[HN Gopher] Give Us Something to Look At: Why ornament matters i...
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Give Us Something to Look At: Why ornament matters in architecture
Author : prismatic
Score : 175 points
Date : 2024-01-02 22:38 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theamericanscholar.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (theamericanscholar.org)
| lqet wrote:
| There is an important and very profane aspect of ornament on
| buildings which isn't mentioned in the article: it hides dirt
| incredibly well.
|
| Just compare these dirty 19th century facades with a dirty facade
| of a house from the 70ies:
|
| https://photographierer.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DSC_23...
|
| https://schall-fassadenreinigung.de/wp-content/themes/yoothe...
|
| The latter looks absolutely filthy, while the former, although
| uncleaned for 150 years, still look nice.
|
| I do not buy the efficiency argument given by Adolf Loos at all.
| What you gain in labor time by removing ornamentation, you will
| loose in renovation work and (urban) living quality.
| stdbrouw wrote:
| Ironically, we're also losing a lot of efficiency because
| cities are demanding setbacks, bumps, differences in height
| etc. for bigger buildings to avoid ending up with drab
| rectangular blocks, but that leads to more heat loss due to
| more surface exposed to the environment, higher use of
| materials and a higher risk of water ingress because there's a
| ton of weak points where different surfaces connect. (It also
| just doesn't look very good.)
|
| Ornament might be an alternative: just make massed buildings
| look nice instead of demanding that they are broken up into a
| bunch of lego blocks.
|
| A good thread by Alfred Twu here:
| https://twitter.com/alfred_twu/status/1715230266531475702
|
| I also wonder if the trend away from ornament has something to
| do with the trend towards fancier materials and bolder colors
| -- wasserstrich bricks, wood facades, decorative plasters in
| bathrooms, highly polished pigmented concrete floors, aluminium
| window frames in unusual colors, etc. People need their
| interestingness fix :-)
| pif wrote:
| > that leads to more heat loss
|
| With global warming, that is becoming more and more an
| advantage, rather than a defect!
| zilti wrote:
| Not at all. It leads to energy waste in winter.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| No, the inverse is also true, more exposed surface leads to
| more heat gain in summer
| j-bos wrote:
| Ah, but heating a building is much more expensive than
| cooling
| bluGill wrote:
| Either way it doesn't matter: buildings are going to be
| either heated or cooled nearly ever day. Some seasons you
| heat them, some you cool them, but rarely is the ambient
| temperature close enough to rely on passive systems for
| comfort. Of course local climate matters, some places
| never need any heating/cooling, some need is only some
| days. Humans have started to demand the building be more
| comfortable.
| paganel wrote:
| > A good thread by Alfred Twu here:
| https://twitter.com/alfred_twu/status/1715230266531475702
|
| And stalinist architecture gets called all sorts of names.
| This buiding [1] is located very close to where I live, an
| excellent example of very early 1950s stalinist architecture
| and also eerily similar to the "good" example from your
| linked tweet.
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@44.4527856,26.095487,3a,48.4
| y,3...
| stdbrouw wrote:
| Yeah, I think the building you show is a pretty good
| example of what Twu would like to see: one big mass, made
| pretty with consoles, balconies and cornices. You can do a
| more modern style too, though. I especially like Persian-
| inspired modern brickwork [1] [2].
|
| What do you consider to be the defining features of
| Stalinist architecture though? The Wikipedia page portrays
| it as more or less "whatever happened to be built during
| Stalin's reign, whatever the style".
|
| [1] https://www.yankodesign.com/2021/12/28/creative-brick-
| design...
|
| [2] https://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/10/kahrizak-residential-
| housi...
| paganel wrote:
| > What do you consider to be the defining features of
| Stalinist architecture though
|
| It's complicated because it has rarely been studied in an
| ideological-free manner (or not that I know of), so I'm
| basing my judgements mostly on what I've seen built
| around me from that era and by reading a couple of local
| architecture magazines back from those days, magazines
| that were actively putting forward said "stalinist"
| style.
|
| I'd say that this definition: "whatever happened to be
| built during Stalin's reign, whatever the style" is
| generally correct, with a small correction when it comes
| to the "whatever the style" part, as in it looks to me
| that there was some consistency in said style going from
| the mid-to-late 1930s to Stalin's death (in 1953), so
| that "whatever" part is a little forced.
|
| As per said style itself I don't know how best to define
| it, mostly neo-classical with intense tints of
| grandiloquence, for example this building from Bucharest,
| _Casa Scanteii_ [1], is a very good example of that style
| (said building is a "scaled-down" replica of the Main
| building of the Moscow State University [2]).
|
| A good starting point could be this wikipedia page of a
| "stalinist" architect named Alexey Shchusev, the style
| that I'm talking about can be seen in his works going
| from about ~1935 to his death, so I wouldn't include the
| Constructivist period (which was in place throughout the
| '20s) as part of Stalinist architecture proper, but maybe
| that's just me. For those that know Romanian there's a
| recently published book about Shchusev called _Alexey
| Shchusev, An Architect of the Imperial Russian Style_
| [4], and by the same author I now see that there 's a
| more general book on Stalinist architecture called _Die
| Architektur Stalins_ [5], this one in German.
|
| Leter edit: There's also an English version of that book
| on Shchusev: _Alexey Shchusev: Architect of Stalin 's
| Empire Style_ [6]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_the_Free_Press
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_building_of_Moscow
| _State_...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Shchusev
|
| [4] https://cartier.ro/libraria/arta/alexei-sciusev-un-
| arhitect-...
|
| [5] https://www.amazon.de/Die-Architektur-Stalins-Bd-
| Bilddokumen...
|
| [6] https://ribabooks.com/Alexey-Shchusev-Architect-of-
| Stalins-E...
| vallode wrote:
| A part of me thinks that our weariness of spending "more" on
| architecture and beauty in cities is the same kind of weird
| frugality people experience with day to day goods.
|
| My grandparents will endlessly complain about the lack of good
| quality products on the market (knives, power tools, clothing)
| but at the same time refuse to engage in locally-made albeit
| more expensive merchants.
|
| Making buildings pretty may cost more (although, from my own
| understanding sourcing local tradespeople and using local
| materials ends up significantly cheaper over time) but the ROI
| is significantly better, both culturally and financially
| (pretty buildings age better, they become more appreciated over
| time in both financial and cultural value).
|
| So is it the same with house goods? Are we just unwilling to
| accept that knives haven't got worse, it's just that we have
| mass-produced medium-quality low opportunity cost products that
| we can keep chucking out the window and complaining about? I
| rambled on, I totally agree that the efficiency of good/pretty
| architecture is completely understated.
| aargh_aargh wrote:
| That's why in economy you vote with your wallet, not your
| mouth. AKA talk is cheap, show me the dough...
| nativeit wrote:
| This only works in pure free markets, which generally do
| not exist.
| aargh_aargh wrote:
| What are you arguing? What's unfree about the section of
| the knives market relevant to the example? The government
| isn't forcing/incentivizing them to buy the cheaper
| products. Economic considerations are.
| MatekCopatek wrote:
| The average consumer lacks the knowledge and skill to
| objectively assess the quality of a knife, the seller is
| aware of that and manipulates them through advertising.
|
| Is a democratic election free if everyone voted freely,
| but was under the influence of widespread propaganda?
| aargh_aargh wrote:
| If they weren't able to objectively assess the quality,
| they surely wouldn't be complaining, would they? But you
| mean pre-sale assessment, and that's again not an issue
| of skill because this is a repeat game. They are well
| aware by now that they're being manipulated but still
| price wins over quality.
|
| I'm not going to argue the political metaphor because I
| feel the parallels there are too far apart to be a useful
| comparison.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| This is predicated on viable options being present and
| available to consumers. In a _lot_ of cases, for a lot of
| products, the options offered are a curated selection by
| the dominant forces, packaged up to appear different, but
| offering fundamentally very little actual difference.
|
| In this scenario, you can not "vote with your wallet".
