7 ms·

The Psychological Cost of Boring Buildings

83 points by whocansay 11y ago

egjerlow 11y ago
This is something I have thought about often, living in Norway. Seemed like there must have been some period in the 50s-60s when building the most mind-crushing office buildings / hospitals / apartment blocks was the goal. Maybe the psychological effect of buildings vary over years? I.e. in the 50s-60s boring, 'efficient' buildings were seen as modern and progressive, and thus, gave a morale boost? Exhibit A: http://borghoytrykk.no/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/VaskhøyblokkOslo1.jpg http://borghoytrykk.no/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Vaskhøyblo...
- ghaff 11y ago
  There was a period of modernist architecture up through maybe the mid-70s--including but not limited to Brutalism--that has aged particularly badly for the most part. Even examples that were presumably designed to stand out, like Boston City Hall and the Boston Public Library addition (to the original beautiful Beaux Arts structure) look simply awful today.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    I think one problem is that concrete literally ages terribly. The Watergate wasn't supposed to be a dirty, stained, dark gray.
    - vonmoltke 11y ago
      Unsealed concrete does. The problem is that the surface of concrete is still fairly porous without sealing, so it readily stains.
  - douche 11y ago
    Boston City Hall is quite possibly the ugliest building I've ever seen. The soot-belching, ash-caked, grease-grimed, wood-burning power plant that I worked in summers in college was more beautiful.
    - Analemma_ 11y ago
      It really is hideous. I grew up in the Boston area, and even as a little kid I distinctly remember thinking, "This has got to be the ugliest building in the world". Then when I got older I thought, "Well, the world is a big place and I haven't seen much of it, so I don't have much of a frame of reference. I'm sure there are uglier buildings somewhere." And then when I got a little older still, it was kind of satisfying to see multiple articles and polls saying that no, it is indeed one of the ugliest buildings in the entire world. It's not even that I think Brutalism is inherently bad. I think there are some really nice examples, like the AT&T building in NYC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street#/media/File:AT%26T_Long_Lines_building.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street#/media/File:A.... But Boston City Hall is Brutalism at its absolute worst.
      - ghaff 11y ago
        I once read a humorous column that described it as an attempt to give any visiting Soviets an inferiority complex by out Soviet-ing Soviet architecture. There are some decent brutalist buildings on the MIT campus including the MIT Student Center--which has a lot of interesting funky angles and is a rather useful space--and a number of IM Pei buildings (at least I think the latter are considered brutalist). There's also the Christian Science Plaza that I'd go so far as to call quite attractive.
  - tamana 11y ago
    99pi , which loves architecture and looks for the beauty in everything, tried really hard to say something nice about Brutalism and all the got was: 1) it's really hard to design and build well with concrete (you get one shot to build, and you can't elegantly patch mistakes or change your design), so architects love to try for the challenge, and they usually fail. 2) concrete is impossible to maintain; the buildings we hate today weren't as bad when they were new. 3) concrete is a really nice background for outdoor fashion photography. 4) concrete had a humble look and cost-effective nature that embodies the working class spirit. Theae are true facts, none of which make me want to live or work in a concrete building. Maybe #4 when I am feeling camaraderie with my fellow worker.
- Al-Khwarizmi 11y ago
  This also puzzles me often. I live in a Spanish city full of apartment buildings of a variety of periods. Often, one can see beautiful art deco buildings (edit: I meant art nouveau, although art deco is nice as well) from the early 20th century right near horrible blocks from the 60s-70s (50s architecture was not that awful here IMO) that took the place of other beautiful buildings of yore. http://www.turismo.gal/imaxes/mdaw/mtyy/~edisp/~extract/TURGA162643~1~staticrendition/tg_carrusel_cabecera_grande.jpg http://www.turismo.gal/imaxes/mdaw/mtyy/~edisp/~extract/TURG... http://www.turismo.gal/imaxes/mdaw/mtyy/~edisp/~extract/TURGA162627~1~staticrendition/tg_carrusel_cabecera_grande.jpg http://www.turismo.gal/imaxes/mdaw/mtyy/~edisp/~extract/TURG... Doing a bit of research, one can uncover true atrocities made in the 60s and 70s... for example, in the 70s, this building (which was fully functional at the time): https://antiguaprisionprovincialcoruna.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/11078169_826488684094615_4656949509388678756_n.jpg https://antiguaprisionprovincialcoruna.files.wordpress.com/2... Was replaced with this: http://www.elidealgallego.com/media/idealgallego/images/2015/07/21/2015072122390958244.jpg http://www.elidealgallego.com/media/idealgallego/images/2015... And I wonder, what were the people of the 60s and 70s thinking? Did they really think that was a sensible change? Did they really think any of the horrible soulless masses of concrete that they gave us were actually nice? People from that period were not savages, that time gave us the Beatles, some awesome movies, the first more or less useful computers, computer networks... So why, dammit, why did they do this? I honestly would like to go there for an hour or two and ask people in the streets, to see if there was a collective hallucination or something.
  - duncanawoods 11y ago
    It does seem mad doesn't it. I guess its just the madness of fashion where quality is defined more by novelty and contrast so it does not remain static. I imagine that at the time, art-deco looked like a man dressed in lace and velvet - an eye-sore of ornamentation and in contrast, the office building was the clean modern lines of a Hugo Boss suit with the authenticity of function. Too many clean lines and you get bored and you swing into something new. Ironically lace and velvet was back-in fashion for men in the 50's... briefly.
