Find all the sources on this page: theaestheticcity.com/resources/youtube/what-makes-buildings-beautiful-and-why-beauty-does-matter/ - and if you liked it, please consider supporting the channel! Thank you so much!
4 minutes into this video, I started thinking of Frank Lloyd Wright. The homes he designed, I could just stare at them. They are so photographic and just plain beautiful.
I think you would like Camillo Sitte's "Art of Building Cities" and "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs. Above all the points you described, there are othe modernist mistakes in terms of an urban plaza / piazzeta or an urban corner that you did not cover in your video.
@@Joskemom exactly! Modern buildings can be very beautiful but as far as this channel is concerned, if you don't add excessive ornamentation on your facades and make creepily symmetrical buildings then it's ugly
A city is not like a canvas. Many of these architects treat buildings as literal works of art, and they treat art simply as expression. Why should i have to be forced to watch someone’s art all day every day?
I have studied architecture and always felt like we are heading in the wrong direction for the sake of some ideology. The funny part is that here in my country of Austria in order to call himself an "architect" a person has to swear an oath to always serve the general public first. And still they ignore the obvious preferences of the normal people for their elitist ideology they are thaught in university that resembles more a kind of modern art than actually giving the people what they need.
In Germany on the other hand you have the Untere Denkmalschutzbehörde which forbids to erect new buildings which are not looking like they are made in their time. Meaning if you want to build a Gründerzeit-style multi family home, you won't get a permit for it. It's insane!
Have seen this among my architect friends. Was visiting one of them a few years ago in England and they took me to a tour of the city that mostly included a questionable mishmash of rather ugly buildings. All being "amazingly innovative" in one way or another, but simply impossible to look at. Surely, something has to change.
Completely agree 100%! Most modern buildings have fantastic interiors with nicely appointed kitchens and bathrooms (for residential units) and other cool rooms. But most people don't get to see the inside of a building. All of us do get to see the outside of a building, and we residents of a city should have a voice in the design of such a building. We shouldn't say no to the construction of a building, but we should have a say on how it looks from the outside, because we have to walk by that thing every day.
@@ligametis If I don't live in the building, all I see is the exterior. I don't have to worry about whether the discordance between the interior and exterior is tasteless or not. I do, however, have to walk by the building, so I do like to see a pleasing exterior.
@Eric Dew I find beutalism and bare concrete pleasing. So what is the solution then? It is still about forcing someone to follow particular style. With the same analysis you are also allowed to have historical old school interior while people are living with modern exterior.
@@ligametis Its not tasteless to get the best of both worlds in a nice historical facade combined with all the trappings of modern living. Its actually quite brilliant.
@@fatboyRAY24 So you like historical or you like modern? You can't really choose both. Otherwise you get McMansions. It is not best of both world, it is tasteless mismatch. People have accepted that historical interiors are inconvenient, overcrowded, uncomfortable and it is expensive to maintain ceiling painting, fancy rugs on walls. Why people don't see the same reasons for why historical exterior is not being chosen?
No architect hates old architecture. It's the boredom of it that makes architects design new things instead of copying for hundreds of years the same things all over again:)
@@vocartagmailcom Refusing to learn from the past is not a laudable thing. Of course, modernism is not exactly modern anymore either, so I don't get why copying stuff from 1930 is fine but 1910 is right out
@@vocartagmailcom The victorian styles of the 19th century were not identical copies of the same architecture of previous centuries. The revival styles of skyscrapers from the early 20th century did not copy older architecture without adding new ideas. The Art Deco style most certainly did not copy old architecture. For some reason, however, architecture after the the second world war is rarely considered beautiful in comparison to those earlier styles. The answer is not that older styles copy themselves over and over. It is simply untrue.
Just keep learning from outside school too! Teachers will try to rewire your brain into modernism and nothing else but you'll do fine if you remember their word is not law. Much luck in your career ❤
I think this is the same about people’s style. When you go to college you start to wonder off and look weird cus you’re bored and want to change everything.. until eventually you go back at not trying too hard and automatically liking to wear beautiful classic clothes and cut and dye your hair the proper/natural way again, wich pleases others as well not just your rebel self 😅
As an architect, I completely agree with this, actually I just got confidence this will be seen and hopefully change a lot that is coming up in our built environments
Whenever you design a building, please make it beautiful. It's integral for our well-being. Brutalism and modernism make people claustrophobic, which lead to them feeling mentally unwell, and people who feel mentally unwell lead to a society that is mentally unwell, and a society that is mentally unwell is more prone to conflict and chaos
I totally agree with this! Urban architecture should not about self expression but the creation of buildings that appease the masses as they’re the people that’ll live in it. The power of beauty should not be underestimated!
Office buildings have no one living in them. Most government buildings have no one living in them. Most factory buildings, warehouses. What criteria should they be built to? For residential buildings, who will arbitrate what is beautiful, what is not. Who's sense of beauty? Yours? Mine? a newborn, he she will live in it later. Architects follow the dictates of their clients. Who is the client? Probably some soulless corporation bent on maximising profits.
@pete fluffy It’s not just about those that are living in these buildings but also those that view it from the outside - the architecture of a place has a huge effect on the way we perceive a place. As the video shows there are defined forms that the human eye finds attractive - that is what beauty is and that’s what should be included more in urban design and architecture.
@@javierpacheco8234 You'll just have to be patient until you get out of school. Many of us are demanding radical change in architectural education. Beginning with an end to bullying and a beginning with tolerance and understanding.
@@colummulhern8865 I agree with you, I don't think it's fair to bully old or traditional architecture, the teachers are being a little totalitarian and I think it's not okay for teachers to be like that to students. Not everyone will like modernist architecture.
@@javierpacheco8234 If you're a student you'll just have to navigate your way through and start designing traditional buildings when you get out. Don't put yourself in danger by trying unless the teachers approve in advance. Schools are beginning to change, but there is a lot of resistance from the cult of modernism.
I actually stopped attending architectural school because of this. I noticed it everywhere, and people would laugh at me for saying it. It seems like beauty is disappearing from human culture, and we are becoming ugly, primitive machines, slowly forgetting who we are and what we are made for. Thank you for posting! I cried while watching. I believe there is a coming renaissance in the form of authentic beauty that we have never seen before. I think AI will help bring more awareness to it, and we will become more aware of the patterns that make us feel good and see the difference between what is ugly and what is beautiful.
@@sandrapicton6349 Perhaps not, but most AI seem to be designed for rather benign goals (e.g. Midjourney or Leonardo.ai). If these AIs were to pose a threat to humans, it would be purely accidental. Admittedly, there may be exceptions (e.g. chaos GPT), but I think human selfishness and malice is largely absent in many of the AIs I've witnessed to date. What's more, the ones that fuel or mirror those characteristics, were created by people to do so. On a final note, AI do not need to have empathy to engage with human need or even have an understanding of beauty to be reliably trained to generate beautiful concept images. As long as humans with empathy and an understanding of beauty and humanity's shared perception of it, are training the AI on images that do meet human needs for beauty; and other humans are similarly prompting the models, then the results will reflect an understanding of beauty, even empathy.
It is not going to come back magically. Maybe after a battle for the soul of humanity but the plan of our over lords will never permit it as it stands now.
I've noticed a similar phenomenon in bodybuilding as in architecture students. Most bodybuilders start because they want to improve their appearance, but somewhere along the way, they lose their sense of aesthetics. If you compare last year's Mr. Olympia winner, Hadi Choopan, with an old-school icon like Steve Reeves, it's clear that Reeves looks more aesthetically pleasing. If you were to ask 100 people outside of bodybuilding which of the two looks more aesthetically pleasing, I bet 90% would say Reeves. Yet, for some reason, many people in bodybuilding seem to have completely lost their sense of beauty.
It may be similar to how mr.video man mentioned that taste changes and that beauty has tree criterias. The 2. criteria of function may be the culprit since bodybuilders slowly become aclimated and atrachted to for a (for exemples skae I know nutting about this stuff.) more eavey thick tricep since it has the astetic function of providing another kind of arm definition.
@@bigorstojanov184 With all due respect, old mate Kant has nothing to do with this. There really are some intrinsic qualities to architecture that most people can agree on are beautiful. Subjectivity only matters when considering everybody's hierarchy of beautiful qualities, other than that there is a baseline for beauty because we've evolved to find these traits beautiful.
@@human6310Yes, but that depends. I like more windows, white and grey, with open layouts and such. Modern New York skyscrapers look better than old French ones.
Many schools were built with reinforced concrete in the 20th century, but according to one study, there seems to be a research result that concrete schools have a higher incidence of school violence than wooden ones. I think this was research in Germany, France, Canada and Japan. If the beauty of appearance, the use of natural materials, and the harmony of the townscape keep people's minds at peace, this can be a very important study. Beauty is more than just decoration. Thank you for showing us the light of hope.
@@ivanastein2671 this building sprung to mind as an example: "The Lunenburg Academy is a historic school building located in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Constructed in 1895 to replace a building that had been destroyed by fire, the academy operated as a school from 1895 until 2012, when the Town of Lunenburg took over the property. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1983 for its distinctive Second Empire architectural features and its illustration of Nova Scotia's education system in the 19th century. As of 2019, the building houses a library and music school, and restoration efforts are ongoing."
For a couple of years I went to a school in Changi, Singapore. Some of the buildings used ordinary materials - brick, cement, concrete. But some used attap - basically leaves and wood from the Attap palm. They were much nicer to be in - the right material for the local conditions. Not very long-lasting, of course, but long enough.
Thank god that someone still appreciates the traditional/ classic architecture… have you ever lived in an old beautiful building with rich ornaments and high ceilings versus a modern square building stripped of all ornamentation with low/ normal ceilings? Well, i do. It is another life! My heart sings every time I come home and see the generous and ornate space… it may cost more, but it is definitely worth it!
I'm so delighted to find actual reasons, physical, evolutionary and psychological, why I (and obviously many others) prefer traditional architecture to modern, block-like structures! I also learned why my home is not "minimalist" and why I get so much more enjoyment and productivity from an office with places for my eye to focus on and rest, as opposed to an empty space with few details. Great video!
Do I dare to hope for even a slight glimpse of beauty? I moved to nature because I can't stand the constant despair and feelings of absolute disgust in our cities.
@mariskab.9106 yeah, I live in the GTA, and all cities here and in the rest of Ontario for that matter look dresdfully similar. Now that would not necessarily be a bad thing if they looked like Dutch cities, which all look quite similar but beautiful. However, the cities here are mostly ugly 😭
When I went to architecture school (in the 80s), the word beauty was NEVER used. And the highest praise you'll hear from an architect about someone else's building is 'nice'. Well, psychopaths are 'nice' too, until they get what they want.
Im an architectural designer with a few years of work experience and this video outlines really well something Ive been thinking about for years. That is the topic of why theres such a divide between what architects like and what the general public likes. I do think that alot of architects, myself included, would love to build things that the general public also likes. I think we as designers can strive for an architecture with just as much composition, resolution and detail as more traditional ornate styles while still being done in a contemporary language. But its hard when you have to worry about things that eat up your budget such as insulation, aggressive schedules, building systems integration, lack of skilled labor and artisans and insane construction costs. There has to be a happy medium but its a struggle …
If I where a dictator and architects would not cooperate with my beauty comities, I would order them all fired and banned from the construction sector and would have civil engeneers coppy the buildings my people have rebuilt after every war for centuries no mater the cost.
@@kungszigfrids1482 i'd do the same. It would be the dicature of beauty. Beauty needs to be present in all aspects of life. New architecture is violent and opressive. Brutalism deserves its name. Communist architecture also express this violence. But i'd not advocate for the removal of past structures. They should stay as a reminder and to help put things in contrast. I enjoy brutalist aesthetic as much as i hate it.
Thank you. You put the problem in very clear and short words, just perfect. As an alumni of an academy of fine arts I must say that you speak from my heart. It makes me angry to see how all these young architects are conditioned to build things that are a) ugly and b) often do not even work, just because they are told again and again that designing buildings to be useful and beautiful is outdated and they have to prove how "innovative" they are instead. (Btw., towers of glass and steal and cubes of concrete have not been "innovative" for a long time, and neither have all those ugly concrete cubes with facades of raw wood planks. Nevertheless those are built again and again and they still get more praise than a beautiful house in a traditional form with a useful roof.)
