[HN Gopher] Making architecture easy
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Making architecture easy
Author : dash2
Score : 95 points
Date : 2023-09-17 16:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (worksinprogress.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (worksinprogress.co)
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| The author is head of housing at the Centre for Policy Studies, a
| UK based right-wing think tank. Therefore we should not be
| surprised if this article is informed by the wider conservative
| philosophy (old is good, new is bad).
|
| However, let's take it on its merits. The distinction it makes
| between architectural competence (what it calls 'goodness') and
| style is correct and important. But I don't think it successfully
| makes the argument that it is easier to be competent using old
| styles. See McMansions for an example of how a vernacular can be
| twisted into bricks and mortar (and drywall) horror, and there
| are plenty more examples of modern interventions ruined by
| hackneyed attempts at traditionalism. Furthermore, I'd argue that
| bright architects, most likely to produce competent work, are not
| going to be drawn to cookie cutter trad style starter homes (for
| example).
|
| It calls out Brutalism specifically, but that style has been out
| of fashion since before many of us were born - though remains a
| favourite bug-bear of the reactionary right.
|
| It rightly notes that architecture is a public art - but given
| that so few buildings are actually designed by architects (as it
| also notes), those that are _should_ challenge the public. Not
| always and everytime, but if art does not challenge us, it ceases
| to be art and becomes merely decoration of culturally barren
| lives.
|
| A counter-point to the central thesis - that architecture should
| be easy: Central Lisbon is a wet dream for this idea, trad
| everything, and very beautiful too. Yet it feels suffocating and
| sterile - no room for the future. I'd rather it had gleaming
| tower blocks, full of hopes and dreams, like downtown SF.
| Crossing the Bay Bridge in SF you feel a sense of excitement,
| adventure and potential. Whereas every time I cross the '24th
| Abril' I get depressed - the most notable feature I can see is
| the cruise ships parked at the terminal.
| paganel wrote:
| I also think that focusing on single buildings, like the author
| of the article mostly does, is not helping anyone. Exquisite
| building after exquisite building might end up creating a total
| non-sense, while on the other hand boring building after boring
| building can create a really nice and liveable thing.
|
| Back to the exquisite buildings, I'm now on the coast of South-
| Western Greece and I can see this first hand, as there are lots
| and lots of villas scattered around the hills here which
| villas, taken individually, have a decent enough modernist
| architectural style, but when you look at them as a whole is a
| cacophony pure and simple (ignoring the habitat destruction,
| that is).
|
| On the other hand the very boring buildings from the downtown
| small Greek town where I'm now staying have almost nothing
| going for them individually and from an architectural pov, if
| not for some details here and there, but taken together the
| discourse changes completely.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| I don't think re-classifying a widely disliked building as
| "challenging" is doing anybody any favors. When you build a
| sidewalk for the public, you don't make it "challenging" by,
| for example, only making it as wide as a balance beam.
|
| A building must suit its purpose, and part of its purpose is to
| mesh with its surroundings. You shouldn't build a building that
| looks like Megatron exploded in the middle of a neighborhood of
| half-timbered buildings, no matter how challenging it may be to
| the people who look at it every day.
|
| And let's not forget, a lot of traditionalist design took into
| account a world without HVAC and other hacks. If you want
| energy efficiency, looking to solutions that tackled the
| problem in a more fundamental way is a good thing, rather than
| papering over the problem with technology.
|
| But you are correct about McMansions twisting the vernacular.
| The crime I always see is how the garage is, inevitably, front
| and center. It may be a Neo-Georgian whatever around the front
| door, but right there next to it is the hallowed automobile
| temple, like a phylactery to the Saints of petroleum refinery.
| ArchitectAnon wrote:
| >And let's not forget, a lot of traditionalist design took
| into account a world without HVAC and other hacks. If you
| want energy efficiency, looking to solutions that tackled the
| problem in a more fundamental way is a good thing, rather
| than papering over the problem with technology.
|
| A lot of these houses were heated with a coal fire in every
| room, they are completely uninsulated and sitting anywhere
| near the window in the dead of winter would be very cold!
| There is something to be said for applying modern passive
| solar design techniques, insulation and airtightness coupled
| with heat recovery ventilation. Of course, this does mean you
| can only have big Georgian style windows on south(ish) facing
| facades.