  - cylinder 11y ago
    This was a worldwide phenomenon. The ugliest most boring buildings are all from the 60s and 70s in NYC too. Same in Australia I've seen. My high school in TX was built in the 70s and intentionally modeled after a prison: they thought eliminating all windows and keeping students in a contained, dark environment would be best for their learning and development. What were people thinking in the 70s?!
- kaybe 11y ago
  I think it was about building a lot, fast, since much was destroyed during the wars. At least that was the case in Germany, I don't know how much was down in Norway. I live in a house from the 50s, and it shows - you never know what you'll find in the walls (stone, wood, straw, mud..) since they built it with whatever they had. Some cables go diagonal within the walls to save material.
- optforfon 11y ago
  I also thought it was a Lutheran thing. Kinda matches the cold depressing churches the Lutherans build
dewyatt 11y ago
FEMA's Brooke Road Facility (BRF - "the barf") is quite the eye sore [1]. Luckily it's not in a super visible/residential area, but I always found it depressing that people actually work there. The outside is bad enough, but the inside is even worse. They're all stuffed into cubicles, no windows that I recall, dirty/decrepit bathroom, just a depressing place overall, hard to explain. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1989182,-78.1524764,3a,75y,111.34h,87.31t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sq-4pH3muktEMb0sl1J7dwg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1989182,-78.1524764,3a,75y,1...
- Xophmeister 11y ago
  It looks like someone welded some shipping containers together in a car park.
  - david-given 11y ago
    That's doing shipping containers a disservice --- you can make some quite interesting structures by welding shipping containers together: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02210/CONTAINERCITY_2210000b.jpg http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02210/CONTAINERC... Making something as awful as the Brooke Road Facility takes real skill and a lot of work.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    It's tilt-wall construction, made with pre-stressed concrete slabs. Pretty common for heavy commercial/light industrial construction and all function, no form.
Kliment 11y ago
As an example of how even the most pedestrian industrial function can be in a beautiful building, here is a waste incineration plant in Vienna: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:M%C3%BCllverbrennungsanlage_Spittelau?uselang=de#/media/File:M%C3%BCllverbrennungsanlage_Spittelau.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:M%C3%BCllverbren...
- cm2187 11y ago
  The problem with "beautiful" is that it is very subjective. This picture is my definition of ugly. Unless you were sarcastic.
  - elcapitan 11y ago
    Here too. It's using a boring building and adding make-up. Very kitschy make-up. That's not architecture, it's just decoration.
    - freddref 11y ago
      Maybe that's what modern buildings are lacking? Are we to surmise that architecture is dead if the proposed positive effects of architecture are better accomplished with decoration? The issue with architecture (edit: as practiced) is the resulting abundance of boring, dull or plain ugly buildings. If all it takes is some decoration, away we go, problem solved.
      - elcapitan 11y ago
        They are definitely lacking a human "scale" and something we can relate to (in my view). But it is also not solved with decoration. Architecture decoration is like putting lipstick on a pig. A dead pig.
  - wozniacki 11y ago
    Seconded. There are these avant-gardes who wouldn't think twice about turning any public building project they could lay their hands into massive brutist absurdist sea of concrete gray from their dreams [1], if given a chance. Add to that a couple of behemoth art pieces [2] strewn somewhere on the premises that will no doubt one day pulverize some poor souls. Alas, the tyranny of the stroppy and vengeful minority. [1] https://lebbeuswoods.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/fic-2.jpg https://lebbeuswoods.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/fic-2.jpg http://www.artspace.com/filip_dujardin/untitled_2007_boxes http://www.artspace.com/filip_dujardin/untitled_2007_boxes [2] http://art-nerd.com/sanfrancisco/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2013/12/Richard-Serra-Ballast-1.jpg http://art-nerd.com/sanfrancisco/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/... http://art-nerd.com/sanfrancisco/ballast-by-richard-serra/ http://art-nerd.com/sanfrancisco/ballast-by-richard-serra/
jfindley 11y ago
I read an interesting study a while back about architecture in London, taken with a sample of professional architects and a sample of general population, all based in London. All the architects in the study hated the old Edwardian terraces, and pitied people who lived in them. All the non-architects loved the old Edwardian terraces, and hated the majority of the buildings the architects loved. You could easily make an argument from the point of view of the architects in that study that a row of Edwardian terraces are dull and boring, but most Londoners would love to live in them. With that in mind, I'm a bit wary of this - there are certainly plenty of horrible buildings around - 60's brutalist concrete would be an example of a style I particularly dislike - but how do we decide what's bland and what's attractive?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Possibly by doing representative sampling of the user population and finding what works for them. Architects are encouraged to be outrageous, individualistic, capricious, even dictatorial. A generic Edwardian terrace is the opposite of everything creative architecture is supposed to stand for. So a divergence of opinion is not a surprise. But I think it's interesting that you can estimate the health of an environment by measuring the effects it has on people. That's not quite a new idea in architecture, but it's certainly not central to architectural teaching. "Objective architecture", assessed by measurable effects instead of subjective whimsy, would revolutionise the profession.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    I think it is rather that since the early XX, architects, like painters, stopped caring about doing "beautiful" and only cared about doing "original". But the difference between painters and architects is that painters can only offend the visitors of the Tate Modern, who are presumably consenting. Architects will offend anyone who happen to live in a city where they exercise their creativity.
