SimCityist, McCentury Modern, fast-casual architecture
December 9, 2022 10:48 AM Subscribe
A classic 5-over-1: retail on the ground floor, topped with several stories of apartments one wouldn’t want to be able to afford. The words THE JOSH have been appended to the canopy above the main entrance in a passionless font.Why Is Everything So Ugly?
I'm not sure I buy all this, but this did make me laugh:
Shittiness is a big tent — and the tent is falling apart.
(The Josh appears to be imaginary; that offputting sculpture in the lead image (which I thought might be straight-up AI!) is in front of the Greenpoint, which from the website doesn't look at all like the description.)
posted by praemunire at 11:13 AM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Shittiness is a big tent — and the tent is falling apart.
(The Josh appears to be imaginary; that offputting sculpture in the lead image (which I thought might be straight-up AI!) is in front of the Greenpoint, which from the website doesn't look at all like the description.)
posted by praemunire at 11:13 AM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's better to just agree to whatever your paid consultant tells you the most boring, safe, cheap thing to do is.
If you're trying to fill a 40-story high-rise, you are trying to appeal to a broad audience. I am living in a soul-killing white-box-next-to-white-box-no-ornamention-please layout and sometimes miss the hell out of my exposed-brick-three-different-ceiling-heights-for-random-reasons-formerly-operational-fireplace-with-mantel place, but at the same time I must concede that the ~18 other people living in the same line in my building can't all find my own personal taste minimally acceptable.
This doesn't explain why boutique condo developments are also shit-ugly, mind you.
posted by praemunire at 11:16 AM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
If you're trying to fill a 40-story high-rise, you are trying to appeal to a broad audience. I am living in a soul-killing white-box-next-to-white-box-no-ornamention-please layout and sometimes miss the hell out of my exposed-brick-three-different-ceiling-heights-for-random-reasons-formerly-operational-fireplace-with-mantel place, but at the same time I must concede that the ~18 other people living in the same line in my building can't all find my own personal taste minimally acceptable.
This doesn't explain why boutique condo developments are also shit-ugly, mind you.
posted by praemunire at 11:16 AM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
Is there a browser plugin that reads articles in Monty Woolley's voice?
posted by credulous at 11:31 AM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by credulous at 11:31 AM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
So many of these have gone up around me - one's being completed a block over as we speak. Hate the look of them, particularly in a sea of Craftsman houses, but from an LA perspective, it's not really any less annoying than cheap stucco boxes and dingbats.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:36 AM on December 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:36 AM on December 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
"... all
their world's done to change the world is
to make it more ugly to the airport."
(Louis Zukofsky, "A"-18)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:48 AM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
their world's done to change the world is
to make it more ugly to the airport."
(Louis Zukofsky, "A"-18)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:48 AM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
If you're calling for at least the reduction of ugliness in everyday life, maybe don't salt your critique with phrases such as "It occurs to us, strolling past a pair of broken BuzzFeed Shopping–approved AirPods", which is clunky as fuck.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:59 AM on December 9, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:59 AM on December 9, 2022 [17 favorites]
Maybe it's because I listened to the If Books Could Kill podcast episode about David Brooks and his brand of "journalism" in which he interviews no one, does no research, and just writes his uninformed opinions about What's Wrong With The World TM, but I just have zero patience for articles like this.
"Cheaper construction materials have changed the way buildings look, and I don't like the way new buildings look." There, I saved you a 3,900 word read.
I mean, take this part:
"After New York replaced the sodium-vapor lights in the city’s 250,000 streetlamps with shiny new LEDs in 2017, the experience of walking through the city at night transformed, almost . . . overnight. Forgiving, romantic, shadowy orange gave way to cold, all-seeing bluish white."
Complaining that LED street light colors are bad and the old street light colors were better? Christ, what an asshole. You can just say, "I am old" instead of telling us how music on LPs sounds more "authentic" than MP3s.
And then I read this:
"Our phone buzzes with a push notification from Zillow: a 0.5-bedroom studio is now available for $4,775 a month in the sub-basement of The Josh. We examine our fellow patients, because nobody else is. The bleeding young man to our left looks to have been the victim of an axe throw gone very wrong. Our neighbor to the right tells us she was hit by a Tesla while e-biking to Roosevelt Island to deliver a single unicorn latte. We overhear someone behind us describe a harrowing food poisoning incident involving a Homemade Chipotle Chicken Cutlet Hack."
Here's the thing I learned about David Brooks from that podcast episode: he made up a lot of his anecdotes whole cloth. Just... fuckin' made them up and wrote them because they fit well with the narrative he was trying to concoct, then told fact checkers that his readers should be able to tell it was obviously "satire." Which sounds better than, "I'm a curmudgeon liar."
posted by AlSweigart at 12:02 PM on December 9, 2022 [60 favorites]
"Cheaper construction materials have changed the way buildings look, and I don't like the way new buildings look." There, I saved you a 3,900 word read.
I mean, take this part:
"After New York replaced the sodium-vapor lights in the city’s 250,000 streetlamps with shiny new LEDs in 2017, the experience of walking through the city at night transformed, almost . . . overnight. Forgiving, romantic, shadowy orange gave way to cold, all-seeing bluish white."
Complaining that LED street light colors are bad and the old street light colors were better? Christ, what an asshole. You can just say, "I am old" instead of telling us how music on LPs sounds more "authentic" than MP3s.
And then I read this:
"Our phone buzzes with a push notification from Zillow: a 0.5-bedroom studio is now available for $4,775 a month in the sub-basement of The Josh. We examine our fellow patients, because nobody else is. The bleeding young man to our left looks to have been the victim of an axe throw gone very wrong. Our neighbor to the right tells us she was hit by a Tesla while e-biking to Roosevelt Island to deliver a single unicorn latte. We overhear someone behind us describe a harrowing food poisoning incident involving a Homemade Chipotle Chicken Cutlet Hack."
Here's the thing I learned about David Brooks from that podcast episode: he made up a lot of his anecdotes whole cloth. Just... fuckin' made them up and wrote them because they fit well with the narrative he was trying to concoct, then told fact checkers that his readers should be able to tell it was obviously "satire." Which sounds better than, "I'm a curmudgeon liar."
posted by AlSweigart at 12:02 PM on December 9, 2022 [60 favorites]
(Do kids still listen to MP3s? I don't know. I'm old.)
posted by AlSweigart at 12:03 PM on December 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by AlSweigart at 12:03 PM on December 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Complaining that LED street light colors are bad and the old street light colors were better?
It's all been downhill since gaslight
posted by BungaDunga at 12:04 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
It's all been downhill since gaslight
posted by BungaDunga at 12:04 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
Writing prompt: Please write something about architecture in the style of a drunk, opinionated William Gibson.
posted by Avelwood at 12:04 PM on December 9, 2022 [25 favorites]
posted by Avelwood at 12:04 PM on December 9, 2022 [25 favorites]
Back in my day the building materials were all wood based and the city was lit at night by the structure fires.
posted by shenkerism at 12:05 PM on December 9, 2022 [33 favorites]
posted by shenkerism at 12:05 PM on December 9, 2022 [33 favorites]
Avelwood, I think you'd found the perfect shorthand way to mock vapid writing like this. Like when someone replies to statements with "[citation needed]".
