5 Reasons the Modern World Is so Ugly
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- A distinguishing feature of much of the modern man-made world is that it is, first and foremost, very ugly: disappointing modern architecture abounds. We've almost ceased to notice how awful a lot of it is and forgotten how much better we can do. Here are five central reasons why so many buildings have gone wrong and an urgent blueprint for how to build the more beautiful world we deserve.
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“One of the great generalisations we can make about the modern world is that it is, to an extraordinary degree, an ugly world. If we were to show an ancestor from 250 years ago around our cities and suburbs, they would be amazed at our technology, impressed by our wealth, stunned by our medical advances - and shocked and disbelieving at the horrors we had managed to build. Societies that are, in most respects, hugely more advanced than those of the past have managed to construct urban environments more dispiriting, chaotic and distasteful than anything humanity has ever known…”
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In the late 80’s My high school Spanish teacher told us that it was a shame that schools are built like industrial warehouses or prisons, but that we were supposed to think creatively within those walls. She remarked that if we really wanted to change education and the state of the world, schools should be built like cathedrals, with rib vaults and stained glass. Now as a high school teacher I hold similar discussions with my own students.
Thanks for addressing this School of Life! Elegantly stated!!
In my area , you can tell the schools from the prisons only by the absence of barbed wire on the fences.
Kaiser Puppydog 😢😢😢
You had an amazing teacher Rob! And as a result, you too have become a great teacher. Chances are you are the only one to many of your pupils. The school and the teacher must feel mysterious. Discipline should not feel forced but enjoyed. This spurs the young mind to want to learn more willingly. The future is in your hands Pal, teach them!
I agree. Just imagine how Harry Potter stories would feel if Hogwarts was a warehouse school. Architecture matters and it's a shame we forgot that.
I completely agree. As an art teacher, I travel through 5 schools per week. The architecture of each profoundly influences the psyche.
Why choose between beauty and function ? When we can have both.
@@theglockykuzdra1006 yes plz
Money is why we can’t have nice thing, isn’t that ironic.
@Sanningen good point
Cost, Lol
Sanningen ,look up TVM( Time value of money) its a simple as would you want a $100 now or a year from now, most likely a vast majority like it now. As we have a innate sense of value but economic mechanisms of inflation have a “real” ( not just nominal) effect on value of currency. By mere supply and demand.
Additional money can loss value by leaving in saving, this is happening in japan for about the better part of two decades. Moreover as a society we agree that education is a important part for a society to maintain high productivity and competitiveness in the global market.
And finally works does not equal happiness nor equal return in money, especially in the United States where propatest (bad spelling) work value is instill since its foundation.
Everybody loves to visit old towns with old style buildings, but nobody wants to build more of them. I wish they did. But oh well, there's always alcohol.
You'd be surprised :)
But every capitalist wants to have their cake and eat it.
Many architects do want to include more aesthetically pleasing features in large developments, but are prevented from doing so by quantity surveyors. Not just on the grounds of expense, but also because decorative elements are difficult for them to cost.
They are expensive. That’s the root cause of most problems - money (or the lack of it), or, the inevitable success of the cheapest product.
The argument is a bit unfair. There a a lot of beautiful and practical contemporary buildings.
The problems begin when politicians and bureaucrats with to much public money meet a so called star architect without any sense for human needs and no knowledge of technical practicality.
Where I live there is a former public school building, planned by such an architect.
Useless and empty for many years now because the glass facade is not safe any more and beyond acceptable maintenance. And the building is also ugly and uninspired.
I noticed this when I was still in elementary school. Schools looked like prisons. A place where creativity goes to die.
Understatement of the year 😓😢🙄💯
I went to decorate my school. I was punished for it and called a vandal. IMHO, vandals were those who designed and erected this obnoxious piece of concrete.
@@Autism_Forever that doesn't surprise me at all that you got punishment for trying to be creative 😓😓 I'm telling you, schools are literally built and designed to be like prisons, colorless, unimaginative, depressing, and anytime you do the opposite of those things you get the book thrown right at your face and brought down for trying to be a positive influence in an otherwise bleak place
that is exactly what it is.
what happened is that we architects betrayed the trust of society and just looked at buildings as buildings and nothing more. it is all our fault. architecture has lost it's Duties and values in a tornado of useless modern arguments and ideas.
I agree so much. I thought I was in minority. Modern ugliness tires me.
it just cheap to build... easy to design..old build had endless time to build and never mean to made profit..
The Trump administration is reinvigorating the classical movement for government buildings in DC. Yeah!
Lmao people 3000 years ago were complaining the exact same thing as you are now. Literally just pointless nostalgia.
What you don't like is the boxy period. What you don't like is new fresh out of the box. What you want is individuality and variance.
@@deeznoots6241 mo
"We have democratized comfort, but made beauty appallingly exclusive". An outstanding statement.
Was going to post this same comment but saw you beat me to it!
Yep that's where I paused and subscribed.
Well to be honest, I find a lot of 'exclusive architecture appallingly ugly and tasteless. I'd rather look at some bland appartement buildings form the 50's or 60's.
@@co7013 yeah but in order to appear as a wanna be intellectual, you have to say that everything modern is ugly
After a few years of the biggest transfer of wealth in history the comfort is quickly going away for a lot of people though.
What has been lost in modern architecture is “scale.” This is a known architectural term. It has to do with size-most importantly, the size of a human body. As a human walks down a street, he/she has to relate to the buildings one passes. Modern architecture has forgotten the human body.
French Kiss Oh definitely this. I’m from central Illinois and I went to Ireland for the first time last year. In my city everything’s set in (mostly empty)blocks with huge (mostly empty) roads and huge buildings. You can see everything ahead of you for a long distance but the scale of the buildings makes it feel like you’re hardly moving. In Dublin the buildings weren’t nearly as large, the buildings looked different from each other, the roads were smaller, the winding(well relatively winding compared to what’s in my city, I dont know if it’s considered winding there) streets made it feel like I was actually going somewhere when I walked, even if it took a while. I actually enjoyed walking. It was great. I wish my city was more like that. (Although of course the Dublin likely layout has the drawback of making social distancing difficult in a pandemic.)
what do you expect from people driven by ego. We are talking about people so arrogant that they believe their artistic expression should dominate the entire surrounding area and be forced upon the people of the city for generations. A city that the architects never have to live in and was likely forced to subsidize their vanity project. A person like that couldnt care less about humans.
Lies again? Ugly Childish
@@dash4800 ...Le Corbusier springs to mind ....as do his pitiless and soulless buildings.
His legacy spawned many ugly monstrosities in later decades, in cities across the world - designed by architects often influenced by his style and philosophy.
Sadly, he's probably the most influential architect of the second half of the 20th century. What a grim legacy indeed.
Idea of modernity was good material and proportion. Is wanish.
Now boring is arhitect ur .
Do right !!! Buti . DK
Modern architecture is like a plain cake: no icing, no personality, no soul
I love Victorian style buildings and interior design I’m at the point where I feel like a man out of time like I should have been born in the 1900s
I don't get this sentiment. Modern architecture is a statement of human achievement and might that forms a pleasant space to be inside. That lens makes modern architecture enjoyable.