As an Art Historian and Illustrator, I say this is an absolutely amazing video. Additional note: you showed the images of columns in classical orders, the Erechteion temple on the Acropolis of Athens, as well as the Vitruvius publications in this video - this is the base of the classical language of architecture that was a sort of a guideline for architects throughout most of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque and obviously Classicist periods. The Art Nouveau and Bauhaus were a few of the movements that “killed it”, calling for the functionality after all. It also had to do with the need to provide comfortable housing for a larger amount of people and not only for a small elite. Public buildings followed the trend too. The problem is, the thing with functionality combined with cutting cost went too far, and the needs for profits are still growing. It would be great if some architects could create functional buildings while using classical vitruvian principles.
i stg, everyone that took inspiration from Le Corbusier has devastated the concept of architecture. The damage that man's legacy has done to the art is immense.
I, as an architect, would like to counter, that not everything Bauhaus (for example) did was bad. The and the idea of "form follows function" has opened a lot of possibilities. Sadly it is true that it lead to a komplete demoinzation of "beauty" in architekture - at least for a while. A phrase that best summons it is: "Ornament is a crime" And we were still tought this in architecture school to a certain extent. BUT! Ornamentation is coming back again. Slowly but steady. And there are a lot of architects that try their best to build "beautyful" or at least "not boring/ugly" again. The problem is often that there is only a limited amount of highly prestigeuos buildings to be build, where you get the budget to live out your imagination. I for example are working in a company that is designing mostly appartement-blocks => so the developer always wants to save money here and save money there and wants a certain appartement-mix and certain designs of the appartements, etc. these pretty constricting specifications come up against restrictions of a developement plan initiated by the town etc. And then you are completely caged in. With all these necessities it is very hard to try to bring in theories like Vitruves etc. We try our best with for example interesting Windowmixes, railing-designs, colours etc. But as I said, we are limited by budget. And let me tell you as somebody who designed and built his own house: As soon as you imagine something that is slightly more challenging / difficult to build, it imediately costs a lot more than the "standard", which can be very frustrating budgetwise ;-) But it is getting better, trust me! PS: And back to Bauhaus: something we definately got from it is nice, wide Windows. I'd sys, without Bauhaus we would still stick to the old tiny window-formates that were used in earlier periods - so not all bad with the more cleaner architecture...
@@florianfritsch8622 thank you for your amazing comment and insights! I agree that Bauhaus has its own share of good outcome, I even wrote a paper about it, and I can say I love how their building in Dessau is designed. Many designed products from Bauhaus valued minimalism which I considered quite a useful life skill. I especially like the story how Josef Albers would bring old newspaper to his new students and tell them to create from it. The thing you mentioned with wide windows is another great example, that resulted in beautiful wide balcony doors that may open up the whole indoor space in the summer. In any case, I understand this thing with cost, and I hope for more opportunities with esthetically aware clients for you :)))
Wait did you really said Art Nouveau? It did everything according to this video, its beautyfull, full with ornaments and uses shapes and icons from nature, its the striking opposite of bauhaus.
@@gergokun7154 I was not talking about something being beautiful in this context, but I said that Art Nouveau abolished the Vitruvian classical language of architecture. So did Bauhaus. There was a beauty in all these movements. However, the further evolution of architecture abolished the esthetics too.
Thank you Stefan; I'm afraid that is my own fault, I need to produce faster... There are multiple ways to foster this in your city. One is to get in touch with the mayor, municipality, developers and other people 'in power'. If they don't want to cooperate or have hostile views of these ideas, it's best to find like-minded people and band together in an 'Architecture uprising' group (like arkitektur upproret in Sweden), or a lobby group like Street Level Australia. None of these paths are easy & quick though, but it is always helpful and fun to find people who also support this as they often share other values as well I've discovered (mostly, appreciation of beauty and optimism!)
@@the_aesthetic_city Btw, beauty is usually lost in ignorance of principles. Ancient Greeks simplified their columns and some elements. Germans thought that simplification was the way, and they ended up with buildings that were mere block compositions. Greeks knew that they had to keep rhythm as any any other art, so they didn't sacrifice it, you will find repeating elements in columns and detail, and variations in the rhythm. In modern architecture, this would be a series a windows at the right distances, vs a simple huge top to floor window as in a modern German building. Germans thought that they could add more detail to a statue to make the work more interesting, and produced some terrible pediments that only look good from a very short distance, a distance impossible for any user of the building. Greeks knew that the detail must be appropriate for the distance, so their works looks beautiful at the typical viewing distance while also looking natural and beautiful up close. They used more depth and simpler forms. The work looks beautiful even up close in a museum. Greeks designed buildings to be seen in motion, when one approaches the building, as we do in cinematography, and Eisenstein noticed it. Germans designed without using time.
@@aristotle_4532 the last sentence makes me think of something a lot of designers, art and architects students make both phisical and digital: models. Models make a static idea of the thing you are going to build, it creates this idea that if it's perfect in theory it should be perfect in practice. My idea would be to implement more tech in these models to feel them, to see them in advance, to walk through them. To make the people who's going to live and work in those spaces try it before it is built
Fantastic video! As an architect and educator, I greatly appreciate the content of this video. It has a very important message that needs to be shared over and over again. Keep up the great work!
I don't understand his example about buildings going out of style, no longer valued and being torn down after 50 years. That was the same situation with buildings built in 1900, people had such opinions about buildings he praises in this video.
@@ligametisyep that’s a real limitation people need to be aware of. Some things we consider ugly today may be considered beautiful tomorrow. At the same time though, biophilic design is also a real thing that has effects on our psychology that architects should be aware of. Absolutely chaotic abstract buildings raise stress levels. I do think architects have a responsibility to at least be aware of the effects their designs can have on people and general principles of what is more universally agreed to be beautiful by most people. To be honest though I have much less of a problem with the occasional “ugly” abstract unique architecture than I do with the mundane architecture and urban design used for box stores and office buildings, and also suburban McMansions. These are a much bigger problem because we are drowning in them, and the reason they are ugly is not because the architect is always bad, but because it’s just cheap to build that way. And also because of car culture.
@CampingforCool41 I believe there must be some good ratio between mundane and very unique. Having unique buildings everywhere can be a mess, while same looking buildings are, well, mundane and boring. In the past there were churches and palaces for variety, nowadays we no longer build them and something has to replace their impact on cities.
Wholeheartedly agree! People underestimate the importance of beauty in architecture and infrastructure, thinking that only utility matters. There's a reason cities that have been around since before the modern era are popular with tourists.
Thank you so much for this video. The Brutalist style that arose after WW2 (based on Socialist and Communist philosophies and embraced by elites and academics) really did a number on the built environment of the Western World. SO MANY beautiful buildings were torn down because they were "passe'" or "old fashioned". In many places, beautiful facades were covered up with metal panels or boring tiles. Maybe there was a desire for a "modern" or "streamlined" look, especially as the "space age" began to dawn, but nothing should ever be a boring gray box! In places like Savannah GA, they need large parking garages in the historic district, but anyone casually driving by wouldn't know that's what they are because the architect took the time to make the exterior of the garages look like historic row house blocks. Fortunately in my small city, over the last 20 years, many of those plain facades are being removed and the beautiful architecture underneath restored. I hope the information in this video will reach many city planners who will insist on visually pleasing exteriors especially for public/municipal structures. I'm definitely going to be sharing this video with a few city council persons I know.
Fascinating. I would add one feature of physical beauty, light. How natural light reflects on a surface, how artificial light can center on attractive features, what colours we use... I think it's greatly important, and can affect the other factors. As for your point on chaos, I live in Latin-America and I know mostly Latin-American cities, and the ones I find more atractive have white or soft-coloured facades, with minimal coverage of signs and lettering son they don't have to compete with each other to draw attention; and those I find most hideous are unfinished edifices covered in a screaming and chaotic information overload of signs, lettering, ugly coloured facades (when they are painted)... Don't get me wrong, I love the colorful, fun, busy merchant streets that are so common in this region, it's the architecture (or lack of it) I'm talking about.
Great point about light! Ironically, in the film "The Lake House", a modern designer lectures his architect son on the importance of noticing how light is different in every place or part of the world.
Started Architecture school in 1977, and it took three semesters to break my spirit and ruin my interest in the profession. I loved the architecture history lectures, but the rest of the program was designed to shatter any aspiration toward the good or beautiful, the principled, the satisfying, or even the durable and adaptable. We were inspired by the heights of past human creativity, and then initiated-indoctrinated-in the futile impossibility of any further such achievement. It seemed impertinent, maybe immoral to even try, and you'd be thought a fool-a sentimental heretic-for appearing to rely on a 'dead' visual language. After 40 some years of slowly learning to recognize the patterns of our modern societal pathology, I began to see that the failing was not mine. And I'm encouraged by the current energetic renewal spreading among those devoted to building with sensitivity and care.
I live in Milwaukee. The apartment I live in is very bland, but some of the condos across the street from me are these lovely old Victorian style houses. Downtown is close by and some of the neo gothic architecture is just gorgeous. I find myself mouth agape just walking down the street at times. Many of the buildings are still bland, but it's a far cry compared to when I lived with my parents in the suburbs. Beauty matters in architecture.
It's not just beauty, historical styles have more friezes , moldings, etc that allow eyes to cling to something. That is what make historic cities attractive, there's always something else to notice. A modern building is so plain that an immediate sense of boredom and sameness gets to you right away.
Interesting how the the proof is in the pudding. What architects like to live in and what they like to build are two entire separate things, and I love the research that went into this video. Well researched and thought out. Thankyou.
Yes, but then we will be called nationalistic and exclusive of other cultures, whereas people visit beautiful cities which have a feel for the culture and people for whom it was built. The vile globalist architecture movement is just that 'globalist' there is no room for national pride or representations of a country's history, it's just plain, regimented , boring, meaningless concrete and glass
I hope not, progress is essential and architecture has always changed. It looks good because it’s old, but new wouldn’t look good. We can implement some features in the newer buildings.
@@TropicalityCatyet that doesn't translate to most modern architecture. It seldom looks good when it's old. As progress for progress sake is meaningless. That's how people become untethered from their built environment
Excellent video. Would love to see more. The part about how designers of modernist buildings tend to themselves live in traditional-design homes was especially noteworthy. Another, perhaps less obvious, point: buildings that are not embraced by the public will tend to be torn down more than those that are. This means constant rebuilding, which usually means constant manufacture of more concrete. It takes a mature tree eight years to process the carbon produced by one yard of concrete. IOW, the continual rebuilding from disliked structures requires more and more concrete.
I think if New York was replaced by classic architecture that was European, people would hate it. Modern Skyscrapers look way better, but with more windows, they have more light inside. They usually also include more nature.
@@TropicalityCat I don't think New York City should put so many international style buildings on the skyline, either. There is starting to be a transition in newer buildings back to something more like Art Deco in more recent designs, and that fits well with the NYC's historic buildings.
This really helped me with explaining to myself why, even if people are nice and chill, some places just heightens my anxiety and some places keep me calm.
Thank you Thoa! I also missed this content and thought that it should be made, and thought that I could do it. So it is great to hear you liked it and fills a 'gap in the market'!
Proud to have recognized Paris, Stockholm, Barcelona, Utrecht, Amsterdam, New York City! ❤ Well done man, this is an awesome first upload! A small point of feedback: It's 14 minutes of continued (pretty fast) talking. A few slower sections or pauzes might help digest the material better. Looking forward to future uploads!
When Kant famously wrote that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ he didn’t mean (as I understand it) that Beauty was a matter of subjective judgement- Beauty is Beauty - the subjectivity he spoke of lies not in interpretation of beauty but in the individual’s ability to perceive Beauty. In some ways what this video talks about is aligned to this idea of universal beauty (though arrived at via scientific not philosophical means). I’m not sure I entirely agree but it is really interesting when two very different modes of thinking arrive at similar conclusions. What I do whole heartedly agree with is that beauty is essential to our quality of life and the sooner we see the end of functionalist architecture the happier we will all be! 😊
Well said about those self-complacent avant-garde architects who in fact live in comfortable, traditional and even beautiful houses! I have every contempt for the contemporary architecture. I'm glad the architects have the same feelings in secret. After all they are human too.
