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Two random comments: 1. When I was younger I though brutalist concrete buildings were ugly, now (even if they still are) i find they are usually the most inter

Two random comments: 1. When I was younger I though brutalist concrete buildings were ugly, now (even if they still are) i find they are usually the most interesting thing in a city core. 2. > Even their own houses typically look like architectural garbage. Agreed. I can't believe how cheap and ugly so many of the "rich people" houses are. It seems to be a competition for who can have the most different rooflines, and for uses of stone veneer

mjhay 4y ago
If you like complicated rooflines, you'll love McMansion Hell: https://mcmansionhell.com/ https://mcmansionhell.com/
- frobolo 4y ago
  That site is just about equal parts hilarious and traumatic to browse.
- ask_b123 4y ago
  This is very good! But now I wonder if there's something similar for good architecture.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    She has it behind the paywall ;) > Did you just join my team of patrons?! Yes, yes you did. THANK YOU! As an official patron, you'll have access to my patron-only feed, the **NEW Discord server**, as well as access to the "Good House of the Month!" - The antidote to the month's house roast. > You'll also receive a special slideshow featuring a curated collection of abandoned McMansions! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3844491 https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3844491
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cjohnson318 4y ago
> I can't believe how cheap and ugly so many of the "rich people" houses are. If don't have the money to build, then you bid over whatever is on the market; whatever some developer and architect duo thought would differentiate themselves ten or twenty years ago. People prioritize commute, distance to family, distacne to the grocery, school zones, number of bedrooms and space, kitchen/bath vintage, and price way, way before what a home actually looks like on the outside. No one really wants to live in a McMansion, but outward appearance is so far down on the priorities that it doesn't matter.
- david927 4y ago
  That's a fine, valid rationalization. But I would disagree with one aspect: part of it is that they like it. We don't have fine taste anymore and we don't have a desire to impress in a classical way. It used to be you would recite a Latin phrase at dinner and everyone would be impressed. Those days are gone. When money is king, everything else is demoted.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    Yea I think people just don't understand "what they like" here. It's like if you grew up on fast food like I did. It's also mind-boggling to me when people travel to Europe or Macinac Island and they come back home and gush about it, but can't get over some sort of mental blocker they have that you could actually live like that here too in the US if we stopped building for cars and started building for people. Although I do think it's an influential factor, I don't think money is the primary issue. If anything having more money and making more money gives you access to "finer" things and more experience. It's much more complicated than that. It reminds me of the anecdote about Tik Tok (which should be banned IMO) that shows funny videos and 'dumb' content to Americans and shows chess championships and educational materials to the Chinese. That's what we're dealing with here at a societal level. Great post, David. :)
  - cjohnson318 4y ago
    De gustibus non est disputandum. The thing about taste is that it's relative.
RC_ITR 4y ago
Here’s the secret to this thread. Every “adult” generation always hates 50-100 year old architecture, because that was what was slightly old and starting to show its age when they were kids. Gen-X/Millenials associate brutalism with non-renovated stuffy classrooms, empty downtown office buildings, and dirty public plazas. Then a bunch get torn down (usually the lowest effort versions) and people adaptively re-use the best ones and everyone remembers the original intent of the style and falls in love with it again. Seriously, people in the 60’s thought Victorian homes were a blight on San Francisco.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  It seems more likely that brutalist architecture is uniquely terrible, and the ascendant architects of the 1960s simply had horrific taste. If anything, architecture seems to have been almost entirely captured by the avant-garde; people more interested in “new and different” than “classic and beautiful”. I don’t think modern audiences are suddenly falling in love with brutalist architecture; even the best examples look like dystopian-future prisons or mental hospitals.
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    >It seems more likely that brutalist architecture is uniquely terrible Interesting, it seems to me that brutalist architecture is actually pretty appealing aesthetically. I might go so far as to say that objective beauty and taste simply does not exist and anyone claiming that it does hasn't thought about it very hard yet.
    - catiopatio 4y ago
      You could go so far to claim that, but it’s exactly that point of view that produced so much objectively ugly, human-unfriendly architecture. Relativists replace the moral imperative of “good for everyone” with “interesting to people like me”, and think they’ve stumbled onto a more sophisticated or accurate view of the world, instead of just vapid sophistry.

