Architecture

[Astérix]

Vitruvius is a good start

lol

[habia]

No

it's just a visual eyesore

most architects who still practice from that time would agree

it is in this quality, the 'visual eyesore', that Brutalism excels and is so artistically powerful.

what I like about the movement is how excessively monumental the structures are. Poured concrete and stone, these are ancient construction methods which last for hundreds or thousands of years. The act of creating even an arguably hideous building, much less an unabashedly hideous building, directly addresses the human ability to make irreversible decisions.

I don't think it's an accident that brutalism was prominent from 50s to 70s while the socio-ecological design movement really came into its own during the 70s. Brutalism brings to foreground the permanence of human capability and action.

To me, this alone legitimizes entire movement.

wood grain on concrete isn't about being pretty or ugly. About showing construction process, acknowledging the process of design and creation.

I'll grant that wood grain on concrete is a bit more crude than say Van der Rohe's I-beam curtain walls, but simultaneously it is much more honest. (van der rohe's curtain wall's are arguably pure facade, only structural role is to support against wind gust and there are more 'efficient' ways to do this)

holes in poured concrete are dope too (what are these called again? lat-holes or something?)

[Vitamian]

No

it's just a visual eyesore

most architects who still practice from that time would agree

Should architecture be merely "pretty" or inoffensive?

As Habia said, Brutalism excels in its sheer monumentalism of presence. This is not dissimilar to the now unfashionable East German state architecture. It promotes domination, egoism and lack of individualism, which is quite unpopular now--everyone has to be individualistic whether or not they are capable of such things.

[jeepster]

I can agree with what you're saying Webb, but for me, it boils down to the fact that people thought the design was timeless. To me, and to history, Brutalism directly references one of the greatest low points of architectural history and design history as a whole, but also addresses on a greater scale the fact that designers as a whole need to address what is inherently ugly and visual unappealing in order to move forward. The examples that diamonds posted don't necessarily commute the same sense of "ugliness" as say, the SUNY Purchase campus (perfect example of UGLY Brutalist buildings), but rather a more self-referential styling that takes in account other factors, especially in regards to the wood on concrete, rather than just the urbanity that Brutalism usually strove to capture. It can be urban, visually, but not necessarily urbane, and therefore I find it to be something of a hideous and regrettable, but ultimately integral part of architecture and design as a whole.

[Vitamian]

Maybe it's our generation's Rococo, which was considered silly at the time.

[jeepster]

It doesn't belong to our generation. Entirely a construct of the pre-baby Boomer's.

Our generation - i.e. those of us who are in college or soon to be graduating, or recently graduated - we have no defined architectural context yet. It all belongs to the baby-boomers still.

[Vitamian]

I'm going to bring back brutal dominating architecture.

------

What I find truly unappealing about contemporary architecture--especially those designed by superstars as one expects a certain kind of idiosyncrasy--is the lack of individuality of the interiors, especially the interior fittings. I was recently in the new De Young Museum and the restrooms were entirely offensive in their inoffensiveness. It might as well have been a suburban library in Idaho or something.

[Appleseed]

Actually, we are of the Supermodern era. No, I didn't make that up. The lack of individuality is part of that identity.

http://www.amazon.com/Supermodernism-Jean-Nouvel/dp/9056622676

^ HzDM, OMA, SANAA running ish. Tho, I have a feeling this global recession will start to pull things in another direction.

[mr fluffernutter]

is habia a student... i like his ness

[semper]

(...) what I like about the movement [brutalism] is how excessively monumental the structures are. Poured concrete and stone, these are ancient construction methods which last for hundreds or thousands of years. The act of creating even an arguably hideous building, much less an unabashedly hideous building, directly addresses the human ability to make irreversible decisions.

I don't think it's an accident that brutalism was prominent from 50s to 70s while the socio-ecological design movement really came into its own during the 70s. Brutalism brings to foreground the permanence of human capability and action.

To me, this alone legitimizes entire movement.

I find your argumentation circular. What you are saying, is that the architecture is good because it represents its time so clearly. This would mean that Pyongyang looks great because it so well reflects North-Korean society.

Once you have established that Brutalism reflects the spirit of its time, you should proceed to evaluate wether you want that spirit to be present in the buildings around you or not. The moral question is inescapable imo.

I bring into mind the building in Rome from the fascist era in my first post:

I like this building in spite of its fascist aura. This building, although unmistakably a landmark of its time, manages to supercede this.

