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The mid in fake midcentury modern

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Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#341

Post by chasd00 »

spiritplumber wrote: post #242
sangnoir wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My grandma went to San Antonio to visit one time and said of the Alamo, "This looks like a warehouse. We have furniture at home that is older, prettier, and has been through more wars than this". She's right, too. I did not translate her comment to English for my local friends though!

> My grandma went to San Antonio to visit one time and said of the Alamo, "This looks like a warehouse. ...

heh what was she expecting? It's an old mission built on the frontier eventually used by the military for storage and barracks. It effectively was a warehouse. The building isn't the reason why it's historic, what happened there is what's important.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#342

Post by ask_b123 »

mjhay wrote: post #65
version_five wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you like complicated rooflines, you'll love McMansion Hell: https://mcmansionhell.com/

This is very good! But now I wonder if there's something similar for good architecture.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#343

Post by mrguyorama »

conductr wrote: post #303
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…

Since we're talking about ugly city hall buildings... > When you do a city hall, it has to convey an image of the people, and this had to represent the people of Dallas ... The people I met – rich and poor, powerful and not so powerful – were all very proud of their city. They felt that Dallas was the greatest city there was, and I could not disappoint them. – I.M. Pei (architect) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas…

It was used (with a matte painting to make it taller) as the OCP building in robocop, for reference on how "evil" it either already was considered or now is considered.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#344

Post by yamtaddle »

DrBazza wrote: post #193
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…

> 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…

One of the small towns I grew up in had a post office, probably built in the early 20th century or very late 19th (I don't recall for sure, but I'm certain it had the date displayed on one or more floor or wall plaques, somewhere)

Heavy metal doors with perfectly smooth-operating hinges. Marble everywhere—floors, counters, stairs, [edit: hell, even the walls!], everywhere, and this was not in an area that mined marble, it was surely imported from at least several hundred miles away, and likely much farther. Thick, ornate brass doors on the PO Boxes. Serious- and heavy-looking metal light fixtures. I loved going there as a kid. It seems silly, maybe, but that post office felt magical.

Similar story for older libraries (including the one in that same town), older university buildings (ditto), older bank buildings even. They're all so nice to be in, and embody a confidence in some kind of permanence and continuity.

Now all that shit's in strip malls or buildings that are otherwise intended to have a 50-year lifespan at most. Cheap low-pile carpet on plywood, comically fake ornamentation if they bother to have any at all.

What's so weird is that we built basic public buildings like we were rich, back when we were, relatively speaking, paupers, but now that we're wildly rich we build everything like we're paupers. It'd be inconceivable for anyone to get half the budget it'd take to build a post office like that one, for a new post office building these days.

Hell, even my Grandparents' cheap, small post-WWII house in a cheap rural town had details that are rarely found outside luxury homes today—the heavy solid-wood front door and extremely solid-and-smooth-feeling metal doorknob, nice metal switch-plates and heavy-feeling, satisfying switches, that kind of thing. I bet you'd have to special-order a storm door to get one with more than half the metal in it that theirs had and it'd cost a fortune, and god, all that stuff felt so nice, and held up to years and years of use without being the worse for it. Their whole working-class neighborhood was built like that.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#345

Post by zwkrt »

acchow wrote: post #329
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 (…

I don't really follow what your point is. But, developers will build what maximizes profits. They are just answering to wallets. If it was mostly the ultra-wealthy purchasing real estate (as it mostly was pre-WW2), then the developers will build what the ultra-wealthy want to spend their money on. Post-WW2 saw the rise of the middle class and their ability to purchase homes. Especially with government-backed mortgage…

I'm interested in what the economic motivations were behind ornate buildings of old. I'm talking about the craftsmanship involved in intricately decorated buildings in urban cores, such as found in most of Europe and less baroquely in the art-deco buildings in the US. Surely at that time economic factors were at work too, and it is very expensive to have custom brick-work and gargoyles and copper accents, etc. At that time did we have a higher standard of what was passable as a public building? A pride in making something pleasing? Were these features actually not more expensive to create?

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#346

Post by chasd00 »

conductr wrote: post #303
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…

Since we're talking about ugly city hall buildings... > When you do a city hall, it has to convey an image of the people, and this had to represent the people of Dallas ... The people I met – rich and poor, powerful and not so powerful – were all very proud of their city. They felt that Dallas was the greatest city there was, and I could not disappoint them. – I.M. Pei (architect) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas…

the inside is even more ridiculous. It would be easier and faster to get in, do what you need to do, and get out if it was just an office building. No one physically goes to City Hall unless there's absolutely no other option.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#347

Post by jcotton42 »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #302
gfxgirl wrote: post #267

This is the equivalent to "why does modern music suck" (said by every generation of the next generation's music) 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…

Demonstrably, modern music does suck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII

I'd watch this response video to that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfNdps0daF8

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#348

Post by abecedarius »

crazygringo wrote: post #8

There's so much in this essay to unpack, it's all over the place -- more of an extended rant than any particularly cohesive argument. But one of the early points is "why is everything so gray instead of colorful?" Which is easy to answer -- when all your cars and buildings are super-colorful, they clash. They become garish and ugly and screaming for attention. Thank god we've moved to more neutral tones that actually…

> because it's the cheapest to put together

Your explanation is that wealthier people choose to spend less on quality? (Not just in proportional terms, but absolutely less.) That correlation can happen, but as an explanation it leaves something out.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#349

Post by RC_ITR »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #287
RC_ITR wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> people in the 60’s Are you sure that was the opinion of the average person or was it the opinion of someone writing a column on architecture in a magazine?

You’re not really aware of the history of city, huh?

The neighborhoods with Victorians were either torn down or became low income in the 1950s (ever wonder why hippies flocked to Haight Ashbury?)

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#350

Post by chasd00 »

dmitriid wrote: post #200
crazygringo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Modern architects are just as aware of proportion as they've ever been. But thankfully they're freed from archaic notions such as e.g. exact golden ratios. It's strange then that these freed minds produce the ugliest buildings imaginable, en masse. And then pat each other on the backs and give each other awards for being beautiful. See, for example, this beautiful multiple-award winning waterfront in Copenhagen htt…

i was in Copenhagen last summer and walked by both. :shrug: I liked them just fine.
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