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Most people prefer traditional architecture

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Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#311

Post by modo_mario »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #273
kelseyfrog wrote: post #223

Earlier 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…

There's also the issue that the names they're actually disproportionally told and taught about are people who "innovated". Who pushed a marginally new style.

It becomes change and following avant garde for the sake of it and a group of people trying to be different in all the same boring ways.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#312

Post by modo_mario »

keiferski wrote: post #283
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…

Architecture built today is mostly optimizing for the developers’ budget and the local regulations.

Often not even that. There's loads of examples of ornamental classical construction being cheaper or the same price than modernist equivalent with even smaller floorspace and that's without economies of scale for a lot of that ornamentation.

Hell the Sears Roebuck houses someone else mentioned had a lot more ornamentation than your average new built

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#313

Post by rightnutwingjob »

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?

I can see the appeal.

And, it kinda looks like someone dropped a wet handkerchief on the Sydney Opera House.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#314

Post by modo_mario »

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…

It's not even always cheaper. https://youtu.be/y5w4REl_Few

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#315

Post by rightnutwingjob »

thisismyopinion wrote: post #303
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?

Give me 5 minutes with a pencil. Emperors new clothes all these fancy architects. The worst is Bjarke Ingels.

Wow, that guy’s buildings look like they were built by someone who never made it as a Lego kit designer.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#316

Post by Nursie »

hardbass wrote: post #310
Nursie wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any building would feel ugly if its less inhabited and full of druggies and homeless. You have cause and effect backwards IMHO. The brutalist housing monstrosities in the UK, with the notable exception of the Barbican which is more gentrified, create the conditions that encourage this. They create grim, cold, bleak, colourless liminal spaces. Their look of decay doesn't inspire community, care for the place you liv…

Its nonsense. If a building has people and businesses, it is good, if it doesn't and has druggies it will feel bad. An unmaintained mansion with druggies will be equally creepy. I am not sure how you are saying a place is inviting of druggies, what are the physical designs that you think make it so? If you say lack of buyers, then to a druggie wny structure is good enough. I find crttain kinds of fakeness disgusting.…

> I am not sure how you are saying a place is inviting of druggies, what are the physical designs that you think make it so?

The concrete voids, semi-open outdoor stairwells and other weird half-hidden spaces in many of these buildings appear to encourage a lot of antisocial behaviour like drug-dealing and urination.

The greyness and water-staining leaves an area looking deprived, and against a (usually) grey and water-stained sky it makes these areas feel lifeless and barren. Especially where the wind constantly whistles through their straight-lined, hard-surfaced open plazas.

The general ugliness of them just depresses the human spirit, kills community cohesion. People don't care about them. So they come to expect the lifts to smell of piss and the stairways to be full of dealers.

The fact that you don't think building design could have such an effect is deeply weird. Have you ever had to live near any brutalist buildings? They take down your mood just by being near them.

> >I find crttain kinds of fakeness disgusting > And I disagree, I find neoclassical buildings cold and inhuman

We've already established you're the voice of the minority here.

> If its liked so much why aren't people funding it?

That's a very interesting question, why are we stuck in a world where governments and large companies are building modernist stuff that people in general don't like? I think partly it's probably cost, I think partly it's down to the overwhelming majority of architects being taught this particular gospel. But beyond that I don't know.

(The idea that it's a choice of the same individuals expressing their preferences is somewhat silly, most people will never in their lifetimes have any sort of meaningful impact on new buildings in a city)

> What specific eay do you think brutalism or any other building style you would prefer as example is not human friendly?

The whole philosophy of form following function is misdirected from the outset. Beauty, attractiveness is an important part of function in human habitation.

And you still haven't answered my question - why is 'honesty' or 'justice to steel' in the slightest bit important? Why should we prioritise that over things like happiness? Why should we not use artifice and skill to make spaces that are attractive, warm and friendly, regardless of material?

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#317

Post by janpeuker »

I dislike a badly designed mall like everyone else, but is it already sealioning if an article ends on a leading question to hide its far-right liberal conservative agenda?

The National Civic Art Society is designing the White House State Ballroom [1] and Create Streets is a conservative influence group that likes speaking at Reform UK events [2]. As many others here have pointed out, visual preference, especially in such a binary choice between obviously cheap and ugly vs expensive and generous, is of course highly biased - pseudo greek style doesn't fly in Asia, even in Australia minimalist styles are much more en vogue.

The most important claims like "exclusively teaches broadly modernist styles" are completely unsupported - especially when a few lines down they literally use their own review of an architect's design, but then call it "in a style drawing on Victorian commercial architecture and Art Deco", again unsubstantiated - it has pretty "modern" clear lines, probably due to sustainability [3], and brick facades themselves have been around for long. In the report they praise the 2010 (!) London city building design guide recommending exactly this brick design. "hardly a single public commission" and "we commissioning styles"?

Where is the line between justifying dictator-style grandiose architecture and the actual empathy needed for simply good design?

I'm just asking questions.

1) https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/29/justin-shubow-trump-archit... 2) https://www.building.co.uk/focus/reform-uk-conference-fundin... 3) https://www.archpaper.com/2025/10/biennale-architettura-carl...

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#318

Post by hardbass »

Nursie wrote: post #316
hardbass wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its nonsense. If a building has people and businesses, it is good, if it doesn't and has druggies it will feel bad. An unmaintained mansion with druggies will be equally creepy. I am not sure how you are saying a place is inviting of druggies, what are the physical designs that you think make it so? If you say lack of buyers, then to a druggie wny structure is good enough. I find crttain kinds of fakeness disgusting.…

> I am not sure how you are saying a place is inviting of druggies, what are the physical designs that you think make it so? The concrete voids, semi-open outdoor stairwells and other weird half-hidden spaces in many of these buildings appear to encourage a lot of antisocial behaviour like drug-dealing and urination. The greyness and water-staining leaves an area looking deprived, and against a (usually) grey and wat…

I am not talking about some abstract honesty to some subtance. I am saying if someone dislikes an architectural style they shouldn't blame it on the materials. Some people like wood for a rustic look. I can make a cabinet with wood that uses all curves and circular openings and so on, I bet this person would hate it, but that doesn't mean they hate wood.

I like warm and humane spaces..i would need to see specific examples to see how brutalism violates it. I think if the situation in your locality is so bad that any public space will be taken over by druggies is not the buildings fault. You should say then that you need highly enclosed and guarded structures to prevent this problem.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#319

Post by nl »

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?

This was specifically in reply to the "convince the design community that form can follow things other than function" parent comment.

I think Hadid and Gehry show that modern architecture doesn't just mean "form follows function".

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#320

Post by modo_mario »

dfgknionio wrote: post #174

Look at this picture: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5kYm!,f_auto,q_auto:... Which side is modern and which is traditional? The examples on the right are clearly more modern than the examples on the left to my eye: the left looks like it's from the '70s while the right is unmistakably 21st century. But the examples on the left are run-down, plain, and feature advertisements and bricked-up windows and steel s…

There are some rules to classical architecture styles regarding windows and window size going upwards that the ones on the right do follow more.
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