You should read up on how Oxford Students feel about Keble College, up to and including a society to to destroy it where you had to bring a brick from the college to a meeting to gain membership.
Ironically Oxford had to perform all sorts of crimes against architecture in the 1970s due to the relative poverty of the UK. They’re currently trying to rectify them.
Thanks for tip! Keble's a great comp for Pauli Murry and Benjamin Franklin: brick instead of stone and absurdly ornate in places. Apparently, Oscar Wilde was reputed to have said that Oxford was the most beautiful city in England, "in spite of Keble College."
Standing across from the college in University Parks, Keble looks grand, if a bit frosted. It's like one of the cakes prepared in Oxford's covered market, or like Will Cotton had decided to try his hand at architecture. I like it, but I admit it's a lot.
After a tour of the Yale campus, Frank Lloyd Wright was asked where he'd want to live among all the splendor. He said, supposedly, "Harkness Tower, so I wouldn't have to look at it."
The Beinecke Library is a beautiful building, particularly from the inside on a sunny day, when the stone glows, but the plaza around it has never become the public space it should have. There's too much flat, white, echoing stone. Something about the scale is off.
We stayed a couplle of days in a small town in the mountains (Europe). Most of the historical city centre was made up of Medieval Ages and 19th century Classicist style buildings. While there I did wonder if living in a pretty place can make one happier?
Yes. We moved across town from a 1990s subdivision bounded by typical traffic- and fast-food-choked Texas arterials to a 1952 house in a quiet neighborhood with sparse traffic, huge trees and landscaped low ranch houses that let the light in. So many birds, with all the trees. We are a couple of blocks from the ocean and walk along the bayfront or sit at one of the many parks watching the waves. We switched to a stunning downtown church built with ranching money a hundred years ago. Every single day I consider with gratitude how different my day to day life is, my emotional and spiritual and civic posture, living in beautiful surroundings. We are much happier.
I noticed on a trip to Japan years ago that every little tiny patch of dirt in front of a shop had a little pansy or something planted in it. The attention to creating beauty in the tiniest places was wonderful.
I come from a landlocked country, I love seeing the ocean from our balcony. Due to the unique geography of our region and the ocean, the sky is always gorgeous and the sun going down paints the clouds in million shades of orange, red, pink, blue, purple and million Pantone numbers. I'm happy for you, glad you guys found a gorgeous place. Share pics!
Spot on. Princeton went through a similar process with the construction of Whitman College.
One point to note is that there is a difference between the fakeness of these campus projects and the fakeness of Disneyland and its ilk. These buildings are built in a retro style, but are intended for permanence. These really are stone and glass and are expected to last for generations. The fakeness of an entertainment venue like Disney is that the fakeness is not just in the appearance but also in the matrix. Those buildings are drywall and particle board and plastic and balsa wood, and will be coming down in a decade or two. If you go into the back rooms of the campus buildings, you will still find brick and masonry, albeit with modern power and plumbing systems. Their style is fake, but the bones are real. The Hogwarts of Disney is skin deep.
That's the bones behind the postmodern architecture at the theme park and it reconciles aesthetics and cost -- that is, you can do a lot to make a building look distinctive without adding too much to the cost and not producing an international style monstrosity with too much sunlight, a busted HVAC system, and leaks in the roof. Better to stick to a proven design for 99% of the building and paint a look on.
The Wal-Mart style building of cinderblock over a squat steel frame stands upright, I guess. It provides for easy installation of all the modern guts, HVAC and electrical and data cabling etc. And it leaves the interior wide open for utterly fungible arrangements, shelving or freezers or checkout counters, cubicles or conference rooms. It’s “proven” as a generic container, the most basic enclosure, four walls and a roof over a big space that can become whatever but isn’t actually anything.
Even if you dressed it up with some genuinely beautiful exterior disguise, the interior remains every bit as hideous as before. And that matters. The passersby won’t notice, but everyone who enters, workers and customers, will feel it. That same message of cheap don’t give a crap impermanence - and what’s more, design that treats the humans who’ll occupy it as irrelevant to all its core considerations. No frills, no flourishes, not the slightest gesture toward the scale and senses of the creatures who will spend so many hours inside. Everything honed to suit the needs of the infrastructure itself, speed of construction, ease of installation. The building is the master, efficiency its only value. Everyone who enters receives the message at 120 decibels.
