231–240 of 382 posts
I feel similar positive about new buildings in my native Netherlands, which seem to be getting less flat and with smaller, more reasonably sized windows (if you know, you know!)
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…
In China buildings are built faster.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
If you just look at hard costs and ignore beauty and comfort, is it also the cost-over-what-timeframe question? If a building is expected to be actively used for 100 years vs 20, you get to different decisions. My other question that I've never found a good answer to, is with mechanization, how is it that "cheap" modern buildings are so expensive. Or were old, traditional buildings super expensive? What is the cost o…
I'd say yes. Reading fairy tales and historical records, we see just how huge were the prices. A pair of boots could be worth a year's income of a peasant.
And then there is the issue of construction. Many older designs use materials and methods that are either out of date or expensive to replicate with currently popular building materials. Simply going back to older designs is not a practical option for most buildings. There has to be some balance of old ideas with newer methods.
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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…
So? Many people (not all) are right-wing because they want to preserve beauty. Being a right-wing is not a rare thing, it's the second most popular belief system in the West.
>Another popular one on social media is the Greek and classical world, especially its comparative lack in modern education compared to, say, 1900. That's an easy intro to colonialism and racism
Racism is much less of a thing in Europe, compared to the USA, yet fascination with Antiquity is just the same or even higher.
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'm thinking of something like a violin. You can't pick up a violin and judge the perfection of the fitting between the wood surfaces that are glued together. If that work isn't perfect, the instrument will eventually fly apart. But you can look at the "scroll" and "bees sting" which are unforgiving of tiny errors. These kinds of features persist to this day due to traditionalism, but have disappeared from most industrial products.
Today, I don't expect an ornamented house to be of any better quality than a plain house.
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…
> Ugliness has become a cultural norm in order to suit the modern economy. I read someone's argument that the ugliness results in market failure. Because the ugly results in not only local opposition to building renewable it results in everyone in the area being opposed. And they then use the political process to block new construction. What really bad is after a 100 years of this the construction industry no longer…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is sort of a just-so story that isn't completely true. Stalin pushed "socialist classicism" [1] as an aesthetic, and it wasn't until his successors took over that modernist architectural ideas imported from the West became a hallmark of actually-existing socialism. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinist_architecture
There was a whole decade of Soviet design before Stalin, which was often radically modernist even by the standards of its day, and that is what the OP was referring to. Stalin was notoriously conservative in his artistic tastes.
Stalin pushed classical and actually within the soviet union Stalinst buildings were considered the best. These are called Stalinka.
Khrushchev embarked on a massive post-war building campaign in an effort to improve living conditions within the USSR by providing millions of new housing units.
These were modernist mid-rise and high-rise buildings and were designed for mass production and efficiency above everything else. These were regarded as considerably lower quality buildings than the Stalinka and were called Khrushchyovka. The Krushchyovka were the classic "commie blocks."
Perhaps there’s a difference between what people prefer looking at and what’s actually nicer to inhabit? Architecture is optimizing for people inhabiting the building, not just staring at it in a photograph. It’s like if you asked someone to judge a phone based on a photo. Yes there’s some aesthetic judgement but it matters more if the phone is usable. I know that personally I find New York’s prewar buildings more be…
> Architecture is optimizing for people inhabiting the building, not just staring at it in a photograph With modern materials and structural design you can absolutely have both.