"This is AI-generated," was exactly what I was thinking about halfway through this article.
posted by AlSweigart at 12:09 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
"This is AI-generated," was exactly what I was thinking about halfway through this article.
posted by AlSweigart at 12:09 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Complaining that LED street light colors are bad and the old street light colors were better?
I'm so old that I'm completely baffled how anyone could believe this is not true.
posted by straight at 12:11 PM on December 9, 2022 [16 favorites]
I'm so old that I'm completely baffled how anyone could believe this is not true.
posted by straight at 12:11 PM on December 9, 2022 [16 favorites]
Is it just me or is the article itself incredibly ugly? Chunky unbroken slabs of poorly spaced text on planes of battling beige. I tried it in three browsers and various privacy modes to make sure that it wasn't the result of some sort of adblock or script-blocking tool making it hideous. I literally couldn't read it past the first few paragraphs; a daunting, ever-scrolling wall of garbage CSS.
posted by Shepherd at 12:16 PM on December 9, 2022 [16 favorites]
posted by Shepherd at 12:16 PM on December 9, 2022 [16 favorites]
"The Josh" is what they called the guy on your high school's lacrosse team who was popular and likeable but completely shallow and hit his peak at age 18.
Although I'm sympathetic to this article's perspective, I mostly agree with the above criticisms of it. However, calling the imaginary ugly building he hates "The Josh" was inspired.
posted by biogeo at 12:16 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
Although I'm sympathetic to this article's perspective, I mostly agree with the above criticisms of it. However, calling the imaginary ugly building he hates "The Josh" was inspired.
posted by biogeo at 12:16 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
Interesting to compare this with an article I was reading a few days ago, Against the survival of the prettiest:
posted by verstegan at 12:18 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
It is a truth universally acknowledged that many buildings are ugly. Every day, we encounter offices, apartment blocks, retail sheds, McMansions, warehouses and hospitals that are unpleasant to look at. But here is what seems to me to be a much stranger fact: most of us struggle to identify an ugly building built before about 1930, and acutely so before 1830.I don't think this is necessarily true: personally I don't have any difficulty thinking of ugly buildings built before 1930. (Before 1830 is admittedly harder ..) But it is a reminder that tastes change. A hundred years ago a lot of people thought the Albert Memorial was a monstrosity.
posted by verstegan at 12:18 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
It's not just you, Shepherd, that's how the article looks to me on Windows/Firefox and a new Mac/Firefox. It looks okay on an old Mac/Firefox, however.
posted by plastic_animals at 12:19 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by plastic_animals at 12:19 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I require pictures of the ugliness to really understand how ugly and see if I agree. Show your work.
posted by hypnogogue at 12:21 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by hypnogogue at 12:21 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
Writing prompt: Please write something about architecture in the style of a drunk, opinionated William Gibson.
FWIW, ChatGPT responded to that with:
Okay, let me take a swing at that. Here goes:I think it must have been going for a very, very drunk Gibson.
Yo, architecture, am I right? It's like, who cares, man? It's just a bunch of boring old buildings, and they all look the same anyway. I mean, why do we even need architects? Can't we just let robots or something build all the buildings? That would be so much cooler.
And don't even get me started on all the fancy-pants "modern" architecture. It's like, what is this garbage? It's all just a bunch of weird shapes and angles, and it looks like it was designed by a bunch of drunk robots. Gimme a break.
But you know what I do like? The old-school stuff. Like, give me a big old Gothic cathedral or a fancy-ass Greek temple any day of the week. That's some real architecture, man. That stuff was built to last, and it's beautiful to boot.
So, yeah, that's my take on architecture. It's all a bunch of crap, except for the good old stuff. But what do I know? I'm just a drunk, opinionated guy. Cheers!
posted by biogeo at 12:22 PM on December 9, 2022 [15 favorites]
The Albert Memorial is really hideous! It's just that in varied streetscapes there's room for "this is hideous, but it's really old!" and "this is our weird-looking research building", especially when things don't look cheap and flimsy. It's like if you saw an ugly tree in a forest - it's part of the gestalt and provides an important sort of rhythmic note.
posted by Frowner at 12:23 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 12:23 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
I don't know about the area where the observation was made (NYC), but where I live (California) all the new construction has to go through so much red tape / community input / CEQA / NIMBYism that there's no room for anything different in any way. When things cost a lot of money and time and can be blocked for any reason, the most neutral and inoffensive options are chosen.
It takes more than two years to approve a housing development in San Francisco. For richer areas in SF it takes over seven years.
posted by meowzilla at 12:26 PM on December 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
It takes more than two years to approve a housing development in San Francisco. For richer areas in SF it takes over seven years.
posted by meowzilla at 12:26 PM on December 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
I read this the other day and really liked it but I, too, am aesthetically offended by most of life, so it was really just validating for me to read.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 12:26 PM on December 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by jeweled accumulation at 12:26 PM on December 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
"Cheaper construction materials have changed the way buildings look, and I don't like the way new buildings look." There, I saved you a 3,900 word read.
TFA does cover some of the same territory as Vox's Why so many new buildings are covered in rectangles video from last year.
posted by Rash at 12:30 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
TFA does cover some of the same territory as Vox's Why so many new buildings are covered in rectangles video from last year.
posted by Rash at 12:30 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
4000 words? By my arithmetic, this should have been 3 pictures and 1000 words.
posted by kcalder at 12:31 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by kcalder at 12:31 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
Metafilter: aesthetically offended by most of life.
posted by gwydapllew at 12:33 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by gwydapllew at 12:33 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
The thing that strikes me most about Manhattan is just how fucking monochrome it is. And then, as you get further out in the city, as the architecture becomes older and more vernacular, how much more colorful it gets.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:34 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:34 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Is it just me or is the article itself incredibly ugly?
In firefox you can use "reader view" to clean out the cruft. It's the little button in the location bar that looks sort of like a document. I pretty much use it on all articles now.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:35 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
In firefox you can use "reader view" to clean out the cruft. It's the little button in the location bar that looks sort of like a document. I pretty much use it on all articles now.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:35 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I am living in a soul-killing white-box-next-to-white-box-no-ornamention-please layout and sometimes miss the hell out of my exposed-brick-three-different-ceiling-heights-for-random-reasons-formerly-operational-fireplace-with-mantel place, but at the same time I must concede that the ~18 other people living in the same line in my building can't all find my own personal taste minimally acceptable.
I'm someone who shares your tastes but VERY strongly considered the soul-killing box on my last move, because just once I'd like to see a right angle, and not have indoor wind patterns, and maybe have a whole apartment full of doors that actually close. I definitely wish new buildings were more interesting and individual but boy howdy, I can't blame anyone for wanting windows that function and floors that are level.