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's definitely true. Just as China has a reputation for
| making cheap goods, when China will make goods to whatever
| quality is paid for, up to and including world class
| craftsmanship. It's just the shop you bought it from wanted
| to sell at a lower price, so they paid for the cheap option.
| kombookcha wrote:
| Ironically, with the way production scales, if more people
| were willing/able to go for the high quality products,
| they'd probably wind up being somewhat cheaper than they
| are now.
|
| Different case when we are talking deliberately exclusive
| luxury products, but for general purpose items like "a
| really good quality knife" we absolutely could be turning
| them out in vast numbers.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Ironically, with the way production scales, if more
| people were willing/able to go for the high quality
| products, they'd probably wind up being somewhat cheaper
| than they are now.
|
| Absolutely.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I think that has happened to some extent. Compare a 2008
| smartphone to a 2023 one at like price point (or even
| cheaper); the 2008 one is a pretty fragile flimsy thing
| by comparison, generally (likely not even water
| resistant). Of course, smartphones benefited from
| _massive_ scale.
| pif wrote:
| > the shop you bought it from wanted to sell at a lower
| price
|
| Actually, it's a bit different: the shop you bought it from
| _knew you only seek for_ a lower price.
| MatekCopatek wrote:
| Your grandparents' complaining isn't entirely pointless -
| sure, you can get a quality product from local merchants, but
| the price is disproportionately higher.
|
| The thing they're actually missing is a mass-produced product
| that brings the cost down because of scale but at the same
| time is still designed with quality in mind. It's not that
| the best available knives got worse, the average $50 ones
| did.
|
| It works for buildings too - whatever is the currently
| popular architectural style is typically what's is easiest to
| get. If everyone is getting pretty buildings, we can all get
| them without having to spend (much) more money.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| In both cases, there is often a lack of genuine
| quality/value over the cheaper options anymore, too. Many
| higher priced tools and architectural options are now the
| cheap stuff with a better grade of finish and a higher
| price tag.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| I built a campervan in between jobs and I take pride in
| bragging about the quality of my build design, especially
| because I installed much higher quality materials and
| systems for around 1/3 the cost of a manufactured RV.
|
| For example, all rough wood framing is solid wood, all
| cabinetry is built from solid baltic birch plywood (zero
| OSB, zero MDF), stainless steel fasteners throughout,
| multiple layers of rigid insulation for through-winter
| occupancy, all cushions made with 1000d cordura, plumbed
| with PEX with Flair-it fittings, propane heat system,
| solar,etc.
|
| My van is much lighter than RVs as a result, I don't need
| tandem wheels as most van RV builds do.
|
| The most luxury of luxuriest RVs can't duplicate that.
| The overhead of hired labor and the coalescing of "we
| just do it this way" thinking among the RV trade results
| in a poor typical product.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| A pretty building gives me ~0 ROI.
|
| Spending an extra 1 million on marketing gives me a far
| better ROI.
|
| These are basically 0 sum, you want a dishwasher or a pretty
| overhang?
|
| Idk your comment irks me like a populist demagogue saying
| everyone can have free free free.
| davemp wrote:
| > A pretty building gives me ~0 ROI. > > Spending an extra
| 1 million on marketing gives me a far better ROI.
|
| In many cases a pretty building can be marketing. There are
| also many intangible effects such as the moral of people
| who work in said building.
|
| Also like OP said pretty buildings are often cheaper over
| long term because people don't want to tear them down as
| often.
|
| Just because it's harder to calculate/measure ROI doesn't
| make it non-existent.
|
| > These are basically 0 sum, you want a dishwasher or a
| pretty overhang?
|
| No one is suggesting to forgo basic amenities for
| ornamentation?
| Daishiman wrote:
| People travel to cities with pretty buildings and abhor the
| ones with horrible buildings and that has a massive ROI.
| anon291 wrote:
| I want a building with the pretty overhang. A dishwasher is
| $600 on Amazon. A pretty overhang on an existing building
| is priceless... you can't add it after-market. It always
| looks strange
|
| My 1920s house has no dishwasher, but is pretty. I added a
| dishwasher for a few hundred dollars. When I redid the
| molding in our house (took it all off, repainted, repaired,
| and put it back on), I took my mouldings to the wood store
| just for fun to see how much it would cost. The dishwasher
| was cheaper. Not even because it's that great moulding, but
| because they just don't make it like that anymore.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| It could be the result of people spending less time in public
| spaces - people often just go outside, drive a car to
| somewhere, get inside. So they care less about public spaces
| being pleasant.
| chadash wrote:
| _> My grandparents will endlessly complain about the lack of
| good quality products on the market (knives, power tools,
| clothing) but at the same time refuse to engage in locally-
| made albeit more expensive merchants._
|
| Not to say that they don't have valid complaints, but some of
| this is definitely selection bias. People don't complain
| about the things that have gotten better. For example, today,
| it's not rare for a car to last 10 years without serious
| issues. There are a bunch of car owners who have driven cars
| to 1 million+ miles and these aren't some specialty car, but
| rather the run-of-the-mill cars coming off of factory lines.
|
| There's lots of good knives out there at price points that
| many people can afford. I personally own a Global 3 knife set
| (chef, paring, utility) that meets 99% of my cutting needs
| and cost $130. I've had them for 9 years and I expect them to
| last at least another 10 years. $130 is expensive, but not
| over a 20-30 year period. Same thing with my pots and pans
| (all-clad) which I expect to last me another 20-30 years, if
| not the rest of my life.
|
| My iPhone is 3 years old. It has been dropped more times than
| I can count, but still looks new. The glass on it is simply
| better quality than what existed before. No, it won't last a
| lifetime, but it will last an acceptable amount of time for
| something that gets as much use as it does.
|
| And with the internet, quality goods are more accessible than
| ever. With a few clicks, I have buy pens and paper from
| Japan, cooking-ware from France and Panama hats from Cuenca,
| even if I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
|
| That said, my biggest complaint is with appliances. Good
| appliances exist (e.g. Miele, Speed Queen), but in general,
| there's little correlation between price and quality. You can
| buy an LG fridge for $1500 or for $4500, but they use the
| same crappy compressor, so the more expensive one won't last
| any longer (and in fact will probably break _sooner_ because
| it has more features on it that can break).
| randcraw wrote:
| The market for heirloom quality products has always been
| tiny, and ever will be. But the availability of "good
| enough" products has never been better than it is today.
| You just have to put in more effort to find them since 95%
| of advice found online is shill.
|
| The reason it's increasingly hard to find "good enough" in
| today's retail marketplace because 90% of us emphasize cost
| and convenience over fine design or workmanship. In past
| decades, if you wanted a solid product, you shopped at a
| bricks retailer you knew well (Sears, Macy's, Land's End)
| and you trusted their buyers to stock only good stuff. But
| today 90% of us shop online at retailers who stock mostly
| cheap disposable products because they're half the cost of
| "good enough" (and 1/10 the cost of heirloom), and because
| they can be delivered to to our door quickly and
| effortlessly. That's where double sigma (97%) of the
| supplier bell curve now. Unsurprisingly it takes a lot more
| effort for us to unearth the 3% that isn't ephemera, given
| we have to do the digging without retailers we trust.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > My grandparents will endlessly complain about the lack of
| good quality products on the market (knives, power tools,
| clothing) but at the same time refuse to engage in locally-
| made albeit more expensive merchants.
|
| The core of that problem is that this is a self-reinforcing
| destructive loop, and it's not just for tools but for
| everything these days. Cheap imports, especially from China,
| grabbed the masses that were just interested in price, and
| large chain stores grabbed the masses that didn't want to
| spend hours driving around small specialist stores. The
| remaining people were not enough to support the few stores
| that did still sell quality products, so they closed down, so
| even more people went for cheap large-chain stuff because
| they couldn't expect that they'd be able to find what they
| need reliably at a small, local store. A lot of formerly
| popular brands (here in Germany, most infamously AEG,
| Telefunken and Grundig) ended up going bankrupt and now also
| sell relabeled cheap Chinese stuff.
|
| And now, the revolution is eating its children, as the deluge
| of scam products and dropshippers on Amazon shows.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Unless it was in a city with implausibly clean air, that 19th
| century one has probably been cleaned at least once (at great
| expense, probably). Otherwise, it'd be practically black. And
| cleaning these things is _expensive_, and takes ages. IIRC
| doing one smallish (but highly ornamented) 19th century
| building in my university took about a year. By contrast, the
| house could be cleaned up in a few days. Modern buildings, clad
| in, essentially, plastic (or just having all-glass surfaces),
| even easier, of course.
| __alexs wrote:
| The 19th C one needs meticulous cleaning by professionals. The
| 70s one needs a coat of paint from your local DIY store.
| yterdy wrote:
| The first style doesn't become dirtier, it just gets an ambient
| occlusion map applied to it.
| usrusr wrote:
| My personal "founder fantasy" (not a founder type at all) for
| the last ten years or so has been a renderer/plugin for
| architecture visualisation that simulates weathering. For
| exactly the reasons you state. If you want a building to still
| look good after the honeymoon phase is over, you have to
| consider how it will look after a few years of realistic
| maintenance. If an architect talks about sustainability (and
| they all seem to do, these days), unless they can show evidence
| of having considered aesthetics after two decades of minimum
| maintenance it's all just babble.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Interesting how few windows there are on the bottom of this
| building, I wonder if it's related to how pedestrian unfriendly
| streets in the US are?
