Is anyone here fixated with any kind of architectural style or type of buildings?

Is anyone here fixated with any kind of architectural style or type of buildings?
For some reason I fucking love brutalism (pure concrete buildings) and parts of any big city in decadent state like lots of poor areas in Hong Kong.

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Absolutely in love with brutalism

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I live a few blocks away from this big bad bitch

I love Art Deco

I like Gaudí's work I guess.

If you want to be out of a job, become an architect.

call me simple but supertall skyscrapers are my favorite

taipei 101 is easily the most visually appealing to me. add to it the lights they set up at different times of the year and the fireworks they shoot out of it and really no other building can compare

I love streamline modern, which is a weird offshoot of lag Art Deco (if you're unfamiliar). That and brutalism. Good shit. There's a crazy architect from Japan who has combined brutalism with post modernism and it's really nice too

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Check these puppies. If pics dont attach see La Coupole V2 lanch pad and St Naizzaire (?) U-boot pens in france.
How do I attach a f'n photo

I love modern rustic wood-concrete-and-steel houses. I'm obsessed with living in a house like this someday.

Got it, Saint Nazaire.

Same. I also like any kind of planned utopias, even though they are destined to fail. That's why I like Brasilia.

Comfy caves.

it's so fucking ugly, god, it's like it's intentional.

Aww shit Boston city hall.

> mynigga.jpg

People's republic of Cambridge, checking in.

Drove by that one Tuesday and it appears to be empty. Middle of the day and the parking lots were empty. The basket handles had peeling paint and rust streaks from the rebar being exposed in spots. Sad.

Boston has good shit.

hard to beat the vehicle assembly building

brutalism you say?

victorian

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Okay, enlighten me brutalists. I just can't see the appeal of it- it seems so lifeless, so oppressive. What is it that you like about that style?

fuckin sweet

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I like how lifeless and oppressive it is

I think that is the appeal, dude

Originally, Dave Longaberger wanted all of the Longaberger buildings to be shaped like baskets, but only the headquarters was completed at the time of his death.

Tami Longaberger, who led The Longaberger Co. to its demise after her father died in 1999, resigned as chief executive officer and director of the company on May 5, 2015.

It was announced in February 2016 that the Basket Building would be closed, and remaining employees would relocate to Longaberger's manufacturing plant in Frayzesburg, Ohio.

holy shit, where is this?

>What is it that you like about that style?
It's lifeless and oppressive.

I'll take a shot.

Basically, it's "Fuck you, I ain't gonna be pretty". No materials like glass or metal on the outside that are only there to look cool - looking cool doesn't have anything to do with keeping the building standing. The concrete basic structure of the building can withstand the elements on its own, so let it. You don't have to polish it or clean it or paint it. If you *need* a window, you put one in, but you don't cover the whole facade with glass.

I like the sense of solidity, the simplicity and the geometric balance.

It's big, powerful, imposing, grey, minimalist. Pseudo-futuristic. Authoritative. Utopian.

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Naboo looked somewhat Mediterranean, venice with the gondolas.

At least its not sandy. Some people don't like sand.

I can tell you what the absolute worst architecture is, anything by Frank Gehry.

lol that's a terrible building

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YES, pic related it's his stupid monstrosity in manhattan

where is this please?

Maybe it's a sign of the times? These days we are living in a confused, twisted world like looking in a funhouse mirror?
Architecture usually seems to be a reflection of the times. As much as brutalism was a reflection of the 60s and 70s.

>somewhat Mediterranean

Salk Institute in California, my brutalist friend.

these two are on the right track: I'm not obsessed with the style by any means, but I do like it because it looks powerful. Just like you might like the way a tank looks, or a certain car or gun. It's badass or imposing. It looks strong.

yes today people want to maximize affordability, mobility/portability, temporality, and modularity/scalability. hence cheap boring design that doesn't last.

pic related it's what's infamously known in nyc as a "fedders building," which are the type of completely and utterly aesthetically bankrupt but profitable structures that are single-handedly destroying the architectural beauty of the outer boroughs at a terrifying pace.

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nothing is as "brutal" as a whole city block that used to be lined with 100+ years of (that's old in U.S., we don't have the history you have, europeans) history destroyed for some fedders buildings just so some fucking jews can make a quick buck.

I feel like the most successful designs of any form are the ones the interplay best with human nature. Unlike fine art, I think the quality of a design does need to factor in whether or not it's successful. It's a matter of whether or not it sells well, because design is usually inherently controlled by market forces and sociology. In terms of architecture, what do you think people responded to best? Cold, modernist rows of apartment complexes and office buildings in deserted business districts? It seems all the most well received forms of architecture were airy buildings that blended with their surroundings, that interplayed with nature and human habits. Most postmodern architecture strives for this, Frank Lloyd Wright, Santiago Calatrava, etc., based all their work around it. Why would people want to work in a complex of dystopian blocks of concrete with a minimum of windows? I've worked in brutalist buildings, and the oppressive aesthetic of the places made it really suck to spend most of my days there.
So it's a powerful statement, but how does that improve anyone's life? That overpowering aesthetic works well in a Rothko painting, but I wouldn't want to live in one.

