4 ms·

> Ugliness has become a cultural norm I love modern architecture (and art); I find many older forms to be garish, focused on pointless decoration and on wealth

by mmooss 18d ago

> Ugliness has become a cultural norm I love modern architecture (and art); I find many older forms to be garish, focused on pointless decoration and on wealth display, rather than on the beauty of function and form. The imagination of [some] modern architecture, starting from those fundamentals, is stunning. You don't like it, which is just as valid, but trying to turn your preference into a universal truth for humanity is not valid. Can't it be just your preference? Why is it so important? I think the real subtext for most such comments is culture war: A reactionary take on modernism and postmodernism, trying to make them outre, outside norms, attached to political liberalism which is often the real target. Innovation is usually greeted by reactionary responses; what's odd is that, in our world of modern double-speak, reactionary has become seen as cutting edge instead of a lack of imagination and progress, of retreat and regression. Let's go back to what we were doing 100+ years ago!

asdff 18d ago
I think a lot of the reflexive distaste for the modern would be softened if we were still able to build in The Old Way, whatever that might be. People like these older brick mid rise buildings with the bit of trimming decoration. But, they just don't get built. Sometimes in NYC or chicago someplace you might see a more recent build where they tried to get those old elements down. They used brick and made it square and tried to do a little decoration, but something is missing. They didn't do the thing where they use nicer brick on the street facing side of the structure, or they didn't do the actual cement formed decorative trim pieces throughout. All the brick is laid the same instead of having some lines on the top edge turned out in a decorative way for example. The whole thing feels severely value engineered even if on paper it's actually a quality building with modern amenities and comforts. Instead it just feels like some knowledge was lost to time and we lost the plot along the way, because there is a refusal or inability to just do what used to be done all the time in the past. Yes building codes are different, but stuff like trim or brick work or generally curb appeal shouldn't affect that. No one is asking for no sprinkler system or no hvac, just a better looking building from the outside. Many of those old buildings do get gutted and end up modern inside but maintain the old facade. People want more of that facade I think without it being a diminishing resource.
- ProfessorLayton 18d ago
  >Yes building codes are different, but stuff like trim or brick work or generally curb appeal shouldn't affect that. It very much does, unfortunately. In the US, the places with the highest housing shortages are mired with endless red tape, discretionary reviews, parking requirements etc. that substantially increase costs. This leaves little room for anything else, including aesthetics. Developers have gotten very good at navigating this, but it has also led to them sticking to basic "good enough" designs like the five-over-ones we see when new apartments are built.
  - asdff 17d ago
    I'm not sure that squares what I see in these places. Seems to me that pretty much everywhere has the same red tape. Who is letting you build without consideration of fire safety, egress points, floor area ratios, parking minimums, etc? Everywhere across the country has such "red tape" and regulation. But what I notice in the housing crisis cities is that this is almost irrelevant. Whatever the actual limits of the zoning are, that is pretty much what you see built. Regulation be damned, it will get bulldozed through and built if it is allowed to be built in these cities. And the real only dam preventing the flood of development becomes these zoning laws that finally say "no" to development happening at all. The red tape is just cost add that gets passed to the buyer. It isn't like there are a glut of homes too expensive to sell in these places (what you'd see if red tape were really the issue), quite the opposite, after all.
    - ProfessorLayton 17d ago
      I wasn't talking about safety issues when mentioning red tape, but even those severely limit housing construction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sfoLUumGnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sfoLUumGnc Parking minimums are how we ended up with cities that are substantially composed of car storage, instead of housing which people need to live. There's little reason to force developers to build car storage when what people need is housing. People in cities get along just fine without a car, and it's possible to adopt a similar model to Japan that requires people to prove they have a parking spot available before they can register a car. >Whatever the actual limits of the zoning are, that is pretty much what you see built. Exactly, the limits are set very low, and so much red tape, that so little housing gets built, which is why we have a shortage.
int_19h 18d ago
There's a converse effect too, though - because conservatives tend to attack modernist and postmodernist art, liberals tend to defend even things that are too ridiculous to be seriously defended. It's not "fascism" to wince and shrug at the taped banana. It's just common sense. But if you insist that everyone who does so is secretly motivated by some kind of bigotry, you end up pushing them towards the right wingers anyway. Ugly is in the right of the beholder when it comes to individuals, but societies also have collective preferences.
- mmooss 18d ago
