7 ms·

The new architecture wars

89 points by tintinnabula 3y ago

lemper 3y ago
unexpectedly interesting article about building's architecuter, not x86 vs arm. on topic: i think it's a hard thing to reconcile and/or combine and/or make a "building with identity" while being able to accommodate >1000 people in a building. Poundbury seems to be a good example, though in singapore, economically speaking, it's better to have an apartment than to have a house on a ground.
StockHuman 3y ago
I’m surprised this didn’t engage or mention Architecture Uprising / Segregation by Design and other projects that have considerably more clout and legitimacy than random trad architecture Twitter accounts. Perhaps that would undermine the “both modernists and traditionalists are placeless” equivalence the article was intent on making, but in doing so missed most of the arguments about human-scale architecture and town design put forth by the “trad” side.
ilaksh 3y ago
Architecture must not be an aesthetic endeavour but rather a functional one that is fully integrated with high tech urban planning. If I am ever able to acquire any significant resources, I would like to pursue a new type of city. This city will use technology like open source design software, formats and blockchain to create an integrated environment. Outer buildings will be public containers for private modular internal buildings. There will be multiple levels of infrastructure including separate levels for roadways and pedestrian walkways. The standard vehicle will be a small autonomous pod. The outer buildings will be connected on multiple levels by roadways. The architecture will be dictated more by functional needs such as passive or active climate control than by aesthetic.
smitty1e 3y ago
When is 3D printing going to put a stake in the heart of Brutalism and give us public spaces that bear no resemblance to oversized Legos?
Duanemclemore 3y ago
I haven't even read it yet, but Hatherley is, in my opinion, the best architecture critic out there. Will report back with any interesting observations.
- alberth 3y ago
  https://owenhatherley.co.uk/journalism/ https://owenhatherley.co.uk/journalism/ Here's more of what he's written, in case you're curious like me.
  - Duanemclemore 3y ago
    Yeah, lots of high quality criticism out there. You don't have to agree with what he's written to appreciate his ability to ask more fundamentally critical questions of the build world. He was first on my radar a LONG time ago (15+ years I think) through his blog, "Sit Down Man, You're a Bloody Tragedy." and he doesn't even list his first book Militant Modernism in his Aeon byline anymore. Which was an awesome little look at UK brutalism.
jackcosgrove 3y ago
What I lament most about architectural debates is that they focus too much on individual buildings. The alienating part of the built environment where I live, which is one of the better built environments in the US, is the street layout. It's a grid, it's repetitive, and it's car-centered. We have already figured out how to build beautiful buildings in any number of styles from many eras. That's because a building is a discrete entity whose design is managed by one group of people, who can form a relationship with an architect who pours their heart and soul into the design. A street network, on the other hand, is managed by successive governments staffed by much more disinterested operators, and often by different governments who may be working at cross purposes. I'm not saying there should be a master plan (I actually don't like those) but rather that the logistics of designing a street network are much, much harder than for a single building, however you go about it. I also consider the harmonization of automobile and pedestrian traffic to be an open problem. Maximalists on both sides just talk past each other. Car-oriented development is bad, but at the same time we aren't going back to a pre-car world. Whether your model is Brasilia (modern) or Cayala (traditional), there are just so few opportunities to actually think about the design of the street network of a city. Street networks are just taken as given and then architects try to make the best of them. That's not a criticism of architects or city planners; the street network design largely seems to be on autopilot with very few opportunities for a change in direction. And for established cities, changing the network is nearly impossible.
- feoren 3y ago
  > I'm not saying there should be a master plan (I actually don't like those) > the street network design largely seems to be on autopilot with very few opportunities for a change in direction You can't have it both ways. The solution to a tragedy of the commons is to manage the commons. How can you say that you dislike master plans, but you want a planned design!? Architects pouring their heart and soul into a building's design is a good thing, but city planners pouring their heart and soul into a neighborhood's design is a bad thing!? One reason it's impossible to do anything is because large-scale planning is unfairly villainized as "inefficient big government intervention", and here you are villainizing it, while simultaneously wishing for intervention (from, who else? Government!)
