6 ms·

It's fascinating how neatly being politically conservative or progressive lines up with the corresponding architectural view. I like brutalism, but I disagree w

by ppod 7y ago

It's fascinating how neatly being politically conservative or progressive lines up with the corresponding architectural view. I like brutalism, but I disagree with the removal of Scruton from that position, it seems political. What annoys me about articles like the above is that they seem to ignore the possibility that aesthetics involves a lot of subjectivity. The argument seems to boil down to, "of course it's ugly, just look at it". But you look at what young travellers and photographers actually spend time appreciating and sharing images of, the modernist parts of Chicago, London and New York seem be appreciated at least as much as other cities and districts with well-regarded pre-20thC buildings.

deogeo 7y ago
> modernist parts of Chicago, London and New York seem be appreciated at least as much as other cities and districts with well-regarded pre-20thC buildings. Not according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Favorite_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Favorite_Architect... - modernist buildings barely show up in that list. Of course you're right - beauty is subjective. So when a simple popularity poll fails to show support for their chosen style, architects resort to pseudo-intellectual justifications of why the people are wrong to dislike the featureless blocks of glass, steel and concrete built in their cities.
- jhbadger 7y ago
  Part of the problem is that modern buildings change their names as corporate clients change and hard to include in lists for that reason. For example, I grew up visiting Chicago and marveling at the wonderful Sears Tower and John Hancock Center. These days these are known as the Willis Tower and 875 North Michigan Avenue.
- LeanderK 7y ago
  > Not according to (..) I am not sure, searching for "modern" reveals 27 hits and postmodern 14. Also, landmarks dominate the top 10 so i am not sure whether the poll more accuratly tracks the most liked building and not style. A style with more distributed votes would suffer (and, for example, there are more hits for postmodern than for art-deco).
  - deogeo 7y ago
    Among the top 50, 5 are any sort of 'modern'. But is this ratio reflected in the types of buildings being built? Perhaps I would not be so bitter if only (27+14)/150 of new buildings were (post)modern in style. But, much like in art, it looks like the style can only exist if it suffocates all others. Edit: By 'suffocate all others', I mean in an academic sense. Look at the designs produced by major architectural schools. They have been purged of older styles, just like the art world was purged of 'traditionally beautiful', confining it to art history.
    - LeanderK 7y ago
      > Perhaps I would not be so bitter if only (27+14)/150 of new buildings were (post)modern in style. But, much like in art, it looks like the style can only exist if it suffocates all others. This is a poll about americas favourite architecture and not in which style to build. I think the poll is largely a function of fame. Buildings are being build in all sorts of style, but I think the sobering result is that a style in itself is not really saving anyone. I also don't think style can only suffocate? A lot of cities are mixed in style.
- jonhendry18 7y ago
  I think such a list would be better for this argument if it were focused on a single city. ie, ranking buildings in just Chicago or New York.
coldtea 7y ago
>What annoys me about articles like the above is that they seem to ignore the possibility that aesthetics involves a lot of subjectivity. Well, in the case of such buildings, most of the subjective opinion is a resounding "nah". >But you look at what young travellers and photographers actually spend time appreciating and sharing images of, the modernist parts of Chicago, London and New York seem be appreciated at least as much as other cities and districts with well-regarded pre-20thC building What tourists take pictures of (and even for that, old buildings are unmatched in popularity) is hardly the criterion to judge buildings other unfortunate people have to live in, and with. It's nice and edgy to photograph a brutalist monstrosity with some filters (oh, apocalyptic dystopian chic). It's another thing to live there.
inflatableDodo 7y ago
Having lived in and around some of London's brutalist experiments, is a bit like trying to get by in a glitched version of minecraft covered in sandpaper.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
> It's fascinating how neatly being politically conservative or progressive lines up with the corresponding architectural view Only it's really not that neat. When the brutalist monstrosities (you may correctly infer I don't like most of them one bit, though I do like much modernism) were being designed and built post-war, brutalism particularly was embraced as enthusiastically on all parts of the political spectrum. The mood was to build a "better world" and to borrow a cliche, embrace the "white heat of technology". Futurism, science, nuclear and modernism - including brutalism - was good. End of. Many fine examples of classic architecture were levelled, like the oft mourned Penn station, to put in an awesome, imposing brutalist slab that was looking tired and shabby within a decade. I'm sure the comparative cheapness and quickness of build won more fans in one part of the political map though. As people started to live in them, use them, and live around them, it very rapidly became clear that brutalism - like much post-war architecture - didn't give a toss about humans. That was the real exciting new development in post-war architecture. The vision was inspiring, the reality was counter-productive in so many cases, as the scale or the amount of extra walking required wrecked the reality. They may have been impressive to look at, but so frequently fail to work as a building, or for people. There are a few brutalist that work, and far more considered modernist, but in the main I call the brutalist experiment failed for those who have to use, inhabit or visit them. The ones that really work, seem to have one common feature - they remember the humans - you know, those things that use buildings? :)
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
  The was a somewhat more "humane" streak at the core of this movement than you make out. Specifically, these buildings were supposed to serve an egalitarian purpose, removing class differences previously expressed with fancy fascades etc. This was also a time of far heavier air pollution than we today ever experience, at least in "the west". The typical multi-family building were therefore built not right at the sidewalk, but about 15m further back. Adjacent buildings no longer connected, but had similar spacing. The fraction of open space vs that used by buildings easily tripled, and the free space was planted with grass or brushes. This was also the time when mixed zoning was mostly abolished in favour of homogenous residential or commercial areas. As it turned out, this style isn't necessarily what people want. It tends to be too quiet, distances increase linear with lowered density, cars became somewhat required, etc. But the motives were mostly pure.
jdietrich 7y ago