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Are you, like me, confusing the main picture illustrating the
| article (which is the Harold Washington Library in Chicago)
| with the building the author talks about (which is the Board of
| Education Building in Philadelphia)? Because the Board of
| Education Building seems to have an adequate number of windows
| [1]. The Chicago Library does have few windows, but I'd
| attribute that to its purpose (the lower floor contains an
| auditorium, multi-purpose room, and exhibit hall) [2].
|
| [1]
| https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/im_display.cfm...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Washington_Library
| 878654Tom wrote:
| The current trend in Belgium is to build houses like cubes and
| drap a variation of white plaster on it [1]. While this looks
| great the first couple of years, the outside gets dirty and not a
| lot of people pay for it to get cleaned/repainted.
|
| The houses are also always... the same. The variations in it are
| where the rectangle windows are and the length / width / height.
| But that is it.
|
| I predict that in 20-30 years these houses will be seen as one of
| the ugly architectural trends of my time.
|
| While houses that were built a century or even more ago (and that
| still stand) are lush with these ornaments and still retain a
| sort of beauty. [2]
|
| I've lived in one of these type of houses and while they have
| some impracticalities because they have been built in a different
| century the outside stays a thing of beauty and you could guide
| people to your house purely because of how it looks.
|
| Currently my wife and I are looking to build a new house and one
| of the requirements that we have for our architect is to build it
| with small details on the outside and a bit more classical than
| the current trend is.
|
| [1] https://sibomat.be/media/f0xf52fy/moderne-bouwstijl-
| realisat...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oude_Markt#/media/File:Old_mar...
| stdbrouw wrote:
| I feel we should bring back Georgian architecture [1]: on the
| one hand it is quite plain and so it fits well with modern
| sensibilities (and modern budgets that don't allow for a lot of
| faff, and the lack of skilled labor), but because of its strong
| emphasis on symmetry and a modest amount of ornament on doors,
| windows and railings, it looks vastly better than the lime
| rendered boxes of today. It also looks great with flat roofs,
| and flat roofs are here to stay -- why bother with nice roof
| tiles when you have to cover them with solar panels anyway.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_architecture
| rsynnott wrote:
| I live in a city that has a bunch of it; in practice, it's
| incredibly impractical, and the few modern attempts to
| imitate it while providing an actually usable building tend
| to end up looking absurd.
|
| Examples: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-
| and-property... - Fake Georgian townhouses. You're still left
| with a four storey house, which isn't super-practical, and
| they look ridiculous.
|
| https://www.pjhegarty.ie/projects/esb-head-office/ -
| Replacing a distinctly un-Georgian Brutalist thing which
| itself replaced a row of Georgian houses back in the day.
| Again, looks silly, but if they'd played it completely
| straight they'd be left with a pretty impractical office
| building.
| stdbrouw wrote:
| At first glance, these look nice to me? Perhaps they look
| silly up close. I'm not sure what you mean by impractical
| though, I don't consider tall and narrow to be essential to
| the style, though many of the 18th and 19th century
| townhouses in the style surely were.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Why is a 4 storey house impractical? And the only thing
| that looks ridiculous to my eye is the top floor which, for
| some reason, abandons the classical look and slaps some
| hideous modern handrails and flashing on top.
| pmontra wrote:
| It's 4 floors per family. An elevator or do a lot of
| stairs everyday. In both cases more time to move around
| than an equivalent 1 or 2 floors house. But if they do
| the stairs it keeps them fit.
| ethanbond wrote:
| My parents have a 3-floor townhouse and it's far, far
| more practical than the goofy sprawling "open floorplan"
| designs. Plus not having neighbors above/below you is a
| great tradeoff. I don't think this is as impractical as
| it would appear to someone not living in one (that's been
| my experience at least).
| derriz wrote:
| Not sure what's impractical about a four story building?
| Without lifts/elevators, four stories hits the sweet spot
| in terms of density vs accessibility.
|
| Of course, if you consider any building older than 100
| years to be "impractical", then maybe living in the
| historic centre of a city isn't for you? There are plenty
| of modern (and soulless) places to live in the more modern
| fringes of the city.
|
| And I disagree - the new ESB headquarters on Fitzwilliam St
| doesn't look "silly" at all - it actually looks very well
| to my eye from the street. Unfortunately
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/NL2qtasuMNM89Nqg8 doesn't have
| enough detail to show it but certainly the materials and
| brickwork is of a high quality. It doesn't aim to be
| pastiche or fake as you call it, but it does respect the
| materials and elevation of the historic streetscape.
| nemo44x wrote:
| You can get a new home built in Georgian Revival style but
| it's going to be expensive. Home builders rely on easy to
| source, mass produced, standard parts. In my experience the
| cost goes way up. For instance, a truss can't be used for the
| roof and windows are custom, etc. and there's going to be a
| lot of windows.
|
| It's why many homes today are built off existing models. But
| you see it in higher-end homes.
|
| Now, of course the required parts could become mass produced
| if there were the demand. And I agree it's a simpler and
| beautiful style. But you can't put a flat roof on them.
| stdbrouw wrote:
| I dunno, I'm not a stickler for details. For example, I
| know that windows with many small panes ("muntins") are not
| cost-effective today and partially defeat the benefits of
| double and triple glazing, and the alternatives (fake bars
| that are glued on or between the glass) look shockingly
| bad... but any kind of partition at all (casement, fixed
| pane + tilt-turn pane, etc.) already adds visual interest
| and does not look out of place, as e.g. is evident in this
| photo of Georgian architecture with windows that I'm
| guessing are not historically accurate: https://upload.wiki
| media.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Baggot_S...
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think some of the higher-end window grills (a "stuck on
| the outside muntin" for a short-hand description) look
| fine from any distance that they're typically seen.
|
| https://aw930cdnprdcd.azureedge.net/-/media/andersenwindo
| ws/... (There's some chance that those are even internal,
| which are longer lasting/easier to clean, but much less
| convincing owing to having all the wrong shadow lines.)
| nemo44x wrote:
| Having a higher end window where the mutton/grill is
| dominated on both sides is best imo. It looks awful from
| the outside when it's an interior stick-on as there's no
| dimension and line you mentioned lack of shadow lines.
| You generally have to go to the higher end though, like a
| Marvin Ultimate. 30 of those on a house, installed, just
| set you back $60k+. But they look great.
| pmontra wrote:
| I had windows like those. The glued cross shaped frame
| was not actually glued and it was on both sides. It
| looked beautiful but it was a nightmare to clean. Four
| small glasses instead of a large one. It was wood, single
| layer glass. I replaced them with something that reduced
| the heat flow.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yeah you can get simulated divided lights (SDL) on a
| modern window. I guess I am a bit of a stickler for these
| things, heh.
|
| I can see a modern Georgian type thing though. Definitely
| nicer than so much of the garbage being built today.
| anon291 wrote:
| My home has muntins, and I have to say they are
| _incredibly_ convenient. If a ball goes through a window
| or something, it 's extremely easy to replace; and very
| cheap. Highly recommend.
|
| As for glazing... I'm not 100% sure. I've heard there are
| ways to get glass panes that are better insulated. My
| other guess is that, had muntins continued to be popular,
| the market would have found something. There's nothing
| inherently inefficient about them.
|
| For example, one option a local window company gave to me
| was to simple add some plastic covering on the inside of
| the window. It would not reduce the outward appearance at
| all, but would provide some insulation. As it is, our
| house is quite efficient and we don't actually have any
| insulation. The way they used to build houses (not open
| floor plan, multiple stories, etc) actually make them
| more pleasant to live in, in my opinion. Our only issue
| was that, when adding AC, the original forced air venting
| leads to a noticeable temperature differential due to the
| lack of an intake on the second floor, but we'll be
| fixing this soon. Plus, ceiling fans have basically
| eliminated the worst of the problem.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Nowadays the window that was broken would just be
| replaced. Luckily they pop out easily!
|
| For your old windows (I have many still, mainly in the
| front) I recommend ensuring you have good weather
| stripping and that you have storm windows installed. That
| helps a lot. Mine are double hung sashes though so the
| pulley boxes are massive leaks but nothing I can do about
| that.
|
| I guess I could just seal the windows shut and put
| insulation in the pulley boxes but they are still
| functional even though we rarely open them.
| yterdy wrote:
| Why stop there? Institute Georgism while you're at it, so
| that people can actually afford houses again. Go "Full
| George".
