No-one has captured this better IMHO than Kunstler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz7oJjWg8_Y .
The mid in fake midcentury modern
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Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#82Why is it the articles which would most benefit from pictures are the ones with the fewest?
And also, is there a movie named "Army Soldier II" with Ryan Reynolds in it, or was I just supposed to understand an oblique reference to something else?
Maybe this piece is meant to be fictional, as though it was written in a possible near-future?
Nothing shows up on IMDB or internet searches.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#83Because Postmodernism poisoned everything to subvert everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_Dialectics
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people responsible for 20th century architecture believed more or less that beauty is Literally Fascism, so that's another component. The ugliness isn't always accidental.
Fascism via "vokisch" movements and ideas attempted to more or less co-opt and own romanticism, classicism, and other forms of non-"modernist" aesthetics. As a result you had a counter-reaction that labeled these things fascist and embraced intentionally minimal, modernist, or decadent themes in rebellion against them. The solution is probably to de-fascize(?) classical and romantic aesthetics. Not sure how you'd do…
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Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#85I gotta say this essay is a bit disappointing. It seems mostly an excuse for the author to grouse and enjoy their own flowery prose. It's the kind of writing I'd expect to see in a Neal Stephenson novel, and it's fun, but it's not really useful as an essay -- it offers very little insight or information. I've often been curious - besides the obvious problems of municipal red-tape, why is construction so expensive now…
Economies of less scale may be contributing. We still use a lot of concrete; use peaked in 2006. But most of that is for roads and bridges. Cement mixers are dispatched much less often to small projects. Developers have a strong preference for putting things up quickly, not waiting for cement to cure, which is compounded by high labor costs. Steel consumption has been roughly constant since the '90s, but prices have doubled, possibly due to energy costs. GFRP rebar performs similarly to steel but generally is even more expensive (the greatest misconception about plastic is that it's "cheap"), though this may be compensated in the long run due to its high corrosion resistance. The application of reinforced concrete is more cautious than it historically was due to rebar corrosion issues, requiring more waterproofing and higher safety factors; GFRP is virtually immune to corrosion but has (correctly) been subject to intense scrutiny to hopefully avoid a similar crisis due to any unexpected failure modes.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#86an article about aesthetics with no images...
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#87A short essay that made me notice other people's mistakes when talking about beauty (and numerous other topics): 2-Place and 1-Place Words by Eliezer Yudkowsky People use "beauty" as if it's a 1-place word (objective metric), rather than a 2-place word ("beautiful to entity X"). Now anytime anyone says "X is best" I follow up with "for who? and in what context?" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eDpPnT7wdBwWPGvo5/2-pla…
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
You don't need to invent a new langauge to express age-old ideas.
If you want to mathematize it, you can use standard terms like "relation" and "2-ary predicate".
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#88My grandparents on one side of the family had a beautiful house, with beautiful furniture, and one large room you were basically forbidden from entering unless on special occasions when they were hosting a formal get-together. You had to be careful about everything you touched. I hated it. Loved them, but hated going there.
My other set of grandparents lived in a small house with a garden in back that they used mostly to feed themselves. Nothing matched, everything was old and decades out of date with respect to modern norms, some things had been repaired often. But it was lived in and comfortable and welcoming, and I loved it.
I appreciate beautiful things but I don't want to live in a museum. My home is small, and nothing matches. I'm okay with this.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#89Reminds 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.
I'm not sure anyone thinks the Eiffel Tower is a masterpiece of beauty. More like a hyper-marketized symbol of Paris. And frankly the area would probably be nicer if it wasn't there at all.
Ah, but now you've delved off into opinions. I'd have to say the article itself is just a gigantic opinion piece.
Ugly is the wrong word. Conformity is. If you consider conformity ugly, you will see it as ugly, if you do not, it will not be ugly. It's all subjective.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#903000 words on ugliness. Zero pictures.
If the author is going to complain about ugliness, he may as well show some examples.