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If you want to see designers trying to fuck the world go to the Osaka 2025 Expo where designers are each proposing the next Brazilia City. They want total contr

If you want to see designers trying to fuck the world go to the Osaka 2025 Expo where designers are each proposing the next Brazilia City. They want total control over everything all centrally planned. no room for anyone’s individualism except the designer’s

pjc50 1y ago
Not a new thing, sadly. See Le Corbusier's "plan for Paris".
- josephg 1y ago
  Current Paris looks the way it does because of central planners who had a vision for the city. In my opinion, it’s beautiful. I don’t know what it’s like to live there, but as a visitor walking though all those brownstone buildings? I love it. Central planning is a risky move - you’re essentially putting all your eggs in one basket. When it works well, we all benefit. When it works badly, we all suffer for it.
  - yubblegum 1y ago
    "brownstone" buildings in Paris?
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    The mansard roofs, etc are a consequence of tax policy. End of the day, design can be from architects imposing their views or tax collectors and road engineers doing theirs. The worst design comes from the genius planners, the best usually from people working with well defined constraints of money, taxes and build expense. The state of American architecture and life is almost completely based on tax policy and allocation of resources to roadways. Our cities of vacant office towers are almost completely a tax story.
    - sgt101 1y ago
      >Our cities of vacant office towers are almost completely a tax story. Also a financial leverage story. Rendering the true market value of these towers would create balance sheet issues at quite a few institutions. No one is keen to rock that boat.
    - paulryanrogers 1y ago
      There's more to it than taxes. Fear of the other (racism), tradition (farming cosplay), and abundant land are also big factors. Without the tax incentives people would still have left the biggest cities.
      - Spooky23 1y ago
        Commercial real estate is all about financial shenanigans. For housing, the Feds both directly subsidized construction and indirectly by changing capital gains rules and having a plethora of goodies for developers. My parents bought their first home in NYC for $19,000 in 1977. They sold it in 1993 for $500,000, and that owner sold it in 2024 for $2.8M. Nobody paid capital gains.
        paulryanrogers 1y ago
        I don't dispute taxes are a big factor, just not the only or even most significant one in residential real-estate. Thanks for calling out commercial. That's something I'll have to study more.
- gbin 1y ago
  Paris is basically Haussmann's. Let people do whatever and you get suburbia-USA: one Normandy style house next to a cheap pre built one next to a tatooine-like dwelling. The city becomes ugly and has no soul.
  - diordiderot 1y ago
    > Let people do whatever and you get suburbia-USA. Absolutely not the case. American suburbs are the result of massive planning restriction and financial subsidy.
A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
If you look at how humans move and interact with their environments, you'll find that it can mostly be reduced to biomechanical optimization problems. Even in extremis: A fist-fight is a sequence of biomechanical optimization problems, and there's always a "perfect move" at any given moment in time. There are many architects, establishers or followers of certain doctrines, who feel the same way about built structures: That they're designed to solve issues related to human movement, and that there's one right way to build them. That if you build things in that correct way, and ignore the kitsch opinions of the proletariat, people will grow happier or be more effective. (Sometimes despite themselves.) I don't necessarily agree with these views, but a quick glance at popular American suburban "architecture" -- possibly the worst of all worlds -- is enough to lend it serious weight.
- 1propionyl 1y ago
  > Even in extremis: A fist-fight is a sequence of biomechanical optimization problems, and there's always a "perfect move" at any given moment in time. No, it is not. And no, there isn't. This is exactly the sort of reductive mode of thought the article is calling out.
  - A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
    You can literally model this. Sure, there's a predictive aspect to it. What if your opponent zigs instead of zags, etc. But this is basically a matter of forecastable probabilities and can be added to your model. The optimal move still exists, no question about it. Any problem of bodily motion through space has an optimal solution. In athletic situations, humans often can't think fast enough to find/utilize it, or aren't coordinated enough to move in the optimal way. And a biomechanically-perfect savant may still lose to an opponent vastly physically superior.
    - strken 1y ago
      I'd bet you $20 that none of the people who have ever won a fistfight have done so by modelling it as a biomechanical optimisation problem, at least on the fly while it was happening. The comparison is unintentionally funny because it's the exact same "I can ignore the experience of the people who my work impacts because my models are perfect" mentality that produces unlivable apartments in dead lifeless streets.
jama211 1y ago
I’m not sure you understand the purpose of those designs, it’s much like the clothing on a fashion runway. It’s meant to inspire creative thinking, not be a literal plan to follow. Not being able to recognise that is like, the absolute baseline understanding you should have to even be able to hold any valid criticism, IMO. Sure, most of it is ridiculous and stupid, you expect that when you brainstorm. Only in environments where you’re allowed to propose any idea regardless of how ridiculous or stupid they are can you uncover certain types of gems of base ideas.
agumonkey 1y ago
To an extent there's a lot of smaller scale projects with nature and human life quality as main goal. The 60s-70s era of architectural grandiosity is most probably over (except nation-wide desire to boost GDP through real estate)
monocultured 1y ago
Any particular pavillion you were thinking of? I just got back from the expo and thought of them more like tourist board exhibits... Mind you, the queues were atrocious and I saw much less than I'd like.