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That house looks like modern Australian architecture too.
| Gare wrote:
| Also like modern Croatian architecture. They're even
| repainting older buildings in white with black details.
| Blergh.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| Yeah architecture in this country is real bottom of the
| barrel stuff, bar a few specific buildings (the new UTS and
| Central Park buildings in Sydney come to mind).
|
| Our residential house design is even worse, they're uniformay
| the most bland, cookie-cutter-McMansion-trash that's built in
| a way that's almost actively hostile to its environmental
| conditions.
| ethanbond wrote:
| It looks like _everywhere_ modern architecture, that 's the
| problem. There is no real culture behind it, only the insular
| culture of professional architects seeking out approval from
| other professional architects. There is no locality to it, no
| local materials or methods.
|
| Christopher Alexander's dissertation, "Notes on the Synthesis
| of Form" lays out a very compelling sociological explanation
| of how this happens.
|
| TLDR: People initially create things (like houses) to solve
| local problems, usually _their own_ problems, with the
| materials and methods they have locally available. As the
| craft develops, its practitioners start to compete directly
| with each other and the craft becomes "self-conscious." This
| competition finds increasingly esoteric "dimensions" to
| compete on, at the expense of solving the real-world problems
| the craft initially set out to solve. So consider e.g. early
| designers of chairs. They were looking for good places to sit
| that looked nice in their homes. Now, if you want acclaim as
| a chair designer, you have to design the most garish, over-
| the-top, wildly uncomfortable "chair" (sculpture) that you
| can.
| paganel wrote:
| Regarding [1], I cannot understand for the life of me how come
| people located in places where it rains comparatively a lot
| (which is the case of Belgium) choose that solution with flat
| roofs for their individual houses, it doesn't make any
| utilitarian sense, you're just inviting rain water into your
| house at one moment or another.
| stdbrouw wrote:
| I think it makes perfect sense. Modern EPDM or fiber-
| reinforced bitumen roofs are very unlikely to leak before
| it's time to replace or renovate them after 25 years or so.
| They provide ample space for solar panels and for a heat
| pump, all out of sight. No need for gutters. They are easier
| to insulate. You don't end up with a bunch of barely usable
| attic space you don't need (even worse if we're talking about
| a hip roof instead of a gable roof.) It just takes a bit of
| effort to not make them look like a cheap cardboard box,
| whereas a house with a nice sloped roof has instant appeal.
| modo_mario wrote:
| There's no denying the practical elements however there are
| issues. For one:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045
| 6...
|
| >before it's time to replace or renovate them after 25
| years or so.
|
| And secondly that is short especially since the ceramic
| rooftiles that predated them could last 70.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| There is a _huge_ gulf for exploration between your [1] and
| [2]! I dare say good contemporary architects have and will be
| doing just that.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| I live in a British Georgian rendered building (think South
| Kensington London [1]).
|
| I find render is classic and beautiful but yes they are an
| ongoing maintenance issue to regularly repaint every decade or
| so and once the render has become damaged, rerendering the
| whole thing is eye-wateringly expensive. The main challenge is
| the right materials and expertise (lime render and porous
| mineral paint) which is expensive so people flipping a house
| will just bodge it with cement render and waterproof paints
| that will barely last a decade before it cracks, traps water,
| causes damp and starts coming way from the wall.
|
| (Note that exposed stone also weathers and requires replacement
| which can make render/paint maintenance look very cheap).
|
| A key part of the longevity of render is the design of other
| features e.g. you need correct channelling of water so it
| doesn't pour from roofs/windows down the render causing stains.
| This requires true skill and subtle architectural features like
| drip grooves carved under overhanging coping stones and subtle
| curves in the render itself (bell cast beading I think?). I am
| maddened by hokey designs that e.g. add a section of wooden
| facade above render which grossly stains the render below
| within months. It's just so careless and predictable. Any
| staining is a design fault that past experts knew how to avoid.
| There shouldn't be any "sources of colour" above render.
|
| One of the joys of render is that you can personalise it with
| your own colours [2] which will stain less easily than white
| (grey is quite trendy) or even go for full graphic design [3]
| (I can't recall if those specific buildings were rendered - we
| have a tradition of drawing stone lines onto render so that it
| resembles limestone construction).
|
| [1] https://images.mansionglobal.com/im-365825/social
|
| [2] https://offloadmedia.feverup.com/secretbristol.com/wp-
| conten...
|
| [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-57212364
| randomdata wrote:
| _> I predict that in 20-30 years these houses will be seen as
| one of the ugly architectural trends of my time._
|
| Isn't that always the case? I seem to recall that all
| architectural styles have been considered ugly 30-40 years
| after they were first in fashion. And then eventually they
| start to become appreciated.
| modo_mario wrote:
| History goes quite far back. The extremely rapid change of
| pace is quite recent. Architectural fast fashion if you will.
| Rather environmentally unfriendly i'd say since it allows for
| easy updating to modern specs that still almost never
| outmatches the carbon bomb that is the actual
| construction/materials.
| pmontra wrote:
| The house at [1] in the parent post could be a modern house in
| any country of the world. It just doesn't fit into the history
| of any of them.
| xdennis wrote:
| I like traditional houses very much, but there are two things
| you to consider: cost and regulations.
|
| When you pay a fortune for the land and building materials you
| can't really build something nice.
|
| When you have to comply with a million regulations, costs go
| even higher if you want an individualized house. If you keep it
| blocky and without decorations you can keep it affordable.
|
| You would never get permission to build the Parthenon because
| it's simply not energy efficient.
|
| Personally I think you should be able to build your own house
| without regulations, but not to sell it (i.e. you have to
| demolish it to sell the land). It's the perfect compromise
| between safety and freedom.
| leoedin wrote:
| I don't agree at all. The kinds of regulations that define
| how buildings are made are all pretty compatible with
| traditional building techniques. Obviously modern houses need
| to have insulation and air tightness, but that's not
| incompatible with block and timber construction used in old
| houses.
|
| The cost of complying with regulations when building a house
| isn't even particularly high. It's stuff like "use x
| thickness of insulation" and "design it with a protected fire
| escape route". It doesn't cost much at the design stage to
| take those into account. The dominating cost is materials and
| labour.
|
| What regulations stop people putting ornamentation on their
| house?
| trgn wrote:
| Belgian houses are exceptionally ugly. Very badly proportioned.
| Belgium has the most beautiful cities in the world, but what
| that really means is that all the attractive areas predate the
| 30s. Once outside, it's a shockingly ugly country. Architects
| cannot seem to balance anything, weirdly positioned windows
| everywhere (e.g. https://www.a2o-architecten.be/work/vaartkom,
| this is so typical of all the dreck I saw going up there). Sad
| to see you use Leuven as an example. When I lived there some
| decade ago, all new buildings going up were unfathomably ugly.
| The old core was perfection though.
|
| Kudos to Belgium to preserving its heritage so well, big thumbs
| down to being a black hole for architecture today.
| JR1427 wrote:
| The examples of unornamented buildings in the article are
| actually highly ornamented, but just more subtly.
|
| In the UK at least, many buildings have zero ornamentation, and
| are just plain brickwork, without even window ledges etc, and
| these look terrible to me.
| JR1427 wrote:
| Here is an example of the style I'm talking about
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Low-rise_flats,_Turv...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| After Glenfell I am happy to see a council house/tower whose
| facade hasn't been fucked with. In reckon a better solution
| is trees around it.
| JR1427 wrote:
| I lived near Grenfell, and tragically watched it burn from
| my flat.
|
| The facelift they gave it was awful, and I would personally
| not call it ornamentation.
|
| Lots of modern architecture seems to try and create the
| illusion/impression of ornamentation, without going to the
| trouble of actually ornamenting.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Personally, not a huge fan of the overly-ornamented stuff, but I
| do think that the current architectural trends are overly...
| generic. Case in point; Fitzwilton House, in Dublin, a Brutalist
| office block recently demolished and replaced with a modern one.
