4 ms·

There's a distinct snobbery to some of the architectural commentary, particularly in lamenting the sameness of stick-built "blocky, forgettable mid-rises" provi

by jp57 2y ago

There's a distinct snobbery to some of the architectural commentary, particularly in lamenting the sameness of stick-built "blocky, forgettable mid-rises" providing apartments for the masses. It is a critique that could only be written by someone who has no trouble affording their rent. Austin, for one place, has had some success in bringing down rents by building tons of blocky, forgettable mid-rises, and I'll take it, thank you. One must have a certain amount of wealth just to be able to travel to enough different places in the world to notice that they are all kind of similar. I think the world's smallest violin plays for the moneyed tourist, disappointed that he's not finding enough variety in his travels. Furthermore, as one who is fortunate enough to have been able to do some traveling like that, in southern France, Croatia, and Greece, I'll point out that the architecture in quaint villages around the mediterranean is also all kind of similar: narrow streets lined with small homes with terra cotta tile roofs and stuccoed stone walls are everywhere. To the extent that there are distinct regional motifs, they are only discernible to the trained architectural eye. As it turns out, in every age, people are less concerned with asserting their identity than with having housing that can be built with available resources and is not too expensive. In an era of global shipping and industrial production, "available resources" doesn't mean local materials any more, though. EDIT: Of course, one can look at pictures of places to which one hasn't traveled and notice that they're similar, but that complaint seems, if anything, even less important.