More to the point, look at what people choose to live in. Good modernist and brutalist homes sell quickly and at a significant premium over prevailing market rates. Modernism got a bad name in many Western countries, because it was used as an architectural and philosophical justification for cheap and shoddy system-built housing to fill the post-war housing gap. That doesn't make rectilinear forms and bare concrete inherently bad; we don't blame vernacular architecture for characterless mock-Tudor estate houses and vulgar McMansions, we blame bad architects, profit-hungry developers and philistine houses. https://www.themodernhouse.com/ https://www.themodernhouse.com/ https://vimeo.com/93963469 https://vimeo.com/93963469
- icebraining 7y ago
  > Good modernist and brutalist homes sell quickly and at a significant premium over prevailing market rates. I admit I wouldn't be asking if it agreed with my biases, but how do we know this? Seems hard to control for all the other variables.
  - kd0amg 7y ago
    There are definitely some confounding factors other than architecture to account for. At least in Boston, new construction isn't replicating the century-old triple decker (of course, truly doing that would take a century of wear and tear). So I have to wonder how much of that price premium comes from having brand new stainless steel appliances and on-site gyms instead of creaky floors and questionable wiring. And then it seems to me, just wandering around town, the "modern" new construction is priced well above market price (lots of units sit vacant for a long time, with many eventually adding deal-sweetening offers like a month or two of free rent).
- rauhl 7y ago
  > Good modernist and brutalist homes sell quickly and at a significant premium over prevailing market rates. Is that because they are good, or because they serve to signal class status?
- mywittyname 7y ago
pjc50 7y ago
Scruton was a tobacco shill years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/jan/24/advertising.tobaccoadvertising?CMP=share_btn_tw https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/jan/24/advertising.to... He's incapable of not being political. Publishing conspiracy theory garbage about Soros at the time of a major hunt for antisemitism in public life was what got him fired. (The author of the original article, Dalrymple, is also a full time culture warrior)
- deogeo 7y ago
  Complaining about modern architectural style is being a culture warrior, but designing and building it is neutral and impartial...
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Building at the high end (the kind of stuff HN cares about) is partly an exercise in artistic style which winds up being political. Building at the low end is apolitical. With razor thin margins that crap doesnt make the cut. No matter how many millions of square feet of warehouse and pole barn you build there is no room for opinions, style and politics when your margin is pennies on the dollar.
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      >Building at the high end (the kind of stuff HN cares about) is partly an exercise in artistic style which winds up being political. >Building at the low end is apolitical. You have an decidedly odd view of what people are interested in and what makes something political.
    - jonhendry18 7y ago
      Low-income housing is extremely political.
- roca 7y ago
  I hope you've read both sides of that issue, e.g. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/the-scruton-tapes-an-anatomy-of-a-modern-hit-job/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/the-scruton-tapes-an-ana...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
stupidcar 7y ago
> The argument seems to boil down to, "of course it's ugly, just look at it" Yes, but only because the heart of the modernist movement has been an attempt to deny, belittle and mock the idea that the instinctive aesthetic reaction of the majority to their creations is important or valid. If you think their constructions are ugly, that's not their problem, it's your problem. Firstly, you're too stupid, conservative and narrow-minded to perceive its genius, and secondly, in fact, you actually do like it, or eventually you will, if you just shut up and wait long enough. It's as if avant-garde jazz advocates were put in charge every radio station and music streaming service on Earth, and given free rein to remorselessly enforce their taste on the whole population, with any dissenter being shouted down and told that, when they eventually forget what all other music sounded like, they'll come to love atonal jazz noise. In such a situation, the fightback would have to begin with people being told it's OK to trust their own instinct and hate the music that's been forced upon them. Likewise, the fightback against overweening modernism has to begin by bursting the elitist bubble of faux-intellectual obfuscation that modernists have created around architecture. It has to begin by telling people that they have as much right to judge the aesthetics of huge changes to the places they live and work as anybody else, and that if they think the changes are ugly, then that's valid, without any "but..." unfolding into a lecture about how daring and original the latest edifice being foisted upon them actually is.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Pils 7y ago
  So lets see: - Modernism isn't a collection a movements across different countries/mediums in the early 20th century, but a "movement" whose "heart" is making intellectuals feel better than regular folks. - No space for differing aesthetic opinions, the only real art is what you feel in your gut. - Modernists are actively trying to change the places you live in work, despite the fact that the height of the movement happening decades ago. - Specifically call out Jazz/Atonal music, apropos nothing. Look, I'm all for differing opinions, but yours are more political than aesthetic (proving the parent's point). Plenty of modern architecture is aesthetically pleasing to the untrained eye. Some of it is not, and some of it is just objectively bad. However, your particular point of view, which presupposes some elite cabal, pushing there modernist agenda/degenerate art on an unknowing and unwilling populace, deserves some more scrutiny.
michaelt 7y ago
But you look at what young travellers and photographers actually spend time appreciating and sharing images of Abandoned, rusting power plants make great subjects for photography [1] - IMHO "striking photographs" is a poor proxy for beauty, popularity or good public architecture. [1] https://abandonedsoutheast.com/2017/04/09/power-plant/ https://abandonedsoutheast.com/2017/04/09/power-plant/
Haga 7y ago
What seems to be absolutely taboo is the synthesis of both views.. Very sad.
jonhendry18 7y ago
Sturgeon's Law applies to Brutalist architecture as much as anything else. Most of it is terrible. The buildings that aren't terrible should be kept around. The buildings that are crap should be allowed to go away. I think the animus towards Brutalism is far more prevalent and justified than animus towards modernism.
on_and_off 7y ago
an article I stumbled upon today : https://www.timeout.fr/paris/sites-et-monuments/les-meilleurs-spots-architecture-brutaliste-du-grand-paris https://www.timeout.fr/paris/sites-et-monuments/les-meilleur... (in french but it you don't really need to read the text to appreciate the pictures) Crimes in concrete really irked me in the way the author just assumes that they hold the truth about architectural beauty.

