its really sad seeing beautiful fields being filled and historic buildings being knocked down to build the most minecraft dirt house like buildings ive ever seen its depressing
yeah its really depressing seeing natural spaces destroyed so they can be urbanized into the ugliest most basic cube like structures. same with historical buildings being torn down so some gray concrete box can replace it.
Its not just in the US. I always hoped that when the architect community, hopefully FINALLY, would get tired of the same boring minimalism, and jump on a new wave of architectural anthropomorphism. I think that was a very short period it had in history, but SO interesting and beautiful, and soulfull. But what do I get, droves UPON DROVES of upside-down "shoeboxes" for houses, with a coat of paint on it....often some shade of white : (......ugh.... bare and depressingly sterile......
Oh yes... there are almost no beautiful modern houses anymore built im my country (Austria). It doesn't have to be expensive or over-detailed, but... colours? decoration? angles that are not 90 degrees? natural materials (stone)? symmetry? The houses are beautiful from the inside, but also the outside matters a lot. ("don't judge a book by its cover" is a scam)
oh and I forgot to say: Symmetry in terms of "where are the windows". in our traditional farm houses, windows are small and placed in the same distance. modern houses have them randomly anywhere. And nature around it. who decided that gardens aren't a thing anymore? flowers? trees? wine or efeu on the walls? only short trimmed grass and weak bushes or trees in rows. Or worse - stone gardens.
people honetsly need to think in a much larger picture than just the architects when it comes to architecture ironically. Architecture is inevitably always tied to the cultural and power system where it is practiced and as architects there's always the projects we'd like to make and the projects contractors, owners, or even regulations, allow us to make. Housing nowadays is vastly different to what it was 100 years ago and the difference is that MOST people today have comfortable houses that were only allowed for the rich 100 eyars back. Part of the reason why is because since the 30's architects and governments have ha d a shared goal of attempting to build more with less
@@joaodelgado6696 as someone who is studying architecture and working part time at a architectural firm, I can attest to this. If we got the money to make something special every time from developers than we would, but the reality is we often design something that is deemed too expensive. Developers are just looking to make the biggest profit with as little money as possible.
I think a lot of this also has to do with America’s insistence on car-centric infrastructure. If we didn’t all need to own cars and drive to get anywhere, I don’t think these mass-produced suburbs would be as common.
I took Environmental Psychology last year, and one thing that really stood out to me was how much of an impact architecture and urban design has on our emotions, and just overall well being without us even knowing. Thus, it definitely makes sense for architecture to fit into the basic needs theory. In fact a lot of your talking points touch on explanations and concepts in Environmental Psychology lol.
I feel like this is pretty obvious too. I don't know about other people, but my mood instantly changes whenever I'm in a colorful neighborhood. It's like a feeling of euphoria.
@@toomessy Definitely! I just meant more of getting a better understanding of the concepts and principles that explain why a colourful neighborhood elicits euphoria.
That’s super interesting. What are some examples of beautiful architecture and urban design that are mood-boosting? Are there certain colors that are best? Plants I’m sure? Any specifics? Thanks!
@@SoccerDua Well. Just to bullet-point: Human scale (Narrow streets, 1:1 enclosure with buildings, continuous urban forest canopy, and relative narrowness of buildings (so that you feel fast) with interest such as shops) Trees (obviously) and natural land where possible (i.e., pave sparingly). Trees are the best for combating urban heat island, cleaning air, and more. Materials (Where one can imagine how structures were built, feel and see the texture, the details, and often local context and colour themes and diversity. Architecture is best old-fashioned, artisan-crafted, so perhaps a Revival is due) Worldbuilding (Just giving a sense of wonder, exploration, where wayfinding and colouring is like game design, and there is interest and diversity across a city. Modern suburbs are the bane of identity, walkability, generosity, etc.) Walkability (Cars are just the least efficient, most destructive transport mode, and only a few people require its use. Priority would be trains, pedestrians, and cycling, through infrastructure. Channel "Not Just Bikes" helps here)
funny how something that we see on a daily basis actually has a really psychological and social impact. I'm a delivery driver and I remember last year summer I would always dread having to deliver in the boring modern housing communities because it was just so boring to drive through, and I always knew it bothered me but I could never really put my finger on why it did
That's why I love Copenhagen so much. Most of the archithecture there is super nice, old and new. There is a sense of peacefullness resulting just from the archithecure. Very underrated topic.
That’s one thing I love about all of Europe - you really get such a sense of time/place/history from the old school maintained buildings. That’s one thing I appreciate about the East Coast in the US - the buildings are way older and styler is more consistent and sets such a “vibe” similarly of time and place.
That’s only in the Scandinavian capitals, though. Maybe in other bigger cities too (although in Scandinavia it’s usually only the capitals that are “big”). In the rest of the countries, the architecture is boring as hell. I live in a small Swedish town and it doesn’t even feel like I’m in Sweden. It has NOTHING to do with Stockholm or even Gothenburg. Looks like another country even.
@@martamiteva3464 It’s really not that different. There’s a lot of concrete in Western Europe and a fair few cities/capitals in Eastern Europe with beautiful historic buildings
Well the reasons for this is that it is cheaper. Where I live (western europe) the housing prices are exploding becasue we do the opposite what the americans do. The majority of people can afford a tiny appartment in a blank skyscarper neighbourhoud (Plattenbau). Only the few rich people can afford a house.
There’s no beauty in the US anymore. HOA killed it, city regulations killed it, builders greed and cut corners killed it. I have tried so hard to redesign my house so everyone who walks in will say “wow, this doesn’t look like my house”
i can still find it in certain parts of my town. The Village of East Davenport is one of my favorite places because it embraces its architecture and has a beautiful sense of community :)
It's time to get inspiration from the past and follow our art history designs into our architecture. As an architect to be I think we need to copy or follow the principles of some of those styles so we can create more eye pleasing architecture.
when I explained to my friends how I thought America was so ugly and so depressing they were so confused about what I was even describing. My friends have literally never left the country and the farthest they have ever traveled was from Florida to New york. My friends couldn't understand how ugly buildings or poorly developed neighborhoods in some areas of the U.S. could make me feel depressed. I literally would be so happy and overwhelmed when I would visit Europe or even Korea and see new modern architecture blending in perfectly with old historic architecture. I feel like I'm the happiest when I'm in an area where I actually enjoy the aesthetics.
Every day we come closer to being capable to collectivize architectural identity, and its an obligation due to the transcendence of the necessity of rationally built neighborhoods. Its like mutual aid for quality of life. I love that every video of yours is a really valuable and relevant topic, you make it so interesting! Just as a personal preference, I love the philosophy and architecture of the Solarpunk movement, it's what I envision for the future of collective spaces not just between humans, but with our planet. love from Mexico!
Just inhumane, dystοpian "you own nothing" architecture behind a green veil. You can hardly call that punk as it's what all big corpοs are already pushing.
@@westelaudio943 No, you describe it as if it was Greenwashing and its precisely what it repels. Anything that big corporations are doing is not solarpunk, its the actions of the people and local communities. Aesthetics is not the focus of the movement, it's sustainability and ecology. There is a big difference to point out here.
my tiny anecdote: so I used to live in a homeless youth shelter. well, a couple. the first one I was in looked like a prison. it felt like one too. it was very intimidating, which wasn't fun for me who was in an already vulnerable state, and the people there weren't exactly warm and welcoming (not that I blame them, I didn't exactly feel like getting to know anyone either in that place). the second place, the place I was at the longest, felt kind of like a tacky elementary school that tries to be bright and cheery but is obviously on a budget. but it definitely felt more welcoming, which could even be felt in the other people living there. not that everyone there was super friendly (like that one guy who broke his belt buckle on another guy's face, etc.) but there were some, and other residents actually talked to me and each other and my roommates were super nice (except my stuff got stolen but still). like it really affected my mental state and helped me get things together.
Sometimes when I feel kinda empty, I take a stroll in my city (Freiburg, Germany) with all its different neighbourhoods and their specific vibes and it makes me feel so alive. It makes me feel the sonder. The uniqueness and vividness of every single life. So I could not agree more, individual beautifully crafted architecture is food for the soul.
you are lucky to live in one of Germanys beautiful cities. Due to the war (fuck em Nazis) so much of century-lasting (medieval!) old cities has been destroyed. But besides from this the ugliness of so so many town/city centres (ugliness to me is also linked to uniformity of stores/brands/companies/chains, besides from too much concrete, to little green) is also due to the lack of political will to acknowledge the importance of architectural beauty.. there was no need to sell all the cities to McDonalds, phone stores, Zara, Zalando and Pimpkie. I just hate the presence of it. Nowadays city centres are synonyms to shopping malls, while they should be public spaces of history, culture, art, leisure and community. -.- So once again, I envy you for living in beautiful Freiburg!
As someone who did go to architecture school, some of the things here a little bit missed the mark. Overall I agree that we need more beauty! 1. Housing developments/buildings are approved/contracted by developers not necessarily designers, and so there’s often just a few types of houses to choose from or projects are rushed through without proper time to consider beauty. Architecture students create some really beautiful stuff, but the industry kind of beats it out of you. 2. Form follows function. What was meant here was specific function. Keeping people happy could be considered a function, it goes a little deeper than just “housing” etc. Not only this, but it does not mean to reject beauty. It just means that things should be functional before they are beautiful. 3. There is no national building code, only certain standards that are technically optional but are good practice within the architectural community. Building codes are municipal so if you want to influence this go to your town halls! They’re often on zoom now. I guess my point is, this is a problem of developers and capital not necessarily architectural design itself. Architects are often trying to push boundaries, but it comes down to getting paid and keeping the firm afloat a lot of the time.
1000%, I work in construction management and have watched many projects go through the unfortunate "value engineering" process. Sometimes a customer with deep pockets is truly willing and able to work in tandem with the architect but that's quite rare
Agreed. The architecture designs we created in school were supposed to be both beautiful and functional. There had to be a reason for each aesthetic choice. Context and the environment were a huge influence. Your building had to make sense in the community. In the real world a lot of the ugly is pushed by developers and how many rooms they can fit in X sqft. At times architects aren't even included.
After almost a year with a commercial/healthcare firm it often boils down to the price per head. How many patient rooms in a hospital, how many units in an ARU, how many dorm rooms in a residence hall. All the clients we serve that provide services without the *need* for competitive or “beautiful” design features will absolutely push the designs we suggest to the minimum for cost. Even the projects we do for municipalities that need community structures are limited by their budgets, small towns don’t have the money to build showpieces of their community - a lot of the time it’s to replace something that’s run it’s course and needs an update and they just barely have enough tax money to do so.
@@Drawfield the almighty dollar is what it comes down to, yes. If you look at the arts and crafts movement, William Morris had all these grand ideas of being able to make design affordable for all people but ultimately it’s just not compatible with the system we live in which is highly unfortunate. Imagine all the beauty the world has been robbed of.
Honestly it gets me kinda down that every video I watch to inform myself can be boiled down to "this would be great for humanity but for it to work we need governments to care/invest" and I know from first-hand experience that governments rarely care, if ever Anything that makes life better for a human makes a worst pawn for authorities to exploit, and capitalism rewards exploitation
Working as a housekeeper, you're forced to ingest this reality. Majority of my customers are middle/upper class, living in cookie cutter homes. I've cleaned out crummy apartments for landlords in questionable areas a handful of times as well, showing me another litany of problems & heartbreak
as an architecture student, most of the people that I have had conversations with regarding architectural beauty tend to only talk about historical architectural styles and always put modernist architecture down. while i do agree that those historical styles are aesthetically pleasing, it is also important to remember that they have also evolved over time. i see modernist architecture as just another step in this process of evolution. at the same time, the mass housing produced is not the only example of modernist architecture. it is a very simple derivative- made using the lowest possible funds and time. i truly believe that every style of architecture can be evolved accordingly ( in regards to modern construction techniques, materials and modern design elements)derivative of that particular community and the result would be stunning ( as can be seen in many cases already)
Another thing that most people don't get about the modern movent is that it wasn't just a rejection of classical or traditional architecture, the rules of order, simmetry, the use of light and much more were taken directly from classical architecture but applied to the context of their era. Also people who don't know about architecture just put the label modernist to pretty much everything from buildings from the 20's to a building made last week when in reality there is so much more to the evolution of architecture, so many opposite ideas, regional styles, sociopolitical context that just gets ignored.
Exactly! I also feel like the reason why so many people put down modern and/or old, historical architecture buildings is usually because of the color scheme. I think a lot of people forget how important color schemes are. My country's architectural buildings are BORING and super minimalist, but yet- thanks to the colours and the decorative, It somehow feels new and fresh every single time. I personally have no problems with either modern or historical buildings, because I believe they're all interesting in their own ways. As corny as that may sound lol.
Totally agreed, much of suburban development is entirely driven by production and profit. The entire goal is development at the lowest dollar. As such many general contractors and construction firms pay very little mind to architectural beauty or style, its hard to critique the style of suburban development when it inherently has no style. Modernist styles, when done well, can break the mold of standardization and can engage with its local context in really innovative ways.
Ok i undertstand but to get rid of craftmanship, ornament or any decoration that comes from an architect's imagination and not put it in their buildings is wrong. Why do we have to accept this idea that we can't build beautiful becuase the function (the purpose of the building) is only considered but not the look. Louis Sullivan, one of the people who coined the term Form ever follows function cared about both its purpose and look too, matter of fact he put beauty into his buildings with his own unique ornament. So i think that architects are lost or dont see this idea as important when it is becuase today's modernist thought on how architecture should be is totally wrong or 50 percent correct.
I always felt weird for finding those rich houses souless, sad and depressing, always lacking of colors and windows, full of those extremely artificial lights and clean-smell of the air-conditioning...but now I know why, modernity lacks of culture, history, color, spontaneity and background. A Rich house is pretty much the same here, in China and in the US. White all over the walls, and that's all. Maybe that's why I'm too into country-side houses and style.
Im a major is architecture and its something ive been interested in for a while. Architecture especially in america and the UK had become much more about stuffing as many people in one place for economic gain than an actual art form. That's really why I chose to major in it, not only do I want to create beautiful structures I also want to focus on sustainable architecture for our future. This video is amazing and Im so happy people are finally talking ab this!!
@@Foogi9000 i love art deco so much that im designing art deco style buildings on my free time which i hope in the future they could be made. I'm majoring in architecture btw.
The statement "form follows function" is often misunderstood. It doesn't mean function is more important and the design should be minimal. It means that the design of a building should relate to the funtion of the building. So for example a school should look like a school, or the function of offices should be reflected in the design and shape of the building. And these designs can still be decorative! If you look up the buildings by Louis Sullivan (the architect who coined the term "form follows function") you can see some of them are highly decorated, especialy by todays standards. I'm a young architect from the Netherlands, so it was interesting to hear about this subject from an american perspective. It looks like the situations are quite different. In the Netherlands we have commities that judge new building plans, not only to check if they fulfil the building codes, but also to judge if they fit in with the surrouding buildings and meet certain aesthetic guidlines. There's also a lot of attention for building social housing. It's mixed in with 'regular' housing, built and owned by not-for-profit social housing corporations. The architectural quality of social housing might be slightly lower than non-social housing, but it's still decent and it's not immediately distinguishable. I design a lot of social housing at the firm I work at, and we always try to make each housing project a little bit special, even with the limited budgets we have to work with.
