The mid in fake midcentury modern • Hacker News Board

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#271

Post by DrBazza » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:07 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #236

DrBazza wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No, we're in a capitalist mental model. It's the same in the UK. It's build cheap, maximise profit, and a race to the bottom. Want that bas-relief from a master stonemason? No chan…

I'm sure capitalism has an effect (similar to how communism built a lot of absolutely disgusting, depressing housing) but I don't think capitalism created American suburban homes out of thin air. There isn't anything inherently cheaper about building a home that isn't symmetrical regardless of materials - in fact the opposite would be true. I think it's less about economic models though and more about a lack of socie…

If I'm a shareholder of a company that builds office blocks, I'll be demanding dividends and a return on my investment.

Unless the customer (e.g. Apple and their giant do(ugh)nut) specifically ask for something that isn't structurally significant, a construction firm isn't going to add it.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#272

Post by com2kid » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #30

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 (…

The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture https://commonedge.org/the-mental-disorders-that-gave-us-mod...

The title image in that article is of boring old (IMHO ugly) building devoid of natural light, next to a rather boring looking modern building that looks like it is delightful to be inside of.

The next image, left building, looks amazing Bright, light filled, with a weather protected area underneath it for social gatherings.

Not the best visual supporting evidence for her argument.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#273

Post by nxmnxm99 » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

Because truth is beautiful and atheism is ugly.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#274

Post by gffrd » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #136

trilbyglens wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm in Europe (in Germany to be more precise), but believe you me, new buildings that I would describe as "beautiful" are few and far between here too. I think most of it is due to what I would call cookie cutter mentality. For most architects, a building is just a job. They don't realize that even the most unassuming building is something that may be used for 100 years and more, that will influence the lives of thou…

> even the most unassuming building […] will influence the lives of thousands of people (if only because they see it and seeing it makes their day a bit better or worse)

This bears repeating.

The amount of people who have to contend with a building will always far outnumber the number of people who inhabit or profit from the building.

How should we build, knowing that?

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#275

Post by philwelch » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

trgn wrote: post #108

trilbyglens wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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…

> Ironically, it's the unenlightened idiots in America that clung/cling most to archaic, conventional notions of beauty and comfort.

An unenlightened idiot only operates on the level of seeing which things are beautiful and which things are ugly. It requires an intelligent, educated person to get involved in sophisticated games of signaling and countersignaling, like pretending to like ugly things in order to seem more sophisticated than unenlightened idiots.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#276

Post by idiotsecant » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:12 PM UTC

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…

>Our goals are to maximize profits while minimizing cost, so we end up building $10m houses out of shitty plywood and fake bricks glued on the fascade.

I think claiming that building things to a budget is some kind of unsophisticated Nouveau riche mentality is overlooking the experience of the vast majority of people. The US median household income (usually two people) is $78,075. The majority of people don't have the resources to care about satisfying your aesthetic requirements.

Plywood and vinyl and 2x4s are inexpensive and good enough, a combination that is generally exactly the optimal solution when you're considering personal survival. Sophistication is a luxury that doesn't come for free.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#277

Post by david927 » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #12

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.

The famous French author Guy de Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower so much that he ate lunch exclusively in the restaurant there because "it was the place in Paris where you couldn't see the Eiffel Tower."

It's beautiful in many way, certainly iconic and has grandfathered its way into our idea of Paris, but I understand Maupassant and I think if they built it today, I would feel the same way.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#278

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #255

galfarragem wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More down-to-earth and simplistic answer: the classless society (Socialism and derivates like Social democracy) with the need to provide reasonable housing for the masses and the spread of industrial concrete[0] took us to the optimal solution: the concrete box. Once Alvaro Siza (Pritzker prize) was asked if his architecture was minimalist. He answered (paraphrasing): "No, it's just a minimalism of costs". From wikip…

It's bizarre to blame communism here when we've seen this as a global phenomenon. It's an issue of neoliberal thinking in general, capitalism also acts to minimizes all costs the exact same way, just drive through any American highway exit and look at the uniformity of the architecture.

[deleted]

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#279

Post by jeffbee » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

There are a lot of demonstrably false factual claims in this article. I will just pick this one: that renters move more often than in the past. This is completely false. The Census CPS Geographic Mobility by Tenure table indicates that in 2021, renter-occupied households who moved in the past year stood at just 16% of all renter households. This figure stood at 34% in 1988 and almost monotonically declined since. Renter mobility stands at an all-time low. In fact, you can easily argue that it is the lack of mobility, rather than hypermobility, that may be contributing to ugly architecture. Tenants without choices are unable to discriminate on aesthetic grounds.

Subjectively, I also disagree with the implication that "perma-class of renters" is somehow bad. The author appears to have been poisoned by the distinctly anglo-american idea that occupying your own home is for some reason a good thing. In Vienna, only 7% of people occupying a home they also own. Everyone I know agrees that Vienna is superior in every respect, including architectural merit, to any American city.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#280

Post by pixl97 » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

User23 wrote: post #221

pixl97 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> 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 This doesn't make any sense. Labor supply obviously scales with population. More people needing housing also means more people available to build housing.

Labor supply scans linearly if nothing else changes. Being that 100+ years ago people were not building computers, or making money producing minecraft videos, or one of any number of tasks that may pay more than flourishing housing.

And you managed to ignore the millions and millions of houses that were close to 'dirt hut' and 'a bunch of sticks leaned together' that have been the more typical means of living for humanity.

And that ignored that until 1900ish population grew very slowly meaning that multigenerational housing was more feasible.

"Everything has changed, why hasn't the world stayed the same" -- this article