    - true_religion 11y ago
      It's actually a reversal of previous eras where people didn't want "beautiful" but wanted to ape the classics. Today originality is seen as a boon, but for a long time you were only seen as a true master if first you could replicate old works.
rjett 11y ago
"So the trick, it seems, is to design a world that excites but doesn’t overly assault our faculties with a constant barrage of information" I just got back from my first trip to Chicago. I've been to quite a few cities, but the variety of architecture and juxtoposition of certain styles throughout the city made for a very enjoyable experience. Not every single building in the city is pretty either. But taken as a whole and hearing how history, art, architecture, and engineering shaped the city was fascinating. I actually did the architectural river tour, which I found to be one of the most enthralling guided tours I've ever been on. Highly recommended.
- hugs 11y ago
  This is one of the "secret" reasons I left the Bay Area to return to Chicago - downtown Chicago (aka The Loop) is beautiful. Please help keep it a secret so everyone doesn't move here and drive the price of everything up. ;)
  - tptacek 11y ago
    You're joking, I know, but just to point out: Chicago is gigantic. Bring it on, Google and Facebook and Apple. We've got more than enough space. :)
    - tachyonbeam 11y ago
      The bay area has more than enough space too. It spreads over 100 kilometers south of San Francisco. It covers more than the surface area of NYC in total. The real issue is that the bay area refuses to grow. The population is only about 5 millions IIRC. The density is really low. IMO, in order to accomodate more people, and deal with the insane rents, the bay area needs to start growing vertically. Every other urban area I've been to has towers, apartment complexes. Here everything is flat. Most apartment buildings are only two floors high, rarely more than three. I won't get into the politics of all of this, but politics are the real problem. Many of the suburbanites around here want their suburbs to remain suburbs. The law of offer and demand should mean that apartment towers are getting built and rents go down as competition increase, but the regulations in place prevent this. Many swanky new condos are being built, but these are still flat buildings, not making efficient use of the available space.
sp332 11y ago
While there's room for improvement, I don't think the building looks bad. All the glass makes it seem airy and full of light. The windows probably make it a nice place to be inside as well. Its only problem is being too big, so that it becomes monotonous. But how would you fix that? Design parts of the building in different styles?
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  Expose something nice in those windows instead of making them blind mirrors.
  - sp332 11y ago
    There's too much sunlight coming in. Your options are to cook/blind everyone inside, put something opaque (and visible to the street) inside the windows while blocking the view, or dim the windows and let the occupants see the street.
    - guard-of-terra 11y ago
      You can put something interesting behind the window, then erect a wall, then your regular space goes. Some stores do that.
      - sp332 11y ago
        Is this different from the second option I mentioned? The wall would still block the view of the people inside, right?
        guard-of-terra 11y ago
        You can make inner wall translucent perhaps?
    - colanderman 11y ago
      Boston's John Hancock tower recently got such a mural, visible from miles away: http://bcheights.com/metro/2015/mural-hancock-tower-public-art/ http://bcheights.com/metro/2015/mural-hancock-tower-public-a... You don't need to block much light to do something like this. Blocking with a bright matte paint an amount of light equal to that which is normally reflected would be quite visible, and would not significantly impact the light entering the building. (This is because you don't normally see reflections of the sun off a glass building, but rather reflections of other buildings, which are matte surfaces. So e.g. a translucent matte mural which blocks 10% of sunlight would be nearly twice as bright as 10% reflections of matte buildings that reflect/scatter 50% of sunlight, while only reducing transmitted light by 10%, from 90% to 81%.)
Huhuh 11y ago
I really enjoyed the book 'A Pattern Language' by Christopher Alexander. It looks at architecture from the level of the ordinary person and has some brilliant insight into what makes a building pleasant to live in. I applied some ideas from the book when I renovated my house and it has been a huge success.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 11y ago
  What specific ideas did you apply? One that I got from that book and have found to be rock solid is that a room feels more alive when it has a window on more than one side.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
eric_h 11y ago
I live in a newly constructed apartment building in a neighborhood in queens that's mostly houses. I typically guide the taxi driver to it by saying "it's the big, ugly building on the corner"
jgalt212 11y ago
These boring buildings are a micro aggression against my highly evolved and sensitive sense of aesthetics.

