I have architect friends. They can't draw, they can't sculpt, they have no clue about art history. Or color theory, if you want to go that far. Usually golden ratio/Fibonacci is kinda where it ends. One of them is a professor of architecture, no less.
That said, I'm sure there are architects today for which some or all of this is not true.
Most of the above are subjects an architect student would have had to learn about and demonstrate profienciency in, to earn their degree, a 100 years ago.
I'm sure the change in architecture's priorities played a role in this too. Industrial materials, construction efficiency. The need to mass produce housing, costs and new social ideals, yadayadayada.
And ofc the modernist rejection of any ornament; even that which is there historically, on existing architecture.
My hope is that in a future where we 3D-print buildings or construct them with robots we will see a renaissance of non-functional[1] beauty/sculpture/texture/color in architecture because the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistend.
But then, architecture is also always a mirror of the period. And from that pov it's not looking so great for beauty making it back any time soon.
[1] Yet functional because how can the happiness/joy of the perceiver of architecture be removed from what should count as functional, in architecture?
I was an architect. There's some truth to what you're saying, but to be honest we rarely get the chance to enact such grand visions. Normally the stars have to align with the perfect client who has limitless budget. These crafts don't come cheap, you know! Gaudi does things with wood that frankly shouldn't be possible.
The other aspect I think also deserves attention is that as our lives have become more digitised and online, our care and attention towards the physical realm has degraded a little. We no longer need exquisite masonry to fire off the synapses - we have the endless scroll and the 24-hour news cycle.
Finally there is a small amount of survivor syndrome happening too - we keep the beautiful buildings but ignore or forget the enormous unhygienic slums that often co-existed with our most beautiful architecture.
I think it's like millennial grey. Not only is it more expensive to add ornamentation, it also hurts resale and repurposing of buildings. Ideally you want mostly identical boxes where you could change the sign to make it a church, a McDonalds, a clothing store, etc every few years.
Or that seems like the goal of commercial builders now, right?
This is the crux. Houses used to be built to be lived in, so ornamentation added value. Now they are commodities to be traded and sold, and variation makes a portfolio harder to manage/less uniform.
I wish people would stop calling it millennial grey. It's Gen-X grey. Kim K and Kanye were the ones who built the logical conclusion in their contrast-less white casa; millennials are born maximalists who pair tech accoutrements with actual wood grain because their fondest memory is of being sat in front of a PS1 and a CRT housed in a stained oak cabinet in their childhood den, wires, manuals, remotes, and jewel cases hither and thither.
Yeah I've noticed that millennials are often maximalists, years and years of ghastly 'landlord white' paint jobs contributed to that as well I think.
I'm currently renting but looking to buy in my area, I'm sure I'll find the chemical stripping of horrible white gloss paint and the painting over of 'minimal' white walls with a riot of colour outright cathartic. The house I'm renting would look so good if someone took the time to undo all the bodge jobs and cheap decoration choices I think. The lovely hardwood doors have proper brass hinges for example but it's all covered up with decades' worth of horrid white paint. Half the houses round here probably have gorgeous hardwood floors under crappy laminate or lino, and almost all have nice fireplaces I'd love to reinstate and use with a wood burner.
re commerical buildings today, absolutely. Most developments, especially retail ones have the goal of being wrapped up in a commerical real estate portfolio. That might be a REIT or held by a private investor. Their goal is to collect buildings with the widest marketability for retail. They are not generally curating locations with intent. Though some owners specialize in that in high density tourist or luxury retail spaces.
To be fair, this isn't entirely new. The American West was strewn with cheap wooden structures that all looked alike with big fake fonts with hand painted signs. Those mostly rotted so they're uncommon in our lexicon outside of movies.
This applies to most fields. Far more people get advanced education now but just necessarily as you cater to a larger group of people you have to diminish the end goal and operate more by procedures and standardization. That reverberates and diminishes the skills of the more competent people who would have been able to learn all of the above a century ago, because now all the institutions cater to a larger body.
I disagree about it being a mirror of the period as some absolute rule though. Insurance policies, building code/zoning, educational structures and the rest are all choices people make.
The cost thing is always absurd to me as in medieval guild systems during the great plague people found resources to build great cathedrals. Acting like cathedrals were cheaper then compared to now is just absurd.
We have the resources we just choose to use it to create trash and then burn it, and to punish anyone who tries to make anything that isn't trash.
It has nothing to do with that. Architecture has to branches - artistic and technical one. These people are the technical kind of architects. It is a STEM field and job. They do a lot of math, physics and that sort of thing is school. Because, the kind of jobs they get require that.
I don't understand the bit where they can draw? How did they pass the entrance exams or their classes? The architects I know basically had to draw all day, everyday.
>They can't draw, they can't sculpt, they have no clue about art history. Or color theory, if you want to go that far. Usually golden ratio/Fibonacci is kinda where it ends. One of them is a professor of architecture, no less.
