Why is modern architecture so shit?

pic related was built by literal medieval steppe-niggers who drank their own piss. There are mud-huts in Africa that look better than the modernist crap we build now.
> hey f@m, how you want to build your towns and cities
> i dunno, just fuck my shit up i guess
> say no more, say no more
We are truly in a golden age of grotesque. I don't give a shit about bydlos and hicks, or promiscuity, or modern """art""", or modern """music""", because I can avoid those things. I can't avoid the urban landscapes we're all forced to live in.

I've heard it all before:
> architecture isn't about beauty
We can argue all day about the purpose of nation-states and human existence, but we humans are innately in love with beauty. We need it as much as we need food and water. Without it, we'll be psychologically malnourished.
> that stuff is old, we can't build like they did in the middle ages anymore
We're wealthier right now than people have ever been in human history. I don't want to go back to the middle-ages, I want us to continue to improve human existence. Architecture today isn't inherently more utilitarian than it was in the past. It got that way through a paradigm-shift in values. A paradigm shift that brought some good, but it threw the baby out with the bath water. This is a CHOICE. Building dignified, beautiful, harmonious architecture doesn't mean we build like it's the XII century. It means we have a little pride in the places where we study, work and live.

I'm a firm believer in if you build it, they will come. Architecture is a form of social conditioning. Suburbia and automobile-slums engender a certain outlook and behaviour in people. I'm not saying it's all bad, but it isn't the best for us. We. Can. Do. Better.

Again, pic related was built by people who were much poorer, much stupider and much less knowledgeable than we are. Let's build a civilisation that is as awe-inspiring as the best of what they were able to churn out. Let's do better.

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*cringes*

tl;dr - we can build harmonious, dignified, beautiful towns and cities if we wanted to. We're just cucked by post-war aesthetic-relativism. Civic pride and beauty are down the toilet.

How is it cringe? I've argued a lot on Architecture forums. I find the modernists who believe we'll have a space-age just by building everything out of cement and concrete more cringey. We get there through advancement in relevant scientific fields, not by building what we think a sci-fi movie version of the future should look like.

I'm not posting modernist pics, because we all know what they look like. If you want to post modernism for contrast, go ahead. The beauty of traditional architecture is undeniable. You have to exercise intense mental gymnastics to justify """modernist""" monstrosities.

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> how do you want your city f@m?
> just neo-baroque my shit up
> say no more, say no more

This is new housing in Malaysia. It isn't perfect, but it illustrates my point. In China, Russia, Nigeria, they haven't entirely bought into the western post-war consensus that things that look like this = old, slum and nationalism. They haven't entirely bought into the idealistic modernist vision.

How we build our towns and cities are a choice. They don't have to be ugly. "modernism" isn't modern. It's a misnomer. It's really just aesthetic nihilism.

Bad architecture is a CHOICE. This is Madagascar. You can see very clearly how they build in the non-western world that people naturally tend towards a certain urban harmony if they can. I think there's a certain tipping point where when you reach a level of prosperity the culture folds back in on itself and becomes masochistic and engages in harsh disharmony as opposed to harmony.

Losing important values in what human existence should be about and becoming self-destructive.

Suburban sprawl is literally de-civilising. Civilisation is a product of population density. The auto-mobile slum is civilisation tearing itself apart. You lose all civic pride, beauty and identity. I'm not a fan of mass-immigration, but suburbanisation is more of a killer of national identity than immigration ever is.

Architecture is among the highest pull-factors for tourism. It isn't the end all be all, but people are always attracted to what is beautiful. Look at tourism statistics. It tells you all you need to know about what people actually want.

We want to visit places that look a certain way, why don't we want our cities to have the best qualities of those places?

I don't think all suburbs are cancer. Suburbs are a natural feature of any mid to large sized city. The problem is when suburbs grow larger than the city proper. The majority of the population live in a sort of nowhere place and all civic identity is eroded.

counterpoint : this is ugly

You people are hillarious

All that impotent anger directed towards a thing you can't possibly understand

The tendency for Brits to all want their own tiny house in a suburb upsets me.

A good guide to making a decent habitat is

It's not perfect, but post something """modern""" that looks better. My entire point is that primitive culture tend towards the type of aesthetic harmony that we're naturally drawn to. """modernism""" is a post-war phenomena and it's entirely chosen.
> Architecture shouldn't attempt to mimic any particular style or aesthetic for the sake of it. Architecture should examine a particular toolset that will best engage the program, occupants, and narrative the building is trying to present. If that means using, say, vaults or arches, okay. If it means using ribbon windows, fine. But architects shouldn't simply attempt to disingenuously recreate a style. They should attempt to satisfy the needs and wants of the client while producing something above and beyond.
I spend a lot of time on architecture forums. There are many, many schools of thought. As many as there are in politics.
> you can't possibly understand
It really isn't that complicated. You have utility and form in a structure. You have to have necessary amenities: electricity, plumbing, heating, insulation. Then you decide the materials striking a balance between cost-effetiveness and quality. All of this has to go through relevant boards, clients, colleagues. You have a lot of choice in form, and in many cases you have extra budget to meet aesthetic demands that represent the interest of clients or the company.
The same budget can produce either of those structures, it's how you work with it.

