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do they 'not look stupid' because they have been around such a long time that they have trained our sense of what we consider a beautiful timeless building to b

do they 'not look stupid' because they have been around such a long time that they have trained our sense of what we consider a beautiful timeless building to be _or_ are they actually beautiful timeless buildings? In another 1000 year would steel "contemporary" buildings be considered beautiful or not? Is beauty a requirement for a institution? Do you want a building to be beautiful or functional? Who gets to decide what is beautiful?

indigochill 9y ago
I would argue beauty and function aren't actually completely separate things, especially in educational institutions. A beautiful environment leads more people to want to be in that environment (a positive function for the institution), and also has a passive positive effect on the mood of people in the environment, which in turn has a minor beneficial effect on their productivity (a positive function for those in the environment). My school had a mix of classic brick buildings as well as steel and glass. I preferred the steel buildings mainly because they were better-maintained and they let in a lot more natural light.
michaelt 9y ago
Do you want a building to be beautiful or functional? Seems like a false dichotomy to me. I mean, you can choose which elements of old buildings to copy and which not to copy; you can copy brickwork, window design and courtyard layouts without copying poor disabled access, ineffective climate control or impractical staircase layout.
- mirceal 9y ago
  is it? I'm not saying you need one or the other. I'm saying that it's a spectrum and you have to chose what you optimize for. The most functional building is not going to be the most beautiful one and vice-versa.
  - njarboe 9y ago
    That is why one should hire a great architect. To try and get as much as possible of both with a given location and budget. With a bad one you can easliy get neither. See sites on bad McMansions.
    - mirceal 9y ago
      Agree. And you can definitely get some of both. My original badly made point was that you cannot prioritize form over function and get away with it. Now that I think about it I guess the reverse is true (ie you cannot prioritize function over form and call it a day).
trgn 9y ago
I'd say they are actually timeless, it isn't just emotional attachment. They're both beautiful and functional. Some of those old buildings are less functional than they used to, like a lot of churches in Europe, but they are redeemed because they are beautiful. > Is beauty a requirement for a institution? It certainly is if those institutions recognize their responsibility when building large projects. Good architecture should be beautiful, robust, and useful. That's a rule of thumb dating back to antiquity. Modernist ideology started to subvert two of those, and really only focused on use. It bastardized beauty into branding, the idea that a building is a sculpture that needs to project the brand of the institution. That's why so called "forward thinking" institutions build buildings that look futuristic. But they only look futuristic in the present-day, that kick wears off really quick. What remains is often objectively horrible and unpleasant. That new Yale building will not suffer that fate, because Yale didn't fall in that trap of using architecture as branding.
- mirceal 9y ago
  I have a problem with the redeeming qualities of a old building. Sure, it's pleasant to look at, it may even improve your mood, but is this why you're there? Example: you need to study in the library and the library is really small because it was super expensive to build and noone thought we would have so many students. And by the way, the heating does not work or it's expensive as fuck. Now what?
  - hindsightbias 9y ago
    For all those tuition costs, would I rather study here: https://connectrac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PCLupdate020.jpg https://connectrac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PCLupdate0... (New and improved!) Or here? https://jenpearl.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/web-stanford-library-reading-room.jpg https://jenpearl.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/web-stanford-li... (er, edited non-rotating link) I've been in a lot of garish, modern/brutal and cold libraries. Some with A/C that actually worked but was always out of control - for whatever reason, a lot of very "modern" buildings have crazy bad HVAC. Either too much or too litle. Of course that can be fixed, but why not something like an updated version of the latter library?
DanAndersen 9y ago
Beauty is one of the functions of a building. Pursuing "form over function" without considering beauty leaves you with a shantytown. >Who gets to decide what is beautiful? If one of the goals of a building is for people to visit it and to spend time around it and to enjoy the experience, then the community of people who will have to live with the building should have the most say about what is beautiful for them. One issue with some architects is that they don't have "skin in the game" when it comes to the buildings they design. They can come up with interesting concepts and visions that may seem appealing as a model or impressive to their peers, but if they don't have to walk by it every single day, then their opinions about what is beautiful should not be a dominating and overriding factor. In the specific case of university donors, they have a particular vision for what the aesthetics should be, and it's their support that makes the university continue to run well and it's their personal connection to the university that makes them care. Their objectives of beauty should be more important in that particular case than a designer who will be moving on to the next project.
- hindsightbias 9y ago
  Have been trying to "get" a lot of modern architecture since I studied it back in the day, but much of it from the 70's on looks dated to me. Buildings like I.M. Pei's Dallas City Hall. Have to look hard to find a Guggenheim, which (IMO) has stood the test of time. So "modern" and functionalism is great, but I'd rather they figure out something lasting before they experiment with a few $100M of my taxes/tuition/donation.
tsul 9y ago
If we’re going to talk “timeless” I might recommend a read through Chris Alexander’s “A Timeless Way of Building” and its follow-up, “A Pattern Language”. Alexander talks about the timelessness and beauty of buildings in terms of culturally-defined patterns—almost ‘design patterns’ but a bit more abstract—that are applied and repeated to create buildings and spaces that evoke a particular “feeling without a name”: something we all feel when a building feels alive and congruous with the actions that take place there. A beautiful building is symbiotic with its purpose, its surroundings, and the people who use it. That’s sort of a gross oversimplification though. I really recommend checking it out. Though its focus is loosely on architecture, I’ve seen a lot of engineers and designers get excited about it and find applications to their own work.