I’m a concept artist for video games by trade. That means I need to know how to [for instance] make a design look intimidating and aggressive on a glance, to communicate that you are dealing with an enemy. Or conversely, how to make something look benign and friendly. What I hadn’t consciously realized is just HOW much of this applies to architecture! Hard angles, edges and overhangs are something pretty commonly found in city architecture. Incidentally, all of those are commonly used in shape language to make something feel threatening, dangerous or aggressive. Of course that’s going to make people feel stressed.
I truly loved your A+ video. You brought depth and accuracy to all three points your above description makes. I don't think it is easy to elevate the importance of the awareness of what a rich environment vs a poor one can have on each of us, but you achieved it beautifully. Thank-you. This was really important and I hope you continue to illuminate all of the in depth details you brought laid out.
I'm glad this is getting so much attention; there needs to be way more emphasis on the physical attractiveness of urban places, especially as we are starting to reconsider our built environment. Beauty matters.
I think that a critical thing overlooked in this essay is the irreplaceable presentation of the human hand on a work of art. We see the human hand in great works of art and it conveys sacrifice and intention to the eye. And interpretable dialogue between the creator and the viewer is always an essential element to the beauty of a work of art.
Apart from proper tourist destinations, I’m pretty sure what is actually making people not gather, is the literal ‘ungatherability’ of the space, such as car centric and anti homeless (anti human) design, there are streets in Sydney Australia which have the most not beautiful buildings but people gather all over, because there was no cars and there are places to sit and there were services to enjoy, I think beauty is the cherry on top, which normally accompanies tourist areas which have restricted car use and places to sit ext
I love how whenever he brings up "beautiful" architecture he shows french architecture from the 19th century.. it truly is the peak of architectural design.
@@the_aesthetic_cityhave a look at the videos on my channel. There are geometric codes in these buildings which are secretly used by modern architects. I have much more information such as what is going on in a simple Victorian house which nobody is aware of. I’m giving you something very significant here. If it means nothing to you it explains exactly why nothing will ever change as the problem has little to do with education at architecture schools but a closed mindset of everyone not just the architects.
100 percent agree! As an artist with a background in biology, psychology, and neuroscience, I believe you are right on track with everything you are saying. I did take a course in environmental psychology and I am aware of the research in correlation between hospital room view and healing time. I'm not versed in the other studies, but I really think they would align. Maybe you can investigate how physical appearance affects human behavior. For example, when an environment is beautiful and orderly and well cared for, people tend to treat it with more respect. Also, social behavior and sense of community improve when city design or building design is composed of many smaller units rather than one mega-design. For example, it's better to divide up a city and have many smaller schools and grocery stores and playgrounds than one large school, etc for a city. I know this principal is perhaps a little beyond the scope of aesthetics. However, I wonder if perhaps there IS an underlying relationship that CAN be tied to aesthetics. For example, very large works of art put us in awe! So we like them as a spectacle. But they don't encourage social behavior between people. And as a species, we NEED more pro-social behaviors!!! Maybe you can do a part 2 to this video and explore these things.
As far as the ideology of modern architecture is concerned, I strongly recommend Tom Wolfe's book "From Bauhaus to Our House". The quintessence: The Bauhaus movement moved to the USA during the Second World War and became a radical academic movement that massively discriminated against architects of other styles. The modern style was seen as a grail of social justice and was directed against the "bourgeoise" and was supposed to give the ordinary worker a life worth living. The workers, however, turned out in protest against these new buildings, which made little impression on the academic ideologues. Even today, students, here in Germany, are brainwashed depending on the university. Modernism is a long-outdated dogma, now 100 years old, but unfortunately still present among architects.
Amazingly nice video! You have featured all the aspects of beauty in the built environment in a very comprenhensive way! As a Biophilic Designer and advocate I love it!!!
This videos is so open minded. I knew it somewhere back in my head but I couldn't name it and I did not know how it works. Great content worth sharing !
I studied Communication Design. At our university, that meant many courses together with the prospective architects: Art History, Psychology of Perception, Designing Grids, etc. And it's actually true what this video talks about. When you looked at the models of freshmen and graduating students in comparison, for example. But I also noticed it in the way the profs and tutors tried to guide us in a certain direction design-wise ...
Practicing Architecture for over 40 years, and I still get blindsided with proposed designs of other architects, especially those with big reputations. They only create shock with what can only be unexpected. The big aspect missing today, which you only touched upon, is the need to be nearly 100% functional while making the function aspects unobtrusive & not noticed. People then become happy in an environment that supports them for many decades/centuries. Thank you for bringing it to attention.
I feel relieved that this is finally getting adressed! With all those dystopian looking new buildings I started to feel like living in a nightmare + I've always thought that some mass of people finds this beautiful somehow so there is no way to break the trend.
Oh my goodness, your message is SO completely dear to my heart!!! I feel so helpless in a world that is getting uglier and uglier!!! 😢 No one I know even speaks about it! I pray that this trend will change in the near future. Thank you so very much for helping this change to be made!!! ❤😊
I have been binging urban design videos recently, and stumbled upon this video and your latest one. Gave me a new perspective I had not considered before. Looking forward to more, thanks for making these.
Thank you for this video, I am currently working on a thesis project covering these same topics (5th year architecture funnily enough), this will be a valuable quick hand resource. I should note that actually, most architects nowadays recognise that there are objective standards for beauty, I have had surprisingly little pushback from my tutors surrounding this choice of topic, but I do admit that we are still heavily trained to appreciate aspects of architecture that other people would find irrelevant.
Thank you for your message! Keep it up, and that is great to hear - something seems to be changing then, which is great news! It's most important to cite studies and to pull the field of Architecture out of its silo and involve other sciences like neuroscience and economics as well. Once you look at these fields and studies, you'll find so much evidence supporting the case of traditional urban forms and architecture.
I remember all these buildings in NYC that were built in the 1960s, all getting awards and almost all gone today. Makes the city seem heartless and alien.
Thank you so much for your research and work. This is exactly why I study architecture and urban planning and I see it as my life goal to create beautiful and sustainable places like Le Plessis Robinson. I couldn't put it into words or structure before I found your channel. It's so inspiring and gives me a lot to continue on my career path!
I completely agree with you, and I’m especially glad you mentioned the evolutionary source of sense of beauty. Also, regarding the patterns that trigger the stress response in us, I’m afraid some architects intentionally abuse this to attract attention to their buildings. I just hope this trend will change soon.
YES YES YES!! You have spoken my heart out and I love the evidence you have presented. Classic architecture styles and the materials used really were much more beautiful than anything today (besides nouveau Biophilic architecture such as Stephano Boeri’s works). Keep making these amazing videos!
This video gave me goosebumps! What a great deep dive into beauty and how it connects to architecture and cities, and the quality of the video is also great. This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm interested in; subscribed!
I think stylistic diversity is also important to a building’s beauty. You can follow all the factors you mentioned in your video, but if each and every building looks exactly the same, it becomes background noise and a little boring. The most interesting places to explore and live tend to have more visual variety while keeping to those principles. So a building that might not fill all the criteria, maybe because it lacks ornamentation for instance, may look beautiful surrounded by other buildings which do - because it provides a place for the eye to rest. Which tbh says the concepts of beauty cannot be solely isolated to one piece, but also how that piece interacts with others in context
Wow, such a great video! I've always felt this way about design, but I've never seen these ideas presented in such a visually appealing, comprehensible, and articulate way. Really excellent work! Hope more people watch this!
It makes so much sense now. What we love and like, and how it affects the brain, i do feel anxious whenever there is nothing to look at (gray walls) and its so much more pleasing to learn the patterns around me, I just FELT how connected i was to all you've been sayin! Really informative video! Thank you :)
Beautiful architecture like the historic buildings have a psychological soothing effect, a well thought out city with architectural aesthetics helps a city in a positive way. I live in a modern city where the buildings, homes, neighborhoods are ugly and the energy of the city is negative, my hometown tucson is a perfect example of no planning, indifference, and apathy even if the surrounding mountains are beautiful.
Fantastic video. It describes the values of beauty perfectly. If you combined these values and inspiration from traditional buildings in the area you are almost guaranteed a perfect building. This should be required study in all architectural universities.
Omg i love this video, and your analysis are absolutely correct!! I really hope these thoughts will spread in society and amongst architects in the foreseeable future!🙌🙌 we want beauty in our world, not ugly gray concrete and glass buildings🙂 give men ornaments give me beauty!❤️
I am so pleased to have chanced upon these videos...perhaps there is hope for the future of architecture if these concepts are embraced. I was delighted to see views of Poundbury and the French village as well as the many gorgeous traditional streetscapes in so many cities including Boston where I live. Unfortunately each new addition to I our sky line is a further blight to our once beautiful city. Good luck to the Aesthetic City movement...God knows we need it.
Finally! Thank you for spreading the word! I feel so uplifted in historical buildings made of material that fits the purpose. Most modern buildings suck the energy out of my body. I feel this so intensely, I am often angry when I walk around town, wandering what kind of people designed this city for us. Modern buildings also are complete nonsense, you need to always open the windows or use energy for air conditioning otherwise you can’t breathe. Everyone wants to live in the beautiful old buildings but because of the stupid war, there are only a few of them left. Also in my creative career I really had problems to get permission to stick to my natural sense of beauty. There are only a few possibilities to make art or learn it like a craft, build beautiful sculptures, beautiful furniture or make beautiful ornaments, you barely find a teacher for this. They all want you to be „original“ or doing something „contemporary“ but no one actuslly teaches the ART of doing something in the correct way so it will look beautiful. Commercials must be easy to read and loud…thes stress me out most of the time…they only use LEGO -colours….Alsmost everyone who does these „oldschool“ things needs to be brave and start their own business. In an industrialized world there are fewer and fewer possibilities for us to work as an employee.
Great video. Couldn’t agree more with this! My mood instantly improves when I sense a greater density of trees in an urban environment. I’ve always liked to be around more classical buildings too. I used to live in London and couldn’t fathom how some of these buildings where allowed to be built. I’ve since moved out into the countryside in a beautiful part of south west England with historic market towns, Forrest’s, rivers and valleys. Nature is all around. I couldn’t be happier.
Splendid video! It is all spot-on. Also architects are saying "creativity" and "expression" but not actually. Clearly you can't design anything that is not in modernist design language.
this is the kind of content I am looking for, I hope you continue to do so. I love European cities, they are timeless and superior to many modernized cities around the world. My concern is, though symmetry, balance, fractals and shaped can all be redone, ornamentation is somewhat a foreign concept if you want to build something contemporary that doesn't borrow from classic images. I'm Asian, and my country doesn't a very familiar ornamentation tradition to call back on much less the means to develop new materials for mass production. You would need artisans or specialists for that. In the end, it is difficult to communicate the value of beauty with those with a bottom-line agenda.
Thank you Angel! I'm not sure what country you're from, but looking at various local traditional styles I see varying levels of ornament - in the Philippines it is much more nuanced, in China there is quite some detail, in Thailand as well. Sometimes it is not needed however; using colours and making the structural beams pronounced or just having some wood carving is already a form of decoration I feel. Anyway, there are multiple ways to Rome so to speak!
@@the_aesthetic_city Maybe consider making a video about asian cities and how the aesthetics can be incorporated into building a liveable beautiful city. I'm from Malaysia, and I must say our urban planning is in the drain, buildings are all the concrete and glass boxes like the rest of the world.
I _LOVE_ your channel. I can't get enough of it; and I agree with the overwhelming majority of points you've made over the course of many videos. This is inspiring. Love from the U.K.!