Forgot to finish my sentence lel.

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this is 15 minutes away from where i live
under this "bridge" is a cemetery.

forgot pic

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British terraced housing is among one of the best ways to handle suburban sprawl. I don't know how Britain managed to keep their shit so tightly in order when literally the rest of the developed world was going the opposite direction.
I understand how people can like high-density modernism. I think it has many positive qualities. It would just be invariably better if it were aesthetically humanistic.

Also, glass boxes are the universal symbol of the elevation of greed above civic unity.

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Germanic splendour. They have the same type of comfy architecture in the low-saxon countries across the channel.

Go away, legoland.

comfy as fuck, I wonder what those guys sitting on the ground are discussing

The original capital of Finland.

:3

St.George, Bermuda. The first English city in the New World. Bermuda in general has great architecture. It fits the landscape perfectly.

If you like cramped places you might like the new neighbourhoods of Warsaw :3

WTF i hate poland now

KRAKAU
R
A
K
A
U

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pls, never use shitty names for polish cities

Ouro Preto is based, I love the few Baroque buildings we still have here in Rio

BRESLAU
DANZIG
WARSCHAU

>yo vancouver, how u want ur city's buildings?
>soul crushing and identityless
>say no more senpai

Because if you build a collosseum for each person to live in youre going to run out of space smartass.

>hey texas, how do you like your cities?
>i like them with at least ten million parking lots, negative urban density, and highways blocking all forms of walking

Brazilian landscape + colonial Portuguese architecture = god-tier
holyfuck, what a tragedy that there's hardly any left.

>build a collosseum for each person to live in
he's asking why germany used to build buildings like this but now only builds commieblocks and styleleess flat boxes.

good modernism is good

You and the bongs shouldn't have destroyed these towms

War is War. But OP is asking why post-1940 architecture is almost always shit. It's been 70 years of awful architecture, why can't we go back to what was good?

There is such a thing as practical, modern and aesthetically pleasing, Hans.

Your people started this whole cancer. The Bauhaus was started by Walter Gropius in Saxony. He hated how architects of his day were obsessed with order and form over substance. He made a radical break from conventional architectural wisdom. It's kind of like a chef being pissed off because everyone in his profession is obsessed with the latest French haute cuisine, so he throws out all the cook books and makes mud pies and daisy sandwiches.

I'm thinking more Cusco, Quebec City, Charleston SC. Those are replicatable with modern methods. I wish there were far, far more cities like pic related around though.

It's just undeniable. We haven't topped that since it was destroyed. Not a single urban landscape more beautiful has been created since Nuremberg was bombed.

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Because thats how most of the country looks?

You probably never even left your state.

We're talking averages. In fact, I'd say every structure in this urban landscape looks better than anything in say, Vancouver, or Miami or Kaliningrad.

>wealthier right now
wew

Because of americanisation, ppl building only glass sky scrapers...

Older building always amaze me like castles and cathedrals. I mean you have giant stone buildings that are huge, look amazing and are so elaborate. Yet they were probably built by people who could not read or write.

>Yet they were probably built by people who could not read or write

So I take it you still shit in a hole, mill grain by hand and contract incurable polio? The peasants and craftsmen who built a lot of the shit I'm posting were far poorer than we are today.

I mean the guys who cut the stone and placed the blocks, not the guys who designed or payed for it.

Commieblocks where built for people to have a place to live in after the War, and then again to house immigrants.
Its no surprise that American cities look like shit.

Back then Wealthy people were drawn to the cities whereas today you wanna move out of the inner city due to immigrants and no free space
The houses you are posting arent designed to house only 1 family, its an outdated concept.
The people that could afford building something like that rather have a house for themselves and for the poorer people the state/companies build commieblocks for efficiency.

Skyscrapers are definitely Americanisation, but the rest of it actually comes from Europe. Commie blocks, brutalism, minimalism. The founding fathers of Modernism were German, French and Swiss architects in the 1910s~30s.

Thank you for explaining that 16th century housing was made for the 16th century. I'm not advocating a return to the 16th century, I'm advocating a return to the value of urban harmony and civic unity that you find in almost all urban landscapes before the post-war era.

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Nobody wants nor is able to live in harmony with immigrants that infest the inner cities.

Nobody is going to fund such a project since the only people living there are chimping immigrants on welfare, it is that simple, living in an inner city here is like outing yourself as the ultimate pleb, its only forgiven to students etc and they - you guessed it right, also dont have money.

the ugly architecture began far before europe/north america was flooded by noneuropeans.

I'm studying architecture and I would advise you to stop talking about things you have no clue about.

