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Most people prefer traditional architecture

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Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#51

Post by saimiam »

petsfed wrote: post #43

Next thing you're gonna tell me that English speakers overwhelmingly prefer novels written in English. Cultures have visual languages just the same as they have written and spoken (and signed) languages. The crucifix symbol has an understood meaning in most European cultures, because of how foundational Christianity is to their cultures. Is it really so surprising that people prefer buildings in a visual language the…

Seems to me that your positions are in opposition to each other.

1. There’s a traditional visual language that people instinctively prefer.

2. Modern architectural sensibilities have superseded traditional visual language through repetition.

I’m reading this to mean something like “people like their own traditional foods but since they've been drowning in pizza for the last 70 years, they’ve forgotten about their traditional foods.”

How can a basal, instinctive preference just disappear? Can the sex drive disappear with enough brainwashing?

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#53

Post by ifwinterco »

tensor wrote: post #50

It seems like these comparisons are more "expensive traditional design vs low cost modern design." None of their examples had what I would consider a single expensive and nice modern design. But every single example of "traditional" design was essentially luxury pricing.

The missing part is that traditional building used to be cheap (in fact the cheapest way of building things).

What changed is labour costs in western countries relative to the cost of materials and other physical things

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#55

Post by Joker_vD »

VorpalWay wrote: post #30
Joker_vD wrote: post #15

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.

I can't tell if this is serious or sarcastic. I'm going to err on the side of serious though. Maybe the majority is actually correct, and traditional architecture is just plain better. I certainly find it more welcoming than the modern concrete and glass box jungle.

> I can't tell if this is serious or sarcastic.

Well, let's try crank the knob yet another notch then.

> Maybe the majority is actually correct

What a horrible thing to say. The liberal democracy, may it be known to you, is about protecting and empowering the minorities of various kind, and the aesthetical minority exists, and its tastes matter.

> traditional architecture is just plain better

It's unsustainable [citation not needed].

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#56

Post by DGAP »

In public spaces I have no doubt this is the case.

I'm more curious about residential though - see huge interesting in MCM over the last decades. I am biased but I think there is a great deal of interest in warm, modernist spaces with ideas like natural materials and lots of natural lighting, especially when compared to the beige boxes of American home building.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#57

Post by 0xWTF »

vintagedave wrote: post #46
Zigurd wrote: post #34

[flagged]

Something fascinating that you may not know: traditional architecture is one of those things that is simultaneously: a) Genuinely widely preferred, with many articles on this, ranging from aesthetic preferences through to scientific studies of how eyes move and what causes fatigue. There is genuine value to architecture before modern architecture -- and... b) A stalking horse for right-wing thinking. It's really inte…

> That is condescending, makes normal people feel unheard, and then when someone does hear them on the innocuous subject

And that is why all the pollsters were caught flat-footed by Trump in 2016. The people who did feel unheard learned to not respond.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#58

Post by AtlasBarfed »

antisthenes wrote: post #33
perilunar wrote: post #16

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.

If it's my building, e.g. the building that I live in - I care more about the ease of maintenance and repair than any facade. Because I spend 80% of my time indoors, and 20% working in the garden, so frankly don't even care what the building looks like. Maybe only care that the property looks neat when it's time to sell. As it stands, these studies are just cherry-picked navel gazing with extra steps. You can't desig…

Am I hot or not architecture edition?

Nonetheless, I think it is a failure of architecture that modern design is ugly. It shouldn't be impossible to make good looking, practical, cost-effective buildings with all the options of materials and engineering that is available.

So let's start as the baseline of these 77 to 23 blowout victories by traditional architecture.

Now gradually substitute other modern designs until you can get more of a 50/50 agreement at least, and hopefully 60/40 in favor of modernism.

You could be right. Some of these might be cherry picked bad modern designs. From the article one of them looked like it should have the wicked witch of the West telling her pretties to fly out from their caves to go attack Dorothy. Another one looks like a massive collection of missile launch tubes.

Some designs I almost have to laugh at, when almost similarly disjointed mcmansion hell type monstrosities are snootily dismissed.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#59

Post by asimpletune »

vintagedave wrote: post #46
Zigurd wrote: post #34

[flagged]

Something fascinating that you may not know: traditional architecture is one of those things that is simultaneously: a) Genuinely widely preferred, with many articles on this, ranging from aesthetic preferences through to scientific studies of how eyes move and what causes fatigue. There is genuine value to architecture before modern architecture -- and... b) A stalking horse for right-wing thinking. It's really inte…

Very well put. I've also heard it said like this, "abusing the truth is the easiest way to lie".

The pattern is 1. take something that's true then 2. use it to imply the Truth. Step 3. is if anyone doubts 2, challenge them to disprove 1. Even if you don't deny that 1 is true and just challenging that 2 doesn't follow from 1, the waters have already been muddied in the eyes of many onlookers.

It's silly that this works but there's so much over-communication now that simplicity is very effective. People often repeat the fallacies verbatim too.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#60

Post by graemep »

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…

So new buildings ignore externalities in the economic sense but also very literally.
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