I only have a couple of architect friends, but wow, they actually have exactly these skills and interests. Amazing artists and designers in their own right. They seem to know a lot about how philosophy interacts with architecture too! Interesting to know they might be the exception.
> And ofc the modernist rejection of any ornament; even that which is there historically, on existing architecture.
There's an ideological capture of postwar architecture departments. Talk to a dutiful architecture student and mention classical architecture, and don't be surprised if you get some eye-rolling or stock dismissals ("it's anachronistic", "it's pastiche", "it's expensive", "it's unoriginal"). People - and that includes students - tend to go along with the prejudices of their professors, both because of ignorance and because they want to "fit in".
There are some maverick departments[0], however.
> My hope is that in a future where we 3D-print buildings or construct them with robots [...] the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistend.
The cost isn't the issue. Societies much poorer than our - and we are the wealthiest we've ever been in history, materially speaking - have produced magnificent artwork and architecture. We simply have different priorities. I don't remember who it was who said this, but if you want to know what a society worships and holds in highest regard, look for the tallest building in the city.
> because the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistent.
It will not happen because the rich will always keep standards of living of the average and poor people just at the low level that they will not rebel.
> It will not happen because the rich will always keep standards of living of the average and poor people just at the low level that they will not rebel.
Cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable metal and glass rectangular prisms filled with cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable workers. Form follows function!
That old architecture implied things like spirit, transcendence, community, beauty. Outmoded concepts for sure!
It is also interesting to read about the Amsterdamse School, an early 1900's style with "mass appeal" of which you can see many beautiful examples throughout the city, which were also only built thanks to strong support from the political sphere. https://architecture-history.org/schools/AMSTERDAM%20SCHOOL....
Read from bauhaus to our house, by tom wolfe. In america we had the Arts & Crafts movement (e.g. greene & greene) as a native folk form.
It was all killed because two dynamics came together to push "the yale box": corporate america's love of cheap buildings (although the buildings are cheap to build but often nightmares to maintain and use... somebody else's problem) and the ideological purity spiraling post WW2 driven by the academic environment and the rise of abstract architectural criticism over the practical building arts.
post modernism acknowledged the failure of the yale box but, because going back to traditional building forms was unthinkable (of course), had to do ironic kitsch instead
Reminds me of a quote attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright: "If the roof doesn't leak, the architect hasn't been creative enough." (and he allegedly said to a client unhappy with the leaks in his roof, "That’s how you can tell it’s a roof.")
Very much. However I've lived in both over the years. Both need to be torn down and replaced! There are a lot of practical things that anyone who has compared living in a house built in 2026 vs something older will not like.
Of course building a new house is expensive. There are a lot of sunk costs in an existing house and generally while there is a lot to not like about an old house, in generally keeping it and doing small remodels to make it better is a better use of money even though ideally you would replace it.
There are a couple of reasons modern design won I think.
Art Nouveau and classic styles from before are very expensive to build and maintain. Human population increased massively during the Industrial Revolution leading to more demand for cheap living space, and living inside is more important than looking at it from the outside.
I think the part of this post that is a push back at the “trad critique” doesn’t really work: at a point the author basically says that modernism has its hold due to being a (and I’m paraphrasing uncharitably here) cheap and easy shot at architectural respectability, which is not only not a defense of it, but pretty much the point of the “trad critique”
I guess the critique of the trad critique is that there is no single clear bright line between beautiful buildings everywhere and some sudden arrival of gray boxes everywhere. The beautiful buildings often had conflicting ideologies behind them, it was not a static landscape of eternal proportion and principle that was one day toppled when some evil people decided to bring misery to all. Of course this is an exaggeration.
The whole thing is anyway an ideological thing today as it was back then. The online trad architecture aesthetic is associated with the right wing, who see it as a return to order from today's decadence and overly guilt ridden elite zeitgeist. Urbanism and human scale architecture is associated with certain parts of the left who admire Nordic and Western European social democracies like the Netherlands and Denmark against what they see as the hegemonic capitalist state of the US.
The point is, architecture doesn't live in a vacuum, it is inextricably linked to political and ideological tribalism, and choices in architecture are expressions of what other tribe one rejects and consciously differentiates from etc.
Part of the reason could also be that many homes are built by companies with the intent of selling them. Even if price and labour wasn't an issue, you'd have to built a number of different types of homes to appeal to all types of buyers. As it is now builder just make the same type of home in three sizes, more or less. The homes are unappealing to a number of people, but on average it's "good enough" and as long as they follow current trends, the design style will mostly be a problem for the buyer in 10 or 20 years time, the builder will be long gone by then.
Simlarly, imagine a block of artistically driven homes.
There is a reason that there is so much difference in interior design and art: It is easily changed and preferences vary wildly.
In a block of cookie cutter houses, one need only pick say a color of shutter.
In a block of artistic architecture, there may be one house that many enjoy while most are seen as ugly to most.