- 3y ago
Log_out_ 3y ago
Can't wait for 3d printed Instagram histories in stone look on every surface. Ornament is wasteful, ornament is unwanted, but to the ego the house is ornament.
resolutebat 3y ago
This article seems to be squarely focused on trends for showcase buildings like opera houses, which are highly visible but make up only a tiny portion of a city's buildings. But all new residential buildings I see are cookie cutter boxes, and all new office buildings I see are vertically stretched-out greenhouses with acres of glass.
- crabmusket 3y ago
  The last three paragraphs, discussing co-operative apartments like La Borda in Barcelona, were interesting. Shame the rest of the article focused, as you say, on style over substance.
  - Duanemclemore 3y ago
    I also wish he had discussed alternatives like these more. My takeaway is the argument - on which you're correct - that people have knock-down-drag-out fights about visual style. I would say that's not because it's as important but that it is what jumps out when browsing the infinite catalog of images that is the modern internet. And substance is what really matters. I think you mentioned Alexander in another comment and more of what he did is necessary - more systematic considerations of not just what something looks like, but how it works. And not just the single object or space, but enmeshed in the network of relationships that extend far beyond the formal. Edited to add: Having read so much Hatherley over the years I can almost guarantee that a name drop in the conclusion like that means he's currently developing more scholarship / criticism on the subject...
  - twic 3y ago
    That felt like a bait and switch. Paragraphs of criticism of huge showpiece buildings, old and new. Then advocacy of a better way which is only used to produce small, humble buildings.
- bunderbunder 3y ago
  All the old residential buildings in some of the nicer cities I've visited are also cookie cutter boxes. Residential areas in the older parts of Amsterdam are indeed beautiful and pleasant, but, much like the another commenter suggested, I'm pretty sure that's almost entirely due to the rest of the environment, especially the transportation infrastructure. Sure, they're nice well-built 300 year old buildings, but I think that, if the city were more car-centric, nobody would spend as much time outside, so nobody would be as motivated to take care of the exteriors of their buildings. And then it would look a lot more like the dingy dirty grimy pile of bricks that you see in cities like Chicago that use similar (if newer) architecture but haven't made the space between the buildings nearly as hospitable to humans.
berbec 3y ago
Was I the only one tricked, bamboozled and hoodwinked into expecting an article about ARM64 vs x64?
- jonhohle 3y ago
  I thought it might be about all the flavors of ARM and the death of a “compatible” standard.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- maxglute 3y ago
  As someone really into architecture and urban design, I feel frequently bamboozled by HN articles with the word architecture.
- bad_username 3y ago
  I was sure it was about monoliths vs microservices.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  I thought it was Einstürzende Neubauten announcing a world tour!
Unfrozen0688 3y ago
Just do 1800s baroque fascades but more classical modern internals
Unfrozen0688 3y ago
The Paris style aperment seems good
maxglute 3y ago
Thesis: >Traditionalist and modernist architecture are both mass-produced, industrial and international. Is there an alternative? Alternative: >When the historian Frampton called for a ‘Critical Regionalism’, a modern architecture sensitive to place and materials, he found an example in the work of Álvaro Siza in Portugal. Rebuttle: regional/vernacular designs almost always involves more labour, which is expensive in advanced economies. Small countries/markets can't rationalize engineering entire regional specific building techniques and validate materials. Large countries/markets have multiple climate zones. In the end mass construction will fall back on value-engineered mass produced industrial building components.
kelseyfrog 3y ago
The framing of traditional vs modern was distasteful. That is, until I went and looked at post-modern architecture, which has even less to say than modern architecture. Architects, we have to admit, are under-performing in the metric of "creating new architectural styles and schools of thought" and over-performing in "number of uninspiring designs." I have to conclude that either there are systemic barriers in getting out-of-distribution buildings built, or something about the pedagogy of architects that filters or hammers out out-of-distribution designs. Either way, we're suffering from a lack of architectural imagination. When I see neo-traditional examples[1], I can't help but be jealous we, in NA, aren't teaming with our own. Instead we've got architects churning out designs that fit squarely in confines of The Ten Thousands Buildings of Oatmeal Problem[2]. Taken as a whole, the parts and their interactions, are a system for producing architectural oatmeal. 1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Andean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Andean 2. https://golancourses.net/2018_60212f/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/kate-compton-oatmeal.pdf https://golancourses.net/2018_60212f/wp-content/uploads/2018...