I don't know, modernism/brutalism is cheaper to construct than a lot of the styles that came before.

I've seen that building in NYC. The thing is, people build buildings to serve a purpose, and to make a profit. In the old days, you might design a cool looking residential building because people would want to live there and you could charge higher price/rent. Now people are increasingly distracted and pulled into the internal worlds of entertainment and the internet; in a sense into the virtual existences this creates. They don't give a shit what the building they live in looks like, as long as they have Netflix and fast internet for their online games. Even when people are walking around inside, people are looking at their phones and not paying attention to the world around them. People are not really "present" in the places they are anymore, if you know what I mean.

It's the Salk Institute by Kahn. His brutalism at least has context and meaning compared to others that just want to be big and massive.

Not really, just that architecture these days can look however you want now (thanks postmodernism) and isn't really tied down anymore by a single set of ideas like before.

While quite a handful of celebrity architects like to pump out nearly abstract forms, there are still ones that design with obvious order.

Your post is basically like saying why would anyone enjoy the taste of vanilla ice cream when chocolate ice cream is so delicious.

>but how does that improve anyone's life
that's exactly why this kind of stuff was (seemingly) abandoned.

here in the US we still live our lives in most cities based on the master plans of singular men though, which is more affecting than a single building. one could argue the prevalence of racial segregation is largely due to the deliberate efforts of apparently racist (it was ye olden times, racism wasn't that crazy) white architects who masterminded many american cities (see baltimore, the 'delmar divide' in st louis, robert moses's expressways in nyc)... giving fewer people the capacity to impact a much larger group is inherently dangerous. these designs are beautiful because they are decadent in expressing this fucked up power. it's exactly the stuff of dystopean sci fi.

>Not really, just that architecture these days can look however you want now (thanks postmodernism) and isn't really tied down anymore by a single set of ideas like before.

Just because it can look like anything, doesn't mean it has too like like a distorted mess or a tumorous growth like in Bilbao. Gehry isn't just another architect, he is the it-man of the moment, one of the most, if not the most, celebrated architects of this century.

>the oppressive aesthetic of the places made it really suck to spend most of my days there
Exactly that. Unlike the pleasant aesthetic of some art, Brutalism is the harsh and disturbing side. The emotions we usually label as negative - fear, anger, despair - are what it evokes on purpose. It is intended to communicate strength in an intimidating way. It isn't strong like a tree is strong. It's strong like someone parking a huge bulldozer next to the tree so that it can topple the tree at any time. It conveys a threat backed by the authorities.

The form of (and the reason why I like) it is because most of the large, Soviet era Brutalist buildings are old and crumbling. There is something about that projection of authority and invulnerability that so intimidated people, but was still brought down by time.

Contrast that with the architecture of a building so bland that you don't even think about it. Art should move you. As to which direction it moves you...

Oscar Niemeyer's brutalism was specifically designed to break down distinctions of race and class, to put everyone one more equal footing. As was the modernist master-plan of Brasilia.

>but how does that improve anyone's life
It doesn't, just like adding LEDs to your computer is meaningless and painting your house some obnoxious color really won't affect your life in any practical way. It's just an aesthetic choice; some people like redheads, some like blonds.

>I wouldn't want to live in one.
Oh I sure as shit wouldn't either. I just think it's neat to have something so jarring compared to the relatively inoffensive sky scraper designs you see in most American cities.

>We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us. ...

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okay but my point is that no single person should ever be tasked to perform such a feat for the unforeseeable future, even with the aid of modern computers there's way too much socioeconomic complexity involved to expect a person to do that successfully. that's simply irresponsible

that's an excellent point, and it's sad to look up from your screen and see what your meatspace has become

I agree completely. Planned utopias are destined to fail, as nice as they are to look at.
There should be no master-planning of cities. Cities should grow organically, to match the needs ebbs and flows of what is going on in the city. An artificial frame should not be imposed from up above.
The same principle can also be applied to the economy in general.

where is this please?

Gehry's style is certainly up for debate, but it's exactly because of his Guggenheim that revitalized Bilbao. Ugly or not, it was iconic enough to attract people and money.

>Gehry isn't just another architect, he is the it-man of the moment,

He may be prolific, but there are others that are as, or more prolific than him right now. Try looking at Foster or Piano for a while if you want coherent forms by celebrated architects.