Excellent, thanks. Beauty is so important and should be the keystone to sustainable building. Forty years ago, when I was a student, we were castigated for placing aesthetics above form and function, in fact if it was anywhere in our work it would be ignored at best. But beauty doesn't have to be old fashioned. There were no examples, in your video, of beautiful modern buildings like, The Bird's Nest, The Innsbruck Railway (Zaha Hadid) or the Lloyds Building (Richard Rogers) and the countless others which will be with us for the next millennia. These buildings touch the minds and hearts of people even with the most traditional tastes. In their priorities, Architects tend to place truth above beauty. For instance, Modernism, was born after WW1 and very successfully fulfilled the desires and needs of its patrons. But this was an ugly period and lots of organizations didn't want the public to know what they were really up to, whether they were communists, capitalists or dictators. Hence, its utter and uncompromising anonymity -but humanity cannot thrive in that environment. I bet all architects have read the poetry of John Keats: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Modernism's heyday was after WWII when patrons didn't have time to care about anything, they just had to throw things up to put a roof over our heads and Modernism provided a cheap and cost effective means to achieve this. New buildings must reflect the aspirations and concepts of the present. When we do this we are expressing self confidence and optimism. We only look back when we feel threatened. Like a toddler, bravely running away at first then running back to the mother at the site of the unexpected. Now experts have identified the essential parts of beauty, Architects should be able to transpose them to contemporary designs. I try to use the Golden Section in all my projects, whether modern or traditional. It's old fashioned, I know but it works. Symmetry? I try and avoid it. After all, repetition is boring. Thanks again.
Great video! I study product design and I have seen my fair share of ugly products that were designed with the thought that form should always follow function. I grew up in a Scandinavian-style house, designed partly by my parents, in a little farmer's town in the Netherlands. They wanted to build a home that reminded them of two of their favourite places; Sweden and Norway. While I did not like the build-style (big, very dark, pointy, simple and colourless), it was built solely to celebrate the landscape it was in. Across (mainly Northern) Scandinavia, you tend to find a simple style of design in both products, furniture and buildings, in order to avoid distracting you from the marvellous views; skill and craftsmanship are amplified by simplicity and durable materials. My parents found this hill somewhere in the Netherlands between a bunch of potato fields and a forest; they thought it was the perfect place to build their celebration of nature and Scandinavian living. My mom even insisted on having a window (one of the few windows in the house without curtains or cover) right above the bathtub so she could watch the view while sitting in the tub (I have only ever been afraid of people from outside enjoying their view). The countless big windows in every room of the house allow lots of light to enter the building, and the view is striking opposed to the few colors inside. The sunlight and solar panels on the roof make the house entirely self-sufficient in energy, and my parents invested in 'timeless' high-end furniture, that they haven't replaced in decades. When sitting in the garden or on the balcony, we can actually hear everything people say that walk or cycle by. I have heard both gasps of people wanting to live here, and disgust for building something that seemed so out of place in the landscape next to 100-year old farmhouses. I think my parents had the best intentions, and they still love their house, but I think it was due to the large open space, the lack of snow, the contrasting surroundings and not having a lot of 'Hygge', that it never felt like a home to me. To summarize, I believe that 'modern' simple architecture does have a place in society, since at times it amplifies nature instead of obscuring it. It is more difficult to appreciate a building that is not highly decorated or 'curvy', similar to how it can be a challenge to appreciate some modern art or a simple product. However, the message to me is quite similar: "In modern design, it is not about the building, or the artwork; it is about the person behind it, the story, the time and place." I think that large, unspecific-looking buildings try to obscure their story by being big, and I just wanted to share a different side to simple design. Simple and straight does not equal badly built, badly maintained and unloved. Le Plessis-Robinson, as mentioned in your next video, is such a good example because it includes nature, well-kept buildings and a human-centered design. I normally never type this much on youtube, so thank you for making me think about this subject! I figured I'd share my story, since I am interested to find out whether others have had similar, or contrasting, insights. Greetings, from a fellow Dutch person :)
I forgot to add that eventually, I had an internship during high school at the architecture company that helped design my parents house. They asked me to make an animated video for them, explaining their company values. As I have seen in other comments, the owner of the company explained to me back then that it was impossible for them to build the way they wanted to. My parents house was the only building they could be slightly creative with, and was ten years later, still one of their favorite projects. The only alteration my parents made was to paint the wooden beams of the house in a dark grey - the main architect was still mad about it and so was I. However, they showed me more recent sketches of neighbourhoods that started out like beautiful houses with patterns on the walls and great building materials, to then show me the finished houses of decent quality but without patterns. It felt very grim to be around such great designers and people with a true vision, that were so limited by policies and budgets. That was eventually what made me decide not to study architecture. Even though I did not expect it, product design at TU Delft has shifted largely towards social service design. The very first lecture I ever had was from an older designer who told us that with the designs of his generation, they ruined the world; now it was up to us to fix it. In the past three years, I have looked at inclusivity at schools, the democratic system, gentrification in neighbourhoods, (social) housing and (mental) healthcare more than I have looked at actual physical products. I hear the word 'sustainable' every day, and have followed multiple courses about environmentally friendly production techniques and durable materials. I've been following a course called co-design in order to not make bad designs that nobody likes or needs, I have roamed the streets with 'social design probes' and sent out countless questionnaires. I was told by my coach for the course 'Envisioning the Future' that I had no idea how privileged I was for being able to have been educated in the arts, to now be at university, and how I should not forget that only a small portion of the population can produce, publish and preserve their art, let alone afford to go to uni. I have been thoroughly humbled; I have been forced to sustain slight existential damage in order to realize the importance of human-centred and sustainable design. What I really wonder is this; Do others experience the same kind of warnings/values in their curriculum or workplace?
Literally my school say to me that "you have to like modern architecture" and that " it makes more sense than classical". But their ideas can't change my view, because the more you supress, the more it comes out
I genuinely don’t understand architects distaste for beauty. Going through architecture school so far seems like systematic sabotage with the intent for their students to leave with the same distaste. The professors are rude if you bring up the idea to the point, absolutely disgusting the things I’ve been called.
This is a very common story, and I hope stories like this will soon belong to the past. Thank you for sharing - I'll do my best to bring as much hypocrisy and fallacies to light as I can
So weird those people behave that way. I've heard similar stories, I wonder what's behind it ? I thought people on those studies would be very tolerant people as well.
It’s really terrible. The worst part about it is they try to plot as a way to help find my place in architecture. I took 4 years of drafting classes with a professional (more open minded) architect so I’ve already found my place. They say “you should do historical preservation to learn design” but don’t mention that only one teacher speaks of classical designs and the teachers all hate him because of it. Not to mention I have one of the highest grades in my class about learning the concepts of architecture but my classmates look at me like I’m crazy whenever I tell them what I prefer or believe in.
@@Mark-xd5up I probably shouldn’t disclose that in the event a faculty member somehow stumbles across this. Then I’d really have no chance in the world of architecture
I very much appreciate this movement of defending classical/traditional architecture as being an option for new buildings. This advocacy is necessary in my opinion, everyone deserves a beautiful environment and an effort made in how their housing is thought off, built and made. the only thing I would say aside from this is the fact that it is, to me at least, about balance. Some modern buildings are iconic and can be appreciated if their relation to their environment is rightly set up. As a lot of movements, the modernisme movement is bastardised for a quick buck and this is imo why we have such a repulsion for it. It is more often then not done to impress or to save money, which can be detrimental. However I do not think it should be one or the other. Ideally I would see most housing and civil buildings being more traditional and modernism kept for special projects, with stricter rules in terms of materials or at least the relation of the building to its direct environment. love your work!
Amen to all of this. I have been thinking this since I was a child, and I am so happy to know that I’m not the only person thinking this. Bravo 👏🏼 good video!
I appreciate the great structure of the topic in the video and the visuals! Currently working on aesthetics within the urban planning process and this has become a fertile ground for discussions in terms of demystifying the question of the aesthetic city. There is a big gap of knowledge when it comes to principles and features that we should be encouraging in city planning and regulation work. I think as long as we keep treating aesthetics as subjective phenomena we will not gain much from the current debates. These features you describe would still need to be rooted in the locality, and of course many of these studies correspond to eurocentric notions of architectural beauty, would be interesting to see studies from other parts of the world (although if we think of asia: chinese palaces, indian temples, mosques and so on we can see some of the features). I wonder if these can be use as a departure point in towns to see what is important for people and develop aesthetics guidelines as a vision for the city. Of course, making them legally binding for developers will be the toughest challenge. Keep up the good work!
Great, important and very well made video! 👌👏 Regarding the criteria of beauty in architecture, in my view, the right mixture of criteria/parameters and their practical execution/application is essential. Meaning, let‘s say the design of a skyscraper can be on the one hand asymmetrical (principally „negative“ for looking beautiful), but on the other hand have a beautiful organic, flowing shape that makes it attractive and calming to look at. A „holistic harmony“ generating look is very important too, I‘d say.
Agree everything, and I am an architect that has thought about this philosophical dilema all my life. But “well done” is a wide issue, simple and complex 😉
Find all the sources on this page: theaestheticcity.com/resources/youtube/what-makes-buildings-beautiful-and-why-beauty-does-matter/ - and if you liked it, please consider supporting the channel! Thank you so much!
4 minutes into this video, I started thinking of Frank Lloyd Wright. The homes he designed, I could just stare at them. They are so photographic and just plain beautiful.
I think you would like Camillo Sitte's "Art of Building Cities" and "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs.
Above all the points you described, there are othe modernist mistakes in terms of an urban plaza / piazzeta or an urban corner that you did not cover in your video.
Brazilian documentary about this topic:
"O Fim da Beleza"
th-cam.com/users/liveBIvpg-QKJ_o?feature=share
@@Joskemom exactly! Modern buildings can be very beautiful but as far as this channel is concerned, if you don't add excessive ornamentation on your facades and make creepily symmetrical buildings then it's ugly
A city is not like a canvas. Many of these architects treat buildings as literal works of art, and they treat art simply as expression. Why should i have to be forced to watch someone’s art all day every day?
I have studied architecture and always felt like we are heading in the wrong direction for the sake of some ideology. The funny part is that here in my country of Austria in order to call himself an "architect" a person has to swear an oath to always serve the general public first. And still they ignore the obvious preferences of the normal people for their elitist ideology they are thaught in university that resembles more a kind of modern art than actually giving the people what they need.
It gets you angry and the ones in charge ignore you and continue with their biased education in architecture.
In Germany on the other hand you have the Untere Denkmalschutzbehörde which forbids to erect new buildings which are not looking like they are made in their time. Meaning if you want to build a Gründerzeit-style multi family home, you won't get a permit for it. It's insane!
Because global predictor (the smartest of the dumb) with their concept of refined fascism reproduces mob-"elite" system of social idiots.
Have seen this among my architect friends. Was visiting one of them a few years ago in England and they took me to a tour of the city that mostly included a questionable mishmash of rather ugly buildings. All being "amazingly innovative" in one way or another, but simply impossible to look at. Surely, something has to change.
Yeah I don't know a single beautiful building in Vienna that was built after the war
Completely agree 100%! Most modern buildings have fantastic interiors with nicely appointed kitchens and bathrooms (for residential units) and other cool rooms. But most people don't get to see the inside of a building. All of us do get to see the outside of a building, and we residents of a city should have a voice in the design of such a building. We shouldn't say no to the construction of a building, but we should have a say on how it looks from the outside, because we have to walk by that thing every day.
It looks tasteless when people choose modern interior but historical exterior. Better just be outdated and have both sides oldschool.
@@ligametis If I don't live in the building, all I see is the exterior. I don't have to worry about whether the discordance between the interior and exterior is tasteless or not. I do, however, have to walk by the building, so I do like to see a pleasing exterior.
@Eric Dew I find beutalism and bare concrete pleasing. So what is the solution then?
It is still about forcing someone to follow particular style. With the same analysis you are also allowed to have historical old school interior while people are living with modern exterior.
@@ligametis Its not tasteless to get the best of both worlds in a nice historical facade combined with all the trappings of modern living. Its actually quite brilliant.
@@fatboyRAY24 So you like historical or you like modern? You can't really choose both. Otherwise you get McMansions. It is not best of both world, it is tasteless mismatch.
People have accepted that historical interiors are inconvenient, overcrowded, uncomfortable and it is expensive to maintain ceiling painting, fancy rugs on walls. Why people don't see the same reasons for why historical exterior is not being chosen?
