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Most people prefer traditional architecture

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Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#11

Post by like_any_other »

beachy wrote: post #3

> Respondents preferred the traditional design by 74 percent to 26 percent. There was almost no variation by social class, and only modest variation by political party. Older people were, as in most studies, more traditional than younger people, but even 18–24s still preferred the traditional design by 61 to 39 percent. I might be missing something but isn't this all a bit of a no-brainer? In the old days, buildings…

> In the old days, buildings were made to impress, to project wealth, to show the generosity of wealthy benefactors to their town or city. Take a look around somewhere like historic Bruges, which benefited from the wealth of local merchants. Incredibly impressive.

Take a look at any old poverty-stricken farming village. It'll be strikingly beautiful compared to anything modern.

This is the Anamosa state prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamosa_State_Penitentiary#/me...

This is Anamosa middle school: https://www.anamosa.k12.ia.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/IMG...

> Not remotely cost effective.

This is the main building of the Ontario college of art and design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCAD_University#/media/File:OC...

Why are we still humoring the "cost effective" explanation, when, whenever the people in charge of design are given free reign, they make non-cost-effective, ugly buildings, ugly in the exact same way all the other "cost effective" buildings are ugly? Whenever they are asked which they prefer visually, ignoring cost, they pick the ugly buildings. Meanwhile anything old, from farms to literal prisons, is beautiful. And all those old buildings you claim didn't care about cost effectiveness, were built in a time when the GDP per capita was 4.6x lower than today [1]. If you believe GDP measures wealth, if you believe there was economic progress and we are materially better off than in the aftermath of WWII, we should have ~4x more "wealth to project". And yet this is what we get.

The explanation that fits the data is that they're building exactly what they want to build, and they're building ugly on purpose.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA/

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#13

Post by like_any_other »

fangspire wrote: post #8
beachy wrote: post #3

> Respondents preferred the traditional design by 74 percent to 26 percent. There was almost no variation by social class, and only modest variation by political party. Older people were, as in most studies, more traditional than younger people, but even 18–24s still preferred the traditional design by 61 to 39 percent. I might be missing something but isn't this all a bit of a no-brainer? In the old days, buildings…

>In the old days, buildings were made to impress Google "survivorship bias".

If survivorship bias had anything to do with it, you would not have old villages where every house is in the same style, and they're all beautiful. There's simply no evidence that old buildings were randomly ugly or beautiful, and only the beautiful ones survived.

Look at 1950s New York - almost every building is beautiful, and every building is more beautiful than modern ones: https://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2020/01/31/new-york-city-i...

That's not survivorship bias, that's going from near-uniformly beautiful to uniformly-ugly.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#15

Post by Joker_vD »

Well then. The solution is obvious: we need to educate the public so that it attains the correct tastes. It's doable: after all, the architecture students do manage to obtain the taste for the modernist architecture during their time in the college/university.

Or maybe do nothing, it's not like the public opinion really matters in the technocratic settings.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#16

Post by perilunar »

There's more to architecture than just the façade, which is what people are rating when they are just looking at photos of the exterior. The interiors, structure, and services, etc. of modern building are often far superior to older ones, and i suspect many 'ordinary' people would agree.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#17

Post by vel0city »

like_any_other wrote: post #11
beachy wrote: post #3

> Respondents preferred the traditional design by 74 percent to 26 percent. There was almost no variation by social class, and only modest variation by political party. Older people were, as in most studies, more traditional than younger people, but even 18–24s still preferred the traditional design by 61 to 39 percent. I might be missing something but isn't this all a bit of a no-brainer? In the old days, buildings…

> In the old days, buildings were made to impress, to project wealth, to show the generosity of wealthy benefactors to their town or city. Take a look around somewhere like historic Bruges, which benefited from the wealth of local merchants. Incredibly impressive. Take a look at any old poverty-stricken farming village. It'll be strikingly beautiful compared to anything modern. This is the Anamosa state prison: https…

Personally I'd rather spend my time in the building with large windows and tons of natural light than holed up in that dark old castle thing.

That prison building is overly stylized to my taste. And given how complex the exterior is and seeing it's state it's obvious it's hard to maintain. Unless you like all the gunk growing all over the building all the time.

Is the old building "fancy"? Sure. So is that fragile china that's kept in the fancy vitrine but rarely actually used because it's such a pain to maintain and actually use.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#19

Post by like_any_other »

vel0city wrote: post #17
like_any_other wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the old days, buildings were made to impress, to project wealth, to show the generosity of wealthy benefactors to their town or city. Take a look around somewhere like historic Bruges, which benefited from the wealth of local merchants. Incredibly impressive. Take a look at any old poverty-stricken farming village. It'll be strikingly beautiful compared to anything modern. This is the Anamosa state prison: https…

Personally I'd rather spend my time in the building with large windows and tons of natural light than holed up in that dark old castle thing. That prison building is overly stylized to my taste. And given how complex the exterior is and seeing it's state it's obvious it's hard to maintain. Unless you like all the gunk growing all over the building all the time. Is the old building "fancy"? Sure. So is that fragile ch…

Then you're part of the 20% of people who prefer modern styles, for whom 99% of buildings are built. You have plenty of choices, while the rest of us are lied to about why buildings look like they do and why we can't have what we want.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#20

Post by expedition32 »

When I was a child I saw Blade Runner. Ever since that day I've had a weakness for concrete jungles. Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai- that's how humans were intended to live.

Unfortunately my European brothers and sisters prefer to live in open air museums. However slowly but surely skyscrapers have been creeping up into the Netherlands- you just can't beat the efficiency.

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