These buildings are the enclosed equivalent of the infamous suburban sprawl roadways they stand along, six lanes wide and treeless, geometry to serve automobiles that subconsciously oppresses people. No one walks there if they can help it. Every aspect of the design says you do not matter, you are not really welcome.
This, not just the investment in permanence, is why the Disney version and cheap disguises won’t do. The beauty — the human scaling, the quirky corners and odd staircases, the hidden nooks and decorative moldings—must extend to the interior as well. It needn’t be as whole hog as the outside; stuff has to go on inside, work must be done, there’ll be desks and chairs and all manner of clutter. Pipes and conduits and banks of machinery. But the same basic ethos must obtain.
Otherwise you’ve got nothing but Potemkin villages of “beauty,” fiberglass fakery (does it ever really convince?) hiding the same deracinated, corporate efficiency ugliness.
Even building a brutalist, new formalist, or deconstructivist building in the 21st century is aping the 20th century in the way Yale's new buildings ape the 18th century aping the 15th. (As you mention, the layers!) We're already in an age of recycled content and whatever you call those 5-over-1s. So I'll take the former over the latter; if I were a mayor making decisions, populist neo-classical architecture for the win.
There's not much in the way of brutalism out here in Minnesota, local physical conditions see to that, but I do actually enjoy the Walker Art Museum. But let's be fair: public spaces should not be built to please the sensibilities of people like us who listen to Mastodon.
I think you're right about a lot of things but it's not just about the old, and about permanence. It's also that a lot of Americans sense with dismay, even if they can't put their finger on it, that we're no longer trying for greatness in architecture.
The America of the Art Deco age was constantly innovating and inventing. The tallest buildings in the world were The Singer Building, then the Met Life Tower, then the Woolworth Building, then 40 Wall Street, then the beautifully Deco Chrysler Building, then the Empire State Building, all in a 30 year time span.
We were building better (or more aggressively at least) than any other country and in bold new styles. Art Deco wasn't an attempt to ape the past or aspire to obsolete styles. It was new and forward-looking and widely embraced during its heyday. So I think Americans would absolutely embrace a new style, provided it felt like an attempt at beauty, not functionality. Ambition and boldness, not austerity and cost-saving.
I do not remotely think this is unique to America (much of the West has accepted a somewhat staid comfort instead of dynamism) and it's not an all-encompassing American malaise, as our booming tech sector shows. But in terms of architecture, we're not going for greatness, and people want grandeur. They want beauty, as you say. Not just efficiency
Freddie, you might want to look at my book, Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives (HarperCollins), for an accessible analysis of why we care so much about the design of the built environment. I was architecture critic at the New Republic for years. WTYW establishes that 1. A concern for aesthetics is not trivial; certain designs actually make us function better and that 2. style has almost nothing to do with our responses to the BE -- as you say, modernism does not equal watered-down, corporate modern-ism. Anyway lots more to say and I will read your article more carefully. Thanks for writing about a topic most people usually ignore.
Well put. It seems to me that a big part of architectural beauty is achieved over time. It's like fermentation. But also like fermentation, there's sort of diminishing returns. One something gets to a certain age and still looks good, it's 'heritage' and that's that.
Another famous recent example, I suppose, would be the enormous sum of money spent on restoring Viollet-le-Duc's wholly fantastical "Gothic" Notre Dame de Paris after the fire. The 19th century Disneyland version of this 1000 year old site of worship has ended up being the 'canonical' one. And then people are complaining that it no longer has 150 years of candle soot on the walls to darken it and so it looks "wrong" ...
On the Brutalism question - I'm a little conflicted. It's undoubtedly less popular, in the West at least, then older and more ornamented styles. That said, I think the Roman statue brigade massively *underestimate* its popularity, at least among the average middle class middlebrow urbanite in a city like London. I have a tea towel with a picture of Trellick Tower on it. You can buy that, and various other bits of Brutalism merch, at the extremely popular Barbican centre, including maps of all London's great brutalist buildings. The reality is that it's now 'heritage' like everything else, and we're custodians of it like everything else, whether we like it or not. (I do like it, for the record.)