- feoren 3y ago
  > Architects, we have to admit, are under-performing in the metric of "creating new architectural styles and schools of thought" Why is new styles a goal? Shouldn't the goal be a building that is functional, beautiful, appealing to live/work in, appealing to live near, efficient in its materials and design, eye-catching, yet appropriate for its surroundings? None of that requires "new". Architects that are caught up in having to be new make the most monstrous creations of all.
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
  So one framing for what's happening now is Parametricism, a term coined by Patrik Schumacher and associated with the style of his business partner and firm: Zaha Hadid. The basic premise of parametricism is that with fully digital design pipelines we have new ways of addressing the flaws in modernism while avoiding the aimlessness of postmodernism. In this view, architects are no longer designing surfaces or volumes, but rather painting parameters which are then utilized by algorithms and optimizers. This approach results in a style that has both unity and variation, continuous differentiation instead of the mechanistic repetition of modernism. Here's one dry video and two kinda silly ones that introduce the perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIcGTBRoKlg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIcGTBRoKlg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfg_7ihB0YU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfg_7ihB0YU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il41AlOBlgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il41AlOBlgk
scythe 3y ago
I've come to believe that we're too abstract and afraid to say what we really mean. There are a few things that could be changed that would, IMHO, make a big difference in the aesthetic quality of new development without the need for "style" arguments. - Roofs are flat. HVAC equipment is put on the roof. This allows a maximum use of zoned floor area. --> Solution: write a roof/attic allowance into zoning codes. - Trees are too small. Developers want to avoid maintenance difficulties with trees, so they plant dwarf varieties that don't provide shade. --> Solution: fund tree management as a public good. Offer incentives for preserving existing trees. - Buildings are surrounded by Stepfordesque hedges that look unnatural. Green space is crammed into noodle-shaped setbacks that are too narrow to support anything like a garden. Mulch is everywhere. --> Solution: replace setbacks wherever possible with access easements and open space requrements. I couldn't care less what the big famous buildings look like. I don't spend much time near them anyway. That's a high-class problem. No wonder it's a duel between the right and the yuppies. As to why flat roofs are ugly? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it has to do with flat-topped things being uncommon in nature. It's a structure made possible only by decently sophisticated engineering, what with the stress on corners and the need for drainage. It makes the occipital lobe think it's missing something.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  "Never enter a pub with a flat roof" (UK) Such pubs tend to be part of (run-down) housing estates (what might be called 'Projects' in the US), with attendant clientele. It's a good rule of thumb if you are unfamiliar with an area!
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > Trees are too small. Developers want to avoid maintenance difficulties with trees, so they plant dwarf varieties that don't provide shade. In some city, I forget which, I saw a guide to street trees that said that picking the correct trees solves the root / maintenance problems: roots grow neither too shallow or too deep, etc. > I couldn't care less what the big famous buildings look like. I don't spend much time near them anyway. They are part of the visual environment that we live in. The Empire State Building in NY is in the visual environment of millions who don't go near it (in fact, it's hardly noticeable close-up - you mostly see the bottom floors).
chiph 3y ago
I'm one of the few people who don't hate Brutalism. I think those architects usually got the window placement wrong, and the owners haven't cleaned the concrete often enough (so they look dingy). I just find something about the 1960's and 70's utopian designs attractive. My favorite is the UCSD library. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geisel-Library.jpg#/media/File:Geisel-Library.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geisel-Library.jpg#/... However, I wouldn't mind seeing more Victorian and Queen Anne homes being built. I realize that because of their enormous level of architectural detail that economics will dictate that they'll be built cheap, bland, and uniform. Which isn't the point. But at least they won't be faux Craftsman or modern Farmhouse. So tired of seeing those.