mjhay 4y ago

If you like complicated rooflines, you'll love McMansion Hell: https://mcmansionhell.com/ https://mcmansionhell.com/

frobolo 4y ago
That site is just about equal parts hilarious and traumatic to browse.
ask_b123 4y ago
This is very good! But now I wonder if there's something similar for good architecture.
- bombcar 4y ago
  She has it behind the paywall ;) > Did you just join my team of patrons?! Yes, yes you did. THANK YOU! As an official patron, you'll have access to my patron-only feed, the **NEW Discord server**, as well as access to the "Good House of the Month!" - The antidote to the month's house roast. > You'll also receive a special slideshow featuring a curated collection of abandoned McMansions! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3844491 https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3844491

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cjohnson318 4y ago

> I can't believe how cheap and ugly so many of the "rich people" houses are. If don't have the money to build, then you bid over whatever is on the market; whatever some developer and architect duo thought would differentiate themselves ten or twenty years ago. People prioritize commute, distance to family, distacne to the grocery, school zones, number of bedrooms and space, kitchen/bath vintage, and price way, way before what a home actually looks like on the outside. No one really wants to live in a McMansion, but outward appearance is so far down on the priorities that it doesn't matter.

david927 4y ago
That's a fine, valid rationalization. But I would disagree with one aspect: part of it is that they like it. We don't have fine taste anymore and we don't have a desire to impress in a classical way. It used to be you would recite a Latin phrase at dinner and everyone would be impressed. Those days are gone. When money is king, everything else is demoted.
- ericmay 4y ago
  Yea I think people just don't understand "what they like" here. It's like if you grew up on fast food like I did. It's also mind-boggling to me when people travel to Europe or Macinac Island and they come back home and gush about it, but can't get over some sort of mental blocker they have that you could actually live like that here too in the US if we stopped building for cars and started building for people. Although I do think it's an influential factor, I don't think money is the primary issue. If anything having more money and making more money gives you access to "finer" things and more experience. It's much more complicated than that. It reminds me of the anecdote about Tik Tok (which should be banned IMO) that shows funny videos and 'dumb' content to Americans and shows chess championships and educational materials to the Chinese. That's what we're dealing with here at a societal level. Great post, David. :)
- cjohnson318 4y ago
  De gustibus non est disputandum. The thing about taste is that it's relative.

RC_ITR 4y ago

Here’s the secret to this thread. Every “adult” generation always hates 50-100 year old architecture, because that was what was slightly old and starting to show its age when they were kids. Gen-X/Millenials associate brutalism with non-renovated stuffy classrooms, empty downtown office buildings, and dirty public plazas. Then a bunch get torn down (usually the lowest effort versions) and people adaptively re-use the best ones and everyone remembers the original intent of the style and falls in love with it again. Seriously, people in the 60’s thought Victorian homes were a blight on San Francisco.

catiopatio 4y ago
It seems more likely that brutalist architecture is uniquely terrible, and the ascendant architects of the 1960s simply had horrific taste. If anything, architecture seems to have been almost entirely captured by the avant-garde; people more interested in “new and different” than “classic and beautiful”. I don’t think modern audiences are suddenly falling in love with brutalist architecture; even the best examples look like dystopian-future prisons or mental hospitals.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  >It seems more likely that brutalist architecture is uniquely terrible Interesting, it seems to me that brutalist architecture is actually pretty appealing aesthetically. I might go so far as to say that objective beauty and taste simply does not exist and anyone claiming that it does hasn't thought about it very hard yet.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    You could go so far to claim that, but it’s exactly that point of view that produced so much objectively ugly, human-unfriendly architecture. Relativists replace the moral imperative of “good for everyone” with “interesting to people like me”, and think they’ve stumbled onto a more sophisticated or accurate view of the world, instead of just vapid sophistry.