I guess it revitalized Bilbao, as much as turning an industrial and port area that used to have some economic function into a museum to look at stuff can revitalize an area...

Foster is pretty good. I like him better than Piano. Though I like the Shard a lot more than the Gherkin.

I have a book on brutalism, and in it, it says that the really great brutalist buildings were every bit as expensive as older styles. They would often do very laborious things to expose the aggregate in the concrete. The wooden forms used to make pic related were also laboriously constructed. The idea was not so much to make cheap buildings, but to make buildings that really showed off what you could do with concrete.

Pic related is apparently from the Barbican centre in London. I've never been, but I'd love to see it someday.

parisian suburbs apparently
washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2015/10/01/a-poetic-vision-of-paris-crumbling-suburban-high-rises/

Hmm... maybe. But I would have thought it would be cheaper than Baroque, Victorian, or Art Deco. Due to the absence of all the ornamentation elements.

Okay, so these are some really good answers.
I guess I can see why that's appealing. I think there's fascinating beauty in abandoned buildings, abandoned factories and military sites. And true, art doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing to be amazing. That being said, I kind of think functioning architecture does. Like said, yeah it's neat to have something so jarringly different to look at, but if it's meant to have that sort of foreboding aesthetic, then aren't the people who make brutalist apartments, schools and government offices kind of dicks?
I really like this answer. Honestly I think to a large extent, modernist urban planning and architecture mostly served to screw people over. If you want to bring up Saint Louis, I mean, look at the failure of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex. Design like this forced a lot of people to live in absolute hellholes, it's literally responsible for destroying career opportunities and raising crime rates.

I'm not trying to be like, an SJW about ethical design or anything, I just think from a logical standpoint buildings should be effective for what they're supposed to be used for. Buildings don't have the freedom of fine art to express whatever they want; they're a product. Their quality hinges upon whether they're satisfying to occupy.

Thanks for the excellent link. These are some beautiful buildings, for the most part.

>There should be no master-planning of cities
No.

Master planning is important because it gives order to the built environment. It tells people where to build or not build for aesthetic, geographic, and/or economic purposes.

Without master planning you wouldn't have visible sight lines to the Eiffel Tower to take pretty pictures of it at and it'd just be plagued by clustered growths of skyscrapers around it.

I agree with
While master planning may seem overbearing, and while I absolutely hate the tract identical housing development, certain plans are very important, especially when it comes to infrastructure.

I think a group of civil engineers thinking about where the city will be in 2, 5, 10, 20, 30, and 50 years from now would be the group I want to decide where the natural gas pipeline should go and how much space we'll need to build a sewage treatment plant a decade from now. This goes double for natural disasters - flood plains should be kept clear, city parks and wide avenues can serve as firebreaks, etc.

A civil engineer channeling L'Enfant could be a very wonderful thing.

this is lego style

You've said someone should not master plan a city because there is far too much socio-economic complexity to do so for now and an unseeable future, it's irresponsible. This is completely true. But then you say cities should be planned to give order to the built environment. Well which is it? Giving order to the built environment and telling people where to build or not for aesthetic or economic purposes is very irresponsible because you can not factor in all the socio economic complexity, when you say this place must be residential, this place must be offices, this place must be for shopping, etc.
As for the pretty pictures and sightlines of the Eiffel tower, I am not prepared to overrule the wishes of thousands of property owners and jack up the price of residential housing into the stratosphere because I will not permit skyscrapers to be built nearby. I would not screw with the economic flow of people and business and mess with thousands of people in to preserve some particular notion of aesthetic. And I would not have the hubris to think I know better where certain types of city activity should be located than the individual actors themselves.

>then aren't the people who make brutalist apartments, schools and government offices kind of dicks?

Corbu's Unite is a residential brutalist but is designed to be the opposite of what people are saying in this thread about Brutalism.

Concrete was his choice of material because aside from steel-frame, which was too expensive at that time, it allowed him to build relatively large spaces for living and let natural light flood in, two things that he deemed essential for human habitation.

Just letting you know that not all brutalist buildings are bad in experience.

I live in a city with no zoning, Houston, Texas. It's working out just fine here.

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This style of architecture is absolutely god-tier. I love every house that has been build that features this kind of design.

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Tough to beat the art-deco classics...

The best thing about the Chrysler Building, is how they secretly jacked up the spire.

Not sure if this has been posted but check out this building located in Manhattan. Known as the AT&T long lines building

>it looks powerful. Just like you might like the way a tank looks, or a certain car or gun. It's badass or imposing. It looks strong.

No, it looks like people in the 60s and 70s were trying to cheaply design and construct buildings made of fucking concrete. Which is exactly what it was. The unnecessary hideousness was just pissed off architects giving a big fuck you to everyone for having to do the work.