89 points by tintinnabula 3y ago

unexpectedly interesting article about building's architecuter, not x86 vs arm. on topic: i think it's a hard thing to reconcile and/or combine and/or make a "building with identity" while being able to accommodate >1000 people in a building. Poundbury seems to be a good example, though in singapore, economically speaking, it's better to have an apartment than to have a house on a ground.

StockHuman 3y ago

I’m surprised this didn’t engage or mention Architecture Uprising / Segregation by Design and other projects that have considerably more clout and legitimacy than random trad architecture Twitter accounts. Perhaps that would undermine the “both modernists and traditionalists are placeless” equivalence the article was intent on making, but in doing so missed most of the arguments about human-scale architecture and town design put forth by the “trad” side.

ilaksh 3y ago

Architecture must not be an aesthetic endeavour but rather a functional one that is fully integrated with high tech urban planning. If I am ever able to acquire any significant resources, I would like to pursue a new type of city. This city will use technology like open source design software, formats and blockchain to create an integrated environment. Outer buildings will be public containers for private modular internal buildings. There will be multiple levels of infrastructure including separate levels for roadways and pedestrian walkways. The standard vehicle will be a small autonomous pod. The outer buildings will be connected on multiple levels by roadways. The architecture will be dictated more by functional needs such as passive or active climate control than by aesthetic.

smitty1e 3y ago

When is 3D printing going to put a stake in the heart of Brutalism and give us public spaces that bear no resemblance to oversized Legos?

Duanemclemore 3y ago

I haven't even read it yet, but Hatherley is, in my opinion, the best architecture critic out there. Will report back with any interesting observations.

alberth 3y ago
https://owenhatherley.co.uk/journalism/ https://owenhatherley.co.uk/journalism/ Here's more of what he's written, in case you're curious like me.
- Duanemclemore 3y ago
  Yeah, lots of high quality criticism out there. You don't have to agree with what he's written to appreciate his ability to ask more fundamentally critical questions of the build world. He was first on my radar a LONG time ago (15+ years I think) through his blog, "Sit Down Man, You're a Bloody Tragedy." and he doesn't even list his first book Militant Modernism in his Aeon byline anymore. Which was an awesome little look at UK brutalism.

jackcosgrove 3y ago

What I lament most about architectural debates is that they focus too much on individual buildings. The alienating part of the built environment where I live, which is one of the better built environments in the US, is the street layout. It's a grid, it's repetitive, and it's car-centered. We have already figured out how to build beautiful buildings in any number of styles from many eras. That's because a building is a discrete entity whose design is managed by one group of people, who can form a relationship with an architect who pours their heart and soul into the design. A street network, on the other hand, is managed by successive governments staffed by much more disinterested operators, and often by different governments who may be working at cross purposes. I'm not saying there should be a master plan (I actually don't like those) but rather that the logistics of designing a street network are much, much harder than for a single building, however you go about it. I also consider the harmonization of automobile and pedestrian traffic to be an open problem. Maximalists on both sides just talk past each other. Car-oriented development is bad, but at the same time we aren't going back to a pre-car world. Whether your model is Brasilia (modern) or Cayala (traditional), there are just so few opportunities to actually think about the design of the street network of a city. Street networks are just taken as given and then architects try to make the best of them. That's not a criticism of architects or city planners; the street network design largely seems to be on autopilot with very few opportunities for a change in direction. And for established cities, changing the network is nearly impossible.

feoren 3y ago
> I'm not saying there should be a master plan (I actually don't like those) > the street network design largely seems to be on autopilot with very few opportunities for a change in direction You can't have it both ways. The solution to a tragedy of the commons is to manage the commons. How can you say that you dislike master plans, but you want a planned design!? Architects pouring their heart and soul into a building's design is a good thing, but city planners pouring their heart and soul into a neighborhood's design is a bad thing!? One reason it's impossible to do anything is because large-scale planning is unfairly villainized as "inefficient big government intervention", and here you are villainizing it, while simultaneously wishing for intervention (from, who else? Government!)
3y ago