Chicago is a funny example to use for all of this though because as any resident can attest, there might only be 3 kinds of new apartment building, but there are only 5 kinds of "old" buildings too. I love walking into a friend's place like, "oh I see you're in Classic Chicago #4, the one with the sunrooms at front and back."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:39 PM on December 9, 2022 [20 favorites]
I'm someone who shares your tastes but VERY strongly considered the soul-killing box on my last move, because just once I'd like to see a right angle, and not have indoor wind patterns, and maybe have a whole apartment full of doors that actually close. I definitely wish new buildings were more interesting and individual but boy howdy, I can't blame anyone for wanting windows that function and floors that are level.
Chicago is a funny example to use for all of this though because as any resident can attest, there might only be 3 kinds of new apartment building, but there are only 5 kinds of "old" buildings too. I love walking into a friend's place like, "oh I see you're in Classic Chicago #4, the one with the sunrooms at front and back."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:39 PM on December 9, 2022 [20 favorites]
Some people think that wind turbines are an eyesore, and I think they are truly beautiful. And I will admit that this railway signal box is ugly but it very interesting and worthy of protection. A lot of modern commercial architecture is bland and hard to have an opinion on. I guess if it functions, that's not inherently problematic.
posted by plonkee at 12:51 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by plonkee at 12:51 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
just once I'd like to see a right angle, and not have indoor wind patterns, and maybe have a whole apartment full of doors that actually close
If you aren't willing to spend all your winter indoor time underneath a down throw, do you really love living in old architecture???
posted by praemunire at 12:52 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
If you aren't willing to spend all your winter indoor time underneath a down throw, do you really love living in old architecture???
posted by praemunire at 12:52 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
then told fact checkers that his readers should be able to tell it was obviously "satire."
I mean...this paragraph pretty obviously was? But I do remember thinking as I was reading the article as a whole, and determining that there was no The Josh, that the line could be clearer in other places. 5-over-1s are actually uncommon in NYC, especially in their most common wood-framed form; they don't meet the fire code, and if you manage to get a building project underway, you aren't settling for five stories of residential.
posted by praemunire at 12:55 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I mean...this paragraph pretty obviously was? But I do remember thinking as I was reading the article as a whole, and determining that there was no The Josh, that the line could be clearer in other places. 5-over-1s are actually uncommon in NYC, especially in their most common wood-framed form; they don't meet the fire code, and if you manage to get a building project underway, you aren't settling for five stories of residential.
posted by praemunire at 12:55 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm sorry but sodium vapor is the worst lighting ever created, and I'm amazed that anyone ever liked it.
posted by condour75 at 12:55 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by condour75 at 12:55 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
The Royal Albert is interesting -ugly, whereas many kinds of ugly are just depressing.
But I'm not thinking of new buildings so much as whole neighborhoods that have suffered from broken sidewalks, rusted infrastructure, too much noise and exhaust, abandoned and decrepit places, and a total lack of green anywhere. And that has less to do with architecture than with capitalism.
And a lot of old buildings are drafty firetraps with lead paint and asbestos. Having lived in a few I'm much less of a romantic about them.
posted by emjaybee at 12:56 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
But I'm not thinking of new buildings so much as whole neighborhoods that have suffered from broken sidewalks, rusted infrastructure, too much noise and exhaust, abandoned and decrepit places, and a total lack of green anywhere. And that has less to do with architecture than with capitalism.
And a lot of old buildings are drafty firetraps with lead paint and asbestos. Having lived in a few I'm much less of a romantic about them.
posted by emjaybee at 12:56 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I was about to disagree with this article, but then I remembered I complained to my children about how ugly the latest Iphone update is, especially the lock screen displays. I just hoisted myself on my own petard.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:02 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:02 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'd always heard the Eiffel Tower was considered ugly by a lot of people (and maybe current ones as well). Don't know if it's a myth but I do see a lot of articles saying that.
posted by aleph at 1:13 PM on December 9, 2022
posted by aleph at 1:13 PM on December 9, 2022
"Writing prompt: Please write something about architecture in the style of a drunk, opinionated William Gibson."
FWIW, ChatGPT responded to that with:
I was getting strong Seinfeld vibes.
posted by slogger at 1:18 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
FWIW, ChatGPT responded to that with:
Okay, let me take a swing at that. Here goes:
Yo, architecture, am I right? It's like, who cares, man? It's just a bunch of boring old buildings, and they all look the same [...]
I was getting strong Seinfeld vibes.
posted by slogger at 1:18 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm not offended by ugly buildings. You want to offend me architecturally, offend me with poorly built public housing meant to warehouse the destitute until we find a way to kill them off preferably with preventable diseases.
posted by evilDoug at 1:20 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by evilDoug at 1:20 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Here's a couple videos explaining the proliferation of 5-over-1's in the US:
https://youtu.be/mrxZqPVFTag
https://youtu.be/UX4KklvCDmg
It's the confluence of building codes, loopholes and economics driving their popularity.
posted by ishmael at 1:35 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
https://youtu.be/mrxZqPVFTag
https://youtu.be/UX4KklvCDmg
It's the confluence of building codes, loopholes and economics driving their popularity.
posted by ishmael at 1:35 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
I appreciated this article because it cleared a low bar: it does not seem crypto-fascist. I also hate the ugliness of so much of modern and current architecture, but for a number of historical reasons, the men (generally) who really bang the drum on this subject are hiding (or not even hiding) very bad ideas about what the modern world should actually be like. I'm thinking of James Howard Kunstler, what's-his-fuck with the statue of Socrates as his avi and a name like "The West Resurgent," and Tartaria theorists.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:43 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 1:43 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
I mean...this paragraph pretty obviously was? But I do remember thinking as I was reading the article as a whole, and determining that there was no The Josh, that the line could be clearer in other places.
I guess?
Army Soldier II is not a real Ryan Reynolds movie, but the "When you're so hangry" GrubHub ad is real. The Josh is apparently not a real building (according to other mefis in this thread), but the quoted New York article is. CityMD is a real private urgent care clinic, but I can't verify if they actually ask for "History of medical litigation" from their patients. After way too much googling, I can verify that the mouse sculptures are real and by artist Brian Donnelly (who goes by KAWS), and they are in fact located around the corner from the n+1 office at 21 India St.
How are we supposed to know what is real and what is "satire" exactly? I even checked the rest of the n+1 to make sure it wasn't a The Onion-style parody. When you read this article, can you point me to the point where it should be obvious that this article was satirical? And what exactly is it satirizing? Is Army Soldier II a real Netflix movie after all?
I contend that none of it is intended as satire and all of it is meant to be taken as true.
posted by AlSweigart at 1:45 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
I guess?
Army Soldier II is not a real Ryan Reynolds movie, but the "When you're so hangry" GrubHub ad is real. The Josh is apparently not a real building (according to other mefis in this thread), but the quoted New York article is. CityMD is a real private urgent care clinic, but I can't verify if they actually ask for "History of medical litigation" from their patients. After way too much googling, I can verify that the mouse sculptures are real and by artist Brian Donnelly (who goes by KAWS), and they are in fact located around the corner from the n+1 office at 21 India St.
How are we supposed to know what is real and what is "satire" exactly? I even checked the rest of the n+1 to make sure it wasn't a The Onion-style parody. When you read this article, can you point me to the point where it should be obvious that this article was satirical? And what exactly is it satirizing? Is Army Soldier II a real Netflix movie after all?
