Replies

Can you articulate why the second structure is less pleasing to you than the first, or is just a general rejection of anything that does not have easily recognizable architectural features such as a pediment, Doric columns, etc?

I am a designer and for the life of me I cannot understand why everyone wants to wear the latest fashions, drive the newest looking cars, show off the most high tech electronics, but still wants to live in structures straight out of the 1700's.

Can you articulate why the second structure is less pleasing to you than the first, or is just a general rejection of anything that does not have easily recognizable architectural features such as a pediment, Doric columns, etc?

I think the pictures don't do complete justice to the second structure. It's a monstrosity, period. It doesn't fit in with the bulk of the campus. It isn't even the worst building in that part of the campus.

I am a designer and for the life of me I cannot understand why everyone wants to wear the latest fashions, drive the newest looking cars, show off the most high tech electronics, but still wants to live in structures straight out of the 1700's.

It's because most modern architecture is objectively ugly.

There are (few) clean, beautiful modern designs that do not sport classic elements. The second one though looks like it came from a bad acid trip. The forbidding blind-eyed structure in the background cohabits the space with the cheerful greenhouse on top of a romanesque revival arch. Angled elevated walkways criss-cross in the air suggesting that whoever put this strange ensemble together did not hapen to think of elevators. Is the pedestrian area under the arch actually sloped? Pushing a stroller under that arch got to be a lot of fun. Is there a reason for the siege earthworks on the left?

It is not textbook ugliness — certainly we can think of much worse, — as much as it is some kind of esthetic indigestion, like looking at someone eat cardboard with peanut butter.

I am a designer and for the life of me I cannot understand why everyone wants to wear the latest fashions, drive the newest looking cars, show off the most high tech electronics, but still wants to live in structures straight out of the 1700's.

Your post assumes facts not in evidence.

Does everyone want to wear the latest fashion? I dress more or less the same as I always have. I'm not unusual.

Does everyone drive the newest looking cars? I buy what's on the lot, and drive it for 200k miles. Function and cost are far more important than "style". Looking around the parking lot at my office ... I can safely say that I'm not unusual.

Does everyone "show off" the most high tech electronics? Hardly ... and this is one area, at least, where "newer" really does strongly suggest objectively, measurablty better performance.

Now ... living in a house that looks like it might have been built in 1750 isn't so wierd. Maybe, just possibly, folks got something fundamentally right then ... and folks don't want to throw away something good, just because some designer who wants a paycheck says it's "dated".

Just my 2 cents. When people look for buildings, they like them to look comfortable and have a human scale. Modern architecture often sacrifices the human scale in deference to creating a visual statement that dwarfs the individual and makes him or her irrelevant. The first image, of the Guggenheim Museum, is the type of work Frank Lloyd Wright liked doing:

I understand that it's a museum, but it's extremely cold, and there seems to be no place for humans in it. The second photograph is also of a Frank Lloyd Wright house, but Wright found it repugnant, and only took the job because he needed the money:

Wright hated the Tudor style, but the client loved it. The structure seems designed for a human scale, and looks like there are comfortable places to sit and talk and be relaxed. The average person is uncomfortable in the first type of structure, comfortable in the second.

Additionally, the first structure is a complete visual statement, and is quite impersonal. There is no area that lends itself to personalization. People like to personalize their space.

In the 1950s, Brazil tried building a national city, Brasilia, based on the premises of modernism. In architecture, Wright was pretty much the deity of this style. It was a master-planned city, and hated by the residents. They found it cold and uninviting. The main streets, which showed off the architecture, alienated the citizens and the business people. The business people started putting the front of their shops in the back alleys, away from the "beautiful architecture." Here's a quote from one Brazilian on the capital city:

Brasília may be a World Heritage Site, but it is only of interest to town planning and architecture students, and those keen to witness the folly of man on a metropolitan scale. It must have looked good on paper, and still looks good in photos, but in the flesh, forget it. Designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, urban planner Lucio Costa, and landscape architect Burle Marx, the city was built in an incredible three years between 1957 and 1960. Unfortunately, the world's most ambitious planned city is designed for automobiles and air-conditioners, not people. Distances are enormous and no-one walks; the sun blazes and there are no trees for shelter. Bureaucrats and politicians are lured to Brasília by 100% salary hikes and big apartments, but as soon as the weekend comes they jet to Rio or São Paulo - anywhere less sterile. The poor, who work in the construction and service industries, were not part of the plan for an inland capital and live in favelas up to 30 km outside the city, called 'anti-Brasílias'.

Modern architecture is frequently designed to appeal to the ego of the architect. The human is left out. This is not always true, but true often enough for you to pose your original question.