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…
The mid in fake midcentury modern
461–470 of 512 posts
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're saying it as somehow "subjective" is bad. Of course it's subjective, and the whole point it a lot of modern art is subjectively perceived by most people as ugly, while being praised and promoted by "experts".
The article opens with: "WE LIVE IN UNDENIABLY UGLY TIMES." Doesn't sound like they're going for subjective.
Why not both? If we, collectively, perceive most of things surrounding us as ugly, then we, collectively, can feel like we live in ugly times, even though there's no objective measure of ugly. While feelings are subjective, their prevalence can be objectively seen and argued about.
Imagine instead the headline were "we live in frightening times", and described how a lot of people fear what's going on around. Fear is not objective - it's an inherently a subjective feeling. But the number of people feeling afraid can be studied (e.g. by polls, or other sociological means) and if it's high, the argument can be made that it is the "frightening times". And definitely there's ample precedent of using "frightening times" in the headlines. So why not "ugly times"?
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaws > Lots of people seem to enjoy those "ugly mouse statue things". Sorry, they're still crap. Seriously, taking the MTV VMA statue and robotically slapping his characters head on it? I recently watched the Nathan For You episode "Dumb Starbucks" and those statutes remind me the lazy, deliberately terrible parodies he displayed at an art gallery to establish his bona fides as a "paro…
What I'm trying to say is that anyone is free to say they're crap, but that is not an objective opinion. "Perception is subjective" - Sol LeWitt
> What I'm trying to say is that anyone is free to say they're crap, but that is not an objective opinion.
Heh. As a total aside, "objective opinion" is the kind of oxymoron that fits HN "rationalism" oh so well.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#464Earlier 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…
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…
> Then a bunch get torn down (usually the lowest effort versions) and people adaptively re-use the best ones and everyone remembers the original intent of the style and falls in love with it again.
Then why hasn't that happened with brutalism? It was hated in the '90s, '00s, and '10s, and it's still hated now. And why is the "international style" so much better regarded despite being the same age?
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could go so far to claim that, but it’s exactly that point of view that produced so much objectively ugly, human-unfriendly architecture. Relativists replace the moral imperative of “good for everyone” with “interesting to people like me”, and think they’ve stumbled onto a more sophisticated or accurate view of the world, instead of just vapid sophistry.
Yeah totally, anyone that disagrees with you on obviously objective things such as "does this building look good" is a vapid idiot!
To believe that how good a building looks is 100% objective is dumb, but to believe that it's 100% subjective is even dumber.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A building which does not learn, its unfortunate inhabitants must adapt to it. That's one of the most interesting and depressing parts of post-WW2 architecture (it's present in certain "high culture" architecture before, but not as ubiquitous). It seems narcissistic, entirely focused on what the architect thought would look cool, and completely detached from the individuals who would actually be using the space. Th…
It's one thing to decide for cool instead of beautiful (or useful) but a whole another thing to get paid for it. Those architects won a contest, right? One the premise of... what? We can build the ugliest, yay? Humans are just details? What exactly is the selling point of brutalism for a communal living area? You want to design your own bunker, be my guest. But something paid by the public should serve the public, no…
Some of it was needing to build cheap, low-maintenance buildings quickly, to replace what had been destroyed in the war. There's nothing wrong with making a considered decision to build something ugly and cheap because getting usable space is a higher priority than making it look good. But when you try to make a virtue of that by pretending ugly is pretty, then you're making a major mistake.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#467Earlier 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…
What if "beautiful buildings" are simply too expensive to build nowdays and there are cheaper alternatives that are functional, yet look sterile and boring? There is a reason almost nobody builds brick mansions anymore.
If these buildings are ugly because we're cheaping out on them then we should at least acknowledge the fact and have an honest conversation about it.
But actually they tend to be just as expensive as beautiful buildings.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#468I'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 few years ago a new apartment building in my city had a rather unique design, the fundamentals of it are very simple:
- a high angle silver metal roof with a very small overhang
- white rough plastered walls
- black accents
Another building in the complex had the same but with black walls.
This shape building had been popular for a few years for 1-2 floor single family houses, but not for apartment buildings. The local architectural design agency gave it their "Building of the Year" award.
Now basically every new apartment either has this colour scheme or this shape, it's like somebody used Stable Diffusion just trained on pictures of the first building to make new designs :D
https://www.eika.lt/basanaviciaus-9a/
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#469There is a bank near my house that has a façade second floor. It makes no attempt to look real from any angle, not from the street nor the parking lot. You can see right through the oversized glassless windows into the sky, beyond that the entire thing is wavy in an unpleasant way. It doesn’t even fit with the style of the rest of the building. My suspicion is it exists almost as a critique of the idea of façades? It…
Speaking of banks. I am not sure about other states but in CA it is so common to see impressive buildings that used to be banks 100 years ago. They look almost like Greek temples. Recent examples that come to mind: Petaluma and Cambria. For some reason nowadays they host unremarkable shops while banks occupy nondescript building nearby.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
In support of this, actually doing detailed tours of many "victorian houses" and then compare them to actual mansions of the era shows significant differences. Like our McMansions of today, the houses often combine aspects that on their own can be nice in ways that don't quite "fit".
There’s a Queen Anne-ish home near me that I always joke is a window showroom. There’s like 1 of every style of window on this thing. A double hung sash with a gothic thing and then a sleeper and a casement etc. Even the lines of the home - just everywhere. But in todays context it’s a simply gorgeous home. “Eclectic” if anything but it has stood the test of time. But I imagine looking at it from that period and it p…
I think a lot of the "love" for these types of homes is simply the materials and the craftsmanship - even as they became "mass produced" they were built "heavy" - modern drywall is better in almost every way but it doesn't have the gravitas.