I contend that none of it is intended as satire and all of it is meant to be taken as true.
posted by AlSweigart at 1:45 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
this article reads like a 300-tweet thread from a guy with a roman statue profile pic
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 1:49 PM on December 9, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 1:49 PM on December 9, 2022 [14 favorites]
sodium vapor v. surgical theatre blue-white. well, they both suck and the tech exists to have them not. but wait, my taxes. /aesthetic snob
posted by j_curiouser at 2:19 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by j_curiouser at 2:19 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
I'm considering this article a Guilty Pleasure Hack: equal parts based & cringe, mix until your muscles cry uncle.
posted by otsebyatina at 2:22 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by otsebyatina at 2:22 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Tartaria theorists
I missed this the first time it was on the Blue, but hoooleeeshit is that the kind of kookery that I used to love right until it ate political discourse in this country
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:25 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
I missed this the first time it was on the Blue, but hoooleeeshit is that the kind of kookery that I used to love right until it ate political discourse in this country
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:25 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
I am not generally a fan of most contemporary architecture, or the kinds of design that this essay is complaining about more generally. But "ugliness" is not really a useful criticism. Taste is subjective, and what one person finds ugly another may find beautiful. Some iconic buildings that I think are quite ugly, others love, and that's fine. My taste doesn't get to govern everything.
But I think there is a more substantial criticism about a lot of modern architecture and design, which is that it lacks craft. In Philadelphia, there are many buildings that were constructed in the early 20th century which are largely brick, and many of them are not exactly what I would have thought of as appealing to my personal taste before moving here. But they are still visually interesting in a way that a lot of more recently constructed buildings are not, and that pretty much comes down to the fact that there is craft in their construction. Although the buildings' facades are just brick, there are sophisticated patterns in the layout of the brick, at multiple spatial scales, which not only add tremendous visual interest, but also speaks to a tremendous amount of skill and care by the bricklayers who constructed them. Although it would have been easier and faster to just lay down bricks in a regular pattern, the architects and bricklayers cared about their work and took the extra time to think about what they were constructing as they built it. Each brick reflects a few moments of careful thought by a skilled human being who valued the work they were doing and wanted it to be something they could be proud of.
The problem with most contemporary architecture, and a lot of contemporary design more generally, is not so much that it is ugly by some objective standard, but that it is inhuman. Buildings like The Josh (maybe fictional but I think a lot of us know the type) are, in a sense, not really designed by humans, they are designed by corporations. They reflect not the values of human beings, who seek to do work that has meaning, that says something about who they are and what matters to them, who want the work to be something that other people admire and come to value themselves. Rather, they reflect the values of capitalist corporations: profit maximization over all else. What is the cheapest way to put up a facade that will still attract people to want to spend money in this building? How can we take advantage of economies of scale to cut costs? How do we design this to avoid as much high-skilled, and thus expensive, labor as possible in its construction? Designers may put their personal touches into their work, but too often a committee reworks it until it is smooth, bland, and grey. Contractors may take pride in the work they do, but the contract leaves them no room for creativity or expression.
I think there are plenty of buildings, and other design, from the early 20th century and earlier which are ugly, by my own personal taste. A lot of 18th century French design, both in architecture and in furniture, strikes me as appallingly gaudy, for example. But it's human in its ugliness. I can think of dressers and other furniture in a museum exhibit I saw a few years ago that were just ridiculously overwrought, in my opinion, but the craftsmanship that went into their construction, the thought that went into the design, the human personality reflected in the details of the carvings, were undeniable. You can't mass produce that kind of craftsmanship, and so it's absent from much contemporary architecture and design.
I think the inhumanity of much of the modern built environment and artifacts we surround ourselves with, not their ugliness, is what prompts people to feel unease, have negative reactions, and write pieces like this.
posted by biogeo at 2:28 PM on December 9, 2022 [39 favorites]
But I think there is a more substantial criticism about a lot of modern architecture and design, which is that it lacks craft. In Philadelphia, there are many buildings that were constructed in the early 20th century which are largely brick, and many of them are not exactly what I would have thought of as appealing to my personal taste before moving here. But they are still visually interesting in a way that a lot of more recently constructed buildings are not, and that pretty much comes down to the fact that there is craft in their construction. Although the buildings' facades are just brick, there are sophisticated patterns in the layout of the brick, at multiple spatial scales, which not only add tremendous visual interest, but also speaks to a tremendous amount of skill and care by the bricklayers who constructed them. Although it would have been easier and faster to just lay down bricks in a regular pattern, the architects and bricklayers cared about their work and took the extra time to think about what they were constructing as they built it. Each brick reflects a few moments of careful thought by a skilled human being who valued the work they were doing and wanted it to be something they could be proud of.
The problem with most contemporary architecture, and a lot of contemporary design more generally, is not so much that it is ugly by some objective standard, but that it is inhuman. Buildings like The Josh (maybe fictional but I think a lot of us know the type) are, in a sense, not really designed by humans, they are designed by corporations. They reflect not the values of human beings, who seek to do work that has meaning, that says something about who they are and what matters to them, who want the work to be something that other people admire and come to value themselves. Rather, they reflect the values of capitalist corporations: profit maximization over all else. What is the cheapest way to put up a facade that will still attract people to want to spend money in this building? How can we take advantage of economies of scale to cut costs? How do we design this to avoid as much high-skilled, and thus expensive, labor as possible in its construction? Designers may put their personal touches into their work, but too often a committee reworks it until it is smooth, bland, and grey. Contractors may take pride in the work they do, but the contract leaves them no room for creativity or expression.
I think there are plenty of buildings, and other design, from the early 20th century and earlier which are ugly, by my own personal taste. A lot of 18th century French design, both in architecture and in furniture, strikes me as appallingly gaudy, for example. But it's human in its ugliness. I can think of dressers and other furniture in a museum exhibit I saw a few years ago that were just ridiculously overwrought, in my opinion, but the craftsmanship that went into their construction, the thought that went into the design, the human personality reflected in the details of the carvings, were undeniable. You can't mass produce that kind of craftsmanship, and so it's absent from much contemporary architecture and design.
I think the inhumanity of much of the modern built environment and artifacts we surround ourselves with, not their ugliness, is what prompts people to feel unease, have negative reactions, and write pieces like this.
posted by biogeo at 2:28 PM on December 9, 2022 [39 favorites]
A few years back we were in Shanghai (multiple visits through a mutual scientific exchange program) and ran into a bunch of very jolly, freshly-credentialed architects from France. They said they loved China - as the only place in the world municipally receptive to funding genuinely creative architectural projects.
(I've been saving this trifle forever!)
posted by Jody Tresidder at 2:54 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
(I've been saving this trifle forever!)
posted by Jody Tresidder at 2:54 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
The problem with most contemporary architecture, and a lot of contemporary design more generally, is not so much that it is ugly by some objective standard, but that it is inhuman. Buildings like The Josh (maybe fictional but I think a lot of us know the type) are, in a sense, not really designed by humans, they are designed by corporations.