| prewett wrote:
| > the hallowed automobile temple, like a phylactery to the
| Saints of petroleum refinery
|
| Ha, I'd say this is a completely mixed metaphor, except it is
| a simile... Phylacteries are used by Jewish men, and contain
| verses of the Torah inside, which are worn on the head and
| the arm (following a literal interpretation of "bind these
| words to your forehead and to your arms"). Jews do not have
| "saints", they have "tzadikim" (righteous ones). Christian
| saints, on the other hand, are either venerated with an ikon
| (an image of the saint) or through a relic (generally a bone
| of the saint) housed in a reliquary. Although a reliquary is
| way too small for a garage, so maybe a chapel which houses
| the reliquary. A "shrine" may also house a reliquary, I'm not
| sure, I tend to think of "shrine" as being to a non-
| monotheistic god. Generally Christian houses of worship are
| not "temples", except for some Pentecostally churches in the
| 1960s, and Jews only have a "Temple", which would be in
| Jerusalem if there were one.
|
| "like a shrine to the petroleum industry" would be
| crabmusket wrote:
| I went through a phase as an avid armchair architect, as someone
| who really appreciates and enjoys the built environment. But
| discussion of style, like this post, misses what I think is the
| most important thing: that a building serves well the needs of
| the people who inhabit it.
|
| Because this can only really be discussed in reference to
| specific buildings and the experiences of the specific people who
| use them, it isn't easy to write about on a blog.
|
| This becomes a question of power. Who is paying for the
| buildings, and for what purpose? What incentives do the payers
| have, and are they aligned with the users? And these questions,
| again, are best asked of specific places, projects and
| jurisdictions.
|
| And then you go beyond and think about town planning, read Jane
| Jacobs, and then Christopher Alexander convinces you that good
| architecture is only possible in an anarchist utopia.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Interesting overview of architectural design history but it
| doesn't mention the most important modern architectural design
| trend: ecologically integrated architecture that's built with
| resilience to stresses (fire, drought, flood) and which has
| energy-efficiency baked in from the beginning.
|
| For example, termite mounds offer many lessons for human
| architects who want to minimize air conditioning costs:
|
| https://www.newswise.com/articles/termite-mounds-inspire-ene...
|
| Here's another example of this style:
|
| https://amazingarchitecture.com/mixed-use-buildings/ko-bogen...
| hexman wrote:
| Asked GTP4-32k to make an article summary of 10 important points.
|
| And then applied the summary to the software architecture
|
| ---
|
| Public and Shared Nature of Software Architecture: Just like
| physical architecture, software architecture is inherently public
| and collaborative. A well-designed software system should be
| intuitive and user-friendly as it is used and experienced by a
| broad range of people.
|
| Traditionalist vs. Modernist Debate: In software architecture,
| the debate between traditional monolithic systems and modern
| microservices architectures echoes the debate in physical
| architecture. This leaves some developers ideologically homeless
| as they see the benefits of both approaches.
|
| Misleading Term of 'Traditionalism': The term 'traditionalism'
| can be misleading. In the context of software, it might suggest
| sticking to older technologies or methods, even though modern
| approaches have become traditions in themselves, with their own
| pioneers and best practices.
|
| 'Goodism' and the Value of Good Software Architecture: The
| concept of 'goodism', favoring good works over bad ones, applies
| to software architecture. However, the sheer quality of the work
| is not all that matters; considerations such as scalability,
| maintainability, and usability are also crucial.
|
| Easy vs. Challenging Architectures: Easy software architectures
| are those that can be understood and utilized without much
| effort, whereas challenging architectures require significant
| work to comprehend and navigate. This distinction is orthogonal
| to the good/bad dichotomy.
|
| Rise of Complexity in High-Status Software: Just as there's been
| a rise in difficulty in high-status arts, software systems have
| become increasingly complex, with architectures like
| microservices and event-driven architectures challenging to
| comprehend and implement effectively.
|
| Software Architecture as a Background Art: Software architecture
| often serves as a 'background art' to the user's primary task.
| Therefore, it should be designed in a way that enhances user
| experience without unnecessary complexity.
|
| What Makes an Easy Software Architecture?: An 'easy' software
| architecture is one that is intuitive, scalable, and
| maintainable, with clear documentation and well-defined
| interfaces for interaction. It involves a combination of
| architectural patterns, use of appropriate technologies, and
| following best practices.