It is not a cake. It is a poisonous mushroom. I feel sick just from being next to it. Modern world is atrocious.
@@tobytheoceanlinerbuilder1078 Just what I like myself! Admire the architecture but be glad you weren't born in the Victorian times. I have a book titled: The Good Old Days, They Were Terrible! Explains all the discomforts and dangers of the Victorian and post Victorian era. Short life spans, dangerous contaminated food, medicines of all kinds that could be worse than the disease itself. (No pure food and drug act) Horse poop everywhere bringing flies and disease etc...etc...I guess if we lived then we wouldnt know the difference, but if we went back in a time machine it probably wouldn't take us long to be trying to get back to all our creature comforts in modern times.
@@Dion-rz3fz I can agree with all this what you are describing, but all these disadvantages from the Victorian past shouldn`t be seen as an excuse or an admitting explanation for the more and more increasing loss of beauty which increases the uglyness in the architecture especially since 1920.
"Brutal boxes" is a very accurate description of most modern buildings.
There's even an architecture style named 'brutalism'.
Exactly.
George W. Douche • 26 years ago and that word came from the french word for concrete which is “beton brute”. Its not because its brutal, its the material choice and function.
I don't think they are that ugly, surely because I see them everyday and they are so simple. I think that it's almost impossible for simple things to be "ugly"
No doupt
“Beauty will save the world” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Damn straight.
Hawk Who determines what is beauty?
Nah
@@dhaval1489 hahaha so at the height of emotion
@@silkie09 Beautiful/ugly feels intuitive and largely personal. There is no clear way to decide how we humans arrive at our personal conclusions that something is pleasant to experience or uncomfortable. The emotion that it stirs either positively or negatively, is the only conclusion we have. A lot of the time, humans prefer to go online to check reviews of a series for example to decide if they should like it or not - which is a shame really
Alternative Title:
"5 Reasons the Modern BUILDINGS Are Ugly"
Not just buildings, unfortunately.
Depending on where you live, the physical environment might be almost entirely buildings (a large part of the problem as well). It's a perfectly reasonable title.
part agree, part not. El mundo moderno sigue lineamientos similares, lógicas del desabastecimiento de la belleza.
@@guidomucci7407 it depends on what you seek. There are a lot of modern artists and musicians that are great. Stop with the "I was born in the wrong generation" mindset.
Excellent suggestion
“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”
- Mignon McLaughlin
Great quote!
Your username is a little ironic, considering it was Apple's slogan. Adopting one of the world's biggest corporations' slogan isn't thinking differently, is it?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_different
not all,
indigenous cultures value those that don't fit in they are seen as special. eg look into shamanism
This is so true as I sit here and watch the service remembering and celebrating the life of the late civil rights activist and congressman John Lewis
@@politics9811 whilst anyone who steps out of the social justice world view is shunned from society.
Oh well I thought this was going to be about social media.
Me too 😂
Although the initial image portrays stocks. 🧐
In a way I don’t mind
Si
Guillem Delclòs makes sense that you don’t considering a significant amount of modernist architecture was funded by both socialist and totalitarian regimes
It's not just the buildings that are "ugly" , but society as a whole, how people seem to think and their attitudes towards everything.
Gr**med by the very same colonizers, no less. This is just one method of their tourtures.
The way people dress
...XD haaaaha!! ... Didn't see that one coming "we are ugly" ...Very Ugly!
What country do you Iive in?
😐
thank you.
agreed.
100% agreed.
This is an inherent problem throughout the whole country of Norway nowadays. Large and ugly modern apartment buildings with a complete lack of adaptation to existing architecture, are massively being built right into the seafront with extraordinary views, meanwhile they're blocking the views for older and smaller buildings, and destroying beautiful and traditional Norwegian townscapes. Such a tragedy for our country. Thank you for this video, it is very important!
Scarily enough, this is why I searched up for this video. I was on Google Maps street view looking around Norway because I'd love to go there one day, and noticed how bland it looked, contrary to what I imagined it looked like.
This is why Burnham forbade the development of Chicago's Lakeshore. Although Chicago still has cookie cutter apartment buildings, Chicago at least can claim an unadulterated view of the lakefront. And at least there's a statue both by Picasso and Calder to brighten up the urban atmosphere.
Idea of modernity was good material and proportion. Is wanish.
Now boring is arhitect ur .
Do right !!! Buti . DK
Similar in Sweden. Maybe not so much in the cities, but i hate it when almost every new house they build in the countryside looks like either some kind of mausoleum or a shoebox with windows. It doesn't fit together at all with the classic little red houses.
Yeah it really is a problem here. They have ruined the area where we have a cabin by building enormous cubes that take up so much space. A fucking disgrace.
I thought it was just me that felt this way.
Me too, I feel so irritated when I see ugly buildings!
Me too... I thought the architecture is "inhumain" in a way. We long for connexion and a sense of community as a human being and the architecture isn't helping
Really? I hear it a lot.
I typed in google "Why is modern architecture", the supplemented.
- so simple
- so bland
- important
- so boring
- bad
- soulless
.
Our children will one day lead the world, but it is our responsibility to show them that this world can be a beautiful place to live...
Nonsense, the world is fucked let's just balanced out everything and it will be k.
Only if u lie to them.
What children?
What makes you sure that children of the future would do that? Are they special? We, our parents, our grandparents before us and so on couldn't do this.
Stop!being! cerebral!
U wanna go and get your self teased?
What's wrong with u?
There is beautiful architecture of every type, but I think one of the big things we’ve lost is local harmony and relatability, which is ever more irrelevant in an age of individuality.
The way we over-exploit our nature has brought us at this point. That's how we lose our harmony with local surroundings.
Nah there are definitley ugly designs, several entire design schools of architecture are outright disgusting and should be used as swear words by children
That's why I really love movies and games with beautiful landscapes and charming character and location designs! We are starving for beauty and nature. Just get a kids book featuring old British countryside: Its depressing how we lack that kind of beauty nowadays.
Hi, I'm a Brit; we have many problems as a nation these days, but we do still have lots of really gorgeous countryside: please come and enjoy it some time!
@@alistairkirk3264 It’s all private land though - either fenced off completely or it’s a plain farming field that you can climb a fence to get into.
I could recommend Eastern Europe for proper simple nature - forests, fields, and countryside.
