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Old 01-23-2018, 05:12 PM
 
Location: Finland
1,100 posts, read 1,215,638 times
Reputation: 1725

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Quote:
Originally Posted by KenFresno View Post
I would argue that modern architecture isn't horrible at all. I would say that quite a lot of it is rather spectacular, imaginative, sublime, abstract and immensely creative. Would you call the architecture of Alvar Aalto horrible. I wouldn't.
Well,Alvar Aalto presents not modern architecture.
When I wrote that it is all about costs, it is so that on these days built anymore buildings like in picture because it would be too expensive and take too long to built house up.

I had on my mind something like this(City hall from my home town)
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Old 01-23-2018, 06:37 PM
 
Location: San Jose
2,594 posts, read 1,241,335 times
Reputation: 2590
Quote:
Originally Posted by UserFinn View Post
Well,Alvar Aalto presents not modern architecture.
When I wrote that it is all about costs, it is so that on these days built anymore buildings like in picture because it would be too expensive and take too long to built house up.

I had on my mind something like this(City hall from my home town)
Technically the modernist architectural movement begun in the late 19th century and included various movements often very different from one another. It seems like people in general say "modern architecture" when they mean "contemporary architecture".

Now concerning the photo you posted. Its an Italian Baroque building with notable Russian influence in your country of Finland. So what about it is Finnish? It doesn't really match the weather, the history, or culture of Finland. This is the problem with the older ornate architecture is that it carries with it another countries and cultures history. It is also not of the time. We don't live in 15th century France or 17th Century Italy. So why should our cities look like theirs?

At least with modernism it allows you to express your own culture in your own way by wiping the slate clean.



Myyrmäki church
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Old 01-24-2018, 07:32 PM
 
Location: Finland
1,100 posts, read 1,215,638 times
Reputation: 1725
Quote:
Originally Posted by KenFresno View Post

Now concerning the photo you posted. Its an Italian Baroque building with notable Russian influence in your country of Finland. So what about it is Finnish? It doesn't really match the weather, the history, or culture of Finland. This is the problem with the older ornate architecture is that it carries with it another countries and cultures history. It is also not of the time. We don't live in 15th century France or 17th Century Italy. So why should our cities look like theirs?

At least with modernism it allows you to express your own culture in your own way by wiping the slate clean.
Photo really match to the building style of that time (Late 1800's), name of the style is empire and in that time it was major style almost in whole Europe.
Sure there was other styles too and I don't understand that "it is was not Finnish style"....It was finnish style to built on that time, so was others too (Like example Jugend).
This same mixed style you will find from all old cities in Finland...It is a fact that we live in northern but that does not mean that we have to built only funny looking igloos.

Here is amateur video from old houses on my home town and as you can see, the whole old city center is built on same style,mixed empire/jugend/what ever.
This was trendy on that time and it looks nice.
Old small houses(Oldest from 1700's) are very expensive and wanted on these days, modern in but have very old outlook.

My point is that originally question was "Why modern Architecture is horrible", not what is the location of building and what style it presents or why it is built like it is.
Just how it looks....And very old buildings looks much nicer with details than new ones and that is my opinion, not yours.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GujZjcAqgNQ
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Old 01-25-2018, 02:10 AM
 
Location: Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne
17,916 posts, read 24,356,551 times
Reputation: 39038
Jeez, even when I was obtusely anti-modernist I wasn't as moronic as this guy. I feel better about my younger self now. Thanks for posting.
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Old 01-25-2018, 03:57 AM
 
Location: Germantown, Philadelphia
14,179 posts, read 9,068,877 times
Reputation: 10526
The guy has seen too much Municipal Flatblock 18A and not enough Fallingwater.

And "modern" is a term for a movement within architecture rather than an expression of contemporaneity. I often use the term "modernist" to make that clear. Alvar Aalto was definitely a modernist, and one of the best architects ever who worked in that tendency.