If the original builders all really enjoyed say neo-victorian, brutalist homeowners must either find another neighborhood or rebuild. And they likely can't rebuild to their own taste because what neo-victorian owner wants to stair out their windows at a bunch of cubes? What brutalist owner wants to look out upon whimsical scroll work?
It's the same in tshirts, underwear, socks, pants, bicycles...More people are okay with accepting some perceptual average than are willing to buy men's thongs and unicycles.
"Helsinki is indeed a unique city of Art Nouveau architecture on the global scale, boasting no less than 600 “Jugend” buildings – more even than in Barcelona or Brussels."
You can buy discipline, focus, and a sense of greater purpose. But it ain't cheap and few with the means to do it have the will to want it.
Consider my office. The original drafted designs for it had an airy look, full ceiling, windows connecting the rooms for added light, doors.
Every single one of those things got nixed because it meant $$$ and the people running my company didn't want to foot the bill. So instead what we ended up with is cheap carpet, no ceiling (I can see all the joists and the ductwork), and paper thin cardboard walls which you can hear discussions from across the building. But the conference room where the C Levels commonly meet is fantastically decorated.
You can pay an architect to be very disciplined if you find a good one. Or you can pay a personal trainer to do discipline for you, a dietician, a personal assistant to be disciplined about your time...
Nothing screams "above the monetary value of things, fame and fortune" as extremely ornamental architecture.
I mean common, La Sagrada Família has nothing to do with "focus and sense of greater purpose". If you want to show off, you will want something like that. If you do not care about showing off, you end up with more boring architecture.
Hi, I visited Oradea in 2024, the Piata Unirii was very pretty and I also loved the Fortress and the museum inside. I'm happy to hear more areas are getting renovated, many areas looked a bit run down, but I visited in October so it was cloudy and rainy. I need to visit again with better weather. I also had dinner at a restaurant with Mama in the name I think, it was delicious.
I went to Sagrada Familia and then to Mies van Der Rohe Pavilion.
The latter had a bikini fashion shoot ongoing.
Maybe something to do with it. The world and society completely transformed. Mass media, fashion, loss of religiosity, sexual liberation, globalization, social mobility...
One thing nobody ever mentions, probably because it's not fashionable, is that all these buildings require maintenance after getting built. Maintaining a modernist block, with its flat surfaces and straight lines, is utterly trivial compared to more decorative styles - where you have to constantly fight pigeons and the elements to not appear derelict. Also, it is typically complicated to fix decorative pieces when they break, as they often do.
I do understand and share the view that the current mainstream is utterly boring, but I also acknowledge the (somewhat) irresistible forces that shape it: money, time, effort. And I don't believe AI can do anything to counter them in a significant manner, sadly.
Funnily enough, all these constructivist and brutalist buildings are often in practice more expensive than something from 19th century. Flat roof means snow and water accumulate there (because effective flat drainage is expensive to construct and to maintain, so it was skimped) and damages roof and corners. No external rain pipes for the sake of flat facades means rain now falls close to the foundation, freezes and cracks it. No rain covers over and under windows (or too tiny) has the same effect. Oversized windows are hard to do and the seating is getting degraded over time while any maintenance to these flat glass monstrosities is prohibitively expensive. Then during the actual usage the heating bills are enormous while the interiors have freezing temperatures. Flat and blocky balconies and protrusions have the same issues and flat roofs. Saving money on the "invisible" parts like rods inside the concrete causes them to rust, degrade and break (remember Genoa bridge?).
It is already a topic in student textbooks, how the first private villa in the constructivist/bauhaus style was wildly over initial budget and suffered severe degradation even in the first few years, strictly because of the design decisions.
I have worked to repair houses both old and new. You are right about fancy fixtures and whatnot in older houses, but modern construction is problematic also. It seems that houses are never built to be maintained.
Because WW1 happened. I think that WW2 is more visible because it's easier to write about. It's not easy to give hard numbers for the loss of normalcy, the everyday rules of ordinary matters, that happened in WW1.
Der von Ludwig Mies van der Rohe entworfene Deutsche Pavillon ist ein edles Stück Architektur und hat nichts mit den Stahl- und Glaskästen zu tun, die die Landschaft verschandeln. Wie setzte sich diese Architektur durch? Ludwig Mies van der Rohe stand mit einem Stahlbaron im oberen Stockwerk eines Hochhauses, deutete auf das Panorama der Steinbauten und sagte: „All das könnte aus Stahl und Glas sein.” So einfach lief das ab.
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The German Pavilion, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is a masterpiece of architecture and bears no resemblance to the steel-and-glass boxes that mar the landscape. How did this style of architecture gain acceptance? Ludwig Mies van der Rohe stood with a steel magnate on the top floor of a high-rise, pointed to the panorama of stone buildings, and said, “All of that could be made of steel and glass.” It was that simple.
I just wanted to say thank you for posting this. It was a wonderful break from the norm, and I've enjoyed reading everyone's comments. I haven't enjoyed anything here or in general in a while.