@@Liusila That's true, but we have a very very extensive and jealously defended network of public footpaths, and national parks, so in all the most scenic parts of the UK there are very good access options for enjoying the countryside even though the land is almost all farmed privately. Eastern Europe is definitely on my list though! (I'll be in Slovenia this summer actually.)
yeah there's a reason ghibli films are so popular
As a French and european in general i feel lucky because even if there are ugly buildings in our countries most of the landscape and the cities are beautiful and that’s something that often shocked me specially when i went to america or asia. You feel like you are in a protected paradise and the rest of the world has become a huge garbage of ugly cubic towers. I’ve also noticed that i’ve the reversed tourist syndrom, i visit a city in america and when i come back i’m amazed by how beautiful my place is because i get used to the american or asian standard. I’ve never understood why people accepted in rich countries to create so much ugliness
The worst was japan, like i felt dizzy by the ugliness of the cities i think i’ve never seen so much ugliness in my life before. I know french people complain about dirtiness of our cities compared with japan but it’s 100% true, the central part of tokyo looks like the worst poorest parts of the ugliest suburbs in france except that it’s rich and clean. I’m not nationalist at all and japan has loads of things france or west european countries don’t have but the ugliness of their cities is something that really shocked me. Paris is dirty, is whatever you want it to be but any average looking building in Paris would be, by far, considered as a national monument because of its beauty in japan. That’s not normal ! Specially when you know that ancient japanese cities were beautiful, this country has lost everything of its architectural past
I have the same reaction when I return to London - in fact it makes it hard to think of where you’d like to travel (without spending too much money), because we’re already in one of the prettiest and most interesting cities in the world.
That was well said, and I envy you for being able to go back home to beautiful, historic architecture. As an American it’s so tiresome seeing shopping plazas and parking garages all over the place here. We still have some fine architecture in historic towns and districts within some of our cities though. Let’s hope they aren’t replaced by ugly modern structures.
I've lived in and seen many places around the world and the United States, India, South Korea and Vietnam have the worst kind of architecture. In the United States, every city is a depressing strip mall with parking lots, interspersed by "gated" communities with McMansions with no aesthetic value. In India, there is just so many people living in abject poverty with no modern conveniences within dilapidated buildings, you have to wonder why their govt does not care to reform their structural integrity. In South Korea, it is one high tower concrete apartment building cheaply erected, one after another interspersed with dilapidated villages in which the downtown areas are all crammed together with neon lights and cars parked every which way and Vietnam is similar, except they at least have some nice modernised living spaces.
Nations that do not invest in architecture and urban planning are also those that often neglect their people and cut funding for social programmes.
Couldn't have said this any better
In São Paulo the cityscape is an almost never ending dystopian forest of apartment buildings. Eastern Europe has cities with identical apartment buildings with identical apartments in identical blocks that go on and on and on. These are the bee hives that accurately represent the lives of the many who support the few.
Architecture needs to be given importance. People think an architect just like a Mason or drafting man. Architects study 5 rigorous years!
Bhoomika Chaudhari - they study five years but never understand beauty!
Which part of india?
Sorry, but the first part of this video is a gross misrepresentation of modern approach to aesthetics. Modernists were never against the idea of 'beauty' they were against the use of additions they saw as gratuitous ornamentation. The mantra "form follows function" was not a an attack on aesthetics, but a strive to rationalise form and optimise resources in a crisis-ridden Europe. And the "ugliness" that haunts post-modern architecture is merely a lack of care from building companies and architects that missed the point of clean design or were simply unaware of it. Proof of this is the work of Mies van der Rohe, which, although modern to the last detail, is extremely elegant and harmonious. I suggest googling Stephan Sagmeister's lecture on beauty, where he goes over (more successfully IMO) a few things this video mentions.
I'm glad someone seems to understand how off this channel's approach to aesthetics is.
This video doesn't seem to criticize modernism per se but rather those "architects that missed the point of clean design" that modernism spawned. Every good idea can have unintended consequences because of others misinterpreting what it means.
In art , the contemporary art reject the beauty for the concept, so i think the architecture got the same kind of evolution.
But i think saving money is the first reason of many ugly buildings
exactly, there are so many great architects after the 1900’s Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Alto, Marcel Breuer, Frank Loyd Wright. They all designed beautiful modern architecture that wasn’t over pretentious and focused on the very essence of a building.
Ale SC you won’t get the clicks with that line of logic...
So basically: “Art was a priority, but Functionality and Money, Money, Money ho ho ho!”
.
Hee ho
Hee hee hee ho ho ho ho ho ho!
Capitalism at its finest
@@dhaval1489 There is literally no rush towards the omega point. Its the main idea of calculus for example, the limit. The limit is not the point but what happens as we approach the limit. Deciding that nukes is worth spending on instead of great artisans from around our planet doing the great work is interesting.
We had an architecture student living next to us a year ago. I asked him how much training he gets in aesthetics, to which he replied that he received none. Just build glass boxes and call it good.
I watched them destroy countless examples of beautiful homes and buildings in my home town in the 60s and replace them with freeways, parking lots and glass boxes.
yup that was my major. they dont teach that aesthetics or form.
they teach all that theyre special and individual even though everyone does the same sh*t. they teach abstraction and that 'your imagination holds no bounds'. literally could make a freaking parallelogram and theyd congratulate you.
“Why the modern world is so ugly?”
Le Corbusier - Let me introduce myself
I don’t mind Chandigarh though. It’s pleasantly surprising to find such a city in India.
His modern style buildings and cityscape plans were indeed mostly ugly, but he was also able to create a beautiful masterwork...Colline Notre Dame du Haut.
@Roger Dodger I like it, especially the interior. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" n'est-ce pas?
That guy is responsible for a lot of awfulness
Oh, the heartache. I love his graphic work, but as actual buildings...sigh.
Growing up in DC, I loved staring at the beautiful ornate buildings. Over the years, gentrification has led to ugly replacements. Buildings may keep a portion of the entrance to maintain historic status benefits, but the rest is just drab and ugly.
I agree. Most of the new developments here are just offensively ugly. Boringness of the urban layout (grid) doesn't help either. It makes me feel like I'm nothing but a tiny numeric value on someone's matrix.
How many times have I said exactly this? Totally agree, the world now is an ugly place.
The other day I was working at a site in a part of the city I've never been in. I saw a large, drab, dark grey building with tall fencing surrounding it, and very thin windows sparsely dotted about the structure. Assuming it was a prison, I turned to my partner and said "It's strange they'd put a prison so close to a residential neighborhood"...she then told me it was a elementary school lol.
Damn, I feel bad for those kids...I'd never go to that school myself
One of the late 19th century educational reformers actually wanted to paint the school windows black so children would not be distracted from their studies by what they could see out the windows.
The main point of public school was to crush children's spirit so they'd be easier to train into factory drones. So the giant black monolith of a schoolhouse is right on target.
School is a prison in a way...
why the architects are so lazey nowadays
Growing up in Poland I was thinking that this XX century brutalism in architecture was sometimes monumental and great... Then I've visited Vienna for the first time :)
Everytime I bring up that the 21st century is ugly to people they are so astonished by my statement that they become aggressive and defensive as if i had insulted their own craftsmanship.
I'm glad im not the only one who noticed the ugliness of the modern world.
Lol I'm just visiting Bucharest and was wondering how is it that the 19th- early 20th century were so amazing and how is it that now evwrything seems so dull.
You mind-readers.
hehe synchronicity right there
Because all the gross old buildings were demolished, you are judging the past at its best and the current at its worst.
@@deeznoots6241 All of those beautiful are similar to each other my dude. There are no "best" ones if uniformity was prioritized more than uniqueness. If architecture now is not as bad as it was before, there wouldn't be any tourists flocking the cities with old architecture.