I'm still a first year architecture student, I hope I never will grow to hate older architecture, as there is so much beauty to be found in it
No architect hates old architecture. It's the boredom of it that makes architects design new things instead of copying for hundreds of years the same things all over again:)
@@vocartagmailcom Refusing to learn from the past is not a laudable thing. Of course, modernism is not exactly modern anymore either, so I don't get why copying stuff from 1930 is fine but 1910 is right out
@@vocartagmailcom The victorian styles of the 19th century were not identical copies of the same architecture of previous centuries. The revival styles of skyscrapers from the early 20th century did not copy older architecture without adding new ideas. The Art Deco style most certainly did not copy old architecture.
For some reason, however, architecture after the the second world war is rarely considered beautiful in comparison to those earlier styles.
The answer is not that older styles copy themselves over and over. It is simply untrue.
Just keep learning from outside school too! Teachers will try to rewire your brain into modernism and nothing else but you'll do fine if you remember their word is not law.
Much luck in your career ❤
I think this is the same about people’s style. When you go to college you start to wonder off and look weird cus you’re bored and want to change everything.. until eventually you go back at not trying too hard and automatically liking to wear beautiful classic clothes and cut and dye your hair the proper/natural way again, wich pleases others as well not just your rebel self 😅
As an architect, I completely agree with this, actually I just got confidence this will be seen and hopefully change a lot that is coming up in our built environments
It will "be seen" more if you show it to people... all the time.
Whenever you design a building, please make it beautiful. It's integral for our well-being. Brutalism and modernism make people claustrophobic, which lead to them feeling mentally unwell, and people who feel mentally unwell lead to a society that is mentally unwell, and a society that is mentally unwell is more prone to conflict and chaos
I totally agree with this! Urban architecture should not about self expression but the creation of buildings that appease the masses as they’re the people that’ll live in it. The power of beauty should not be underestimated!
Office buildings have no one living in them. Most government buildings have no one living in them. Most factory buildings, warehouses. What criteria should they be built to? For residential buildings, who will arbitrate what is beautiful, what is not. Who's sense of beauty? Yours? Mine? a newborn, he she will live in it later.
Architects follow the dictates of their clients. Who is the client? Probably some soulless corporation bent on maximising profits.
@pete fluffy It’s not just about those that are living in these buildings but also those that view it from the outside - the architecture of a place has a huge effect on the way we perceive a place. As the video shows there are defined forms that the human eye finds attractive - that is what beauty is and that’s what should be included more in urban design and architecture.
@@zoomingcomet9663 I have not seen an attractive building in 50 years and I am not likely to ever see one if thewy insist os huge things.
I don't think it should be about self expression or appeasing the masses. The answer is somewhere in between.
Self-expression should be reserved for a painting or a piece of furniture to be put inside the own home.
Should be shown to architectural students once a week
Teacher will block it because it's not modernist
@@javierpacheco8234 You'll just have to be patient until you get out of school. Many of us are demanding radical change in architectural education. Beginning with an end to bullying and a beginning with tolerance and understanding.
@@colummulhern8865 I agree with you, I don't think it's fair to bully old or traditional architecture, the teachers are being a little totalitarian and I think it's not okay for teachers to be like that to students. Not everyone will like modernist architecture.
@@javierpacheco8234 If you're a student you'll just have to navigate your way through and start designing traditional buildings when you get out. Don't put yourself in danger by trying unless the teachers approve in advance.
Schools are beginning to change, but there is a lot of resistance from the cult of modernism.
You think they don't see something like this? They see, they know and they still think what is being designed nowadays is still better.
Architects need to see this!!!! Historical buildings have been popular for decades yet modern buildings get bland fast.
Centuries*
Unfortunately, it's not about the beauty, but the ego. If you've met most architects, you would understand what I mean by this...
I actually stopped attending architectural school because of this. I noticed it everywhere, and people would laugh at me for saying it. It seems like beauty is disappearing from human culture, and we are becoming ugly, primitive machines, slowly forgetting who we are and what we are made for. Thank you for posting! I cried while watching. I believe there is a coming renaissance in the form of authentic beauty that we have never seen before. I think AI will help bring more awareness to it, and we will become more aware of the patterns that make us feel good and see the difference between what is ugly and what is beautiful.
Precisely. And the ironic thing is that the AI itself is more humane than many humans nowadays.
...you cried while watching?
Not sure AI has the empathy needed to engage with human need for beauty, or even an understanding of beauty.
@@sandrapicton6349 Perhaps not, but most AI seem to be designed for rather benign goals (e.g. Midjourney or Leonardo.ai). If these AIs were to pose a threat to humans, it would be purely accidental. Admittedly, there may be exceptions (e.g. chaos GPT), but I think human selfishness and malice is largely absent in many of the AIs I've witnessed to date. What's more, the ones that fuel or mirror those characteristics, were created by people to do so. On a final note, AI do not need to have empathy to engage with human need or even have an understanding of beauty to be reliably trained to generate beautiful concept images. As long as humans with empathy and an understanding of beauty and humanity's shared perception of it, are training the AI on images that do meet human needs for beauty; and other humans are similarly prompting the models, then the results will reflect an understanding of beauty, even empathy.
It is not going to come back magically. Maybe after a battle for the soul of humanity but the plan of our over lords will never permit it as it stands now.
I've noticed a similar phenomenon in bodybuilding as in architecture students. Most bodybuilders start because they want to improve their appearance, but somewhere along the way, they lose their sense of aesthetics. If you compare last year's Mr. Olympia winner, Hadi Choopan, with an old-school icon like Steve Reeves, it's clear that Reeves looks more aesthetically pleasing. If you were to ask 100 people outside of bodybuilding which of the two looks more aesthetically pleasing, I bet 90% would say Reeves. Yet, for some reason, many people in bodybuilding seem to have completely lost their sense of beauty.
It may be similar to how mr.video man mentioned that taste changes and that beauty has tree criterias. The 2. criteria of function may be the culprit since bodybuilders slowly become aclimated and atrachted to for a (for exemples skae I know nutting about this stuff.) more eavey thick tricep since it has the astetic function of providing another kind of arm definition.
OMG... I looked up the pictures and we also added Arnold Schwartz..., and we could see how ugly it is getting!! Great comparison!
@@teachoc9482thank you :D yea its really noticable
Finally somebody mentions this topic! I am so sick of people saying, beauty is subjective.
Read Kant, beauty is subjective. Doesn't matter if you are sick. Truth is like that, unpleasant
@@bigorstojanov184 With all due respect, old mate Kant has nothing to do with this. There really are some intrinsic qualities to architecture that most people can agree on are beautiful. Subjectivity only matters when considering everybody's hierarchy of beautiful qualities, other than that there is a baseline for beauty because we've evolved to find these traits beautiful.
@@human6310Yes, but that depends. I like more windows, white and grey, with open layouts and such. Modern New York skyscrapers look better than old French ones.
@@human6310I also prefer Minimalism over Maximalism:
@@bigorstojanov184 shut up and repeat "19th century french architecture is objective beauty"
This is so important to our cities and our lives - great job outlining it all so clearly! I hope to see more videos in the future.
Thanks Will! Working on it :)
Many schools were built with reinforced concrete in the 20th century, but according to one study, there seems to be a research result that concrete schools have a higher incidence of school violence than wooden ones. I think this was research in Germany, France, Canada and Japan. If the beauty of appearance, the use of natural materials, and the harmony of the townscape keep people's minds at peace, this can be a very important study. Beauty is more than just decoration. Thank you for showing us the light of hope.
a wooden school? Have yet to see one
Remember the darknes...
@@ivanastein2671 this building sprung to mind as an example: "The Lunenburg Academy is a historic school building located in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Constructed in 1895 to replace a building that had been destroyed by fire, the academy operated as a school from 1895 until 2012, when the Town of Lunenburg took over the property. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1983 for its distinctive Second Empire architectural features and its illustration of Nova Scotia's education system in the 19th century. As of 2019, the building houses a library and music school, and restoration efforts are ongoing."
For a couple of years I went to a school in Changi, Singapore. Some of the buildings used ordinary materials - brick, cement, concrete. But some used attap - basically leaves and wood from the Attap palm. They were much nicer to be in - the right material for the local conditions. Not very long-lasting, of course, but long enough.
@@ivanastein2671
The schools that I frequented as a kid were of wood inside.
Thank god that someone still appreciates the traditional/ classic architecture… have you ever lived in an old beautiful building with rich ornaments and high ceilings versus a modern square building stripped of all ornamentation with low/ normal ceilings? Well, i do. It is another life! My heart sings every time I come home and see the generous and ornate space… it may cost more, but it is definitely worth it!
I'm so delighted to find actual reasons, physical, evolutionary and psychological, why I (and obviously many others) prefer traditional architecture to modern, block-like structures! I also learned why my home is not "minimalist" and why I get so much more enjoyment and productivity from an office with places for my eye to focus on and rest, as opposed to an empty space with few details. Great video!
Do I dare to hope for even a slight glimpse of beauty? I moved to nature because I can't stand the constant despair and feelings of absolute disgust in our cities.
@mariskab.9106 yeah, I live in the GTA, and all cities here and in the rest of Ontario for that matter look dresdfully similar. Now that would not necessarily be a bad thing if they looked like Dutch cities, which all look quite similar but beautiful. However, the cities here are mostly ugly 😭
When I went to architecture school (in the 80s), the word beauty was NEVER used. And the highest praise you'll hear from an architect about someone else's building is 'nice'. Well, psychopaths are 'nice' too, until they get what they want.
Haha, yes, or if they don't.
@@Mrpersonman0 I don't know about buildings, but you definitely have to be a psychopath to become a brutalist architect.
Lmao
True! And hilarious comparison to psychopaths. Yes...Ted Bundy was very nice! 😆
Im an architectural designer with a few years of work experience and this video outlines really well something Ive been thinking about for years. That is the topic of why theres such a divide between what architects like and what the general public likes. I do think that alot of architects, myself included, would love to build things that the general public also likes. I think we as designers can strive for an architecture with just as much composition, resolution and detail as more traditional ornate styles while still being done in a contemporary language. But its hard when you have to worry about things that eat up your budget such as insulation, aggressive schedules, building systems integration, lack of skilled labor and artisans and insane construction costs. There has to be a happy medium but its a struggle …
Ornaments used to be mass produced.
If I where a dictator and architects would not cooperate with my beauty comities, I would order them all fired and banned from the construction sector and would have civil engeneers coppy the buildings my people have rebuilt after every war for centuries no mater the cost.
Forget ornament. Elegant proportions and sensitive detailing cost nothing.
@@CrankyHermit that is not enough. The human brain craves a certain kevel of structured complexity.
@@kungszigfrids1482 i'd do the same. It would be the dicature of beauty. Beauty needs to be present in all aspects of life. New architecture is violent and opressive. Brutalism deserves its name. Communist architecture also express this violence. But i'd not advocate for the removal of past structures. They should stay as a reminder and to help put things in contrast. I enjoy brutalist aesthetic as much as i hate it.
Thank you. You put the problem in very clear and short words, just perfect. As an alumni of an academy of fine arts I must say that you speak from my heart. It makes me angry to see how all these young architects are conditioned to build things that are a) ugly and b) often do not even work, just because they are told again and again that designing buildings to be useful and beautiful is outdated and they have to prove how "innovative" they are instead. (Btw., towers of glass and steal and cubes of concrete have not been "innovative" for a long time, and neither have all those ugly concrete cubes with facades of raw wood planks. Nevertheless those are built again and again and they still get more praise than a beautiful house in a traditional form with a useful roof.)
As an Art Historian and Illustrator, I say this is an absolutely amazing video.
Additional note: you showed the images of columns in classical orders, the Erechteion temple on the Acropolis of Athens, as well as the Vitruvius publications in this video - this is the base of the classical language of architecture that was a sort of a guideline for architects throughout most of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque and obviously Classicist periods.