Unrelated but while scrolling, when I scrolled up, the asterisk thingy appeared on the top right corner and I thought it was a spider or some glitch and had a mini freakout before realizing it was the actual branding
Sagrada Família is an amazing building. Going inside it is an awesome experience.
But it is a _lot_. Putting aside the artistic skill and construction cost of it, I'm glad I don't live in a city where everything is like that. I feel like it'd be overstimulating much like an analog version of the Las Vegas strip.
I live in Barcelona, it's a very pleasant city (if you can aford to live here), The city has almost 2000 years of history and architecture. It's inhabitants left its mark. Eixample (the Extension) was planned kinda all at once by Cerda and thats why theres an over representation of specific styles of architecture, and why Eixample feels a bit like an open air museum.
Did you visit other Gaudí buildings? La pedrera is open for visiting and a very nice apartment building. I wouldn’t mind a city where most buildings are like that.
Sagrada Família is very purposefully a total exaggeration but so are most large churches when viewed as part of their surrounding context. They’re designed to stand out.
nature has proven calming effects on humans... bird sings, even plants on the roof of an urban area can have positive effects just because of the vision
i highly doubt a christian church has the same effect. everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited by the religion and alienation
> i highly doubt a christian church has the same effect. everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited by the religion and alienation
Maybe not the exact same effect as nature but it is indeed calming to me at least. Stepping into a cathedral, or masjid, or temple and the noise of the world falls away (and I'm not even religious). I'm sure I'm not the only one.
i'm also not religious and having lived in a remote place for more than a year, i lost count of the amount of times i sat at the grass in a completely meditative state by starring at clouds, mountains and sunsets
This reminds me when I lived in Brazil and had to temporarily work in a building designed by the famous architect Oscar Niemeyer.
The place was horrible. With few windows and poor ventilation, it was close to a rainforest. Because of that, it was moldy and a nurturing place for respiratory diseases. Add to this the fact that in Southern Brazil no one knows how to build with proper insulation against cold and you get what many Brazilian architects say in secret about Niemeyer: "as an architect, he was an excellent sculptor".
Dude, it's labor. It is no coincidence that essentially every intricate form of architecture gave way to simplified forms at the exact same time that wages for trade workers were rapidly rising.
Hand placed parquet that took a master craftsman several weeks to lay disappeared. Intricate carvings upon otherwise utilitarian and common structures likewise.
Art Deco itself is a compromise with this creeping reality. Not fully modern minimalist but economically efficient in using flattened elements, prefabs and striaght accents for detailing.
When a trad person posts their diatribe online it is a simple tell. They know next to nothing about how the built world is actually created. And they don't understand how wages came to form the basis of respect for working people. The act of decrying the utilitarian transition is itself a form of disrespect via ignorance. Because what you are essentially saying is that your aesthetic preferences are more important than the time of expert laborers, whether you know it or not.
Counterpoint, a relative of mine works in a sector where he sees a lot of luxury villas (we're from Tuscany, so it's full of wealthy oligarchs on the coast). I've seen some of the photos and I'd say none of them look good to me, they're just modernist regular shaped blocks of something that makes a house, and inside the kitchiest decorations possible just to flaunt money. And yet, they could afford to pay for any style they wanted
I have architect friends. They can't draw, they can't sculpt, they have no clue about art history. Or color theory, if you want to go that far. Usually golden ratio/Fibonacci is kinda where it ends. One of them is a professor of architecture, no less.
That said, I'm sure there are architects today for which some or all of this is not true.
Most of the above are subjects an architect student would have had to learn about and demonstrate profienciency in, to earn their degree, a 100 years ago.
I'm sure the change in architecture's priorities played a role in this too. Industrial materials, construction efficiency. The need to mass produce housing, costs and new social ideals, yadayadayada.
And ofc the modernist rejection of any ornament; even that which is there historically, on existing architecture.
My hope is that in a future where we 3D-print buildings or construct them with robots we will see a renaissance of non-functional[1] beauty/sculpture/texture/color in architecture because the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistend.
But then, architecture is also always a mirror of the period. And from that pov it's not looking so great for beauty making it back any time soon.
[1] Yet functional because how can the happiness/joy of the perceiver of architecture be removed from what should count as functional, in architecture?
I was an architect. There's some truth to what you're saying, but to be honest we rarely get the chance to enact such grand visions. Normally the stars have to align with the perfect client who has limitless budget. These crafts don't come cheap, you know! Gaudi does things with wood that frankly shouldn't be possible.
The other aspect I think also deserves attention is that as our lives have become more digitised and online, our care and attention towards the physical realm has degraded a little. We no longer need exquisite masonry to fire off the synapses - we have the endless scroll and the 24-hour news cycle.
Finally there is a small amount of survivor syndrome happening too - we keep the beautiful buildings but ignore or forget the enormous unhygienic slums that often co-existed with our most beautiful architecture.