They're not even designed "by corporations", which implies some human agency. They're designed by code. This struck me one day when my wife and I noticed that all the houses going up in our neck of the woods are effectively just boxes. One of us commented that they looked like they were designed by an algorithm that optimized square footage, when we realized - they effectively are!
In this case, there are two "codes" at play: the zoning code + the imperative to maximize ROI. The latter is nothing new (I don't think developers in 1922 were any less greedy than developers in 2022), so the main difference between now and then is the former. We now have severe restrictions on what we can build, which has led to our current housing shortage and skyrocketing prices.
In this environment, maximizing ROI means optimizing for square footage. Maybe back in the day an additional 200 square feet of space didn't justify the construction cost or the potential lack of renters/buyers due to aesthetic ugliness. But now it does, and it will continue to do so until we can actually build enough housing to bring prices down.
posted by Ndwright at 3:25 PM on December 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
They're not even designed "by corporations", which implies some human agency. They're designed by code. This struck me one day when my wife and I noticed that all the houses going up in our neck of the woods are effectively just boxes. One of us commented that they looked like they were designed by an algorithm that optimized square footage, when we realized - they effectively are!
In this case, there are two "codes" at play: the zoning code + the imperative to maximize ROI. The latter is nothing new (I don't think developers in 1922 were any less greedy than developers in 2022), so the main difference between now and then is the former. We now have severe restrictions on what we can build, which has led to our current housing shortage and skyrocketing prices.
In this environment, maximizing ROI means optimizing for square footage. Maybe back in the day an additional 200 square feet of space didn't justify the construction cost or the potential lack of renters/buyers due to aesthetic ugliness. But now it does, and it will continue to do so until we can actually build enough housing to bring prices down.
posted by Ndwright at 3:25 PM on December 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
Whenever it's public money it's even worse, because now everyone has an opinion on where the money should be spent (elseware). I don't want to hate on my local San Francisco but they have the $20K trash can and the $6.5 billion bridge; both projects had a mandate to look unique and interesting to fit the area's perceived "status".
posted by meowzilla at 3:32 PM on December 9, 2022
posted by meowzilla at 3:32 PM on December 9, 2022
his readers should be able to tell it was obviously "satire."
To be fair, this 100% read as obvious satire to me.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:19 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
To be fair, this 100% read as obvious satire to me.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:19 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
The part about the unicorn latte and the Chipotle Chicken Hacks seemed blatantly satirical to me. Which was cued up by the discussion of the Situationists and the dérive.
posted by praemunire at 4:29 PM on December 9, 2022
posted by praemunire at 4:29 PM on December 9, 2022
Why Is Everything So Ugly?
I just sort of figured it's because cookie cutters are easy, and beauty costs time and money. Now that nearly every part of every system (because they're all interlocking) is locked into worship of ROI, there is no room for time or money unless it's in direct service of ROI. We get functional (if we're lucky) and easily reproduced because that's what the investing class will (grudgingly) allow.
I mean, I could turn that into a 3,900 word essay, but who's got the time?
posted by Ghidorah at 4:32 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
I just sort of figured it's because cookie cutters are easy, and beauty costs time and money. Now that nearly every part of every system (because they're all interlocking) is locked into worship of ROI, there is no room for time or money unless it's in direct service of ROI. We get functional (if we're lucky) and easily reproduced because that's what the investing class will (grudgingly) allow.
I mean, I could turn that into a 3,900 word essay, but who's got the time?
posted by Ghidorah at 4:32 PM on December 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
It's not just the investing class. Nobody wan't to lose money. Aesthetics are arbitrary, so why fight for them?
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 4:34 PM on December 9, 2022
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 4:34 PM on December 9, 2022
How does anyone in 2022 on the internet still feel confident in having their work correctly appraised as satirical?
posted by otsebyatina at 4:37 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by otsebyatina at 4:37 PM on December 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
Fair question.
posted by praemunire at 5:10 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 5:10 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I’m in Scotland where I guess the situation and history are different. But every time I look at one of Edinburgh’s magnificent old buildings and am tempted to rue the ugliness of contemporary ones, I remind myself that the good stuff was built on the stolen proceeds of Empire and generations of underpaid construction workers with zero safety or employment regulations.
Yes, the Victorians (and their predecessors) built stunning, grand public buildings, and banks, and so on - because they were busy stealing wealth from half the world to fund it all with. And allowing their workers to die in their dozens so we could have the Forth Bridge. And so on.
It would be nice if we could have the grand architecture without the pillaging, but if government offices now looking like shoeboxes is what we can afford without imperialism and when we employ safe, decently-paid workers, I’ll take that compromise.
Saying that, the fairly recently-built Scottish Parliament building is satisfyingly hefty and beautiful from the inside (even if it is a bit shoeboxy from the outside) so it can be done, I guess. But you’d probably only get away with that level of expenditure once in a generation or so these days.
posted by penguin pie at 5:12 PM on December 9, 2022 [14 favorites]
Yes, the Victorians (and their predecessors) built stunning, grand public buildings, and banks, and so on - because they were busy stealing wealth from half the world to fund it all with. And allowing their workers to die in their dozens so we could have the Forth Bridge. And so on.
It would be nice if we could have the grand architecture without the pillaging, but if government offices now looking like shoeboxes is what we can afford without imperialism and when we employ safe, decently-paid workers, I’ll take that compromise.
Saying that, the fairly recently-built Scottish Parliament building is satisfyingly hefty and beautiful from the inside (even if it is a bit shoeboxy from the outside) so it can be done, I guess. But you’d probably only get away with that level of expenditure once in a generation or so these days.
posted by penguin pie at 5:12 PM on December 9, 2022 [14 favorites]
I don't think cheaper materials/costs *have* to look so cheap. I'm reminded of early Industrial days where materials like steel and glass were so expensive they were in limited use. And certain possibilities look promising for the future.
At the moment I think the buildings have more "don't care" than "can't" in them.
posted by aleph at 5:37 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
At the moment I think the buildings have more "don't care" than "can't" in them.
posted by aleph at 5:37 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
People will totally be nostalgic for this style of architecture in 50 years. I mean, people are nostalgic for 90s suburban malls right now! Someone in 2072 will be painstakingly restoring The Josh to its original shade of yellow as a classic example of an early 21st century condo building.
I do agree that grey-on-grey-on-grey interiors (especially with grey “wood grain” “luxury” vinyl flooring) is an interior design trend that has probably run its course at this point? Though I’d personally still take it over a wall-to-wall brown carpet that has absorbed the odors of the last several renters and their pets.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:07 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I do agree that grey-on-grey-on-grey interiors (especially with grey “wood grain” “luxury” vinyl flooring) is an interior design trend that has probably run its course at this point? Though I’d personally still take it over a wall-to-wall brown carpet that has absorbed the odors of the last several renters and their pets.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:07 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I mean, people are nostalgic for 90s suburban malls right now!