The Art Nouveau and Bauhaus were a few of the movements that “killed it”, calling for the functionality after all. It also had to do with the need to provide comfortable housing for a larger amount of people and not only for a small elite. Public buildings followed the trend too. The problem is, the thing with functionality combined with cutting cost went too far, and the needs for profits are still growing. It would be great if some architects could create functional buildings while using classical vitruvian principles.
i stg, everyone that took inspiration from Le Corbusier has devastated the concept of architecture. The damage that man's legacy has done to the art is immense.
I, as an architect, would like to counter, that not everything Bauhaus (for example) did was bad. The and the idea of "form follows function" has opened a lot of possibilities.
Sadly it is true that it lead to a komplete demoinzation of "beauty" in architekture - at least for a while. A phrase that best summons it is: "Ornament is a crime"
And we were still tought this in architecture school to a certain extent.
BUT! Ornamentation is coming back again. Slowly but steady. And there are a lot of architects that try their best to build "beautyful" or at least "not boring/ugly" again.
The problem is often that there is only a limited amount of highly prestigeuos buildings to be build, where you get the budget to live out your imagination. I for example are working in a company that is designing mostly appartement-blocks => so the developer always wants to save money here and save money there and wants a certain appartement-mix and certain designs of the appartements, etc. these pretty constricting specifications come up against restrictions of a developement plan initiated by the town etc. And then you are completely caged in.
With all these necessities it is very hard to try to bring in theories like Vitruves etc.
We try our best with for example interesting Windowmixes, railing-designs, colours etc. But as I said, we are limited by budget.
And let me tell you as somebody who designed and built his own house: As soon as you imagine something that is slightly more challenging / difficult to build, it imediately costs a lot more than the "standard", which can be very frustrating budgetwise ;-)
But it is getting better, trust me!
PS: And back to Bauhaus: something we definately got from it is nice, wide Windows. I'd sys, without Bauhaus we would still stick to the old tiny window-formates that were used in earlier periods - so not all bad with the more cleaner architecture...
@@florianfritsch8622 thank you for your amazing comment and insights!
I agree that Bauhaus has its own share of good outcome, I even wrote a paper about it, and I can say I love how their building in Dessau is designed. Many designed products from Bauhaus valued minimalism which I considered quite a useful life skill. I especially like the story how Josef Albers would bring old newspaper to his new students and tell them to create from it. The thing you mentioned with wide windows is another great example, that resulted in beautiful wide balcony doors that may open up the whole indoor space in the summer.
In any case, I understand this thing with cost, and I hope for more opportunities with esthetically aware clients for you :)))
Wait did you really said Art Nouveau? It did everything according to this video, its beautyfull, full with ornaments and uses shapes and icons from nature, its the striking opposite of bauhaus.
@@gergokun7154 I was not talking about something being beautiful in this context, but I said that Art Nouveau abolished the Vitruvian classical language of architecture. So did Bauhaus. There was a beauty in all these movements. However, the further evolution of architecture abolished the esthetics too.
Absolute tragedy how little traffic this channel has. What can I do in my city to encourage the designers to incorporate beauty in it?
Thank you Stefan; I'm afraid that is my own fault, I need to produce faster... There are multiple ways to foster this in your city. One is to get in touch with the mayor, municipality, developers and other people 'in power'. If they don't want to cooperate or have hostile views of these ideas, it's best to find like-minded people and band together in an 'Architecture uprising' group (like arkitektur upproret in Sweden), or a lobby group like Street Level Australia. None of these paths are easy & quick though, but it is always helpful and fun to find people who also support this as they often share other values as well I've discovered (mostly, appreciation of beauty and optimism!)
@@the_aesthetic_city You just happen to be in a small niche.
@@the_aesthetic_city Btw, beauty is usually lost in ignorance of principles.
Ancient Greeks simplified their columns and some elements. Germans thought that simplification was the way, and they ended up with buildings that were mere block compositions. Greeks knew that they had to keep rhythm as any any other art, so they didn't sacrifice it, you will find repeating elements in columns and detail, and variations in the rhythm. In modern architecture, this would be a series a windows at the right distances, vs a simple huge top to floor window as in a modern German building.
Germans thought that they could add more detail to a statue to make the work more interesting, and produced some terrible pediments that only look good from a very short distance, a distance impossible for any user of the building. Greeks knew that the detail must be appropriate for the distance, so their works looks beautiful at the typical viewing distance while also looking natural and beautiful up close. They used more depth and simpler forms. The work looks beautiful even up close in a museum.
Greeks designed buildings to be seen in motion, when one approaches the building, as we do in cinematography, and Eisenstein noticed it. Germans designed without using time.
@@aristotle_4532 the last sentence makes me think of something a lot of designers, art and architects students make both phisical and digital: models.
Models make a static idea of the thing you are going to build, it creates this idea that if it's perfect in theory it should be perfect in practice.
My idea would be to implement more tech in these models to feel them, to see them in advance, to walk through them. To make the people who's going to live and work in those spaces try it before it is built
@@claudiosolomon1324 Even when you photograph the actual building, matching the actual experience using lenses and video takes serious skill.
Fantastic video! As an architect and educator, I greatly appreciate the content of this video. It has a very important message that needs to be shared over and over again. Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much! I hope to continue making content in this spirit
I don't understand his example about buildings going out of style, no longer valued and being torn down after 50 years. That was the same situation with buildings built in 1900, people had such opinions about buildings he praises in this video.
@@ligametisyep that’s a real limitation people need to be aware of. Some things we consider ugly today may be considered beautiful tomorrow. At the same time though, biophilic design is also a real thing that has effects on our psychology that architects should be aware of. Absolutely chaotic abstract buildings raise stress levels. I do think architects have a responsibility to at least be aware of the effects their designs can have on people and general principles of what is more universally agreed to be beautiful by most people. To be honest though I have much less of a problem with the occasional “ugly” abstract unique architecture than I do with the mundane architecture and urban design used for box stores and office buildings, and also suburban McMansions. These are a much bigger problem because we are drowning in them, and the reason they are ugly is not because the architect is always bad, but because it’s just cheap to build that way. And also because of car culture.
@CampingforCool41 I believe there must be some good ratio between mundane and very unique.
Having unique buildings everywhere can be a mess, while same looking buildings are, well, mundane and boring.
In the past there were churches and palaces for variety, nowadays we no longer build them and something has to replace their impact on cities.
Please share this video amongst your architect colleagues!!🙌😀
Wholeheartedly agree! People underestimate the importance of beauty in architecture and infrastructure, thinking that only utility matters. There's a reason cities that have been around since before the modern era are popular with tourists.
This is such a great abstract of what I think of for many years and tried to spread. Please keep on. Its so important to let people know about this.
Thank you so much for this video. The Brutalist style that arose after WW2 (based on Socialist and Communist philosophies and embraced by elites and academics) really did a number on the built environment of the Western World. SO MANY beautiful buildings were torn down because they were "passe'" or "old fashioned". In many places, beautiful facades were covered up with metal panels or boring tiles. Maybe there was a desire for a "modern" or "streamlined" look, especially as the "space age" began to dawn, but nothing should ever be a boring gray box! In places like Savannah GA, they need large parking garages in the historic district, but anyone casually driving by wouldn't know that's what they are because the architect took the time to make the exterior of the garages look like historic row house blocks. Fortunately in my small city, over the last 20 years, many of those plain facades are being removed and the beautiful architecture underneath restored. I hope the information in this video will reach many city planners who will insist on visually pleasing exteriors especially for public/municipal structures. I'm definitely going to be sharing this video with a few city council persons I know.
Fascinating. I would add one feature of physical beauty, light. How natural light reflects on a surface, how artificial light can center on attractive features, what colours we use... I think it's greatly important, and can affect the other factors.
As for your point on chaos, I live in Latin-America and I know mostly Latin-American cities, and the ones I find more atractive have white or soft-coloured facades, with minimal coverage of signs and lettering son they don't have to compete with each other to draw attention; and those I find most hideous are unfinished edifices covered in a screaming and chaotic information overload of signs, lettering, ugly coloured facades (when they are painted)... Don't get me wrong, I love the colorful, fun, busy merchant streets that are so common in this region, it's the architecture (or lack of it) I'm talking about.
Great point about light! Ironically, in the film "The Lake House", a modern designer lectures his architect son on the importance of noticing how light is different in every place or part of the world.
Started Architecture school in 1977, and it took three semesters to break my spirit and ruin my interest in the profession. I loved the architecture history lectures, but the rest of the program was designed to shatter any aspiration toward the good or beautiful, the principled, the satisfying, or even the durable and adaptable. We were inspired by the heights of past human creativity, and then initiated-indoctrinated-in the futile impossibility of any further such achievement. It seemed impertinent, maybe immoral to even try, and you'd be thought a fool-a sentimental heretic-for appearing to rely on a 'dead' visual language. After 40 some years of slowly learning to recognize the patterns of our modern societal pathology, I began to see that the failing was not mine. And I'm encouraged by the current energetic renewal spreading among those devoted to building with sensitivity and care.
I live in Milwaukee. The apartment I live in is very bland, but some of the condos across the street from me are these lovely old Victorian style houses. Downtown is close by and some of the neo gothic architecture is just gorgeous. I find myself mouth agape just walking down the street at times. Many of the buildings are still bland, but it's a far cry compared to when I lived with my parents in the suburbs. Beauty matters in architecture.
it endears the person to their living space, turning what is a house into a home and with this attachment, it makes a person work for its upkeep.
It's not just beauty, historical styles have more friezes , moldings, etc that allow eyes to cling to something. That is what make historic cities attractive, there's always something else to notice. A modern building is so plain that an immediate sense of boredom and sameness gets to you right away.
Interesting how the the proof is in the pudding. What architects like to live in and what they like to build are two entire separate things, and I love the research that went into this video. Well researched and thought out. Thankyou.
You have explained this topic very beautifully.
Truely, I hope in the future people all around the world will embrace their traditional architecture.
Yes, but then we will be called nationalistic and exclusive of other cultures, whereas people visit beautiful cities which have a feel for the culture and people for whom it was built.
The vile globalist architecture movement is just that 'globalist' there is no room for national pride or representations of a country's history, it's just plain, regimented , boring, meaningless concrete and glass
I like your profile, Baldwin IV was a brilliant king despite all his setbacks
I hope not, progress is essential and architecture has always changed. It looks good because it’s old, but new wouldn’t look good. We can implement some features in the newer buildings.
@@TropicalityCatyet that doesn't translate to most modern architecture. It seldom looks good when it's old. As progress for progress sake is meaningless. That's how people become untethered from their built environment
Excellent video. Would love to see more. The part about how designers of modernist buildings tend to themselves live in traditional-design homes was especially noteworthy. Another, perhaps less obvious, point: buildings that are not embraced by the public will tend to be torn down more than those that are. This means constant rebuilding, which usually means constant manufacture of more concrete. It takes a mature tree eight years to process the carbon produced by one yard of concrete. IOW, the continual rebuilding from disliked structures requires more and more concrete.
About that features of beauty, no wonder people love Art Nouveaux. It's beautiful and filled with nature and curves
This needs to be seen by many, many, many more people than it currently has.
Could not agree more!
I think if New York was replaced by classic architecture that was European, people would hate it. Modern Skyscrapers look way better, but with more windows, they have more light inside. They usually also include more nature.
@@TropicalityCat I don't think New York City should put so many international style buildings on the skyline, either. There is starting to be a transition in newer buildings back to something more like Art Deco in more recent designs, and that fits well with the NYC's historic buildings.
This really helped me with explaining to myself why, even if people are nice and chill, some places just heightens my anxiety and some places keep me calm.
This whole video into my veinssss please. Exactly the content I've been searching for. Thank you.
Thank you Thoa! I also missed this content and thought that it should be made, and thought that I could do it. So it is great to hear you liked it and fills a 'gap in the market'!
I love the old buildings from before ca. 1930! In my opinion almost every style, that was developed in this time was beautiful.
Proud to have recognized Paris, Stockholm, Barcelona, Utrecht, Amsterdam, New York City! ❤
Well done man, this is an awesome first upload!
A small point of feedback: It's 14 minutes of continued (pretty fast) talking. A few slower sections or pauzes might help digest the material better.
Looking forward to future uploads!
Thank you Eduard! And I agree, it is a bit fast - I will introduce some more strategic silences in future uploads.
