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Why is everything so ugly?

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191–200 of 328 posts

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#191

Go and spend summer in Russia, it is the perfect antidote. St. Petersburg is amazingly beautiful! Museums, architecture, cultural performances, no morbidly obese people on streets, no graffiti, even metro is nice!

I'd rather visit sunny Magnitogorsk: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn... (Actually I'd rather visit Kyiv but I've heard that now's not a good time.)

An areal photo during the winter isn't very fair to the city. Looking around on street view during the summer months it doesn't look nearly as bad. A bit run down, but that's common for nearly all ex-soviet cities.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#193
All the new builds in my area share a rendered concrete and jail-bar fencing aesthetic that is monstorous, undesirable and ugly. There are no sensible features to look at. The corners of the build look so sharp, you'd cut your hand if you touched them.

The hundred-million dollar shopping centre was done up last year and it removed most of the internal landmarks and created a series of flat hallways. There is nothing to rest your eyes upon, nothing to look at.

It's one flat, dated shop after another. Usually based on some dead subculture from 10yrs ago and recent ladies' fashion trends.

The apartments went up as part of the build and that are flat cubes, copy pasted with doors and windows cut into a wall behind a front patio of flat wooden slats. Minecraft aesthetic for ferrari prices.

It is physically irritating to look for a pattern or a boundary line or a landmark and find nothing to anchor yourself. Everything is textureless and shapeless. I avoid the place.

The concept of an aspirational home is dead in my books. The traditional homes may raise the blood pressure a touch too much and seem complex.. The contemporary builds are ugly and irritating.

A sense of balance, proportion, beauty and differentiated shapes, physically calms me. It has to be updated traditional. Neo classical or french colonial or some such new variation on an outdated style.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#194
post #96

Oh man. There is this building in the city where I live. It's SO uncompromisngly gray and ugly that sometimes I think maybe it's actually a parody of this particular style. It kind of looks like a prison from the outside too... but it's actually condos! I hate it so much that I love it. :) Anyway here's a great photo of it I found on Google: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipMKvYH4OHFU5o4gZlSZ...

Wow you weren’t kidding. Looks like a sheet metal factory.

It looks like it's straight out of an urban scene for Equilibrium.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#196
post #130
post #127

Well, I for one don't think everything is ugly. Apple devices and stores look clean and elegant to me. Tesla vehicles feel and look simple and beautiful to me. If given a choice, I'd rather live in new buildings with bright, light-filled interiors than in old buildings with darker, mustier interiors. I could provide more examples of things I don't think are ugly. The main point is this: Beauty is in the eye of the be…

> Tesla vehicles look beautiful to me. As you say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder—but, seriously, the Cybertruck as a thing of beauty? (This is from someone who actually liked the boxy car designs of old.)

Your comment just proved the point of gp. Even if you think something is ugly, why not acknowledge the fact that some might consider it beautiful?

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#197
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the elites want to demoralise us Yeah no. The "elites" want profit, that's why we turned every part of the planet that we don't use for agriculture into concrete car scapes. Or Something. > advertisements with unattractive people practically didn't exist ten years ago. Now we are constantly bombarded with them incel vibes here. This is so hilariously stupid that it prevents me from being tempted to flag you…

What's stupid, that there are many more unattractive people in advertisements today that ten years ago? You may disagree if you want but I don't see how that observation is "stupid". No idea what incel vibes means...

> No idea what incel vibes means...

"incel" is short for "involuntary celibate"; people who the other sex doesn't find attractive / can't get laid. Originally it was self-applied by people who wanted to figure out what was wrong with themselves, but turned into an insult years ago.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#199
post #148

My crackpot theory: This is in part due to CAD: * Colors other than gray don't look nice in CAD and aren't the default. * It's super easy to just stack a bunch of rectangles (looking at you, architects...) * You can chamfer and fillet but that's the end of what most people do. More complex shapes are hard to due due to the clunky spline tools. Hence elaborate ornaments are left out.

Not such a crackpot theory in my opinion - the tools we use to communicate design surely will influence what we design.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather visit sunny Magnitogorsk: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn... (Actually I'd rather visit Kyiv but I've heard that now's not a good time.)

An areal photo during the winter isn't very fair to the city. Looking around on street view during the summer months it doesn't look nearly as bad. A bit run down, but that's common for nearly all ex-soviet cities.

Magnitogorsk has nice weather in summer. Some green parks, decent public transport. But not that much fun, westerners usually prefer university cities. It has very nice surrounding nature.

Polution is ok I guess (India and China were far worse from my experience). It is not industrial shithole as OP suggests. Factories were cleaned up over 30 years. And smoke stack are quite high and leave smoke in high atmosphere. And most of them use natural gas anyway...

There is 2.5 hours walk through on youtube: "Magnitogorsk, Russia. Metallurgic Capital and Steel Heart of Russia. Ural Trip 1".

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