Loosely related, but something I really enjoyed about THE BRUTALIST last year was the way it dramatized and rationalized the desire among architects in that period of time, most deeply and specifically felt among Jewish architects in the wake of the Holocaust, to reject the beauty and comfort and harmony of the traditional forms. The film basically agrees with the most right wing chud perspective on brutalism being a Judeo-Marxist conspiracy, but inhabits the perspective through which that seemed vital and necessary and left behind these structures that are so puzzling today.
Not a perfect movie, but that and ANORA were so much more thematically daring than OBAA, not to start that discourse again.
Harkness tower may not have classrooms designated as such, but I took a class in a room in the base area within the Tower's footprint, probably in 1967 or 1968. It was part of the College Seminars program, an attempt to include the residential colleges more directly in academic affairs. Harkness is part of Branford College, which sponsored this course, but as residents of Saybrook (which is attached), a couple of friends and I participated.
I would say it's perhaps not _prohibitively_ expensive, but it certainly is more expensive.
I asked this very question to my neighbor who is an architect professor, as well as her husband (who's an architect in the real world!). When asking why don't we make beautiful stone and brick buildings anymore, they just laughed and sighed. According to them:
For one thing, brick and stone can only go so high. So most high-rise buildings are out of the question. Which is a problem in a downtown where block space is at a premium.
For another, there's cost. All that stone and brick (especially the stone) is not only more expensive pound for pound than steel and glass and concrete, but requires specialized masons to build it - masons who are getting rarer and rare these days. And they aren't cheap.
Then there's just the physics of the materials themselves. You can get a lot more usable space out of a steel and glass and concrete monstrosity than you can with stone and brick. And it's much more adaptable to changes in interior space needs (you can combine or divide rooms if needed), HVAC, and electronics conduits.
Finally, constructing all of those lovely Yale buildings was a lot easier back in the days of cheaper labor and almost non-existent regulations and insurance. Contractors and developers these days actually have a legal obligation to at least give somewhat of a damn about their workers.
I'm not saying I necessarily agree with all of that (I happen to love old stone and brick buildings), but I would say most modern architects do. They tend to value innovation and creativity (read: new is better than old) over traditional aesthetics - even when those aesthetics are universally admired. Why that is you'd have to ask them. But if I had to guess I'd say it's the human ego rearing it's ugly head: they want to create something unique in order to stand out to their peers, and traditional architecture, no matter how beautiful, isn't unique.
I did, I'm just relaying what they told me. Perhaps they don't think robotics or mechanization of ornamentation is a real thing yet? /shrug
But I'm guessing the reason has more to do with my last point: they probably just like the way modern design lends itself to a much greater creative uniqueness than traditional design. There's more possibilities for something truly unique and innovative, or at least that's what they believe. And relying on contractors or "armchair" architects for any push-back on this won't work - those guys would just build giant aluminum sheds everywhere.
The bottom line is architects enjoy a very high degree of control over modern design, especially in the urban planning arena. And architects are known for being arrogant, so good luck trying to change that mindset.
To give an example: my own university campus has an architecture style that could be described as "Collegiate Gothic". Almost all of the buildings on campus that were built before the 50's are this style. The main library where I work was expanded in the 90's and they actually took the time to _replace_ the 60's rectangular facade with a limestone style that matches the rest of campus. It was more expensive to do so, but they did it anyway because state universities just had more money in the 90's.
Fast forward to 5 years ago and that same library underwent an _interior-only_ renovation - this was due to a need to update and modernize the tech and space usage. But what they did was make study room walls out of floor to ceiling glass, used lighting with a modern slim LED aesthetic, and used an overall muted grey and cream color scheme. In other words, it screamed "corporate" on the inside, despite looking like a traditional university building on the outside. It was and is quite jarring walking in for the first time.
