocking it all down" to make space for the New. Haussman did that. Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, one of the most iconic sacral buildings of the world (?) sits on the rubble of its Christian predecessors (as well as an ancient pagan temple, oh well, zeitgeist). The difference was that Le Corbusier's stuff is, as most of this thread attests, ghastly, mayb…

I think the cutoff is the invention of photography. The only way painters could remain relevant is by doing something original rather than beautiful. Then the other arts followed. Modern classical music is impossible to listen to most ears. And architects followed too, more interested in creating an original shape of glass or concrete rather than building anything beautiful and pleasing. There is hardly any piece of…

It does not seem to be the case to me. At least I cannot see the correlation.

Art Deco buildings are very beautiful, and that happened a long time after photography was invented.

In fact, the soulless style of architecture only started to visibly dominate after WWII.

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#56

Post by ambrozk »

pembrook wrote: post #48
rich_sasha wrote: post #25

It should probably be pointed out that Paris has a history of "knocking it all down" to make space for the New. Haussman did that. Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, one of the most iconic sacral buildings of the world (?) sits on the rubble of its Christian predecessors (as well as an ancient pagan temple, oh well, zeitgeist). The difference was that Le Corbusier's stuff is, as most of this thread attests, ghastly, mayb…

While everybody loves Haussman's Paris today, at the time, it was extremely controversial and he was eventually ousted. Paris used to be like the cramped medieval old towns you see throughout the rest of Europe. Here's a classic quote from one of Haussman's most powerful critics: "We weep with our eyes full of tears for the old Paris, the Paris of Voltaire, of Desmoulins, the Paris of 1830 and 1848, when we see the g…

I don't like Paris' broad boulevards. In my opinion they're the least interesting part of the city. The best places to congregate are always off the main line of commerce, away from cars and trucks. Obviously, proper waste disposal and lamps are good, but I don't know why we're taking it for granted that criticism of Hausmann's aesthetics is "hilariously wrong."

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#57

Post by rst »

pembrook wrote: post #48
rich_sasha wrote: post #25

It should probably be pointed out that Paris has a history of "knocking it all down" to make space for the New. Haussman did that. Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, one of the most iconic sacral buildings of the world (?) sits on the rubble of its Christian predecessors (as well as an ancient pagan temple, oh well, zeitgeist). The difference was that Le Corbusier's stuff is, as most of this thread attests, ghastly, mayb…

While everybody loves Haussman's Paris today, at the time, it was extremely controversial and he was eventually ousted. Paris used to be like the cramped medieval old towns you see throughout the rest of Europe. Here's a classic quote from one of Haussman's most powerful critics: "We weep with our eyes full of tears for the old Paris, the Paris of Voltaire, of Desmoulins, the Paris of 1830 and 1848, when we see the g…

Le Corbusier-style tower blocks never happened in Paris, but they were built all over the US as part of "urban renewal" projects, and there have since been multiple generations growing up in those structures, to become nostalgic for them if it were ever going to happen. It hasn't happened yet.

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#58

Post by somewhereoutth »

swayvil wrote: post #15
DocTomoe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out that people who dislike brutalist living silos are often also the same people who think we have a housing crisis. You can't have everyone live in Bath unless you demolish it and put Pruitt-Igoe 2.0 onto it. And as you've correctly pointed out: what then would be the attraction of any desirable place?

The problem is too many people. The question is, what horrible dystopian method are we gonna use for those who insist on breeding like rats? Forced sterilization? Containment ghettos? Euthanasia squads?... Yes, scary. But so are megablocks.

This is a solved problem - provide education and empowerment for women. This is why advanced societies are seeing flat birth rates (indeed often declining).

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#59

Post by snapcaster »

a-dub wrote: post #51
api wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High modernists are like the somewhat narcissistic recluse programmer who thinks everything is crap. They shut themselves in and rewrite everything in their own superior paradigm without bothering to look at any real world use case or ask anyone anything. Then they're surprised that nobody uses what they built.

"dude. i know that's not what it's supposed to do, but actually it's better. it's a feature, not a bug. no, no. it's not shitty, and no i'm not refactoring it and neither are you. it works better and they'll never be able to fire us. it's like jane jacobs and shit. leave it alone. the bits are happy."

haha, great comment. This whole thread is full of people who enjoyed Seeing Like a State loving the discussion

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#60

Post by snapcaster »

swayvil wrote: post #47
yywwbbn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a single developed country where to high birth rates are an issue? What? You can’t?

Well usa is getting pretty packed. Visit any big city and it's all giant concrete hives and special roads so we can crawl over each other.

From your comments I think I understand your feelings on this issue, but please understand that you're ignoring reality and getting upset about something that isn't even happening. The population is dropping in many developed countries and fertility rates are plummeting. The world with fewer humans you seem to seek is already happening.
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