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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 archi

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
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  It's interesting that people are searching for the escape hatch, and I appreciate the videos, but I don't have much hope in parametricism. The reason I don't have much hope is that parametricism has arrived, it just isn't evenly distributed yet. One of the key ideas in the videos you mentioned was the digital tooling that enables parametricism. I need to point out that the same tools and ideas are already put to use in digital asset/content creation. We've already experienced the negative side of parametricism in digital content, specifically games that employ procedural generation. But shouldn't procedural[parametric] design of digital content provide endless variety? The reality is more complicated and this is where I have one reason to believe it won't, and one reason to believe it will. The reason parametric design won't provide endless variety is the Ten Thousands Bowls of Oatmeal Problem I referenced above. Just because each instantiation is different, variety must be semantically meaningful. It doesn't matter that each bowel of oatmeal has a unique combination of fruit, nuts, honey, and spices. It's that at the end of the day they are all just bowls of oatmeal. Real variety would be scrambled eggs, crepes, or breakfast in bed. I don't have hope that architects will be able to create salient variation ie: perceptual uniqueness. Adding more variational parameters doesn't guarantee any increase in perceptual uniqueness. In fact, it's an open question[1] as to what does. The reason I think parametric design could succeed is that the equation for parametric architecture is different than that of digital content. Manual curation, for example, is a huge cost compared to procedural generation, but a negligible cost compared to building a building. Curation may pose an effective filter against perceptual sameness. I'll likely remain a cynic until evidence that parametricism indeed offers a way out of the doldrums of the last 80 years of architecture. 1.https://knivesandpaintbrushes.org/projects/why-oatmeal-is-cheap/why_oatmeal_is_cheap_fdg2023.pdf https://knivesandpaintbrushes.org/projects/why-oatmeal-is-ch... (previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35735763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35735763)
  - pixl97 3y ago
    The question is, do bowls of oatmeal provide the maximal utility? Or, to frame this a different way, "Just because you're unique, doesn't mean you're useful".
  - 3y ago
burlesona 3y ago
What this view is missing is how much of historical architecture was actually Craft. People didn’t go in a computer and design things to be built out of a bunch of commodity parts. Local humans knew how to make things by hand out of wood and masonry, according to certain traditional methods, and the humans experimented just a little bit with their methods on every building. This is the bread and butter of every vernacular architectural style. This has effectively gone extinct in the developed world, because we don’t do labor like this anymore.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  People experiment far more on a computer, where you can try lots of different things, render them, see them in different light and weather, test structural integrity, etc. I wonder when buildings were built as you describe; maybe the 19th century? Isn't the 'golden age' romantic fantasy obvious?
ajcp 3y ago
But the "neo-traditional" example you give is simply and literally just a façade. > The bulk of the buildings in El Alto are simple, unadorned brick structures; Neo-Andean structures are typically similar in underlying structure, but with the addition of very elaborate decorative facades.[1] That's to say that it is not "new", or even architecture for that matter, but an artistic veneer over what is still traditional architecture. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Andean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Andean
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  Architecture, the art and design of buildings, can, sometimes, just be a facade. In other words, in the entire history of ever, no one has ever been right when they've called something "not architecture". It clearly fits into Alexander's pattern language in the same way that neighborhoods, walkways, form, ornamentation, and doorknobs do. We must not confuse ourselves into thinking there is good-architecture and not-architecture.
  - ajcp 3y ago
    Architecture as we are discussing it - that is the sum of a structures parts as it forms a coherent and intentional "whole" to express a specific school of thought - is certainly different from simply a façade, even if a façade does qualify as a defined pattern within architecture. The glasses on my face are not architecture, nor is the puddle of water outside my window. While they may have been "architected" in a sense, at a certain point we must call a rose a rose and mean a rose if we are to have an intelligible conversation.
    - kelseyfrog 3y ago
      I really wish I had used a Scottish example so we could be arguing over what true Scottish architecture is.
wolverine876 3y ago
> 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 don't see a problem, except in the unimaginative repetition of obsolete styles. There have always been lots of uninspired buildings, just like there have been uninspired songs - the pop music of 50 years ago wasn't better, it's just survivor bias. They are obsolete now because they were designed for a certain situation: The affordable building materials, skills, engineering, etc. If you want to follow tradition, and innovate new designs now for the new situation - that's what they did, and back then people all complained about anything new, just like now. We were a culture that embraced innovation, now we're actively killing it, IME, as people seem to have embraced thoughtless, irrational conservatism. (General thoughtlessness - an acceptance of the abandonment of reason - is killing it more.) It's socially acceptable to make these statements, people will even cheer you on, so people make them. You can see the almost standardized rhetoric, including the definitive language as if there is no other possibility they can imagine. If even HN doesn't embrace innovation, who will?