Why did they do it this way? Because that's what the architects wanted to do. We had input sessions during the process, but every time someone brought up the idea making the interior a bit more traditional and cozy to match the exterior, the architects would not entertain that idea. They said "this is how modern libraries look now" or "no one likes the traditional look anymore" or "students prefer the slick modern feel". They basically refused to listen to any of us (in this specific aspect) and did what they wanted to the interior. And since they were already bought and paid for by the state, we had to go with their recommendation.
Perhaps our experience was unique, but I have to say I've never met an architect who didn't think they were all that and a bag of chips.
Musicians don't like the same music as the general public, painters don't like the same paintings, and filmmakers don't like the same films. That's all fine; it causes no trouble. If my musician friend likes complex free jazz that I can't wrap my head around, I don't have to listen to it. I don't have to any music that I didn't choose for myself.
But when it comes to architecture, the very same dynamic becomes troublesome. Because I actually do have to look at - and maybe even live or work in - buildings that I didn't choose for myself.
Agree. Architecture is unique in the "arts" in that it is largely forced upon the general public due to its all-encompassing public use. I suppose you could say the same about vehicles, but to a smaller degree because of both the sheer width and breadth of design choices, as well as the ability to choose one over the other...something you can't do with public buildings.
Architects basically control the whole physical public use arena in terms of style and function, and the general public just has to accept their design choices without much say in it. I mean when's the last time you got a vote on which design style to use for the local community center? They have a tremendous amount of power over almost every aspect of public (and to a lesser degree private) design and use decisions. That kind of hegemony tends to make one think rather highly of oneself.
I'm going to level with you: When I saw this subject line in my inbox, I thought this essay was going to be a defense of all the loner dudes who jerk off to Tifa Lockhart's tits.
Something that gives older buildings an advantage is mature landscapes. Nothing better than walking among tall leafy trees. If done correctly even Brutalist buildings could be softened and maybe admired by more people. Maybe it's part of Brutalism to use large flat paved surroundings, but that sure makes them less approachable.
And consistency is the other important many times missing element. Architectural context is important. A lot of non-sequiturs jammed together, yuck.
As a Yale alum who grew up in west coast suburbia, returned to Yale for grad school, and since then has only taught at architecturally undistinguished institutions, I agree with virtually everything you say. It’s entirely bogus, but I wish my own hard-working, first-gen students had access to the automatic sense of intellectual worth that comes with having your classes in wood-paneled seminar rooms, as leafy, late-afternoon light streams in from leaded glass windows. I try to give my students the same education that I got, but the rooms I teach in convey a message, too.
That said, I lived in Ezra Stiles and loved it. It’s architecturally interesting and well landscaped (Saarinen supposedly wanted it to look like the Tuscan hills), and the renovation after I graduated leaned hard into the midcentury modern vibe—the furnishings and finishing look great. It’s not for everyone, and in general my tastes run more traditional (I now live in a 110 year old house in a neighborhood of similarly aged homes), but it’s not a generic dorm building, either.
I think it's true they are widely considered "ugly," or as a weird 1960s mistake, but I've never had the sense that anyone is deeply invested in that position, and certainly not most people who get assigned there. (Every college has pluses and minuses, and at least when I was there, Morse and Stiles were envied for having much larger dorm rooms, including a disproportionate number of singles.) It's possible that you're right about a disparity in donations, though I don't recall ever being asked to donate to my residential college, specifically, and that strikes me as an unusual way to earmark one's funds.
You should read up on how Oxford Students feel about Keble College, up to and including a society to to destroy it where you had to bring a brick from the college to a meeting to gain membership.
Ironically Oxford had to perform all sorts of crimes against architecture in the 1970s due to the relative poverty of the UK. They’re currently trying to rectify them.
Thanks for tip! Keble's a great comp for Pauli Murry and Benjamin Franklin: brick instead of stone and absurdly ornate in places. Apparently, Oscar Wilde was reputed to have said that Oxford was the most beautiful city in England, "in spite of Keble College."
Standing across from the college in University Parks, Keble looks grand, if a bit frosted. It's like one of the cakes prepared in Oxford's covered market, or like Will Cotton had decided to try his hand at architecture. I like it, but I admit it's a lot.