Exactly. While Louis Ssillivan champianed this phrase, he still created gorgeous buildings with very intricate ornamentation. It was modernists like Le Corbuseir and Mies van der Roe that took it to mean function at the expense of all ornamentation or beauty.
Totally agreed, though it pre-dated the term, Palais Garnier is a classic champion of the mode of thinking with layouts and exterior forms that match the utility of the structure while still maintaining the grandeur and detail associated with late 19th century Parisian architecture.
Yes I've been thinking about this for a while. Im also studying architecture and i read history about louis sullivan. Form follows function is very misinterpreted than what the original phrase means.
Indeed. I remember reading that, as building became easier at the end of the 19th century, "form follows function" could be put to very specific lengths, including gathering particular materials, constructing new forms for quality of life, etc. This was about Art Nouveau, which could be applied to any architectural style, and was very organic, and still defined by the skilled traditional artisans, in cooperation with the architects and artists.
The Ugliness problem runs so rampant in the US partly because they put a lot of emphasis in the car, pretty cities in Europe are suitable for people to walk so there even modern ugly shoebox apartments might have easy acces to parks schools etc etc 🙄
I’d honestly argue that the loss of Architectural beauty is closely related to historical US policy on housing, race, US culture, and capitalism. After WWII, cheap, quickly built suburban housing developments were starting to pop up everywhere as a response to economic growth, low cost government loans, developers wanting to profit as much as possible, and the desire of Americans to own their own homes (see Levittown, NY as an example). The style of Levittowns where developments go up as quickly and cheaply as possible remains to today. That also means that architecture and neighborhood design often become secondary. Also houses are purposely design to be closed-off boxes because historically, Americans have sought to separate themselves from the other. The first suburban developments in the early 19th century were built for rich people to separate themselves from the lower classes. Starting in 1930s and 40s, suburbs acted as a way for white Americans to separate themselves from black Americans. Single family housing was preferred in the 19th century as it was a sign of wealth Also those tacky ass McMansions that upper middle class people put up on cheap land often are just cheap copies of past architectural styles of what the person thought signifies “wealth”, even though it often ends up looking crap and was put up with the cheapest materials possible. So to this day, house ownership still remains more a sign of wealth, but since most people aren’t rich enough to afford interesting housing, they stick with what they can get, which tends to be what we typically see. The pervasiveness of single family housing is also a big reason for the housing crisis that we have right now as multi-family housing is often zoned out by local governments and fought tooth and nail by NIMBYs. I also unfortunately don’t ever see the government really taking an interest in preserving a specific architectural style because most areas either don’t have one or can’t afford it. The only time it will be used is the way we have historically used zoning, and that is for the primary purpose of exclusion. While I think most people would want to see the more beautiful architecture, I just don’t see that happening if there is a profit incentive to just built as quickly and cheaply as possible.
As an architecture student in grad school, i agree with your points 100%. Originality is dying and after studying the same white minimalist building every semester it starts to get boring and feel underwhelming.Combining aesthetic beauty and public space use can be done and hopefully it can be improved in the future when architects start to realize that architecture isn’t just an art, it is a necessity.
Thank you that there are people like you. Because I also am studying architecture and I also think the same way as you do. Almost everything that we build is in that color and also the exterior is always in a fractalated form which gives it that ugly appearance.
I always loved one specific building near my school that was so beautiful to me, and I was so sad that it was the only one that was actually beautiful in the City, so I always thought I would love to live right in front of it, so I could see it outside my window. Architectural beauty is necessary and so inspiring, that building literally gave me happiness and would have loved to see a neighbourhood that complimented that architecture
still watching but I like the direction you went with this. It makes me think a lot about the personality-less aesthetic of ~gentrification buildings~ that can be seen across major cities. I grew up in Seattle and every time I go back I see more blocky gray townhouses that serve as a visual harbinger of loss of previous communities of color and as a reminder of how and why things have changed in the city since I was a kid. Likewise, empty/abandoned buildings and/or craftsman homes serve as a sad reminder of what is given value and allocated resources in a community and always make me personally reflect on the ways they could be used to bring more life/sense of community into underserved neighborhoods- those buildings could be used to house the homeless or serve as resource hubs for recreation, childcare, job placement, or art and cultural centers rather than remaining abandoned and serving as blight.
I grew up in the suburbs in America and it was always very sad. No one talks to their neighbors, the surrounding landscape isn't even designed for human use but for curbside appeal, and every house is a shade of beige. It just made me really hate the HOA when I was a kid but now I see it's a much larger issue.
I live in Vienna. We have so many beautiful old buildings here, be it palais or apartment buildings from the Wilhelminian period (end of the 19th century). Many tourists are surely so excited about the city because of this architectural heritage. I once read that architecture is only interesting/beautiful when the eye is engaged. And these buildings have ornaments, sculptures, stucco, ornate windows and doors, bay windows, chimneys, skylights, etc. New architecture lacks all of that, lots of glass, bare concrete, smooth surfaces, dark colors. I wish architecture could become more interesting and beautiful again and not just use the cheapest materials. I don't think many of the buildings built today will still be standing 100 years from now.
As an Architecture student currently making a project critiquing American suburbs and finding an alternative suburban house typology (while sometimes regretting not having studied Philosophy), this video couldn't have been more perfect ! Thanks for sharing !
I really love Japanese and south Korean suburban neighbourhood architecture even though its modern with a lot of industrial things such as electric lines running through the streets, it has so much character and is somehow so very charming and unique. It's so much more beautiful than the clean square-grid boxes of the western world
This reminds me of this huge old mansion from the 1800's in the middle of my old hometown that was torn down, despite historical societies best efforts, and replaced with some cookie-cutter concrete and steal beam office building.
@@chlorox01 I remember there was this castle type apartment in my neighborhood it was beautiful because it was made of brick, when I was like 14 they demolished it and, at first I thought they were gonna build something something better than that castle type apartment, now that the new apartment building was made, it was such a big downgrade to see this because it's one of those ugly deformed concrete and glass buildings that got replaced with. I'm not sure if architecture is really my thing to study because I don't wanna design things like that, I wanna design more beautiful styles or maybe a preservation architect could be my thing. But yeah I wanna do something about this because living in a ugly city is a choice.
i gotta say, this is one of my fave video essays in a while. i've kind of gotten sick of "video essays" that don't really bring up anything new or relevant. this video was SO GOOD! and something that annoys me too. i hate how modern housing is so soulless. we deserve more beautiful houses
I live in Arizona and in all the cities you can see the same trend of housing. Tan/ brown colored houses and all neighborhoods looking so similar you can not really tell the difference. Its really sad to see because psychologically your mind likes looking at beautiful things. It boosts your mood and just helps and so for a community fo feel more lively and more like a community I think a lot of people will see positive change in their day to day life. Not everyone knows that your unconscious is always picking up external cues and so why not give it positive cues to induse more happiness.
I used to live in Arizona too, I now live in Seattle and all of the houses here look so beautiful and different. I find the architecture here to be more beautiful than Arizona and am glad that I moved out of suburbia hell.
I find Arizona to be the very worst offender of cookie cutter, bland architecture. Almost EVERYWHERE you go in Phoenix/Tuscon, houses and shopping centers look the exact same. No character, bland, and super boring; uninspired.
@@sashamoore9691 A rural town doesn't reflect OP's example in the slightest. The prettier places in Arizona only really exist in very wealthy areas; which is a shame.
long rambling comment from an architecture student in the U.K.: The street planning good/bad examples at 10:50 - there's a real argument to be made that the plan labelled 'good' is a lot less rational than that labelled 'bad' (an orthogonal grid iron). The intention behind the curves and cul-de-sacs found in many suburbs was often about seeking forms which communities could assemble *around* (to varying degrees of success). The depth of all these issues is... deep: modernism in architecture is a frequently misunderstood movement; like, the quote at 11:40 that 'nobody wants to be in it because the thing is so damned ugly' ignores a million factors of economics, public policy, geography, population patterns. Whether a building is 'ugly' or not, if the land is valuable, someone will front the money to retrofit it, or knock it down and build something new. by blaming dereliction on a building's perceived 'ugliness' wealthy cultural elites (like the presenter of that now infamous BBC programme) can eschew responsibility for the decline of communities in post-industrial areas, who were way more screwed-over by neoliberal economics/politics, than the style of their houses. Modernism was often the architecture of the welfare state - schools, hospitals, public housing; in the neoliberal turn of the latter 20th Century, those buildings and the communities around them were neglected by governments. This is also the moment that public housing was eviscerated and local government architects' offices shut down. More often than not what we find beautiful and what gets built is a matter of politics and policy than anything else! In the U.K., our government's policies are pretty horrendous right now imo, particularly on housing and local planning. They talk the talk, but *local* government is so chronically underfunded and under-resourced they have very little power to really institute meaningful plans (despite the prime-minister's ill-defined, underresourced 'levelling-up' quote-un-quote policy). The U.K. needs millions more genuinely affordable houses, local groups ought to be involved in their design, and architects based in local governments employed. Far too often though, these efforts are kneecapped by the plague of private developers in a race-to-the-bottom fees competition where all that matters is the bottom line, and the generosity/safety/beauty of the space is forgotten (leading to events like Grenfell tower). Architects get caught up in this too and are chronically overworked and underpaid (see recent New York Times reporting on unionisation at SHoP architects in NYC for an example). Further, beauty is not the only factor. Can beauty really create community? That's a huge question with perhaps no answer - my studio unit is currently dealing with it, and it's great to watch your video and hear you take! Public transit options, cycling safety, mutual aid networks, feminist design, green space access, proximity to schools, healthcare, employment, nature, clean air, natural light: all of these things are important in the quality of life and community created in neighbourhoods too. perhaps it's a matter of where beauty is imposed from: is a community given power and agency to form its own symbols and anchors (exceedingly rarely), or are they imposed from above? I recommend looking into the Cleveland model (hybridised into the Preston Model in the U.K.) for designing neighbourhoods and economies around 'anchor institutions' (hospitals, schools, museums, transit centres) that represent local identity, used as investment vessels to direct community funds. This is a long, rambling comment, which is to say that, more often than not, architectural style is a matter of economic incentive. Modernism needed to deal with the urban poverty created by the industrial revolution (and meanwhile created cool luxury for the new bourgeoisie!); post-modernism created icons of symbolic capital when the political and economic picture swung back around in the 70s and onwards. In the U.K., the industrial revolution caused mass social disruption and destitution and there was no social infrastructure to deal with it. By the time Germany etc. industrialised they were forewarned by the U.K.'s problems (the Crystal Palace 1870 World's Fair; Hermann Muthesius' book 'The English House'; Engels' "The Great Towns' are all good examples of where Germany etc were forewarned). This warning led to the foundation of the Deutsche Werkbund and later the Bauhaus (two schools at the very foundations of modernist architecture). As for your take in this video, much of it aligns fairly close to Kenneth Frampton's "Critical Regionalism", and Prince Charles' "A Vision of Britain" (no joke!), but more contemporary architectural practices like Assemble of MUF in the U.K. are worth checking out too for this kind of work in community that speaks truly to a new sensibility of architecture. hope some of this is interesting, and I enjoyed the video lots!
Wait didn't the industrial revolution caused massive rise of living standards and millions of people rising out of poverty particularly in the 20th century . Moreover how would you explain the ugliness of cities in eastern Europe which developed under socialism ?
Architectural beauty makes a huge difference on people’s living quality. When you are surrounded by beautiful buildings you feel happy and fascinated in a way.
I live in Wales (Britain for any Americans reading) about 5 minutes away from a castle and there's constant work being done to preserve it. The Village I live in is built around and in the castle walls instead of just tearing it down, resulting in basically living the castle. For years I've never thought about it until I realised the amount of tourists that would come to see it. I find it really cool and although all the houses look like clones of themselves, It's really counteracted by this massive funking castle. Idk if that's what she meant about preserving historical monuments in Britain and if this is an example but there you go if it is
i love that there’s a video about this because i love walking around and seeing lovely little details about houses and when going to a different area that was all identical suburbs i couldn’t imagine living there without wanting to die
I relate to the influence of architecture and esthetics on psychology so much. I'd lived in Russia (both in Moscow and right outside of it) from 8 to 13 and the architecture there had such a negative impact on me, and I didn't realise this until now! Back in the Soviet Union, after the 50s, they built millions of identical "panelka" and "khrushevka" buildings to accomodate citizens. Functionality was very obviously prioritised over beauty, and the buildings were built in a Le Corbusier fashion - one appartment was the minimum size required for a small family. Stuff like entertainment venues or public spaces were built in a grey-ish, "brutalist" style. These types of buildings are still present today. Honestly, they're so depressing to look at. It's even more depressing in winter (and winters in Moscow are quite long!) or at the beginning of spring, when the snow is melting and kind of disgustingly brown. It's a well-known fact among Russians that a lot of them get depressed at the end of winter/beginning of spring. Whenever I visit my family living outside of Moscow, I get so gloomy just looking at where they live. I live in France, so this feels like whiplash.
@@sashamoore9691As an Albanian, I hate the architecture from the late 1940s to the early 90s. It's so depressing as shit man. Not that modern architecture here is any better. No, in fact, it depresses me, probably even more than the older architecture from the late 40s to the early 90s. Imo, the peak of Albanian architecture was from the 1920s to the early 1940s
There's a horror movie called Vivarium, it touches upon this exact issue and utilizes it as a horror tactic. And let me tell you, now there is nothing more unsettling to me than a neighborhood full of replica houses. It fills me with an unexplainable sense of doom and uneasiness.
Whenever i get really High i have vivid imagery about this exact topic, It fills me with an almost Nihilistic sense of Sadness. What can be said about American Architecture in 200 to 300 Years? That it was cheap and lazy with no style and that it was dictated by greed and profit?
this is kind of why I prefer older neighborhoods from the 70s/80s - the houses are smaller but have more character, and there's way more space between each house.
Loved the video, here in Colombia most public and private housing projects consists of 10 to 20 stories apartment blocks with little to no design, they start adding colors and shapes that make no sense to make them seem more colorful and playful but it just ends up being another boring project
I was thinking about this the other day. I've also come to the realisation that, because of globalisation, most cities around the world look similar enough for international travelling to become kinda pointless if your main priority is to surround yourself with the overall feel and unique aesthetic of said cities
Yea... In Korea the same thing is happing in certain large cities especially in seoul. I will say seoul has gotten better at listening to the public but in reality most people in seoul would rather be told what is best for them then decided for themselves unlike those who live in say incheon or Busan
I had never really left Missouri/Kansas in my whole life. I always thought most architecture was ugly, just endless ugly "stroads" surrounded on both sides by rows and rows of ugly concrete strip malls. Went on a road trip finally, and yeah from place to place there were someone interesting designs. But almost every city with a decent population just looked the same as Missouri. If you kid napped me and dropped me off in another state I would not be able to tell usually without some major land marks, because the virus that is strip malls has infected everything
It depends on the city. The old neighborhoods in places like st. Luis, new Orleans, Boston, philly/ baltimore, san francisco, are amazing, and completely unique to that region. Although, often times, those neighborhoods are really poor, rundown, and neglected. I'm very into architecture myself tho, and it's interesting to see the contrast of beauty and ugly in those neighborhoods.
