The Architecture Thread

[Medwed]

 

[sugarbutch]

Such tiny American windows...

 

[brokencycle]

I feel dumber for watching any of that, but a great example of how wrong he is, he says something like "Houses are getting smaller."

Well:

Today’s new homes are 1,000 square feet larger than in 1973, and the living space per person has doubled over last 40 years

http://www.aei.org/publication/toda...ce-per-person-has-doubled-over-last-40-years/

 

[brokencycle]

Such tiny American windows...

Don't get cucked by your windows.

 

[Big Pun]

Just read From Bauhaus to Our House if you want a non-marsupialed critique of modern architecture.

 

[ethanm]

Medwed would post a video from that piece of human garbage.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Medwed would post a video from that piece of human garbage.

I wonder if he knows who he actually is. And, I thought that Medwed, whether one agrees with him or not, at least had pretensions to taste and to knowledge. It's quite clear that Alex Jones's catamite has neither.

 

[brokencycle]

I wonder if he knows who he actually is. And, I thought that Medwed, whether one agrees with him or not, at least had pretensions to taste and to knowledge. It's quite clear that Alex Jones's catamite has neither.

In my experience, pretentiousness is typically a vaneer to hide a lack of knowledge and understanding.

 

[Medwed]

Ethanm did you get lost on the interwebz again? This is a wrong thread for you dear.

You boys shooting the messenger again. 99% of the World does not live in your exemplary Architecture. The World has been made incredibly ugly by overactive OCD idiots such as Le Corbusier. I know cities in Europe that were beautiful and untouched by two wars and then destroyed by bureaucrats and rebuilt to be a model shithole a-la Le Corbusier. Anyone whose passion is to normalize ugliness deserves scorn.
Anyone who watches that video and thinks of Alex Jones does not deserve my time.

 

[ethanm]

Anyone who watches that video and thinks of Alex Jones does not deserve my time.

Yeah, anyone who watches a video produced by an Infowars employee and thinks of Alex Jones is an IDIOT!

 

[FlyingMonkey]

A simple demolition of that video - why is the alt-right so angry about architecture? https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/07/why-is-the-alt-right-so-angry-about-architecture/532470/

 

[btau]

Rubbish video, rubbish rebuttal. Old mate in the video can't separate brutalist concrete jungle slums built in rubbish city fringe suburbs to be cheap housing for the proles from monuments to capitalism like the Shard. They aren't comparable in style, they aren't comparable in purpose, they aren't comparable in intended usage. All they have in common is
A: they are tall
B: they are built under the reign of Elizabeth the II.

I think the video has some some valid criticism, albeit overhyped toward Le Corbusier. I think the architectural world and governments learned a lot from these 70's & 80's brutalist monuments to utilitarian efficiency and if given a time machine, probably wouldn't build them again. It turns out that building row after row of ugly econobox towers with every corner possible cut, no green spaces, no common spaces, limited access to public transport, etc and filling them full of low socio economic status families isn't a great idea. But architects & town planners learn and move on, its a progressive art, which is part of why it doesn't make sense to compare other buildings like the shard to cookie cutter 70's/80's towers.

On the other hand, I cant' take the rebuttal article seriously either. It starts with ad hominem attacks to de-legitimise the video creator & doesn't get much better from there. The author refuses to acknowledge that SOME (not all) Modern architecture is.. well... Bad. Funny how it fails to mention any of the concrete shitboxes that make up a huge amount of the video's content, or Tour Montparnasse (tell me with a straight face that it looks like it belongs on the Paris skyline).

Personally I think its important to match architecture to the culture of the city.. Modern tech hub? Build a "Gates of Suzhou" (giant pants building). 500+ year old "old world" city... Maybe not. Balancing history vs progress is a tough one though. I'm sure there is some sort of middle ground between Paris's eye wateringly expensive real estate & sprawl or Brussels quaint charm & horrific traffic, vs turning your city into another generic skyscraper cookie cutter town with "unique character" earned by a few silly shaped buildings that the locals will give equally silly names (aka, "the can of ham", "the walkie talkie", "the gherkin")

 

[brokencycle]

Original Frank Lloyd Wright house in Minneapolis: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2206-Parklands-Ln-Minneapolis-MN-55416/1977902_zpid/

 

[FlyingMonkey]

On the other hand, I cant' take the rebuttal article seriously either. It starts with ad hominem attacks to de-legitimise the video creator & doesn't get much better from there. The author refuses to acknowledge that SOME (not all) Modern architecture is.. well... Bad. Funny how it fails to mention any of the concrete shitboxes that make up a huge amount of the video's content, or Tour Montparnasse (tell me with a straight face that it looks like it belongs on the Paris skyline).

Ad-hominem is a completely irrelevant accusation here, a fallacious use of logical fallacy (or 'fallacy fallacy') when the whole point of the rebuttal piece is to seek to understand who is behind the recent attacks on modern architecture, what are their motivations, and what the attacks mean and represent. And the point is that they are not really about architecture. There are and have been serious criticisms both of modernism(s) generally and particular architects and buildings. But these attacks are not really adding anything new here and there's little to be gained from trying to take their critique seriously as architectural critique. For the alt-right, architecture here is really just a stand-in for 'culture' more generally, which is the way in which the alt-right generally talks about race.

 

[otc]

Bet there aren't many single-owner FLW houses out there....