After a tour of the Yale campus, Frank Lloyd Wright was asked where he'd want to live among all the splendor. He said, supposedly, "Harkness Tower, so I wouldn't have to look at it."
The Beinecke Library is a beautiful building, particularly from the inside on a sunny day, when the stone glows, but the plaza around it has never become the public space it should have. There's too much flat, white, echoing stone. Something about the scale is off.
Aesthetics are hard. Tweeting is easy.
We stayed a couplle of days in a small town in the mountains (Europe). Most of the historical city centre was made up of Medieval Ages and 19th century Classicist style buildings. While there I did wonder if living in a pretty place can make one happier?
Yes. We moved across town from a 1990s subdivision bounded by typical traffic- and fast-food-choked Texas arterials to a 1952 house in a quiet neighborhood with sparse traffic, huge trees and landscaped low ranch houses that let the light in. So many birds, with all the trees. We are a couple of blocks from the ocean and walk along the bayfront or sit at one of the many parks watching the waves. We switched to a stunning downtown church built with ranching money a hundred years ago. Every single day I consider with gratitude how different my day to day life is, my emotional and spiritual and civic posture, living in beautiful surroundings. We are much happier.
I noticed on a trip to Japan years ago that every little tiny patch of dirt in front of a shop had a little pansy or something planted in it. The attention to creating beauty in the tiniest places was wonderful.
I come from a landlocked country, I love seeing the ocean from our balcony. Due to the unique geography of our region and the ocean, the sky is always gorgeous and the sun going down paints the clouds in million shades of orange, red, pink, blue, purple and million Pantone numbers. I'm happy for you, glad you guys found a gorgeous place. Share pics!
My thought is that a lot of what people dislike isn't so much the modernism as the value engineering. As an example this cost a lot extra:
https://media.wired.com/photos/5926c2dcaf95806129f508b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jewel-Changi-Airport_Forest-Valley-Day_Approved-last.jpg
It's very modern and people love it.
Or China Central Television:
https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/11/OMA-CCTV-building-Beijing_dezeen.jpg
Oh yeh, that costs extra. It has a presence that says - a lot of time and money went into this.
A good American example of this is the new JP Morgan Building. It’s cool looking, but IT COSTS EXTRA.
Or the Apple HQ:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPE_SjXvmWkbSvYNgXmG4TE5UFcXfy9Q8XCBqga9pGdh1l9iklIdieBk05&s=10
I don't know how the fuck they did that, but I know it wasn't cheap.
Spot on. Princeton went through a similar process with the construction of Whitman College.
One point to note is that there is a difference between the fakeness of these campus projects and the fakeness of Disneyland and its ilk. These buildings are built in a retro style, but are intended for permanence. These really are stone and glass and are expected to last for generations. The fakeness of an entertainment venue like Disney is that the fakeness is not just in the appearance but also in the matrix. Those buildings are drywall and particle board and plastic and balsa wood, and will be coming down in a decade or two. If you go into the back rooms of the campus buildings, you will still find brick and masonry, albeit with modern power and plumbing systems. Their style is fake, but the bones are real. The Hogwarts of Disney is skin deep.
Note Venturi's concept of the "Decorated Shed" https://99percentinvisible.org/article/lessons-sin-city-architecture-ducks-versus-decorated-sheds/ -- a building on the commercial strip is always built like a Wal-Mart but it might have some fiberglass thing on the front that makes it look like... anything.
That's the bones behind the postmodern architecture at the theme park and it reconciles aesthetics and cost -- that is, you can do a lot to make a building look distinctive without adding too much to the cost and not producing an international style monstrosity with too much sunlight, a busted HVAC system, and leaks in the roof. Better to stick to a proven design for 99% of the building and paint a look on.
Proven design - proven to do what?
The Wal-Mart style building of cinderblock over a squat steel frame stands upright, I guess. It provides for easy installation of all the modern guts, HVAC and electrical and data cabling etc. And it leaves the interior wide open for utterly fungible arrangements, shelving or freezers or checkout counters, cubicles or conference rooms. It’s “proven” as a generic container, the most basic enclosure, four walls and a roof over a big space that can become whatever but isn’t actually anything.