I’m so glad someone is talking about this! I’m buying a house soon. My husband and I would like to purchase a newer built home (about less than 25 years old) so we don’t have to deal with things like mold, lead paint etc. but all of the newer homes are SO boring and the old ones are absolutely gorgeous 😓
A really good short story that exemplifies this problem is "Shining Houses" by Alice Munro. The story is set in a newly built 60s suburb where the houses are virtually identical except for the rundown house of an old lady surrounded by an unkept lawn. The neighborhood thinks this is ruining the perfect image of their area and have been making efforts to kick her out of her lot whether that is by attempting to buy the place or even trying to call social services on her. They're doing it under the grounds that they care for the old woman living alone and think it's better if she lives in a retirement home. It is mainly a critique on modernism and, in my interpretation, how architecture makes social division (particularly in the isolation/identification of an out-group) in the modern age more concrete. Now more than ever, being part of the community requires utmost conformity and there's no better way to foster that than moulding your environment to promote it. It also places a huge emphasis on how these developments were built on fertile land and how this is destroying the environment. The natural environment was replaced by something "manufactured" to follow a certain standard.
I don’t think conformity necessarily is bad. If we look at many beautiful villages and cities in Europe, the buildings follow the same style as one another and yet I’d consider them beautiful. But with many American suburbs and cities, they conform like you said, but with a god awful soul sucking style.
AHHHHHHHH I LOVE THIS VIDEO!!!!!! As the daughter of two immigrant architects (Argentina to USA) and someone who wants to study architecture themselves, the way architects are treated nowadays is so sad 💃💃 In Argentina, the way my parents studied architecture is that they learned every single part including engineering, physics, interior design, etc while in the USA usually architects only specialize in one area. The worst part about architecture here other than being confined mainly to one area of work is that for a young architect especially, creativity is like 😻😻 not at all needed. Commonly, unless you're like one of the top 1% of architects who can not only own their own architecture firms but become famous enough that people buy your designs, then most of what you will do is make new floor plans for already manufactured designs 💜 For example, my dad has been working as an architect for around 30 years now and has a good position at his place of work (architecture is also hard to get into w/out experience) but he'll have to work on designing a fast food chain and what he receives from his clients is the exact colors and design they want, really only being able to design a new floor plan. The problem with architecture is that for many architects, they can't actually use their creativity unless they want to make money 👵👵 You have to accept mostly any commissions you can get and at the end of the day the client is who you must abide to and usually they have a specific idea in mind that you must follow even if they have bad taste 💜 Architecture is also hard to credit as well and it becomes extremely underrated in importance when people think they can design for themselves to save money and end up making caca 😩😩 It's also important to point out here how some people will just get some famous architect for their building without realizing that the space in which you build in and context matters. I think you really did a great job talking about this in your video and personally I'd like to rant about this one library they just built in my area that was designed by a European living in a big and famous city. I live in Florida 💜 Not only does the library have those giant uglyass pillars that are supposed to block terrorist attacks (which although may be common in someplace in Europe are not at all in this area of Florida) but even the way the building is designed to stretch out doesn't utilize the nature around it. There's literally this super pretty lake next to the library and when you go to the 2nd floor of the building and step out onto the balcony you can't even see the lake bec of how the building is shaped 🧍♀️🧍♀️ Some people are silly 💜 but what bothers me the most is that people often claim that these buildings are pretty when in reality if you look at the way they were designed for this specific area no 💜 just no 💜 It really makes me wish people were more aware of how much architecture actually matters in creating a community bec when I go out with my family and friends personally I hate going to ugly malls even if they have stores I can afford. I'd end up choosing the prettier mall even if I can't buy anything bec at least it will make me semi detach from this sense of corporate and capitalist america and make me feel like I'm romanticizing my life 🤥🤥🤥
I remember reading about how Rome eschewed its spiritual predecessor Greece's culture of innovation in favour of a sort of knock-off of Greece that was paradoxically utilitarian and decadent, and that it was reflected in Rome's architecture (Corinthian columns over Doric and Ionian, for one). It was odd to me to think of the Colosseum as anything but beautiful when, in its time, it was sort of a symbol of Rome's imperial society of domination, ruled by money and power. Kinda like an ancient skyscraper (at least, if that's how you wanna think of skyscrapers). Anyway, love your videos, creators like you make me a more thoughtful person and I'm grateful for it.
that’s so interesting, I recently learned about Greek art for university & the assigned reading touched on Romans copying & commissioning Greek art but I never really thought about their motivations, at least not in this way that parallels it to current architectural trends & values. if I remember correctly Romans had something to do with the making of Greece’s biggest temple too which would make sense under this theory. arguably the Greeks also did want to show off certain things & so could be viewed as decadent, like how the building of the Athena parthenon was kinda controversial apparently because it was viewed as a waste of money (I guess in this case utilitarianism & decadence were at odds?). (btw I’m v much not an expert on Ancient Greek art & architecture, just had a little exposure to it recently but I find it interesting)
@@percabethisawesome1163 It might be that Roman scholars were hipsters who idolized Athens and project that onto the whole Greek society, and maybe that's why Rome is viewed as such a dramatically more oligarchical society? But that's just a guess. I, too, am not an expert.
I really loved this video! I'm currently studying environmental planning in hopes of not only preserving the ecosystems we develop on, but keeping the cultural and historical relevance as well. Great job on this video!
This video was really well researched and I love that you have gone into architecture theory! P E Moskowitz has written some really interesting stuff about the relationship between the Suburbs, White Flight and Gentrification. They point out that racism and the desire to keep racial communities apart was also a key motive when designing the suburbs.
Another motive was to create zoning. This made the country extremely car dependent, which was desirable for companies like the Big Three and Big Oil of course. The US highway system was more or less designed by GM.
@@Atombender zoning ties in strongly to redlining which was also a cause and effect of racism, and freeway planning was also heavily tied to specifically tearing apart Black communities. GM’s downturn specifically in Detroit also resulted in hitting Black communities the hardest - its all delicately interlinked.
As an architect undergraduate in Brazil, I have to say that suburbs in the US are such micro cosmos that it is expected to have a cloning and replication of household's projects, as it certainly is cheaper and more 'modern' in the sense you mentioned. However, what may be easier to implement and reduce the costs to live a more culturally represented enviroment is the adoption of public spaces and community proposals, such as public gardens, parks and subsidize the occourence of cultural displays, as local artists playing songs, selling arts and crafts and planting local trees, bushes and that sort of gesture. The important part in all of this is the crucial participation of people to keep it alive and not letting the routine and work keep these places empty. A way of doing that is proposing public-made projects, with votes and mediatic appeal, to make it a big deal around the neighborhood. Thats all I guess haha love your videos, Sun!
@Cínico Podcast Honestly I personally do not enjoy its themes and proposals. Despite a great project for the time, IMO such focus on transportation by wheels and the huge scale of everything just ends up making it a bunch of condos and some beautiful public buildings by the avenues. Great ideals but not really sustainable for any real urban area that can naturally grow.
Beauty in architecture is just now being discussed but the cities in North America have basically been gutted of beautiful buildings in favour of featureless glass boxes. I recently asked an architecture student about how much training he is getting in aesthetics and he replied that there is none at all.
Thank goodness someone is addressing this! I feel like as a whole society and its architecture is starting to get uglier as we progress through the 21st century
I recently graduated from university with a bachelor's of architecture. This video was amazing. Keep up the great work. Architecture should reflect the community that it serves.
As an architecture major, I'd just like to say... damnnnnn!! You came up with a thesis-level work and you distilled it into a TH-cam video. All of the things you've mentioned are things I've learned and discussed in architecture school - the rise of modernism, architecture and community, and "beauty" in architecture, among other things. A great, complex look into modernist architecture and its effects/results. Modernist architecture is supposed to be not only functional but ALSO improve living standards (great reads are Towards an Architecture by Le Corbusier and What Tuberculosis Did for Modernism by Margret Campbell) , such as how the Sanatorium Zonnestraal in Switzerland was designed to help treat tuberculosis patients by having more open windows that let in sunlight. Sadly this beauty of modernism has manifested exponentially and tragically into the boring, single-family detached home that a lot of American-style suburbs have. If you think about it, it is kind of ironic a country that values individualism like America has houses that look the same. As a future architect I want to create architecture that reflects the diverse diaspora of the communities I design for, and I wonder how it'll turn out. Like, now that Lunar New Year and Black History Month have now begun when I write this, what is Asian-American architecture? What is African-American architecture? Based on the needs of both communities, what can the architecture that represent these respective communities become? How can architecture reflect and balance the duality of being Asian/Black/other cultural/ethnic group with that of the broader American community and its values of freedom and liberty? Sorry for the long rant and train of thought, but loved every single bit of the video! Keep doing what you are doing :)
your comment was so cool to read! i didn't know how much architects resonated with this video until i went into the comments. you're right about the america-individualism-housing thing lmao i laughed also, the topic you bring up with the houses is so interesting. bc then, you could go into the particular ethnicities within those racial groups and find sm difference. this is was a super cool comment to read, i hope you are able to continue your work and hopefully find your answers!!!! thank you!!!
i live in a country that's incredibly car-centric, and overall no walkable side streets. It's hard to walk in those streets because it's severly occupied, it's sad that i never got to experience "talking a short stroll". That's one thing i wish to experience to fufill my wish as a child. It's no wonder that I dont feel motivated to step outside my house whenever I do so
This is so interesting!! I live in a city where new businesses are either required or highly incesntivised to have some sort of public art on their property and it's cool to see! While there's a lot of art that feels out of place or just there for the sake of it there's also been a lot of amazing murals by local artists who are being hired a lot more often then they used to. But, because it's a business thing there's very little of this translated outside of our downtown and a lot of the suburbs feel very cookie cutter.
I've never ever came across a youtuber which is a literal clone of myself, you and I have the exact same tone in speech, the same view upon topics in this, and a keen interest in the social sciences. Thank you for providing such brilliant & educational videos, the first 10/10 youtuber I've seen in a long time
the title and the theme of the video has caught my attention first so i saved your video to my watch later playlist but then i decided to just watch it and oh my god i love how you put your videos together you structure them so well and you never talk about unnecessary or boring things you make everything so interesting!!!!
This is so true 😭 my aunts live in America, and they have told me many times to go visit them, but I just can't do it, something in American architecture makes me feel a reluctance to even set foot in the country. I'm sorry Americans.
I live here and it’s not bad you don’t want to go to America to visit your aunt because of our architecture really visit your aunt and don’t fell sorry for us why should I live in apartment complex that look the same?
Same with me stepping foot outside of America. The houses always look like communist shit. European homes have no bathrooms or ugly interiors. I have yet to see a country that doesn’t try to emulate American suburban homes.
There is a lot of beautiful architecture in America if you are in the right places Usually the older and more historical cities or neighborhoods have many beautiful and culturally significant houses and buildings
Don’t sorry, copy paste suburbia isn’t everywhere at all. Where I live, the houses are ugly in an interesting way and I love that. Don’t let these areas scare you away from your own family
i went out of the country (I'm from the US) for a school trip the beginning of this year and i was amazed at the architecture, it was beautiful. and it wasn't just the huge buildings for tourists, the streets and neighborhoods i walked through were so so pretty. another thing i've experienced in my own state is the insane amount of classism that architecture builds up.
As an architecture student Ive got to realise that most of the time this topic comes up, most people tend to think of architecture as only the facade. Some people still want that Art Nouveau look on their building and think thats architectural beauty. Dont get me wrong, modern architecture had its problems but we couldnt be here if it werent for the Frank Lloyds and Louis Sullivans of this world. I personally believe in the thinking of "Less is more" which I bet is the cause for all the minimalism people hate, and yes form should follow function. To me architecture is more about form than anything. How is a space used shoud come first rather than "does it look beautiful" Nice thought out video though.
@@tlowery2074 as someone who is studying architecture and working part time at a architectural firm, I have seen it is also a lack of money. If we got the money to make something special every time from developers than we would, but the reality is we often design something that is deemed too expensive. Developers are just looking to make the biggest profit with as little money as possible.
@@tlowery2074 That's actually pretty accurate. Architecture has three main aspects firmitas (estructure), utilitas (function) and venustas (aesthetic), that means that every building in ordel to be architecture has to be designed to had those three things. It's not just about a thing that looks good, I had to be efficient and strong.
I know beauty is asking too much. But at least don't make it oppressing, inhumane, estranging and misanthropic brutalism with a lick of white paint, only serving the wallet of the developer and with no connection at all to the context or the people who actually live there. I feel like architecture schools are just still stubbornly indoctrinating their students into modernism barely changed over a century even though its detrimental effects have been well documented, or making you think that there is no alternative. Until every bit of creativity that every little toddler possesses is completely killed off. If you would pop your head outside of the architecture school bubble, you would see that this is wildly unpopular among common people, and for good reason. People just want humanly scaled, kind buildings, respectful to the context and local needs and traditions and streetscape, where everyone (think children, elderly, tourists) loves to walk by, have fun, admire, recognize, socialize. Even though these functions are reprimanded by capitalism. Not only to serve private gains but also public needs, not only the rich 'gentry' but also the poor, and more democratic than the blindly imposed structures we have now. Buildings who are fascinating in their own right instead of being parasitic of their surroundings in term of function (mixing functions) and beauty. It's high time for architecture to recognize the mistakes of the past and reinvent themselves.
@@hydrocharis1 agreed! But can you give examples of what good architecture and a properly designed city/ neighborhood would look like? I’m trying to picture what I guess I have not seen, so I’m finding it difficult to understand how what we all seem to want can be concretely applied.
As an architecture student myself, I can comfortably say that we definitely understand the importance of context, It is one of the main aspects of designing. However, the buildings that are being built are rarely the result of an architect having free hands to do whatever they want. It is all a question of money for the client, they want to make as much money of the building as possible while spending as little as possible to build it. Thats why there are so many poorly designed buildings, because the architects are constrained by their clients. The most possible solution I can see is if regulations are changed to "force" a budget increase to create more contextually fitting and beautiful architecture.
Yeah the client sometimes just knows to well what he wants that it destroys the creativity that the architect wants to show and the most important, the budget which will determine how pretty the building will be.
The other day I was discussing architecture with my fellow classmate and we compared modern and baroque architecture.... You know how the conversation ended? Quoting my classmate 'Yeah but baroque is trash because it isn't unique' Like, excuse me? How is baroque not unique with its gilded swirls and dramatic colour scheme (not to mention the facade). Very bizarre.
As an architecture student I can recommend a look at Walters Way in Lewisham, London. It is a project that completely recalibrated my perspective on the role of the architect and of architecture. It is mid century modernist in it's approach and therefore it was cheap, quick and functional. However each house was built by it's occupants with Walter Segal, the architect, simply supervising. This allowed each house to be an expression of it's occupants and therefore a perfect reflection of community. It is in all honesty the most gorgeous street in all of England. This video reminded of it.