  > It's not "fascism" to wince and shrug at the taped banana. Agreed, though your comment does much more than wince and shrug: > too ridiculous to be seriously defended Humans are very social animals and we follow social norms, like a herd moving together. Look how similar everyone's clothing is: Nobody is on 5th Avenue in a loin cloth or Elizabethan outfits (unless intentionally violating norms). Why do we all chose to wear the same things? We follow norms. How do we signal and punish things outside norms, or shape norms to exclude something? Ridicule. Sophisticated public communicators consciously use it - you can see it in the way some conservative publications depict trans people. Their intent, through ridicule, is to push them outside norms - a foundation of facism, normalizing persecution and even brutality and murder. Facists also did/do that to art - it's the same thinking (though not everyone who ridicules art is a fascist - the fascists take advantage of that bit of human nature.) In your comment you aren't just wincing and shrugging, but literally ridiculing (to be clear, I'm not calling you a fascist in any sense) > It's just common sense. Which means, common norms. There's nothing special about them; it's just a social phenomenon. Every innovator, including in tech, faces the usual response: - First they laugh at you (ridicule you) - Then they say it's not in the orthodoxy (if ridicule fails, you go from being ridiculous to being a threat to norms) - Then they say they knew it all along (you're now within norms) The same happens with social change, like women working - Ridicule, then a threat to norms, then normalized. What was absurd becomes normalized. In art, Impressionists were once objects of ridicule; now of course it's arguably the most popular style of painting in human history. > societies also have collective preferences They don't. People try to make preferences look more universal to justify their own beliefs or simplify thinking, but it's always far more diverse. Look at how the Democratic party attempts to lump simple demographic groups (e.g., black men) into one stereotype of political thinking - and ~25% voted for Trump in 2024. Societies do have norms, which are very changeable. Look how the far right has changed norms around the world in just a short time. It's not by accident - I've seen guides on how to normalize antisemitism, for example. The leading fascists in history, the Nazi party, had very consciously designed propaganda to do the same. If someone wants to be an innovator (and have a truly free mind, IMHO), they need to step back and see norms, their dynamics, and what's beyond them, and learn to see what's outside without the filters, to treasure it as potential future innovation. To look at things on their merits, not at whether they are inside or outside. At the debut of the first play by Harold Pinter, The Homecoming, much of the audience booed and left at intermission. Pinter, the great innovator, booed the audience. (Or so the story goes.)
Nursie 18d ago
> You don't like it, which is just as valid, but trying to turn your preference into a universal truth for humanity is not valid. Can't it be just your preference? What if it's almost everyone's preference? Except for the high priests of architecture who have their own agenda. Then we end up living in a world full of buildings they design for themselves that most of us dislike. > Why is it so important? Because the rest of us have to live with it at street level, every day. > A reactionary take on modernism and postmodernism, trying to make them outre, outside norms, attached to political liberalism which is often the real target. But they are the norm and have been for some time. It's time to challenge that norm. If we go back to (for example) Le Corbusier, we see this sort of thing thrown around in discussions all the time - you just don't accept innovation, you're hung up on traditionalism, get with the way of the future. Only it's not the future, it's one part of the past, and for all there was noble intent behind some of this stuff, we've had adequate time to judge the outcomes as lacking.
- hardbass 17d ago
  I am not an architect or high priest of anything.
  - Nursie 17d ago
    No, but it appears you are part of a pretty small minority.
    - hardbass 17d ago
      I find it very irritating looking at fake or overdone things. I don't think that's minority. Each era of architecture was suited in some way to the building materials and technology of it's time. I do not understand this movement to rob concrete, steel and plywood of it's natural voice and force it to conform to design styles made for different substances and tech.
      - Nursie 17d ago
        > I find it very irritating looking at fake or overdone things. I don't think that's minority. 1. I think the onus is on you to prove that it's not a minority, in the face of people overwhelmingly favouring older, more ornamented designs. 2. Beauty does not have to feel 'fake' and ugliness can be very authentic indeed, especially when it comes to concrete. I'd take a faux-neogothic revival over another period of brutalism without even blinking. I used to live near-ish to this eyesore - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyndham_Court#/media/File:Eastern_Wing_of_Wyndham_Court_as_seen_from_the_South.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyndham_Court#/media/File:East... It's a hideous blot on the landscape, the wind blows through mercilessly and constantly, it feels desolate and dystopian to be around. It smells of piss and depression. It's notorious for drug dealing. But someone managed to get it listed and protected anyway so now the town's stuck with it permanently. > I do not understand this movement to rob concrete, steel and plywood of it's natural voice and force it to conform to design styles made for different substances and tech. Perhaps we don't have to force it to be 'traditional' but it's clear that the 'natural voice' afforded by these materials and the current set of design languages in architecture result in ugly buildings that the large majority of people just do not like. We don't have to look at the overwhelming preference for traditional buildings and take away from that "We must go back to exactly that", but we should at least take away "People don't like what's being made now, we can do better" And if there is no way for concrete, steel and plywood to express more beauty then perhaps we could think about using other things that might. Either way, ploughing on with creating spaces and edifices that the majority think are ugly and worse than what came before, either because of a professional disdain for what humans actually like to be around, or some high-minded ideas about material expression seems ... well, pretty pig-headed.