Even if you dressed it up with some genuinely beautiful exterior disguise, the interior remains every bit as hideous as before. And that matters. The passersby won’t notice, but everyone who enters, workers and customers, will feel it. That same message of cheap don’t give a crap impermanence - and what’s more, design that treats the humans who’ll occupy it as irrelevant to all its core considerations. No frills, no flourishes, not the slightest gesture toward the scale and senses of the creatures who will spend so many hours inside. Everything honed to suit the needs of the infrastructure itself, speed of construction, ease of installation. The building is the master, efficiency its only value. Everyone who enters receives the message at 120 decibels.
These buildings are the enclosed equivalent of the infamous suburban sprawl roadways they stand along, six lanes wide and treeless, geometry to serve automobiles that subconsciously oppresses people. No one walks there if they can help it. Every aspect of the design says you do not matter, you are not really welcome.
This, not just the investment in permanence, is why the Disney version and cheap disguises won’t do. The beauty — the human scaling, the quirky corners and odd staircases, the hidden nooks and decorative moldings—must extend to the interior as well. It needn’t be as whole hog as the outside; stuff has to go on inside, work must be done, there’ll be desks and chairs and all manner of clutter. Pipes and conduits and banks of machinery. But the same basic ethos must obtain.
Otherwise you’ve got nothing but Potemkin villages of “beauty,” fiberglass fakery (does it ever really convince?) hiding the same deracinated, corporate efficiency ugliness.
Even building a brutalist, new formalist, or deconstructivist building in the 21st century is aping the 20th century in the way Yale's new buildings ape the 18th century aping the 15th. (As you mention, the layers!) We're already in an age of recycled content and whatever you call those 5-over-1s. So I'll take the former over the latter; if I were a mayor making decisions, populist neo-classical architecture for the win.
There's not much in the way of brutalism out here in Minnesota, local physical conditions see to that, but I do actually enjoy the Walker Art Museum. But let's be fair: public spaces should not be built to please the sensibilities of people like us who listen to Mastodon.
I think you're right about a lot of things but it's not just about the old, and about permanence. It's also that a lot of Americans sense with dismay, even if they can't put their finger on it, that we're no longer trying for greatness in architecture.
The America of the Art Deco age was constantly innovating and inventing. The tallest buildings in the world were The Singer Building, then the Met Life Tower, then the Woolworth Building, then 40 Wall Street, then the beautifully Deco Chrysler Building, then the Empire State Building, all in a 30 year time span.
We were building better (or more aggressively at least) than any other country and in bold new styles. Art Deco wasn't an attempt to ape the past or aspire to obsolete styles. It was new and forward-looking and widely embraced during its heyday. So I think Americans would absolutely embrace a new style, provided it felt like an attempt at beauty, not functionality. Ambition and boldness, not austerity and cost-saving.
I do not remotely think this is unique to America (much of the West has accepted a somewhat staid comfort instead of dynamism) and it's not an all-encompassing American malaise, as our booming tech sector shows. But in terms of architecture, we're not going for greatness, and people want grandeur. They want beauty, as you say. Not just efficiency
Freddie, you might want to look at my book, Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives (HarperCollins), for an accessible analysis of why we care so much about the design of the built environment. I was architecture critic at the New Republic for years. WTYW establishes that 1. A concern for aesthetics is not trivial; certain designs actually make us function better and that 2. style has almost nothing to do with our responses to the BE -- as you say, modernism does not equal watered-down, corporate modern-ism. Anyway lots more to say and I will read your article more carefully. Thanks for writing about a topic most people usually ignore.
Thank you!
Well put. It seems to me that a big part of architectural beauty is achieved over time. It's like fermentation. But also like fermentation, there's sort of diminishing returns. One something gets to a certain age and still looks good, it's 'heritage' and that's that.
Another famous recent example, I suppose, would be the enormous sum of money spent on restoring Viollet-le-Duc's wholly fantastical "Gothic" Notre Dame de Paris after the fire. The 19th century Disneyland version of this 1000 year old site of worship has ended up being the 'canonical' one. And then people are complaining that it no longer has 150 years of candle soot on the walls to darken it and so it looks "wrong" ...