83 points by whocansay 11y ago

This is something I have thought about often, living in Norway. Seemed like there must have been some period in the 50s-60s when building the most mind-crushing office buildings / hospitals / apartment blocks was the goal. Maybe the psychological effect of buildings vary over years? I.e. in the 50s-60s boring, 'efficient' buildings were seen as modern and progressive, and thus, gave a morale boost? Exhibit A: http://borghoytrykk.no/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/VaskhøyblokkOslo1.jpg http://borghoytrykk.no/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Vaskhøyblo...

ghaff 11y ago
There was a period of modernist architecture up through maybe the mid-70s--including but not limited to Brutalism--that has aged particularly badly for the most part. Even examples that were presumably designed to stand out, like Boston City Hall and the Boston Public Library addition (to the original beautiful Beaux Arts structure) look simply awful today.
- rayiner 11y ago
  I think one problem is that concrete literally ages terribly. The Watergate wasn't supposed to be a dirty, stained, dark gray.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    Unsealed concrete does. The problem is that the surface of concrete is still fairly porous without sealing, so it readily stains.
- douche 11y ago
  Boston City Hall is quite possibly the ugliest building I've ever seen. The soot-belching, ash-caked, grease-grimed, wood-burning power plant that I worked in summers in college was more beautiful.
  - Analemma_ 11y ago
    It really is hideous. I grew up in the Boston area, and even as a little kid I distinctly remember thinking, "This has got to be the ugliest building in the world". Then when I got older I thought, "Well, the world is a big place and I haven't seen much of it, so I don't have much of a frame of reference. I'm sure there are uglier buildings somewhere." And then when I got a little older still, it was kind of satisfying to see multiple articles and polls saying that no, it is indeed one of the ugliest buildings in the entire world. It's not even that I think Brutalism is inherently bad. I think there are some really nice examples, like the AT&T building in NYC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street#/media/File:AT%26T_Long_Lines_building.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street#/media/File:A.... But Boston City Hall is Brutalism at its absolute worst.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      I once read a humorous column that described it as an attempt to give any visiting Soviets an inferiority complex by out Soviet-ing Soviet architecture. There are some decent brutalist buildings on the MIT campus including the MIT Student Center--which has a lot of interesting funky angles and is a rather useful space--and a number of IM Pei buildings (at least I think the latter are considered brutalist). There's also the Christian Science Plaza that I'd go so far as to call quite attractive.
- tamana 11y ago
  99pi , which loves architecture and looks for the beauty in everything, tried really hard to say something nice about Brutalism and all the got was: 1) it's really hard to design and build well with concrete (you get one shot to build, and you can't elegantly patch mistakes or change your design), so architects love to try for the challenge, and they usually fail. 2) concrete is impossible to maintain; the buildings we hate today weren't as bad when they were new. 3) concrete is a really nice background for outdoor fashion photography. 4) concrete had a humble look and cost-effective nature that embodies the working class spirit. Theae are true facts, none of which make me want to live or work in a concrete building. Maybe #4 when I am feeling camaraderie with my fellow worker.
Al-Khwarizmi 11y ago
