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> Because they study architecture. If the architecture they're studying is divorced from the preferences and needs of the uneducated masses then who cares? The

> Because they study architecture. If the architecture they're studying is divorced from the preferences and needs of the uneducated masses then who cares? They may as well be studying their own butts.

rbanffy 19d ago
> divorced from the preferences and needs of the uneducated masses then who cares? Preferences, perhaps, but needs, I'm sure not. On this, I much prefer being divorced from preferences, than designing soul-less buildings designed solely to cater to preferences, without leveraging the knowledge gained through years of study.
- bobthepanda 19d ago
  Modernist architecture certainly has its fair share of misfires, particularly where the postwar architects were attempting social engineering to be “cleaner” or more “rational.” The schools were often teaching ideals based in no empirical evidence.
  - rbanffy 18d ago
    It's hard to build something new based on empirical evidence because the thing you are building might be such a radical departure from previous experience the data you have simply does not apply.
    - bobthepanda 18d ago
      The problem is that a core group of modernists kept doggedly insisting on it after it was proven to not work. For example, we know now that pedestrian skyways only work in limited contexts and have plenty of downsides; or that a large, concrete windswept plaza is pretty to look at but pretty antisocial and unusable space, and yet you still see this kind of thing in the latest from say Zaha Hadid et al. It’s why a next wave of architects and planners have coined terms like “bird-shit architecture” that only looks good completely devoid of context and landed from the sky.
- tengbretson 19d ago
  "they just don't know what they actually need" Classic butt-guy response.
  - rbanffy 18d ago
    As Henry Ford would say, "They didn't want a car. They wanted a faster horse". Often we go out exploring the solution space for new things that were never done before and nobody ever asked for them because nobody had imagined them until they saw the first one. Remember how blown away everyone was with the Jeff Han's multitouch demo? It became immediately obvious it was the future of direct manipulation interfaces. If you go back further, do you remember how sci-fi pictured the computers we would be using "in the future"? In 2001 there were no alphanumeric keyboards. Neither on the Enterprise. We are finally catching up with the vision of Tron, of the computer as an environment for intelligent agents (it took decades for most people to even formulate this understanding of the movie). We get a lot of things wrong, but our job is to try the things nobody is asking for, because they don't know they can be.
    - tengbretson 18d ago
      If, after 75 years of trying to sell cars, people _still_ would prefer a faster horse, then Henry Ford would have been just as wrong.

rbanffy 19d ago

> divorced from the preferences and needs of the uneducated masses then who cares? Preferences, perhaps, but needs, I'm sure not. On this, I much prefer being divorced from preferences, than designing soul-less buildings designed solely to cater to preferences, without leveraging the knowledge gained through years of study.

bobthepanda 19d ago
Modernist architecture certainly has its fair share of misfires, particularly where the postwar architects were attempting social engineering to be “cleaner” or more “rational.” The schools were often teaching ideals based in no empirical evidence.
- rbanffy 18d ago
  It's hard to build something new based on empirical evidence because the thing you are building might be such a radical departure from previous experience the data you have simply does not apply.
  - bobthepanda 18d ago
    The problem is that a core group of modernists kept doggedly insisting on it after it was proven to not work. For example, we know now that pedestrian skyways only work in limited contexts and have plenty of downsides; or that a large, concrete windswept plaza is pretty to look at but pretty antisocial and unusable space, and yet you still see this kind of thing in the latest from say Zaha Hadid et al. It’s why a next wave of architects and planners have coined terms like “bird-shit architecture” that only looks good completely devoid of context and landed from the sky.
tengbretson 19d ago
"they just don't know what they actually need" Classic butt-guy response.
- rbanffy 18d ago
  As Henry Ford would say, "They didn't want a car. They wanted a faster horse". Often we go out exploring the solution space for new things that were never done before and nobody ever asked for them because nobody had imagined them until they saw the first one. Remember how blown away everyone was with the Jeff Han's multitouch demo? It became immediately obvious it was the future of direct manipulation interfaces. If you go back further, do you remember how sci-fi pictured the computers we would be using "in the future"? In 2001 there were no alphanumeric keyboards. Neither on the Enterprise. We are finally catching up with the vision of Tron, of the computer as an environment for intelligent agents (it took decades for most people to even formulate this understanding of the movie). We get a lot of things wrong, but our job is to try the things nobody is asking for, because they don't know they can be.
  - tengbretson 18d ago
    If, after 75 years of trying to sell cars, people _still_ would prefer a faster horse, then Henry Ford would have been just as wrong.