by ppod 7y ago

deogeo 7y ago

> modernist parts of Chicago, London and New York seem be appreciated at least as much as other cities and districts with well-regarded pre-20thC buildings. Not according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Favorite_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Favorite_Architect... - modernist buildings barely show up in that list. Of course you're right - beauty is subjective. So when a simple popularity poll fails to show support for their chosen style, architects resort to pseudo-intellectual justifications of why the people are wrong to dislike the featureless blocks of glass, steel and concrete built in their cities.

jhbadger 7y ago
Part of the problem is that modern buildings change their names as corporate clients change and hard to include in lists for that reason. For example, I grew up visiting Chicago and marveling at the wonderful Sears Tower and John Hancock Center. These days these are known as the Willis Tower and 875 North Michigan Avenue.
LeanderK 7y ago
> Not according to (..) I am not sure, searching for "modern" reveals 27 hits and postmodern 14. Also, landmarks dominate the top 10 so i am not sure whether the poll more accuratly tracks the most liked building and not style. A style with more distributed votes would suffer (and, for example, there are more hits for postmodern than for art-deco).
- deogeo 7y ago
  Among the top 50, 5 are any sort of 'modern'. But is this ratio reflected in the types of buildings being built? Perhaps I would not be so bitter if only (27+14)/150 of new buildings were (post)modern in style. But, much like in art, it looks like the style can only exist if it suffocates all others. Edit: By 'suffocate all others', I mean in an academic sense. Look at the designs produced by major architectural schools. They have been purged of older styles, just like the art world was purged of 'traditionally beautiful', confining it to art history.
  - LeanderK 7y ago
    > Perhaps I would not be so bitter if only (27+14)/150 of new buildings were (post)modern in style. But, much like in art, it looks like the style can only exist if it suffocates all others. This is a poll about americas favourite architecture and not in which style to build. I think the poll is largely a function of fame. Buildings are being build in all sorts of style, but I think the sobering result is that a style in itself is not really saving anyone. I also don't think style can only suffocate? A lot of cities are mixed in style.
jonhendry18 7y ago
I think such a list would be better for this argument if it were focused on a single city. ie, ranking buildings in just Chicago or New York.