This also puzzles me often. I live in a Spanish city full of apartment buildings of a variety of periods. Often, one can see beautiful art deco buildings (edit: I meant art nouveau, although art deco is nice as well) from the early 20th century right near horrible blocks from the 60s-70s (50s architecture was not that awful here IMO) that took the place of other beautiful buildings of yore. http://www.turismo.gal/imaxes/mdaw/mtyy/~edisp/~extract/TURGA162643~1~staticrendition/tg_carrusel_cabecera_grande.jpg http://www.turismo.gal/imaxes/mdaw/mtyy/~edisp/~extract/TURG... http://www.turismo.gal/imaxes/mdaw/mtyy/~edisp/~extract/TURGA162627~1~staticrendition/tg_carrusel_cabecera_grande.jpg http://www.turismo.gal/imaxes/mdaw/mtyy/~edisp/~extract/TURG... Doing a bit of research, one can uncover true atrocities made in the 60s and 70s... for example, in the 70s, this building (which was fully functional at the time): https://antiguaprisionprovincialcoruna.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/11078169_826488684094615_4656949509388678756_n.jpg https://antiguaprisionprovincialcoruna.files.wordpress.com/2... Was replaced with this: http://www.elidealgallego.com/media/idealgallego/images/2015/07/21/2015072122390958244.jpg http://www.elidealgallego.com/media/idealgallego/images/2015... And I wonder, what were the people of the 60s and 70s thinking? Did they really think that was a sensible change? Did they really think any of the horrible soulless masses of concrete that they gave us were actually nice? People from that period were not savages, that time gave us the Beatles, some awesome movies, the first more or less useful computers, computer networks... So why, dammit, why did they do this? I honestly would like to go there for an hour or two and ask people in the streets, to see if there was a collective hallucination or something.
- duncanawoods 11y ago
  It does seem mad doesn't it. I guess its just the madness of fashion where quality is defined more by novelty and contrast so it does not remain static. I imagine that at the time, art-deco looked like a man dressed in lace and velvet - an eye-sore of ornamentation and in contrast, the office building was the clean modern lines of a Hugo Boss suit with the authenticity of function. Too many clean lines and you get bored and you swing into something new. Ironically lace and velvet was back-in fashion for men in the 50's... briefly.
- cylinder 11y ago
  This was a worldwide phenomenon. The ugliest most boring buildings are all from the 60s and 70s in NYC too. Same in Australia I've seen. My high school in TX was built in the 70s and intentionally modeled after a prison: they thought eliminating all windows and keeping students in a contained, dark environment would be best for their learning and development. What were people thinking in the 70s?!
kaybe 11y ago
I think it was about building a lot, fast, since much was destroyed during the wars. At least that was the case in Germany, I don't know how much was down in Norway. I live in a house from the 50s, and it shows - you never know what you'll find in the walls (stone, wood, straw, mud..) since they built it with whatever they had. Some cables go diagonal within the walls to save material.
optforfon 11y ago
I also thought it was a Lutheran thing. Kinda matches the cold depressing churches the Lutherans build

dewyatt 11y ago

FEMA's Brooke Road Facility (BRF - "the barf") is quite the eye sore [1]. Luckily it's not in a super visible/residential area, but I always found it depressing that people actually work there. The outside is bad enough, but the inside is even worse. They're all stuffed into cubicles, no windows that I recall, dirty/decrepit bathroom, just a depressing place overall, hard to explain. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1989182,-78.1524764,3a,75y,111.34h,87.31t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sq-4pH3muktEMb0sl1J7dwg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1989182,-78.1524764,3a,75y,1...

