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> [...] needlessly ornamental furniture [...] That ignorance of beauty being a perfectly valid prime objective over function, for everyday objects (or architec

> [...] needlessly ornamental furniture [...] That ignorance of beauty being a perfectly valid prime objective over function, for everyday objects (or architecture) is why most things and buildings today look straight out of a dystopian sci-fi flic. And because we love to live in such bland spaces, "decorated" with such furniture, inside such buildings, is probably also why people spend tons of money every year to escape them. And to e.g. visit picturesque European cities and villages with tiny winding roads and "needlessly" decorated building facades in their holidays.

kranke155 3y ago
Glad someone else caught that. Saying beauty in decoration is “needless” is like saying we should only have non fiction books. Fiction - invention - creativity - fantasy - has its place both in furniture and publishing. We live in a Bauhaus world.
- UweSchmidt 3y ago
  Architects and product designers saw Bauhaus and thought they could skip the decorations and call it a day, leading to ugly cities and crappy products, but that ain't Bauhaus! Minimal, aesthetic and functional things remain few and far between; the old iPod was Bauhaus, but most other things? Not so much.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    There are many beautiful buildings and objects. I hold the ugliness of the world on the people's behavior rather then the objects of the world.
    - jschveibinz 3y ago
      This is the most profound comment in the section, ie. to each his own to find beauty, and along the way try to treat others with respect.
- detourdog 3y ago
  I feel many people truly misunderstand what the Bauhaus School was about and the Great Leap Forward it brought. The problem statement that the Bauhaus school was founded under was along the lines of this. The machine age is upon us. The guilds of the craftsman is holding back the training of the workers. The machine age is providing easy access to materials that are more dynamic than wood or stone. The Arts and Crafts movement is generally given credit as the step between the old world and the machine age production. The Bauhaus was founded to train architects and designers to work with machine age production. The early days they had a hard time getting the students to understand that a machine couldn't produce a cherub. There was a deep seated belief that culture was dangerous after the Great War and peace could exist through efficient use of resources. The machine age would bring a world of abundance if resources were used efficiently. Finally my art history teachers would have a conniption if a student referred to Bauhaus style architecture. The proper term is International Style. This name is relevant becuase it was to have no cultural preconceived notions. This would promote peace through understanding. The goal was that a human could be dropped in the space from anywhere in the world and navigate their surroundings. I see it as a worthy goal. Not every building is successful and I admit to being indoctrinated in design since birth but I find this place people and the knowledge workers seem to thrive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex#/media/File:Bell_Labs_Holmdel.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex#/med... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement
  - ralusek 3y ago
    > The goal was that a human could be dropped in the space from anywhere in the world and navigate their surroundings. I see it as a worthy goal. It's funny, because I've often used an expression that's almost a perfect inversion of this in order to describe the world's best places. That you could be dropped into a place and know that you are in exactly that place, and not in any of the innumerable identity-less spaces on the planet. This goal is dystopian.
    - detourdog 3y ago
      I don't believe the inversion is inherent. I believe a unique identity can exist without explicit cultural references. I don't see the split or the inversion. I would recognize this place as distinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salk_Institute_for_Biological_Studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salk_Institute_for_Biological_... It might be you would describe that as dystopian but I suppose dystopian is in the eye of the beholder. I guess this is a good as place as any to mention that Corbusier railed against the metric system as anti-human. The reasoning was that human spaces should be defined through human proportions not power of 10 proportioning. The lack of tolerance for other peoples preferences is considered dystopian in some circles.
yakubin 3y ago
Beauty != ornamentation. While Bauhaus looks dystopian, there are art styles which do away with ornamentation and look beautiful, such as Japanese wabi sabi. See e.g. <https://hypebeast.com/image/2014/11/kyoto-guide-to-wabi-sabi-4.jpg?w=520 https://hypebeast.com/image/2014/11/kyoto-guide-to-wabi-sabi...> The main thing making Bauhaus dystopian is its alienation of humans from nature. In contrast, wabi sabi emphasises connection with nature, which creates a very different effect, while still being minimal. Edit: another difference is approach to irregular shapes. Bauhaus bans them, while wabi sabi embraces them. I think that too makes the first dystopian and the latter human.
- username332211 3y ago
  In the article Art Déco is presented as an explicitly non-naturalistic style with decorations there being based on geometric shapes. Yet, I don't think it's common to describe Déco as a dystopian style.
  - yakubin 3y ago
    All but the last photo demonstrating it in the article look pretty dystopian to me. Especially this one: <https://www.archdaily.com/1005570/from-art-nouveau-to-the-bauhaus-how-home-interiors-looked-in-popular-art-movements/64de08058177ff017c22ca4d-from-art-nouveau-to-the-bauhaus-how-home-interiors-looked-in-popular-art-movements-photo https://www.archdaily.com/1005570/from-art-nouveau-to-the-ba...>. And if not dystopian, then at least very inhospitable.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Some folks would even say that less ornamentation = more beauty. e.g. Jony Ive.
- cameronh90 3y ago
  Isn't that a large ornament of a bird right on top of that house? I'd argue that scene has _many_ design elements that are there only the sake of aesthetics. Whether you consider them ornamentation or not I guess depends on your perspective, but if you look closely you'll see lots of shapes and textures that would have required significant effort purely to add beauty. Japanese aesthetics also tend to value the uniqueness of hand crafted objects, and architecture that is built with care by a skilled tradesperson. Whereas Bauhaus and much of modernism in general were often about stripping all non-essential design elements away, whether ornamentation or otherwise. Essentially: the minimum manufacturing effort to produce a building that meets the functional requirements, ideally in such a way that can be mass manufactured. The end result of a lot of Bauhaus designs isn't particularly visually minimalist. Indeed, there are often a lot of contrasting shapes and colours and often lack of symmetry. Both are a form of minimalism, but very different in philosophy.
deleted 3y ago
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kranke155 3y ago

Glad someone else caught that. Saying beauty in decoration is “needless” is like saying we should only have non fiction books. Fiction - invention - creativity - fantasy - has its place both in furniture and publishing. We live in a Bauhaus world.