I think it's like millennial grey. Not only is it more expensive to add ornamentation, it also hurts resale and repurposing of buildings. Ideally you want mostly identical boxes where you could change the sign to make it a church, a McDonalds, a clothing store, etc every few years.
Or that seems like the goal of commercial builders now, right?
This is the crux. Houses used to be built to be lived in, so ornamentation added value. Now they are commodities to be traded and sold, and variation makes a portfolio harder to manage/less uniform.
I wish people would stop calling it millennial grey. It's Gen-X grey. Kim K and Kanye were the ones who built the logical conclusion in their contrast-less white casa; millennials are born maximalists who pair tech accoutrements with actual wood grain because their fondest memory is of being sat in front of a PS1 and a CRT housed in a stained oak cabinet in their childhood den, wires, manuals, remotes, and jewel cases hither and thither.
Yeah I've noticed that millennials are often maximalists, years and years of ghastly 'landlord white' paint jobs contributed to that as well I think.
I'm currently renting but looking to buy in my area, I'm sure I'll find the chemical stripping of horrible white gloss paint and the painting over of 'minimal' white walls with a riot of colour outright cathartic. The house I'm renting would look so good if someone took the time to undo all the bodge jobs and cheap decoration choices I think. The lovely hardwood doors have proper brass hinges for example but it's all covered up with decades' worth of horrid white paint. Half the houses round here probably have gorgeous hardwood floors under crappy laminate or lino, and almost all have nice fireplaces I'd love to reinstate and use with a wood burner.
re commerical buildings today, absolutely. Most developments, especially retail ones have the goal of being wrapped up in a commerical real estate portfolio. That might be a REIT or held by a private investor. Their goal is to collect buildings with the widest marketability for retail. They are not generally curating locations with intent. Though some owners specialize in that in high density tourist or luxury retail spaces.
To be fair, this isn't entirely new. The American West was strewn with cheap wooden structures that all looked alike with big fake fonts with hand painted signs. Those mostly rotted so they're uncommon in our lexicon outside of movies.
This applies to most fields. Far more people get advanced education now but just necessarily as you cater to a larger group of people you have to diminish the end goal and operate more by procedures and standardization. That reverberates and diminishes the skills of the more competent people who would have been able to learn all of the above a century ago, because now all the institutions cater to a larger body. I disagree about it being a mirror of the period as some absolute rule though. Insurance policies, building code/zoning, educational structures and the rest are all choices people make. The cost thing is always absurd to me as in medieval guild systems during the great plague people found resources to build great cathedrals. Acting like cathedrals were cheaper then compared to now is just absurd. We have the resources we just choose to use it to create trash and then burn it, and to punish anyone who tries to make anything that isn't trash.
It has nothing to do with that. Architecture has to branches - artistic and technical one. These people are the technical kind of architects. It is a STEM field and job. They do a lot of math, physics and that sort of thing is school. Because, the kind of jobs they get require that.
You may find this article interesting, as I did.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-beauty-of-concrete/
I don't understand the bit where they can draw? How did they pass the entrance exams or their classes? The architects I know basically had to draw all day, everyday.
The architects you know drew mostly straight lines and arcs, i reckon.
>They can't draw, they can't sculpt, they have no clue about art history. Or color theory, if you want to go that far. Usually golden ratio/Fibonacci is kinda where it ends. One of them is a professor of architecture, no less.
I only have a couple of architect friends, but wow, they actually have exactly these skills and interests. Amazing artists and designers in their own right. They seem to know a lot about how philosophy interacts with architecture too! Interesting to know they might be the exception.
> And ofc the modernist rejection of any ornament; even that which is there historically, on existing architecture.
There's an ideological capture of postwar architecture departments. Talk to a dutiful architecture student and mention classical architecture, and don't be surprised if you get some eye-rolling or stock dismissals ("it's anachronistic", "it's pastiche", "it's expensive", "it's unoriginal"). People - and that includes students - tend to go along with the prejudices of their professors, both because of ignorance and because they want to "fit in".
There are some maverick departments[0], however.
> My hope is that in a future where we 3D-print buildings or construct them with robots [...] the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistend.
The cost isn't the issue. Societies much poorer than our - and we are the wealthiest we've ever been in history, materially speaking - have produced magnificent artwork and architecture. We simply have different priorities. I don't remember who it was who said this, but if you want to know what a society worships and holds in highest regard, look for the tallest building in the city.
[0] https://heyzine.com/flip-book/44640c2c78.html
> because the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistent.
It will not happen because the rich will always keep standards of living of the average and poor people just at the low level that they will not rebel.
> It will not happen because the rich will always keep standards of living of the average and poor people just at the low level that they will not rebel.
Could you explain your exact line of thinking?
I think contemporary architecture is perfect:
Cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable metal and glass rectangular prisms filled with cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable workers. Form follows function!