Xophmeister 11y ago
It looks like someone welded some shipping containers together in a car park.
- david-given 11y ago
  That's doing shipping containers a disservice --- you can make some quite interesting structures by welding shipping containers together: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02210/CONTAINERCITY_2210000b.jpg http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02210/CONTAINERC... Making something as awful as the Brooke Road Facility takes real skill and a lot of work.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  It's tilt-wall construction, made with pre-stressed concrete slabs. Pretty common for heavy commercial/light industrial construction and all function, no form.

Kliment 11y ago

As an example of how even the most pedestrian industrial function can be in a beautiful building, here is a waste incineration plant in Vienna: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:M%C3%BCllverbrennungsanlage_Spittelau?uselang=de#/media/File:M%C3%BCllverbrennungsanlage_Spittelau.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:M%C3%BCllverbren...

cm2187 11y ago
The problem with "beautiful" is that it is very subjective. This picture is my definition of ugly. Unless you were sarcastic.
- elcapitan 11y ago
  Here too. It's using a boring building and adding make-up. Very kitschy make-up. That's not architecture, it's just decoration.
  - freddref 11y ago
    Maybe that's what modern buildings are lacking? Are we to surmise that architecture is dead if the proposed positive effects of architecture are better accomplished with decoration? The issue with architecture (edit: as practiced) is the resulting abundance of boring, dull or plain ugly buildings. If all it takes is some decoration, away we go, problem solved.
    - elcapitan 11y ago
      They are definitely lacking a human "scale" and something we can relate to (in my view). But it is also not solved with decoration. Architecture decoration is like putting lipstick on a pig. A dead pig.
- wozniacki 11y ago
  Seconded. There are these avant-gardes who wouldn't think twice about turning any public building project they could lay their hands into massive brutist absurdist sea of concrete gray from their dreams [1], if given a chance. Add to that a couple of behemoth art pieces [2] strewn somewhere on the premises that will no doubt one day pulverize some poor souls. Alas, the tyranny of the stroppy and vengeful minority. [1] https://lebbeuswoods.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/fic-2.jpg https://lebbeuswoods.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/fic-2.jpg http://www.artspace.com/filip_dujardin/untitled_2007_boxes http://www.artspace.com/filip_dujardin/untitled_2007_boxes [2] http://art-nerd.com/sanfrancisco/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2013/12/Richard-Serra-Ballast-1.jpg http://art-nerd.com/sanfrancisco/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/... http://art-nerd.com/sanfrancisco/ballast-by-richard-serra/ http://art-nerd.com/sanfrancisco/ballast-by-richard-serra/

jfindley 11y ago

I read an interesting study a while back about architecture in London, taken with a sample of professional architects and a sample of general population, all based in London. All the architects in the study hated the old Edwardian terraces, and pitied people who lived in them. All the non-architects loved the old Edwardian terraces, and hated the majority of the buildings the architects loved. You could easily make an argument from the point of view of the architects in that study that a row of Edwardian terraces are dull and boring, but most Londoners would love to live in them. With that in mind, I'm a bit wary of this - there are certainly plenty of horrible buildings around - 60's brutalist concrete would be an example of a style I particularly dislike - but how do we decide what's bland and what's attractive?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Possibly by doing representative sampling of the user population and finding what works for them. Architects are encouraged to be outrageous, individualistic, capricious, even dictatorial. A generic Edwardian terrace is the opposite of everything creative architecture is supposed to stand for. So a divergence of opinion is not a surprise. But I think it's interesting that you can estimate the health of an environment by measuring the effects it has on people. That's not quite a new idea in architecture, but it's certainly not central to architectural teaching. "Objective architecture", assessed by measurable effects instead of subjective whimsy, would revolutionise the profession.
- cm2187 11y ago
  I think it is rather that since the early XX, architects, like painters, stopped caring about doing "beautiful" and only cared about doing "original". But the difference between painters and architects is that painters can only offend the visitors of the Tate Modern, who are presumably consenting. Architects will offend anyone who happen to live in a city where they exercise their creativity.
  - true_religion 11y ago
    It's actually a reversal of previous eras where people didn't want "beautiful" but wanted to ape the classics. Today originality is seen as a boon, but for a long time you were only seen as a true master if first you could replicate old works.

