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The mid in fake midcentury modern

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Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#361

Post by rrreese »

keiferski wrote: post #179
cdrini wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I'm blown away people here are confidently saying things like "most people don't think the Eiffel Tower is beautiful." Huh? Are you guys joking? Are these comments generated by GPT? It's beautiful because of its geometry. It's beautiful in the way it compliments the city. It's beautiful when it's lit up at night. What more do you want exactly? Who would have the gall to say something like "most people" don't thi…

Instead of being outraged, I suggest you read the comments again. No one said it is ugly or that it isn't beautiful, just that it's not typically thought of as an example of "a beautiful thing." People think of it as a symbol of Paris, not an exemplar of beauty. Especially people that live in Paris and see it everyday.

A comment made two hours before yours literally calls it a monstrosity

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#362

Post by MSFT_Edging »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #298
trs8080 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Body positivity" is not about labeling everything as beautiful but rather not labeling people who may not match traditional standards of beauty as "ugly."

Is this actually how it's practiced? I know this is the professed meaning of the term/movement but when it comes to the implementation it seems to be turning into something much different. Also, in this definition of beauty where do you draw the line for "ugly" or is it now a word without a meaning?

I'm in a lot of these circles and usually it's exactly how it works.

You see a fat person, someone says they're beautiful.

Do you A: call them ugly to make them feel bad

or

B: keep moving.

The basis of body positivity is to help folks have less self hate while being like "wtf dude, don't be a dick" to the people constantly criticizing them.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#363

Post by the_third_wave »

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…

Architects certainly realise that a building is more than just a job but they also get pulled along in the strife for change for change's sake since any architect who just repeats or refines whatever has been done before is unlikely to find him- or herself chosen by the top agencies.

Have a look at where architects live and compare it to what they design. You'll find that many if not most - architects or otherwise - prefer to live in classical buildings which in nothing resemble the concrete-glass-steel(-wood) style of modern architecture. There are exceptions but they are in the minority, at least among the architects I know.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#364

Post by nine_k »

OJFord wrote: post #281
nine_k wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. There are many houses in Europe that survived 3-4 different states claiming the land on which they stand.

Well, I live in England, so unless we count devolution (of some powers in other UK constituents) or changes of royal household, just the one in my case ;)

England is pretty stable. Some places on the continent, not so much, esprcially to the east and south of modern Germany.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#365

Post by eiffelthelang »

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.

During the last election, a (arguably fringe) far-right candidate had in his platform the destruction of the Eiffel tower.

It is a modernist monstrosity.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#366

Post by abyssin »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #231
BrandonS113 wrote: post #212

I'm now visiting a brand new office building in London and it is stunning. Not minimalist, brutalist, ornate. And unique. And everybody who works in it seems to love it. I want to work there. What bugs me is how most new buildings are similar all across the world. 100 years ago, each city has a character unique to it. Barcelona was uniquely Barcelona. Copenhagen was uniquely Copenhagen. Now most new buildings look li…

A meme was circulating last week showing dozens of sedans from multiple automakers and it highlighted just how similar they all looked. The meme was criticizing the notion that competition facilitates innovation. However I think people failed to take into account that cars have likely converged to a common design as a consequence of fuel economy and regulatory pressures. I wonder if similar pressures affect architect…

I know very little about the actual job of an architect, but I think new architectural design trends have a lot to do with the tools that are used to draw buildings. Being an architect used to require strong drawing and mental modelling abilities. Those two would have an impact on the aesthetics of the buildings.

Another factor is the way we move around. When you walk, you have the time to see details. Do architects nowadays spend many hours walking in cities every week?

Lastly, the cost of manual work probably had a big impact. Builders probably contributed a lot of the beauty that can be seen in old buildings, also because drawings used to be less precise.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#367

Post by graublau »

joenot443 wrote: post #323
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…

The folks in Eastern Canada would happily disagree that their bright and primary colored homes are ugly, and after having seen them in person, I also think they're beautiful. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/44/0e/32/440e32a0e0c8fdececf6... I get where you're coming from with grays clashing less than the highlights. But given the choice, I'd always take the loud bright colors of the Maritimes over the inoffensive neutr…

Strathcona is charming and colourful. I don't necessarily agree with the "colour clash" idea above but Canada exemplifies "bad architectural era" like no other country due to fewer legacy buildings. We have to live with bad architecture a lot

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#368

Post by unity1001 »

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 (…

> aesthetic unity

Was it aesthetic unity, or was it aristocratic taste that was enforced in an uniform fashion upon everyone because the people did not have neither time nor money to care about aesthetics...

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#369

Post by the_third_wave »

jonasdegendt wrote: post #264
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.

Yes but how many people in Europe actually live in houses older than two centuries (about when American immigration really popped off, so let’s arbitrarily pick then)? It’s a significant minority. 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 uninspir…

We do, in a 17th century farm in the Swedish countryside. A large log-house construction, the building was first erected somewhere in the late 1600's/early 1700's on the other side of the hill. It was moved to its current location during the land reform of 1823-1827 when farmers moved out to the land they worked, before that they each worked several small strips of land spread around the hamlet they inhabited.
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