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Most people prefer traditional architecture

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Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#81

Post by AlanYx »

georgefrowny wrote: post #36
VorpalWay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do actually like the "concrete jungle" style like the Barbican and Salk Institute (by all accounts a pleasantly human place to work despite the famously stark-looking courtyard). I think the biggest problem with them is that the minute you stop maintaining things like gardens in contrast to the concrete and let it get dirty and scarred, it looks apocalyptic and stressful very quickly. Whereas even quite dilapidated…

>I think the biggest problem with them is that the minute you stop maintaining things like gardens in contrast to the concrete and let it get dirty and scarred, it looks apocalyptic and stressful very quickly.

There's a trend in some Eastern European countries to paint older brutalist concrete buildings as a cost-effective measure to reduce concrete spalling and do thermo-modernization. It's actually pretty amazing how much nicer some of these buildings look even with just a uniform white paint job (others involve more color).

Architects seem to be largely opposed, seeing it as an erasure of the material honesty that brutalism was supposed to represent, but IMHO it suggests that a lot of the core issue with these designs wasn't the shape or creativity of the buildings themselves but just the way the concrete look quickly aged.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#82

Post by jiehong »

Analemma_ wrote: post #35
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.

Yes, every time people get grumpy about modern architecture and look over to see if I agree I tell the story about how I used to work at a company in Boston which moved from a beautiful 19th century building to a soulless Modernist steel-and-glass skyscraper. And thank fucking god: the old building was too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, had too little natural light, and was too cramped. The Modernist buil…

I'm pretty sure that some kind of hybrid can be found where the exterior could look nice and the interior would be very nice as well.

Now, not every modern building has to look like a glass and steel colorless brick.

For example, I really like the look of Oodi [0], Helsinki's new library: it reminds me of wood covered with snow, and the interior is exactly what you would expect from a modern building (built in 2018).

[0]: https://oodihelsinki.fi/en/

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#83

Post by bix6 »

boh wrote: post #61

Modernism is the act of using cheaper resources and more standardized/cheaper methods of production. The aesthetic is more of a side-effect of those limits. Ugliness has become a cultural norm in order to suit the modern economy. It may come as a surprise but it required years of cultural development and education for most people to accept the work of Dieter Rams as some aesthetic pinnacle rather than soulless mass p…

The influencer aesthetic. Why do people pay so much to look so boring?

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#84

Post by bix6 »

torginus wrote: post #77
boh wrote: post #61

Modernism is the act of using cheaper resources and more standardized/cheaper methods of production. The aesthetic is more of a side-effect of those limits. Ugliness has become a cultural norm in order to suit the modern economy. It may come as a surprise but it required years of cultural development and education for most people to accept the work of Dieter Rams as some aesthetic pinnacle rather than soulless mass p…

I don't think this computes. Modern 'efficient' industrial design can absolutely fail at efficiency. I have lived in spartan, utilitarian apartments that you could tell were built without any regards for efficient use of living space, and ended up wasting huge swaths of their floor area to interior corridors, winding tunnels between rooms, random walled off mystery areas and overall such poor planning that I'm sure d…

They didn’t say anything about efficiency. It’s all cost driven. Cheapest inputs possible. The PE backed builder isn’t dealing with the building in 2 years, what do they care how well it works?

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#85

Post by everybodyknows »

ifwinterco wrote: post #53
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

Material costs changed too. Hardwood slats over a raised perimeter foundation used to be the cheapest way. Nowadays that would be a premium build.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#86

Post by dzonga »

the tragedy is that architects (experts) prefer the modernist buildings. while common people prefer the classical buildings which makes cities more livable. the other tragedy is before 'regulations' normies designed buildings - they didn't have architecture degrees. don't know if that's still possible anymore.

& buildings shape lives.

the only way to reverse the modernist trend is to have laws that incentivize classical buildings otherwise we gonna keep getting ugly buildings.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#87

Post by trgn »

expedition32 wrote: post #20

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.

hive cities do have a charm

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#89

Post by ragall »

boh wrote: post #61

Modernism is the act of using cheaper resources and more standardized/cheaper methods of production. The aesthetic is more of a side-effect of those limits. Ugliness has become a cultural norm in order to suit the modern economy. It may come as a surprise but it required years of cultural development and education for most people to accept the work of Dieter Rams as some aesthetic pinnacle rather than soulless mass p…

> Modernism is the act of using cheaper resources and more standardized/cheaper methods of production.

That's how they sold it, but it's not true. By the end of the 19th century, all the building ornamentation that you can still see in European capitals, had been stadardized and was mass-produced, while the construction techniques using brick and mortar had been further refined, yielding building designs that were cheap to construct and easy to maintain.

Modernist buildings were, at the same time, more expensive to build and less durable because of the reinforced concrete which has a much shorter lifespan than stone or brick plus mortar. The only advantage they had was that of increased height, but that was only an issue due to the restrictive zoning in Anglo countries. Without NIMBYism that pushed towards sky-scrapers, NYC could well have ended up like Paris: replacing 1-3 stories buildings with 8-10 stories, but allowing mixed commercial/residential space everywhere.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#90

Post by torginus »

bix6 wrote: post #84
torginus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this computes. Modern 'efficient' industrial design can absolutely fail at efficiency. I have lived in spartan, utilitarian apartments that you could tell were built without any regards for efficient use of living space, and ended up wasting huge swaths of their floor area to interior corridors, winding tunnels between rooms, random walled off mystery areas and overall such poor planning that I'm sure d…

They didn’t say anything about efficiency. It’s all cost driven. Cheapest inputs possible. The PE backed builder isn’t dealing with the building in 2 years, what do they care how well it works?

I think most developers have a captive market. They don't really compete, they build whatever they want, and still sell, because somebody somewhere will still buy, since they know they can sell for more.
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