On the Brutalism question - I'm a little conflicted. It's undoubtedly less popular, in the West at least, then older and more ornamented styles. That said, I think the Roman statue brigade massively *underestimate* its popularity, at least among the average middle class middlebrow urbanite in a city like London. I have a tea towel with a picture of Trellick Tower on it. You can buy that, and various other bits of Brutalism merch, at the extremely popular Barbican centre, including maps of all London's great brutalist buildings. The reality is that it's now 'heritage' like everything else, and we're custodians of it like everything else, whether we like it or not. (I do like it, for the record.)
Loosely related, but something I really enjoyed about THE BRUTALIST last year was the way it dramatized and rationalized the desire among architects in that period of time, most deeply and specifically felt among Jewish architects in the wake of the Holocaust, to reject the beauty and comfort and harmony of the traditional forms. The film basically agrees with the most right wing chud perspective on brutalism being a Judeo-Marxist conspiracy, but inhabits the perspective through which that seemed vital and necessary and left behind these structures that are so puzzling today.
Not a perfect movie, but that and ANORA were so much more thematically daring than OBAA, not to start that discourse again.
Adorno notoriously said “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric"
Harkness tower may not have classrooms designated as such, but I took a class in a room in the base area within the Tower's footprint, probably in 1967 or 1968. It was part of the College Seminars program, an attempt to include the residential colleges more directly in academic affairs. Harkness is part of Branford College, which sponsored this course, but as residents of Saybrook (which is attached), a couple of friends and I participated.
I would say it's perhaps not _prohibitively_ expensive, but it certainly is more expensive.
I asked this very question to my neighbor who is an architect professor, as well as her husband (who's an architect in the real world!). When asking why don't we make beautiful stone and brick buildings anymore, they just laughed and sighed. According to them:
For one thing, brick and stone can only go so high. So most high-rise buildings are out of the question. Which is a problem in a downtown where block space is at a premium.
For another, there's cost. All that stone and brick (especially the stone) is not only more expensive pound for pound than steel and glass and concrete, but requires specialized masons to build it - masons who are getting rarer and rare these days. And they aren't cheap.
Then there's just the physics of the materials themselves. You can get a lot more usable space out of a steel and glass and concrete monstrosity than you can with stone and brick. And it's much more adaptable to changes in interior space needs (you can combine or divide rooms if needed), HVAC, and electronics conduits.
Finally, constructing all of those lovely Yale buildings was a lot easier back in the days of cheaper labor and almost non-existent regulations and insurance. Contractors and developers these days actually have a legal obligation to at least give somewhat of a damn about their workers.
I'm not saying I necessarily agree with all of that (I happen to love old stone and brick buildings), but I would say most modern architects do. They tend to value innovation and creativity (read: new is better than old) over traditional aesthetics - even when those aesthetics are universally admired. Why that is you'd have to ask them. But if I had to guess I'd say it's the human ego rearing it's ugly head: they want to create something unique in order to stand out to their peers, and traditional architecture, no matter how beautiful, isn't unique.
Do read the linked report and newsletter post though
I did, I'm just relaying what they told me. Perhaps they don't think robotics or mechanization of ornamentation is a real thing yet? /shrug
But I'm guessing the reason has more to do with my last point: they probably just like the way modern design lends itself to a much greater creative uniqueness than traditional design. There's more possibilities for something truly unique and innovative, or at least that's what they believe. And relying on contractors or "armchair" architects for any push-back on this won't work - those guys would just build giant aluminum sheds everywhere.
The bottom line is architects enjoy a very high degree of control over modern design, especially in the urban planning arena. And architects are known for being arrogant, so good luck trying to change that mindset.
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To give an example: my own university campus has an architecture style that could be described as "Collegiate Gothic". Almost all of the buildings on campus that were built before the 50's are this style. The main library where I work was expanded in the 90's and they actually took the time to _replace_ the 60's rectangular facade with a limestone style that matches the rest of campus. It was more expensive to do so, but they did it anyway because state universities just had more money in the 90's.