That's clearly hyperbole. Is every city in Germany made up of non-German nationals? Even with the concern about immigration, I don't see how making an effort to have cities that don't look like shitholes is ever a negative. Unless Germany is turned into a Sultanate tomorrow, good urban planning should always be a priority.

post-ww2 architecture is ugly, it doesn't matter what your memeprofessors believe.

Because they used slaves

Why don't you become an architect then and show what true beauty is without blowing trillions away in "old looking buildings lmao"

Nobody is interested in it, besides, centralisation is awful.

So you're some naive student cannonising fallible men who tell you that ugly is beautiful and beautiful is ugly? The range of views is very diverse in architecture. On the boards I frequent, there are seasoned architects who express the exact same views that I'm expressing (perhaps more technically), and architects who swing the other way and consider these thoughts heresy.

What has happened to architecture is comparable to what has happened to modern-art and what has happened to pop-music. Self promotion, laziness and sophistry have prevailed. Except unlike the other arts, architecture imposes itself on the entire population, and it doesn't receive the sort of negative reception better understood arts receive when the artists start producing shit.

This is revivalism: youtube.com/watch?v=rUOvFGh0l4Y
The Soviet Union used slaves and it still produced shit. Slavery doesn't give people good town planning.

>cost-effetiveness

thing is, if you want ornaments today, they need to be mass produced in a chinese factory.

there are plenty of buildings being built today that still use high quality natural materials like stone and wood.

breitman-breitman.com/menu.html
princeofwales.gov.uk/features/poundbury
newurbanism.org/
google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=traditional architects

Architecture is as varied as any art. Modernism became the new orthodoxy after WWII rebuilding of Europe, and the boom of the USA after the war. The modernists seized upon a demoralised western world.
> le ornamentism meme
Ornamentism isn't what I'm arguing for. Modernist structures can be as or more ornamented than many types of traditionalist structures.

This image triggers the contemporary architect.

OH MY GAWD! You akshualy think that isss good? It is SOOO medieval, built on the back of Negro slaves no doubt. OMG. That JPG is pissing my little brain off so much!!!!!11!1

NOT ENOUGH RIGHT ANGLES
NOT ENOUGH GLASS
NOT ENOUGH CONCRETE

Just fuck my country up senpai

Beautiful. Do you guys believe that people that live in a town/city with great architecture like the ones in this thread are more "vibrant" than people that grow up in modern architecture?

I think it has a detrimental effect on the human spirit, if that's what you mean.

like O M G, it looks like it belongs to some sort of european tradition or something. that's just GROSS, okay? buildings should look like they could be from any society on earth and have no identity or character.

don't you want to be progressive and stuff? architecture is the tool of the patriarchy. buildings in north america, europe, asian, and africa all need to look the SAME, okay!?!?

I feel you OP.
I have been thinking the same.
It feels like somewhere along the line we have stopped trying.

1 day my super-edgy anglist arkitekter will be loooked back on fondly like we used to do with the Romans. :DDD Modernism is timeless, that's why it's called MODERNISM. ; )

one of my favorite reasons for living in new orleans is downtown

good thread

A lot of our cities have these characteristics. It can be found in the Benelux and bordering German and French towns. However the south of the low countries has a lot of French influence while the east of it has a lot of German influence. All those architectural styles have been developed since the partition of Francia. The boundaries don't make much sence for the architecture of the Frankish area. When the Holy Roman Empire and France were two seperate countries, the architecture was still inlfuences by each other. Every region has it's typical architecture, just like the typical Brabantic architecture (pic related).

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>"Wow, i sure wish i was in some gay architects nostalgic wank fantasy" -Nobody

Feels robotic

>"whew, if only this state-of-the-art airport looked like a gay little castle"

gross. that's ugly.

This one looks a little better than the first. Still feels revolting

>"No greek columns, i give it a 0/10"

I mean it looks nice, but something about these architectures just feels wrong.

>"Wow that's really... err.. see it's bad because... err.. it wasn't built 100 years ago and it's not made with bricks so.. err.."

Why? There's nothing wrong with the stuff he's posting except for the first one.

some people itt are afraid of progress

I said it was a feeling, like a subjective thing. To me, it just feels wrong intuitively. Cant put my finger on why though.

that's fair. but some people take it a little too far and make super broad generalizations like "architecture is boring nowadays" or "muh 18th century stone buildings" as if there's nothing being made today that's not exciting

WOW! I sure fantasize about glass and steel structure that totally don't relate to the human experience. Cold and inorganic, that's my shit. And you know what makes it even better? Having it on a ridiculously untraversable scale so people are unable to convienently get from point A to point B, because I'm a vain starchitect who'd rather have busy people stare at my shitty work than just help them get to where they want to go and feel comfortable along the way. Wow....

>glass and steel structure
literally complaining about the lack of bricks

Oh, wow, glass and steel... progress. Because I buy into the myth that progress equals environments for humans that are made to look like machines for no good reason.... wow.