4 ms·

(post script at the start, this is meant to be a bit faux outrage/tongue in cheek, I didn't realize my childhood dislike of brutalism was still so strong :D eve

(post script at the start, this is meant to be a bit faux outrage/tongue in cheek, I didn't realize my childhood dislike of brutalism was still so strong :D everyone has different tastes, it's not that big a deal etc) I feel like this is just horribly pretentious stuff that I hear all the time in Britain from posh people. I moved to the UK from Romania, I grew up surrounded by brutalist apartment buildings. They're ugly and awful and everyone I know from back home agrees. Poundbury looks quite pretty, I would enjoy living there. The barbican towers look absolutely hideous. They're literally too ugly for socialist architecture committees, our 1980s Bucharest apartment buildings look a lot nicer than that(and they're still ugly). Also brutalist buildings weather horribly, that sickly yellow mouldy look, you end up needing to repaint them every 10-15 years or just deal with the shabby look. It all just sounds like "Oh no, poor people are mimicking the architecture of their 'betters' quick lets mock their plebeian tastes. You either live in a legit bajillion pound period home or a concrete box. Know your place, plebe! PVC windows gasp pearl clutch" My post-socialist country working class taste says that if we are to have a standardized building style we could do far worse than mock georgian. No comment on the type of person that would want to live there, I can imagine given that it's a trial run it'll be some fairly "you have no authority here, jackie weaver" type folks. But in a random village/burb that's just styled like this, I think the people would just be average normal.

pasabagi 5y ago
The barbican is super expensive, fwiw. They are also really nice inside. Personally, I like brutalist buildings. I feel like a lot of the fake georgian cutesy stuff is built to look good (for a certain taste) but almost always sucks to live in. I spent my student years living in mouldy little semi-detatched houses in the UK, and they are really shit houses. Brutalist flats I've lived in have all functioned pretty well as flats (no mushrooms in the walls, etc).
- larksimian 5y ago
  You're 1000% correct about build quality. Ironically, re my prior post, I've been missing soviet style flats ever since I moved to the UK many years ago. Affordable, better soundproofing, no mold, way better plumbing, no personal boiler to have to screw around with. Also 4-story apartment buildings are obviously a better way of doing medium density than stuffing 4-8 people into a 4 bedroom house the way South East England does it. However, that's sort of orthogonal(maybe wrong word) to he architectural style. I'm sure decent build quality can be done with a decent outside facade, even though private British home builders are all awful these days. I have joked to friends several times (when angry about rentals' value/money ratio) that Oxford could have benefited from a Ceausescu figure tearing down the crappier working class neighborhoods and replacing them with 4-6 story apartment buildings. Only about 10% serious about it, since he would've torn down the downtown as well to build himself a McPalace, tacky bastard that he was.
  - pasabagi 5y ago
    The thing is, georgian houses only look good if they are actually made with all the right materials and skills - and that stuff is expensive. If you look at all the neoclassical / retro stuff the nazis built, for example, it generally looks really dystopian, no matter how well you look after it, My personal feeling, aesthetics-wise, is that materials look good and work well when you respect their innate properties. Trying to force an aesthetic from one material on another is, at best, a recipe for an cheap and ugly chimera - which is kind of how I view Poundbury. More often, it just results in buildings that don't work (every UK house ever). Georgian buildings come from a specific set of materials and skills, many of which don't really exist any more. You can replace the stucco with concrete or polystyrene or whatever, but it's never going to look the same, because part of the 'aura' of the old stuff is it was made by really skilled people who had generations of experience showing in every move they made.

pasabagi 5y ago

The barbican is super expensive, fwiw. They are also really nice inside. Personally, I like brutalist buildings. I feel like a lot of the fake georgian cutesy stuff is built to look good (for a certain taste) but almost always sucks to live in. I spent my student years living in mouldy little semi-detatched houses in the UK, and they are really shit houses. Brutalist flats I've lived in have all functioned pretty well as flats (no mushrooms in the walls, etc).

larksimian 5y ago
You're 1000% correct about build quality. Ironically, re my prior post, I've been missing soviet style flats ever since I moved to the UK many years ago. Affordable, better soundproofing, no mold, way better plumbing, no personal boiler to have to screw around with. Also 4-story apartment buildings are obviously a better way of doing medium density than stuffing 4-8 people into a 4 bedroom house the way South East England does it. However, that's sort of orthogonal(maybe wrong word) to he architectural style. I'm sure decent build quality can be done with a decent outside facade, even though private British home builders are all awful these days. I have joked to friends several times (when angry about rentals' value/money ratio) that Oxford could have benefited from a Ceausescu figure tearing down the crappier working class neighborhoods and replacing them with 4-6 story apartment buildings. Only about 10% serious about it, since he would've torn down the downtown as well to build himself a McPalace, tacky bastard that he was.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  The thing is, georgian houses only look good if they are actually made with all the right materials and skills - and that stuff is expensive. If you look at all the neoclassical / retro stuff the nazis built, for example, it generally looks really dystopian, no matter how well you look after it, My personal feeling, aesthetics-wise, is that materials look good and work well when you respect their innate properties. Trying to force an aesthetic from one material on another is, at best, a recipe for an cheap and ugly chimera - which is kind of how I view Poundbury. More often, it just results in buildings that don't work (every UK house ever). Georgian buildings come from a specific set of materials and skills, many of which don't really exist any more. You can replace the stucco with concrete or polystyrene or whatever, but it's never going to look the same, because part of the 'aura' of the old stuff is it was made by really skilled people who had generations of experience showing in every move they made.