it’s cool, I really like how this place has an unexpected knowledgeable side to it where architecture plops up out of nowhere and I’ve wasted … dunno how long reading itt.
I’ll later post some impressions from a 2015 trip to Milan, Porta Nuova, where I hung out in the Samsung District (seriously, yepp!) here.
I disagree very strongly with this. Speaking as an American, aside from what we did to indigenous peoples, I think that modernism was the most destructive thing to ever happen to this land. It was anti-historical, techno-fetishistic, solipsistic, infantilizing (architects treating civilians collectively like a child who needs to take their bitter medicine, or as units contributing to a mechanistic utopia), and actually was regressive in terms of construction (lots of leakage, molding, quick materialistic degradation, insufficient lighting). It also wasn’t as formally inventive as often advertised. The image below, for example, is from 1797, despite looking like something that might’ve been drawn 120 years later.
Also, I’m fine with this topic being moved to a permanent subforum.
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Isn’t there a difference between something that is “ahead of its time” and something that is just “futuristic?”
Some things look like everything will look in 20 years, some things will always look like they will never be normal.
Is that to me or Sonnick
Oh, btw, I visited Gropius’ Lincoln house a few years ago with a group. The best part about the interior was the amount of sunlight let in, thanks to the long unbroken strips of windows. Otherwise I thought it was pretty unremarkable and pervaded by an almost hostile sense of sterility and a pathological fear of excess. The exterior looks like a big VCR and even has some of those hideous glass blocks near the entrance. The backyard garden was the best part.
SONNICK i guess though more of an aside than an actual response. I didn’t notice your post between, but now that I read it I can say I generally agree with you wrt modernism (in all forms) and also that I learned something re: 18th century designs. I want to know more about this–what were the ideas behind that style?
I don’t think anyone here is a professional architect, so we’re definitely all amateurs. I just happen to know a handful of architects, basically due to proximity. I’m not even really an architecture enthusiast, but–y’know–I know what my friends complain about, and after living in a city with a lot of changing architecture I have some opinions.
But what is “aging well” in reference to modernist architecture?
Modernism is pretty “in” right now, so you could say that it’s a matter of the clock hitting noon again.
Or you could argue that modernism is so non-natural that it always looks out of the place. So maybe by embracing anachronism or alienation it becomes “timeless.”
I mean, there’s obviously no such thing as timelessness, and nothing is exempt from fashion. But maybe there’s a way to cheat by embracing a sort of accepted anachronism? We’ve felt that building ripping off the Greeks look “timeless” and stately for basically the last three hundred years. And I guess modernism always looks like modernim.
Still wish i understood why anything in this thread is causing people emotions.
Is that snark or are you being sincere, Rudie?
Architecture and civic planning in general are how we shape space, and that has all sorts of aesthetic and socio-political ramifications. I don’t see why it’s hard to understand getting emotional about that, unless your general approach to built structures is “a building is a building” or “a road is a road” with the occasional interjection of “that building is cool.”
Its honesty! I am looking at these buildings and feeling nothing. Well nothing about the building themselves. That kind of artitecture has infected Texas in the form of apartments in expensive shopping malls that I am really not sure what kind of jackhole lives above a gap because no one that works there can afford it. Like my problem is more with modern shopping centers trying to simulate an urban environment where people live work and exist. Except it obviously isnt that because you cant skateboard they dont want minorities except as janitortial and they demolished a community over twenty years to put in this shopping mall.
Or worse they destroy miles of beautiful texas countryside and two hundred year oak trees to sell oakleys and 5 dollar shit coffee.
But getting angry about the building itself i dont get.
I feel nothing as well (and also live in Texas and might live in a terrible bourgeois apartment), but maybe that’s what diplo finds upsetting. If you have the eye to appreciate architecture the absence of emotive substance could be depressing in itself.
Guys, we’re posting on a forum that pretty much exists for the purpose of artistic snobbery.
I think diplo’s partially annoyed in the same way that people get annoyed by Transformers movies: if you care about an artform, it can be kind of sad to see it expressed poorly. And it feels even worse if people seem to like or not notice the crap version of the thing you love.