Glad to see a pointed critique at the joke that modernity and post-modernism has become in western culture. Its end results are absolutely second-rate and shameful, and then we wonder why apathy, depression, and suicide are rampant; the modern spirit quickly followed suit in shallowness and ugliness. Great video.
Yes, because nice buildings prevent suicides
@@Grgrqr beauty is one of the things that makes life worth living, friend. love/connection is another, but that's difficult to have when you're busy making snide, cynical comments.
@@dillonjohnlane and you haven’t considered that some people find these modern buildings good looking?
@@Grgrqr Switched arguments pretty quick there, eh? I never said no modern buildings are good looking. But, well, yes I have considered it. I mean, that is the most generic, boilerplate argument for relativism there is (you can't say it's good/bad, right/wrong, better/worse etc, because it's all relative, so someone might disagree). I can see you've considered it too, but I doubt you've thought that argument through to it's conclusion, because you'd find it out it doesn't work, not for actually living anyway.
Have you considered you could probably also find someone who thinks a standard prison is good looking? Point is, they're not built to be beautiful in the first place, the only point of the building is function, and personally, I think beauty is a value worth striving for, I think it's worth prioritizing. There's a reason people vacation to Barcelona, Budapest, Amsterdam etc. Beauty was prioritized, and we are losing that in the modern world, that's my point.
@@dillonjohnlane have you noticed that all of those places are associated with a romanticized antiquity? There is new iron and grey buildings out there that are made for art, just because it’s old doesn’t mean its automatically better.
If you watch "home" remodel or real estate shows, the answer is simple but depressing. Old homes are can be beautiful but typically smaller. Their plumbing and electricity were and are add ons. Often the most expensive parts of the home, and often don't age well once you take lead out of the equation. Builders want to reduce the square footage cost so they add more "dead" square footage. Light building materials, bigger rooms, and closets you can walk into. They market the "starter" home because no one stays in one house for a lifetime so why spend the money you can't recoup.
Then there is material cost. Most people are not choosing to avoid wood or stone, but concrete and glass are cheap to install and often more durable when you factor in termites, mold, fire, and water. That beautiful old-growth hard forest timber your picturing was cut down decades ago. Population pressure and resource shortages in farmland and natural resources like wood are not new. It probably help advance the need for colonial expansion and in the US our "independence" and mover west. What remaining blocks of old-growth forest remain are located in very hot, very cold, very remote and often fragile ecosystems that took millennia to build inventory but could be easily be stripped in under 50 years if allowed. Think, Amazon rainforest or Siberia tundra belt. The Malaysian forest of Borneo provided that beautiful teak you see in Art Deco furniture, but has reduced the island to palm-oil plantation today. Slow growing hardwoods, not pine or spruce like you see at construction sight or IKEA, were treated as cheap disposable resources and now most of it is gone. I know no one who wants MDA or laminate, but paying 2-3 fold more to build a bed frame or shelf seems untenable.
Build small, build dense and you might be able to go back a little like the video.
Insightful comment thanks for sharing, I had the same name as you lol
Thank you for these valid points
Valid points if you live in countries in which throughout history people have built with wood.
London's asymmetrical skyline is a SHARD to the EYE.
A 'walking talking' nightmare.
Aren't we in a pickle (or gherkin)!
Most modern cities for that matter. I have been lamenting about it and this video is so rational - I feel seen and understood. Thank you for this video
My (private Catholic) high school and undergrad campuses were built primarily in the neoclassical style, and my graduate university is noted for its soaring Gothic buildings. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that students in all of these schools tend to be well-behaved and do well academically.
"cities grew ever uglier" (picture of frankfurt) ruuuuuuuude lmao
It's true though...
True indeed. Frankfurt is abysmal.
it really is so ugly, sorry
it is a ugly city
Love the beauty of old new york, where horse shit littered the streets and factories made the air dirty, much better than modern new york.
People need to take off their nostalgia glasses.
This is why I am a big fan of street art and murals. In a country with basically no 'local' architecture and full of sheer, blank walls, covering them in paintings and pictures for me restores some of that lost beauty
There’s a fine line between street art and murals and graffiti, with the former often evolving to the latter. It’s a pretty damning observation of the architecture that most often the graffiti _still_ improves the aesthetic.
There's definitely a need for some sort of quality standard, though. When waiting at a railroad crossing, I examine the boxcar graffiti -- some of it shows genuine talent and care, but most is just ugly scrawls.
I hate street art, honestly.. it just looks like graffiti to me.
Painting for rest of my life ….offices are hideous
As much as I admire your channel and have been following for years I have to say that typically your architectural commentary is mediocre at best. Architecture at any age has had an inevitable relationship with money, means and cultures of construction, trade relations, technology in general and so on. It’s dangerously reductive to draw a line at modernism and say everything before was classicism (not really) and hence was beautiful. Not even mentioning to what extent of the societies within their regions those beautiful pieces of architecture were accessible to. A better way to approach this topic would be observing how and speed of construction has accelerated so much that disciplinary architectural thinking has fallen into a position of following what is constructed instead of leading it. 20th century indeed was a breaking point, precisely because of the disjunction between discipline and practice of architecture, and that is the real problem. It’s not a mere problem of aesthetics or losing track of what is beautiful, it’s an economic, technological, political problem.
Well said. I too am a longtime fan of the channel but dislike De Botton's myopic take on architecture. I agree with the insights on Romanticism and religion and other common themes, but I find his reactionary take on architecture too be unhelpful. A superior philosophy of architecture is much more complicated than De Botton permits. I think what your comment begins to point out all the ways that judgements about form and function are complicated - as you say, "economic, technological, and political" considerations are a good place to start.
@@Aaooee Agree, and "myopic" is a good way to put it. In a way I do admire the intention of TSL but saying "here are the 5 reasons why" is such a clickbait approach ironically going against the usual dexterity with which they compose most of the Philosophy themed content..
Yeah I study architecture and this seems like a very subjective take, I wouldn't praise ugly post modern buildings but many contemporary architects have designed buildings can cause as much of an emotional response from me as much as other art pieces and classic architecture
As a fellow architect student i agree with this comment a lot, I appreciate TSL input but it always felt too short sighted, his argument would hold more of a valid point if ,like you said economical , technological and political perspective are considered
You are being way too polite. It's very poorly researched vomit of misinterpreted buzzwords with even more poorly constructed argument that sites zero sources behind the huge claim. It's a very personalized opinion presented as a hard fact, and as an architect and Master's student of Architectural Heritage I'm beyond pissed.
"We have democratised comfort but we have made beauty appallingly exclusive." Very true indeed.
Many 1960s/70s Brutalist buildings aren't as functional as the 1910 futurist would have thought. Shopping centres, blocks of flats and car parks within a single lifetime have become outdated and obsolete for their towns. My town has just removed a 1960s car park, and a barely used 1970s shopping centre while several 18th / 19th century churches have been repurposed as town halls, bars or music venues. The older buildings seem to adapt better, as well as being prettier!
building ugly buildings should be seen as a crime towards humanity.
add it to the list of all the other crimes humans created in their path to greed and grandiosity. Selfish culture.
