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The mid in fake midcentury modern

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Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#11

Post by Victerius »

aliqot wrote: post #9

We're asking for it though aren't we? Anything non-conventional to beauty is being embraced right now. For generations we only saw the most visually presentable, and in that saccharine world of nothing-better the only thing that stands out are things that are unique from that aesthetic.

It's come to the point where I find some conventionally attractive individuals not particularly interesting. For example, men who look like this: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ8c7xV...

There are so many men who look like this now, on Instagram and TikTok. It's boring. They all look the same. When everything is beautiful, nothing is.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#12

Post by pavlov »

Reminds me of the Parisian art critic who was appalled when they built a modernist colossus that destroyed the beautiful harmony of his home city. The rest of his life he would scrupulously choose walking routes to avoid seeing the monstrosity.

The building in question was the Eiffel Tower.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#14

Post by helen___keller »

It's worth mentioning that a lot of modern architecture (in single family & small-to-mid multifamily developments) is essentially dictated by money: what sells the best (typically the design that maximizes square footage), what is cheapest to build, and what is capable of passing for a given state and municipalities zoning and building code.

People shop by location, price, and square footage as their primary search criteria. Safe & bland architecture with no unique craftsmanship reflects the fact that these things are not relevant for the financing, construction & sale of most housing.

Edit: a few other things to consider.

1. Our relationship with the outdoors has shifted considerably since the invention of modern heating and AC. This has implications on modern architecture.

2. Our relationship with our housing (namely, how many hours we spend in what parts of the house) has shifted immensely in the past century. This has vast implications on modern architecture and construction.

3. The average person's relationship with art and beauty has completely changed in just the past few decades. Consider a pre-war world with little-to-no television in the average household, where you yourself had to look in the world around you and decide what was beautiful; versus the modern world where you open your smartphone and scroll down an instagram timeline or a pinterest board (or watch a show on HGTV) and instantly have an idea of what's "expected" from a "good house". Mass media (including social media for the most part) has a homogenizing effect on culture.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#15

Post by badpun »

I think the reason might be mechanisation and mass-production. Before that, everything was done by hand, so it wasn't that much more expensive to produce interesting architecture or say hand-crafted ornaments details on buildings. Right now, costs of that would be gigantic (which is shown in giant costs of renovation of historic buildings, which needs to be done using the older methods), compared to a standard boxy builds which can be done using prefabricated components. Beautiful buildings would be much more expensive than standard glass boxes, so for the most part we choose not to build them.

Also, materials. Natural materials such as wood or stone feel so much nicer than concrete or glass.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#17

Post by DocTomoe »

jmartrican wrote: post #6

It could be the case that in 30 years, we look back at the aesthetics of our current times with fondness and nostalgia.

I know I am in the minority here, but I actually like brutalist architecture between 1965 and 1985. Not the cookie-cutter ghettos, I mean artful architecture, like Habitat 67 or the Robarts Library, or the Wellcome headquarters.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#18

Post by harha »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #5

World Wars 1 & 2 happened, shattering the remaining sense of aesthetic unity we had that was followed by modernism which purity spiraled into the ubiquitous glass box, which was then followed by a post-modernist surface-level, purely negative rejection of modernism the post-modernists were unable to return to any pre-modern sense of aesthetics due to their ideological commitment to the ur modernist impulse of pride (…

Misaligned incentives do their part too, from fixed rent for older buildings to energy efficiency standards not considering the energy used in rebuilding

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#19

Post by donatj »

There is a bank near my house that has a façade second floor. It makes no attempt to look real from any angle, not from the street nor the parking lot. You can see right through the oversized glassless windows into the sky, beyond that the entire thing is wavy in an unpleasant way. It doesn’t even fit with the style of the rest of the building. My suspicion is it exists almost as a critique of the idea of façades? It’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen.

This is in my opinion the source of a lot of ugliness in our environment - reactionary design. Things designed not outright for function or purpose or hell even aesthetics. Things designed in reaction to previous trends. Soulless mocking critique.

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