That old architecture implied things like spirit, transcendence, community, beauty. Outmoded concepts for sure!
https://architizer.com/projects/tiktok/
These are pretty nice IMHO:
https://architizer.com/projects/vortex-21/
https://architizer.com/projects/flying-vegetation/
https://architizer.com/projects/tibo/
https://architizer.com/projects/icon-6/
https://architizer.com/projects/sanctuary/
I also recommend works of Gerhardt Fjuck about this topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvU5dmu4sl8
I read the end of the first phrase as "Farm follows function!". Would not have been a bad typo.
I love that the site has a banner that says 'the future of architecture is human' and every photo on that page is of corporate soul destroying misery.
Sort of a recap for normies of Scott Alexander's Whither Tartaria from 2021: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/whither-tartaria
It is also interesting to read about the Amsterdamse School, an early 1900's style with "mass appeal" of which you can see many beautiful examples throughout the city, which were also only built thanks to strong support from the political sphere. https://architecture-history.org/schools/AMSTERDAM%20SCHOOL....
Read from bauhaus to our house, by tom wolfe. In america we had the Arts & Crafts movement (e.g. greene & greene) as a native folk form.
It was all killed because two dynamics came together to push "the yale box": corporate america's love of cheap buildings (although the buildings are cheap to build but often nightmares to maintain and use... somebody else's problem) and the ideological purity spiraling post WW2 driven by the academic environment and the rise of abstract architectural criticism over the practical building arts.
post modernism acknowledged the failure of the yale box but, because going back to traditional building forms was unthinkable (of course), had to do ironic kitsch instead
> the rise of abstract architectural criticism over the practical building arts.
i.e. "any mason can build a brick house, but an architect will create an ugly box that no mason would ever have built".
Reminds me of a quote attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright: "If the roof doesn't leak, the architect hasn't been creative enough." (and he allegedly said to a client unhappy with the leaks in his roof, "That’s how you can tell it’s a roof.")
Uh, I guarantee you a 1970 ranch is a far easier building to maintain than a craftsman bungalow.
Edit: I love me a craftsman bungalow but matching dry rotted custom milled trim from 90 years ago is an mfer.
Very much. However I've lived in both over the years. Both need to be torn down and replaced! There are a lot of practical things that anyone who has compared living in a house built in 2026 vs something older will not like.
Of course building a new house is expensive. There are a lot of sunk costs in an existing house and generally while there is a lot to not like about an old house, in generally keeping it and doing small remodels to make it better is a better use of money even though ideally you would replace it.
There are a couple of reasons modern design won I think.
Art Nouveau and classic styles from before are very expensive to build and maintain. Human population increased massively during the Industrial Revolution leading to more demand for cheap living space, and living inside is more important than looking at it from the outside.
I think the part of this post that is a push back at the “trad critique” doesn’t really work: at a point the author basically says that modernism has its hold due to being a (and I’m paraphrasing uncharitably here) cheap and easy shot at architectural respectability, which is not only not a defense of it, but pretty much the point of the “trad critique”
It's a (as described in the article) conservative belief so it must be condemned and disavowed especially if it has merit.
I guess the critique of the trad critique is that there is no single clear bright line between beautiful buildings everywhere and some sudden arrival of gray boxes everywhere. The beautiful buildings often had conflicting ideologies behind them, it was not a static landscape of eternal proportion and principle that was one day toppled when some evil people decided to bring misery to all. Of course this is an exaggeration.
The whole thing is anyway an ideological thing today as it was back then. The online trad architecture aesthetic is associated with the right wing, who see it as a return to order from today's decadence and overly guilt ridden elite zeitgeist. Urbanism and human scale architecture is associated with certain parts of the left who admire Nordic and Western European social democracies like the Netherlands and Denmark against what they see as the hegemonic capitalist state of the US.
The point is, architecture doesn't live in a vacuum, it is inextricably linked to political and ideological tribalism, and choices in architecture are expressions of what other tribe one rejects and consciously differentiates from etc.
Part of the reason could also be that many homes are built by companies with the intent of selling them. Even if price and labour wasn't an issue, you'd have to built a number of different types of homes to appeal to all types of buyers. As it is now builder just make the same type of home in three sizes, more or less. The homes are unappealing to a number of people, but on average it's "good enough" and as long as they follow current trends, the design style will mostly be a problem for the buyer in 10 or 20 years time, the builder will be long gone by then.
Simlarly, imagine a block of artistically driven homes.
There is a reason that there is so much difference in interior design and art: It is easily changed and preferences vary wildly.
In a block of cookie cutter houses, one need only pick say a color of shutter.
In a block of artistic architecture, there may be one house that many enjoy while most are seen as ugly to most.
If the original builders all really enjoyed say neo-victorian, brutalist homeowners must either find another neighborhood or rebuild. And they likely can't rebuild to their own taste because what neo-victorian owner wants to stair out their windows at a bunch of cubes? What brutalist owner wants to look out upon whimsical scroll work?
It's the same in tshirts, underwear, socks, pants, bicycles...More people are okay with accepting some perceptual average than are willing to buy men's thongs and unicycles.