It really should. People have no idea how much nice architecture can affect your mental wellbeing and happiness. Architects have a big power trip in hand and they are detached from public preference. They shouldn’t be allowed to have that power trip in how the world looks, because we all know how architecture schools feels towards nice buildings.
How about a video on why society is so ugly due to greed and the exploitation of people?
Capitalism
Communism
Omar Sabir how about human nature?
Will Wow how about human nature?
There are many views on human nature
I’m not sure. There are some brutalist buildings that are strangely beautiful. 🤔
I was showing a Bulgarian relative the beauties of Liverpool - the Three Graces, Oriel Chambers, the Town Hall, St Georges Hall, the Albert Dock, The Georgian Quarter. He made no comment and was the first visitor to not exclaim with delight that he had no idea Liverpool was so exquisite. And then we walked from the beautiful Water Street with aching feet and his face finally lit up. He was looking at the Brutalist Liverpool Crown Court, locally known as The Sandcastle. I made a mental note to show him the Dollan Baths in East Kilbride.
True, but not if you have to live beside them.
No.
mellowman1001 Here’s a few:
www.schoolhouse.com/blogs/conversations/brutalist-architecture
Only if you buy into a relativist mindset. You can't describe what's beautiful about the buildings, because there are no esthetic components of them that makes them beautiful.
My personal pet theory is that buildings are growing to big. If building plots were made smaller we would see so much more variety at glance. Nothing is worse than looking down a street with the same building vanishes into the distance. It drains all energy from the body and one feels small and vulnerable. Standing on a street with many small different buildings makes an interesting cozy and uplifting environment at a human scale. And these small buildings on their small plots doesn’t have to be architectural masterpieces, humble honest buildings will do nicely. For me variety is a must.
Oh and then I forgot one thing, there should be substantially mor trees in our cities. We connect instinctively with vegetation. The green colours and shade keeps us happy. It should almost be a human right that we all shall be able to see at least one tree from our apartment or house.
beautiful architecture also has a lot of points and symmetries that are emotionally relaxing for a human animal. the sparse modern buildings are barren and harder to connect to because they're just so plain.
Symmetries and points don't required extraneous decoration, though. Right?
Details are essential!
@@hellucination9905 but not self-important.
I love this channel, but there's so many ads now when I watch on my phone I'm tempted to stop, I had 4 double ads during this video, I know that's far less than television, but it's far more than there used to be on TH-cam
I watch it on a Firefox browser, you can download some add-ons that block ads, it won't be as polished as the app but you won't have to bother with ads anymore
Creators need money
That's the only real way you can support some of the best channels here on YT if you don't support them through monetary means. I keep this as a rule of thumb that if the video is long (15-20+ mins), I would watch the 2 or 3 ads (including the starting one depending on how much I love a channel like Kurzgesagt, Vsauce, Veritasium, SmarterEveryDay, Lemmino, to name a few) and then click on the end of the video and resume the video (rewatch according to YT) on mobile which clears out any remaining ads that might be present. I even click on some of the relevant ads just so that these channels earn money to support them. Similarly, I browse with Ad-block on laptop but if I truly care about a channel and value their content, I will disable the Ad-block and then watch that specific video.
For a true gem of brutalism, have a look at Boston city hall.
oof
Just googled it. The ugliest building I have ever seen
oh god what the heck was that thing
I walked by there in person as a tourist like ten years ago. At first glance I thought it was a prison.
good lord
Rudolph Steiner said that your home becomes an extension of your body. He proposed soft warm tones and more curved lines, saying that the human system - both physical and energetic - would feel more at home and harmonious in such an environment.
That makes total sense to me.
I remember when Alain de Botton came to my city of Toronto and insulted it for being ugly 😆😆😆😆😆
Canada as a whole is drenched in ugliness. I'm sad that we didn't inherit more of the colonial style of architecture. Because what Canadians build is horrendous.
The houses in the west areas of Toronto are pretty, I think. Especially around Roncesvalles, but even Queen West, the shop buildings are pretty. Next time you ride the streetcar along Queen West, turn your gaze upwards to the second floor of those shops and you'll know what I mean.
He did the same to my city, Brisbane Australia, and put up a photo of ipswich another city on his blog and said it was Brisbane .... Brisbane and Ipswich were then both offended. 😂
Chrystiana Romanova any colonial style is actually a sad pastiche of a bunch of styles mixed up. The true era is over. I think it’s possible to have beautiful modern architecture. Developers don’t care though just as long as maximizes profit and is ‘serviceable’ to look at
I am in Toronto and can confirm that it is ugly.
It's not quite the city's fault though - it's just its age. Most buildings here are new and most new buildings are ugly. I used to live in one of the largest historic districts in the US (Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati; largely circa 1880-ish) and didn't really appreciate what I had there until I saw all this new-style garbage in Toronto. Even the old here is being renovated to look new.
Have you read Stephen Hicks’ essay: Why Art Became Ugly?
Anime
Now I want to go read it. Thanks!
Prince Charles of the U.K. argued on this same subject years ago and was severely ridiculed for his belief.
So does Roger Scruton..
The poor have always lived rough .The rich and privileged have never cared and only consider themselves.
@@DavoidJohnson Some peasant dwellings are pretty though. Maybe not highly developed but not necessarily ugly.
@@DavoidJohnson Ah, the Monty Python theory of history. Saves actually studying, eh?
th-cam.com/video/t2c-X8HiBng/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/Ided5k1FqMA/w-d-xo.html
David Johnson council flats in the UK would be considered luxury apartments in the US
Architecture is one of the reasons I've come to appreciate living in Philadelphia - the iconic brick row homes and old colonial-style townhouses. Not because they are particularly beautiful but because they give me a sense of being home. Even to some extent, the towering glass skyscrapers that make up our skyline. Although this modern, efficient style of buildings could exist anywhere in the world and that's kind of a bummer.
This is such a small fraction of the city, think of the countless cold grey boxes filling empty plots and polluting row home lines anywhere north of spring garden and south of south street. It's not like we've lost the technology to build beautiful brick rowhomes in those plots, it's just cost savings have overtaken aesthetics.
Not sure the cities were so beautiful in the past. The Paris we know today , exists because they freed the city centre from the dark narrow street herited from tbe middle age
And if they did the same to any of the small towns along the Amalfi Coast, it would utterly ruin them. But hey, let's call 'beauty' one single, narrow thing, right?
You may elegantly theorize an idea with a lot of incomplete/misleading hypothesis, but that does noy make it correct. Only the argument on natural materials holds some water. The rests are misleading/overblown. The main reason of bad architecture is its democratization; never in human history so many people had so much money in their hands, often people without a 'class'. And they are demanding houses that may not be aesthetically pleasing to elite eyes but rather serves their functional purpose.
Let us return to an aristocratic order of society.
@@hellucination9905 You first.