Log_out_ 3y ago

Can't wait for 3d printed Instagram histories in stone look on every surface. Ornament is wasteful, ornament is unwanted, but to the ego the house is ornament.

resolutebat 3y ago

This article seems to be squarely focused on trends for showcase buildings like opera houses, which are highly visible but make up only a tiny portion of a city's buildings. But all new residential buildings I see are cookie cutter boxes, and all new office buildings I see are vertically stretched-out greenhouses with acres of glass.

crabmusket 3y ago
The last three paragraphs, discussing co-operative apartments like La Borda in Barcelona, were interesting. Shame the rest of the article focused, as you say, on style over substance.
- Duanemclemore 3y ago
  I also wish he had discussed alternatives like these more. My takeaway is the argument - on which you're correct - that people have knock-down-drag-out fights about visual style. I would say that's not because it's as important but that it is what jumps out when browsing the infinite catalog of images that is the modern internet. And substance is what really matters. I think you mentioned Alexander in another comment and more of what he did is necessary - more systematic considerations of not just what something looks like, but how it works. And not just the single object or space, but enmeshed in the network of relationships that extend far beyond the formal. Edited to add: Having read so much Hatherley over the years I can almost guarantee that a name drop in the conclusion like that means he's currently developing more scholarship / criticism on the subject...
- twic 3y ago
  That felt like a bait and switch. Paragraphs of criticism of huge showpiece buildings, old and new. Then advocacy of a better way which is only used to produce small, humble buildings.
bunderbunder 3y ago
All the old residential buildings in some of the nicer cities I've visited are also cookie cutter boxes. Residential areas in the older parts of Amsterdam are indeed beautiful and pleasant, but, much like the another commenter suggested, I'm pretty sure that's almost entirely due to the rest of the environment, especially the transportation infrastructure. Sure, they're nice well-built 300 year old buildings, but I think that, if the city were more car-centric, nobody would spend as much time outside, so nobody would be as motivated to take care of the exteriors of their buildings. And then it would look a lot more like the dingy dirty grimy pile of bricks that you see in cities like Chicago that use similar (if newer) architecture but haven't made the space between the buildings nearly as hospitable to humans.

berbec 3y ago

Was I the only one tricked, bamboozled and hoodwinked into expecting an article about ARM64 vs x64?

jonhohle 3y ago
I thought it might be about all the flavors of ARM and the death of a “compatible” standard.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
maxglute 3y ago
As someone really into architecture and urban design, I feel frequently bamboozled by HN articles with the word architecture.
bad_username 3y ago
I was sure it was about monoliths vs microservices.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
I thought it was Einstürzende Neubauten announcing a world tour!

Unfrozen0688 3y ago

Just do 1800s baroque fascades but more classical modern internals

Unfrozen0688 3y ago

The Paris style aperment seems good

maxglute 3y ago

Thesis: >Traditionalist and modernist architecture are both mass-produced, industrial and international. Is there an alternative? Alternative: >When the historian Frampton called for a ‘Critical Regionalism’, a modern architecture sensitive to place and materials, he found an example in the work of Álvaro Siza in Portugal. Rebuttle: regional/vernacular designs almost always involves more labour, which is expensive in advanced economies. Small countries/markets can't rationalize engineering entire regional specific building techniques and validate materials. Large countries/markets have multiple climate zones. In the end mass construction will fall back on value-engineered mass produced industrial building components.

kelseyfrog 3y ago

The framing of traditional vs modern was distasteful. That is, until I went and looked at post-modern architecture, which has even less to say than modern architecture. Architects, we have to admit, are under-performing in the metric of "creating new architectural styles and schools of thought" and over-performing in "number of uninspiring designs." I have to conclude that either there are systemic barriers in getting out-of-distribution buildings built, or something about the pedagogy of architects that filters or hammers out out-of-distribution designs. Either way, we're suffering from a lack of architectural imagination. When I see neo-traditional examples[1], I can't help but be jealous we, in NA, aren't teaming with our own. Instead we've got architects churning out designs that fit squarely in confines of The Ten Thousands Buildings of Oatmeal Problem[2]. Taken as a whole, the parts and their interactions, are a system for producing architectural oatmeal. 1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Andean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Andean 2. https://golancourses.net/2018_60212f/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/kate-compton-oatmeal.pdf https://golancourses.net/2018_60212f/wp-content/uploads/2018...

