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Crimes in Concrete

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101–110 of 134 posts

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#101
post #2

It's fascinating how neatly being politically conservative or progressive lines up with the corresponding architectural view. I like brutalism, but I disagree with the removal of Scruton from that position, it seems political. What annoys me about articles like the above is that they seem to ignore the possibility that aesthetics involves a lot of subjectivity. The argument seems to boil down to, "of course it's ugly…

More to the point, look at what people choose to live in. Good modernist and brutalist homes sell quickly and at a significant premium over prevailing market rates. Modernism got a bad name in many Western countries, because it was used as an architectural and philosophical justification for cheap and shoddy system-built housing to fill the post-war housing gap. That doesn't make rectilinear forms and bare concrete i…

Modern homes are very expensive to build, so it isn't surprising that they fetch a premium on the market.

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The was a somewhat more "humane" streak at the core of this movement than you make out. Specifically, these buildings were supposed to serve an egalitarian purpose, removing class differences previously expressed with fancy fascades etc. This was also a time of far heavier air pollution than we today ever experience, at least in "the west". The typical multi-family building were therefore built not right at the sidew…

The motives were indeed good, but you seem to be missing a few things in places. Bear in mind I'm in the UK, where Europe's post-war rebuilding was also large part of the motive. The American experience was necessarily a little different - no bomb damage, and a large profit from WW2, thank-you-very-much. The huge areas of bomb damage, and decades of soot and other pollutants meant many of those fine classic buildings…

The UK has a number of brutalist university campuses, but they're often set in extensive landscaping - which actually makes them quite pleasant.

But I wouldn't idolise pre-war architecture. There are some shockingly awful 1930s estates around London, and they're almost as dispiriting in their own way as archetypal brutalist tower blocks.

The garden cities are much more pleasant, but then you're not comparing like with like. Tower blocks were built to replace Victorian slums, with relatively high population density in both.

Some of the original designs were terrible, but sometimes they can be salvaged.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/12/grand-p...

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#103
post #30

In the past 5 years or so, there has been a bit of a building boom in my city. The dominant architectural style reminds me a lot of the style discussed in this article. None of it has a concrete facade, but otherwise it would fall right in line. It's ugly, depressing, and distressing.

Are you talking about the colored concrete fiber side?

https://www.allurausa.com/blog/17-fiber-cement-siding-color-...

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#104
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument seems to boil down to, "of course it's ugly, just look at it" Yes, but only because the heart of the modernist movement has been an attempt to deny, belittle and mock the idea that the instinctive aesthetic reaction of the majority to their creations is important or valid. If you think their constructions are ugly, that's not their problem, it's your problem. Firstly, you're too stupid, conservative an…

So lets see: - Modernism isn't a collection a movements across different countries/mediums in the early 20th century, but a "movement" whose "heart" is making intellectuals feel better than regular folks. - No space for differing aesthetic opinions, the only real art is what you feel in your gut. - Modernists are actively trying to change the places you live in work, despite the fact that the height of the movement h…

In this context architecture is mostly about homes, so gut reactions aren't unreasonable.

And the Modernists very much were trying to change the landscape.

Here's a video about the Smithsons who designed one of the UK's largest housing projects. They're clearly serious and well-intentioned, but also... "eccentric" is probably a diplomatic description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH5thwHTYNk

But... it's worth remembering that these projects were replacements for slum housing, not showcase palaces and cathedrals. While they weren't ideal, they did usually manage to be warmer, healthier, cleaner, and more sanitary than the hovels they typically replaced.

Over time some of the harder egdes of modernism have been filed off, and modern projects seem to be trying to learn from the past, while still keeping the functionalism of the original modernists.

There are plenty of blocks on the European mainland which are very liveable, built in that style. And unless Mr Dalrymple wants to propose a new archiectural style that he thinks can improve on them, it's not worth taking him seriously - except as a self-indulgent grumbler.

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#105
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably can't convince you of anything, but there are definitely two sides to this story. You can choose to listen to Stevens Curl if you want to. You can choose to listen to Theodore Dalrymple as well. Like Stevens Curl he is a blowhard with very iffy politics. As a trained architectural historian (who has spent years in the UK) it's very clear to me where he is coming from, and it's not a rational place. HN is a…

>I probably can't convince you of anything You might be able to, but if you claim someone is making tedious old right wing arguments, when it according to the reviews he spends his time commenting on Corbusier's fascism and the Spectator lumps him in with Vonnegut, then I can't take your critique all that seriously. Do you think Vonnegut's architectural critiques are also tired right wing arguments?

And Orwell, apparently he is now a right-winger too.

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I probably can't convince you of anything You might be able to, but if you claim someone is making tedious old right wing arguments, when it according to the reviews he spends his time commenting on Corbusier's fascism and the Spectator lumps him in with Vonnegut, then I can't take your critique all that seriously. Do you think Vonnegut's architectural critiques are also tired right wing arguments?

And Orwell, apparently he is now a right-winger too.

The point Bayley is making is that there is a motley crew of people of all political persuasions who think modernization in the 20th C was a disaster. The mechanization of war was the big shock. Obviously there is everything from e.g. socialist environmentalists on the left to the libertarian rejection of organized society on the right. There's a huge spectrum.