My 5 reasons the modern world is so ugly:
- Social Media
- Technology
- Misinformation
- People
- Consumerism
ZeroDarknezz
Social media and technology is not the problem. The problem is people being too reliant on them and using it too much. They are both useful tools and good entertainment. But can harm our mental health if we use them too much.
@@mobeenkhan824 Nah they're both a problem cuz they get into our lives so much to the point that we become dependent of them. Everyday problems keep growing even if their main goal is to make our lives easier. You just need to take a look to the media, everything is correlated.
no
ZeroDarknezz it was too much, too fast. In the future; psychology will study when these things overwhelmed an unready population and it will make the “mass hysteria’s of witchcraft” seem pale in comparison
@@mobeenkhan824 social media is engineered to be addictive and keep you coming back. It takes advantage of human psychology to keep people using it. Whether they're using it in a good way is second to the fact that they're using it, which is all corporations care about, since userbase is what makes them money, whether that's through ad exposure or selling data. So yeah, social media is definitely a problem
This is so interesting, I have never thought about this before. Thanks for the knowledge
I guess I'll give it a try, since your saying it like that.
I'm almost done, and I'm so bored by it that I'm going to have to watch it again,....cause i caught myself not even listening at all........
I got 3 ad's on this 10 minute video. Really The School of Life? The reason why this modern world is so ugly might have something to do with it being so greedy.
Martha Speaks Greed is perfused throughout any economic system.
The opening credits/logos/graphics were kind of funny to watch on the way to a video called "5 reasons the modern world is so ugly". And using an iMac an an example of 'ugly' is probably a bad idea. As bad as using a Roman aqueduct to suggest anything other than functionalism at work.
I'm of the opinion that utility is primary and that aesthetics is secondary, however I'm not of the opinion that aesthetics are of no bearing and little value.
Form should not interfere with function, however it rarely does therefore it pays decently well to give it its due consideration.
I hate the minimalist movement, that's not really optimally functional but rather optimally ugly. There's nothing, nothing to please you or bring you comfort.
Are we not comfort creatures? We manipulate the environment to please us. If we can't even succeed at that, that's just sad.
A chair should be comfortable before pretty, but a piece of molded plastic rightfully disgusts you regardless of comfort, being surrounded by ugliness isn't terribly comfortable mentally.
When purpose and beauty aligns you then experience delight.
Minimalism can be relaxing
Well said Adrian, good comment.
I disagree re minimalism, one of my favorite design quotes is:
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."-Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
When I'm in a cluttered place, I feel 'pressed in on'. I enjoy the emptiness of unfilled space, room to move and breathe and imagine.
@@silversolver7809 I think that's more to do with having had a busy day, then your brain doesn't seek anymore stimulation. Or for extroverts that spend little time in their home.
Also artful isn't cluttered, if it appears that way then you're overstimulated
@@arandomfox999 Agreed :)
The real function should be warmth and inclusion. When friends/family visits your home, do you want them to feel at home or tense that they cannot touch anything or move a pillow ahaha You describe it well that molded plastic is ugly even if comfortable. As we move into a 3D printed future, we have to bring nature along as well.
I too think old buildings are much nicer that modern ones, You see old houses have nice woodwork and architecture, beutiful angles and shapes and stained glass, They were a peice of art and every house was unike in its own way… Meanwhile modern houses are plane soul-less boxes made of glass and concrete usually painted in grey or white… architecture has truly lost its charm and beuty.
i just realized that after4-5 years of subscription i have never seen poor quality content from this channel. i hope this only changes for the better since we need channels like this. btw, this matter was super important for me as a mutual concern, they made me an architect who started to doubt his whole teachings and knowledge of the craft and grew bitter with the world of architecture, the modernists betrayed humanity and served nothing even though they had access to all the psychological research data that they wanted to know what we humans need.
It seems to me this video doesn't get the complexity of how the modern world came into existence.
Industrialization and mass production changed our world on every level. Social life, politics, ideologies, population and yes, also styles of living.
That reflects in any kind of design nowadays, only in architecture it is maybe most obvious to people not from the field. Nowadays architecture production can not be thought without the politics and economics and by that also the explosive need for new infrastructure in the last century.
How do you feel about the modern man-made world around you? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications to ensure you don't miss our next film and become a channel member here: th-cam.com/channels/7IcJI8PUf5Z3zKxnZvTBog.htmljoin
👀
Kill half of the population
Un-modernize. Revert to simpler times/ evolve to a higher one wherein both the advantages of modernity and the past are more or less balanced.
I would ban modernism and the bauhous moevment, Corbosier and Vanderroha. I hated studying them at university. we also need to train architects in classical architecture. I had to learn it myself and felt attacked at every turn by my lecturers.
Please turn off the reverb/ virtualizer sound settings, it makes it hard to listen sometimes lol
In Lisbon you know you are out of the historical center when your eyes begin to hurt and your soul to cry.
JPC chanel - I live in a small town in Ontario Canada and my soul cries when I see pictures of European architecture.
@@doktorvfx the fancy modern part is good but its 1%, the rest...
That was a good one ❤
❤️
I understand you good. When you in berlin and walk from "u stadtmitte" down the leipziger street along the soviet living blocks and nazi-architecture styled shopping malls and end up Potsdamer Platz you want to to commit suicide for what architecture has become and that without pointless enemy bombing those whole street would look like the area were you stepped out of the metro. I will never forgive the british for this crime against my astetic sense.
Wow, what an appalling take. Leaving aside the wilful ignorance around the aesthetics of modern/contemporary architecture, even just following its own logic this video quickly falls apart under the weight of its own generalisations and contradictions…
POINT ONE: all modern buildings are ugly, featureless boxes focused only on function!
POINT THREE: modern buildings are ugly because architects try too hard to make them unique, outlandish and shock us!
*Wait, what!? Are modern buildings all identical and featureless or all unique and shocking??? Pick a lane dude.*
---
ALSO POINT THREE: historically, “the job of an architect was always to turn out a building like all the others…” which is great!
POINT FIVE: modern buildings that could “come from anywhere” are an abomination!
*Erm ok, so I guess the same neoclassical building style you point out was repeated in many countries for thousands of years is wonderful and ideal and to be encouraged, but any other type of architectural style which could spread globally is automatically horrendous??*
---
I could spend all day writing about how bad this video is, but I think the funniest fallacy is assuming all buildings in history must have been beautiful because the ones that remain are beautiful. It’s like telling people no bad music was made in the 1960s because you’ve listened to a Beatles album.
Comparing a cathedral that took 200 years to build to bog-standard modern housing blocks is hardly a fair comparison, is it? Why don’t we compare modern housing blocks to the horrendous housing conditions and functional buildings that have been built over repeatedly in many cities throughout history instead? Oh, you can’t, because all the ugliest buildings got torn down long ago, right?
Silly video, go away.
What's stupider is all the ignorant people agreeing in the comments
You are too dumb to synthesize his arguments. The video is perfectly coherent.
I like older architecture, but I also really appreciate the brutalist, modern looks as well. Some newer buildings have a sort of clean/sleek look that, at least to me, is really beautiful in it's own way.
Though I somewhat agree, they are also depressing to live in or around, even the good ones.
