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The mid in fake midcentury modern

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Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#201

Post by pixl97 »

scythe wrote: post #36

When I look at pretty old buildings, what sticks out are hand-molded wrought iron, hand-laid brick quoins, hand-carved window siding, hand-assembled decorative fences — surely, you can see the common factor? So it's cost disease. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease Modern buildings are made principally of prefabricated components designed to be packaged and shipped efficiently and assembled quickly. Wh…

Not sure where to start debunking this...

When you look at old buildings you're automatically starting with survivorship bias. Expensive and well kept old buildings tend to stay around a lot longer than buildings that were built cheaply at the time. Those have all been bulldozed.

Oh, did I mention that expensive building was expensive? It's easy to ignore that huge parts of the population were living in houses with paper thin walls and spending enormous amounts of energy to keep warm or cool (on cooling people had avoided the southern united states in mass till cooling options were available).

Oh, did we also mention that not only the US population, but the global population has increased massively since then. All of those processes you're describing are massively energy and labor intensive and do not scale as you're trying to put 8 billion people under rooves.

Why lay bricks rather than fake bricks? So everyone has a home and they don't have to burn an entire forest to get it.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#202

Post by krona »

crazygringo wrote: post #175
krona wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me weep. Pythagorean ideals of proportion have existed for a millenia. See Ancient Greek/Roman architecture, gothic architecture (e.g. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00004-022-00591-2 ) and then go to visit an average modern city development and look at what modern architects consider to be, I don't know, the 'ideal' diameter of a non-supporting (almost entirely aesthetic) column, or the incongr…

Yes, Pythagorean ideals of proportion have been around for a long time, but they've also been essentially "debunked" in terms of aesthetic beauty. Kind of the same way that precious little of the music we listen to today follows Bach's prescriptions for counterpoint. They were a historical starting point that we've long since evolved away from, in favor of greater freedom and sophistication. Which isn't to say that t…

> Overall, I see no evidence of problems of proportion getting worse.

Except if you ask people, specifically the people who *have to work in, live in and around these buildings*, and given the choice, they will choose, time and time again, architectural styles which have fallen out of favour with the vandals.

Some think beauty is simply in the eye of the beholder and it's the plebs who have a false consciousness. Perhaps you're one of them.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#203

Post by dmitriid »

Renevith wrote: post #165
yunwal wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that it takes is to travel to Mexico to understand this is wrong. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3Y5ULj_0l3o/UrYr0ys5RTI/AAAAAAAACo... This kind of architecture works it just requires a kind of unity and dedication to a common ideal that we no longer have.

I think it's hideous and I wouldn't want to live there. There's nothing "wrong" (nor "right") about the idea that lots of bold colors will tend to clash and be unpleasant. It's just subjective and different people hold different opinions about it.

> I think it's hideous and I wouldn't want to live there.

This is really no different from "beautful colorful houses in the Nordics" someone gushed about in another comment.

You need consistency and care. If you have that, suddenly you are a "tourist destination", "cozy place to live" etc.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#204

Post by soco »

bnralt wrote: post #172
at_a_remove wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have to deal with some Brutalist structures. Ghastly things, look like they were built by some kind of enormous alien wasp-like creatures that spit out a paste of concrete. Unfriendly interiors. Stairwells almost deliberately vertiginous. Floors with the warmth and charm of a Detroit loading dock. A building which does not learn, its unfortunate inhabitants must adapt to it .

> A building which does not learn, its unfortunate inhabitants must adapt to it. That's one of the most interesting and depressing parts of post-WW2 architecture (it's present in certain "high culture" architecture before, but not as ubiquitous). It seems narcissistic, entirely focused on what the architect thought would look cool, and completely detached from the individuals who would actually be using the space. Th…

It's one thing to decide for cool instead of beautiful (or useful) but a whole another thing to get paid for it. Those architects won a contest, right? One the premise of... what? We can build the ugliest, yay? Humans are just details? What exactly is the selling point of brutalism for a communal living area? You want to design your own bunker, be my guest. But something paid by the public should serve the public, not be a practical joke on the citizens. Yet another failure of the local authorities, move on...

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#205

Post by bobthepanda »

pixl97 wrote: post #91
account-5 wrote: post #61

I don't know, it might just be me but if you're going to write an article (a really long one) bemoaning how everything is ugly you need to provide more than one picture. I want picture proof, not long descriptions that leave me to imagine. Pictures paint a thousand words and all that!