UweSchmidt 3y ago
Architects and product designers saw Bauhaus and thought they could skip the decorations and call it a day, leading to ugly cities and crappy products, but that ain't Bauhaus! Minimal, aesthetic and functional things remain few and far between; the old iPod was Bauhaus, but most other things? Not so much.
- detourdog 3y ago
  There are many beautiful buildings and objects. I hold the ugliness of the world on the people's behavior rather then the objects of the world.
  - jschveibinz 3y ago
    This is the most profound comment in the section, ie. to each his own to find beauty, and along the way try to treat others with respect.
detourdog 3y ago
I feel many people truly misunderstand what the Bauhaus School was about and the Great Leap Forward it brought. The problem statement that the Bauhaus school was founded under was along the lines of this. The machine age is upon us. The guilds of the craftsman is holding back the training of the workers. The machine age is providing easy access to materials that are more dynamic than wood or stone. The Arts and Crafts movement is generally given credit as the step between the old world and the machine age production. The Bauhaus was founded to train architects and designers to work with machine age production. The early days they had a hard time getting the students to understand that a machine couldn't produce a cherub. There was a deep seated belief that culture was dangerous after the Great War and peace could exist through efficient use of resources. The machine age would bring a world of abundance if resources were used efficiently. Finally my art history teachers would have a conniption if a student referred to Bauhaus style architecture. The proper term is International Style. This name is relevant becuase it was to have no cultural preconceived notions. This would promote peace through understanding. The goal was that a human could be dropped in the space from anywhere in the world and navigate their surroundings. I see it as a worthy goal. Not every building is successful and I admit to being indoctrinated in design since birth but I find this place people and the knowledge workers seem to thrive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex#/media/File:Bell_Labs_Holmdel.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex#/med... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement
- ralusek 3y ago
  > The goal was that a human could be dropped in the space from anywhere in the world and navigate their surroundings. I see it as a worthy goal. It's funny, because I've often used an expression that's almost a perfect inversion of this in order to describe the world's best places. That you could be dropped into a place and know that you are in exactly that place, and not in any of the innumerable identity-less spaces on the planet. This goal is dystopian.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    I don't believe the inversion is inherent. I believe a unique identity can exist without explicit cultural references. I don't see the split or the inversion. I would recognize this place as distinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salk_Institute_for_Biological_Studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salk_Institute_for_Biological_... It might be you would describe that as dystopian but I suppose dystopian is in the eye of the beholder. I guess this is a good as place as any to mention that Corbusier railed against the metric system as anti-human. The reasoning was that human spaces should be defined through human proportions not power of 10 proportioning. The lack of tolerance for other peoples preferences is considered dystopian in some circles.

yakubin 3y ago

Beauty != ornamentation. While Bauhaus looks dystopian, there are art styles which do away with ornamentation and look beautiful, such as Japanese wabi sabi. See e.g. <https://hypebeast.com/image/2014/11/kyoto-guide-to-wabi-sabi-4.jpg?w=520 https://hypebeast.com/image/2014/11/kyoto-guide-to-wabi-sabi...> The main thing making Bauhaus dystopian is its alienation of humans from nature. In contrast, wabi sabi emphasises connection with nature, which creates a very different effect, while still being minimal. Edit: another difference is approach to irregular shapes. Bauhaus bans them, while wabi sabi embraces them. I think that too makes the first dystopian and the latter human.

username332211 3y ago
In the article Art Déco is presented as an explicitly non-naturalistic style with decorations there being based on geometric shapes. Yet, I don't think it's common to describe Déco as a dystopian style.
- yakubin 3y ago
  All but the last photo demonstrating it in the article look pretty dystopian to me. Especially this one: <https://www.archdaily.com/1005570/from-art-nouveau-to-the-bauhaus-how-home-interiors-looked-in-popular-art-movements/64de08058177ff017c22ca4d-from-art-nouveau-to-the-bauhaus-how-home-interiors-looked-in-popular-art-movements-photo https://www.archdaily.com/1005570/from-art-nouveau-to-the-ba...>. And if not dystopian, then at least very inhospitable.
MichaelZuo 3y ago
Some folks would even say that less ornamentation = more beauty. e.g. Jony Ive.
cameronh90 3y ago
Isn't that a large ornament of a bird right on top of that house? I'd argue that scene has _many_ design elements that are there only the sake of aesthetics. Whether you consider them ornamentation or not I guess depends on your perspective, but if you look closely you'll see lots of shapes and textures that would have required significant effort purely to add beauty. Japanese aesthetics also tend to value the uniqueness of hand crafted objects, and architecture that is built with care by a skilled tradesperson. Whereas Bauhaus and much of modernism in general were often about stripping all non-essential design elements away, whether ornamentation or otherwise. Essentially: the minimum manufacturing effort to produce a building that meets the functional requirements, ideally in such a way that can be mass manufactured. The end result of a lot of Bauhaus designs isn't particularly visually minimalist. Indeed, there are often a lot of contrasting shapes and colours and often lack of symmetry. Both are a form of minimalism, but very different in philosophy.

deleted 3y ago

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