@Vincent Philippart For sure, the aesthetic isn't for everyone, though I think my bigger gripe with cities is is the lack of open public spaces, especially with regards to parks and natural spaces. Overall, newer cities are built around cars, not communities and walking, and i think safe, walkable cities would do a lot to improve the lives of those living in them.
It must be standing apart from old buildings , far apart
No it isn't
@@vincentphilippart4669plus even if the modern building is done genuinely nice, the materials they use to make them are so visibly cheap that the building looks like a life-sized Fisher Price toy. Like a fake building
I’m contemplating studying architecture n this shows up. As always, apt 😂
Well then this viddo is very important for you.
In architecture school anyone trying to make something beautiful was called "pastiche" or "kitsh". I'm now working as an architect making classical and vernacular buildings. We're a rare breed but we do exist :)
The algorithm works
@@acmulhern Can you share some of your projects? I'm interested in modern versions of traditional esthetics
Please change the world
@@acmulhern I LOVE YOU! THANKS FOR MAKING THESE KIND OF BUILDINGS! Now I am in peace
The focus on "Monopoly Man" capitalist property developers is odd, considering that many modernist architects were motivated by egalitarian concerns (i.e. housing more people is more important than having ornate buildings). Also, many of the most egregious brutalist buildings were commissioned by public entities (like council housing, city halls, schools and other government buildings) rather than private developers.
Yes, he doesn't mention the Soviet apartment block. The most impersonal, drab buildings ever made.
Bryan B which replaced extremely poor quality housing that was far uglier and had awful living conditions, soviet housing blocks may not be aesthetically pleasing to some but they represent a massive improvement in the quality of life of tens of millions of people and are still quite favoured in eastern-bloc countries due to their amenities and locations
Right? I was waiting for cartoons of fat cats in zoot suits.
Unexpected ads are interfering with the ideas.
Four ads in ten minutes! 😭 not conducive to listening while doing the washing up at all 😄
@@Zen-ev2mi There is this wonderful thing called Adblock, been around for a decade or so, have you heard of it?
Only 1 force, and 1 reason. Money now drives everything, and as you say, maybe the democratisation of money. The corollary is that in the times and eras where the beauty you describe formed our urban places, most people lived in hovels, died young, if not at birth, and lived a life of desperate poverty, hunger and despair. They didn't get the chance to enjoy that beautiful architecture. Further, the payment for those beautiful buildings was generally by the blood and servitude of human beings treated as animals. The reason Bath is beautiful, is that it was built on the wealth generated by the huge slave trade in nearby Bristol. So yes, that was an era of architectural beauty. But from then to where we are now is much, much more sociologically and economically complex than this video alludes to. It's not just about people deciding to do ugly things. (Oh, and I'm an architect who studies this stuff. Just saying!)
Our whole world has become ugly.
The early skyscrapers were things of beauty - the Art Deco world knew how to use height to project aspiration, we still love them. But nothing after that, except perhaps 1950s-modernist houses and their replay in the 1970s.
My favourite museum is The Museum of Decorative Arts in the Louvre - it shows European interior design and concepts going back over 800 years. It stops in the 1970s with some ridiculous artefacts. It has nothing to say about the decades since.
Cars have lost all character in the pursuit of the functional. Not one of the designs of the past 30 years can match cars of yesteryear in terms of visual impact - even the cheapest - the Mini, the VW Beetle & Kombi, for example.
I am no Christian but... when I grew up, "turn the other cheek" was deemed a virtue whereas now it is a weakness.
So many people throughout the world are drawn to the beautiful music of Europe's Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. It's a reason why the Beatles were so famous - they reintroduced tonality as an art after more than 50 years of increasingly atonal experimentation. Harmony has been progressively leached out of music since then and musical analysist regularly show that even melody and rhythm are being trivialised: music has become, at best, a coming-of-age thing rather than something future generations will be drawn to.
Movies - these past 20 years have been the absolute nadir, with badly-made films based on comic books 50 years old being the only thing with real appeal - it's like we've forgotten how to tell stories and just want cheap thrills.
I could go on - fashion, novels, paintings, etc. We want to be angry, and we surround ourselves with these hideous artefacts. The way people have stopped having children in the West indicates a lack of hope. I am very happy I am a child of the 1960s - it was the last decade of "yes".
P.S. I do not believe ours is a no-hope reaction to climate change - the deterioration in Western culture started way before we became aware of that, and the internet has massively accelerated it.
Modern architecture is so ugly***
Better than homeless
@@alifbagas6 What a well thought out argument, as if those are the two only options...
@@Beastnar if you come from developing nations, you'll realize that blocky apartment does better than a slums
@@alifbagas6 You missed the point
@@alifbagas6 and are those slums beautiful to anyone there?
Weird video. I think modern cities are beautiful. I love walking around my downtown and see how different buildings look based on when they were built. And the skyline is lovely. (Chicago if anyone is curious) I might agree about suburbs being generally ugly.
You're so edgy being all needlessly aggressive and negative online. Such a unique intellect.
It’d help at least if the new building materials didn’t look so cheap. Even if I see a nice modern building, the materials used to make it look like a life-sized Fisher Price toy
In Sweden, housing is expensive as hell no matter how new or old the building is. The worst kind of capitalism is building cheap anonymous buildings, and taking rent (or selling the appartments) for such an high price only the upper middle class and beyond can affort it. I'm not opposed to cheap buildings; I'm opposed the capitalistic thought of making a huge profit for something that by every means shouldn't only because of a schewed housing market bubble.
I'm an architect and i'm agree with you 100% The housing it's a human right not a business
I disagree. Classical buildings lack abstraction. Good modernist buildings give me deep satisfaction the way science does. The sense of aesthetics allows to feel beyond the mundane. Good modernist buildings feel like art in a very deep way. I disagree deeply.
You've missed one of the most important points: the population explosion. Big cities' populations multiplied by almost 10 in under a hundred years. There's no way to both provide everyone functional housing AND make them beautiful at the same time. Most buildings had bound to be ugly because of the demand for building fast and many. This is especially the case for developing nations, like eastern Europe and the far east.
That being said, I don't find contemporary architecture as ugly as some people make it out to be. Massive glass skyscrapers mesmerize me and I find beauty in living in 2010+ made modern buildings. I believe things are not as ugly as they were in the 1960s and 70's anymore.
That's not true at all.
i've always adored brutalism, but it gets really boring to see the same cookie-cutter type skyscraper all over the world
Which is funny, given that brutalism hasn't really produced many skyscrapers. Brutalism is massive, not tall.
I understand what you are saying but skyscrapers arent brutalist, that's more mirror Esque architecture you are talking about, which are dull and lifeless
Good luck convincing someone to pay for a beautiful building.
they won't pay for it, but their children will pay for its absence with their mental health
Clancer a beginning solution would be to stop building outward. Sprawl will kill us faster than any boring building
As someone who lives in a 3rd world country. I find the modern buildings beautiful and the 1st world countrys roads and highways very well planned.
