Quote:
Originally Posted by jetsetter
They are close minded in that they only accept "modern" designs, designs by others like them in universities like theirs. A "traditional" design would be out of question for them. Any new building has to be glass, steel, and geometric. There is little room for marble, stone, and brick in their world. To use any of the classical design elements would be unthinkable. That is a closed mind. Unwilling to think out of their little modernist box.
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Modernists use marble (lime?)stone and brick all the time. In fact I would say that modern architecture uses marble a lot more often than traditional architecture does. The difference is that in modernism materials are used for their inherit beauty while in traditional architecture they're mainly used as a vehicle for ornament. In general, modernism has a much richer palette of materials to use, and is more free to use them. If someone is a fan of materials and their inherit qualities, then they should be a fan of modern architecture.
To criticize modern architecture as being "geometric" is both completely false (while there are a lot of "geometric" modern buildings there are also a lot of organic ones, while organic traditional architecture barely exists) and shows a misunderstanding of traditional architecture itself, since the beauty of traditional architecture is the beautiful proportions and geometric relationships.
But I think that materials and proportions are besides the point in neo-traditional architecture. Presumably this thread is for posting GOOD examples of neo-traditional architecture, but I'd say at least a third of the buildings posted here are poorly designed buildings in themselves, and also show little understanding of the traditional architecture they're based on. I would also say that in the general public internally registers properly designed neo-traditional architecture, actual historic buildings, and bad faux historic architecture (think historically themed wal-marts) more or less the same.
But the quality or accuracy doesn't matter, because the point of neo-traditional architecture isn't to make high quality architecture, it's to create traditional imagery to convey the associated traditional values. So universities use it to convey "ye olde university", a place with history and cultural traditions and the social status associated with long-lived institutions. Commercial buildings use it to convey "mainstreet USA", a place of community gathering, with family owned small businesses. Residential buildings use it to convey traditional family and community values. Likewise a university might use modern architecture to convey its cutting-edge progressiveness, etc.
The Sarah Palin analogy is always in the back of my head, although I avoid it since imo comparing anything with Sarah Palin is a low blow, but since it's already brought up...
I would say that Sarah Palin is to political science as neo-traditional architecture is to architecture (intellectually vacant, but very popular among the public). And I would further say that Sarah Palin is to Ben Franklin as neo-traditional architecture is to traditional architecture (related on the surface, but actually completely unrelated and intellectually opposed).