patrickhogan1 2y ago
I agree—the complaint seems trivial. You could frame it as: Oh, how mundane—so many homes now feature open floor plans that let more people enjoy sunlight and fresh air, with well-lit spaces, functional plumbing, antibacterial stainless steel fixtures, easy-to-clean hygienic floors, cheap yet comfortable furniture, and the charm of indoor plants. What a bunch of hipsters. If raising the standard of living for the majority results in some uniformity, so be it.
- mschild 2y ago
  No, that's not how you could frame it. At no point in the article does the author suggest that more affordable housing with modern amenities is bad. He, and the people he quoted, clearly are critiquing the sameness of the styling and for housing especially the outside. Not just across cheaply built timber frame lowrises, but also across office buildings.
  - jp57 2y ago
    Perhaps, but the tone underlying the article, as with most art and style critiques, is if you don't care about the considerations they are critiquing, or if you even prioritize them lower than affordability, ease of construction, and low barriers to development, then you are a philistine — you have bad taste. But it’s downright shameful that we deprive ourselves of living in interesting, meaningful, and wonderful places, given the thousands of precedents for inspiration worldwide, and many hundreds within our borders. Instead, we’ve copied and pasted our society from the most anodyne, the most boring, and the most bleh. We’ve all seen them. Covered with fiber cement, stucco, and bricks or brick-like material. They’ve shown up all over the country, indifferent to their surroundings. Spreading like a non-native species. So it's not really the sameness, per se, but the that these buildings all have, in the opinion of these pundits, the same bad taste. Stucco is okay on thousands and thousands of five-hundred-year-old homes all around the Mediterranean, brick is okay on 19th and 20th century buildings throughout America, but these same claddings are somehow anathema on five-over-ones? One paragraph before the above quote they lay out four economic reasons why the same styles are proliferating, so it's reasonable to infer that diverging from the sameness would make properties more expensive to build, and thus to buy. I think that making city living accessible to the non-wealthy has a greater chance of making cities "interesting, meaningful, and wonderful places" than trying to create expensive architectural diversity.
- rini17 2y ago
  In Vienna there's Hundertwasserhaus and other distinct examples of public housing. It proves doing it differently is possible and the uniformity complaint does have some merit.
mrob 2y ago
>One must have a certain amount of wealth just to be able to travel to enough different places in the world to notice that they are all kind of similar. You don't need to travel in person to see things. I like watching videos of foreign countries, and part of the appeal is seeing different architecture. I don't want every country to look the same, even if I never travel there. And poor people can usually afford cheap smartphones, so they can also enjoy watching foreign videos.
- yowzadave 2y ago
  I think this is a good point, and perhaps one of the bigger reasons for the “average” quality the OP is describing. We are all consuming the same media, so our culture is homogenizing. Just like speciation requires isolation, perhaps our cultural globalization is preventing weird uniqueness from developing?
yowzadave 2y ago
Yes—also, the McMansion has a much more toxic and lasting impact on a place’s urban qualities than a five-over-one. The five-over-one, yes, often looks bland and cheap and “same-ey”, but it does at least allow for a productive density and walkability. It’s not as overtly anti-social and vulgar as the McMansion.
klik99 2y ago
I, personally, hate the trend because it's visually boring, but that doesn't mean there's upsides - buildings are safer, it's cheaper to build. Even though I subjectively don't like the style, I don't believe everyone should strive for art in all things. Another optimist read about the non-architectural global monoculture the article was complaining about is it's a great sign we're becoming closer as a world, that whats hip coffeshop in NYC is hip coffeeshop in Shanghai is hip coffeeshop in Liverpool. On one hand I hate that everything looks the same, but it also gives me hope that the world is starting to unify. Also I would forgive a lot of blocky buildings if there were just bits of personality of cities sprinkled inside. For example - Amsterdam has blocky buildings like everywhere in the world, but it has these cool riverfront, bridges, and a few unique modern constructions that give it real personality.
LunaSea 2y ago
> There's a distinct snobbery to some of the architectural commentary, particularly in lamenting the sameness of stick-built "blocky, forgettable mid-rises" providing apartments for the masses. It is a critique that could only be written by someone who has no trouble affording their rent. This is easily invalidated by the fact that villas drawn by architects also follow this withe cubes trend in many European countries.
lentil_soup 2y ago
in a way you're kind of agreeing with the author, the reason those mediterranean villages feel the same is because they make sense to the climate and lifestyle of the people there. It wouldn't make sense to have that kind of architecture in say Canada, but somehow globally we're converging on styles that might not be the most appropiate for the place (without going into the hot debate of the identity of the place). For example, why do we have glass skyscrappers in hot countries instead of architecture and materials that by design helps regulate temperature? I also don't buy the argument that considering the identity of a place is being snob. Of course it's ok to want to build affordable housing but that doesn't mean you can't spend some time to plan the city we want to live in. If it was just about building cheap many countries have tried building faceless blocks and ended up with bigger problems than just rent. If anything, I find assuming that other places should just build like Austin because it worked there problematic.
- jp57 2y ago
  There is a paragraph with four economic reasons why buildings are converging on the same set of styles. It is reasonable to infer that divergence would make properties more expensive, and the article doesn't even attempt to suggest that that might not be so. Just following the paragraph on the economic reasons for convergence, there's another paragraph with a quote dripping with contempt for the aesthetics on which the style has converged. The combined message is "It's too bad we can't afford to have better taste." That sentiment is snobbishness in a nutshell.

by jp57 2y ago

patrickhogan1 2y ago

I agree—the complaint seems trivial. You could frame it as: Oh, how mundane—so many homes now feature open floor plans that let more people enjoy sunlight and fresh air, with well-lit spaces, functional plumbing, antibacterial stainless steel fixtures, easy-to-clean hygienic floors, cheap yet comfortable furniture, and the charm of indoor plants. What a bunch of hipsters. If raising the standard of living for the majority results in some uniformity, so be it.

mschild 2y ago
No, that's not how you could frame it. At no point in the article does the author suggest that more affordable housing with modern amenities is bad. He, and the people he quoted, clearly are critiquing the sameness of the styling and for housing especially the outside. Not just across cheaply built timber frame lowrises, but also across office buildings.
- jp57 2y ago
  Perhaps, but the tone underlying the article, as with most art and style critiques, is if you don't care about the considerations they are critiquing, or if you even prioritize them lower than affordability, ease of construction, and low barriers to development, then you are a philistine — you have bad taste. But it’s downright shameful that we deprive ourselves of living in interesting, meaningful, and wonderful places, given the thousands of precedents for inspiration worldwide, and many hundreds within our borders. Instead, we’ve copied and pasted our society from the most anodyne, the most boring, and the most bleh. We’ve all seen them. Covered with fiber cement, stucco, and bricks or brick-like material. They’ve shown up all over the country, indifferent to their surroundings. Spreading like a non-native species. So it's not really the sameness, per se, but the that these buildings all have, in the opinion of these pundits, the same bad taste. Stucco is okay on thousands and thousands of five-hundred-year-old homes all around the Mediterranean, brick is okay on 19th and 20th century buildings throughout America, but these same claddings are somehow anathema on five-over-ones? One paragraph before the above quote they lay out four economic reasons why the same styles are proliferating, so it's reasonable to infer that diverging from the sameness would make properties more expensive to build, and thus to buy. I think that making city living accessible to the non-wealthy has a greater chance of making cities "interesting, meaningful, and wonderful places" than trying to create expensive architectural diversity.
rini17 2y ago
In Vienna there's Hundertwasserhaus and other distinct examples of public housing. It proves doing it differently is possible and the uniformity complaint does have some merit.