Except the stakes are arguably higher in this case, because these buildings are actually giant, sometimes unavoidable things that take up space and that sometimes you have to be inside whether you want to or not. Imagine if every day, you had to walk by shit art, or–y’know–work inside it. Imagine if you looked out our window and you saw a sea of Alvin and the Chipmunks movies.
Monumental mediocrity can be a bummer.
The theory of space stuff is kind of a more academic way of emphasizing the ramifications of that.
Alright again you guys are just saying “It’s shit I hate it.” I need a better explanation of why it’s shit?
But yeah: I think there’s a certain amount of urban privilege that has to do with caring about architecture.
Or if you want to avoid getting identity politics-y about it, you could just say that architecture matters more to people in cities.
I never noticed architecture growing up, because I never saw any big buildings. The from-the-catalog suburban houses I saw were drafted, not designed. In theory, there were some interesting 150 year old structures in the nearest town, but most of them had been renovated over the years, etc.
The only reason I’m aware of architecture as an art form is because I happened to become friends with architecture majors in college and lived in a major city for seven years. The theory surrounding architecture is pretty cool, but it makes a lot more sense in a urban context where space is at a premium and large populations have to be considered. If you see an essay or lecture by a cool architect, you can get an insight into their process, and it becomes evident how much thought and expression goes into the design of great buildings.
Just don’t watch that Frank Gehry documentary, or you’ll think that architects just kind of make random shapes but really big.
Here is a 53 part exploration of notable buildings.
Modernism is the future of the heart forever.
Also, specifically, Urbanized is a pretty solid entertaining movie to engage with this question, I think.
Because you look at it and either feel nothing or feel sad. They’re alienated from the space around them in a way that makes you feel kind of alienated too, and they’re not interesting enough to elicit any additional, better response.
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I think diplo will say otherwise, but I think a lot of it is formal aesthetics.
Just looking at exteriors, I think you just look at it, and you like it or you don’t like it, along the lines of an abstract painting. You can break down the aethetics of if and why you react that way, but it comes out as really petty and personal.
When you get into the interiors, the way the building interacts with the space around it, and sort of overall effect of the building, there’s a lot of theory that can be explored. But we’re just reacting to exterior shots right now, so I think that’s kind of an exercise in taste.
So, in the building Tulpa posted from Portland, the colors and patterns are really garish, as if to say, “Look: this is different!” But the lime green accents mixed with the dark gray just make me think of a video game controller. They’re confrontational in a broad, obvious way, and the building looks to be pretty typical otherwise, down to the materials.
The swoopiness of the Barclay center entrance feels sort of expected in a corporate way. diplo said it looks like a giant logo. I get what he means. it feels like corporate art in which swoopy abstractions are convey a sort of over-focus-tested level of creativity.
The mix of brick facades and modernism in general just doesn’t really work for me. Like I said, it seems like a poor attempt to integrate fashionable contemporary modernism into traditional environments. But nothing clashes worse than a poor imitation sitting right next to the real thing.
Again, the biggest issue with these sorts of structures is materials. Cheap building materials show. They look flimsy, you can see seams, they corrode due to weather faster, they warp faster. In Bed Stuy Brooklyn, where I used to live, they are currently going through a process of tearing down 100-year-old brownstones to put up cheap “modern” condos. What a lot of people don’t realize is that these old brownstones were summer homes for wealthy Manhattanites back in the day. They’re actually very cleverly built to withstand hurricanes with windows oriented so that the winds blows along them, rather than against them. A poorly constructed condo made of cheap steel with giant windows is not going to fair quite so well.
But maybe that’s getting more practical than what you were asking after.
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Formal aesthetics are important, and I would like to talk about that (when I have time later), but the luxury condos I’m harping on are particularly insidious because they’re representative of a city putting huge amounts of money into projects that aren’t even close to being as justifiable as funding public transit, housing the homeless, or improving the civic space of neglected and lower income places like Roxbury, which have been in dire need of better roads and more attractive (and materially durable) affordable housing. They’re basically enormous realizations of the “banality of evil” conceit, and that makes me really fucking angry. Their unimaginative ugliness is both visual and symbolic.
