The mid in fake midcentury modern • Hacker News Board

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#411

Post by thundergolfer » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #218

thundergolfer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this top-comment is obviously wrong and mistaken if you know anything about aesthetics and architecture. The broken timelining of Modernist design is the most obvious error. I wouldn’t expect HN to get this right though.

No, it isn't. It isn't what is taught in school, but it is a reasonably well-informed opinion, as my sibling comments show.

Yes it is. I have an undergraduate in Architecture, and your comment reads as wildly incorrect.

Checking out the book you link, I see this in Wikipedia:

> The response to Wolfe's book from the architecture world was highly negative. Critics argued that, once again, Wolfe was writing on a topic he knew nothing about and had little insight to contribute to the conversation.

No surprised. If you're going to critique Modernist architecture, at least understand that it started about 40 years before you say it did.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#412

Post by baremetal » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 10:02 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #339

idiotsecant wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 th…

The cost of a home has almost nothing to do with the materials. It's the developer that is trying to cut as much as possible, because this means he gets increased profit margins.

>The cost of a home has almost nothing to do with the materials.

In this environment? Citation needed. Building materials of all sorts are difficult to source, often with long lead times, and are multiples of what they were a few years ago. Labor has gone up as well. Builders are lucky to get 20% margins.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#413

Post by bombcar » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

actionablefiber wrote: post #198

kodyo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing you notice if you've been in an airplane is that there's a lot of room to spread out if people want to.

And then those people will want things like “electricity” and “a network of wide paved roads” and “Internet” and “drinking water” and “sewage” and “timely package delivery to their front door” and “big box stores with parking lots the size of two city blocks” - and those things at that density have absolutely terrible unit economics and environmental externalities. I frequently see people complain about how traffic i…

Heh everything you mention there is available in thousands upon thousands of small towns across the US - basically anywhere there's a Walmart that isn't a city.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#414

Post by bombcar » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 10:08 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #377

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…

> 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, Yeah, I think this is more the real reason. Nothing is intended to last. Shopping centers come and go - restaurants get built and then torn down and replaced 10 years later with some other restaurant building (actual example in my neig…

Commercial buildings in the US are incredibly cheap boxes, and knocking an old one down and rebuilding to spec is how the land-owners get new leases.

The companies that DON'T knock down are always a bit cheap.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#415

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

philwelch wrote: post #275

trgn wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mo…

Enlightenment may consist in rejecting exactly that.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#416

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

david927 wrote: post #146

cjohnson318 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't believe how cheap and ugly so many of the "rich people" houses are. If don't have the money to build, then you bid over whatever is on the market; whatever some developer and architect duo thought would differentiate themselves ten or twenty years ago. People prioritize commute, distance to family, distacne to the grocery, school zones, number of bedrooms and space, kitchen/bath vintage, and price way, way…

That's a fine, valid rationalization. But I would disagree with one aspect: part of it is that they like it . We don't have fine taste anymore and we don't have a desire to impress in a classical way. It used to be you would recite a Latin phrase at dinner and everyone would be impressed. Those days are gone. When money is king, everything else is demoted.

> It used to be you would recite a Latin phrase at dinner and everyone would be impressed. Those days are gone.

Because anyone can do that, it's not impressive. You don't need to have studied Latin to know a Latin phrase. We have google translate and the entire internet. It's no longer an "exotic" thing. Hell, I see people still do things like that, with Latin or some other relevant language. It's weird to think that's impressive.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#417

Post by RC_ITR » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

trgn wrote: post #359

RC_ITR wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won’t get into the debate of if it’s possible to have an objective “good” or “bad” but when it comes to architecture that is almost always subjective.

> possible to have an objective “good” or “bad” yes > when it comes to architecture that is almost always subjective. no

Ok you proved me wrong. You succeeded at designing and constructing an objectively bad comment.

Touche.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#418

Post by bombcar » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #113

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…

New construction in Europe is awful as well. Cheap, vinyl casement windows abound, brick veneer, pebble siding and disposable kitchens and fake flooring. They make homes that look like they could survive a bombing, but they're actually fragile and cheap buildings. > building $10m houses out of shitty plywood and fake bricks glued on the fascade A 10m home is probably not build of veneer. High quality construction is…

$10m might be getting into actually architected houses, but certainly down in the $2m you find absolute junk.

It's famous enough that it has a website dedicated to it: https://mcmansionhell.com

It's surprisingly "affordable" to have an entirely custom house designed and built, but the only people who bother are people who are certain they'll be in an area for quite awhile. Otherwise you either buy a developer's house (one of five models that they're pumping out, each one designed to be less obnoxious than the previous, so everything is always "beige" to the max) or you buy an existing one, which is usually just a developer house from a decade or more ago.

I mean anyone can order something from https://www.goldeneagleloghomes.com today and it'll have some kind of a style.

But it would look out of place in a modern subdivision.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#419

Post by yamtaddle » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

rovolo wrote: post #407

yamtaddle wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 marb…

> Cheap low-pile carpet on plywood Part of it is that carpet and plywood are fabricated materials. Prefabricated plywood and wall-to-wall carpeting weren't really things until ~1930s. The older materials seems more luxurious now, but that's because the newer materials have become cheap. It's like how aluminum was once more expensive than gold, but is now ubiquitous because the material itself has become much cheaper.…

Kinda, but there were definitely far-cheaper options for materials in the early 20th century than ornamental sorts of stone like marble, they could definitely make much cheaper doors than big-ass heavy metal ones that'd still last at least as long as cheap modern doors, and they could make stick-built structures instead of e.g. heavy stone or brick buildings back then, and they often did—far nicer in some ways than ours, but that part of our slide in quality has the excuse that there simply isn't any lumber as good as what they used, anymore, unless you tear it out of an old building—but instead they chose to spend quite a bit more to make serious institutional buildings feel serious. Even for something as mundane as a post office or library in a little nowheresville coal town.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#420

Post by bombcar » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

idiotsecant wrote: post #282

OJFord wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My European house is older.

Side question - always been curious. Surely these houses were not designed for plumbing, electrical, efficient insulation, etc. Do they just bodge these things onto the outside of walls, or how does that work?

Many of them are basically not insulated; the vast majority of "old Europe" is in more temperate climates for obvious reasons. And in the colder areas, you have the immense thermal mass of brick/stone buildings. Sealing air gaps provides some help.

Plumbing and electrical is "simpler" to run than it may seem, but it does result in unexpected locations for bathrooms, etc, as those were often added wherever they could fit them in.

Remember that given the population growth, the vast majority of the people living in Europe are not living in 300+ year old buildings.