|
| The Role of Simplicity in Software Architecture: Similar to the
| concept of 'tonality' in architecture, 'simplicity' plays a
| crucial role in software architecture. The software system should
| be as simple as possible to meet its requirements, enhancing
| usability and maintainability.
|
| Flexibility in Choosing Software Architectural Styles: There's no
| strict need to choose between traditional monolithic
| architectures or modern microservices. There are many strands of
| modern software architectures that are accessible, and there's no
| general reason why we have to stick to old styles or always adopt
| new ones.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Cities do not "struggle perennially against decline". Cities grow
| and grow and grow.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _Cities do not "struggle perennially against decline". Cities
| grow and grow and grow._
|
| Tell that to Detroit.
|
| Have you ever seen pictures of 1970s New York?
|
| * https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/07/america-in-
| the-197...
|
| * https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/new-york-
| photos-1970s-verga...
| TheFuzzball wrote:
| Dear lord this blog is tasteful. Beautiful prose and typography.
| I actually read the whole thing!
| cryptonector wrote:
| > Unlike nearly all other arts, architecture is inherently public
| and shared. That means that buildings should be designed to be
| agreeable - easy to like - not to be unpopular works of genius.
|
| Why write this garbage?
|
| Architecture is to please those who pay for it. The end.
|
| There's ugly buildings out there, but as long as someone wanted
| that, who am I to say that they shouldn't have built it? As long
| as it isn't the government paying for it, I shouldn't get a say.
| But if it is the government paying for it -one I pay taxes to
| anyways- then I do get a say.
| alsaffar wrote:
| Where I'm from (Kuwait) we don't have any building code that
| defines or limits what can be done with a home or building's
| facade and to be honest the clash of tastes is really visible
| and bothersome to see even when walking in my own neighborhood.
| However, this summer I travelled to Oman where such a code
| exists to limit out of place color palettes and facade shapes,
| so the houses are actually beautiful to look at with the
| mountain range in the background. Even those buildings near the
| coast have a separate set of codes and the place is certainly
| appealing to see and walk through.
|
| Of course, sometimes there is a need for iconic structures and
| buildings, and there is a place for that, but I believe it is a
| matter of delicate balance and therefore should be codified as
| to not ruin the horizon. And thats why I kind of agree with the
| quoted statement.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| My old boss said buildings are like baking. We need 95% bread and
| 5% cake. Problem with architects is they want to make cake almost
| every time.
|
| I really think we are heading in the right direction with this
| stuff though. There are more and more good contextual buildings
| and we are refining our ideas on good design as a society. It is
| a very different world to most of the 20th C when building
| technologies, city functions and society at large were advancing
| so fast it was hard to understand what to aim for.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| We needed 95% bread in the 20th century. As society evolves and
| income rises, we want to consume better quality food. Not cake,
| though.
|
| I think it's the same with architecture.
|
| For example: artificial lighting at night can be detrimental to
| human sleep.
|
| How come our houses aren't thought to account for that? We
| should have dimm yellow lighting below the eyes to avoid
| messing up with melatonin, for instance.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Hummus. The futures market is in Hummus.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Buildings have purposes and limitations. They can fail by not
| accomplishing their purpose sufficiently or by being limited
| in a way that defeats their purpose.
|
| Limitations are economic, legal, or physical. Two of those
| can be bent or changed.
|
| You can work around many problems with enough effort and
| money. For example, if you have a bedroom, you can buy
| lightproof curtains to block the windows (but this impedes
| airflow). You can turn off overhead lights and buy lights
| that go in the places and colors that you want. These are
| relatively easy and cheap compared to rebuilding.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| We're discussing architecture, which comes before building.
|
| Most architects are concerned with the basics, which you
| mentioned. This is the bread.
|
| What I'm saying is: society is evolving and an increasing
| portion of the population, especially in rich countries,
| would appreciate architectures that go beyond that to
| consider the quality of life in more refined and well-
| thought ways.
| foobiekr wrote:
| The main problem with architecture metaphors for software is
| that software people think buildings and other construction
| projects are far, far, far more static than they actually are,
| so software people think they have a unique problem.
|
| As an example, someone saying "but you don't change
| buildings|bridges|towers|dams|... once they're built" is almost
| inevitable when you start comparing the discipline of
| architecture and infrastructure to software.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > "but you don't change buildings|bridges|towers|dams|...