by mmooss 18d ago

asdff 18d ago

I think a lot of the reflexive distaste for the modern would be softened if we were still able to build in The Old Way, whatever that might be. People like these older brick mid rise buildings with the bit of trimming decoration. But, they just don't get built. Sometimes in NYC or chicago someplace you might see a more recent build where they tried to get those old elements down. They used brick and made it square and tried to do a little decoration, but something is missing. They didn't do the thing where they use nicer brick on the street facing side of the structure, or they didn't do the actual cement formed decorative trim pieces throughout. All the brick is laid the same instead of having some lines on the top edge turned out in a decorative way for example. The whole thing feels severely value engineered even if on paper it's actually a quality building with modern amenities and comforts. Instead it just feels like some knowledge was lost to time and we lost the plot along the way, because there is a refusal or inability to just do what used to be done all the time in the past. Yes building codes are different, but stuff like trim or brick work or generally curb appeal shouldn't affect that. No one is asking for no sprinkler system or no hvac, just a better looking building from the outside. Many of those old buildings do get gutted and end up modern inside but maintain the old facade. People want more of that facade I think without it being a diminishing resource.

ProfessorLayton 18d ago
>Yes building codes are different, but stuff like trim or brick work or generally curb appeal shouldn't affect that. It very much does, unfortunately. In the US, the places with the highest housing shortages are mired with endless red tape, discretionary reviews, parking requirements etc. that substantially increase costs. This leaves little room for anything else, including aesthetics. Developers have gotten very good at navigating this, but it has also led to them sticking to basic "good enough" designs like the five-over-ones we see when new apartments are built.
- asdff 17d ago
  I'm not sure that squares what I see in these places. Seems to me that pretty much everywhere has the same red tape. Who is letting you build without consideration of fire safety, egress points, floor area ratios, parking minimums, etc? Everywhere across the country has such "red tape" and regulation. But what I notice in the housing crisis cities is that this is almost irrelevant. Whatever the actual limits of the zoning are, that is pretty much what you see built. Regulation be damned, it will get bulldozed through and built if it is allowed to be built in these cities. And the real only dam preventing the flood of development becomes these zoning laws that finally say "no" to development happening at all. The red tape is just cost add that gets passed to the buyer. It isn't like there are a glut of homes too expensive to sell in these places (what you'd see if red tape were really the issue), quite the opposite, after all.
  - ProfessorLayton 17d ago
    I wasn't talking about safety issues when mentioning red tape, but even those severely limit housing construction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sfoLUumGnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sfoLUumGnc Parking minimums are how we ended up with cities that are substantially composed of car storage, instead of housing which people need to live. There's little reason to force developers to build car storage when what people need is housing. People in cities get along just fine without a car, and it's possible to adopt a similar model to Japan that requires people to prove they have a parking spot available before they can register a car. >Whatever the actual limits of the zoning are, that is pretty much what you see built. Exactly, the limits are set very low, and so much red tape, that so little housing gets built, which is why we have a shortage.

int_19h 18d ago

There's a converse effect too, though - because conservatives tend to attack modernist and postmodernist art, liberals tend to defend even things that are too ridiculous to be seriously defended. It's not "fascism" to wince and shrug at the taped banana. It's just common sense. But if you insist that everyone who does so is secretly motivated by some kind of bigotry, you end up pushing them towards the right wingers anyway. Ugly is in the right of the beholder when it comes to individuals, but societies also have collective preferences.