Maybe tell the architects clients (developers) to place a little more emphasis on beauty. As an architect, we try like hell to make things look good, but we don't have the final say and we're not the ones paying for it so a lot of the beauty is removed before it's built leaving a bland box. Most of the ugliness you see is a mix of clients throwing "character" out first when the budget gets tight and architects not understanding budgets or whose spirits have been crushed by said soulless work and no longer care because NOT ONE PERSON INVOLVED CARES. I've moved several times due to ugly environments, it matters sooo much 😭
As an Architect who primary design housing complex. The issue here gets even worst when we are talking about privately developed mid-low income housing where aesthetic is the 10th thing down to list of what is considered important to the developer. In any case, great video. Certainly would love to talk more about this topic as it has been something I have been thinking about since I was jn school.
DUDE FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT! Also when things become more widespread and low built, it activates your fight or flight because we are naturally scared of open spaces. This makes it less walkable in America vs New York or Italy. But overall it's just less enjoyable. Also some people say it's meant to increase car sales and car use to grow the economy and to keep the oil industry afloat, etc. I don't know how much i believe that though, i think they just do what's cheap and easy.
Would it be cheaper to use up more space to leave open spaces between buildings though? I'd think that it would be more expensive. I think it could be due to the car reason.
@@mynameisreallycool1 ya fs Abt the car thing. I thinks its also the way it's manufactured and bc it allows for cheaper designs that are all the same+more structurally sound. And it makes it easier for the government to change the buildings easily, eg: change a neighborhood into a shopping strip. Where they can't do that in downtown NY or somewhere more crowded, partially bc of the space and bc of the extra designing and engineering req. (Idrk bc it's different in different places but ya)
I just want to say I love your video. It was actually the reason I did my thesis of architectural engineering on this topic. Thank you for giving me the inspiration I needed ❤
2:40 The three house architecture can be roughly say as a modern house, a real 'modernist architecture'(Ludwis Mile van der Rohe style) and a brutalist architecture. That three 'modern', 'modernist' and 'brutalist' are the most confused part for most people. You can distinguish roughly as follow : 1. modern = anything trendy, glass, fancy, apparent fragility (over hanging, cantilever, etc..) 2. modernist = the most bland. you won't notice it if done well. 3. brutalist = rough appearance as an aesthetic, wall with no window, raw concrete, structural beam, bunker like, sometime dystopian movie architecture. The main different is that brutalist requires aesthetic (just different kind) where modernist don't care except function.
I feel like: "form follows function" is generally a good way to conceptualise things. But one should be aware of the actual function. If residential houses are places for people to live in and one builds a residential house, nobody wants to live in in a place where nobody wants to live, then you failed "form follows function".
As someone who works at a firm that does multi-family housing projects, both affordable and standard market, much of our design work is dependent on what our developers want for a particular project, and a lot of that does come down to what is cheaper to produce and source. There are some projects that we get to have more design freedom on and we do take advantage of that while still keeping to the budget given. I don’t think the projects I have been involved with are necessarily badly designed or lacking architectural beauty, but they definitely do focus on a particular style of architecture and tend not to branch out too much from that style. I would definitely love to see more architectural diversity across the board and I think we will get there as more younger designers and marginalized designers move into positions of project management and higher positions within firms.
I think a planned development by definition cannot accurately reflect the character of future inhabitants. It's the people that need to transform the place to suit their needs. It takes time to do so, decades or even centuries.
I hope you made good money from my eating this. I got 8 ads throughout 😭. Aside from that, I loved the video. There is so much to learn, and so much I know so little about, it's crazy cool.
I'm from the UK and have just started my architectural career, bear in mind my knowledge is limited, however, overall I would say that architecture is beginning to be shaped by a higher tendancy to design buildings to fit into a historical or vernacular urban farbic overall I would say that today this translates to less risky design language for new developments, architects aren't necessarily out to make statements these days. Among most large housing developers (Barratt, Redrow etc) what this translates to practically speaking is this kind of faux pop up Georgian aesthetic that I see a lot, most new 'affordable' estates are built with red or yellow brick facades with pastiche quasi Georgian elements like porches, faux wooden windows and clay roof tiles, whilst an algorithm is used to place houses in a way that looks like it could have occurred naturally but is actually designed to fit the most units as is possible on a given plot of land. I would say that overall this leads the final products to look less outwardly offensive than some of the modernist estates produced in the 1960-70s but they are still clearly mass produced and often build to a dubious level of finish. They are also generally held back in how much they can get away with looking Georgian by the limitations imposed by modern energy efficiency standards and safety regulations. As for less mass produced products I would say it varies by location, in cities you can get away with most new build designs requiring they meet sustainability guidelines but for smaller towns local councils will usually have some choice specifications regarding how many affordable houses are included in your development and what material you are utilising for the exterior finish, they are more likely to arrive an application if the structure dosent stand out and it doesn't irk local residents. E.g. I am currently designing a retirement village on the site of an old modernist shopping precinct, the build is likely to be very housing dense and utilise a lot of red brick and gabled roof elements, we will probably avoid trying anything too fancy and I've been asked to render the structure in such a way as to hililight how little the new building will impact the street scape. Overall the planning system prevents really ugly buildings being put up nowadays but also discourages adventurousness and 'going the extra mile' new builds are generally made as cost efficiently as possible with any questionable architectural flair generally removed to reduce the chance for planning gridlock and objection by locals. Like I would really love to design a dank pastiche looking clock tower to one of the corners of this build I'm currently designing but the economics and the planning system generally discourage this kind of ostentatiousness going through these days. Some schemes off the top of my head in the UK that display these kinds of development patterns working as intended would be, poundbury in Dorchester, the accordia developments on the outskirts of Cambridge, or the sterling prize winning social houses in Norwich. Some less praiseworthy examples might be any new build estate on the outskirts of Milton Keynes or Peterborough or any other mid sized English town for that matter.
Poundbury is a pretty shitty looking town. I’m not against pastiche architecture and wish we built more Neoclassical, Georgian and Victorian style buildings, but in this case the architects and developers didn’t get it right at all. The town feels like a model railway village. It suffers from a lack of any originality, organic expansion or decay and there is far too little stylistic variation. I don’t know what the answer is to creating beautiful housing projects, but Poundbury is most definitely not the answer.
I'm fascinated by your channel, also, the way you pronounced Le Corbusier made me laugh so hard. You actually explained this part of architecture history better than my architecture history professor, so thank you.
Here in Colorado they're replacing all these beautiful, historical Victorian style houses with these god-awful boxes known as townhouses. And what sucks most is that I can't criticize. I'm not cool or hit for Progressive if I criticized these new architectural nightmares
as a brit, the way american homes are made are scary. they’re all built awfully but are ginormous and it looks so isolated. even tho i can hear my neighbours talk all the time because our houses are super close, i love the way it is. in the space of 3 american homes, 10 english houses can be built with a corner store and a small park. i’m not even kidding, space can be used to much wiser.
only halfway through, so not sure if you'll mention this, vut suburbs are only "form follows function" in a way that is itself aesthetic and purely superficial. This may sound paradixical, but once you consider that suburbs are a terribly inefficient way of organizing living it makes sense. They are meant to seem efficient, bexause we associate these pre made pattern type things with efficiency. however suburbs are also very ideological. nuclear family values, individualism, american dream and so n.
i love hearing you do deep-dives on this kind of content! definitely looking forward to more commentary on intense random topics, i would recommend looking into literary criticism for good base philosophies to explore ie. marxism, feminism and also how they can be applied to things other than texts, like what you just did with architecture
I just think that everyone would instantly feel happier if the world had more colorful buildings. I have always been amazed by these big and very detailed buidling, form example Italy, it looks so much more handmade and not mass-produced and the cities are closer to eachother so the streets are smaller and I love that so much
Its rly interesting cus the city where I live is kind of split architecturally. Like basically how the city was built is it was first built near the ocean, and then slowly got built farther inland. So the downtown area is filled with gorgeous, colourful architecture that gives it such a pretty look. As you go further and further away from the ocean, you can slowly see the architecture become more modern, and become more dull and boring
Unfortunately, as Architecture students we are told we will have to make modern buildings like that if we want a job. Unless you have your own firm, which is not going to be likely. Also, I blame HGTV and Instagram for making the "Minecraft design" or "McMansion design" the go to modern design so that when clients come in that is basically all they will have in their head no matter what you do to nicely show them other options. Basically, we are doomed to designing open plan U shaped kitchens with a kitchen Island looking into the living area and a TV over a fireplace and everything in white, gray and silver tones. NO EXCEPTIONS or when our shitty friends who also know nothing about architecture come over, they will think we live in a dumpster. It's getting to the point that all you have to do is put a Shead Roof here and there on a design and people will think its next level.
In the UK, in my community, the opinions that local residents have on new developments genuinely holds enough power to stop developments all together. They also are increasing the amount of listed buildings that they r renovating and reducing the amount of greenland they build on, turning more to brownfield land. Also I wrote an essay about art being more important than science and I do genuinely believe that the metrics that we measure our life with and use daily will never live up to the creativity and nuance of the human mind and so it is no wonder that council estates look so depressing compared to old georgian buildings for example. Scientists are far too literal when creating, we need more innovative minds in the urban planning industry
As someone who lives in a poor black/mexican neighborhood, this video really hit the nose on this topic. Its so sad to see such little effort put into these neighborhoods. It sets the standard really :/
It's your responsibility to improve the areas in which you live. It's not the anyone else's fault that your neighborhood is in squalor. It's yours. Even the poorest Japanese peoples manage to maintain their environments and make them liveable.
@@juliemiller5196 cállate weon, cómo vas a mejorar esos espacios si son PÚBLICOS. No estamos hablando de higiene o limpieza, sino de tamaño y disposición de las estructuras y la calidad de vida que estas ofrecen a la gente.
@@nubesloc4s Most public infrastructure can be maintained by private citizens. Educate yourselves and stop expecting others to maintain your neighborhoods.
AKDJFHVHDSKUJF my favourite subjects (history, geography, economics) ALL CONVERGING!!!! i love talking about architecture/housing/urban planning too so this video was a blast ^.^ not going to lie i had to backtrack sometimes because your style of thinking is so complex and very much logical still HAHAH but i really enjoyed this!!!! as always, looking forward to the next
Love the classical music in the background! This is my first time watching a video of yours so I don't know if you have already, but Chopin would be a good choice of background music as well.
“If you want to understand what's most important to a society, don't examine its art or literature, simply look at its biggest buildings.” - Joseph Campbell
Edit: Right, thats me finished! It's true that just "Git Gud at Interior Decoration" truly doesn't quite come off as more than just a (good willed) joke. On a related note: The penultimate episode of Podquisition which has three (mostly UK) white hosts discussed a little bit about the relative uselessness of "doing a graffiti" when you're dealing with environmental devastation such as the pollution of a local water source + just want to make your anger known by writing a slogan, which I was like "I mean I guess" about. And yet...... by the time I was enjoying the second half of this essay , the memory of that desperately exploded back into consciousness. I won't say it's a hill I'll die on but, well. The most I'll say is that is on one hand I think that murals and tagging are both valid forms of selfexpression and types of beautiful art which itself is a form of resistance for any deeply dehumanized group that is being taken for as nothing but a joke by the society around them which is as profound n deep as the Grand Canyon but on the other hand I guess it would behoove someone to make super clear just typing on the internet with their not-inexpensive-laptop that that by itself isn't tantamount to ACTUAL REAL organizing; while, again, (ugh!) on the other _other_ hand who am I to say any of that naysaying to a fellow brown pre-teen in 2009 using paint to express themselves on a bit of the West Bank apartheid wall that Israhell was building at the time in the 00s and 2010s; however, on the other other other hand it would be nice to focus on something more productive like jerryrigging Water Sewage Treatment and things like that e.g. finding some relief. I guess every little thing counts so it was kind of annoying even if I did end up agreeing with what was said. It's more like, but HOW are you saying it? And WHO, and among which kind of audience, is someone saying or hearing that ? All that to say, I guess that's one more thing about specifically mostly English, 100% white ~left~ spaces that I have been having a lot of really negative reactions to at this moment in time and I swear I didnt need that extra stress ; n; I think you're right on the most important factor, that we've ABSOLUTELY got to think about caring for lots of people's ability to be (affordably) housed and not get dystenery - ya know, that pesky thing called public health - etc 1st and foremost. It's a tightrope to walk but as an essayist you make it look so easy. May be I am biased however. I've never been able to feel anything less than anxiety when I see a video is above 60, 90 minutes (still kind of okay for me) let alone 2 or 3 hours long. You're dope as all hell and I'm glad FD Signifier on Olay & Friends reminded me to check you out again after my very quick glance at any nonwhite essayists on this horrible hole of reactionaries. I am inspired to make videos as well in a way Ive never been and I hope to one day be able to be of educational/pedagogical help even if just a little percentage. (Can you tell I've seen your latest episode about Video Essayists?) Because of a bunch of negative events I've never finished school but I looooooooove learning + thinking*. So, in short, thank you. Well done. I hope that you are staying safe * as demanding as it is
Fr tho. The only nice buildings around here are old ones. New buildings look like boxes. They lack charm and personality. I've literally thought of moving just to get away from the boring architecture
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Can i ask what do you think of Sienna mae's SA to Jack wright?
Who cares if the houses are ugly
@@__yklim me
@@__yklim me too
its really sad seeing beautiful fields being filled and historic buildings being knocked down to build the most minecraft dirt house like buildings ive ever seen its depressing
Im studying architecture and i agree with you. I hate our current era of architecture.
yeah its really depressing seeing natural spaces destroyed so they can be urbanized into the ugliest most basic cube like structures. same with historical buildings being torn down so some gray concrete box can replace it.
@@javierpacheco8234 late stage capitalist architecture
ok boomer
Yeah I agree w you
as someone who isn’t from america, i find the idea of neighbourhoods where the houses all look the same creepy asf
It is creepy and there's a horror film based off this prison type neighborhood style called "vivarium"
Yeah, just like the USSR copy paste block houses
Makes me think of the Dursley's home in Harry Potter
Most americans find it creepy too. But like with most awful things here, we either grow used to it or use it not by choice.
what if you walk up to the wrong house
Its not just in the US. I always hoped that when the architect community, hopefully FINALLY, would get tired of the same boring minimalism, and jump on a new wave of architectural anthropomorphism. I think that was a very short period it had in history, but SO interesting and beautiful, and soulfull. But what do I get, droves UPON DROVES of upside-down "shoeboxes" for houses, with a coat of paint on it....often some shade of white : (......ugh.... bare and depressingly sterile......
Oh yes... there are almost no beautiful modern houses anymore built im my country (Austria). It doesn't have to be expensive or over-detailed, but... colours? decoration? angles that are not 90 degrees? natural materials (stone)? symmetry?
The houses are beautiful from the inside, but also the outside matters a lot. ("don't judge a book by its cover" is a scam)
oh and I forgot to say: Symmetry in terms of "where are the windows". in our traditional farm houses, windows are small and placed in the same distance. modern houses have them randomly anywhere.
And nature around it. who decided that gardens aren't a thing anymore? flowers? trees? wine or efeu on the walls? only short trimmed grass and weak bushes or trees in rows. Or worse - stone gardens.
Out here in rural Ireland. Some lazy-ass structures about.
people honetsly need to think in a much larger picture than just the architects when it comes to architecture ironically. Architecture is inevitably always tied to the cultural and power system where it is practiced and as architects there's always the projects we'd like to make and the projects contractors, owners, or even regulations, allow us to make. Housing nowadays is vastly different to what it was 100 years ago and the difference is that MOST people today have comfortable houses that were only allowed for the rich 100 eyars back. Part of the reason why is because since the 30's architects and governments have ha d a shared goal of attempting to build more with less
@@joaodelgado6696 as someone who is studying architecture and working part time at a architectural firm, I can attest to this.