Stalinist sugarcake architecture (see pic below) I find awful because it doesn't do this. It only reflects the repressive pompousness of the regime, nothing more.

Jeepster, I like the urban-urbane thing. I needed my dictionary for that one :-)

[habia]

^thanks, yes my argument is circular at the moment I never brought out any conclusion

a little busy right now, but briefly:

the main point I left out of last post is that a school of thought being capable of strongly representing its time is indicative of good design. Good or bad is even beside the point, what I appreciate about Brutalism (or whichever other design movements) is that it was crucial as a polarizing catalyst, as a polemic, for all following designers.

bad design (mediocre design) is incapable of this.

of course giving inherent value to the controversial is stupid. The controversy I value is that which effects my peers/mentors... slightly narcissistic as this is..... peers/mentors being the architects I respect, which is highly subjective.

(in case it's not obvious, I'll point out now that in this previous paragraph I admit all my objective debate rests on foundation of subjectivity. academia!)

[Vitamian]

As an aside, I love the Stalinist architecture because of its bombastic nature.

I have a secret love of repressive societies and their architectural fancies. The moral undertones are understandable, but not of a great issue for me as I am quite selfish and only demand the aesthetic satisfaction. Besides, the tears of the proletariat makes for much more picturesque landscapes.

[Vitamian]

Brutalist Building of the Day:

The 1970s is the most undervalued decade of design. It is not dissimilar to how the Victorian/Beaux-Arts period was perceived in the 1950s and 1960s, where a lot of the buildings were torn down.

[Vitamian]

Paul Rudolph's Green Residence:

[VuONG]

it would be interesting to see who here is actually practicing or studying architecture.

brutalism. like post modern is a hit or miss

for explain the UCSD campus library is both beautiful and ugly at the same time.

neways if were gotta get hung up on one typology we are kinda missing the point of this thread.

these are not my favorites but seminal examples of architecture

helix hotel

Galeria Adriana Varejão

MuSH House

Library Vienna

interesting thread. hope it keeps going

[Servo2000]

for example the UCSD campus library is both beautiful and ugly at the same time.

Have you seen this in person? I have to say that I'm actually a big fan of it.

[its swanny]

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/

[Vitamian]

The very Brutalist Barbican Centre:

The rather iconic Habitat 67:

[VuONG]

Have you seen this in person? I have to say that I'm actually a big fan of it.

i took it one step further i've studied it.

its ok, but far from seminal, or should be mimic for principals of design.

[Servo2000]

I'm not going to comment as regards to the latter - I'm not a student of architecture nor do I study it so my judgement is purely of it as a structure in the context of Southern California / UCSD / what looks kind of dope.

[semper]

Habia and Vitamian: my last post on Brutalism makes it seem like I put it on the same level as totalitarianism, which is crap of course. Sorry about that... What I mean is that it has a background of breaking radically with the past, and in architecture that turned into eradicating it. But I have never seen the Barbican Centre, and I like it on that pic.

I think what often went wrong is the social context and the implications that brutalist buildings were planned to have on their surroundings. Constructing huge neighbourhoods in blocks where the inhabitants were supposed to maintain public facilities themselves, with separated motorised and pedestrian traffic - that all went horribly wrong.

So maybe it's not Brutalism itself that is wrong, but the hopes placed in it at the time.

Servo2000 : again, your judgement and mine are as good as any architect's. Professionals may know better if something is feasable and if a certain construction is good, but when it comes to taste there are no professionals.

[Appleseed]

but when it comes to taste there are no professionals.

Com'mon now, the concept of 'taste' may be subjective, but professionals get exposed to a much, much larger breadth of work than the average person. The more exposure/experience one has, the more refined ('better') one's taste is. Speaking in generalities of course.

Hard to argue that a bystander's opinion carries as much weight as someone who's invested themselves in it.

[VuONG]

charle rose is pretty much a god.

here are some interesting videos if any of you care for a couple good hour of architecture lecture

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1844176650002432714&ei=P-jfSem9BaL2qAPTi9GaDg&q=charlie+rose+zaha+hadid+piano+gehry&hl=en&client=safari

zaha, frank, renza, jean

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7034175158778754032

renza

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3960249165805863008&ei=JhbgScKABZr0qAOSqOk_&q=charlie+rose+rem&hl=en&client=safari

renza, calatrava, koolhaas

[tmadd]

Com'mon now, the concept of 'taste' may be subjective, but professionals get exposed to a much, much larger breadth of work than the average person. The more exposure/experience one has, the more refined ('better') one's taste is. Speaking in generalities of course.