| The original was, well, a lot of people didn't like it, but it
| was utterly unique. The replacement is a completely generic glass
| thing, almost indistinguishable from the next one down the canal,
| or literally thousands of others worldwide.
|
| Before and after shots:
| https://www.archiseek.com/2016/permission-demolish-fitzwilto...
|
| Pictures don't really do justice to just how startling the thing
| looked; it was completely unignoreable. Now, from a practical
| point of view, it probably needed replacing; it was a pretty
| inefficient use of land, if nothing else. But they could at least
| have replaced it with something interesting.
|
| (Fun fact: it used to contain the Australian embassy, amongst
| other things, which always felt vaguely inappropriate; Australia
| just doesn't have the appropriate sinister vibes for such a
| building.)
| tpm wrote:
| Yeah looking at the pictures I am slightly dissapointed. For
| comparison, I am looking from my window at this (Slovak
| National Archive):
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/80942841@N08/8352212537/in/pho...
| troupo wrote:
| The main problem I see is that modern architecture robs cities
| and countries of their character.
|
| Yet another soulless amalgamation of concrete and glass (that
| invariably wins prestigious awards and is praised for its
| uniqueness or something) can be plopped anywhere, Dubai,
| Stockholm, New York, or Cape Town, and it wouldn't make a shred
| of difference.
| pocketarc wrote:
| You are absolutely right there.
|
| But personally, instead of lamenting it, I see it as a sign
| of our march towards the "Earth" culture. We are watching the
| development of the first global civilisation unfold.
|
| It's exciting, even if it has none of the charm of older
| architectural styles.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| But _is_ it exciting? Why? Personally I find the idea of a
| uniform "Earth" culture with no local identities as
| exciting as the idea of never being able to travel away my
| own local culture to experience a different one, that is,
| not exciting at all.
| c22 wrote:
| It might be kind of exciting if it stopped people from
| traveling around so damn much. But of course everyone
| will still take 2-4 weeks every year to fly to one of the
| same generic vacation destinations and double or
| quadruple their lifetime energy footprint.
| troupo wrote:
| It's not "the development of the first global
| civilisation". It's the death of imagination and
| creativity.
|
| You'd think that for a place as varied and interesting as
| Earth, you'd emerge with something that is as varied and
| interesting.
| kipchak wrote:
| It also seems like you would expect the practical
| considerations from environment and material availability
| to result in different looking buildings. For example
| pitched roofs and large windows in climates with lots of
| snow, or windcatchers, flat roofs, white paint and small
| windows in warmer places.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| Much like the original post, the construction industry
| has an intimate understanding of the pricing of the plain
| box as a 'standard' and the non-plain box as a 'premium /
| luxury'. The resulting environment expresses bland
| uniformity as a standard cost and unqiueness as high-
| specialty luxury.
| rsynnott wrote:
| We can have a global civilisation without the buildings
| being so bloody boring.
| philwelch wrote:
| The "global civilization" spent 20 years trying to
| assimilate Afghanistan before just giving up and allowing a
| rebuilt Kabul and all of its bland contemporary
| architecture get overrun by a gang of medieval goat
| herders. I suspect the world has already reached peak
| homogenization and will increasingly splinter on cultural
| lines in the future.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| This is exactly the problem with Hudson Yards in NYC. Even
| now, the most likely image you'll see when searching for
| Hudson yards is of the rather terrible "Vessel" sculpture
| they plopped down in the middle. This is because all the
| surrounding buildings are so devoid of character that they're
| near impossible to photograph in an interesting manner.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Is The Vessel still closed because too many people were
| committing sudoku by jumping off it?
| mkehrt wrote:
| To be clear on terminology--this isn't "Modern" architecture;
| it's "contemporary". Modern refers to a very specific set of
| movements. The demolished brutalist building the OP mentions
| is an offshoot of Modern. The replacement is not.
| troupo wrote:
| Common definition of the term "modern" is "relating to the
| present or recent times as opposed to the remote past.".
|
| I'd rather call architectural styles from 100 years ago
| "modernist" to avoid confusion.
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| What you, I, and everybody else here hates and is responding
| to here is the design choices of major corporations who are
| larger than many governments and have the ability and
| incentive to push and use an anodyne and inoffensively bland
| style that fits in anywhere in the world of the modern global
| economy. The awards are part of the same system, trying to
| give legitimacy to itself.
|
| That said - the International Style, which started over a
| hundred years ago at this point (back when style "movements"
| were still a thing) was actually a universalist project,
| trying to argue FOR the ideal architecture whose express
| purpose was that it COULD BE plopped down anywhere.
|
| Needless to say that approach has some... issues. But it has
| to be understood that the world they were reacting to was
| VASTLY different from today. Tenement slums without indoor
| plumbing were still a thing for example. These guys were
| massively egotistical, paternalistic, etc. So of course their
| approach was going to have certain flaws. But they were
| trying to do what -they thought- was in the universal good.
|
| More recently people like Frampton argued for "critical
| regionalism" that tries to reconcile local character and
| culture with contemporary standardized building practices.
| Then postmodernism happened and history and local culture
| were allowed back in the academy (cf: Washington Library).
| Since deconstructivism collapsed under the weight of self-
| parody it's been a kind of no limits return to regionally
| responsive architecture.
|
| But the awards that are being given out for that aren't the
| ones that get all the press. Except the Pritzker, which has
| really changed its tune in the past 15 years in recognizing
| architecture with more character and sensitivity to its
| culture.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| You can find neoclassical buildings in Boston, Havana, Paris,
| Oslo, Moscow.
|
| They all look the same, just like skyscrapers.
|
| "soullessness" and "lack of character" go back a long way,
| and people only mentioning it when talking about brutalism or
| glass buildings is just evidence they know nothing about the
| history and culture they are trying to preserve
| philwelch wrote:
| The problem with brutalism or glass buildings isn't that it
| all looks the same or lacks local character. The problem is
| that they are ugly. It's only when we are asking the second
| "why"--"why are they ugly?"--that we find out that, at
| least in part, these styles are specifically designed to
| avoid any sort of local or cultural flavor. Neoclassical
| architecture doesn't have this problem because it
| intentionally calls back to Greece and Rome, reflecting a
| cultural heritage that is, in fact, shared all the way from
| Moscow to Boston.
| navane wrote:
| They're the same picture. Someone drew a rectangle in AutoCAD,
| then did some repeating offsets, handed it to the engineers:
| "make it work". All I see is rectangles in rectangles ad
| infinitum.
| hinkley wrote:
| Yeah, nobody is the winner in this debate, regardless of who
| won.
|
| I hate both buildings, enough that I'm having negative
| feelings about both architects.
|
| They are both so godawfully ugly that I would probably walk a
| different route rather than get angry again every time I walk
| past. Gross.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I used to kind of like the old one when I walked past it.
| The new one is just very, very generic; you don't notice it
| at all.
| s_dev wrote:
| I think Theatre Royal vs Hawkins House is better example in
| Dublin:
|
| https://www.dochara.com/the-irish/then-now/hawkins-st-theatr...
|
| Almost seems criminal.
| hinkley wrote:
| If anyone remembers the Kingdome in Seattle, surfing the lead
| up to demolition someone ran pictures of the original
| proposal. The artist rendering was a white building, that
| looked okay, maybe even good.
|
| What Seattle got was raw concrete. Pseudo brutalist. That
| building was an ugly piece of shit the day it opened, and it
| just got uglier every day after. To paraphrase Office Space,
| every time you saw the Kingdome, it was the ugliest it had
| ever been.
|
| What they replaced it with has changed names a couple times
| but is a decent building. And the Mariner's stadium has
| actual brick on it, but due to budget problems only on the
| side that faces away from most commuters.
|
| It seems like the artists' drawings for some buildings,
| especially the simple ones, can end up lying quite a bit. I
| get the same vibe from the building in the parent comment. I
| bet the proposal was exactly the same shape as what they
| build but the facade was rendered much differently.
| philwelch wrote:
| The Kingdome was an engineering catastrophe on top of an
| architectural one. It was physically falling apart and
| deemed unsafe for use years before it was even paid off.
| rsynnott wrote:
| You'll be glad to hear that it's gone now, though the
| replacement isn't particularly inspiring. That sort of thing
| was definitely the low-point of Dublin's architecture,
| though; awful building.
| IshKebab wrote:
| You can tell how ugly a building is by how many trees are
| obscuring it in photos.
