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Old Posted Nov 27, 2017, 10:03 PM
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Jasoncw Jasoncw is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Detroit, Michigan
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The problem with these types of articles/arguments is that they are objectively not true.

Quote:
- For about 2,000 years, everything human beings built was beautiful, or at least unobjectionable. The 20th century put a stop to this, evidenced by the fact that people often go out of their way to vacation in “historic” (read: beautiful) towns that contain as little postwar architecture as possible. But why? What actually changed? Why does there seem to be such an obvious break between the thousands of years before World War II and the postwar period? And why does this seem to hold true everywhere? --- A few obvious stylistic changes characterize postwar architecture. For one, what is (now somewhat derisively) called “ornament” disappeared. At the dawn of the 20th century, American architect Louis Sullivan proclaimed the famous maxim that “form follows function.”
For 2000 years there was a lot of architectural history, and there were a lot of styles which were all popular or unpopular to different people at different times. It was even very common for individual buildings to change styles partway through construction or be drastically changed to different styles during renovation. This was especially true during the Renaissance.

Anyone who has taken any class in architectural history knows that for most of those old famous buildings, the stories go "so and so was hired to design it, then 30 years later he died and then so and so took over and redesigned the unbuilt parts, and then 200 years later they renovated it and changed styles and then 100 years after that it got changed again". If the original styles were so wonderful and popular and timeless they wouldn't have spent giant piles of money to change the styles.

There were also regional/political/identity related angles to it. In Europe nationalistic identity politics caused gothic to be preferred in some places and neoclassical to be preferred in others. And during these times, the "wrong" styles were sometimes demolished or renovated or replaced.

And then not to mention all of the wonderful amazing old buildings that were disassembled and used for construction materials for new buildings in more popular styles.

Quote:
- Plant life is actually one of the most important elements of architecture. One of the most serious problems with postwar architecture is that so much of its entirely devoid of nature. It presents us with blank walls and wide-open spaces with nary a tree or shrub to be seen. Generally speaking, the more plant life is in a place, the more attractive it is, and the less nature there is, the uglier it is. This is because nature is much better at designing things than we are. In fact, even Brutalist structures almost look livable if you let plants grow all over them; they might even be downright attractive if you let the plants cover every last square inch of concrete.
This is so completely outrageously false I don't even know what to say. NONE of those old non-modern styles involved plants at all whatsoever. Buildings simply did not have plants incorporated into the designs. Go to St Peter's Basilica and count the plants. Then there's early modernism and midcentury modernism where incorporating nature into our lives and having buildings which integrated interior and exterior are some of the most defining characteristics.


Quote:
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum is an impressive building. Unfortunately, it doesn’t bear any actually relationship to its surroundings; it could have been placed anywhere.
Neoclassical architecture is exactly the same everywhere. The proportional and compositional laws which govern it are universal. Many of the celebrated architecture styles and buildings are universal and could be teleported to a lot of different places without it being conspicuous.


Quote:
Wright’s Fallingwater house, on the other hand, was designed to cohere with its location. Aesthetic coherence is very important; a sense of place depends on every element in that place working together. The streets of the Beacon Hill neighborhood in Boston are beautiful because there are many different elements, but they are all aesthetically unified.
So what we need to do is build entirely modern neighborhoods so that they're aesthetically unified? Aesthetic unity isn't specific to certain styles.

Quote:
The Tour Montparnasse in Paris is horrifying, because it doesn’t flow with the surrounding buildings and draws attention to itself.
By that argument we also need to demolish all of the gothic cathedrals which also don't fit into the flow (in terms of scale and style).

Quote:
Capitalism eats culture, and it makes ugly places. Money has no taste.
Most modernist movements are explicitly socialistic. Oh wait, sorry, using exotic and expensive materials carved into as much ornament as possible to convey as much wealth as possible is what we value in our society. Humble materials and unassuming designs are ugly and morally bankrupt. If only modern architecture could be as humble as the Palace of Versailles! In the article he says that modern architecture was convenient for the capitalists because it meant things like stained glass windows and ornament which hurt the bottom line could be eliminated... but the only buildings that had those things in the first place were for rich people. And yet the most expensive and most profitable buildings built during those times were the ones covered in expensive ornament, so the ornament definitely had good ROI.

Quote:
- It should be obvious to anyone that skyscrapers should be abolished. After all, they embody nearly every bad tendency in contemporary architecture: they are not part of nature, they are monolithic, they are boring, they have no intricacy, and they have no democracy. Besides, there is plenty of space left on earth to spread out horizontally; the only reasons to spread vertically are phallic and Freudian. Architect Leon Krier has suggested that while there should be no height limit on buildings, no building should ever be more than four stories (so, spires as tall as you like, and belfries). This seems a completely sensible idea.
In order for human scaled cities to work there needs to be density (otherwise it's not possible to walk to things). If you spread the density across buildings completely evenly there's not enough room for plants (isn't that what he wants?), and the buildings don't get good light and ventilation or views/privacy. Concentrating certain buildings types (offices, apartments for non-families) into higher density towers lets you use lower density building types (rowhouses with backyards for families) where it's most important.

Quote:
But more than just abolishing skyscrapers, we must create a world of everyday wonder, a world in which every last thing is a beautiful thing. If this sounds impossible, it isn’t; for thousands of years, nearly every buildings humans made was beautiful.
99% of buildings ever built have been demolished. I'm sure it was because each one of them was just so incredibly beautiful. And if you want the world to have everyday wonder, I think everyone here would agree that looking out the window of a skyscraper down onto your city is wonder invoking.


Also in the article he complains about why we can't make buildings like Sullivan anymore, even though Sullivan was 100% a modern architect. We can't build buildings like Sullivan anymore because after neo-traditional architecture destroyed the chicago school he spent the rest of his life barely employed and in poverty.

He also mentions the Guardian Building in Detroit, which is art deco, which is... also modernism!! (or at least a populist form of it).


I have to admit I didn't read the entire article but just about every line there's something objectively false. The article is long and going line by line showing the problems in his arguments would make an even longer forum post.

If you think modern buildings are ugly and how ugly something is is all you really care about then just say so and be honest about it.

If you want to make a theory of how architecture ought to be, and you're going to judge buildings based on that, then you need to take your own theory seriously and approve of modern buildings which fit your criteria and disapprove of non-modern ones that don't fit the criteria.

And absolutely most of all, if you're going to advocate for historical architecture you need to actually learn about historical architecture. If there's one thing that's consistent between neo-traditionalists it's that they're all staggeringly ignorant of architectural history.
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