I take it back about taste being subjective, this is an objectively wrong way for people to feel
posted by biogeo at 6:42 PM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
While I agree that most of the renovations and new buildings going up in my home city are made of poorly-pre-formed cheese in unpleasant colors, the article ranted about things that just aren't as unattractive. I stopped reading when "direct-to-consumer eyeglasses" were tossed in the pile. Those eyeglasses can be utterlyl charming.
posted by Peach at 7:04 PM on December 9, 2022
posted by Peach at 7:04 PM on December 9, 2022
Perhaps every generation hates its own architecture. Which does not mean there aren't a lot of ugly buildings in the world. Back in 1987, the King formerly known as Prince Charles gave one of his speeches about how unbearable the London skyline had become: "You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that."
posted by bryon at 7:10 PM on December 9, 2022
posted by bryon at 7:10 PM on December 9, 2022
Thinking about the comments above, about how modern design is an emergent property of building and zoning codes and ROI: it's procedurally generated architecture. With all that implies for the unlikelihood of deviation and the unsettling uniformity. Welcome to life in Uncanny Valley.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:11 PM on December 9, 2022
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:11 PM on December 9, 2022
My direct-to-consumer eyeglasses DON’T look as good or fit as well as ones from an optician’s, but they have the advantage of being something I actually have the option of buying.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:46 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:46 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
As per MeFi convention, most of us seem to enjoy hating this article.
But I live in flyover country, where this style (McCentury Modern!) has just taken over my neighborhood in the last 5-10 years.
Living in Colorado, and being totally ignorant of contemporaneous design criticism, I found this article well-done and attuned to my elitist aesthetic standards. OK, a little wordy, but it's N+1.
posted by kozad at 7:49 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
But I live in flyover country, where this style (McCentury Modern!) has just taken over my neighborhood in the last 5-10 years.
Living in Colorado, and being totally ignorant of contemporaneous design criticism, I found this article well-done and attuned to my elitist aesthetic standards. OK, a little wordy, but it's N+1.
posted by kozad at 7:49 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
I don't want to hate on my local San Francisco but they have the $20K trash can and the $6.5 billion bridge; both projects had a mandate to look unique and interesting to fit the area's perceived "status".
It was Oakland's Mayor Elihu Harris, Oakland Mayor-elect Jerry Brown and 6 other East Bay mayors joined by SF Mayor Wille Brown that did not want an ugly "freeway on stilts" for the eastern span end of the Bay Bridge, and CatTrans who assembled the architects to decide on designs. It wasn't a San Francisco decision as the West Span of the Bay Bridge is already showy.
It also wasn't the design by the end so much as repeated delays that caused the extremely inflated cost. Two years of wrangling over where exactly the bridge would intersect Yerba Buena Island -initiated by then mayor Willie Brown- helped bump the price up immediately. You have to keep all the people involved (inspectors, bookkeepers, engineers) basically on call as politicians bicker. So delays mounted and the cost increased, and 9/11 caused insurance premiums to skyrocket, steel prices doubled, and then Schwarzenegger said everything needed to go back to the drawing board because he didn't think that the design was worth it... until he realized it was going to cost just as much to go back to square one with a new basic design.
TL;DR: you can't hang the design of the bridge on SF, nor the inflated price solely on the design.
posted by oneirodynia at 8:59 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
It was Oakland's Mayor Elihu Harris, Oakland Mayor-elect Jerry Brown and 6 other East Bay mayors joined by SF Mayor Wille Brown that did not want an ugly "freeway on stilts" for the eastern span end of the Bay Bridge, and CatTrans who assembled the architects to decide on designs. It wasn't a San Francisco decision as the West Span of the Bay Bridge is already showy.
It also wasn't the design by the end so much as repeated delays that caused the extremely inflated cost. Two years of wrangling over where exactly the bridge would intersect Yerba Buena Island -initiated by then mayor Willie Brown- helped bump the price up immediately. You have to keep all the people involved (inspectors, bookkeepers, engineers) basically on call as politicians bicker. So delays mounted and the cost increased, and 9/11 caused insurance premiums to skyrocket, steel prices doubled, and then Schwarzenegger said everything needed to go back to the drawing board because he didn't think that the design was worth it... until he realized it was going to cost just as much to go back to square one with a new basic design.
TL;DR: you can't hang the design of the bridge on SF, nor the inflated price solely on the design.
posted by oneirodynia at 8:59 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
Drunk Gibson? It's been a while since I've read one, but Ok, I'll give it a shot:
All cities are alike. They used to be uniquely terrible in interesting ways. The squalid isolation of the walled city of Kowloon. The abandoned buildings dripping tears of rust in Chicago. The endless snarling snarled traffic jams of the entire West and East Coast. The back alley deaths of any place labeled third world country, unseen and uncaringly caused by the ceaseless grinding of corporate capitalist overlords. Islands battered and flooded by the Mammon god of deliberate climate change. But now every city is the same, and not just the relentless locust swarming of the megacity sprawl. We have too many people and too much space to fill for uniqueness or cleverness. Putting a genuine antique Buddhist temple in the middle of Kansas makes no sense when you can have endless strip malls full of instant scop chicken nuggets and fourth party technology knockoffs of sketchy knockoffs. Little Johnny and little Susan don't need culture if they can study karate in the nearest enclosed shopping center enclave. The cities have already conquered the coasts, spread up from Texas to smash through Oklahoma towards the heart of a dying country. What need of tasteful buildings when a disposable citizenship demands tack and tat? When commerce says a building should only last long enough to recoup the profit?
No, The world Is a wasteland of prefabrication and accidental spaces, home formed in the cracks where business deigns to let life live, I'm text and uncommercialized only through negligence and ennui. Dumpsters back up on storage units for outdated electronics and storehouses for shirts of losing sports teams. People will and have killed for such things, the trickling down from the haves to those who want. Life is cheap and brutal, but money is power. The downtrodden fight back by making life unpleasant for the rich in small ways, areas made inaccessible through fear and filth. Any such visits to dens of iniquity are driven by addiction in various forms, chemical or perversion. Anything can be bought and sold for enough money, influence or pure power. Replacement livers for the alcoholics and druggies, replacement children from far away countries for people incapable or unwilling to reproduce for themselves. In the neon slamming soundscape of the ghetto there are no rules other than what can be enforced by might. Nothing to prevent the invisible toxicity of a drug lab or unshielded cell towers poisoning what passes for a school. Into the warrens of arcades and whore houses sticky and smeared with unimaginable filth. Through gang territory where death stalks at random culling people without rhyme or reason. To succeed is to live another day, but life is also misery. Through the tangled labyrinth of the unwanted, the hell of humanity you walk naked and alone. All the processing power wired through your skull can never save you. It's a far more primal drive that sends you to do or die.
posted by Jacen at 11:15 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
All cities are alike. They used to be uniquely terrible in interesting ways. The squalid isolation of the walled city of Kowloon. The abandoned buildings dripping tears of rust in Chicago. The endless snarling snarled traffic jams of the entire West and East Coast. The back alley deaths of any place labeled third world country, unseen and uncaringly caused by the ceaseless grinding of corporate capitalist overlords. Islands battered and flooded by the Mammon god of deliberate climate change. But now every city is the same, and not just the relentless locust swarming of the megacity sprawl. We have too many people and too much space to fill for uniqueness or cleverness. Putting a genuine antique Buddhist temple in the middle of Kansas makes no sense when you can have endless strip malls full of instant scop chicken nuggets and fourth party technology knockoffs of sketchy knockoffs. Little Johnny and little Susan don't need culture if they can study karate in the nearest enclosed shopping center enclave. The cities have already conquered the coasts, spread up from Texas to smash through Oklahoma towards the heart of a dying country. What need of tasteful buildings when a disposable citizenship demands tack and tat? When commerce says a building should only last long enough to recoup the profit?