mrob 2y ago

>One must have a certain amount of wealth just to be able to travel to enough different places in the world to notice that they are all kind of similar. You don't need to travel in person to see things. I like watching videos of foreign countries, and part of the appeal is seeing different architecture. I don't want every country to look the same, even if I never travel there. And poor people can usually afford cheap smartphones, so they can also enjoy watching foreign videos.

yowzadave 2y ago
I think this is a good point, and perhaps one of the bigger reasons for the “average” quality the OP is describing. We are all consuming the same media, so our culture is homogenizing. Just like speciation requires isolation, perhaps our cultural globalization is preventing weird uniqueness from developing?

yowzadave 2y ago

Yes—also, the McMansion has a much more toxic and lasting impact on a place’s urban qualities than a five-over-one. The five-over-one, yes, often looks bland and cheap and “same-ey”, but it does at least allow for a productive density and walkability. It’s not as overtly anti-social and vulgar as the McMansion.

klik99 2y ago

I, personally, hate the trend because it's visually boring, but that doesn't mean there's upsides - buildings are safer, it's cheaper to build. Even though I subjectively don't like the style, I don't believe everyone should strive for art in all things. Another optimist read about the non-architectural global monoculture the article was complaining about is it's a great sign we're becoming closer as a world, that whats hip coffeshop in NYC is hip coffeeshop in Shanghai is hip coffeeshop in Liverpool. On one hand I hate that everything looks the same, but it also gives me hope that the world is starting to unify. Also I would forgive a lot of blocky buildings if there were just bits of personality of cities sprinkled inside. For example - Amsterdam has blocky buildings like everywhere in the world, but it has these cool riverfront, bridges, and a few unique modern constructions that give it real personality.

LunaSea 2y ago

> There's a distinct snobbery to some of the architectural commentary, particularly in lamenting the sameness of stick-built "blocky, forgettable mid-rises" providing apartments for the masses. It is a critique that could only be written by someone who has no trouble affording their rent. This is easily invalidated by the fact that villas drawn by architects also follow this withe cubes trend in many European countries.

lentil_soup 2y ago

in a way you're kind of agreeing with the author, the reason those mediterranean villages feel the same is because they make sense to the climate and lifestyle of the people there. It wouldn't make sense to have that kind of architecture in say Canada, but somehow globally we're converging on styles that might not be the most appropiate for the place (without going into the hot debate of the identity of the place). For example, why do we have glass skyscrappers in hot countries instead of architecture and materials that by design helps regulate temperature? I also don't buy the argument that considering the identity of a place is being snob. Of course it's ok to want to build affordable housing but that doesn't mean you can't spend some time to plan the city we want to live in. If it was just about building cheap many countries have tried building faceless blocks and ended up with bigger problems than just rent. If anything, I find assuming that other places should just build like Austin because it worked there problematic.

jp57 2y ago
There is a paragraph with four economic reasons why buildings are converging on the same set of styles. It is reasonable to infer that divergence would make properties more expensive, and the article doesn't even attempt to suggest that that might not be so. Just following the paragraph on the economic reasons for convergence, there's another paragraph with a quote dripping with contempt for the aesthetics on which the style has converged. The combined message is "It's too bad we can't afford to have better taste." That sentiment is snobbishness in a nutshell.