If we got the money to make something special every time from developers than we would, but the reality is we often design something that is deemed too expensive. Developers are just looking to make the biggest profit with as little money as possible.
I think a lot of this also has to do with America’s insistence on car-centric infrastructure. If we didn’t all need to own cars and drive to get anywhere, I don’t think these mass-produced suburbs would be as common.
This. Cars have done more harm than good
YES!
I see we have watched not just bikes's videos
@@dexi6111 haha you didn’t have to call me out so hard 😂
Don't forget the wasted space of parking lots and parking garages
I took Environmental Psychology last year, and one thing that really stood out to me was how much of an impact architecture and urban design has on our emotions, and just overall well being without us even knowing. Thus, it definitely makes sense for architecture to fit into the basic needs theory. In fact a lot of your talking points touch on explanations and concepts in Environmental Psychology lol.
I feel like this is pretty obvious too. I don't know about other people, but my mood instantly changes whenever I'm in a colorful neighborhood. It's like a feeling of euphoria.
@@toomessy Definitely! I just meant more of getting a better understanding of the concepts and principles that explain why a colourful neighborhood elicits euphoria.
That’s super interesting. What are some examples of beautiful architecture and urban design that are mood-boosting? Are there certain colors that are best? Plants I’m sure? Any specifics? Thanks!
any biography on this topic? I study architecture and this thing about psychology and architecture seems satisfying to me
@@SoccerDua Well. Just to bullet-point:
Human scale
(Narrow streets, 1:1 enclosure with buildings, continuous urban forest canopy, and relative narrowness of buildings (so that you feel fast) with interest such as shops)
Trees
(obviously) and natural land where possible (i.e., pave sparingly). Trees are the best for combating urban heat island, cleaning air, and more.
Materials
(Where one can imagine how structures were built, feel and see the texture, the details, and often local context and colour themes and diversity. Architecture is best old-fashioned, artisan-crafted, so perhaps a Revival is due)
Worldbuilding
(Just giving a sense of wonder, exploration, where wayfinding and colouring is like game design, and there is interest and diversity across a city. Modern suburbs are the bane of identity, walkability, generosity, etc.)
Walkability
(Cars are just the least efficient, most destructive transport mode, and only a few people require its use. Priority would be trains, pedestrians, and cycling, through infrastructure. Channel "Not Just Bikes" helps here)
funny how something that we see on a daily basis actually has a really psychological and social impact. I'm a delivery driver and I remember last year summer I would always dread having to deliver in the boring modern housing communities because it was just so boring to drive through, and I always knew it bothered me but I could never really put my finger on why it did
this is an interesting anecdote!
That's why I love Copenhagen so much. Most of the archithecture there is super nice, old and new. There is a sense of peacefullness resulting just from the archithecure. Very underrated topic.
That’s one thing I love about all of Europe - you really get such a sense of time/place/history from the old school maintained buildings. That’s one thing I appreciate about the East Coast in the US - the buildings are way older and styler is more consistent and sets such a “vibe” similarly of time and place.
That’s only in the Scandinavian capitals, though. Maybe in other bigger cities too (although in Scandinavia it’s usually only the capitals that are “big”). In the rest of the countries, the architecture is boring as hell. I live in a small Swedish town and it doesn’t even feel like I’m in Sweden. It has NOTHING to do with Stockholm or even Gothenburg. Looks like another country even.
@@tlowery2074 You mean all of Western Europe. Eastern Europe is a completely different world regarding architecture
@@martamiteva3464 It’s really not that different. There’s a lot of concrete in Western Europe and a fair few cities/capitals in Eastern Europe with beautiful historic buildings
@@martamiteva3464 Not really, except of socialist style architecture here and there
i am so disappointed how cities are so grey and sqaure, so much potential and they all blew it for quick money
Well the reasons for this is that it is cheaper. Where I live (western europe) the housing prices are exploding becasue we do the opposite what the americans do. The majority of people can afford a tiny appartment in a blank skyscarper neighbourhoud (Plattenbau). Only the few rich people can afford a house.
There’s no beauty in the US anymore. HOA killed it, city regulations killed it, builders greed and cut corners killed it. I have tried so hard to redesign my house so everyone who walks in will say “wow, this doesn’t look like my house”
It's still in places with strict architectural ordinances. Such as Babcock Ranch and Celebration in Florida.
If u ever get the chance, visit Santa Fe
i can still find it in certain parts of my town. The Village of East Davenport is one of my favorite places because it embraces its architecture and has a beautiful sense of community :)
It's time to get inspiration from the past and follow our art history designs into our architecture. As an architect to be I think we need to copy or follow the principles of some of those styles so we can create more eye pleasing architecture.
when I explained to my friends how I thought America was so ugly and so depressing they were so confused about what I was even describing. My friends have literally never left the country and the farthest they have ever traveled was from Florida to New york. My friends couldn't understand how ugly buildings or poorly developed neighborhoods in some areas of the U.S. could make me feel depressed. I literally would be so happy and overwhelmed when I would visit Europe or even Korea and see new modern architecture blending in perfectly with old historic architecture. I feel like I'm the happiest when I'm in an area where I actually enjoy the aesthetics.
Every day we come closer to being capable to collectivize architectural identity, and its an obligation due to the transcendence of the necessity of rationally built neighborhoods. Its like mutual aid for quality of life. I love that every video of yours is a really valuable and relevant topic, you make it so interesting! Just as a personal preference, I love the philosophy and architecture of the Solarpunk movement, it's what I envision for the future of collective spaces not just between humans, but with our planet. love from Mexico!
interesting, i'll look into it!
yes i love solarpunk! its really like the opposite of cyberpunk and the direction i hope humanity manages to go towards
@@sejal-x3l bestie energy ur givin
Just inhumane, dystοpian "you own nothing" architecture behind a green veil. You can hardly call that punk as it's what all big corpοs are already pushing.
@@westelaudio943 No, you describe it as if it was Greenwashing and its precisely what it repels. Anything that big corporations are doing is not solarpunk, its the actions of the people and local communities. Aesthetics is not the focus of the movement, it's sustainability and ecology. There is a big difference to point out here.
my tiny anecdote: so I used to live in a homeless youth shelter. well, a couple. the first one I was in looked like a prison. it felt like one too. it was very intimidating, which wasn't fun for me who was in an already vulnerable state, and the people there weren't exactly warm and welcoming (not that I blame them, I didn't exactly feel like getting to know anyone either in that place). the second place, the place I was at the longest, felt kind of like a tacky elementary school that tries to be bright and cheery but is obviously on a budget. but it definitely felt more welcoming, which could even be felt in the other people living there. not that everyone there was super friendly (like that one guy who broke his belt buckle on another guy's face, etc.) but there were some, and other residents actually talked to me and each other and my roommates were super nice (except my stuff got stolen but still). like it really affected my mental state and helped me get things together.
Sometimes when I feel kinda empty, I take a stroll in my city (Freiburg, Germany) with all its different neighbourhoods and their specific vibes and it makes me feel so alive. It makes me feel the sonder. The uniqueness and vividness of every single life.
So I could not agree more, individual beautifully crafted architecture is food for the soul.
you are lucky to live in one of Germanys beautiful cities. Due to the war (fuck em Nazis) so much of century-lasting (medieval!) old cities has been destroyed. But besides from this the ugliness of so so many town/city centres (ugliness to me is also linked to uniformity of stores/brands/companies/chains, besides from too much concrete, to little green) is also due to the lack of political will to acknowledge the importance of architectural beauty.. there was no need to sell all the cities to McDonalds, phone stores, Zara, Zalando and Pimpkie. I just hate the presence of it. Nowadays city centres are synonyms to shopping malls, while they should be public spaces of history, culture, art, leisure and community. -.- So once again, I envy you for living in beautiful Freiburg!
As someone who did go to architecture school, some of the things here a little bit missed the mark. Overall I agree that we need more beauty!
1. Housing developments/buildings are approved/contracted by developers not necessarily designers, and so there’s often just a few types of houses to choose from or projects are rushed through without proper time to consider beauty. Architecture students create some really beautiful stuff, but the industry kind of beats it out of you.
2. Form follows function. What was meant here was specific function. Keeping people happy could be considered a function, it goes a little deeper than just “housing” etc. Not only this, but it does not mean to reject beauty. It just means that things should be functional before they are beautiful.
3. There is no national building code, only certain standards that are technically optional but are good practice within the architectural community. Building codes are municipal so if you want to influence this go to your town halls! They’re often on zoom now.
I guess my point is, this is a problem of developers and capital not necessarily architectural design itself. Architects are often trying to push boundaries, but it comes down to getting paid and keeping the firm afloat a lot of the time.
1000%, I work in construction management and have watched many projects go through the unfortunate "value engineering" process. Sometimes a customer with deep pockets is truly willing and able to work in tandem with the architect but that's quite rare
Agreed. The architecture designs we created in school were supposed to be both beautiful and functional. There had to be a reason for each aesthetic choice.
Context and the environment were a huge influence. Your building had to make sense in the community.
In the real world a lot of the ugly is pushed by developers and how many rooms they can fit in X sqft. At times architects aren't even included.
After almost a year with a commercial/healthcare firm it often boils down to the price per head. How many patient rooms in a hospital, how many units in an ARU, how many dorm rooms in a residence hall. All the clients we serve that provide services without the *need* for competitive or “beautiful” design features will absolutely push the designs we suggest to the minimum for cost. Even the projects we do for municipalities that need community structures are limited by their budgets, small towns don’t have the money to build showpieces of their community - a lot of the time it’s to replace something that’s run it’s course and needs an update and they just barely have enough tax money to do so.
@@Drawfield the almighty dollar is what it comes down to, yes. If you look at the arts and crafts movement, William Morris had all these grand ideas of being able to make design affordable for all people but ultimately it’s just not compatible with the system we live in which is highly unfortunate. Imagine all the beauty the world has been robbed of.
thank you for this write up, I’m also an architecture student and had similar criticisms. It’s more about the way capitalism has degraded the arts.
Honestly it gets me kinda down that every video I watch to inform myself can be boiled down to "this would be great for humanity but for it to work we need governments to care/invest" and I know from first-hand experience that governments rarely care, if ever
Anything that makes life better for a human makes a worst pawn for authorities to exploit, and capitalism rewards exploitation
Working as a housekeeper, you're forced to ingest this reality. Majority of my customers are middle/upper class, living in cookie cutter homes. I've cleaned out crummy apartments for landlords in questionable areas a handful of times as well, showing me another litany of problems & heartbreak
as an architecture student, most of the people that I have had conversations with regarding architectural beauty tend to only talk about historical architectural styles and always put modernist architecture down. while i do agree that those historical styles are aesthetically pleasing, it is also important to remember that they have also evolved over time. i see modernist architecture as just another step in this process of evolution.
at the same time, the mass housing produced is not the only example of modernist architecture. it is a very simple derivative- made using the lowest possible funds and time. i truly believe that every style of architecture can be evolved accordingly ( in regards to modern construction techniques, materials and modern design elements)derivative of that particular community and the result would be stunning ( as can be seen in many cases already)
Another thing that most people don't get about the modern movent is that it wasn't just a rejection of classical or traditional architecture, the rules of order, simmetry, the use of light and much more were taken directly from classical architecture but applied to the context of their era. Also people who don't know about architecture just put the label modernist to pretty much everything from buildings from the 20's to a building made last week when in reality there is so much more to the evolution of architecture, so many opposite ideas, regional styles, sociopolitical context that just gets ignored.
Exactly! I also feel like the reason why so many people put down modern and/or old, historical architecture buildings is usually because of the color scheme. I think a lot of people forget how important color schemes are. My country's architectural buildings are BORING and super minimalist, but yet- thanks to the colours and the decorative, It somehow feels new and fresh every single time. I personally have no problems with either modern or historical buildings, because I believe they're all interesting in their own ways. As corny as that may sound lol.
Totally agreed, much of suburban development is entirely driven by production and profit. The entire goal is development at the lowest dollar. As such many general contractors and construction firms pay very little mind to architectural beauty or style, its hard to critique the style of suburban development when it inherently has no style. Modernist styles, when done well, can break the mold of standardization and can engage with its local context in really innovative ways.
Agreed, had a whole discussion with my prof over this
Ok i undertstand but to get rid of craftmanship, ornament or any decoration that comes from an architect's imagination and not put it in their buildings is wrong. Why do we have to accept this idea that we can't build beautiful becuase the function (the purpose of the building) is only considered but not the look. Louis Sullivan, one of the people who coined the term Form ever follows function cared about both its purpose and look too, matter of fact he put beauty into his buildings with his own unique ornament. So i think that architects are lost or dont see this idea as important when it is becuase today's modernist thought on how architecture should be is totally wrong or 50 percent correct.
I always felt weird for finding those rich houses souless, sad and depressing, always lacking of colors and windows, full of those extremely artificial lights and clean-smell of the air-conditioning...but now I know why, modernity lacks of culture, history, color, spontaneity and background.
A Rich house is pretty much the same here, in China and in the US.
White all over the walls, and that's all.
Maybe that's why I'm too into country-side houses and style.
Im a major is architecture and its something ive been interested in for a while. Architecture especially in america and the UK had become much more about stuffing as many people in one place for economic gain than an actual art form. That's really why I chose to major in it, not only do I want to create beautiful structures I also want to focus on sustainable architecture for our future. This video is amazing and Im so happy people are finally talking ab this!!
Well i would like architecture to look like art deco. Which is my favorite style and here in united states we have great art deco architecture.
@@javierpacheco8234 Art Deco is top tier
@@Foogi9000 i love art deco so much that im designing art deco style buildings on my free time which i hope in the future they could be made. I'm majoring in architecture btw.
i hope you don't wear the hijab
@@AlexanderLittlebears i do ❤️
The statement "form follows function" is often misunderstood. It doesn't mean function is more important and the design should be minimal. It means that the design of a building should relate to the funtion of the building. So for example a school should look like a school, or the function of offices should be reflected in the design and shape of the building. And these designs can still be decorative! If you look up the buildings by Louis Sullivan (the architect who coined the term "form follows function") you can see some of them are highly decorated, especialy by todays standards.
I'm a young architect from the Netherlands, so it was interesting to hear about this subject from an american perspective. It looks like the situations are quite different. In the Netherlands we have commities that judge new building plans, not only to check if they fulfil the building codes, but also to judge if they fit in with the surrouding buildings and meet certain aesthetic guidlines. There's also a lot of attention for building social housing. It's mixed in with 'regular' housing, built and owned by not-for-profit social housing corporations. The architectural quality of social housing might be slightly lower than non-social housing, but it's still decent and it's not immediately distinguishable. I design a lot of social housing at the firm I work at, and we always try to make each housing project a little bit special, even with the limited budgets we have to work with.
Exactly. While Louis Ssillivan champianed this phrase, he still created gorgeous buildings with very intricate ornamentation. It was modernists like Le Corbuseir and Mies van der Roe that took it to mean function at the expense of all ornamentation or beauty.