indigochill 9y ago

I would argue beauty and function aren't actually completely separate things, especially in educational institutions. A beautiful environment leads more people to want to be in that environment (a positive function for the institution), and also has a passive positive effect on the mood of people in the environment, which in turn has a minor beneficial effect on their productivity (a positive function for those in the environment). My school had a mix of classic brick buildings as well as steel and glass. I preferred the steel buildings mainly because they were better-maintained and they let in a lot more natural light.

michaelt 9y ago

Do you want a building to be beautiful or functional? Seems like a false dichotomy to me. I mean, you can choose which elements of old buildings to copy and which not to copy; you can copy brickwork, window design and courtyard layouts without copying poor disabled access, ineffective climate control or impractical staircase layout.

mirceal 9y ago
is it? I'm not saying you need one or the other. I'm saying that it's a spectrum and you have to chose what you optimize for. The most functional building is not going to be the most beautiful one and vice-versa.
- njarboe 9y ago
  That is why one should hire a great architect. To try and get as much as possible of both with a given location and budget. With a bad one you can easliy get neither. See sites on bad McMansions.
  - mirceal 9y ago
    Agree. And you can definitely get some of both. My original badly made point was that you cannot prioritize form over function and get away with it. Now that I think about it I guess the reverse is true (ie you cannot prioritize function over form and call it a day).

trgn 9y ago

I'd say they are actually timeless, it isn't just emotional attachment. They're both beautiful and functional. Some of those old buildings are less functional than they used to, like a lot of churches in Europe, but they are redeemed because they are beautiful. > Is beauty a requirement for a institution? It certainly is if those institutions recognize their responsibility when building large projects. Good architecture should be beautiful, robust, and useful. That's a rule of thumb dating back to antiquity. Modernist ideology started to subvert two of those, and really only focused on use. It bastardized beauty into branding, the idea that a building is a sculpture that needs to project the brand of the institution. That's why so called "forward thinking" institutions build buildings that look futuristic. But they only look futuristic in the present-day, that kick wears off really quick. What remains is often objectively horrible and unpleasant. That new Yale building will not suffer that fate, because Yale didn't fall in that trap of using architecture as branding.

mirceal 9y ago
I have a problem with the redeeming qualities of a old building. Sure, it's pleasant to look at, it may even improve your mood, but is this why you're there? Example: you need to study in the library and the library is really small because it was super expensive to build and noone thought we would have so many students. And by the way, the heating does not work or it's expensive as fuck. Now what?
- hindsightbias 9y ago
  For all those tuition costs, would I rather study here: https://connectrac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PCLupdate020.jpg https://connectrac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PCLupdate0... (New and improved!) Or here? https://jenpearl.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/web-stanford-library-reading-room.jpg https://jenpearl.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/web-stanford-li... (er, edited non-rotating link) I've been in a lot of garish, modern/brutal and cold libraries. Some with A/C that actually worked but was always out of control - for whatever reason, a lot of very "modern" buildings have crazy bad HVAC. Either too much or too litle. Of course that can be fixed, but why not something like an updated version of the latter library?

DanAndersen 9y ago

Beauty is one of the functions of a building. Pursuing "form over function" without considering beauty leaves you with a shantytown. >Who gets to decide what is beautiful? If one of the goals of a building is for people to visit it and to spend time around it and to enjoy the experience, then the community of people who will have to live with the building should have the most say about what is beautiful for them. One issue with some architects is that they don't have "skin in the game" when it comes to the buildings they design. They can come up with interesting concepts and visions that may seem appealing as a model or impressive to their peers, but if they don't have to walk by it every single day, then their opinions about what is beautiful should not be a dominating and overriding factor. In the specific case of university donors, they have a particular vision for what the aesthetics should be, and it's their support that makes the university continue to run well and it's their personal connection to the university that makes them care. Their objectives of beauty should be more important in that particular case than a designer who will be moving on to the next project.

hindsightbias 9y ago
Have been trying to "get" a lot of modern architecture since I studied it back in the day, but much of it from the 70's on looks dated to me. Buildings like I.M. Pei's Dallas City Hall. Have to look hard to find a Guggenheim, which (IMO) has stood the test of time. So "modern" and functionalism is great, but I'd rather they figure out something lasting before they experiment with a few $100M of my taxes/tuition/donation.

tsul 9y ago

If we’re going to talk “timeless” I might recommend a read through Chris Alexander’s “A Timeless Way of Building” and its follow-up, “A Pattern Language”. Alexander talks about the timelessness and beauty of buildings in terms of culturally-defined patterns—almost ‘design patterns’ but a bit more abstract—that are applied and repeated to create buildings and spaces that evoke a particular “feeling without a name”: something we all feel when a building feels alive and congruous with the actions that take place there. A beautiful building is symbiotic with its purpose, its surroundings, and the people who use it. That’s sort of a gross oversimplification though. I really recommend checking it out. Though its focus is loosely on architecture, I’ve seen a lot of engineers and designers get excited about it and find applications to their own work.