@@the_aesthetic_city i wonder if there is anything you can do even within this video, to add even a 0.4 second pause between some sentences?
@@the_aesthetic_city I actually loved the pace of the entire video. It kept me from start to finish, which is pretty rare.
Sint Jan’s Kathedraal in Den Bosch zag ik ook.
When Kant famously wrote that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ he didn’t mean (as I understand it) that Beauty was a matter of subjective judgement- Beauty is Beauty - the subjectivity he spoke of lies not in interpretation of beauty but in the individual’s ability to perceive Beauty. In some ways what this video talks about is aligned to this idea of universal beauty (though arrived at via scientific not philosophical means). I’m not sure I entirely agree but it is really interesting when two very different modes of thinking arrive at similar conclusions. What I do whole heartedly agree with is that beauty is essential to our quality of life and the sooner we see the end of functionalist architecture the happier we will all be! 😊
This is the most concise argument for the value of beauty I have ever heard. Thank you, and keep up the important work you are doing.
Well said about those self-complacent avant-garde architects who in fact live in comfortable, traditional and even beautiful houses! I have every contempt for the contemporary architecture. I'm glad the architects have the same feelings in secret. After all they are human too.
I’m a concept artist for video games by trade. That means I need to know how to [for instance] make a design look intimidating and aggressive on a glance, to communicate that you are dealing with an enemy. Or conversely, how to make something look benign and friendly.
What I hadn’t consciously realized is just HOW much of this applies to architecture!
Hard angles, edges and overhangs are something pretty commonly found in city architecture. Incidentally, all of those are commonly used in shape language to make something feel threatening, dangerous or aggressive. Of course that’s going to make people feel stressed.
I truly loved your A+ video. You brought depth and accuracy to all three points your above description makes. I don't think it is easy to elevate the importance of the awareness of what a rich environment vs a poor one can have on each of us, but you achieved it beautifully. Thank-you. This was really important and I hope you continue to illuminate all of the in depth details you brought laid out.
This video is fabulous. It is painful to observe how many people are oblivious to these concepts. Please do more.
I'm glad this is getting so much attention; there needs to be way more emphasis on the physical attractiveness of urban places, especially as we are starting to reconsider our built environment. Beauty matters.
the world is currently being run by "people" that despise our idea of beauty.
I think that a critical thing overlooked in this essay is the irreplaceable presentation of the human hand on a work of art. We see the human hand in great works of art and it conveys sacrifice and intention to the eye. And interpretable dialogue between the creator and the viewer is always an essential element to the beauty of a work of art.
Apart from proper tourist destinations, I’m pretty sure what is actually making people not gather, is the literal ‘ungatherability’ of the space, such as car centric and anti homeless (anti human) design, there are streets in Sydney Australia which have the most not beautiful buildings but people gather all over, because there was no cars and there are places to sit and there were services to enjoy, I think beauty is the cherry on top, which normally accompanies tourist areas which have restricted car use and places to sit ext
I love how whenever he brings up "beautiful" architecture he shows french architecture from the 19th century.. it truly is the peak of architectural design.
Can't help myself
@@the_aesthetic_cityhave a look at the videos on my channel. There are geometric codes in these buildings which are secretly used by modern architects. I have much more information such as what is going on in a simple Victorian house which nobody is aware of. I’m giving you something very significant here. If it means nothing to you it explains exactly why nothing will ever change as the problem has little to do with education at architecture schools but a closed mindset of everyone not just the architects.
Gothic has never been surpassed
Craftsman homes in southern California are much appreciated, except by modern developers. There's a lot of fighting over keeping them.
@@garryferrington811 oh yeah, I love the craftsman style. It's a shame most of the homes like that get torn down
I definuently agree with all this points! I think its sad that today’s architecture dont seems to care about „real“ beauty..
They're suffocated by pretense and fear
100 percent agree!
As an artist with a background in biology, psychology, and neuroscience, I believe you are right on track with everything you are saying.
I did take a course in environmental psychology and I am aware of the research in correlation between hospital room view and healing time. I'm not versed in the other studies, but I really think they would align.
Maybe you can investigate how physical appearance affects human behavior. For example, when an environment is beautiful and orderly and well cared for, people tend to treat it with more respect.
Also, social behavior and sense of community improve when city design or building design is composed of many smaller units rather than one mega-design. For example, it's better to divide up a city and have many smaller schools and grocery stores and playgrounds than one large school, etc for a city. I know this principal is perhaps a little beyond the scope of aesthetics. However, I wonder if perhaps there IS an underlying relationship that CAN be tied to aesthetics. For example, very large works of art put us in awe! So we like them as a spectacle. But they don't encourage social behavior between people. And as a species, we NEED more pro-social behaviors!!!
Maybe you can do a part 2 to this video and explore these things.
I think you are right in every point! Every architect should know this
As far as the ideology of modern architecture is concerned, I strongly recommend Tom Wolfe's book "From Bauhaus to Our House".
The quintessence:
The Bauhaus movement moved to the USA during the Second World War and became a radical academic movement that massively discriminated against architects of other styles. The modern style was seen as a grail of social justice and was directed against the "bourgeoise" and was supposed to give the ordinary worker a life worth living. The workers, however, turned out in protest against these new buildings, which made little impression on the academic ideologues.
Even today, students, here in Germany, are brainwashed depending on the university. Modernism is a long-outdated dogma, now 100 years old, but unfortunately still present among architects.
Amazingly nice video! You have featured all the aspects of beauty in the built environment in a very comprenhensive way!
As a Biophilic Designer and advocate I love it!!!
Thank you Nuria! I hope it brings more awareness to the topic
Architects and artists should collab sometime, I swear all we build is concrete blocks now.
This videos is so open minded. I knew it somewhere back in my head but I couldn't name it and I did not know how it works. Great content worth sharing !
I studied Communication Design. At our university, that meant many courses together with the prospective architects: Art History, Psychology of Perception, Designing Grids, etc. And it's actually true what this video talks about. When you looked at the models of freshmen and graduating students in comparison, for example. But I also noticed it in the way the profs and tutors tried to guide us in a certain direction design-wise ...
Some of us got told blank that we had to design in the Modernist Style. I eventually dropped out disillusioned
This video really describes my exact opinions on this topic to an uncanny degree of detail. Makes me excited to see!
Thank you!! Then you'll like what's coming :)
Practicing Architecture for over 40 years, and I still get blindsided with proposed designs of other architects, especially those with big reputations. They only create shock with what can only be unexpected. The big aspect missing today, which you only touched upon, is the need to be nearly 100% functional while making the function aspects unobtrusive & not noticed. People then become happy in an environment that supports them for many decades/centuries. Thank you for bringing it to attention.
I feel relieved that this is finally getting adressed! With all those dystopian looking new buildings I started to feel like living in a nightmare + I've always thought that some mass of people finds this beautiful somehow so there is no way to break the trend.
Dystopian? - just bland/ nondescript.
@@stuartwray6175 extra terrestrial, post apocalyptic
Oh my goodness, your message is SO completely dear to my heart!!! I feel so helpless in a world that is getting uglier and uglier!!! 😢 No one I know even speaks about it! I pray that this trend will change in the near future. Thank you so very much for helping this change to be made!!! ❤😊
I have been binging urban design videos recently, and stumbled upon this video and your latest one. Gave me a new perspective I had not considered before. Looking forward to more, thanks for making these.
Thank you for this video, I am currently working on a thesis project covering these same topics (5th year architecture funnily enough), this will be a valuable quick hand resource.
I should note that actually, most architects nowadays recognise that there are objective standards for beauty, I have had surprisingly little pushback from my tutors surrounding this choice of topic, but I do admit that we are still heavily trained to appreciate aspects of architecture that other people would find irrelevant.
Thank you for your message! Keep it up, and that is great to hear - something seems to be changing then, which is great news! It's most important to cite studies and to pull the field of Architecture out of its silo and involve other sciences like neuroscience and economics as well. Once you look at these fields and studies, you'll find so much evidence supporting the case of traditional urban forms and architecture.
Would you love to live in some baroque interior? It doesn't even seem convenient.
I remember all these buildings in NYC that were built in the 1960s, all getting awards and almost all gone today. Makes the city seem heartless and alien.
@@kinnish5267 There are plenty of buildings from that decade.
@@ligametis I might, but I wouldn’t want to clean it, so. I guess not.
Thank you so much for your research and work. This is exactly why I study architecture and urban planning and I see it as my life goal to create beautiful and sustainable places like Le Plessis Robinson. I couldn't put it into words or structure before I found your channel. It's so inspiring and gives me a lot to continue on my career path!
As an architecture student, thanks so much!! I love this video. I just subscribed ❤️
Ohh...have no idea how happy I am with this video!!!! I feel and think exactly the same way. Thank you so much!!!
Can't be emphasized enough how important this video is. Feels like changing
I completely agree with you, and I’m especially glad you mentioned the evolutionary source of sense of beauty. Also, regarding the patterns that trigger the stress response in us, I’m afraid some architects intentionally abuse this to attract attention to their buildings. I just hope this trend will change soon.
Thank you for making this channel! This kind of content is drastically needed.
YES YES YES!! You have spoken my heart out and I love the evidence you have presented. Classic architecture styles and the materials used really were much more beautiful than anything today (besides nouveau Biophilic architecture such as Stephano Boeri’s works). Keep making these amazing videos!
Thank you for the sources listed, i am writing a research paper on this topic during my psychology studies, it is a great help!
This video is simply brilliant. What a great introduction to architecture. Thank you !❤
Thank you!!
This video gave me goosebumps! What a great deep dive into beauty and how it connects to architecture and cities, and the quality of the video is also great. This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm interested in; subscribed!
I think stylistic diversity is also important to a building’s beauty. You can follow all the factors you mentioned in your video, but if each and every building looks exactly the same, it becomes background noise and a little boring.
The most interesting places to explore and live tend to have more visual variety while keeping to those principles. So a building that might not fill all the criteria, maybe because it lacks ornamentation for instance, may look beautiful surrounded by other buildings which do - because it provides a place for the eye to rest. Which tbh says the concepts of beauty cannot be solely isolated to one piece, but also how that piece interacts with others in context
Wow, such a great video! I've always felt this way about design, but I've never seen these ideas presented in such a visually appealing, comprehensible, and articulate way. Really excellent work! Hope more people watch this!
It makes so much sense now. What we love and like, and how it affects the brain, i do feel anxious whenever there is nothing to look at (gray walls) and its so much more pleasing to learn the patterns around me, I just FELT how connected i was to all you've been sayin! Really informative video! Thank you :)
Beautiful architecture like the historic buildings have a psychological soothing effect, a well thought out city with architectural aesthetics helps a city in a positive way. I live in a modern city where the buildings, homes, neighborhoods are ugly and the energy of the city is negative, my hometown tucson is a perfect example of no planning, indifference, and apathy even if the surrounding mountains are beautiful.
Fantastic video. It describes the values of beauty perfectly. If you combined these values and inspiration from traditional buildings in the area you are almost guaranteed a perfect building. This should be required study in all architectural universities.
Omg i love this video, and your analysis are absolutely correct!! I really hope these thoughts will spread in society and amongst architects in the foreseeable future!🙌🙌 we want beauty in our world, not ugly gray concrete and glass buildings🙂 give men ornaments give me beauty!❤️
I am so pleased to have chanced upon these videos...perhaps there is hope for the future of architecture if these concepts are embraced. I was delighted to see views of Poundbury and the French village as well as the many gorgeous traditional streetscapes in so many cities including Boston where I live. Unfortunately each new addition to I our sky line is a further blight to our once beautiful city. Good luck to the Aesthetic City movement...God knows we need it.
Great work Ruben! Love it!
Thank you Johan!