pjc50 1y ago

Not a new thing, sadly. See Le Corbusier's "plan for Paris".

josephg 1y ago
Current Paris looks the way it does because of central planners who had a vision for the city. In my opinion, it’s beautiful. I don’t know what it’s like to live there, but as a visitor walking though all those brownstone buildings? I love it. Central planning is a risky move - you’re essentially putting all your eggs in one basket. When it works well, we all benefit. When it works badly, we all suffer for it.
- yubblegum 1y ago
  "brownstone" buildings in Paris?
- Spooky23 1y ago
  The mansard roofs, etc are a consequence of tax policy. End of the day, design can be from architects imposing their views or tax collectors and road engineers doing theirs. The worst design comes from the genius planners, the best usually from people working with well defined constraints of money, taxes and build expense. The state of American architecture and life is almost completely based on tax policy and allocation of resources to roadways. Our cities of vacant office towers are almost completely a tax story.
  - sgt101 1y ago
    >Our cities of vacant office towers are almost completely a tax story. Also a financial leverage story. Rendering the true market value of these towers would create balance sheet issues at quite a few institutions. No one is keen to rock that boat.
  - paulryanrogers 1y ago
    There's more to it than taxes. Fear of the other (racism), tradition (farming cosplay), and abundant land are also big factors. Without the tax incentives people would still have left the biggest cities.
    - Spooky23 1y ago
      Commercial real estate is all about financial shenanigans. For housing, the Feds both directly subsidized construction and indirectly by changing capital gains rules and having a plethora of goodies for developers. My parents bought their first home in NYC for $19,000 in 1977. They sold it in 1993 for $500,000, and that owner sold it in 2024 for $2.8M. Nobody paid capital gains.
      - paulryanrogers 1y ago
        I don't dispute taxes are a big factor, just not the only or even most significant one in residential real-estate. Thanks for calling out commercial. That's something I'll have to study more.
gbin 1y ago
Paris is basically Haussmann's. Let people do whatever and you get suburbia-USA: one Normandy style house next to a cheap pre built one next to a tatooine-like dwelling. The city becomes ugly and has no soul.
- diordiderot 1y ago
  > Let people do whatever and you get suburbia-USA. Absolutely not the case. American suburbs are the result of massive planning restriction and financial subsidy.

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago

If you look at how humans move and interact with their environments, you'll find that it can mostly be reduced to biomechanical optimization problems. Even in extremis: A fist-fight is a sequence of biomechanical optimization problems, and there's always a "perfect move" at any given moment in time. There are many architects, establishers or followers of certain doctrines, who feel the same way about built structures: That they're designed to solve issues related to human movement, and that there's one right way to build them. That if you build things in that correct way, and ignore the kitsch opinions of the proletariat, people will grow happier or be more effective. (Sometimes despite themselves.) I don't necessarily agree with these views, but a quick glance at popular American suburban "architecture" -- possibly the worst of all worlds -- is enough to lend it serious weight.

1propionyl 1y ago
> Even in extremis: A fist-fight is a sequence of biomechanical optimization problems, and there's always a "perfect move" at any given moment in time. No, it is not. And no, there isn't. This is exactly the sort of reductive mode of thought the article is calling out.
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
  You can literally model this. Sure, there's a predictive aspect to it. What if your opponent zigs instead of zags, etc. But this is basically a matter of forecastable probabilities and can be added to your model. The optimal move still exists, no question about it. Any problem of bodily motion through space has an optimal solution. In athletic situations, humans often can't think fast enough to find/utilize it, or aren't coordinated enough to move in the optimal way. And a biomechanically-perfect savant may still lose to an opponent vastly physically superior.
  - strken 1y ago
    I'd bet you $20 that none of the people who have ever won a fistfight have done so by modelling it as a biomechanical optimisation problem, at least on the fly while it was happening. The comparison is unintentionally funny because it's the exact same "I can ignore the experience of the people who my work impacts because my models are perfect" mentality that produces unlivable apartments in dead lifeless streets.

jama211 1y ago

I’m not sure you understand the purpose of those designs, it’s much like the clothing on a fashion runway. It’s meant to inspire creative thinking, not be a literal plan to follow. Not being able to recognise that is like, the absolute baseline understanding you should have to even be able to hold any valid criticism, IMO. Sure, most of it is ridiculous and stupid, you expect that when you brainstorm. Only in environments where you’re allowed to propose any idea regardless of how ridiculous or stupid they are can you uncover certain types of gems of base ideas.

agumonkey 1y ago

To an extent there's a lot of smaller scale projects with nature and human life quality as main goal. The 60s-70s era of architectural grandiosity is most probably over (except nation-wide desire to boost GDP through real estate)

monocultured 1y ago

Any particular pavillion you were thinking of? I just got back from the expo and thought of them more like tourist board exhibits... Mind you, the queues were atrocious and I saw much less than I'd like.