No, The world Is a wasteland of prefabrication and accidental spaces, home formed in the cracks where business deigns to let life live, I'm text and uncommercialized only through negligence and ennui. Dumpsters back up on storage units for outdated electronics and storehouses for shirts of losing sports teams. People will and have killed for such things, the trickling down from the haves to those who want. Life is cheap and brutal, but money is power. The downtrodden fight back by making life unpleasant for the rich in small ways, areas made inaccessible through fear and filth. Any such visits to dens of iniquity are driven by addiction in various forms, chemical or perversion. Anything can be bought and sold for enough money, influence or pure power. Replacement livers for the alcoholics and druggies, replacement children from far away countries for people incapable or unwilling to reproduce for themselves. In the neon slamming soundscape of the ghetto there are no rules other than what can be enforced by might. Nothing to prevent the invisible toxicity of a drug lab or unshielded cell towers poisoning what passes for a school. Into the warrens of arcades and whore houses sticky and smeared with unimaginable filth. Through gang territory where death stalks at random culling people without rhyme or reason. To succeed is to live another day, but life is also misery. Through the tangled labyrinth of the unwanted, the hell of humanity you walk naked and alone. All the processing power wired through your skull can never save you. It's a far more primal drive that sends you to do or die.
posted by Jacen at 11:15 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
personally I don't have any difficulty thinking of ugly buildings built before 1930. (Before 1830 is admittedly harder ..)
Survival of the fittest, ugly and cheap stuff falls apart or gets torn down. Same with all the lovely antique furniture, they do not preserve the shit generally.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:27 AM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
Survival of the fittest, ugly and cheap stuff falls apart or gets torn down. Same with all the lovely antique furniture, they do not preserve the shit generally.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:27 AM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
Personally I blame minecraft for the blocky ugliness of new 3-5 story cinderblock condo developments.
posted by srboisvert at 3:13 AM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 3:13 AM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
Shortly after his ascension to the throne, there was this article in The Guardian about TMFKATPOW* - Carbuncles and King Charles: was the royal family’s meddling supertroll right about architecture? I've only ever seen Poundbury in photographs, and it's tended to remind me of Portmeirion, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
*The Monarch Formerly Known As The Prince Of Wales, the particular form of that gag that I'm going for.
posted by Grangousier at 4:20 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
*The Monarch Formerly Known As The Prince Of Wales, the particular form of that gag that I'm going for.
posted by Grangousier at 4:20 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
Biogeo: I think the inhumanity of much of the modern built environment and artifacts we surround ourselves with, not their ugliness, is what prompts people to feel unease, have negative reactions, and write pieces like this.Christopher Alexander—who I will continue to insist is the contemporary authority on "why are modern buildings bad, maybe"—talks a lot about architecture as process. To paraphrase him, every creative act, whether the thing you're making is a poem or a building or a relationship, consists of a series of iterative reflections, where you look upon things-as-they-stand and get a sense of where they should be taken next. Because every reflective step is so continent on the state of things as they stand now, you can't plot it all out at once: the thing you're making is emergent, even if it's emerging into a framework or specification that you established early on.
Ndwright: They're not even designed "by corporations", which implies some human agency. They're designed by code.
One thing that I love about The Nature of Order, Alexander's extremely-long book about what makes buildings good and bad, is that he has this delightfully broad outlook on where "good" can come from. Sometimes it's expensive houses designed by tasteful architects, but other times it's street corners whose buildings were made by hand, using only immediately-available materials—or painted Harley-Davidsons in a bike gang. A part of his point is that it has less to do with "cheap vs expensive" or "simple vs ornate," and more to do with: "How involved were people in making these environs?"
His argument, basically, is that it's not that old buildings were innately "better," but that earlier eras of architecture didn't offer as many shortcuts. Manners of construction that turn the outward appearance of a building into a total facade, disconnected from its own skeleton. Computer-aided design that lets architects whip up detailed but abstract plans. Corporate approaches to architecture that both mass-produce building designs and optimize those buildings for financial-metric purposes. And what he calls "image-centric architecture:" things which are meant to look compelling in photographs but which don't play well with their surroundings, or don't offer meaningful outdoor spaces, or flat-out compromise their interiors for the sake of whatever image they're projecting.
There's a bit in The Nature of Order where he breaks down the process of designing a house, and goes over the steps someone would go through to adjust that house's design to its environs. For instance: do its windows look out upon beautiful views, or do they look out upon ephemera and noise? "Windows look nice on a house" is a consideration of the design of a building as divorced from context; "windows look at things" is a mindset that creates a relationship between the building and everything around it, so that the building belongs to the landscape and the landscape belongs to the building.
Alexander goes through pages and pages of similar considerations, and then goes back to the original design of the house and goes: "Okay, you want to treat architecture like it's a computation? Let's call all these things the original design overlooked flaws. If you need numbers to believe what I'm saying, here are the hundreds of ways that this nice-in-the-abstract building fails to do the thing it was designed to do." (And then he goes a step further and calculates the impact these flaws on the building's property value, which is fun and kind of catty.)
I lived in a very old old South Philly townhouse from 2014 to 2020. It was unattractive by a lot of metrics and cheap as hell, but everything about it was charming. Every room had a lovely shape to it, its janky-ass spiral staircase was as pleasurable as it was hazardous, and the place as a whole felt alive: if dwellings have spirits, this house's spirit was friendly and warm.
That neighborhood has been steadily gentrifying. Every time a resident moved out on our street, a company would swoop in and rebuild the house they'd just left. The street gradually got more modernized, more outwardly "fetching," but it deadened a little too. And that had nothing to do with the modern style of architecture or the sense of newness, and everything to do with the sense that its "style" was a shallow pretense meant to look good in a catalogue, without any real consideration paid to the experience of living there beyond bullet-pointed "amenities" on a Zillow tab.
A building three blocks from where I used to live just went viral on Twitter for being an "extremely divorced" building, and... yep. Again, the problem with it isn't the style per se: it's the senselessness. You can do this style in considerate, deft, and striking ways, but this ain't that. This is "luxury" in air quotes only. Diet Coke Luxury.
That's the problem with modern architecture: not its modernity, but its Diet Coke-ness. It's not about "beauty" in the sense of aesthetic appeal: it's about what Alexander calls "wholeness" or just "life." The sense that a building is alive and attentive and thoughtful in the way that things-that-people-make can be those things: because they were made with care and reflection, and given an opportunity to grow into the things that they eventually became. Modern approaches to architecture lack that, and people notice—even when they can't quite put their finger on what exactly they are noticing.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 5:48 AM on December 10, 2022 [19 favorites]
I'm sorry but sodium vapor is the worst lighting ever created, and I'm amazed that anyone ever liked it.