We now have an organization dedicated to preservation of Modernist buildings: Docomomo, the "international committee for the doumentation and conservation of the buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the modern movement."

It is a perhaps delicious irony that we now see modern architecture as a historic artifact that needs preservation.
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Old 01-25-2018, 06:49 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, PA (Morningside)
14,353 posts, read 17,030,476 times
Reputation: 12411
I have no problem with modern architecture per se. I have a problem with contemporary architects who believe that working within the modernist/postmodernist framework is the only valid choice - that new traditional designs are in some sense gauche.

The way I look at it is as follows. If architecture is an art form, all expressions of it have their proper place in a given time period. Hence contemporary music can be anything from traditional folk to abstract electronic soundscapes. Visual art can be anything from representational to abstract. And architecture can take forms ranging from neotraditional to postmodernist and still be meritorious.
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Old 01-25-2018, 07:33 AM
 
Location: Youngstown, Oh.
5,510 posts, read 9,493,295 times
Reputation: 5622
I wonder what the participants in this thread think of the work of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP


They seem to do a little of everything.
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Old 01-25-2018, 08:57 AM
 
Location: Germany
1,148 posts, read 1,013,374 times
Reputation: 1702
Berlin - reconstruction of City Palace









BERLIN | City Palace Reconstruction (Stadtschloss) - "Humboldt-Forum" | U/C - Page 122 - SkyscraperCity
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Old 01-25-2018, 01:23 PM
 
Location: San Jose
2,594 posts, read 1,241,335 times
Reputation: 2590
Quote:
Originally Posted by UserFinn View Post
My point is that originally question was "Why modern Architecture is horrible", not what is the location of building and what style it presents or why it is built like it is.
Just how it looks....And very old buildings looks much nicer with details than new ones and that is my opinion, not yours.
But why should looking nice be the only quality a building should have? We don't expect paintings, film or music to elicit a singular response. Yet with buildings the expectation is that they should be pretty, pleasant and meek and nothing else. Why can't buildings draw feelings of mystery, sublimity, terror, unease, and whimsy the way other mediums do?
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Old 01-25-2018, 01:38 PM
 
9,511 posts, read 5,443,411 times
Reputation: 9092
Quote:
Originally Posted by KenFresno View Post
I have seen this video before. The presenter has no idea what he is taking about. The information he provides is either wrong or partially correct.

For example:

The commentator mixes up modernism with post-modernism which are not only different but often at odds with one another. Which leads me to believe he doesn't know what he is looking at or taking about since anyone with knowledge of architecture could tell each movement apart.

The commentator wrongfully attributes Modernism with authoritarian. Modernism was despised by almost all 20th century tyrants at one point or another. The Bauhaus for example was driven out of Germany by threat of death after Hitler took power. Dictators much preferred knock off neo-classicism and kitsch national romanticism to actually functional modernism. Go look up the buildings built by Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Ceausescu as proof. What makes this argument so pathetic is that many modernist structures were built for the most civilized and democratic of reasons. Public housing, schools, art galleries, public infrastructure, research facilities, libraries, etc.

The commentator starts off by saying "Ascetic ugliness encourages ugly behavior". Well you have stark modernist cities like Singapore and Tokyo which are clean, have low crime and are generally socially healthy. Then you have cities with beautiful ornate architecture like Naples, which are trash littered and crime ridden. He attributes the dire state of modernist slums of Britain to their ascetic qualities. When most were barely maintained and largely neglected. Any building left to decay will eventually looked trashed and attract anti-social behavior.
Not even you have it all right. Stalin was not a modernist. The buildings built during his time are grand, large scale monuments worth looking at. The Moscow metro stations built during his time are masterpieces. Kruschov and Brezhnev are what screwed up all Russian building architecture. Cheap ugly mass produced and engineered constructs devoid of imagination. At the time a necessary evil.

I agree with the vid. What we have today isn't worth looking at or living in. Might as well be living in the streets in a card board box.
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