261–270 of 512 posts
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> How is it that America can still be traumatised from the world wars architecturally but europe is not? America is young, Europe is old.
USA is nearly 250 years old. Most European states are younger, even though European peoples and cultures are indeed old. Italy is young, Rome is old.
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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…
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 .
https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-buildings-learn-what-happen...
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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. Per…
When I think of people who like older buildings, it's because of the materials, the ornamentation, the history, the culture, the craftsmanship, the uniqueness, I could go on. All of which makes total sense.
But proportion just isn't something that usually comes up. And none of this has anything to do with false consciousness, sheesh.
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> We have nothing old, and cannot imagine that anything might become old. Obviously wrong. America has an enormous amount of beautiful "old" architecture. Most streetcar suburbs are shockingly beautiful, from the utilitarian carriage houses all the way up to the mansions and large public buildings. It all predates WW1. The reason truly is psychological. At the elite level (public institutions, taste makers), it was a…
> Obviously wrong. America has an enormous amount of beautiful "old" architecture. [...] It all predates WW1 Your comment shows the difference between American "old" and European "old". In Europe, there are people who live in homes far older than that.
I live in a mid sized European city with a city center containing buildings that go back to the 12th century, but the house I grew up in was built in 1890. It’s one of the older houses on the street too, and pretty uninspiring to be honest. The place I live in now, very near downtown, is like 20 years old.
Sure, most American homes are probably less than 50 years old, but on the scale of a couple hundred of years, does that make Europe that much more sophisticated and “cultured”, generally speaking?
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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…
Here’s the secret to this thread. Every “adult” generation always hates 50-100 year old architecture, because that was what was slightly old and starting to show its age when they were kids. Gen-X/Millenials associate brutalism with non-renovated stuffy classrooms, empty downtown office buildings, and dirty public plazas. Then a bunch get torn down (usually the lowest effort versions) and people adaptively re-use the…
If anything, architecture seems to have been almost entirely captured by the avant-garde; people more interested in “new and different” than “classic and beautiful”.
I don’t think modern audiences are suddenly falling in love with brutalist architecture; even the best examples look like dystopian-future prisons or mental hospitals.
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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…
> Fascism via "vokisch" movements and ideas attempted to more or less co-opt and own romanticism, classicism, and other forms of non-"modernist" aesthetics. In my opinion, it's not so much that "fascism" (sort of a useless label in today's world) has co-opted traditional aesthetics, it's that the left has run away from the actual concept of beauty. As an example: look at the body positivity movement. Everybody, no ma…
Scott Alexander posted something similar
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria
And the response he got was arguably predictable..., others didn't agree that modern architecture is ugly.
Sure there are some ugly buildings. But, for example, for me. I went to some 1929 building that I'm sure this author and Scott would find beautiful
And it is. But it's arguably NOT functional. On the 25th floor the view would be incredible but the windows are tiny and so unless you walk directly up to the window you can't see the view. In pretty much any modern building the view would be front and center, full floor to ceiling, wall to wall windows.
I prefer that modern style. check out an old museum and a modern one. The modern one will have all kinds of amazing affordances. Places decided to highlight the view, places decide to give a sense of space, places designed for eating in unique space.
I'd much rather go to one of these
https://design-milk.com/10-modern-museums-youll-definitely-w...
Than one of these
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-oldest-museums-a...
Even if the contents was the same.
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USA is nearly 250 years old. Most European states are younger, even though European peoples and cultures are indeed old. Italy is young, Rome is old.
My European house is older.
https://twitter.com/paulskallas/status/1546563161587089408 https://medium.com/@lindynewsletter/refinement-culture-51d96...
Best way way I can think of to provide a tl;dr is that we live in a society where convergence towards the optimum is the goal. We have all this data to help us make these informed decisions. Companies (and people) feel a need, implicit or otherwise, to target the largest audience possible, which is just another way of saying that they're trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
My personal favorite example of this is how recently remodeled homes, particularly the ones that are trying to be sold, all have the same sort of grayish "trendy" minimalist interior. Odds are, they were advised to make their home look this way because it's the most broadly-appealing home interior that exists out there, supported by "the data". If you make your home look like this then you'll have more buyers, or so the logic goes.
Once you know about it though, you see it everywhere.
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 (…
World war 1 was the suicide of Europe.