The problem with the word ugly is its completely an opinion. There is no right or wrong ugly. The author would have done much better to forego the word ugly and replace it with hyper conformity.

It's also rose colored glasses.

Many of the surviving examples of historic architecture we consider classic today, were ugly or dilapidated mass architecture in their time. Ask someone in 1900 what they thought of a New York tenement or a Sears mail-order home, and they would look at you like you were insane for suggesting those characteristics now command seven-figure premiums.

(What would've been the true beauties of those eras, the mansions, are mostly gone, mostly because they tended to be in high-value areas that would've been redeveloped in later generations because of said high value.)

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#206

Post by samsquire »

pixl97 wrote: post #153
samsquire wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you mean but I reject the idea of an ugly truth. I would reject an ugly truth being true but a false thing people accept as being true which is not necessarily true. If you truly reject anything not true good right it becomes easier to avoid degrading words or falling into despair. Said another way, the truth cannot be ugly. So there is no such thing as an ugly truth. Do you agree the truth is beautiful?…

I can reject there is no ugly truth on a theoretical basis (though not a practical basis) Lets say you become omniscient and now you know that 7 days from now the universe is going to end in a flash. I mean, that's not great in itself. You think to yourself, I should let everyone know so they can say their goodbyes, but when you do there is a vast amount of human suffering and violence. If you say nothing the world g…

Thank you for your reply and for your understanding of what I say.

I would say there are 2 independent separate things: the circumstance or what you are using the word true to refer to. True is a property of what is but is separate word and meaning from what is

What is can be ugly. But true the word is not. True is eternal and immune to badness

True is what Is truly, that isn't false. The what referant or circumstances are independent of the true.

The true is not the same as the what. The what can potentially be outside the true. The what can be ugly.

From the word "true" it doesn't refer to what is not true except by duality (opposite)

The quality of true is beautiful and always good because it is what is and not what is false.

It's not the property of true that is ugly, what is going on is independent of the true.

Some thing bad going on is independent from the property of the property that some thing is going on. True refers to the absence of falseness.

In other words, the externality of what is going on is going on is beautiful, separate and independent of the not good.

Your scenario is unpleasant and not good but the scenario is independent from the idea you can be sure of the truth. Knowing you can be sure of the truth is beautiful even if the referant of the truth is ugly.

True cannot be made wet by what it refers to.

Said another way, why do people think ugly overrides the beauty of true rather than the other way round, true overrides the beauty of the ugly. It's a precedence thing.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#207

Post by sph »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #56
sph wrote: post #10

There are two schools of thought: those that think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and those that think, like Steve Jobs famously quipped, that some people just have no good taste. After fighting with this concept for years, I decided to embrace the superiority and smugness that comes with the latter: the vast majority of people have no understanding of beauty and aesthetic. The only thing that stops the w…

Keep going though. It’s not just about “taste”. We have always needed opinionated people to be able to push their ideas. That’s what Linus is, Jobbs was, like him last year or hate him this year Musk, Eminem, Pulitzer, Jefferson, Tesla or Edison, Stuart Mill, the Wrights, and so on to any major or minor scale… The best things come from opinionated people who were told they couldn’t go against the grain like that. We’…

I'm saddened to see you downvoted. I do not agree with the examples you've made but I agree with the general idea of your comment.

In our thirst for a more progressive society, we've created an artistically dull culture that is afraid to offend, and there can be no beauty if one isn't allowed to say fuck the rules. Punk died at the turn of the millennium, and we're all a bunch of posers now.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#208

Post by marcosdumay »

ericmay wrote: post #23
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 (…

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…

> I'm not religious at all but right now we face a crisis of what we are building for

That wouldn't be bad at all, but at the same time we are facing a humanistic crisis too. We don't respect the gods to create things for them, and we don't respect the people to create things for them.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#209

Post by recursivedoubts »

selectodude wrote: post #79
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 (…

>It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human, and all things super-human, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function . This is the law. Emphasis mine. Louis Sullivan is quoted as saying this in 1896, prior to any world wars. I think you…

That was certainly part of it, as was the industrial revolution, but consider the auditorium building built by sullivan in 1889:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditorium_Building_(Chicago)

There is still a strong connection with the historical aesthetics in it. The lead up to WW1, in the edwardian era, featured a move towards stripped down classicism, but the real break in my mind happened during WW1/2, and particularly post WW2.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#210

Post by marcosdumay »

trilbyglens wrote: post #92
ericmay wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Was the GP talking about the US? Because all of it is applicable to all over the world.
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