rjett 11y ago

"So the trick, it seems, is to design a world that excites but doesn’t overly assault our faculties with a constant barrage of information" I just got back from my first trip to Chicago. I've been to quite a few cities, but the variety of architecture and juxtoposition of certain styles throughout the city made for a very enjoyable experience. Not every single building in the city is pretty either. But taken as a whole and hearing how history, art, architecture, and engineering shaped the city was fascinating. I actually did the architectural river tour, which I found to be one of the most enthralling guided tours I've ever been on. Highly recommended.

hugs 11y ago
This is one of the "secret" reasons I left the Bay Area to return to Chicago - downtown Chicago (aka The Loop) is beautiful. Please help keep it a secret so everyone doesn't move here and drive the price of everything up. ;)
- tptacek 11y ago
  You're joking, I know, but just to point out: Chicago is gigantic. Bring it on, Google and Facebook and Apple. We've got more than enough space. :)
  - tachyonbeam 11y ago
    The bay area has more than enough space too. It spreads over 100 kilometers south of San Francisco. It covers more than the surface area of NYC in total. The real issue is that the bay area refuses to grow. The population is only about 5 millions IIRC. The density is really low. IMO, in order to accomodate more people, and deal with the insane rents, the bay area needs to start growing vertically. Every other urban area I've been to has towers, apartment complexes. Here everything is flat. Most apartment buildings are only two floors high, rarely more than three. I won't get into the politics of all of this, but politics are the real problem. Many of the suburbanites around here want their suburbs to remain suburbs. The law of offer and demand should mean that apartment towers are getting built and rents go down as competition increase, but the regulations in place prevent this. Many swanky new condos are being built, but these are still flat buildings, not making efficient use of the available space.

sp332 11y ago

While there's room for improvement, I don't think the building looks bad. All the glass makes it seem airy and full of light. The windows probably make it a nice place to be inside as well. Its only problem is being too big, so that it becomes monotonous. But how would you fix that? Design parts of the building in different styles?

guard-of-terra 11y ago
Expose something nice in those windows instead of making them blind mirrors.
- sp332 11y ago
  There's too much sunlight coming in. Your options are to cook/blind everyone inside, put something opaque (and visible to the street) inside the windows while blocking the view, or dim the windows and let the occupants see the street.
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    You can put something interesting behind the window, then erect a wall, then your regular space goes. Some stores do that.
    - sp332 11y ago
      Is this different from the second option I mentioned? The wall would still block the view of the people inside, right?
      - guard-of-terra 11y ago
        You can make inner wall translucent perhaps?
  - colanderman 11y ago
    Boston's John Hancock tower recently got such a mural, visible from miles away: http://bcheights.com/metro/2015/mural-hancock-tower-public-art/ http://bcheights.com/metro/2015/mural-hancock-tower-public-a... You don't need to block much light to do something like this. Blocking with a bright matte paint an amount of light equal to that which is normally reflected would be quite visible, and would not significantly impact the light entering the building. (This is because you don't normally see reflections of the sun off a glass building, but rather reflections of other buildings, which are matte surfaces. So e.g. a translucent matte mural which blocks 10% of sunlight would be nearly twice as bright as 10% reflections of matte buildings that reflect/scatter 50% of sunlight, while only reducing transmitted light by 10%, from 90% to 81%.)

Huhuh 11y ago

I really enjoyed the book 'A Pattern Language' by Christopher Alexander. It looks at architecture from the level of the ordinary person and has some brilliant insight into what makes a building pleasant to live in. I applied some ideas from the book when I renovated my house and it has been a huge success.

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dang 11y ago
What specific ideas did you apply? One that I got from that book and have found to be rock solid is that a room feels more alive when it has a window on more than one side.

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eric_h 11y ago

I live in a newly constructed apartment building in a neighborhood in queens that's mostly houses. I typically guide the taxi driver to it by saying "it's the big, ugly building on the corner"

jgalt212 11y ago

These boring buildings are a micro aggression against my highly evolved and sensitive sense of aesthetics.