My heart is glad that your soul has been spared the ravages of the worst that fluorescent bulbs can do, but even among LEDs there is a light of such a hard, cold blue as to make me doubt my memories that the sun ever existed.
posted by straight at 7:58 AM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
My heart is glad that your soul has been spared the ravages of the worst that fluorescent bulbs can do, but even among LEDs there is a light of such a hard, cold blue as to make me doubt my memories that the sun ever existed.
posted by straight at 7:58 AM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
re: pettiness about modernism:
The cabinets in my new apartment had no handles, just clean artificial wood panels.
I've lost minutes of my life pulling on the wrong side of the cabinet doors. Some days, after a long day of other frustrations, coming home and pulling on the wrong side of a door made me feel unreasonable, like a chimp in a monkey trap.
I finally put decorative pins on these doors indicating the opening side and my life is suddenly just a little bit better, everyday.
posted by ishmael at 9:19 AM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
The cabinets in my new apartment had no handles, just clean artificial wood panels.
I've lost minutes of my life pulling on the wrong side of the cabinet doors. Some days, after a long day of other frustrations, coming home and pulling on the wrong side of a door made me feel unreasonable, like a chimp in a monkey trap.
I finally put decorative pins on these doors indicating the opening side and my life is suddenly just a little bit better, everyday.
posted by ishmael at 9:19 AM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Also, the designers of hotel bathrooms are psychopaths. No fans are bad enough, but then in some hotels, there's no door?
Or like a frosted glass partition and that's it.
All in the service of "clean lines" or some such. Gods be good.
posted by ishmael at 9:21 AM on December 11, 2022
Or like a frosted glass partition and that's it.
All in the service of "clean lines" or some such. Gods be good.
posted by ishmael at 9:21 AM on December 11, 2022
even among LEDs there is a light of such a hard, cold blue as to make me doubt my memories that the sun ever existed
I'm holding onto my incandescent Christmas-tree lights until they flicker out entirely. LED is just wrong for trees.
posted by praemunire at 10:44 AM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm holding onto my incandescent Christmas-tree lights until they flicker out entirely. LED is just wrong for trees.
posted by praemunire at 10:44 AM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
in some hotels, there's no door?
I always thought this was to save money and space. If there’s no door there’s no clearance needed for a door to open which lets you make the room smaller.
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:39 AM on December 11, 2022
I always thought this was to save money and space. If there’s no door there’s no clearance needed for a door to open which lets you make the room smaller.
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:39 AM on December 11, 2022
That does not explain the hotel bathrooms with glass walls such that anyone sharing the room has to basically close their eyes not to watch you shower and use the toilet.
posted by emjaybee at 12:58 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 12:58 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
LED is just wrong for trees.
The comfort you seek has a name: 2700K. I call the blue super-white "prison white."
posted by rhizome at 1:22 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
The comfort you seek has a name: 2700K. I call the blue super-white "prison white."
posted by rhizome at 1:22 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Complaining that LED street light colors are bad and the old street light colors were better? Christ, what an asshole. You can just say, "I am old" instead of telling us how music on LPs sounds more "authentic" than MP3s.
No, if you're actually old you hate the sickly orange sodium lamps because you grew up with mercury vapor. Or if you're even older, you may have gotten to experience carbon arc lamps.
posted by wierdo at 5:16 PM on December 11, 2022
No, if you're actually old you hate the sickly orange sodium lamps because you grew up with mercury vapor. Or if you're even older, you may have gotten to experience carbon arc lamps.
posted by wierdo at 5:16 PM on December 11, 2022
I still remember gaslight, consarn it! Or at least people tell me I do, but I'm not so sure...
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:09 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:09 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
The only proper color for street lighting at night is burning thatch roofs from Viking raiders destroying your town because your lord failed to pay the danegeld on time. Nothing else has the same charm.
posted by biogeo at 10:42 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 10:42 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Athelstan shot first!
posted by rhizome at 11:39 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 11:39 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
I still remember gaslight, consarn it!
Gaslight porch lights are a pretty good sign you are super wealthy.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:10 AM on December 12, 2022
Gaslight porch lights are a pretty good sign you are super wealthy.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:10 AM on December 12, 2022
Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted summarizing Alexander's take on modern: "Manners of construction that turn the outward appearance of a building into a total facade, disconnected from its own skeleton."
I'm a little confused by this. My touristy vibrant downtown town has a bunch of old iron front buildings. They're what people often point to as beautiful buildings, but they're entirely facade. Those fixtures were cast and affixed after construction, and you totally could do the same thing on a modern building. In fact, there were a few decades where the iron was removed, and... well... it looked like the '60s.
When new construction is proposed, the arguments in front of the Planning Commission and then, inevitably, to Council because the "against" folks manage to derail the process such that it gets escalated there, are all for slapping facades that disconnect the appearance of the building from its construction materials.
My impression of how bad commercial architecture happens is that we bankrupt the local developers who care about being part of the town by harassing them over materials and aesthetics, thus forcing them to sell to someone with the legal resources to make the town abide by its own rules. And at that point they've then spent enough on soft costs that they slap up whatever they think they can sell to the investors who'll run it with whatever materials are trendy at the moment.
And, of course, mandate enough parking that there's no way the development can be charming or walkable or anything other than a bland copy of a thousand other such developments.
And maybe break up the face with some faux brick, or other trim that'll need painting and maintenance in 5 years, but whatever, they're on to the next town.
posted by straw at 9:20 AM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm a little confused by this. My touristy vibrant downtown town has a bunch of old iron front buildings. They're what people often point to as beautiful buildings, but they're entirely facade. Those fixtures were cast and affixed after construction, and you totally could do the same thing on a modern building. In fact, there were a few decades where the iron was removed, and... well... it looked like the '60s.
When new construction is proposed, the arguments in front of the Planning Commission and then, inevitably, to Council because the "against" folks manage to derail the process such that it gets escalated there, are all for slapping facades that disconnect the appearance of the building from its construction materials.
My impression of how bad commercial architecture happens is that we bankrupt the local developers who care about being part of the town by harassing them over materials and aesthetics, thus forcing them to sell to someone with the legal resources to make the town abide by its own rules. And at that point they've then spent enough on soft costs that they slap up whatever they think they can sell to the investors who'll run it with whatever materials are trendy at the moment.
And, of course, mandate enough parking that there's no way the development can be charming or walkable or anything other than a bland copy of a thousand other such developments.
And maybe break up the face with some faux brick, or other trim that'll need painting and maintenance in 5 years, but whatever, they're on to the next town.
posted by straw at 9:20 AM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
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I do have my own hypothesis on it though.
Doing something interesting and unique invites risk, expense, and criticism. nobody developing real estate wants those things. Also nobody making decisions wants to be holding the bag if they greenlight anything interesting and there's a problem with it. It's better to just agree to whatever your paid consultant tells you the most boring, safe, cheap thing to do is.
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:06 AM on December 9, 2022 [28 favorites]