|
| The replacement is definitely boring and generic. Still far
| less ugly than the brutalist building it replaced. I think this
| photo gives a better impression of it:
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/turgidson/7570053250
| TheCoreh wrote:
| I initially thought the before/after pictures were just two
| different views of the "before". I was looking for the after.
|
| Both buildings are conceptually very similar. I do like both.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| I think the minimalist design trend came from the necessity of
| making mass production simpler and it still is lauded as "ultra
| modern" and futuristic because it makes good looking design
| easier and in turn faster and cheaper. It's easier to throw
| away all the furniture and just put 4 white cubes on a white-
| paited room and call it minimalist interior design than
| actually choosing different pieces and colors that work
| together.
| Tanoc wrote:
| One thing I've noticed by people watching, both in real life and
| digitally, is that even if there's a lot of things to do, people
| won't stick around if the buildings around them are blah and
| flat. You could have an amazing square with all sorts of little
| fried food carts and comfortable benches or a digital square with
| lots of minigames and events, but people won't go there if
| they're surrounded by modernist and post-modernist architecture
| comprised of flat glass and concrete surfaces, no matter how
| planar or curved the overall forms actually are. Such buildings
| have a "This is a place of function, not humanity" aura that
| people unconsciously pick up on.
| trimistermota wrote:
| But this aura is also a lot of social conditioning. People pick
| up on this aura because people have been taught that ornament
| is art based architecture and modern designs are function based
| architecture.
| DrScientist wrote:
| I think you are wrong - I think it's much more fundamental
| than that - boring environments stress and depress people
| [1][2].
|
| The flip side of why people find a walk in nature lifts their
| mood.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/oct/19/dema
| nd-... [2] https://www.thecut.com/2016/04/the-psychological-
| cost-of-bor...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| According to Christopher Alexander et al. in A Pattern
| Language, it's about edges: you want buildings to have a non-
| zero-width "edge" to them that creates an additional zone that
| is (a) not the building (b) not the open space beyond it. APL
| has several nice examples of this.
| btbuildem wrote:
| C.A. talks about centers -- edges are one of the aspects that
| help create centers, but there are many others.
|
| Repetition is one of the tools that help emphasize and create
| centers. Look at the building in the first photo in the
| article -- how much repetition there is in terms of shapes,
| architectural "molecules".
| sidcool wrote:
| What do building architects think of Ayn Rand's treatise on
| architecture in the FountainHead?
| badcppdev wrote:
| Curious about the size of the segment on the Venn diagram ...
|
| HN commenter, Architect, FountainHead reader
| vmfunction wrote:
| > Harold Washington Library in Chicago
|
| Hmm, that looks quite like a ripe off of the Central Post &
| Telegraph Head Office in Denmark.
|
| https://media.homeanddecor.com.sg/public/2020/11/0-VillaCph_...
| Mtinie wrote:
| I agree they share elements, and that's totally expected given
| their architectural style lineage.
|
| Central Post & Telegraph building is classified as Neo-
| Baroque[1], while the Harold Washington Library (of
| significantly later construction) reflects many of the Beaux-
| Arts[2] forms and ornamentation.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_Revival
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaux-Arts_architecture
| vmfunction wrote:
| wow thanks for the architectural info. This is what I like
| about HN.
| svckr wrote:
| To me, Loos' argument comes across as some grand rationalisation
| for a simple difference in taste. I.e. "I don't like it, but to
| state my opinion as a fact, I came up with this story about
| efficiency"
|
| "Why do you waste all that effort (on something that I,
| personally, don't enjoy or benefit from)?" is an argument I read
| between the lines all to often ...
| incrudible wrote:
| Not just efficiency, but _degeneracy and criminality_. The
| article fails to mention his own degenerate sex crimes,
| however. Much of his own work is not devoid of ornament, and
| ironically these works stood the test of time, in my opinion.
| His oversimplified work may have been startling in its day,
| today it looks bland next to the many many utilitarian
| buildings that followed this trend. Reduction inevitably leads
| to conformity. A cube looks like a cube, no matter who
| specified its dimensions.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The article gives too much credit to Loos.
|
| > Loos made ornamentation sound like something practiced only
| by primitive peoples or criminal deviants.
|
| Loos didn't make ornamentation "sound like" something practiced
| only by primitive peoples or criminal deviants. That was his
| main point. His argument is
|
| 1. We're more evolved than primitive people.
|
| 2. Primitive people, degenerates, and criminals ornament
| themselves and their environments.
|
| 3. Therefore we've evolved beyond the need to ornament our
| selves and environment.
|
| A simple difference in taste doesn't quite capture Loos'
| racism. Loos attempts to build a reality where he and un-
| ornamentalists are more civilized, cultured, and morally
| superior to others and ornamentation is evidence of such. He
| uses ornamentation to construct a difference and then uses that
| difference to validate his superiority.
|
| Loos' argument rests on othering "primitive people" and makes
| makes six total references toward the Papuans to accomplish
| this. It's short so I'll list each one.
|
| 1. Comparing them to children - "At the age of two he[the
| child] looks like a Papuan"
|
| 2. Describing them again as immoral children - "The child is
| amoral. So is the Papuan, to us."
|
| 3. As cannibals - "The Papuan kills his enemies and eats them."
|
| 4. As a reckless ornamenter - "The Papuan tattoos his skin, his
| boat, his rudder, his oars; in short, everything he can get his
| hands on."
|
| 5. Again compares them to children, and implies they are
| degenerates - "But what is natural for, a Papuan and a child,
| is degenerate for modern man."
|
| 6. That "we" are more progressed than primitive people. -
| "People progressed far enough for ornament to give them
| pleasure no longer, indeed so far that a tattooed face no
| longer heightened their aesthetic sensibility, as it did with
| the Papuans, but diminished it."
|
| I can't stress enough how childish Loos himself comes across in
| the piece. It's a temper tantrum of an article and I'm honestly
| surprised it's taken seriously, or at least was. I'd encourage
| folks to read the original[1]. It's a five to ten minute read.
|
| 1. https://www.archdaily.com/798529/the-longish-read-
| ornament-a...
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| The headline image (Harold Washington Library, Chicago, 1987) is
| a good example of how Post Modernism got things badly wrong -
| with its haphazard ornamentation grabbing styles from all over
| the time/place and tastelessly agglomerating them together
| without coherent thesis.
|
| Sadly there are many more such examples, architecture was in a
| dark place in the 80s.
| coldtea wrote:
| Still way better looking than 99% of "modernist"
| architecture...
|
| At least here it's just tastelessness at fault, as opposed to a
| concrete (pun intended) hatred of beauty...
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| I like the look of that building. I don't care at all that it
| may be haphazard in architecture history.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| The original downtown library in Chicago closed in the late
| 1970s and moved to temporary space; they spent a full decade
| arguing about a permanent replacement before finally agreeing
| to issue a bond and to hold a design competition.
|
| This design was a collaboration among many groups, and had a
| long list of "as a homage to XXXX, we've included this design
| element." It almost certainly wasn't a serious entry, but that
| list of design elements apparently kept getting it enough votes
| to stay in the competition as they did each round of
| elimination. At the end of the competition, they looked at the
| remaining entries and realized that this was the only one that
| could be built for the amount of money in the bond issue. So it
| won.
|
| It's pretty strange as the "cheap" option, because everything
| you touch is made of marble, brass or solid wood, the doors are
| huge and very heavy, every light fixture looks custom made,
| it's filled with artwork and sculptures, etc.
| btbuildem wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more - it's a beautiful building with a
| strong presence. The only thing I can see being a "bit much"
| are the adornments on the roof.
| kipchak wrote:
| I agree it's rather haphazard and incoherent, but given it's a
| library and the variety of material it contains I think the
| lack of coherency somewhat works.
| airstrike wrote:
| This reminds me of "Why Beauty Matters", a documentary by Roger
| Scruton, which fundamentally transformed my views on architecture
| and beauty in general
|
| https://vimeo.com/549715999
| blueridge wrote:
| Came here to mention Scruton. Would recommend the documentary
| mentioned above, plus Scruton's book: The Aesthetics of
| Architecture.
|
| https://www.scruton.org/building-beautiful
|
| I am also obsessed with traditional Japanese architecture. Lots
| of simple ornament, warm colors and materials, deliberate use
| of shadows and light.
|
| https://eastwindinc.com/
|
| Books:
|
| Japanese Homes and their Surroundings
|
| Japanese Architecture: An Exploration of Elements & Forms
| airstrike wrote:
| Thank you for these resources!
| cocostation wrote:
| "The latter presumably referred to the current fashion for
| tattoos among European royals, including Edward VII, Kaiser
| Wilhelm II, and Tsar Nicholas II."
|
| Wait...what?!