Not mentioned in the article - Helsinki has a large collection of Art Nouveau ("Jugend") buildings, though not quite matching Riga.
https://www.myhelsinki.fi/visit/helsinki-art-nouveau-archite...
"Helsinki is indeed a unique city of Art Nouveau architecture on the global scale, boasting no less than 600 “Jugend” buildings – more even than in Barcelona or Brussels."
I think the answer to this question is deeply uncomfortable in 2026.
Softly put, it's discipline, focus and a sense of greater purpose, far above the monetary value of things, fame and fortune.
In other words, exactly what our current, consumer-oriented society lacks. (for better or worse)
It's not those things, it's money.
You can buy discipline, focus, and a sense of greater purpose. But it ain't cheap and few with the means to do it have the will to want it.
Consider my office. The original drafted designs for it had an airy look, full ceiling, windows connecting the rooms for added light, doors.
Every single one of those things got nixed because it meant $$$ and the people running my company didn't want to foot the bill. So instead what we ended up with is cheap carpet, no ceiling (I can see all the joists and the ductwork), and paper thin cardboard walls which you can hear discussions from across the building. But the conference room where the C Levels commonly meet is fantastically decorated.
I’m curious about “you can buy discipline”. For oneself?
You can pay an architect to be very disciplined if you find a good one. Or you can pay a personal trainer to do discipline for you, a dietician, a personal assistant to be disciplined about your time...
I don't think you know what discipline means.
Nothing screams "above the monetary value of things, fame and fortune" as extremely ornamental architecture.
I mean common, La Sagrada Família has nothing to do with "focus and sense of greater purpose". If you want to show off, you will want something like that. If you do not care about showing off, you end up with more boring architecture.
I'm lucky to live in an Art Nouveau City :) (Oradea, Romania)
Hi, I visited Oradea in 2024, the Piata Unirii was very pretty and I also loved the Fortress and the museum inside. I'm happy to hear more areas are getting renovated, many areas looked a bit run down, but I visited in October so it was cloudy and rainy. I need to visit again with better weather. I also had dinner at a restaurant with Mama in the name I think, it was delicious.
Which area/building would you recommend to see Art Nouveau in Oradea?
Casa Darvas is a nice museum, with a good coffee shop in the garden.
The Central Square (Piata Unirii) has been renovated nicely and looks very good. The old main street is still in renovation, so it's not so nice now.
I went to Sagrada Familia and then to Mies van Der Rohe Pavilion.
The latter had a bikini fashion shoot ongoing.
Maybe something to do with it. The world and society completely transformed. Mass media, fashion, loss of religiosity, sexual liberation, globalization, social mobility...
One thing nobody ever mentions, probably because it's not fashionable, is that all these buildings require maintenance after getting built. Maintaining a modernist block, with its flat surfaces and straight lines, is utterly trivial compared to more decorative styles - where you have to constantly fight pigeons and the elements to not appear derelict. Also, it is typically complicated to fix decorative pieces when they break, as they often do.
I do understand and share the view that the current mainstream is utterly boring, but I also acknowledge the (somewhat) irresistible forces that shape it: money, time, effort. And I don't believe AI can do anything to counter them in a significant manner, sadly.
Funnily enough, all these constructivist and brutalist buildings are often in practice more expensive than something from 19th century. Flat roof means snow and water accumulate there (because effective flat drainage is expensive to construct and to maintain, so it was skimped) and damages roof and corners. No external rain pipes for the sake of flat facades means rain now falls close to the foundation, freezes and cracks it. No rain covers over and under windows (or too tiny) has the same effect. Oversized windows are hard to do and the seating is getting degraded over time while any maintenance to these flat glass monstrosities is prohibitively expensive. Then during the actual usage the heating bills are enormous while the interiors have freezing temperatures. Flat and blocky balconies and protrusions have the same issues and flat roofs. Saving money on the "invisible" parts like rods inside the concrete causes them to rust, degrade and break (remember Genoa bridge?).
It is already a topic in student textbooks, how the first private villa in the constructivist/bauhaus style was wildly over initial budget and suffered severe degradation even in the first few years, strictly because of the design decisions.
I have worked to repair houses both old and new. You are right about fancy fixtures and whatnot in older houses, but modern construction is problematic also. It seems that houses are never built to be maintained.
Because WW1 happened. I think that WW2 is more visible because it's easier to write about. It's not easy to give hard numbers for the loss of normalcy, the everyday rules of ordinary matters, that happened in WW1.
Der von Ludwig Mies van der Rohe entworfene Deutsche Pavillon ist ein edles Stück Architektur und hat nichts mit den Stahl- und Glaskästen zu tun, die die Landschaft verschandeln. Wie setzte sich diese Architektur durch? Ludwig Mies van der Rohe stand mit einem Stahlbaron im oberen Stockwerk eines Hochhauses, deutete auf das Panorama der Steinbauten und sagte: „All das könnte aus Stahl und Glas sein.” So einfach lief das ab. --- The German Pavilion, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is a masterpiece of architecture and bears no resemblance to the steel-and-glass boxes that mar the landscape. How did this style of architecture gain acceptance? Ludwig Mies van der Rohe stood with a steel magnate on the top floor of a high-rise, pointed to the panorama of stone buildings, and said, “All of that could be made of steel and glass.” It was that simple.