| once they're built"
|
| Anyone who's played Factorio for any (un)reasonable length of
| time knows the folly of this assumption. At best, a player
| did a lot of planning to avoid this specific problem.
| officialchicken wrote:
| Without opening the can-of-worms that is anticontextual
| architecture, you never have the budget to make cake. I had 1
| building in 10+ years - and it was a pool house, an ancillary
| structure.
| itronitron wrote:
| To reinforce that notion, bread is not usually flat on top but
| cake almost always is.
| swader999 wrote:
| Not to criticise parent, but I think the building and
| construction metaphor doesn't apply to software. The
| construction happens in the compiler and the interpreter, it's
| a afterthought, you get it for free. What we do is design,
| sometimes iterative design. Need a different metaphor.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| I think that Christopher Alexander (the architect that coined the
| term 'Design Patterns' which the software industry adopted)
| solved this issue half a century ago. Buildings used to have a
| 'pattern language' that made sense in the cultural context and
| with the technology available of the place where it was built.
| But in modernism, we developed a machine like approach to
| building and there was a battle to strip buildings of ALL
| tradition in order to make way for efficiency, mostly in
| construction costs. However, many of these inefficiencies in what
| Christopher Alexander calls 'living' architecture, had developed
| through generations of knowledge passed down from skilled
| laborers, and we severed that tie in the last century. To fix
| this, we have to reignite the focus on craft by the people
| designing and building, and to adopt the learnings of traditions,
| which Alexander spent a lifetime documenting. We already have the
| answers, and while not perfect, it certainly is at least a much
| better starting point than every building being a complete blank
| canvas for an artist to paint based solely on their imagination,
| and judged on how new it is.
|
| Design school claims to have moved past the 1930s mentality, but
| in my experience, it was mostly about proving to each other who
| is the smartest person in the room rather than how the
| architecture produced encourages life.
| gatinsama wrote:
| I wish they at least made it easy on the eyes
| [deleted]
| ArchitectAnon wrote:
| A lot of this analysis is purely about style, not substance. It's
| a discussion of what font the website uses, not whether it's
| useful and easy to navigate website. We should be evaluating
| buildings based on wether they are in the right place in the
| first place, wether it creates a walkable setting, wether you can
| find the front door easily, wether you can navigate around the
| building easily, wether they are energy efficient, wether they
| provide a healthy internal environment... etc. What decorations
| you stick on the outside are kind of the last thing to worry
| about. For example, the main problem with the brutalist building
| with the caption 'Some people like this building, some do not.
| But all must experience it' is scale, not style, if you chopped
| off the top five floors and left only three storeys, it would be
| much more acceptable in its setting. A lot of the problems with
| brutalist architecture are less to do with the style of materials
| and more a failure to address basic design issues like signalling
| 'where's the front door?'.
| mhink wrote:
| I get where you're coming from, but the article is very
| specifically _about_ the external design of buildings, and the
| impact that external design has on the area around it.
|
| You're not wrong that the internal design is important (and
| perhaps, in some cases, given less attention than it should
| fairly receive) but one of the points the article makes is that
| for any given building, only a very small people who experience
| that building will actually be interacting with it directly.
| Most people will experience it as a background to something
| else going on in their life:
|
| > Buildings' exteriors serve as backgrounds to a huge range of
| activities. In my view, this generates constraints on what we
| want them to look like. The streets of a city are places of
| work and play, of sickness and health, of triumph and grief. To
| all this, buildings owned by strangers form the involuntary
| backdrop, and for this reason, we often want them to be as we
| want strangers to be: polite, courteous, friendly and
| unintrusive.
|
| With this in mind, I don't think it's unreasonable to _also_
| evaluate buildings on the basis of how their facade contributes
| (or doesn 't contribute) to the general vibe of the area around
| it.
| presentation wrote:
| Another way, I live in Tokyo and 95% of buildings here are
| prefab and ugly. But it's a delightful city to be in
| nonetheless, because everything about them is functional in a
| way that creates a great atmosphere. I've come to value the
| physical prettiness of buildings less and their public function
| far more.
| fragmede wrote:
| That's a good attitude I'll have to adopt. In America, the
| 4-over-1 design, of 1, ground floor of commercial, with 4
| floors of residential above it, has become a very generic
| "downtown" look across the whole country. it's boring.
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