Hard to argue that a bystander's opinion carries as much weight as someone who's invested themselves in it.

This discussion gets into ridiculous and incredibly uninteresting territory really fast, and I don't want to turn this particularly interesting and enjoyable thread into a back and forth on authority, expertise, and privilege, but the more exposure I get to a variety of art-forms and practical disciplines, the more anecdotal cases I find where a vast majority of "professionals" and "experts" who have studied their disciplines either have horrible taste, embarrassing ignorance of fundamental aspects or benchmarks of their craft, or a self-serving tendency to irrationally and incorrectly grant merit to their creations (or those things they deem to be done the right way, regardless of whether there is any reason for considering that particular way "right") and many exhibit all three issues. The fact that I hold a degree in English from a fairly prestigious university, and managed to write the preceding sentence is one excellent example of the fallacy of "expertise."

While I definitely do believe that there is at least sometimes validity to the idea that knowing the language and context of a discipline can inform ones taste to a degree that it might hold more validity or heft than someone who just looks at any individual piece of work and issues a response based on their interpretation, I seem to keep finding so many instances where people who can read (in a broad, not written-word-specific sense) and think, and do so in interesting ways, have better taste and tend to gravitate towards examples of a given discipline that are esteemed by legitimate experts in that field, that I think its hard to fall back on experience and exposure as an indicator of refined, or superior taste.

This post is long, not particularly well written, and I hope it doesn't distract this thread. More interesting pictures of engaging, if not always aesthetically pleasing structures please. This makes me wonder if there is a furniture thread. Free and Easy just did an interior design issue that had a few small articles that would apply to this thread, but focused more on furniture...maybe I will try to get my scanner working...a lot of very cool stuff.

[VuONG]

i would like to say your understanding of design does change once you study ,understand and are exposed great architecture. This is why at my school we visit great architecture and have case studies, once you absorb it, your palette for design becomes larger.

i must disagree, first if you call architecture art, you are wrong, architecture is architecture, and art is art.

art exist for no other reason then to exist for itself and serves no other purpose, so therefore anyone can judge art. Art is about revealing emotion or to appeal to a sense. Architecture is so much more then this.

Architecture is so much more complex.

you need a little bit of expertise to fully understand true beauty in the concept of form and the logic of space.

Anybody can say ya, that looks beautiful. but very few and truly understand why its beautiful.

architecture is not art, there are aspects of art in architecture, but if anyone is looking at a building with this singular aspect taken into account, they are already ignorant and therefore have bad taste.

neways...

the new building which will hold the arcopllis site

[semper]

I started this thread as a place where anyone with an interest in architecture could post his ideas. If this turns into I-know-better-than-you, this will be a very tiny niche unfortunately.

I'm a classical musician by profession. Of course I know a lot more about classical music than the average listener, but this means for me that if any group of music lovers wants to talk about it, I should either step down from my acropolis or not take part. But it can be very interesting for me to hear how people that experience it "from the outside" think about it.

A propos acropolis, what site are you talking about, VuONG?

[VuONG]

this new building will house some of the orginial site from ancient Athens and house artifacts from the Acropolis

[Appleseed]

Totally was not trying to turn it into an 'us vs. them', sorry if it came out like that. I simply wanted to point out that an architects taste in architecture is (often, not always) a bit more learned, than someone without that background. And to think that all opinions and taste are created equal, really isn't fair in my opinion.

"I'm a classical musician by profession. Of course I know a lot more about classical music than the average listener, but this means for me that if any group of music lovers wants to talk about it, I should either step down from my acropolis or not take part. But it can be very interesting for me to hear how people that experience it "from the outside" think about it."

This sentiment I can totally get behind. To be clear however, what I often come across, ESPECIALLY in Los Angeles, is kneejerk-NIMBY-reactionism to any kind of higher architecture. Even on sites like Curbed, that are supposed to have an urban/architecture slant, people just spout off nonsense based on their 'taste'. As though this city is going to revert 1000sqft bungalows throughout. My gut tells me that ya'll (the non-architects in this discussion) are more sophisticated that that, BUT that statement, reflected in the stuff I read and have to deal with on a day to day, struck a nerve. Sorry to drag on.

End point: fuck a neighborhood council.

[hapsical]

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Edited July 24, 2014 by hapsical

[semper]

Queen's Day in Amsterdam gets me to places.

Apartment block in Johan M. Coenenstraat, 1920's

I should get out more often.