mmooss 18d ago
> It's not "fascism" to wince and shrug at the taped banana. Agreed, though your comment does much more than wince and shrug: > too ridiculous to be seriously defended Humans are very social animals and we follow social norms, like a herd moving together. Look how similar everyone's clothing is: Nobody is on 5th Avenue in a loin cloth or Elizabethan outfits (unless intentionally violating norms). Why do we all chose to wear the same things? We follow norms. How do we signal and punish things outside norms, or shape norms to exclude something? Ridicule. Sophisticated public communicators consciously use it - you can see it in the way some conservative publications depict trans people. Their intent, through ridicule, is to push them outside norms - a foundation of facism, normalizing persecution and even brutality and murder. Facists also did/do that to art - it's the same thinking (though not everyone who ridicules art is a fascist - the fascists take advantage of that bit of human nature.) In your comment you aren't just wincing and shrugging, but literally ridiculing (to be clear, I'm not calling you a fascist in any sense) > It's just common sense. Which means, common norms. There's nothing special about them; it's just a social phenomenon. Every innovator, including in tech, faces the usual response: - First they laugh at you (ridicule you) - Then they say it's not in the orthodoxy (if ridicule fails, you go from being ridiculous to being a threat to norms) - Then they say they knew it all along (you're now within norms) The same happens with social change, like women working - Ridicule, then a threat to norms, then normalized. What was absurd becomes normalized. In art, Impressionists were once objects of ridicule; now of course it's arguably the most popular style of painting in human history. > societies also have collective preferences They don't. People try to make preferences look more universal to justify their own beliefs or simplify thinking, but it's always far more diverse. Look at how the Democratic party attempts to lump simple demographic groups (e.g., black men) into one stereotype of political thinking - and ~25% voted for Trump in 2024. Societies do have norms, which are very changeable. Look how the far right has changed norms around the world in just a short time. It's not by accident - I've seen guides on how to normalize antisemitism, for example. The leading fascists in history, the Nazi party, had very consciously designed propaganda to do the same. If someone wants to be an innovator (and have a truly free mind, IMHO), they need to step back and see norms, their dynamics, and what's beyond them, and learn to see what's outside without the filters, to treasure it as potential future innovation. To look at things on their merits, not at whether they are inside or outside. At the debut of the first play by Harold Pinter, The Homecoming, much of the audience booed and left at intermission. Pinter, the great innovator, booed the audience. (Or so the story goes.)

Nursie 18d ago

> You don't like it, which is just as valid, but trying to turn your preference into a universal truth for humanity is not valid. Can't it be just your preference? What if it's almost everyone's preference? Except for the high priests of architecture who have their own agenda. Then we end up living in a world full of buildings they design for themselves that most of us dislike. > Why is it so important? Because the rest of us have to live with it at street level, every day. > A reactionary take on modernism and postmodernism, trying to make them outre, outside norms, attached to political liberalism which is often the real target. But they are the norm and have been for some time. It's time to challenge that norm. If we go back to (for example) Le Corbusier, we see this sort of thing thrown around in discussions all the time - you just don't accept innovation, you're hung up on traditionalism, get with the way of the future. Only it's not the future, it's one part of the past, and for all there was noble intent behind some of this stuff, we've had adequate time to judge the outcomes as lacking.

hardbass 17d ago
I am not an architect or high priest of anything.
- Nursie 17d ago
  No, but it appears you are part of a pretty small minority.
  - hardbass 17d ago
    I find it very irritating looking at fake or overdone things. I don't think that's minority. Each era of architecture was suited in some way to the building materials and technology of it's time. I do not understand this movement to rob concrete, steel and plywood of it's natural voice and force it to conform to design styles made for different substances and tech.
    - Nursie 17d ago
      > I find it very irritating looking at fake or overdone things. I don't think that's minority. 1. I think the onus is on you to prove that it's not a minority, in the face of people overwhelmingly favouring older, more ornamented designs. 2. Beauty does not have to feel 'fake' and ugliness can be very authentic indeed, especially when it comes to concrete. I'd take a faux-neogothic revival over another period of brutalism without even blinking. I used to live near-ish to this eyesore - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyndham_Court#/media/File:Eastern_Wing_of_Wyndham_Court_as_seen_from_the_South.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyndham_Court#/media/File:East... It's a hideous blot on the landscape, the wind blows through mercilessly and constantly, it feels desolate and dystopian to be around. It smells of piss and depression. It's notorious for drug dealing. But someone managed to get it listed and protected anyway so now the town's stuck with it permanently. > I do not understand this movement to rob concrete, steel and plywood of it's natural voice and force it to conform to design styles made for different substances and tech. Perhaps we don't have to force it to be 'traditional' but it's clear that the 'natural voice' afforded by these materials and the current set of design languages in architecture result in ugly buildings that the large majority of people just do not like. We don't have to look at the overwhelming preference for traditional buildings and take away from that "We must go back to exactly that", but we should at least take away "People don't like what's being made now, we can do better" And if there is no way for concrete, steel and plywood to express more beauty then perhaps we could think about using other things that might. Either way, ploughing on with creating spaces and edifices that the majority think are ugly and worse than what came before, either because of a professional disdain for what humans actually like to be around, or some high-minded ideas about material expression seems ... well, pretty pig-headed.