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

kelseyfrog 3y ago
It's interesting that people are searching for the escape hatch, and I appreciate the videos, but I don't have much hope in parametricism. The reason I don't have much hope is that parametricism has arrived, it just isn't evenly distributed yet. One of the key ideas in the videos you mentioned was the digital tooling that enables parametricism. I need to point out that the same tools and ideas are already put to use in digital asset/content creation. We've already experienced the negative side of parametricism in digital content, specifically games that employ procedural generation. But shouldn't procedural[parametric] design of digital content provide endless variety? The reality is more complicated and this is where I have one reason to believe it won't, and one reason to believe it will. The reason parametric design won't provide endless variety is the Ten Thousands Bowls of Oatmeal Problem I referenced above. Just because each instantiation is different, variety must be semantically meaningful. It doesn't matter that each bowel of oatmeal has a unique combination of fruit, nuts, honey, and spices. It's that at the end of the day they are all just bowls of oatmeal. Real variety would be scrambled eggs, crepes, or breakfast in bed. I don't have hope that architects will be able to create salient variation ie: perceptual uniqueness. Adding more variational parameters doesn't guarantee any increase in perceptual uniqueness. In fact, it's an open question[1] as to what does. The reason I think parametric design could succeed is that the equation for parametric architecture is different than that of digital content. Manual curation, for example, is a huge cost compared to procedural generation, but a negligible cost compared to building a building. Curation may pose an effective filter against perceptual sameness. I'll likely remain a cynic until evidence that parametricism indeed offers a way out of the doldrums of the last 80 years of architecture. 1.https://knivesandpaintbrushes.org/projects/why-oatmeal-is-cheap/why_oatmeal_is_cheap_fdg2023.pdf https://knivesandpaintbrushes.org/projects/why-oatmeal-is-ch... (previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35735763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35735763)
- pixl97 3y ago
  The question is, do bowls of oatmeal provide the maximal utility? Or, to frame this a different way, "Just because you're unique, doesn't mean you're useful".
- 3y ago

burlesona 3y ago

What this view is missing is how much of historical architecture was actually Craft. People didn’t go in a computer and design things to be built out of a bunch of commodity parts. Local humans knew how to make things by hand out of wood and masonry, according to certain traditional methods, and the humans experimented just a little bit with their methods on every building. This is the bread and butter of every vernacular architectural style. This has effectively gone extinct in the developed world, because we don’t do labor like this anymore.

wolverine876 3y ago
People experiment far more on a computer, where you can try lots of different things, render them, see them in different light and weather, test structural integrity, etc. I wonder when buildings were built as you describe; maybe the 19th century? Isn't the 'golden age' romantic fantasy obvious?

ajcp 3y ago

But the "neo-traditional" example you give is simply and literally just a façade. > The bulk of the buildings in El Alto are simple, unadorned brick structures; Neo-Andean structures are typically similar in underlying structure, but with the addition of very elaborate decorative facades.[1] That's to say that it is not "new", or even architecture for that matter, but an artistic veneer over what is still traditional architecture. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Andean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Andean

kelseyfrog 3y ago
Architecture, the art and design of buildings, can, sometimes, just be a facade. In other words, in the entire history of ever, no one has ever been right when they've called something "not architecture". It clearly fits into Alexander's pattern language in the same way that neighborhoods, walkways, form, ornamentation, and doorknobs do. We must not confuse ourselves into thinking there is good-architecture and not-architecture.
- ajcp 3y ago
  Architecture as we are discussing it - that is the sum of a structures parts as it forms a coherent and intentional "whole" to express a specific school of thought - is certainly different from simply a façade, even if a façade does qualify as a defined pattern within architecture. The glasses on my face are not architecture, nor is the puddle of water outside my window. While they may have been "architected" in a sense, at a certain point we must call a rose a rose and mean a rose if we are to have an intelligible conversation.
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    I really wish I had used a Scottish example so we could be arguing over what true Scottish architecture is.

wolverine876 3y ago

> 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 don't see a problem, except in the unimaginative repetition of obsolete styles. There have always been lots of uninspired buildings, just like there have been uninspired songs - the pop music of 50 years ago wasn't better, it's just survivor bias. They are obsolete now because they were designed for a certain situation: The affordable building materials, skills, engineering, etc. If you want to follow tradition, and innovate new designs now for the new situation - that's what they did, and back then people all complained about anything new, just like now. We were a culture that embraced innovation, now we're actively killing it, IME, as people seem to have embraced thoughtless, irrational conservatism. (General thoughtlessness - an acceptance of the abandonment of reason - is killing it more.) It's socially acceptable to make these statements, people will even cheer you on, so people make them. You can see the almost standardized rhetoric, including the definitive language as if there is no other possibility they can imagine. If even HN doesn't embrace innovation, who will?