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Most people prefer traditional architecture

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Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#321

Post by rightnutwingjob »

bigbuppo wrote: post #246
AlexandrB wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can do like modern UI designers and throw both form and usability in the trash and optimize for novelty and "brand" instead.

Or just following the bandwagon. Here's looking at you hamburger menu... the thing that 83% of people don't even realize is a thing that can be clicked on.

I’ve recently come across a number of websites where the hamburger menu has been eschewed and what is obviously a drop down menu placed at the centre of the page immediately below the page title graphic.

I’m not sure if it’s a particular framework or whatever, I’m just a computer user.

The sites where I’ve seen it have predominantly been for business whose primary activities are not-online.

It’s refreshing.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#322

Post by modo_mario »

Onavo wrote: post #195

The exterior perhaps but definitely not the interior. If you visit Europe, the interiors are all small and cramped.

Depends on the era and place. Very old farm houses generally had low ceilings but hey, the people were shorter and you cooked under an open chimney so better have a small space to heat.

Later classic buildings especially in cities had higher ceilings and consequentially a more roomy vibe than modern residential buildings.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#323

Post by rightnutwingjob »

Nursie wrote: post #295
rbanffy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When form doesn't follow function, usability suffers.

Hot-take - what if beauty (or to tone it down, mere 'pleasantness') is function?

Words? What are words? We just don’t know.

If beauty is function we might as well do away with words and go back to using grunts, or whatever it was that preceded the very idea of this thing here is not that thing over there.

I guess that’s why design school graduates had to invent the concept of User Experience in an effort to regress the pursuit of functionality and basic design-consistency to the undifferentiated mess of Un-usability minima we seem to be stuck in.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#324

Post by Nursie »

hardbass wrote: post #318
Nursie wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 exa…

> I am saying if someone dislikes an architectural style they shouldn't blame it on the materials.

Cool, then we’ll blame it on the choice of how and where to use those materials? So when there’s an architectural style that for example is very heavy on chunky raw concrete, is pretty universally despised and has negative social consequences, it’s fair to say “we should probably stop doing that, it seems like a bad idea” rather than some abstract verbiage about doing justice to the raw materials?

Because to be clear - I don’t care about the materials, I care about the outcomes. If someone can use concrete/steel/ply to make something attractive that isn’t going to degrade is a short handful of years, go for 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.

Nope, repeated pattern across the whole country, for reasons given and now explained multiple times.

Do you believe architecture can have any effect on a place? How people feel in that place, how that then translates into how they act in those spaces, positive or negative?

If yes, then perhaps it’s time to admit that some styles can be on the negative side.

If no, then why are we even bothering?

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#325

Post by modo_mario »

vel0city wrote: post #25
like_any_other wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how original, never seen that before. If you're defending modern architecture, you have NO place complaining about originality, when 99% of it is steel & glass basic geometric shapes.

> you have NO place complaining about originality, I can definitely complain about a lack of originality for works which lack originality. Modern designs can often lack originality, I agree. Classical designs can lack originality as well. A lack of originality can make things boring. Don't let your personal choices get in the way of objectively analyzing things. Its not good to put yourself in a camp and act like eve…

>A lack of originality can make things boring. Don't let your personal choices get in the way of objectively analyzing things.

It can but originality is not the end of aesthetics. What's more the modernist architecture is globalised so the "unique" building's style gets recreated and seen in every single corner of the world where they all try to be avant garde in the exact same ways. There's no vernacular architecture elements anymore which give a sense of place. Not even much of ones that make sense due to origin in environmental factors such as rain/snow in the nordics or heat in gulfstates.

>You can't honestly say the modern building I linked above lacks originality. How many other buildings have anodized scales on the outside which change colors based on the lighting?

I'll plainly say it. It lacks originality. I'd rather it have a painting on it than a trying to be the equivalent of a shiny TCG card the novelty of which will wear of very quick.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#326

Post by hardbass »

Nursie wrote: post #324
hardbass wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exa…

> I am saying if someone dislikes an architectural style they shouldn't blame it on the materials. Cool, then we’ll blame it on the choice of how and where to use those materials? So when there’s an architectural style that for example is very heavy on chunky raw concrete, is pretty universally despised and has negative social consequences, it’s fair to say “we should probably stop doing that, it seems like a bad ide…

Many countries in Asia use concrete by default. People don't seem to have any problems with it.

Architecture obviously impacts a person's mood and behavior, eg unwalkable architecture would force a lot of driving. I just am not certain if brutalism can be said to cause whatever negative issues you are claiming it does. At least I am sure the movement wasn't designed to be anti human in any way.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#327

Post by throw0101a »

modo_mario wrote: post #311
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

Is Palladio not taught? Christopher Alexander (of A Pattern Language)? The classical order of columns?

Brent Hull (for one) has done a whole bunch of stuff with his restoration work on trying to teach people about proper proportion:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arca0o5KyTo

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9JWBWiEKWQ

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpV7m1lU_Dw

* https://www.youtube.com/@BrentHull/videos

This was all standard stuff until the 1930s.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#328

Post by TomMasz »

I wonder how many of the competitions for new buildings include traditional designs as candidates. Are people picking modernist designs because that's all there is to choose from? Also, cost doesn't seem to be mentioned. Are traditional designs more expensive to build?

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#329

Post by sfn42 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #298
spwa4 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,-8.40702…

Here's a thought. Imagine roughly 5% of available apartments are in renovated old buildings. I don't know what the real figure is, doesn't matter I just assume it's significantly lower than newly built apartments.

Now also imagine that 20% of people prefer those old buildings.

Per apartment then, there's 4 times as many interested buyers than per modern apartment, and the buyers of the old apartments are looking at a much slimmer market so they're willing to pay much more for the right one because they're unlikely to see a comparable one soon.

Also I imagine bringing an old building up to modern standards is quite expensive so that also explains some of the price.

I don't really know anything, I just think what I'm writing makes sense.

Re: Most people prefer traditional architecture

#330

Post by TFNA »

jordanb wrote: post #239
TFNA wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A huge part of the Soviet period before Stalin was the civil war and minimal efforts to do anything other than fight it ("war communism"). After that you got the NEP and things going traditional. 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…

Again, this comment is not informed (I work in a field largely centered around the early Soviet era). Mass housing construction of dispiriting blocks boomed in the Khrushchev era, and the early Soviet era was indeed tumultuous, but the 1920s and even early 1930s saw architectual designs for public buildings that were remarkably modernist. Wikipedia has more than enough coverage if you want to learn more.
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