Totally agreed, though it pre-dated the term, Palais Garnier is a classic champion of the mode of thinking with layouts and exterior forms that match the utility of the structure while still maintaining the grandeur and detail associated with late 19th century Parisian architecture.
Yes I've been thinking about this for a while. Im also studying architecture and i read history about louis sullivan. Form follows function is very misinterpreted than what the original phrase means.
Indeed. I remember reading that, as building became easier at the end of the 19th century, "form follows function" could be put to very specific lengths, including gathering particular materials, constructing new forms for quality of life, etc.
This was about Art Nouveau, which could be applied to any architectural style, and was very organic, and still defined by the skilled traditional artisans, in cooperation with the architects and artists.
The Ugliness problem runs so rampant in the US partly because they put a lot of emphasis in the car, pretty cities in Europe are suitable for people to walk so there even modern ugly shoebox apartments might have easy acces to parks schools etc etc 🙄
I’d honestly argue that the loss of Architectural beauty is closely related to historical US policy on housing, race, US culture, and capitalism. After WWII, cheap, quickly built suburban housing developments were starting to pop up everywhere as a response to economic growth, low cost government loans, developers wanting to profit as much as possible, and the desire of Americans to own their own homes (see Levittown, NY as an example). The style of Levittowns where developments go up as quickly and cheaply as possible remains to today. That also means that architecture and neighborhood design often become secondary. Also houses are purposely design to be closed-off boxes because historically, Americans have sought to separate themselves from the other. The first suburban developments in the early 19th century were built for rich people to separate themselves from the lower classes. Starting in 1930s and 40s, suburbs acted as a way for white Americans to separate themselves from black Americans. Single family housing was preferred in the 19th century as it was a sign of wealth
Also those tacky ass McMansions that upper middle class people put up on cheap land often are just cheap copies of past architectural styles of what the person thought signifies “wealth”, even though it often ends up looking crap and was put up with the cheapest materials possible. So to this day, house ownership still remains more a sign of wealth, but since most people aren’t rich enough to afford interesting housing, they stick with what they can get, which tends to be what we typically see. The pervasiveness of single family housing is also a big reason for the housing crisis that we have right now as multi-family housing is often zoned out by local governments and fought tooth and nail by NIMBYs.
I also unfortunately don’t ever see the government really taking an interest in preserving a specific architectural style because most areas either don’t have one or can’t afford it. The only time it will be used is the way we have historically used zoning, and that is for the primary purpose of exclusion. While I think most people would want to see the more beautiful architecture, I just don’t see that happening if there is a profit incentive to just built as quickly and cheaply as possible.
i learned about levittown in school and it was an extremely intriguing topic honestly and got me interested in architecture casually
wow just when i was complaining that my youtube algorithm has gotten real boring, you appear 🤧
NO WAY how are you here
As an architecture student in grad school, i agree with your points 100%. Originality is dying and after studying the same white minimalist building every semester it starts to get boring and feel underwhelming.Combining aesthetic beauty and public space use can be done and hopefully it can be improved in the future when architects start to realize that architecture isn’t just an art, it is a necessity.
Thank you that there are people like you. Because I also am studying architecture and I also think the same way as you do. Almost everything that we build is in that color and also the exterior is always in a fractalated form which gives it that ugly appearance.
I always loved one specific building near my school that was so beautiful to me, and I was so sad that it was the only one that was actually beautiful in the City, so I always thought I would love to live right in front of it, so I could see it outside my window. Architectural beauty is necessary and so inspiring, that building literally gave me happiness and would have loved to see a neighbourhood that complimented that architecture
This topic has been concerning me for so long now. Thank you for talking about this!
still watching but I like the direction you went with this. It makes me think a lot about the personality-less aesthetic of ~gentrification buildings~ that can be seen across major cities. I grew up in Seattle and every time I go back I see more blocky gray townhouses that serve as a visual harbinger of loss of previous communities of color and as a reminder of how and why things have changed in the city since I was a kid.
Likewise, empty/abandoned buildings and/or craftsman homes serve as a sad reminder of what is given value and allocated resources in a community and always make me personally reflect on the ways they could be used to bring more life/sense of community into underserved neighborhoods- those buildings could be used to house the homeless or serve as resource hubs for recreation, childcare, job placement, or art and cultural centers rather than remaining abandoned and serving as blight.
I grew up in the suburbs in America and it was always very sad. No one talks to their neighbors, the surrounding landscape isn't even designed for human use but for curbside appeal, and every house is a shade of beige. It just made me really hate the HOA when I was a kid but now I see it's a much larger issue.
Sounds like you grew up in Arizona. Those are pretty much my same grievences with arcitecture now.
Sounds like you grew up in Arizona. Those are pretty much my same grievances with architecture now.
I live in Vienna. We have so many beautiful old buildings here, be it palais or apartment buildings from the Wilhelminian period (end of the 19th century). Many tourists are surely so excited about the city because of this architectural heritage. I once read that architecture is only interesting/beautiful when the eye is engaged. And these buildings have ornaments, sculptures, stucco, ornate windows and doors, bay windows, chimneys, skylights, etc. New architecture lacks all of that, lots of glass, bare concrete, smooth surfaces, dark colors. I wish architecture could become more interesting and beautiful again and not just use the cheapest materials. I don't think many of the buildings built today will still be standing 100 years from now.
As an Architecture student currently making a project critiquing American suburbs and finding an alternative suburban house typology (while sometimes regretting not having studied Philosophy), this video couldn't have been more perfect ! Thanks for sharing !
I really love Japanese and south Korean suburban neighbourhood architecture even though its modern with a lot of industrial things such as electric lines running through the streets, it has so much character and is somehow so very charming and unique. It's so much more beautiful than the clean square-grid boxes of the western world
This reminds me of this huge old mansion from the 1800's in the middle of my old hometown that was torn down, despite historical societies best efforts, and replaced with some cookie-cutter concrete and steal beam office building.
Did you feel sad when they demolished it?
@@javierpacheco8234 oh yeah definitely, it was one of my favorite buildings in town as a kid
@@chlorox01 I remember there was this castle type apartment in my neighborhood it was beautiful because it was made of brick, when I was like 14 they demolished it and, at first I thought they were gonna build something something better than that castle type apartment, now that the new apartment building was made, it was such a big downgrade to see this because it's one of those ugly deformed concrete and glass buildings that got replaced with. I'm not sure if architecture is really my thing to study because I don't wanna design things like that, I wanna design more beautiful styles or maybe a preservation architect could be my thing. But yeah I wanna do something about this because living in a ugly city is a choice.
i gotta say, this is one of my fave video essays in a while. i've kind of gotten sick of "video essays" that don't really bring up anything new or relevant. this video was SO GOOD! and something that annoys me too. i hate how modern housing is so soulless. we deserve more beautiful houses
I live in Arizona and in all the cities you can see the same trend of housing. Tan/ brown colored houses and all neighborhoods looking so similar you can not really tell the difference. Its really sad to see because psychologically your mind likes looking at beautiful things. It boosts your mood and just helps and so for a community fo feel more lively and more like a community I think a lot of people will see positive change in their day to day life. Not everyone knows that your unconscious is always picking up external cues and so why not give it positive cues to induse more happiness.
I used to live in Arizona too, I now live in Seattle and all of the houses here look so beautiful and different. I find the architecture here to be more beautiful than Arizona and am glad that I moved out of suburbia hell.
Arizonas gorgeous tho. I lived in a rural town in northwestern az and loved the vibe. Want to go back
@@nicolea8205 seattles a suburban hell with homeless at your front door steps and everywhere you turn! Place is shitHole
I find Arizona to be the very worst offender of cookie cutter, bland architecture. Almost EVERYWHERE you go in Phoenix/Tuscon, houses and shopping centers look the exact same. No character, bland, and super boring; uninspired.
@@sashamoore9691 A rural town doesn't reflect OP's example in the slightest. The prettier places in Arizona only really exist in very wealthy areas; which is a shame.
long rambling comment from an architecture student in the U.K.:
The street planning good/bad examples at 10:50 - there's a real argument to be made that the plan labelled 'good' is a lot less rational than that labelled 'bad' (an orthogonal grid iron). The intention behind the curves and cul-de-sacs found in many suburbs was often about seeking forms which communities could assemble *around* (to varying degrees of success).
The depth of all these issues is... deep: modernism in architecture is a frequently misunderstood movement; like, the quote at 11:40 that 'nobody wants to be in it because the thing is so damned ugly' ignores a million factors of economics, public policy, geography, population patterns. Whether a building is 'ugly' or not, if the land is valuable, someone will front the money to retrofit it, or knock it down and build something new. by blaming dereliction on a building's perceived 'ugliness' wealthy cultural elites (like the presenter of that now infamous BBC programme) can eschew responsibility for the decline of communities in post-industrial areas, who were way more screwed-over by neoliberal economics/politics, than the style of their houses.
Modernism was often the architecture of the welfare state - schools, hospitals, public housing; in the neoliberal turn of the latter 20th Century, those buildings and the communities around them were neglected by governments. This is also the moment that public housing was eviscerated and local government architects' offices shut down. More often than not what we find beautiful and what gets built is a matter of politics and policy than anything else! In the U.K., our government's policies are pretty horrendous right now imo, particularly on housing and local planning. They talk the talk, but *local* government is so chronically underfunded and under-resourced they have very little power to really institute meaningful plans (despite the prime-minister's ill-defined, underresourced 'levelling-up' quote-un-quote policy). The U.K. needs millions more genuinely affordable houses, local groups ought to be involved in their design, and architects based in local governments employed. Far too often though, these efforts are kneecapped by the plague of private developers in a race-to-the-bottom fees competition where all that matters is the bottom line, and the generosity/safety/beauty of the space is forgotten (leading to events like Grenfell tower). Architects get caught up in this too and are chronically overworked and underpaid (see recent New York Times reporting on unionisation at SHoP architects in NYC for an example).
Further, beauty is not the only factor. Can beauty really create community? That's a huge question with perhaps no answer - my studio unit is currently dealing with it, and it's great to watch your video and hear you take! Public transit options, cycling safety, mutual aid networks, feminist design, green space access, proximity to schools, healthcare, employment, nature, clean air, natural light: all of these things are important in the quality of life and community created in neighbourhoods too. perhaps it's a matter of where beauty is imposed from: is a community given power and agency to form its own symbols and anchors (exceedingly rarely), or are they imposed from above? I recommend looking into the Cleveland model (hybridised into the Preston Model in the U.K.) for designing neighbourhoods and economies around 'anchor institutions' (hospitals, schools, museums, transit centres) that represent local identity, used as investment vessels to direct community funds.
This is a long, rambling comment, which is to say that, more often than not, architectural style is a matter of economic incentive. Modernism needed to deal with the urban poverty created by the industrial revolution (and meanwhile created cool luxury for the new bourgeoisie!); post-modernism created icons of symbolic capital when the political and economic picture swung back around in the 70s and onwards. In the U.K., the industrial revolution caused mass social disruption and destitution and there was no social infrastructure to deal with it. By the time Germany etc. industrialised they were forewarned by the U.K.'s problems (the Crystal Palace 1870 World's Fair; Hermann Muthesius' book 'The English House'; Engels' "The Great Towns' are all good examples of where Germany etc were forewarned). This warning led to the foundation of the Deutsche Werkbund and later the Bauhaus (two schools at the very foundations of modernist architecture). As for your take in this video, much of it aligns fairly close to Kenneth Frampton's "Critical Regionalism", and Prince Charles' "A Vision of Britain" (no joke!), but more contemporary architectural practices like Assemble of MUF in the U.K. are worth checking out too for this kind of work in community that speaks truly to a new sensibility of architecture. hope some of this is interesting, and I enjoyed the video lots!
Wait didn't the industrial revolution caused massive rise of living standards and millions of people rising out of poverty particularly in the 20th century . Moreover how would you explain the ugliness of cities in eastern Europe which developed under socialism ?
Architectural beauty makes a huge difference on people’s living quality. When you are surrounded by beautiful buildings you feel happy and fascinated in a way.
I live in Wales (Britain for any Americans reading) about 5 minutes away from a castle and there's constant work being done to preserve it. The Village I live in is built around and in the castle walls instead of just tearing it down, resulting in basically living the castle. For years I've never thought about it until I realised the amount of tourists that would come to see it. I find it really cool and although all the houses look like clones of themselves, It's really counteracted by this massive funking castle. Idk if that's what she meant about preserving historical monuments in Britain and if this is an example but there you go if it is
i love that there’s a video about this because i love walking around and seeing lovely little details about houses and when going to a different area that was all identical suburbs i couldn’t imagine living there without wanting to die
I swear if you were my teacher my life would be so much easier I could listen to you for HOURS and it still wouldn't be boring ou enough
agree omfg also wassup once
Well she does take her time to prepare and formulate her words in the most interesting way possible
And she is pleasant to look at
@@hmutandadzi bro your other comments on her channel..
@@lotus4xuan “and u look like the prettiest girl from anime to come to life”..
I relate to the influence of architecture and esthetics on psychology so much. I'd lived in Russia (both in Moscow and right outside of it) from 8 to 13 and the architecture there had such a negative impact on me, and I didn't realise this until now!
Back in the Soviet Union, after the 50s, they built millions of identical "panelka" and "khrushevka" buildings to accomodate citizens. Functionality was very obviously prioritised over beauty, and the buildings were built in a Le Corbusier fashion - one appartment was the minimum size required for a small family. Stuff like entertainment venues or public spaces were built in a grey-ish, "brutalist" style. These types of buildings are still present today. Honestly, they're so depressing to look at. It's even more depressing in winter (and winters in Moscow are quite long!) or at the beginning of spring, when the snow is melting and kind of disgustingly brown. It's a well-known fact among Russians that a lot of them get depressed at the end of winter/beginning of spring. Whenever I visit my family living outside of Moscow, I get so gloomy just looking at where they live. I live in France, so this feels like whiplash.
So true! Same in Albania and Bulgaria. The buildings were just too depressing looking and got me down so bad! Ugh
@@sashamoore9691As an Albanian, I hate the architecture from the late 1940s to the early 90s. It's so depressing as shit man. Not that modern architecture here is any better. No, in fact, it depresses me, probably even more than the older architecture from the late 40s to the early 90s.
Imo, the peak of Albanian architecture was from the 1920s to the early 1940s
There's a horror movie called Vivarium, it touches upon this exact issue and utilizes it as a horror tactic. And let me tell you, now there is nothing more unsettling to me than a neighborhood full of replica houses. It fills me with an unexplainable sense of doom and uneasiness.
Whenever i get really High i have vivid imagery about this exact topic, It fills me with an almost Nihilistic sense of Sadness. What can be said about American Architecture in 200 to 300 Years? That it was cheap and lazy with no style and that it was dictated by greed and profit?
this is kind of why I prefer older neighborhoods from the 70s/80s - the houses are smaller but have more character, and there's way more space between each house.
I drive by such places and feel that way, yet I am overwhelmed by the urban decay in those areas.
Yeah I agree older houses look way nicer
That’s like the older apartments too. I literally live in a apartment with three bedrooms and paying $750 a month .
True. Lots of character; both inside and out. Also built sturdier as well.
