I like modern architecture but I wouldn't want to live in it or near it. Modern architecture is depressing.
Most people prefer traditional architecture
291–300 of 383 posts
Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture
#292Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture
#293Earlier 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?
that one looks too Calatrava-ish (specifically Oceanografic), I'd prefer the Dongdaemun Design Plaza if we are talking Zaha Hadid - especially once you see it in person.
Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but it appears you are part of a pretty small minority.
I find it very irritating looking at fake or overdone things. I don't think that's minority. Each era of architecture was suited in some way to the building materials and technology of it's time. I do not understand this movement to rob concrete, steel and plywood of it's natural voice and force it to conform to design styles made for different substances and tech.
> I find it very irritating looking at fake or overdone things. I don't think that's minority.
1. I think the onus is on you to prove that it's not a minority, in the face of people overwhelmingly favouring older, more ornamented designs.
2. Beauty does not have to feel 'fake' and ugliness can be very authentic indeed, especially when it comes to concrete. I'd take a faux-neogothic revival over another period of brutalism without even blinking.
I used to live near-ish to this eyesore - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyndham_Court#/media/File:East...
It's a hideous blot on the landscape, the wind blows through mercilessly and constantly, it feels desolate and dystopian to be around. It smells of piss and depression. It's notorious for drug dealing. But someone managed to get it listed and protected anyway so now the town's stuck with it permanently.
> I do not understand this movement to rob concrete, steel and plywood of it's natural voice and force it to conform to design styles made for different substances and tech.
Perhaps we don't have to force it to be 'traditional' but it's clear that the 'natural voice' afforded by these materials and the current set of design languages in architecture result in ugly buildings that the large majority of people just do not like.
We don't have to look at the overwhelming preference for traditional buildings and take away from that "We must go back to exactly that", but we should at least take away "People don't like what's being made now, we can do better"
And if there is no way for concrete, steel and plywood to express more beauty then perhaps we could think about using other things that might. Either way, ploughing on with creating spaces and edifices that the majority think are ugly and worse than what came before, either because of a professional disdain for what humans actually like to be around, or some high-minded ideas about material expression seems ... well, pretty pig-headed.
Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture
#295Earlier 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.
When form doesn't follow function, usability suffers.
Hot-take - what if beauty (or to tone it down, mere 'pleasantness') is function?
Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 f…
> things that people actually enjoy
No one will care if you build 1000th replica of a nice building. It's just not interesting to anyone and actually becomes boring very fast. People may live in it but no one will come from afar to visit it because of its beauty. It will become another one in a row of the same.
If you build a striking, exceptional building, it can become a big success (like Gehry's in Bilbao which is a success story for the whole city), so people who commission buildings sometimes select for that.
And also there is a sizable group of people who actually enjoy interesting buildings, like people who enjoy haute couture or haute cuisine etc., so it's not like there is no market for that.
Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture
#297Most people have bad taste, preferring elaborately ornate crap with multiple clashing patterns. No surprises here.
Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 traditi…
Yep. Simple, ~20m2-30m2 square boxes, densily packed (with ideally thick walls) is by far the easiest kind of space to use. Then maybe one 50m2 for having a big living room. > In fact, at least in my (small) city, fully renovated old buildings ... are where the most expensive flats per m2 are. Considerably more than in new buildings. Isn't that because of location? These places tend to be right next to the rail/bus s…
No, I mean controlling for location.
A specific example. The very same building developer completed these two buildings and offered the flats for sale more or less simultaneously, in the second half of last year IIRC.
Building 1. Renovated early 20th century building (originally built in 1923). Google Maps coordinates (the renovation is not yet visible in Google Maps): https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3621801,-8.4070271,11a,75y,2... Photos of the renovated building: https://ammapromocion.com/plaza-de-vigo/ Flats have 117 useful sqm and the middle flats were being offered at between 1.1M-1.2M €, and sold fast (you can still buy the 1st floor flat for 950K. But it's a 1st floor with a bar directly below, which reduces its value rather sharply. This is Spain, bars are noisy and open until late).
Building 2. Newly built. Google Maps coordinates (again, finished building not visible yet in Google Maps): https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3599669,-8.4061383,23a,75y,2... Photos of the finished building: https://ammapromocion.com/promocion-juan-florez/ Flats are different sizes, but some are only slightly smaller than in the other building - around 110 useful sqm. They were being offered for around 700K. They also sold fast.
The distance between both buildings according to Google Maps is 290 m, a 4-minute walk, so they are basically in the same neighborhood. You can argue that the new one is in a worse location because it has more traffic and the street is uglier, and it's true (although the other is in an area with many bars, so I think not everyone would prefer its location). Anyway, that kind of difference could be worth at most 50K in this market, being generous - and most likely more than fully offset by fact that the newly built flats include garage while the renovated ones don't have it! Anyhow, it definitely doesn't explain a 400K+ price difference.
It's just one concrete example, but I've seen many (I was recently looking for flats... finally I settled from one from the 1940s, building not renovated :)). Of course I don't know the trends outside my city, but at least here, fully renovated old buildings are the apex of the housing market.
Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture
#299Modernism 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
Which modernism?
1930s modernism was about new materials to allow luxury for the modern man (electricity! large windows! electric oven! washing machines! fridges! indoor toilets!)
1960/70s modernism was about creating new communities, adapting land to fit the modern car based world. No more pokey little shops with only a few items, requiring a trudge along a wobbly high street. NO! drive your car, go to a futuristic supermarket only once a week.
I don't think we see a modernism now, not as a movement. I will now divert to UK building, because in the US its different. Part of the reason why thats the case in the UK is that councils used to build houses, facilities and infrastructure with their own money. This meant they had their own architects. This lead to town plans that were coherent, if not always successful. See Birmingham, milton keynes, roehamton.
Housing wise, council houses were built, or should have been built to a standard. They were, especially in cities much bigger, brighter and luxurious compared to what preceded them. Were they pretty? no, modern is never pretty, because its not what you grew up with. When I was a kid everyone _hated_ victorian terrace houses, because thats what poor people have. They were more pokey compared to executive estate housing, and in some places didn't have a drive for your four door saloon.
Now, those estates are meh and terrace houses are very expensive, despite being cold, draughty, dingey little shitboxes with odd toilet arrangements. (unless you've slapped in a loft conversion and extended over the kitchen/outdoor toilet)
> Dieter Rams as some aesthetic pinnacle rather than soulless mass production.
The problem is, Rams was about bringing the complex new object into the house in a was that was reliable and simple. If we were all about Rams' vision, then we'd have got rid of radiators, had decent windows, insulated the place, had lots of cupboards and cleanly separated living spaces. Not an everything room and a bedroom with inbuilt mould farm (shower + shitter)
Yes the modern apartment is inspired by loft living and dieter rams, but that requires 100sqm/1000sqft and high ceilings. none of which most places have. So you get a kitchen diner because it allows developers to shave off one room from the floorplan and increase density by 1/3rd without extra mateiral costs.
But thats not modernism, thats poor fucking standards, and the lack of competition in the uk in the form new council houses. (a 3 bedroom council house will be at least 90sqm with seperate kitchen, living room)
Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture
#300How funny, they chose very beautiful old architecture and very ugly modern architecture and invented a result - why not choose things like the Bahai temple in Delhi or Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright? I'm sure there are some old ugly buildings and the ones that people hated probably got torn down so there's survivorship bias in play here too!