Finally! Thank you for spreading the word! I feel so uplifted in historical buildings made of material that fits the purpose. Most modern buildings suck the energy out of my body. I feel this so intensely, I am often angry when I walk around town, wandering what kind of people designed this city for us. Modern buildings also are complete nonsense, you need to always open the windows or use energy for air conditioning otherwise you can’t breathe. Everyone wants to live in the beautiful old buildings but because of the stupid war, there are only a few of them left. Also in my creative career I really had problems to get permission to stick to my natural sense of beauty. There are only a few possibilities to make art or learn it like a craft, build beautiful sculptures, beautiful furniture or make beautiful ornaments, you barely find a teacher for this. They all want you to be „original“ or doing something „contemporary“ but no one actuslly teaches the ART of doing something in the correct way so it will look beautiful. Commercials must be easy to read and loud…thes stress me out most of the time…they only use LEGO -colours….Alsmost everyone who does these „oldschool“ things needs to be brave and start their own business. In an industrialized world there are fewer and fewer possibilities for us to work as an employee.
Great video. Couldn’t agree more with this! My mood instantly improves when I sense a greater density of trees in an urban environment. I’ve always liked to be around more classical buildings too. I used to live in London and couldn’t fathom how some of these buildings where allowed to be built. I’ve since moved out into the countryside in a beautiful part of south west England with historic market towns, Forrest’s, rivers and valleys. Nature is all around. I couldn’t be happier.
Splendid video! It is all spot-on.
Also architects are saying "creativity" and "expression" but not actually. Clearly you can't design anything that is not in modernist design language.
Thank you, and exactly
@@the_aesthetic_city you are welcome
this is the kind of content I am looking for, I hope you continue to do so. I love European cities, they are timeless and superior to many modernized cities around the world. My concern is, though symmetry, balance, fractals and shaped can all be redone, ornamentation is somewhat a foreign concept if you want to build something contemporary that doesn't borrow from classic images. I'm Asian, and my country doesn't a very familiar ornamentation tradition to call back on much less the means to develop new materials for mass production. You would need artisans or specialists for that. In the end, it is difficult to communicate the value of beauty with those with a bottom-line agenda.
Thank you Angel! I'm not sure what country you're from, but looking at various local traditional styles I see varying levels of ornament - in the Philippines it is much more nuanced, in China there is quite some detail, in Thailand as well. Sometimes it is not needed however; using colours and making the structural beams pronounced or just having some wood carving is already a form of decoration I feel. Anyway, there are multiple ways to Rome so to speak!
@@the_aesthetic_city Maybe consider making a video about asian cities and how the aesthetics can be incorporated into building a liveable beautiful city. I'm from Malaysia, and I must say our urban planning is in the drain, buildings are all the concrete and glass boxes like the rest of the world.
I _LOVE_ your channel. I can't get enough of it; and I agree with the overwhelming majority of points you've made over the course of many videos.
This is inspiring. Love from the U.K.!
This video should have millions of views
Excellent, thanks. Beauty is so important and should be the keystone to sustainable building.
Forty years ago, when I was a student, we were castigated for placing aesthetics above form and function, in fact if it was anywhere in our work it would be ignored at best.
But beauty doesn't have to be old fashioned. There were no examples, in your video, of beautiful modern buildings like, The Bird's Nest, The Innsbruck Railway (Zaha Hadid) or the Lloyds Building (Richard Rogers) and the countless others which will be with us for the next millennia. These buildings touch the minds and hearts of people even with the most traditional tastes.
In their priorities, Architects tend to place truth above beauty. For instance, Modernism, was born after WW1 and very successfully fulfilled the desires and needs of its patrons. But this was an ugly period and lots of organizations didn't want the public to know what they were really up to, whether they were communists, capitalists or dictators. Hence, its utter and uncompromising anonymity -but humanity cannot thrive in that environment. I bet all architects have read the poetry of John Keats: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Modernism's heyday was after WWII when patrons didn't have time to care about anything, they just had to throw things up to put a roof over our heads and Modernism provided a cheap and cost effective means to achieve this.
New buildings must reflect the aspirations and concepts of the present. When we do this we are expressing self confidence and optimism. We only look back when we feel threatened. Like a toddler, bravely running away at first then running back to the mother at the site of the unexpected.
Now experts have identified the essential parts of beauty, Architects should be able to transpose them to contemporary designs.
I try to use the Golden Section in all my projects, whether modern or traditional. It's old fashioned, I know but it works. Symmetry? I try and avoid it. After all, repetition is boring.
Thanks again.
Great video! I study product design and I have seen my fair share of ugly products that were designed with the thought that form should always follow function. I grew up in a Scandinavian-style house, designed partly by my parents, in a little farmer's town in the Netherlands. They wanted to build a home that reminded them of two of their favourite places; Sweden and Norway. While I did not like the build-style (big, very dark, pointy, simple and colourless), it was built solely to celebrate the landscape it was in. Across (mainly Northern) Scandinavia, you tend to find a simple style of design in both products, furniture and buildings, in order to avoid distracting you from the marvellous views; skill and craftsmanship are amplified by simplicity and durable materials. My parents found this hill somewhere in the Netherlands between a bunch of potato fields and a forest; they thought it was the perfect place to build their celebration of nature and Scandinavian living. My mom even insisted on having a window (one of the few windows in the house without curtains or cover) right above the bathtub so she could watch the view while sitting in the tub (I have only ever been afraid of people from outside enjoying their view). The countless big windows in every room of the house allow lots of light to enter the building, and the view is striking opposed to the few colors inside. The sunlight and solar panels on the roof make the house entirely self-sufficient in energy, and my parents invested in 'timeless' high-end furniture, that they haven't replaced in decades. When sitting in the garden or on the balcony, we can actually hear everything people say that walk or cycle by. I have heard both gasps of people wanting to live here, and disgust for building something that seemed so out of place in the landscape next to 100-year old farmhouses. I think my parents had the best intentions, and they still love their house, but I think it was due to the large open space, the lack of snow, the contrasting surroundings and not having a lot of 'Hygge', that it never felt like a home to me. To summarize, I believe that 'modern' simple architecture does have a place in society, since at times it amplifies nature instead of obscuring it. It is more difficult to appreciate a building that is not highly decorated or 'curvy', similar to how it can be a challenge to appreciate some modern art or a simple product. However, the message to me is quite similar: "In modern design, it is not about the building, or the artwork; it is about the person behind it, the story, the time and place." I think that large, unspecific-looking buildings try to obscure their story by being big, and I just wanted to share a different side to simple design. Simple and straight does not equal badly built, badly maintained and unloved. Le Plessis-Robinson, as mentioned in your next video, is such a good example because it includes nature, well-kept buildings and a human-centered design. I normally never type this much on youtube, so thank you for making me think about this subject! I figured I'd share my story, since I am interested to find out whether others have had similar, or contrasting, insights. Greetings, from a fellow Dutch person :)
I forgot to add that eventually, I had an internship during high school at the architecture company that helped design my parents house. They asked me to make an animated video for them, explaining their company values. As I have seen in other comments, the owner of the company explained to me back then that it was impossible for them to build the way they wanted to. My parents house was the only building they could be slightly creative with, and was ten years later, still one of their favorite projects. The only alteration my parents made was to paint the wooden beams of the house in a dark grey - the main architect was still mad about it and so was I.
However, they showed me more recent sketches of neighbourhoods that started out like beautiful houses with patterns on the walls and great building materials, to then show me the finished houses of decent quality but without patterns. It felt very grim to be around such great designers and people with a true vision, that were so limited by policies and budgets. That was eventually what made me decide not to study architecture.
Even though I did not expect it, product design at TU Delft has shifted largely towards social service design. The very first lecture I ever had was from an older designer who told us that with the designs of his generation, they ruined the world; now it was up to us to fix it.
In the past three years, I have looked at inclusivity at schools, the democratic system, gentrification in neighbourhoods, (social) housing and (mental) healthcare more than I have looked at actual physical products. I hear the word 'sustainable' every day, and have followed multiple courses about environmentally friendly production techniques and durable materials. I've been following a course called co-design in order to not make bad designs that nobody likes or needs, I have roamed the streets with 'social design probes' and sent out countless questionnaires. I was told by my coach for the course 'Envisioning the Future' that I had no idea how privileged I was for being able to have been educated in the arts, to now be at university, and how I should not forget that only a small portion of the population can produce, publish and preserve their art, let alone afford to go to uni. I have been thoroughly humbled; I have been forced to sustain slight existential damage in order to realize the importance of human-centred and sustainable design.
What I really wonder is this; Do others experience the same kind of warnings/values in their curriculum or workplace?
The person who said "form follows function" (Sullivan) was creating very beautiful buildings, "FFF" does not mean "build ugly".
Thank you for a very rational and informative study of architecture. Spot on!!!😊
Literally my school say to me that "you have to like modern architecture" and that " it makes more sense than classical". But their ideas can't change my view, because the more you supress, the more it comes out
Same
One of the best of the best TH-cam channel
This has provided structure and evidence for thoughts about architecture that I’ve had for years. Please keep publishing new videos!
I genuinely don’t understand architects distaste for beauty. Going through architecture school so far seems like systematic sabotage with the intent for their students to leave with the same distaste. The professors are rude if you bring up the idea to the point, absolutely disgusting the things I’ve been called.
This is a very common story, and I hope stories like this will soon belong to the past. Thank you for sharing - I'll do my best to bring as much hypocrisy and fallacies to light as I can
So weird those people behave that way. I've heard similar stories, I wonder what's behind it ? I thought people on those studies would be very tolerant people as well.
It’s really terrible. The worst part about it is they try to plot as a way to help find my place in architecture. I took 4 years of drafting classes with a professional (more open minded) architect so I’ve already found my place. They say “you should do historical preservation to learn design” but don’t mention that only one teacher speaks of classical designs and the teachers all hate him because of it. Not to mention I have one of the highest grades in my class about learning the concepts of architecture but my classmates look at me like I’m crazy whenever I tell them what I prefer or believe in.
@@mint2574 Which university ?
@@Mark-xd5up I probably shouldn’t disclose that in the event a faculty member somehow stumbles across this. Then I’d really have no chance in the world of architecture
I very much appreciate this movement of defending classical/traditional architecture as being an option for new buildings. This advocacy is necessary in my opinion, everyone deserves a beautiful environment and an effort made in how their housing is thought off, built and made.
the only thing I would say aside from this is the fact that it is, to me at least, about balance.
Some modern buildings are iconic and can be appreciated if their relation to their environment is rightly set up.
As a lot of movements, the modernisme movement is bastardised for a quick buck and this is imo why we have such a repulsion for it.
It is more often then not done to impress or to save money, which can be detrimental.
However I do not think it should be one or the other.
Ideally I would see most housing and civil buildings being more traditional and modernism kept for special projects, with stricter rules in terms of materials or at least the relation of the building to its direct environment.
love your work!
Well made video. I love it.
Shocked to see you don't have more subs.
I am so obsessed with ancient architecture. I am looking for ideas for my museum.
Amen to all of this. I have been thinking this since I was a child, and I am so happy to know that I’m not the only person thinking this. Bravo 👏🏼 good video!
I appreciate the great structure of the topic in the video and the visuals! Currently working on aesthetics within the urban planning process and this has become a fertile ground for discussions in terms of demystifying the question of the aesthetic city. There is a big gap of knowledge when it comes to principles and features that we should be encouraging in city planning and regulation work. I think as long as we keep treating aesthetics as subjective phenomena we will not gain much from the current debates. These features you describe would still need to be rooted in the locality, and of course many of these studies correspond to eurocentric notions of architectural beauty, would be interesting to see studies from other parts of the world (although if we think of asia: chinese palaces, indian temples, mosques and so on we can see some of the features). I wonder if these can be use as a departure point in towns to see what is important for people and develop aesthetics guidelines as a vision for the city. Of course, making them legally binding for developers will be the toughest challenge.
Keep up the good work!
Great, important and very well made video! 👌👏
Regarding the criteria of beauty in architecture, in my view, the right mixture of criteria/parameters and their practical execution/application is essential. Meaning, let‘s say the design of a skyscraper can be on the one hand asymmetrical (principally „negative“ for looking beautiful), but on the other hand have a beautiful organic, flowing shape that makes it attractive and calming to look at. A „holistic harmony“ generating look is very important too, I‘d say.
Thank you for this video and your great podcast. Your work is very important!
Agree everything, and I am an architect that has thought about this philosophical dilema all my life. But “well done” is a wide issue, simple and complex 😉