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| But even the Looshaus, the example of an at the time scandalously
| unornamented building -- on first glance at the picture, seemed
| to me more comfortable, asthetically pleasing, human-centered,
| and spirit-raising than most contemporary new construction.
|
| So what's that about?
|
| Is the Looshaus, even though unornamented for the time, still
| more ornamented than contemporary standard? Or is it about
| something other than ornamentation? Or is it just my own personal
| judgement which is unusual or wrong (based only a picture, not
| being there in person) -- what do people generally think of the
| Looshaus today?
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| I've been lucky enough to go to a few folk art museums around the
| world. Buildings made by peasants can be richly ornamented, a
| stark contrast to the landscape, or fitting in with it. The
| designs showcase their craftsmanship, their relationship to their
| faith, their connection to their culture, and to the natural
| world. It reminds one of what it means to be a human who cares
| about more than function. Art and culture may not be the sole
| domain of humans, but it's one we've mastered. The spaces we live
| in and around should be filled with it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| We moved recently. Our previous house served us well, with
| adequate space for all the kids. My wife never complained. But
| this time, as we were getting ready to hunt for a house, she
| said, "Can our next house be _pretty_? "
|
| Beauty matters. We can have different definitions of what beauty
| _is_ , and tastes change. But we still need beauty. We are not
| just purely functional organisms, whether or not our philosophy
| admits it. We have a sense of the aesthetic. We don't like ugly,
| and we don't like boring, and we don't want to be surrounded by
| either of them.
| holy_duck wrote:
| Howard Roark rolling in his grave
| btbuildem wrote:
| Christopher Alexander (the architect and design theorist
| mentioned in the beginning of the article) wrote at length (and
| depth!) on the concepts underlying the sense of "liveliness" or
| "life" in spaces, and "quality" in general. He was pretty
| successful at capturing it too; his "Pattern Language" describes
| well a lot of the aspects that make spaces and structures
| coherent vs not.
|
| Whenever I see this stuff discussed, the conversation rarely
| plumbs the depths. But even in this article -- just look at the
| photos. The buildings accused of being ornamented -- they're
| elaborate in a specific way; the complications aren't there just
| for the sake of adding something, they reiterate certain
| structural themes, create depth, a sense of connection at variety
| of scales. Compare to the "unadorned" buildings -- dead, flat,
| boring, generic, your attention slips off them like water off an
| oiled pan.
|
| What I often muse about as someone who builds software, are the
| parallels between the concerns of the architect and those of a UX
| designer. We've all seen styles and themes come and go, and some
| comparisons beg to be drawn. The flat design trends of recent
| years match the anonymous glass facades housing the FAANGs.
| Skeuomorphic interfaces as degenerate and overburdened as baroque
| twirls at their peak. Etc etc.
|
| But underlying these comparisons is always the qualification of
| purpose. The flat and skeuo interfaces fall short precisely
| because they're decorated (or, undecorated) for style's sake,
| there's a disconnect from function - even if the function
| (especially if!) is to make the person faced with them feel a
| certain way.
|
| Over the many years, the only interfaces I've seen fulfill their
| mission of connecting with the user, creating a unique space that
| immerses and engages, are those in games. Finely crafted one-
| offs, thematic, memorable, full of intricate detail, intimately
| connected to the subjects of the interaction, the mission, the
| overall story of the game.
|
| They're coherent, involved, and what communicates that connection
| are the many details, specific and deliberate. Yes at first
| glance they're ornamental, but reveal themselves to be deeply
| functional after a longer look.
| pmontra wrote:
| Skeuomorphic interfaces educated people to click for the first
| time on buttons which resembled buttons in real life. Having to
| click on unadorned words would have been too difficult. Which
| words are to click, which words are only to read? It still is
| difficult at times but 30+ years of collective education makes
| it possible.
| apineda wrote:
| Could you recommend any particular readings for Christopher
| Alexander?
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| _A Pattern Language_
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| You can't go wrong! His most important treatise - and the
| book I talk about more with UX people and software devs more
| than architects even - is A Pattern Language.
|
| Basically the deal with Alexander is he was a VERY early
| adopter of computerization in architecture. He made some
| kinda... missteps? about systematization in his earliest
| writings. Then walked it all back / developed it with "A City
| is Not a Tree" talking about graphs and urban organization.
|
| His arc from there was constantly deeper into trying to make
| sense of how information science techniques could be applied,
| most notably in A Pattern Language and the case study of its
| application, The Oregon Project.
|
| Then, his "magnum opus" was a development on that where he
| tried to fill in the gaps that A Pattern Language left was A
| Timeless Way of Building.
|
| If you don't want to get too deep, I'd stick with A Pattern
| Language.
| btbuildem wrote:
| There are a few! Depending on what aspect / approach you
| prefer. These four are my favourites:
|
| "The Nature of Order" (four books!) is the most extensive -
| beautiful, comprehensive, a little overwhelming, he lays out
| a broad philosophy of how built up spaces can foster life.
| Lots of visual examples, but gets pretty conceptual and
| abstract too.
|
| "The Timeless Way of Building" is a bit more focused, centers
| around the architectural concerns. More compact, more
| practical than the Nature of Order.
|
| "Pattern Language" -- you'll see that one suggested a lot. He
| lays out the concepts of interacting patterns ("best
| practices") that act on a variety of scales, some more
| generic, some more abstract. It's less of a read than a
| reference, but a few chapters lay out the motivations.
|
| "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" - the most far out one of
| the four suggestions, abstract, philosophical, a rarefied
| read. Dissects the essence of concepts, defines what "form"
| is -- fascinating read for sure, and not too long.
| gwern wrote:
| > the complications aren't there just for the sake of adding
| something, they reiterate certain structural themes, create
| depth, a sense of connection at variety of scales. Compare to
| the "unadorned" buildings -- dead, flat, boring, generic, your
| attention slips off them like water off an oiled pan.
|
| Exactly. Consider the very first photograph, which highlights
| the owls: I couldn't actually see the books, but I could see
| the owls, and my instant thought was, 'I bet this is a
| library'. Because owls are so strongly associated with wisdom,
| Athena, books, and learning. Far from being useless, they are
| subtly serving as a UI, drawing on a recognition memory: even
| 30 years from now, should I happen to be walking through
| Chicago, I will probably recognize the library as a library
| solely from the owl-book cues.
|
| I'm reminded of Tufte's 'data ink' phrase: Tufte visualizations
| can often be quite beautiful, but they are not necessarily
| _minimal_ ; they could be made simpler by removing
| 'ornamentation', but only by also losing subtle 'data' or
| theme. (You can have plenty of style or decoration, it just has
| to _mean something_.)
|
| Whereas, in the anti-human boxes prized by modernism, they are
| interchangeable, meaningless, big ugly dumb boxes, designed for
| humans and things to be shuffled in and out of at the
| convenience of the powers that be - cubicles writ large.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| People are looking for objectivity in vain. Beyond basic
| structure, there is no objectivity in art, music, architecture,
| fashion, etc. That is, you can make the argument that a
| discordant piano piece is objectively worse than one that follows
| well-worn progressions, and that would be pretty believable, but
| saying that a piece with more tremolos than one with no tremolos
| is objectively better just doesn't work.
|
| Ornamentation is taste, and taste is very cyclical. If you grew
| up in an over-the-top ornamented place, it's very understandable
| that you'd view the simple clean lines of modernist architecture
| as a revelation. OTOH, if you grew up in bland generic
| International Style places, it's perfectly understandable why
| you'd yearn for something beyond basic shapes. You can't separate
| taste from the environment you grew up in, your predisposition
| for novelty-seeking etc.
|
| FWIW, I think we're near the end of the modernist cycle. A lot of
| us grew up in very bland environments and now we want something
| more. But 100 years ago, the same thing we're now decrying was a
| breath of fresh, calming air in a suffocating environment.
| usrusr wrote:
| I've been preaching this myself for quite a while: the way the
| aesthetics of minimalistically clean surfaces work is by
| emphasizing new-ness while they are in fact new. That does look
| awesome, I'm guilty of enjoying that look myself, but when that
| new-ness disappears, the same design emphasizes its absence.