Loved the video, here in Colombia most public and private housing projects consists of 10 to 20 stories apartment blocks with little to no design, they start adding colors and shapes that make no sense to make them seem more colorful and playful but it just ends up being another boring project
Latin America has the worst cities in the world in terms of organization and architecture after India and Africa (in general, there are exceptions)
I was thinking about this the other day. I've also come to the realisation that, because of globalisation, most cities around the world look similar enough for international travelling to become kinda pointless if your main priority is to surround yourself with the overall feel and unique aesthetic of said cities
Yea... In Korea the same thing is happing in certain large cities especially in seoul. I will say seoul has gotten better at listening to the public but in reality most people in seoul would rather be told what is best for them then decided for themselves unlike those who live in say incheon or Busan
I had never really left Missouri/Kansas in my whole life. I always thought most architecture was ugly, just endless ugly "stroads" surrounded on both sides by rows and rows of ugly concrete strip malls.
Went on a road trip finally, and yeah from place to place there were someone interesting designs. But almost every city with a decent population just looked the same as Missouri. If you kid napped me and dropped me off in another state I would not be able to tell usually without some major land marks, because the virus that is strip malls has infected everything
Single family zoning law moment
It depends on the city. The old neighborhoods in places like st. Luis, new Orleans, Boston, philly/ baltimore, san francisco, are amazing, and completely unique to that region. Although, often times, those neighborhoods are really poor, rundown, and neglected. I'm very into architecture myself tho, and it's interesting to see the contrast of beauty and ugly in those neighborhoods.
I’m so glad someone is talking about this! I’m buying a house soon. My husband and I would like to purchase a newer built home (about less than 25 years old) so we don’t have to deal with things like mold, lead paint etc. but all of the newer homes are SO boring and the old ones are absolutely gorgeous 😓
A really good short story that exemplifies this problem is "Shining Houses" by Alice Munro. The story is set in a newly built 60s suburb where the houses are virtually identical except for the rundown house of an old lady surrounded by an unkept lawn. The neighborhood thinks this is ruining the perfect image of their area and have been making efforts to kick her out of her lot whether that is by attempting to buy the place or even trying to call social services on her. They're doing it under the grounds that they care for the old woman living alone and think it's better if she lives in a retirement home. It is mainly a critique on modernism and, in my interpretation, how architecture makes social division (particularly in the isolation/identification of an out-group) in the modern age more concrete. Now more than ever, being part of the community requires utmost conformity and there's no better way to foster that than moulding your environment to promote it.
It also places a huge emphasis on how these developments were built on fertile land and how this is destroying the environment. The natural environment was replaced by something "manufactured" to follow a certain standard.
I don’t think conformity necessarily is bad. If we look at many beautiful villages and cities in Europe, the buildings follow the same style as one another and yet I’d consider them beautiful. But with many American suburbs and cities, they conform like you said, but with a god awful soul sucking style.
AHHHHHHHH I LOVE THIS VIDEO!!!!!! As the daughter of two immigrant architects (Argentina to USA) and someone who wants to study architecture themselves, the way architects are treated nowadays is so sad 💃💃 In Argentina, the way my parents studied architecture is that they learned every single part including engineering, physics, interior design, etc while in the USA usually architects only specialize in one area. The worst part about architecture here other than being confined mainly to one area of work is that for a young architect especially, creativity is like 😻😻 not at all needed. Commonly, unless you're like one of the top 1% of architects who can not only own their own architecture firms but become famous enough that people buy your designs, then most of what you will do is make new floor plans for already manufactured designs 💜 For example, my dad has been working as an architect for around 30 years now and has a good position at his place of work (architecture is also hard to get into w/out experience) but he'll have to work on designing a fast food chain and what he receives from his clients is the exact colors and design they want, really only being able to design a new floor plan. The problem with architecture is that for many architects, they can't actually use their creativity unless they want to make money 👵👵 You have to accept mostly any commissions you can get and at the end of the day the client is who you must abide to and usually they have a specific idea in mind that you must follow even if they have bad taste 💜 Architecture is also hard to credit as well and it becomes extremely underrated in importance when people think they can design for themselves to save money and end up making caca 😩😩 It's also important to point out here how some people will just get some famous architect for their building without realizing that the space in which you build in and context matters. I think you really did a great job talking about this in your video and personally I'd like to rant about this one library they just built in my area that was designed by a European living in a big and famous city. I live in Florida 💜 Not only does the library have those giant uglyass pillars that are supposed to block terrorist attacks (which although may be common in someplace in Europe are not at all in this area of Florida) but even the way the building is designed to stretch out doesn't utilize the nature around it. There's literally this super pretty lake next to the library and when you go to the 2nd floor of the building and step out onto the balcony you can't even see the lake bec of how the building is shaped 🧍♀️🧍♀️ Some people are silly 💜 but what bothers me the most is that people often claim that these buildings are pretty when in reality if you look at the way they were designed for this specific area no 💜 just no 💜 It really makes me wish people were more aware of how much architecture actually matters in creating a community bec when I go out with my family and friends personally I hate going to ugly malls even if they have stores I can afford. I'd end up choosing the prettier mall even if I can't buy anything bec at least it will make me semi detach from this sense of corporate and capitalist america and make me feel like I'm romanticizing my life 🤥🤥🤥
TLDR : Modern housing is soulless, doesn't care about the context of its location and is meant for efficiency rather than comfort
I remember reading about how Rome eschewed its spiritual predecessor Greece's culture of innovation in favour of a sort of knock-off of Greece that was paradoxically utilitarian and decadent, and that it was reflected in Rome's architecture (Corinthian columns over Doric and Ionian, for one). It was odd to me to think of the Colosseum as anything but beautiful when, in its time, it was sort of a symbol of Rome's imperial society of domination, ruled by money and power. Kinda like an ancient skyscraper (at least, if that's how you wanna think of skyscrapers).
Anyway, love your videos, creators like you make me a more thoughtful person and I'm grateful for it.
that’s so interesting, I recently learned about Greek art for university & the assigned reading touched on Romans copying & commissioning Greek art but I never really thought about their motivations, at least not in this way that parallels it to current architectural trends & values. if I remember correctly Romans had something to do with the making of Greece’s biggest temple too which would make sense under this theory. arguably the Greeks also did want to show off certain things & so could be viewed as decadent, like how the building of the Athena parthenon was kinda controversial apparently because it was viewed as a waste of money (I guess in this case utilitarianism & decadence were at odds?).
(btw I’m v much not an expert on Ancient Greek art & architecture, just had a little exposure to it recently but I find it interesting)
@@percabethisawesome1163 It might be that Roman scholars were hipsters who idolized Athens and project that onto the whole Greek society, and maybe that's why Rome is viewed as such a dramatically more oligarchical society? But that's just a guess. I, too, am not an expert.
I really loved this video! I'm currently studying environmental planning in hopes of not only preserving the ecosystems we develop on, but keeping the cultural and historical relevance as well. Great job on this video!
This video was really well researched and I love that you have gone into architecture theory!
P E Moskowitz has written some really interesting stuff about the relationship between the Suburbs, White Flight and Gentrification. They point out that racism and the desire to keep racial communities apart was also a key motive when designing the suburbs.
Another motive was to create zoning. This made the country extremely car dependent, which was desirable for companies like the Big Three and Big Oil of course. The US highway system was more or less designed by GM.
@@Atombender zoning ties in strongly to redlining which was also a cause and effect of racism, and freeway planning was also heavily tied to specifically tearing apart Black communities. GM’s downturn specifically in Detroit also resulted in hitting Black communities the hardest - its all delicately interlinked.
As an architect undergraduate in Brazil, I have to say that suburbs in the US are such micro cosmos that it is expected to have a cloning and replication of household's projects, as it certainly is cheaper and more 'modern' in the sense you mentioned.
However, what may be easier to implement and reduce the costs to live a more culturally represented enviroment is the adoption of public spaces and community proposals, such as public gardens, parks and subsidize the occourence of cultural displays, as local artists playing songs, selling arts and crafts and planting local trees, bushes and that sort of gesture.
The important part in all of this is the crucial participation of people to keep it alive and not letting the routine and work keep these places empty. A way of doing that is proposing public-made projects, with votes and mediatic appeal, to make it a big deal around the neighborhood.
Thats all I guess haha love your videos, Sun!
@Cínico Podcast Honestly I personally do not enjoy its themes and proposals. Despite a great project for the time, IMO such focus on transportation by wheels and the huge scale of everything just ends up making it a bunch of condos and some beautiful public buildings by the avenues. Great ideals but not really sustainable for any real urban area that can naturally grow.
Your video essays flow oh so smoothly, and you explain things so articulately.
As always, thank you for sharing your insights with us
Beauty in architecture is just now being discussed but the cities in North America have basically been gutted of beautiful buildings in favour of featureless glass boxes. I recently asked an architecture student about how much training he is getting in aesthetics and he replied that there is none at all.
Thank goodness someone is addressing this! I feel like as a whole society and its architecture is starting to get uglier as we progress through the 21st century
I recently graduated from university with a bachelor's of architecture. This video was amazing. Keep up the great work. Architecture should reflect the community that it serves.
As an architecture major, I'd just like to say... damnnnnn!! You came up with a thesis-level work and you distilled it into a TH-cam video. All of the things you've mentioned are things I've learned and discussed in architecture school - the rise of modernism, architecture and community, and "beauty" in architecture, among other things. A great, complex look into modernist architecture and its effects/results. Modernist architecture is supposed to be not only functional but ALSO improve living standards (great reads are Towards an Architecture by Le Corbusier and What Tuberculosis Did for Modernism by Margret Campbell) , such as how the Sanatorium Zonnestraal in Switzerland was designed to help treat tuberculosis patients by having more open windows that let in sunlight.
Sadly this beauty of modernism has manifested exponentially and tragically into the boring, single-family detached home that a lot of American-style suburbs have. If you think about it, it is kind of ironic a country that values individualism like America has houses that look the same. As a future architect I want to create architecture that reflects the diverse diaspora of the communities I design for, and I wonder how it'll turn out. Like, now that Lunar New Year and Black History Month have now begun when I write this, what is Asian-American architecture? What is African-American architecture? Based on the needs of both communities, what can the architecture that represent these respective communities become? How can architecture reflect and balance the duality of being Asian/Black/other cultural/ethnic group with that of the broader American community and its values of freedom and liberty?
Sorry for the long rant and train of thought, but loved every single bit of the video! Keep doing what you are doing :)
your comment was so cool to read! i didn't know how much architects resonated with this video until i went into the comments. you're right about the america-individualism-housing thing lmao i laughed
also, the topic you bring up with the houses is so interesting. bc then, you could go into the particular ethnicities within those racial groups and find sm difference.
this is was a super cool comment to read, i hope you are able to continue your work and hopefully find your answers!!!! thank you!!!
@@ven_nom8636 Ahhhh thank you!! I'm glad you were able to get something off my rant haha
i live in a country that's incredibly car-centric, and overall no walkable side streets. It's hard to walk in those streets because it's severly occupied, it's sad that i never got to experience "talking a short stroll". That's one thing i wish to experience to fufill my wish as a child. It's no wonder that I dont feel motivated to step outside my house whenever I do so
This is so interesting!! I live in a city where new businesses are either required or highly incesntivised to have some sort of public art on their property and it's cool to see! While there's a lot of art that feels out of place or just there for the sake of it there's also been a lot of amazing murals by local artists who are being hired a lot more often then they used to. But, because it's a business thing there's very little of this translated outside of our downtown and a lot of the suburbs feel very cookie cutter.
I've never ever came across a youtuber which is a literal clone of myself, you and I have the exact same tone in speech, the same view upon topics in this, and a keen interest in the social sciences. Thank you for providing such brilliant & educational videos, the first 10/10 youtuber I've seen in a long time
Wow I can't believe you're almost at 100k, congratulations bby, so proud of you
the title and the theme of the video has caught my attention first so i saved your video to my watch later playlist but then i decided to just watch it and oh my god i love how you put your videos together you structure them so well and you never talk about unnecessary or boring things you make everything so interesting!!!!
This is so true 😭 my aunts live in America, and they have told me many times to go visit them, but I just can't do it, something in American architecture makes me feel a reluctance to even set foot in the country. I'm sorry Americans.
I live here and it’s not bad you don’t want to go to America to visit your aunt because of our architecture really visit your aunt and don’t fell sorry for us why should I live in apartment complex that look the same?
Same with me stepping foot outside of America. The houses always look like communist shit. European homes have no bathrooms or ugly interiors. I have yet to see a country that doesn’t try to emulate American suburban homes.
There is a lot of beautiful architecture in America if you are in the right places
Usually the older and more historical cities or neighborhoods have many beautiful and culturally significant houses and buildings
Don’t sorry, copy paste suburbia isn’t everywhere at all. Where I live, the houses are ugly in an interesting way and I love that. Don’t let these areas scare you away from your own family
i went out of the country (I'm from the US) for a school trip the beginning of this year and i was amazed at the architecture, it was beautiful. and it wasn't just the huge buildings for tourists, the streets and neighborhoods i walked through were so so pretty.
another thing i've experienced in my own state is the insane amount of classism that architecture builds up.
As an architecture student Ive got to realise that most of the time this topic comes up, most people tend to think of architecture as only the facade.
Some people still want that Art Nouveau look on their building and think thats architectural beauty.
Dont get me wrong, modern architecture had its problems but we couldnt be here if it werent for the Frank Lloyds and Louis Sullivans of this world.
I personally believe in the thinking of "Less is more" which I bet is the cause for all the minimalism people hate, and yes form should follow function. To me architecture is more about form than anything. How is a space used shoud come first rather than "does it look beautiful"
Nice thought out video though.
To me the beauty of architecture is about the balanced marriage *of* form and function!
@@tlowery2074 as someone who is studying architecture and working part time at a architectural firm, I have seen it is also a lack of money.
If we got the money to make something special every time from developers than we would, but the reality is we often design something that is deemed too expensive. Developers are just looking to make the biggest profit with as little money as possible.
@@tlowery2074 That's actually pretty accurate. Architecture has three main aspects firmitas (estructure), utilitas (function) and venustas (aesthetic), that means that every building in ordel to be architecture has to be designed to had those three things. It's not just about a thing that looks good, I had to be efficient and strong.
I know beauty is asking too much. But at least don't make it oppressing, inhumane, estranging and misanthropic brutalism with a lick of white paint, only serving the wallet of the developer and with no connection at all to the context or the people who actually live there. I feel like architecture schools are just still stubbornly indoctrinating their students into modernism barely changed over a century even though its detrimental effects have been well documented, or making you think that there is no alternative. Until every bit of creativity that every little toddler possesses is completely killed off. If you would pop your head outside of the architecture school bubble, you would see that this is wildly unpopular among common people, and for good reason. People just want humanly scaled, kind buildings, respectful to the context and local needs and traditions and streetscape, where everyone (think children, elderly, tourists) loves to walk by, have fun, admire, recognize, socialize. Even though these functions are reprimanded by capitalism. Not only to serve private gains but also public needs, not only the rich 'gentry' but also the poor, and more democratic than the blindly imposed structures we have now. Buildings who are fascinating in their own right instead of being parasitic of their surroundings in term of function (mixing functions) and beauty.
It's high time for architecture to recognize the mistakes of the past and reinvent themselves.