Fast forward to 5 years ago and that same library underwent an _interior-only_ renovation - this was due to a need to update and modernize the tech and space usage. But what they did was make study room walls out of floor to ceiling glass, used lighting with a modern slim LED aesthetic, and used an overall muted grey and cream color scheme. In other words, it screamed "corporate" on the inside, despite looking like a traditional university building on the outside. It was and is quite jarring walking in for the first time.
Why did they do it this way? Because that's what the architects wanted to do. We had input sessions during the process, but every time someone brought up the idea making the interior a bit more traditional and cozy to match the exterior, the architects would not entertain that idea. They said "this is how modern libraries look now" or "no one likes the traditional look anymore" or "students prefer the slick modern feel". They basically refused to listen to any of us (in this specific aspect) and did what they wanted to the interior. And since they were already bought and paid for by the state, we had to go with their recommendation.
Perhaps our experience was unique, but I have to say I've never met an architect who didn't think they were all that and a bag of chips.
Artists often have weird tastes in art.
Musicians don't like the same music as the general public, painters don't like the same paintings, and filmmakers don't like the same films. That's all fine; it causes no trouble. If my musician friend likes complex free jazz that I can't wrap my head around, I don't have to listen to it. I don't have to any music that I didn't choose for myself.
But when it comes to architecture, the very same dynamic becomes troublesome. Because I actually do have to look at - and maybe even live or work in - buildings that I didn't choose for myself.
Agree. Architecture is unique in the "arts" in that it is largely forced upon the general public due to its all-encompassing public use. I suppose you could say the same about vehicles, but to a smaller degree because of both the sheer width and breadth of design choices, as well as the ability to choose one over the other...something you can't do with public buildings.
Architects basically control the whole physical public use arena in terms of style and function, and the general public just has to accept their design choices without much say in it. I mean when's the last time you got a vote on which design style to use for the local community center? They have a tremendous amount of power over almost every aspect of public (and to a lesser degree private) design and use decisions. That kind of hegemony tends to make one think rather highly of oneself.
"Real Feelings for Fake Beauty"
I'm going to level with you: When I saw this subject line in my inbox, I thought this essay was going to be a defense of all the loner dudes who jerk off to Tifa Lockhart's tits.
Something that gives older buildings an advantage is mature landscapes. Nothing better than walking among tall leafy trees. If done correctly even Brutalist buildings could be softened and maybe admired by more people. Maybe it's part of Brutalism to use large flat paved surroundings, but that sure makes them less approachable.
And consistency is the other important many times missing element. Architectural context is important. A lot of non-sequiturs jammed together, yuck.
As a Yale alum who grew up in west coast suburbia, returned to Yale for grad school, and since then has only taught at architecturally undistinguished institutions, I agree with virtually everything you say. It’s entirely bogus, but I wish my own hard-working, first-gen students had access to the automatic sense of intellectual worth that comes with having your classes in wood-paneled seminar rooms, as leafy, late-afternoon light streams in from leaded glass windows. I try to give my students the same education that I got, but the rooms I teach in convey a message, too.
That said, I lived in Ezra Stiles and loved it. It’s architecturally interesting and well landscaped (Saarinen supposedly wanted it to look like the Tuscan hills), and the renovation after I graduated leaned hard into the midcentury modern vibe—the furnishings and finishing look great. It’s not for everyone, and in general my tastes run more traditional (I now live in a 110 year old house in a neighborhood of similarly aged homes), but it’s not a generic dorm building, either.
Hey, I don't have a problem with Morse or Stiles! I'm just sharing what I've heard.
I think it's true they are widely considered "ugly," or as a weird 1960s mistake, but I've never had the sense that anyone is deeply invested in that position, and certainly not most people who get assigned there. (Every college has pluses and minuses, and at least when I was there, Morse and Stiles were envied for having much larger dorm rooms, including a disproportionate number of singles.) It's possible that you're right about a disparity in donations, though I don't recall ever being asked to donate to my residential college, specifically, and that strikes me as an unusual way to earmark one's funds.