| Ornaments are the the key to graceful aging in architecture.
|
| When you have a clean white wall, with three square windows
| decisively set in one part, yeah, it looks bold and fresh. But
| after a few years you get a wall with those rainwater "tear
| paths" that just look sad because there's nothing else to catch
| the eye. If instead there were some sills, ledges or maybe just
| some brick surface patterns, those same water traces would be
| patina that's perceived as part of the ornament.
| c22 wrote:
| The key is maintenance. If you wash that wall every day it will
| never develop water stains, and a flat unadorned wall is easier
| to wash than one with a lot of nooks and crannies.
|
| A lot of walls don't get washed every day though, even the flat
| minimalist ones. What makes sense for a school or a hospital or
| a courthouse might not make sense for a home or a condo.
| hinkley wrote:
| Because washing it every day would drastically raise the
| lifetime cost of the building.
|
| We spend millions in the year before a building opens, then
| millions every decade it exists on maintenance and repairs.
| Having a full time washer would raise that quite a bit.
|
| Window washers make hazard pay and have higher insurance
| costs than janitors because of the physical danger, do they
| not?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I agree, minimalism hides the complexity, it doesn't make it go
| away.
| anon291 wrote:
| My wife and I purchased a 1920s home for exactly this reason.
| It's not a magnificent home by any means, but at that time, they
| seemed to pay more attention to small details. Simple things like
| the kinds of molding used. The kinds of window frames on the
| outside. The attention paid to the facade rather than just the
| function of the home on the inside. The leading on the glass of
| the builtins (which conveniently also makes it very easy to
| replace broken pieces). The art deco themes on the door. The
| stair railings which are both functional, yet artistic at the
| same time. Not to mention the lighting, which is so far removed
| from 'Restoration Hardware generic chic' that it almost makes you
| want to cry to think about the kind of thing we find acceptable
| today. Everything is subtle but it makes life better to live in
| something pretty rather than meh.
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| Hi, architect here. I'll completely sidestep specific arguments
| or a criticism of the critic, except one thing. The idea that
| there's some kind of competition of ideologies inside the entire
| discipline of architecture is dated.
|
| It would be impossible to summarize the entire "architectural
| dialog" as one thing, but let's be general. Inside these
| discussions, a lot of us laugh a people like Patrik Schumacher
| for constantly trying to make some battle of the -isms happen.
| Rybczynski has had a long and prolific career, and can be
| forgiven for being of an older generation who were taught that
| there was some ideological battle for what was "right" or good or
| beautiful in "architecture."
|
| But today your typical architect is going to have their own
| design "style" or method, but also a pluralistic view that it's
| the diversity of approaches that makes architecture richer. Most
| architects I know could expound on their love for say Olson
| Kundig, David Chipperfield, Freddie Mamani, and Kengo Kuma in a
| single sitting.
|
| I couldn't tell you a single architect who doesn't actively want
| to make beautiful buildings that elevate the human spirit.
| Rybczynski only uses the word "developer" once in the entire
| piece (even then it's just to mention that Wagner was one). In
| reality, it's the economic logic of modern development that has
| driven the enshittification of architecture hated by everyone -
| architects most of all.
| anon291 wrote:
| Let's suppose this is true. If it were true, I'd expect there
| to be at least some architects producing renderings of the sort
| of architecture they would like to build, if even just for
| design exploration. However, when I do see these sorts of
| experimental architecture designs online (granted, I'm not
| really 'in on' the right spaces), they typically are all the
| same style of 'modern bland'. Where're the architects showing
| us what they would like to build that's actually interesting,
| and pretty? I've seen a few architects reviving classical
| styles, but they seem to be the minority. And interestingly
| enough, those architects seem to be finding some success
| getting projects funded.
|
| So I guess, can you point me to some examples of modern
| architects showcasing the sorts of things they'd rather build?
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| Thanks for the reply. I'd start by googling the four
| architects with extremely diverse aesthetic sensibilities I
| mentioned.
| anon291 wrote:
| Well I did. Of the four, only Freddie Mamani with his Neo
| Andean stuff seemed to be doing anything truly different
| and culturally influenced. The rest are just doing 'Global
| modern bland'.
|
| I'm honestly not sure how you would classify something like
| this:
|
| https://www.sensesatlas.com/freddy-mamani-neo-andean-
| archite...
|
| With anything from
|
| https://olsonkundig.com/
|
| The former looks like something new, where culturally
| relevant ornamentation truly is given extra weight. The
| latter looks like any generic fancy building you could find
| anywhere in the world.
|
| Which I think goes with what I said... there are a handful
| doing something interesting and they seem to have enough
| projects. It seems there would be demand. I notice that
| Mamani in particular is self-taught, which probably
| explains a lot of this.
| CollinEMac wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this.
|
| The picture that's being painted online over the last few years
| has ultra-modern super-minimalist architects on one side and
| hyper-traditional maximum-maximalist architects on the other
| side.
|
| I haven't seen many actual architects giving their take on it
| (they're probably out building stuff).
| 4bpp wrote:
| > expound on their love for say Olson Kundig, David
| Chipperfield, Freddie Mamani, and Kengo Kuma in a single
| sitting.
|
| I was familiar with buildings by some of them, and looked up
| the rest. Excepting, as a sibling post does, Freddie Mamani,
| the best thing I can say about the ones that are not just
| straight up unsightly is that they are _interesting_ , in the
| way in which an essay that a verbally gifted student wrote
| arguing for a nonsense position randomly pulled out of a hat
| can be interesting. Do you think that, if you polled people who
| have nothing to gain socially from signalling sophistication in
| modern architecture (this in particular excludes all architects
| and politically normal upper-middle-class white-collar
| workers), many would report that their spirit was elevated by
| them?
| angarg12 wrote:
| I used to love ultra modern white-box architecture, but recently
| I gained a new appreciation for the buildings of my home city in
| Europe that were built in the late 19th and early 20th century.
| These buildings are very ornate and I find them beautiful to look
| at. For example [1] is our old post office. When I look at that I
| can't help but think, are modern architects even trying?
|
| Ultra modern architecture is still interesting but I like it when
| it goes beyond a white box and does something unique and
| striking.
|
| [1] https://offloadmedia.feverup.com/valenciasecreta.com/wp-
| cont...
| extractionmech wrote:
| Those buildings were covered in sooth and ugly to look at when
| Modernism was being born. Have you seen photos of London before
| the great cleaning? It looks like a dark pit. 21st century arm
| chair design crit needs to 'contextualize'* its criticism..
|
| ex: *they were not easy to clean. Modern was easy to clean.
| bitwize wrote:
| Whenever I found myself having to engage with administrative arms
| of the Massachusetts government, I found myself in Boston's
| government district with its distinctive brutalist architecture:
| https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nbq2z7LV5VM/Sw71CQ9s1dI/AAAAAAAAB...
|
| Which only added to my depression, as I felt like I was on
| Vogsphere. And then imagine a New England winter wind whipping
| through those rectilinear slabs. By all means, ornament your
| buildings. Make your structure an aesthetic.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Ornaments are symbols that encode values. I was surprised they
| didn't include Venturi's "ducks vs. decorated sheds," assessment
| of ornamentation.
| (https://99percentinvisible.org/article/lessons-sin-city-arch...)
|
| The idea is that an unornamented building is just a single
| (arguably vulgar) symbol intended to represent something else.
| The example is a building shaped like a rubber duck. A decorated
| shed is a building with a purpose and then ornamented symbols
| attached to it to integrate it into its environment.
| telotortium wrote:
| HN would probably be interested in another book by the author,
| Witold Rybczynski: One Good Turn: A Natural History of the
| Screwdriver and the Screw (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684867303).
| It's born out of a writing prompt for a newspaper article - what
| is the most important tool (for construction specifically) of the
| past millennium? Prof. Rybczynski decided on this answer, and
| gives a history of the screw, both as a fastener and as a way to
| regulate motion in a machine. It's short but still quite
| comprehensive, even involving looking for screws in medieval
| drawings.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if we designed our living
| spaces with some nature in mind. We plant non-native plants that
| don't support any bees, butterflies or birds. We don't get to
| smell the bloom of wildflowers in spring. We don't feel a breeze
| of cool air as we walk by a forest. Streams are safely redirected
| under roads so we no longer hear the trickle of water. Our lawns
| are crafted to be as uniform as possible. We go from one lifeless
| place to another every day. Of course we are bored!
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