@@hydrocharis1 agreed! But can you give examples of what good architecture and a properly designed city/ neighborhood would look like? I’m trying to picture what I guess I have not seen, so I’m finding it difficult to understand how what we all seem to want can be concretely applied.
As an architecture student myself, I can comfortably say that we definitely understand the importance of context, It is one of the main aspects of designing. However, the buildings that are being built are rarely the result of an architect having free hands to do whatever they want. It is all a question of money for the client, they want to make as much money of the building as possible while spending as little as possible to build it. Thats why there are so many poorly designed buildings, because the architects are constrained by their clients. The most possible solution I can see is if regulations are changed to "force" a budget increase to create more contextually fitting and beautiful architecture.
Yeah the client sometimes just knows to well what he wants that it destroys the creativity that the architect wants to show and the most important, the budget which will determine how pretty the building will be.
The other day I was discussing architecture with my fellow classmate and we compared modern and baroque architecture....
You know how the conversation ended?
Quoting my classmate 'Yeah but baroque is trash because it isn't unique'
Like, excuse me? How is baroque not unique with its gilded swirls and dramatic colour scheme (not to mention the facade). Very bizarre.
As an architecture student I can recommend a look at Walters Way in Lewisham, London. It is a project that completely recalibrated my perspective on the role of the architect and of architecture. It is mid century modernist in it's approach and therefore it was cheap, quick and functional. However each house was built by it's occupants with Walter Segal, the architect, simply supervising. This allowed each house to be an expression of it's occupants and therefore a perfect reflection of community. It is in all honesty the most gorgeous street in all of England. This video reminded of it.
Maybe tell the architects clients (developers) to place a little more emphasis on beauty. As an architect, we try like hell to make things look good, but we don't have the final say and we're not the ones paying for it so a lot of the beauty is removed before it's built leaving a bland box. Most of the ugliness you see is a mix of clients throwing "character" out first when the budget gets tight and architects not understanding budgets or whose spirits have been crushed by said soulless work and no longer care because NOT ONE PERSON INVOLVED CARES. I've moved several times due to ugly environments, it matters sooo much 😭
As an Architect who primary design housing complex. The issue here gets even worst when we are talking about privately developed mid-low income housing where aesthetic is the 10th thing down to list of what is considered important to the developer. In any case, great video. Certainly would love to talk more about this topic as it has been something I have been thinking about since I was jn school.
DUDE FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT!
Also when things become more widespread and low built, it activates your fight or flight because we are naturally scared of open spaces. This makes it less walkable in America vs New York or Italy. But overall it's just less enjoyable.
Also some people say it's meant to increase car sales and car use to grow the economy and to keep the oil industry afloat, etc. I don't know how much i believe that though, i think they just do what's cheap and easy.
Would it be cheaper to use up more space to leave open spaces between buildings though? I'd think that it would be more expensive. I think it could be due to the car reason.
@@mynameisreallycool1 ya fs Abt the car thing.
I thinks its also the way it's manufactured and bc it allows for cheaper designs that are all the same+more structurally sound. And it makes it easier for the government to change the buildings easily, eg: change a neighborhood into a shopping strip. Where they can't do that in downtown NY or somewhere more crowded, partially bc of the space and bc of the extra designing and engineering req.
(Idrk bc it's different in different places but ya)
I just want to say I love your video. It was actually the reason I did my thesis of architectural engineering on this topic. Thank you for giving me the inspiration I needed ❤
I have thought about this as well, not to mention the complete lack of communities in many cases. North America is built for cars, not people
2:40 The three house architecture can be roughly say as a modern house, a real 'modernist architecture'(Ludwis Mile van der Rohe style) and a brutalist architecture.
That three 'modern', 'modernist' and 'brutalist' are the most confused part for most people. You can distinguish roughly as follow :
1. modern = anything trendy, glass, fancy, apparent fragility (over hanging, cantilever, etc..)
2. modernist = the most bland. you won't notice it if done well.
3. brutalist = rough appearance as an aesthetic, wall with no window, raw concrete, structural beam, bunker like, sometime dystopian movie architecture. The main different is that brutalist requires aesthetic (just different kind) where modernist don't care except function.
I feel like: "form follows function" is generally a good way to conceptualise things. But one should be aware of the actual function. If residential houses are places for people to live in and one builds a residential house, nobody wants to live in in a place where nobody wants to live, then you failed "form follows function".
As someone who works at a firm that does multi-family housing projects, both affordable and standard market, much of our design work is dependent on what our developers want for a particular project, and a lot of that does come down to what is cheaper to produce and source. There are some projects that we get to have more design freedom on and we do take advantage of that while still keeping to the budget given. I don’t think the projects I have been involved with are necessarily badly designed or lacking architectural beauty, but they definitely do focus on a particular style of architecture and tend not to branch out too much from that style. I would definitely love to see more architectural diversity across the board and I think we will get there as more younger designers and marginalized designers move into positions of project management and higher positions within firms.
I think a planned development by definition cannot accurately reflect the character of future inhabitants. It's the people that need to transform the place to suit their needs. It takes time to do so, decades or even centuries.
I hope you made good money from my eating this. I got 8 ads throughout 😭. Aside from that, I loved the video. There is so much to learn, and so much I know so little about, it's crazy cool.
I'm from the UK and have just started my architectural career, bear in mind my knowledge is limited, however, overall I would say that architecture is beginning to be shaped by a higher tendancy to design buildings to fit into a historical or vernacular urban farbic overall I would say that today this translates to less risky design language for new developments, architects aren't necessarily out to make statements these days.
Among most large housing developers (Barratt, Redrow etc) what this translates to practically speaking is this kind of faux pop up Georgian aesthetic that I see a lot, most new 'affordable' estates are built with red or yellow brick facades with pastiche quasi Georgian elements like porches, faux wooden windows and clay roof tiles, whilst an algorithm is used to place houses in a way that looks like it could have occurred naturally but is actually designed to fit the most units as is possible on a given plot of land. I would say that overall this leads the final products to look less outwardly offensive than some of the modernist estates produced in the 1960-70s but they are still clearly mass produced and often build to a dubious level of finish. They are also generally held back in how much they can get away with looking Georgian by the limitations imposed by modern energy efficiency standards and safety regulations.
As for less mass produced products I would say it varies by location, in cities you can get away with most new build designs requiring they meet sustainability guidelines but for smaller towns local councils will usually have some choice specifications regarding how many affordable houses are included in your development and what material you are utilising for the exterior finish, they are more likely to arrive an application if the structure dosent stand out and it doesn't irk local residents. E.g. I am currently designing a retirement village on the site of an old modernist shopping precinct, the build is likely to be very housing dense and utilise a lot of red brick and gabled roof elements, we will probably avoid trying anything too fancy and I've been asked to render the structure in such a way as to hililight how little the new building will impact the street scape.
Overall the planning system prevents really ugly buildings being put up nowadays but also discourages adventurousness and 'going the extra mile' new builds are generally made as cost efficiently as possible with any questionable architectural flair generally removed to reduce the chance for planning gridlock and objection by locals. Like I would really love to design a dank pastiche looking clock tower to one of the corners of this build I'm currently designing but the economics and the planning system generally discourage this kind of ostentatiousness going through these days. Some schemes off the top of my head in the UK that display these kinds of development patterns working as intended would be, poundbury in Dorchester, the accordia developments on the outskirts of Cambridge, or the sterling prize winning social houses in Norwich. Some less praiseworthy examples might be any new build estate on the outskirts of Milton Keynes or Peterborough or any other mid sized English town for that matter.
Poundbury is a pretty shitty looking town. I’m not against pastiche architecture and wish we built more Neoclassical, Georgian and Victorian style buildings, but in this case the architects and developers didn’t get it right at all. The town feels like a model railway village. It suffers from a lack of any originality, organic expansion or decay and there is far too little stylistic variation. I don’t know what the answer is to creating beautiful housing projects, but Poundbury is most definitely not the answer.
I'm fascinated by your channel,
also, the way you pronounced Le Corbusier made me laugh so hard.
You actually explained this part of architecture history better than my architecture history professor, so thank you.
Here in Colorado they're replacing all these beautiful, historical Victorian style houses with these god-awful boxes known as townhouses. And what sucks most is that I can't criticize. I'm not cool or hit for Progressive if I criticized these new architectural nightmares
as a brit, the way american homes are made are scary. they’re all built awfully but are ginormous and it looks so isolated. even tho i can hear my neighbours talk all the time because our houses are super close, i love the way it is. in the space of 3 american homes, 10 english houses can be built with a corner store and a small park. i’m not even kidding, space can be used to much wiser.
Awesome of you to include Roger Scruton! A personal hero of mine. TH-cam took down his documentary "Why Beauty Matters."
only halfway through, so not sure if you'll mention this, vut suburbs are only "form follows function" in a way that is itself aesthetic and purely superficial. This may sound paradixical, but once you consider that suburbs are a terribly inefficient way of organizing living it makes sense. They are meant to seem efficient, bexause we associate these pre made pattern type things with efficiency. however suburbs are also very ideological. nuclear family values, individualism, american dream and so n.
i love hearing you do deep-dives on this kind of content! definitely looking forward to more commentary on intense random topics, i would recommend looking into literary criticism for good base philosophies to explore ie. marxism, feminism and also how they can be applied to things other than texts, like what you just did with architecture
"Let's keep talking"
*parasocial relationship intensifies*
I just think that everyone would instantly feel happier if the world had more colorful buildings. I have always been amazed by these big and very detailed buidling, form example Italy, it looks so much more handmade and not mass-produced and the cities are closer to eachother so the streets are smaller and I love that so much
Its rly interesting cus the city where I live is kind of split architecturally. Like basically how the city was built is it was first built near the ocean, and then slowly got built farther inland. So the downtown area is filled with gorgeous, colourful architecture that gives it such a pretty look. As you go further and further away from the ocean, you can slowly see the architecture become more modern, and become more dull and boring
Unfortunately, as Architecture students we are told we will have to make modern buildings like that if we want a job. Unless you have your own firm, which is not going to be likely. Also, I blame HGTV and Instagram for making the "Minecraft design" or "McMansion design" the go to modern design so that when clients come in that is basically all they will have in their head no matter what you do to nicely show them other options. Basically, we are doomed to designing open plan U shaped kitchens with a kitchen Island looking into the living area and a TV over a fireplace and everything in white, gray and silver tones. NO EXCEPTIONS or when our shitty friends who also know nothing about architecture come over, they will think we live in a dumpster. It's getting to the point that all you have to do is put a Shead Roof here and there on a design and people will think its next level.
i live in portugal and our architecture is one of my favorite things about my country
In the UK, in my community, the opinions that local residents have on new developments genuinely holds enough power to stop developments all together. They also are increasing the amount of listed buildings that they r renovating and reducing the amount of greenland they build on, turning more to brownfield land. Also I wrote an essay about art being more important than science and I do genuinely believe that the metrics that we measure our life with and use daily will never live up to the creativity and nuance of the human mind and so it is no wonder that council estates look so depressing compared to old georgian buildings for example. Scientists are far too literal when creating, we need more innovative minds in the urban planning industry
As someone who lives in a poor black/mexican neighborhood, this video really hit the nose on this topic. Its so sad to see such little effort put into these neighborhoods. It sets the standard really :/
It's your responsibility to improve the areas in which you live. It's not the anyone else's fault that your neighborhood is in squalor. It's yours. Even the poorest Japanese peoples manage to maintain their environments and make them liveable.
@@juliemiller5196 stop shitting on everyone's thoughts in the replies you deny everything they say 😐
@@juliemiller5196 cállate weon, cómo vas a mejorar esos espacios si son PÚBLICOS. No estamos hablando de higiene o limpieza, sino de tamaño y disposición de las estructuras y la calidad de vida que estas ofrecen a la gente.
what's so bad about it?
@@nubesloc4s Most public infrastructure can be maintained by private citizens. Educate yourselves and stop expecting others to maintain your neighborhoods.
I am studying urban planning in Germany and we also talked about suburbansim in the USA, very interesting topic!
AKDJFHVHDSKUJF my favourite subjects (history, geography, economics) ALL CONVERGING!!!! i love talking about architecture/housing/urban planning too so this video was a blast ^.^ not going to lie i had to backtrack sometimes because your style of thinking is so complex and very much logical still HAHAH but i really enjoyed this!!!! as always, looking forward to the next
Love the classical music in the background! This is my first time watching a video of yours so I don't know if you have already, but Chopin would be a good choice of background music as well.
“If you want to understand what's most important to a society, don't examine its art or literature, simply look at its biggest buildings.” - Joseph Campbell
Love the writing/ the scope of topics/ the editing &c
Edit: Right, thats me finished!
It's true that just "Git Gud at Interior Decoration" truly doesn't quite come off as more than just a (good willed) joke.
On a related note: The penultimate episode of Podquisition which has three (mostly UK) white hosts discussed a little bit about the relative uselessness of "doing a graffiti" when you're dealing with environmental devastation such as the pollution of a local water source + just want to make your anger known by writing a slogan, which I was like "I mean I guess" about. And yet...... by the time I was enjoying the second half of this essay , the memory of that desperately exploded back into consciousness. I won't say it's a hill I'll die on but, well. The most I'll say is that is on one hand I think that murals and tagging are both valid forms of selfexpression and types of beautiful art which itself is a form of resistance for any deeply dehumanized group that is being taken for as nothing but a joke by the society around them which is as profound n deep as the Grand Canyon but on the other hand I guess it would behoove someone to make super clear just typing on the internet with their not-inexpensive-laptop that that by itself isn't tantamount to ACTUAL REAL organizing; while, again, (ugh!) on the other _other_ hand who am I to say any of that naysaying to a fellow brown pre-teen in 2009 using paint to express themselves on a bit of the West Bank apartheid wall that Israhell was building at the time in the 00s and 2010s; however, on the other other other hand it would be nice to focus on something more productive like jerryrigging Water Sewage Treatment and things like that e.g. finding some relief. I guess every little thing counts so it was kind of annoying even if I did end up agreeing with what was said. It's more like, but HOW are you saying it? And WHO, and among which kind of audience, is someone saying or hearing that ?
All that to say, I guess that's one more thing about specifically mostly English, 100% white ~left~ spaces that I have been having a lot of really negative reactions to at this moment in time and I swear I didnt need that extra stress ; n;
I think you're right on the most important factor, that we've ABSOLUTELY got to think about caring for lots of people's ability to be (affordably) housed and not get dystenery - ya know, that pesky thing called public health - etc 1st and foremost. It's a tightrope to walk but as an essayist you make it look so easy. May be I am biased however. I've never been able to feel anything less than anxiety when I see a video is above 60, 90 minutes (still kind of okay for me) let alone 2 or 3 hours long. You're dope as all hell and I'm glad FD Signifier on Olay & Friends reminded me to check you out again after my very quick glance at any nonwhite essayists on this horrible hole of reactionaries. I am inspired to make videos as well in a way Ive never been and I hope to one day be able to be of educational/pedagogical help even if just a little percentage. (Can you tell I've seen your latest episode about Video Essayists?) Because of a bunch of negative events I've never finished school but I looooooooove learning + thinking*. So, in short, thank you. Well done. I hope that you are staying safe
* as demanding as it is
Fr tho. The only nice buildings around here are old ones. New buildings look like boxes. They lack charm and personality. I've literally thought of moving just to get away from the boring architecture