Formally, I find that good architecture on a fundamental level just makes life more exciting and rewarding for me. I want my eyes and body to have fun when I’m outside of my house. I want to walk down a street and be delighted by the spatial and ornamental display of other people’s imagination. Buildings are like miniature worlds. They’re really cool when done right! The tricky thing about architecture, I think, is that, like I wrote in this article:
when the built environment is what many of us grow up among by default, perhaps we learn to interpret the qualities of built environments as facts of life, rather than creations to be consciously critical of
We’ll travel thousands of miles to go see “beautiful” “historic” places in India or Europe or whatever but somehow we have this cultural disconnect from the idea of caring about our own local architecture in the same sort of way. It’s a complex thing, and it’s not helped at all by how cut off we are from the planning process unless we consciously insert ourselves into town hall meetings. In my opinion, every proposed building would necessitate the public’s involvement on some level for an idea to come to fruition, even if that would mean involving NIMBY folks.
I’ll respond to this later!
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[quote=“diplo, post:45, topic:948, full:true”]I disagree very strongly with this. Speaking as an American, aside from what we did to indigenous peoples, I think that modernism was the most destructive thing to ever happen to this land. It was anti-historical, techno-fetishistic, solipsistic, infantilizing (architects treating civilians collectively like a child who needs to take their bitter medicine, or as units contributing to a mechanistic utopia), and actually was regressive in terms of construction (lots of leakage, molding, quick materialistic degradation, insufficient lighting). It also wasn’t as formally inventive as often advertised. The image below, for example, is from 1797, despite looking like something that might’ve been drawn 120 years later.
Also, I’m fine with this topic being moved to a permanent subforum.
[/quote]
Architecture in the first half of 20th century saw a disruptive (#bullshitBingo) development that changed the landscape (literally), agreed.
Most of the time not for the better, yes.
But there were two World Wars, at least one major financial crisis and, considering the leaps made by civilization in that timeframe, other factors that surely had their effect on how architecture developed, or rather they shaped the range of what was possible/feasible. Workers-class lodging looked like this
in 1900, and if I could find a workers class picture of say, 1955, I’d post it here to illustrate how much things changed, but i get a lot of communist pictures that are a bit, uh, Command&Conquer.
Agreed, quality of building material was sub-par, even before the war(s), so that can’t be the only factor here, and I’d like to attribute that to experimenting with new material, but honestly, I think in the end it was all about $$$. To accommodate family members living in dignity, space was needed, and if you double the space you’d originally have had in 1900, cost surely must have been the deciding factor.
Then there were political factors, like social housing projects or semi-state-sponsored housing projects that explicitly had first and foremost a requirement to be affordable for the masses, yet (esp. after the war) also driven by ambitions of the architects that wanted to leave their footprint (quite interesting in this regard: stolen link from that wiki-page, the introduction to the CSH-series and a manifesto of some sorts for the whole project. It becomes clear that when tasked with providing housing that is forward thinking, the architects’ thoughts and ideas of what’s “good” might differ from what you’d call “for the masses”. There are only so much cliffs where you can build your Los Angeles dream home, and try that glass facade somewhere that gets sub 30°F).
Some parts of major cities of yurop were badly hit/completely obliterated in WW2, and a lot of ghastly buildings were erected asap to fill the voids … i believe that nice architecture was next to the last point that people cared about in these cities. And building cooperatives surely weren’t exactly chasing the next best design-thing, but rather residents money/RoI foremost (as they do today but we’re in the past for now).
so tl;dr-version, I agree, Modernism destroyed as much as it replaced the past, and I cannot say for sure which one was the major driving force here …
but after all that, it’s just that some aspects of this period are appealing to me (I’ll write more about that in the next post, e.g. about the Frankfurt kitchen et al).
(and btw, that building from Stuttgart has been done by Corbusier iirc, his Modulor is a wonderful example of how misguided some architects were back then).
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