141–150 of 512 posts
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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.
I too like brutalist architecture for its sincerity. Big Cities are inherently ugly. Brutalist architecture just don't pretend they are pretty.
Because Postmodernism poisoned everything to subvert everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_Dialectics
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To latch on to this great post there are a couple of other worthwhile discussion points: We're still in a nuclear war mental model. We can't build beautiful things if we think they'll be destroyed in a war. We still have a societal level PTSD from World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and other things. World War I veterans came back with horrific problems. That's why architects like Frank Lloyd…
How is it that America can still be traumatised from the world wars architecturally but europe is not? I don't really buy the argument that america builds badly because of fear of destruction. It's more that we are an utterly utilitarian culture. We have nothing old, and cannot imagine that anything might become old. Our goals are to maximize profits while minimizing cost, so we end up building $10m houses out of shi…
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.
Essentially the plot of Boris Vian's 1948 "To hell with the Ugly"
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Two random comments: 1. When I was younger I though brutalist concrete buildings were ugly, now (even if they still are) i find they are usually the most interesting thing in a city core. 2. > Even their own houses typically look like architectural garbage. Agreed. I can't believe how cheap and ugly so many of the "rich people" houses are. It seems to be a competition for who can have the most different rooflines, an…
> I can't believe how cheap and ugly so many of the "rich people" houses are. If don't have the money to build, then you bid over whatever is on the market; whatever some developer and architect duo thought would differentiate themselves ten or twenty years ago. People prioritize commute, distance to family, distacne to the grocery, school zones, number of bedrooms and space, kitchen/bath vintage, and price way, way…
But I would disagree with one aspect: part of it is that they like it. We don't have fine taste anymore and we don't have a desire to impress in a classical way. It used to be you would recite a Latin phrase at dinner and everyone would be impressed. Those days are gone.
When money is king, everything else is demoted.
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 (…
The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture https://commonedge.org/the-mental-disorders-that-gave-us-mod...
I do wonder if we could apply this to make more human software too?
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> But otherwise, the answer to most of the rest of the essay is: economics. Correct proportions cost nothing . And that's just for starters.
Were proportions mentioned in the article? I couldn't find it. But I'm intrigued now -- I thought I've heard all of the complaints about modern design, but I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say that proportions have gotten worse. What specifically are you referring to? The only particularly noticeable thing I can think of is cars having gotten more "bulbuous" rather than sleek, but that's entirely due to crumple zo…
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How is it that America can still be traumatised from the world wars architecturally but europe is not? I don't really buy the argument that america builds badly because of fear of destruction. It's more that we are an utterly utilitarian culture. We have nothing old, and cannot imagine that anything might become old. Our goals are to maximize profits while minimizing cost, so we end up building $10m houses out of shi…
I've got to think a utilitarian culture would say something like "huh, maybe we should build homes that are easily served by transit." But American culture is much more strongly opposed to this than most those in most other countries.
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To latch on to this great post there are a couple of other worthwhile discussion points: We're still in a nuclear war mental model. We can't build beautiful things if we think they'll be destroyed in a war. We still have a societal level PTSD from World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and other things. World War I veterans came back with horrific problems. That's why architects like Frank Lloyd…
How is it that America can still be traumatised from the world wars architecturally but europe is not? I don't really buy the argument that america builds badly because of fear of destruction. It's more that we are an utterly utilitarian culture. We have nothing old, and cannot imagine that anything might become old. Our goals are to maximize profits while minimizing cost, so we end up building $10m houses out of shi…
America is young, Europe is old.