coldtea 7y ago

>What annoys me about articles like the above is that they seem to ignore the possibility that aesthetics involves a lot of subjectivity. Well, in the case of such buildings, most of the subjective opinion is a resounding "nah". >But you look at what young travellers and photographers actually spend time appreciating and sharing images of, the modernist parts of Chicago, London and New York seem be appreciated at least as much as other cities and districts with well-regarded pre-20thC building What tourists take pictures of (and even for that, old buildings are unmatched in popularity) is hardly the criterion to judge buildings other unfortunate people have to live in, and with. It's nice and edgy to photograph a brutalist monstrosity with some filters (oh, apocalyptic dystopian chic). It's another thing to live there.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

Having lived in and around some of London's brutalist experiments, is a bit like trying to get by in a glitched version of minecraft covered in sandpaper.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

> It's fascinating how neatly being politically conservative or progressive lines up with the corresponding architectural view Only it's really not that neat. When the brutalist monstrosities (you may correctly infer I don't like most of them one bit, though I do like much modernism) were being designed and built post-war, brutalism particularly was embraced as enthusiastically on all parts of the political spectrum. The mood was to build a "better world" and to borrow a cliche, embrace the "white heat of technology". Futurism, science, nuclear and modernism - including brutalism - was good. End of. Many fine examples of classic architecture were levelled, like the oft mourned Penn station, to put in an awesome, imposing brutalist slab that was looking tired and shabby within a decade. I'm sure the comparative cheapness and quickness of build won more fans in one part of the political map though. As people started to live in them, use them, and live around them, it very rapidly became clear that brutalism - like much post-war architecture - didn't give a toss about humans. That was the real exciting new development in post-war architecture. The vision was inspiring, the reality was counter-productive in so many cases, as the scale or the amount of extra walking required wrecked the reality. They may have been impressive to look at, but so frequently fail to work as a building, or for people. There are a few brutalist that work, and far more considered modernist, but in the main I call the brutalist experiment failed for those who have to use, inhabit or visit them. The ones that really work, seem to have one common feature - they remember the humans - you know, those things that use buildings? :)

IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
The was a somewhat more "humane" streak at the core of this movement than you make out. Specifically, these buildings were supposed to serve an egalitarian purpose, removing class differences previously expressed with fancy fascades etc. This was also a time of far heavier air pollution than we today ever experience, at least in "the west". The typical multi-family building were therefore built not right at the sidewalk, but about 15m further back. Adjacent buildings no longer connected, but had similar spacing. The fraction of open space vs that used by buildings easily tripled, and the free space was planted with grass or brushes. This was also the time when mixed zoning was mostly abolished in favour of homogenous residential or commercial areas. As it turned out, this style isn't necessarily what people want. It tends to be too quiet, distances increase linear with lowered density, cars became somewhat required, etc. But the motives were mostly pure.

jdietrich 7y ago

More to the point, look at what people choose to live in. Good modernist and brutalist homes sell quickly and at a significant premium over prevailing market rates. Modernism got a bad name in many Western countries, because it was used as an architectural and philosophical justification for cheap and shoddy system-built housing to fill the post-war housing gap. That doesn't make rectilinear forms and bare concrete inherently bad; we don't blame vernacular architecture for characterless mock-Tudor estate houses and vulgar McMansions, we blame bad architects, profit-hungry developers and philistine houses. https://www.themodernhouse.com/ https://www.themodernhouse.com/ https://vimeo.com/93963469 https://vimeo.com/93963469

icebraining 7y ago
> Good modernist and brutalist homes sell quickly and at a significant premium over prevailing market rates. I admit I wouldn't be asking if it agreed with my biases, but how do we know this? Seems hard to control for all the other variables.
- kd0amg 7y ago
  There are definitely some confounding factors other than architecture to account for. At least in Boston, new construction isn't replicating the century-old triple decker (of course, truly doing that would take a century of wear and tear). So I have to wonder how much of that price premium comes from having brand new stainless steel appliances and on-site gyms instead of creaky floors and questionable wiring. And then it seems to me, just wandering around town, the "modern" new construction is priced well above market price (lots of units sit vacant for a long time, with many eventually adding deal-sweetening offers like a month or two of free rent).
rauhl 7y ago
> Good modernist and brutalist homes sell quickly and at a significant premium over prevailing market rates. Is that because they are good, or because they serve to signal class status?
mywittyname 7y ago