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The motives were indeed good, but you seem to be missing a few things in places. Bear in mind I'm in the UK, where Europe's post-war rebuilding was also large part of the motive. The American experience was necessarily a little different - no bomb damage, and a large profit from WW2, thank-you-very-much. The huge areas of bomb damage, and decades of soot and other pollutants meant many of those fine classic buildings…

The UK has a number of brutalist university campuses, but they're often set in extensive landscaping - which actually makes them quite pleasant. But I wouldn't idolise pre-war architecture. There are some shockingly awful 1930s estates around London, and they're almost as dispiriting in their own way as archetypal brutalist tower blocks. The garden cities are much more pleasant, but then you're not comparing like wit…

I'm not idolising the 30s but that era does seem to have been something of a peak for public housing. Even with a few awful ones. It was the last major round of building before we got the post-war legislation that gave us overspill estates - almost guaranteed to be isolated sink estates and split families. At least part of the attitude that saw tower blocks cut off from the world by adding a major urban motorway or junction as part of the project.

You're completely right about the brutalist campuses, btw.

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#108
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably can't convince you of anything, but there are definitely two sides to this story. You can choose to listen to Stevens Curl if you want to. You can choose to listen to Theodore Dalrymple as well. Like Stevens Curl he is a blowhard with very iffy politics. As a trained architectural historian (who has spent years in the UK) it's very clear to me where he is coming from, and it's not a rational place. HN is a…

>I probably can't convince you of anything You might be able to, but if you claim someone is making tedious old right wing arguments, when it according to the reviews he spends his time commenting on Corbusier's fascism and the Spectator lumps him in with Vonnegut, then I can't take your critique all that seriously. Do you think Vonnegut's architectural critiques are also tired right wing arguments?

I'm not aware of anything that Vonnegut (jr.) wrote about architecture specifically, but that list of "other people unhappy with modernity" is supposed to be a miscellaneous grab-bag anyway.

Curl's book is a mud-slinging rant which accuses modernist architects of being psychotic, deranged, obsessed with hygiene, inclined to erethism (I had to look it up) etc. The claim that Corbusier was a fascist is the least of it. In this sense Curl's argument is a bit like the claims that Corbusier was autistic https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/01/the-perils-of-diagnos... which aren't really taken seriously.

The right-wing aspect of what Curl is saying is his alignment with traditional 'polite' architecture (built by and for the wealthy) and his total dismissal of the social collectivist agenda of much modernist architecture. Modernism, at its best, had a social conscience and tried to serve the people rather than cravenly serving capital.

The opposition Curl is subscribing to essentially distinguishes between individualistic, traditional architecture (with ornament and ostentatious materials) and a collectivistic modernist architecture (inspired by vernacular building and modern machinery). This is exactly the kind of Manichean distinction that you will find in idealistic modernist manifestos. The difference is that Curl takes the side of capital, while the modernists would have taken the side of labour.

The reality of architectural practice is much more complex than that. Positing that opposition as the historical, intellectual reality behind 20th C architecture just isn't a good premise. Curl (like David Watkin in "Morality and Architecture") is attacking a straw man. He's fighting a propaganda war that ended years ago.

There's a ding-dong battle here between Curl (with his uncritical embrace of traditionalism) and Barnabas Calder (who himself is not exactly a hard-line socialist): https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-duel-has-mod...

Curl says things about architecture "generating hostile responses in humans" and it seems clear to me from experience that we are dealing with someone who is reaching for pseudoscientific language because their argument is weak. Nikos Salingaros is another prominent person who loves to science-up his reactionary ideas about architecture.

The truth is that the modernists were acting out of an idealistic conviction that the machine age needed a machine architecture. Of course that wasn't a logical necessity: it was ideology, to some degree. But they were also responding as best they could to genuine changes in the circumstances in which they had to build (caused by modernization).

It's possible for historians to discuss this period now without trying to start a fight or seeing the issues in black and white.

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#109
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Orwell, apparently he is now a right-winger too.

The point Bayley is making is that there is a motley crew of people of all political persuasions who think modernization in the 20th C was a disaster. The mechanization of war was the big shock. Obviously there is everything from e.g. socialist environmentalists on the left to the libertarian rejection of organized society on the right. There's a huge spectrum.

The way it played out in architecture has been pretty bad. Corbusier in particular should have just stuck to chairs. He was much better at chairs than he was at buildings.

As far as this kind of thing goes, I love stuff by Altair Alto and Shigeru Ban, whereas I'd happily bury George Marsh under his own concrete. Norman foster I am 50/50 on. Some of his stuff I like, but the tulip and the gherkin are basically just giant tumescent cocks sprouting out of the centre of London.

Re: Crimes in Concrete

#110
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I probably can't convince you of anything You might be able to, but if you claim someone is making tedious old right wing arguments, when it according to the reviews he spends his time commenting on Corbusier's fascism and the Spectator lumps him in with Vonnegut, then I can't take your critique all that seriously. Do you think Vonnegut's architectural critiques are also tired right wing arguments?

I'm not aware of anything that Vonnegut (jr.) wrote about architecture specifically, but that list of "other people unhappy with modernity" is supposed to be a miscellaneous grab-bag anyway. Curl's book is a mud-slinging rant which accuses modernist architects of being psychotic, deranged, obsessed with hygiene, inclined to erethism (I had to look it up) etc. The claim that Corbusier was a fascist is the least of it.…

Thank you, that seems to be fair and thought out and I have a much better idea of where you are coming from now.
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