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Most people prefer traditional architecture

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Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#271

Post by hardbass »

ericmay wrote: post #255
bix6 wrote: post #84

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?

You mention the private equity backed builder, but the designs come from the corrupted ivory tower which just invents more and more ridiculous designs (modernism, brutalism, for example) to try to stay fresh. Same in the art world. (Banksy, Warhol, others) We have not made any progress, and perhaps we don’t need to, when it comes to architecture since World War I. There have been a few projects like La Sagrada Famíli…

What do you think is weird about Banksy? Looks like older pre-modern art to me.

If you like neoclassicism and hate brutalism, then I would say you are very strange too. To me, brutalism hits the same things neoclassicism does but much more organically and better.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#272

Post by bigstrat2003 »

nl wrote: post #217
kelseyfrog wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would have to convince the design community that form can follow things other than function. Until form is no longer synonymous with function, design will eschew ornamentation.

Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry would like a word. Taste is subjective, but is there really a more beautiful building in the world than the Heydar Aliyev Center?

Yes. That building is rather ugly, in my opinion. Give me gothic style over that any day of the week.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#273

Post by bigstrat2003 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #223
nl wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry would like a word. Taste is subjective, but is there really a more beautiful building in the world than the Heydar Aliyev Center?

The article literally talks about polling people. The disparity between lay people and architects is the point of the piece. Architectural taste doesn't align with the taste of everyone else. Why should that be the case? Why shouldn't architects design buildings people enjoy?

> Why shouldn't architects design buildings people enjoy?

In many fields (architecture, art, cooking all come to mind) there seems to be an outright resistance to doing things that people actually enjoy. My hypothesis is that practitioners in those fields have spent so much time studying them, they have become bored of the "normal" stuff which people actually enjoy. In an effort to satisfy themselves, they optimize for novelty, either not knowing or not caring that doing so is making their work something which can only really be appreciated by people as desperate for novelty and steeped in the field as they are.

With food at least it isn't so bad, because there are a ton of not pretentious restaurants you can go to enjoy. Nobody can force you to go to the pretentious restaurants run by chefs bored of normal food. But with architecture, a building is something everyone in that city is forced to experience, whether they like it or not. It would be nice if architects were therefore more mindful that they should try to appeal to a broad range of tastes, not just architecture nerds who are bored of what came before.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#274

Post by jillesvangurp »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #96

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…

It's not that hard to bring old buildings (altbau in German) up to modern standards via renovation. Here in Berlin, there are lots of buildings from early last century that are very desirable property not just because of their exterior but because of their interiors. You get modern insulation, wiring, bathrooms, kitchens, etc. And high ceilings, wooden floors. When I moved here 18 years ago, there were still a lot of these buildings in their original state with no insulation, coal burners for heating, etc. You could smell the coal in the winter. All that has been renovated at this point. The communists actually attempted to cover up the nice facades by just plastering over it as that was considered decadent. A lot of that property has been restored to its original state at this point.

A challenge with some old construction is that it was (at the time) cheap construction. Which means that after a century there can be lots of structural issues, mold, leaky roofs, problems with foundations, etc. But you should compare that to modern cheap construction, which isn't all that great either and doesn't age well.

A lot of West Berlin post war construction is particularly grim and ugly because it was obviously built on the cheap with little or no attention to how things looked. Surviving, pre-war construction is a lot nicer. Especially if somebody invests in fixing that up. You can see the contrast throughout the city because heavy bombing left a lot of gaps that were later filled in with some typically very bland and sometimes very ugly and now very dated construction. It seems some architects had some weird notions of modern. Especially some seventies and eighties architecture is a combination of cheap and very ugly. Cheap concrete does not age well. And painting it some weird shade of yellow or purple doesn't make it better. More recent construction is a lot less offensive, thankfully. The DDR mostly didn't bother with filling in the gaps and as a result, a lot of recent construction has been addressing that using more premium materials and architects that actually know what they are doing.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#275

Post by hardbass »

Nursie wrote: post #268
mmooss wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ugliness has become a cultural norm I love modern architecture (and art); I find many older forms to be garish, focused on pointless decoration and on wealth display, rather than on the beauty of function and form. The imagination of [some] modern architecture, starting from those fundamentals, is stunning. You don't like it, which is just as valid, but trying to turn your preference into a universal truth for huma…

> You don't like it, which is just as valid, but trying to turn your preference into a universal truth for humanity is not valid. Can't it be just your preference? What if it's almost everyone's preference? Except for the high priests of architecture who have their own agenda. Then we end up living in a world full of buildings they design for themselves that most of us dislike. > Why is it so important? Because the r…

I am not an architect or high priest of anything.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#276

Post by Nursie »

hardbass wrote: post #275
Nursie wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't like it, which is just as valid, but trying to turn your preference into a universal truth for humanity is not valid. Can't it be just your preference? What if it's almost everyone's preference? Except for the high priests of architecture who have their own agenda. Then we end up living in a world full of buildings they design for themselves that most of us dislike. > Why is it so important? Because the r…

I am not an architect or high priest of anything.

No, but it appears you are part of a pretty small minority.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#277

Post by rob74 »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #96

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…

Well, it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, does it? An old building doesn't have to be run down, and a new one can be both expensive and shoddily built.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#278

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #96

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…

I would argue that the inner spaces are also nicer in traditional architecture. Taller ceilings where those of us who are tall can walk below a hanging lamp without hitting anything, or just stretch, taller windows that let more light in, etc.

Obviously no one likes having a small or no elevator, or poor insulation, but that's related to technological progress, not aesthetic trends. If we kept building in the traditional styles, we would obviously have incorporated this anyway.

In fact, at least in my (small) city, fully renovated old buildings (where the scale of facades, windows, etc. is old, but the floor slabs, insulation, elevator, etc. are brand new) are where the most expensive flats per m2 are. Considerably more than in new buildings.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#279

Post by vixen99 »

rbanffy wrote: post #136
Zigurd wrote: post #34

[flagged]

> This whole newsletter is a white guy advocating for a 1950s world. But with flock cameras. It reads uncomfortably close to an anti-intellectual discourse so popular in the far-right.

If think you have a substantive point to make why not spell it out rather than indulging in empty rhetorical flourish. Who's the anti-intellectual?

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#280

Post by alex-moon »

alexgoodhart wrote: post #253
alex-moon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The aesthetic is more or a side-effect of using cheaper resources and cheaper methods of production." This is a really interesting argument and very much not the story I've heard. Can you cite any sources for any of your statements at all?

My guess is that at best it's a specious argument. It would be interesting but difficult to try to elucidate. Still what occurs to me is – Cheaper: than what? Is it that premodern architects had the same technology and materials available but chose not to use them ? – What is a 'side effect' in architecture in a way that's unique from the necessary compromising that the needs of occupants, material constraints, longe…

That's it yeah. These kinds of pieces have been written for centuries. Surprise: people like what they are familiar with! There is no meaningful conclusion to draw from this. Look at Monet or Satie. In their own time? Grotesque, offensive - the kind of art scruffy pompous intellectuals enjoy. Now, a century later? At home in a greige IKEA showroom house being sold on the open market. To be clear: I don't think there is anything wrong with this - I love IKEA! I am buying a greige house as we speak! It is just not an interesting observation, and when writers attempt to use it as an argument against making new things, it's facetious at best, and at worst? Well, several interesting possibilities.
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