>Well which is it?
I wasn't even that guy who said the 'socioeconomic complexity' thing.

> you can not factor in all the socio economic complexity
Master planning takes into account various feasibility studies, including socio-economic ones. Of course you can't factor in "all" complexities but that's what feasibility studies are for. Nothing is absolute anyway.

>As for the pretty pictures and sightlines of the Eiffel tower...
It's more than pretty pictures, I just cited that as one of the good things you can do because of master planning. You realize that planning helped the Tower to be visible enough to be France's icon of great cultural and historical significance and importance?

The way you put it you wouldn't mind completely sacrificing the aesthetic for the practical and economical, which is what people in this thread seem to be complaining about anyway.

>And I would not have the hubris
It's not so much as hubris as much as telling people to not build their houses in an area that's directly above fault line which can screw them up when an earthquake hits, or providing enough road arteries in commercial districts to relieve them of traffic congestion, or telling people it's not ok to build their stuff on an area with soft clay for miles underground, which makes for unstable foundation for higher structures.

>The unnecessary hideousness was just pissed off architects giving a big fuck you to everyone for having to do the work.
You can't seriously believe this

thats a cool building

>I wasn't even that guy who said the 'socioeconomic complexity' thing.
My mistake, you sounded like the same guy.

>that's directly above fault line which can screw them up when an earthquake hits, or providing enough road arteries in commercial districts to relieve them of traffic congestion, or telling people it's not ok to build their stuff on an area with soft clay for miles underground, which makes for unstable foundation for higher structures.
You don't need laws to tell people this. People will not spend millions of dollars to build a building directly above a fault line or where there will be an unstable foundation.
But, as far as building high structures on soft clay, that can be done now with current foundation technology. You don't need bedrock to build a skyscraper. There are plenty of cities where it would be all but impossible to get down to bedrock, yet they have skyscrapers now.
Making a law that says you can't build in a certain area due to soil conditions presupposes that there wouldn't be some future technological solution to the problem. That's hubris.

Here's the old DMV building in Orange County, NY

"brutalism" is a neologism by peter and allison smithson. it is based on le corbusier's "beton brut" or raw concrete. corbusier design beautiful light filled plastic spaces for people to enjoy.

its well documented that the failure of pruitt igoe is not due to the style, nor to modernism, but to shitty maintenance, cost cutting. you can hear from the people who lived there first hand in a recent doc (was on netflix a while back).

this is actually an objectively beautiful building. Gehry is an excellent architect.
superlol
its not actually about 'pure concrete building" if there even is such a thing as brutalism.
its about engaging materials directly for their possibilities and qualities. some how espoused similar ideas where great designers, some were not.
its not so bad, but truly not a great designer, style aside.
kahn of course was a good designer

Is that the house from the movie House?

I'm fixated on old Soviet architecture

No, but it's as good an explanation as any. Or maybe architects were just really depressed about their childhood buddies being slaughtered in vietnam or something.

a better explanation is the limited vocabulary of most architects, especially in the recent past. the other explanation is a style which is easily co-opted by the needs of cheap owners investors and developers to make cheap shit even cheap - though thats true for most arts it s especially true for something like brutalism.

if it exists

Brutalism is garbage. It is everything wrong with modern "art".

Why Beauty Matters by Roger Scruton

youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc&feature=youtu.be

>People will not spend millions of dollars to build a building directly above a fault line or where there will be an unstable foundation.
Fault lines or soft foundations aren't exactly visible enough to say 'oh you can't build on that' at first glance.

>Making a law that says you can't build in a certain area due to soil conditions presupposes that there wouldn't be some future technological solution to the problem. That's hubris.
No, but as long as those solutions don't exist planning prevents people from screwing up and wasting money. Master plans can be updated by the government to an extent, it's not exactly unchangeable.

Another point is that without master planning, you'd have congested third world hellholes as cities that you'd wish someone actually planned beforehand before people started to build their stuff.

It's ironic that Corbu, who designed beautiful spaces that put the importance of human habitation and comfort first and foremost, is indirectly responsible for the start of the Brutalist Movement.

People just need to find the architects who used Brutalism the 'right' way to appreciate it.

What is this shit called?

I live in Chicago and it's filled with shit like this. it's sexy AF.

Unnng

Dam son, this is why i enrolled to architecture school, too bad i dont have pics with me

Fav architects
>Corbusier
>Tadao Ando
>Abraham Zabludovsky
>Zaha Hadid
>the dude who designed halo ODST levels (no joke)
>Mies van der Rohe
>Oscar Niemeyer
>Luis Barragan
>Michael Rojkind

Recomend me some youtube channels and architects plox

lol new criterion trash
boooooh! scare quotes!

its just faggots like this guy running around scared and making the world worse
in this vein, generally

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hobson_Richardson