Me too! I found the video to be just another "old good, modern bad", they didn't really gave good reasons for them to be "ugly", just repeated the function argument, and advocated for classic architecture.
@@cornloin9732 New York and beautiful don't go together.
The 3rd world is our remaining hope for the future.. You can adapt everything which is good but ignore the 1st world's mistakes.
@@cornloin9732 LA is not beautiful...
LA is especially ugly in the more urbanized areas and the mansions in rich areas range from nice to disgusting waste of millions
I wish this man would have been my art history professor. Not only does he make art intriguing but he also has a voice that is mellifluous and lovely to listen to.
This is extremely surface level as far as explanations go. I recommend "The Ancient City" by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges and "On Power" by Bertrand de Jouvenel. While you are at it, read Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil".
Many peopel believe beauty is a social construct. I think there is a lot more crossover between taste that we'd like to think though
The concept of the "social construct"* is itself one. It is a complete invention.
* Should be "social construction" - the tendency towards these nominal forms mirrors Orwell's Newspeak.
I'm so glad you posted this, minimalism is so impersonal and boring, modern futurism as well, and cars all look the same
you forgot how architecture hides c*pitalism; worker identities (in how industrial buildings hide whats inside vs how they used to expose the labour within) and the number of studies strongly linking aesthetics to well being
As an architect I wish I could agree to all of this but one very important thing this video completely ignored. As architects we're also bound to build something that people want. It's like a mirror, some architects are still trying to use art as a medium, but the answer to this question is this - architecture is now closely related to science rather than art.
Or rather also we are rather helpless in this, most architect want to design beautiful building. But clients and greedy developer don't share our vision.
Very sad and I'm studying to become an architect, I'm not sure if architecture is my thing if my dream buildings that I aspired do not come true.
LouisSullivan said "form follows function," and he created some of the most beautiful buildings ever in America. You have misunderstood his meaning.
Yes and this is unfortunate because Louis Sullivan who coined the term "form follows function" actually designed astonishing and very ornate buildings. He never said to get rid of ornaments or symmetry, he just wanted an architecture that represents America, and he also said that a skyscraper should be a beautiful soaring thing. Most architects and educators always get ethos wrongly said because they say that it doesn't matter how a building looks like what matters is the function (the purpose), in other words form follows function has been misinterpreted.
This is a surprisingly poor video from a usually excellent channel. To say modernism’s reaction against ornament and emphasis on form meant a rejection of beauty is quite wrong. Aesthetic debates of the time show how modernists sought to extract from classical examples and pure geometry the essence of the aesthetically satisfying and were reacting against the fussy facades and excessive, often unpleasant decorativeness stuck on 19th century buildings during the gothic revival, facades that often bore no relation to the interiors or uses of the buildings. Commercialized housing is often undertaken by building firms and engineers rather than architects and often under bidding conditions where the lowest bid wins and the result is that most building today is indeed ugly. The same can be said for most fashion, most product design etc. If one wants to understand why the modern world is so undeniably ugly look to the economic conditions and pressures of production, not to aesthetics.
Idk I kinda like that rugged urban cyberpunk aesthetic
They are only nice if you're ok with living in a post industrial globalist hellscape rather than genuine human civilization.
That's not what you're getting. You will never live in such a world. You will live in this one.
@@elmergoering2443 "globalist"
We must return to our roots. Diversity is NOT our strength, UNITY is, with our own great people.
“Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.” ― Anaïs Nin
Wow, that's actually interesting, that is if your right, which I think u are.
The bauhause school was very visionary, the nazis surpressed them and went back to tradition only. Le corbusier also was a visionary responsible for the architecture you dont like
@@hund4440 damn this is the second conversation I've seen tonight in a row were 2 unknown people go at each other on a personal level lol, ...surprisingly im honestly a lil jealous lol, if you can imagine that?
Lol
i LOVE modern houses,especially the ones that is surrounded by nature and has the best views but i hate modern buildings in cities, i personally think that they are boring to look at, Just a big box with windows
OMG 5:49 THATS LITERALLY MY SCHOOL!! OCAD UNIVERSITY AHAHA I agree I absolutely despise the exterior AND interior of OCAD!!!!!
I think that the past was also quite ugly in a different way. It stank and many buildings would have been rundown. This is more and more true the further back you go. Often only the 'great' buildings survive, again this is more and more true previously. I should probably say that this is totally uneducated opinion and was based off my gut reaction
sad but true. i used to practice and teach architecture, and i have to agree that 'beauty' is removed from architecture. architecture students are not even allowed to use the words "nice" or "beautiful" as those words are considered a lazy way to rationalise a sophisticated yet highly functional design concept. We (architecture professions and academics) do live in a different world from other people. Show a photo of a "Brutalist" building to a layman and see if he/she likes it as much as an architect.
Architecture as a study and architects really needs to get in touch with what most people prefer. Architecture study really is its own bubble and many still worship that guy with round glasses and completely disregard and trash on those two keywords you mentioned. Architects have a big power trip in how the public looks and how it feels, because its been studied that bad architecture is bad for health. Many architects think they know better and disregard public preferences as well.
People defending these buildings and this kind of "modernism" look like those modern artists that try to defend their "pieces of art" and condemn people because they are just too ignorant, too uneducated too etc etc to understand their work.
So while we admire those masterpieces from long ago and while we're longing for them, they keep telling among themselves how fantastic their works are, building this echo chamber of self-gratitude and self-approval, while trying to bring us all in their "beautiful" world.
I have never been in europe... but allways seen the pictures of their "hundreads of years ago" built cities, with really beatiful buildings, surrounded by awfull streets... its too common the configuration wall-sidewalk-street without the meter-wide grass-green strip with trees between the sidewalk and the street... and unfortunatly were I am from they are also dissapearing, fullfilling them and also parks with cement tiles, because some asshole think that having grass and trees are too expensive to mantain... this makes streets an parks sad and filthy places... nowadays green places are privilege.. and that is sad.
"A beautiful world with ugly people; an ugly world with beautiful people. We can never win."
I'm so early! What should I write?! Uh.... PINEAPPLE!
What an intelligent comment on an intellectual channel
Thank you for being useless
@@kripposoft you're welcome
I recommend to watch 'why beauty matters' by Roger Scruton, here on youtube
Where's the link. I am seeing so many i dunno which one.
@@johncarlolipa23 Search " 'Why Beauty Matters' Roger Scruton full documentairy" and you will find it. It's about an hour long.
The thought of this crossed my mind way before this video expressed my concerns, but I'm glad it did because it could do it better than I could. Ive always thought. Why create ugly buildings when we could create beautiful buildings that do the same thing. Thats what happens when the people loose sight of the beauty of the arts.
Also, modern architecture looks very unremarkable and lacking of essence, and normally disrupts the cityscape. Like, you can see the newest buildings of most cities in any part of the world and they all look alike.
i think most folks watching can agree there are overblown, developer-driven monstrosities out there, but if i like modernism or even think the bauhaus style is beautiful, is this video suggesting i've been brainwashed into liking them? The video at times seems to equate detailed decoration or traditional styles with beauty. I largely agree with the themes of the video beyond this.