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Modernist architecture certainly has its fair share of misfires, particularly where the postwar architects were attempting social engineering to be “cleaner” or
by 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 agoIt'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 agoThe 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.