pjc50 7y ago

Scruton was a tobacco shill years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/jan/24/advertising.tobaccoadvertising?CMP=share_btn_tw https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/jan/24/advertising.to... He's incapable of not being political. Publishing conspiracy theory garbage about Soros at the time of a major hunt for antisemitism in public life was what got him fired. (The author of the original article, Dalrymple, is also a full time culture warrior)

deogeo 7y ago
Complaining about modern architectural style is being a culture warrior, but designing and building it is neutral and impartial...
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Building at the high end (the kind of stuff HN cares about) is partly an exercise in artistic style which winds up being political. Building at the low end is apolitical. With razor thin margins that crap doesnt make the cut. No matter how many millions of square feet of warehouse and pole barn you build there is no room for opinions, style and politics when your margin is pennies on the dollar.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    >Building at the high end (the kind of stuff HN cares about) is partly an exercise in artistic style which winds up being political. >Building at the low end is apolitical. You have an decidedly odd view of what people are interested in and what makes something political.
  - jonhendry18 7y ago
    Low-income housing is extremely political.
roca 7y ago
I hope you've read both sides of that issue, e.g. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/the-scruton-tapes-an-anatomy-of-a-modern-hit-job/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/the-scruton-tapes-an-ana...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

stupidcar 7y ago

> The argument seems to boil down to, "of course it's ugly, just look at it" Yes, but only because the heart of the modernist movement has been an attempt to deny, belittle and mock the idea that the instinctive aesthetic reaction of the majority to their creations is important or valid. If you think their constructions are ugly, that's not their problem, it's your problem. Firstly, you're too stupid, conservative and narrow-minded to perceive its genius, and secondly, in fact, you actually do like it, or eventually you will, if you just shut up and wait long enough. It's as if avant-garde jazz advocates were put in charge every radio station and music streaming service on Earth, and given free rein to remorselessly enforce their taste on the whole population, with any dissenter being shouted down and told that, when they eventually forget what all other music sounded like, they'll come to love atonal jazz noise. In such a situation, the fightback would have to begin with people being told it's OK to trust their own instinct and hate the music that's been forced upon them. Likewise, the fightback against overweening modernism has to begin by bursting the elitist bubble of faux-intellectual obfuscation that modernists have created around architecture. It has to begin by telling people that they have as much right to judge the aesthetics of huge changes to the places they live and work as anybody else, and that if they think the changes are ugly, then that's valid, without any "but..." unfolding into a lecture about how daring and original the latest edifice being foisted upon them actually is.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Pils 7y ago
So lets see: - Modernism isn't a collection a movements across different countries/mediums in the early 20th century, but a "movement" whose "heart" is making intellectuals feel better than regular folks. - No space for differing aesthetic opinions, the only real art is what you feel in your gut. - Modernists are actively trying to change the places you live in work, despite the fact that the height of the movement happening decades ago. - Specifically call out Jazz/Atonal music, apropos nothing. Look, I'm all for differing opinions, but yours are more political than aesthetic (proving the parent's point). Plenty of modern architecture is aesthetically pleasing to the untrained eye. Some of it is not, and some of it is just objectively bad. However, your particular point of view, which presupposes some elite cabal, pushing there modernist agenda/degenerate art on an unknowing and unwilling populace, deserves some more scrutiny.

michaelt 7y ago

But you look at what young travellers and photographers actually spend time appreciating and sharing images of Abandoned, rusting power plants make great subjects for photography [1] - IMHO "striking photographs" is a poor proxy for beauty, popularity or good public architecture. [1] https://abandonedsoutheast.com/2017/04/09/power-plant/ https://abandonedsoutheast.com/2017/04/09/power-plant/

Haga 7y ago

What seems to be absolutely taboo is the synthesis of both views.. Very sad.

jonhendry18 7y ago

Sturgeon's Law applies to Brutalist architecture as much as anything else. Most of it is terrible. The buildings that aren't terrible should be kept around. The buildings that are crap should be allowed to go away. I think the animus towards Brutalism is far more prevalent and justified than animus towards modernism.

on_and_off 7y ago

an article I stumbled upon today : https://www.timeout.fr/paris/sites-et-monuments/les-meilleurs-spots-architecture-brutaliste-du-grand-paris https://www.timeout.fr/paris/sites-et-monuments/les-meilleur... (in french but it you don't really need to read the text to appreciate the pictures) Crimes in concrete really irked me in the way the author just assumes that they hold the truth about architectural beauty.