feoren 3y ago
> Architects, we have to admit, are under-performing in the metric of "creating new architectural styles and schools of thought" Why is new styles a goal? Shouldn't the goal be a building that is functional, beautiful, appealing to live/work in, appealing to live near, efficient in its materials and design, eye-catching, yet appropriate for its surroundings? None of that requires "new". Architects that are caught up in having to be new make the most monstrous creations of all.
jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
So one framing for what's happening now is Parametricism, a term coined by Patrik Schumacher and associated with the style of his business partner and firm: Zaha Hadid. The basic premise of parametricism is that with fully digital design pipelines we have new ways of addressing the flaws in modernism while avoiding the aimlessness of postmodernism. In this view, architects are no longer designing surfaces or volumes, but rather painting parameters which are then utilized by algorithms and optimizers. This approach results in a style that has both unity and variation, continuous differentiation instead of the mechanistic repetition of modernism. Here's one dry video and two kinda silly ones that introduce the perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIcGTBRoKlg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIcGTBRoKlg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfg_7ihB0YU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfg_7ihB0YU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il41AlOBlgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il41AlOBlgk

scythe 3y ago

I've come to believe that we're too abstract and afraid to say what we really mean. There are a few things that could be changed that would, IMHO, make a big difference in the aesthetic quality of new development without the need for "style" arguments. - Roofs are flat. HVAC equipment is put on the roof. This allows a maximum use of zoned floor area. --> Solution: write a roof/attic allowance into zoning codes. - Trees are too small. Developers want to avoid maintenance difficulties with trees, so they plant dwarf varieties that don't provide shade. --> Solution: fund tree management as a public good. Offer incentives for preserving existing trees. - Buildings are surrounded by Stepfordesque hedges that look unnatural. Green space is crammed into noodle-shaped setbacks that are too narrow to support anything like a garden. Mulch is everywhere. --> Solution: replace setbacks wherever possible with access easements and open space requrements. I couldn't care less what the big famous buildings look like. I don't spend much time near them anyway. That's a high-class problem. No wonder it's a duel between the right and the yuppies. As to why flat roofs are ugly? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it has to do with flat-topped things being uncommon in nature. It's a structure made possible only by decently sophisticated engineering, what with the stress on corners and the need for drainage. It makes the occipital lobe think it's missing something.

somewhereoutth 3y ago
"Never enter a pub with a flat roof" (UK) Such pubs tend to be part of (run-down) housing estates (what might be called 'Projects' in the US), with attendant clientele. It's a good rule of thumb if you are unfamiliar with an area!
wolverine876 3y ago
> Trees are too small. Developers want to avoid maintenance difficulties with trees, so they plant dwarf varieties that don't provide shade. In some city, I forget which, I saw a guide to street trees that said that picking the correct trees solves the root / maintenance problems: roots grow neither too shallow or too deep, etc. > I couldn't care less what the big famous buildings look like. I don't spend much time near them anyway. They are part of the visual environment that we live in. The Empire State Building in NY is in the visual environment of millions who don't go near it (in fact, it's hardly noticeable close-up - you mostly see the bottom floors).

chiph 3y ago

I'm one of the few people who don't hate Brutalism. I think those architects usually got the window placement wrong, and the owners haven't cleaned the concrete often enough (so they look dingy). I just find something about the 1960's and 70's utopian designs attractive. My favorite is the UCSD library. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geisel-Library.jpg#/media/File:Geisel-Library.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geisel-Library.jpg#/... However, I wouldn't mind seeing more Victorian and Queen Anne homes being built. I realize that because of their enormous level of architectural detail that economics will dictate that they'll be built cheap, bland, and uniform. Which isn't the point. But at least they won't be faux Craftsman or modern Farmhouse. So tired of seeing those.