I just wanted to say thank you for posting this. It was a wonderful break from the norm, and I've enjoyed reading everyone's comments. I haven't enjoyed anything here or in general in a while.
Thank you!
Unrelated but while scrolling, when I scrolled up, the asterisk thingy appeared on the top right corner and I thought it was a spider or some glitch and had a mini freakout before realizing it was the actual branding
Like those paper cutouts of lizards that people put on walls in order to fascinate cats.
Thank you for this idea, my cats are in for a treat today.
Sagrada Família is an amazing building. Going inside it is an awesome experience.
But it is a _lot_. Putting aside the artistic skill and construction cost of it, I'm glad I don't live in a city where everything is like that. I feel like it'd be overstimulating much like an analog version of the Las Vegas strip.
I live in Barcelona, it's a very pleasant city (if you can aford to live here), The city has almost 2000 years of history and architecture. It's inhabitants left its mark. Eixample (the Extension) was planned kinda all at once by Cerda and thats why theres an over representation of specific styles of architecture, and why Eixample feels a bit like an open air museum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfN517mqhC8 (Absolutely worth watching if you want to know why Barcelona was planned the way it was.)
If you go to the "Gothic quarter" or to Gracia you won't see much "Art nouveau."
Its a very varied city. I live in a building in the "Modernisme" style and its lovely.
Did you visit other Gaudí buildings? La pedrera is open for visiting and a very nice apartment building. I wouldn’t mind a city where most buildings are like that.
Sagrada Família is very purposefully a total exaggeration but so are most large churches when viewed as part of their surrounding context. They’re designed to stand out.
The level of detail can vary while keeping the idea intact. You wouldn't be more overwhelmed than when you walk down on any european old city centers.
It’s no different from living in a beautiful natural landscape. I can tell you from experience that no, you get used to it.
It would not be a lot. It would fade into the background, except that any time you want to see beauty you just have to look up and focus.
nature has proven calming effects on humans... bird sings, even plants on the roof of an urban area can have positive effects just because of the vision
i highly doubt a christian church has the same effect. everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited by the religion and alienation
> i highly doubt a christian church has the same effect. everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited by the religion and alienation
Maybe not the exact same effect as nature but it is indeed calming to me at least. Stepping into a cathedral, or masjid, or temple and the noise of the world falls away (and I'm not even religious). I'm sure I'm not the only one.
i'm also not religious and having lived in a remote place for more than a year, i lost count of the amount of times i sat at the grass in a completely meditative state by starring at clouds, mountains and sunsets
everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited
Not to downplay atrocities committed in the name of Christianity but I am pretty sure every large ideology has its share of of atrocities.
yes but when you have it talking basically exclusively about "love", it's much harder to swallow
Most ideologies have their keywords. Love, peace, freedom, fairness, ... and the atrocities keep coming.
Compare Sagrada Familia to Times Square.
Once again, it's the market telling you something you don't want to hear.
This reminds me when I lived in Brazil and had to temporarily work in a building designed by the famous architect Oscar Niemeyer.
The place was horrible. With few windows and poor ventilation, it was close to a rainforest. Because of that, it was moldy and a nurturing place for respiratory diseases. Add to this the fact that in Southern Brazil no one knows how to build with proper insulation against cold and you get what many Brazilian architects say in secret about Niemeyer: "as an architect, he was an excellent sculptor".
Dude, it's labor. It is no coincidence that essentially every intricate form of architecture gave way to simplified forms at the exact same time that wages for trade workers were rapidly rising.
Hand placed parquet that took a master craftsman several weeks to lay disappeared. Intricate carvings upon otherwise utilitarian and common structures likewise.
Art Deco itself is a compromise with this creeping reality. Not fully modern minimalist but economically efficient in using flattened elements, prefabs and striaght accents for detailing.
When a trad person posts their diatribe online it is a simple tell. They know next to nothing about how the built world is actually created. And they don't understand how wages came to form the basis of respect for working people. The act of decrying the utilitarian transition is itself a form of disrespect via ignorance. Because what you are essentially saying is that your aesthetic preferences are more important than the time of expert laborers, whether you know it or not.
Counterpoint, a relative of mine works in a sector where he sees a lot of luxury villas (we're from Tuscany, so it's full of wealthy oligarchs on the coast). I've seen some of the photos and I'd say none of them look good to me, they're just modernist regular shaped blocks of something that makes a house, and inside the kitchiest decorations possible just to flaunt money. And yet, they could afford to pay for any style they wanted
As it turns out, rich people are often cheap AF.