[Rei Murasame]

It's not a wholly unreasonable thing to say that the parts of a building should actually have some sort of function other than just sitting there for the hell of it, and that things can look beautiful in doing their job.

The whole point of giant columns in the first place was that they were actually capable of holding up a building made of stone and marble, not because anybody thought they just looked cool.

Exactly. Exactly, that is precisely what modernists were trying to accomplish, Saeko, well said. Basically the idea was to just not have things on a building that didn't make any sense to have there.

But for some reason, a lot of people never understood that simple request. Also, there's a perception that fighting against modernist architecture (ie, with regards to this thread: constructivism, structuralism, whatever) is somehow fighting 'against Sovietism', even though the Soviet Union itself after Stalin did not actually implement it.

Least of all in Moscow, given that Moscow looks literally like a gingerbread house from the 1700s. Edible gingerbread architecture, how can I even take it seriously, I just want to eat it.

[Harmattan]

There are certainly loveable modernist buildings, but don't you think that a whole modernist city would be boring, unsurprising?

I love my cities to be diverse, historical layers stockpiled upon each other, modern buildings cheating with the ancient codes to blend with the rest and create historical gradients, or, on the opposite, posing as the eccentric guy in the neighborhood.

I love when buildings distort space and cheat with light, sound, angles, materials. Why should architecture be genuine to the human eye and stripped to the minimum?

I love when you find yourself in absurdly tall or wide rooms, when you move through muffled rooms to buzzing ones, when suddenly you emerge from a deliberately dark corridor to find yourself bathed by a sunset light scattered by columns or grids and reflected upon a yellow pavement, when a throat between two buildings emerge on a vast space, when a pool's edge blends with the ocean behind it, when a wall is dropped to offer you a wonderful panorama, when a room seems suspended from nowhere.

What I don't like is monotony.

It's not a wholly unreasonable thing to say that the parts of a building should actually have some sort of function other than just sitting there for the hell of it, and that things can look beautiful in doing their job.

The whole point of giant columns in the first place was that they were actually capable of holding up a building made of stone and marble, not because anybody thought they just looked cool.

I find this proposition as absurd as religion. Why should we stick to such rules? Why should architecture be different from other arts and design?

And outer columns were actually superfluous: they could have enclosed spaces and therefore saved heat and maximized space occupancy.

[Frollein]

Meh, Bauhaus isn't really my thing, I like Historicism in architecture, Neoclassicism, Neorenaissance and Neobaroque:







Heimatstil:



Much more aesthetically pleasing.

[Saeko]

There are certainly loveable modernist buildings, but don't you think that a whole modernist city would be boring, unsurprising?

I love my cities to be diverse, historical layers stockpiled upon each other, modern buildings cheating with the ancient codes to blend with the rest and create historical gradients, or, on the opposite, posing as the eccentric guy in the neighborhood.

I love when buildings distort space and cheat with light, sound, angles, materials. Why should architecture be genuine to the human eye and stripped to the minimum?

I love when you find yourself in absurdly tall or wide rooms, when you move through muffled rooms to buzzing ones, when suddenly you emerge from a deliberately dark corridor to find yourself bathed by a sunset light scattered by columns or grids and reflected upon a yellow pavement, when a throat between two buildings emerge on a vast space, when a pool's edge blends with the ocean behind it, when a wall is dropped to offer you a wonderful panorama, when a room seems suspended from nowhere.

What I don't like is monotony.

Yeah, you're gonna get tired of that gimmicky bullshit after like five minutes.

Modernism =/= monotony.

I find this proposition as absurd as religion. Why should we stick to such rules? Why should architecture be different from other arts and design?

And outer columns were actually superfluous: they could have enclosed spaces and therefore saved heat and maximized space occupancy.

I don't know, maybe because architecture is about building actually usefull buildings?

[Lexington]

There's nothing worse than brutalism.



Said Prince Charles of all people, "You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe - when it knocked down our buildings, it didn't replace them with anything more offensive than rubble."

[Harmattan]

Yeah, you're gonna get tired of that gimmicky bullshit after like five minutes.

But you don't go to the same places everyday. When you go to a new place and it has some abormal or strange quality, I enjoy it.

Besides there are things you never get tired of, especially space and light. Those are things that make their effect whenever you go through them.

Modernism =/= monotony.

Any architectural style, repeated ad nauseam, would be monotonous. But modernism is even worse because it greatly restrains creative freedom by favoring raw materials, functional lines and straight angles.

I don't know, maybe because architecture is about building actually usefull buildings?

Cars and furniture are first and foremost functional, yet design matters a lot. Imagine if we imposed straight lines, 90° angles and brushed aluminium for cars.

There's nothing worse than brutalism.

There are many horrible things, for sure. Now maybe it's because I grew up in a brutalist environment at some point of my life or because of its prevalence in dystopian sci-fi, but I must confess a brutalist fetish. Just look at those ones:

Habitat 67


Chicago's Marina city


And post-modern brutalism and all-time's favorite: Ricardo Bofill ("espaces d'Abraxxa" followed by "La Murall Roja")

[Rei Murasame]

Well, to answer everyone at once, I don't think that modernism is repetitive.

I think it's that neo-<insert-old-fashioned-European-style-here> which is monotonous, since neo-whateverism is confined to reproducing those old styles in perhaps slightly different and jumbled up ways, but it's still just the same things over and again. Brutalism is also really depressing for the same reason.

Modernism can do something new every time, it's new by definition. And since we're apparently doing living spaces now, here's some examples:


This one is from 'Link 5': Not only does it have some echoes of the famous 'Robie House' evident in its inspiration, it also is pretty defensible from the street so that if 'youths who did not do nothing' should happen to start 'not doing nothing' at your gates, you aren't immediately a sitting duck. It looks really good, it is genuinely beautiful.

• [Link 1]
• [Link 2]
• [Link 3]
• [Link 4]
• [Link 5!]
• [Link 6]

I think it's amazing what can be accomplished when you aren't being forced to re-make centuries-old designs for no particular reason.

[quetzalcoatl]

The Soviets were actually heading in the correct direction when they started doing Constructivist architecture

Who could argue with this example of Russian constructivism:

[Rei Murasame]

Who could argue with this example of Russian constructivism:

<literally posts the Palace of Soviets abomination>

Anyone who knows that is not constructivism could argue against it, because that's not constructivism, it's not any form of modernism, that's some neo-classical abomination.

You must be trolling though, I explained already that the USSR sabotaged it pretty early on. In fact, I explained in the very post which you are quoting.

Also:

Many prominent German modernists went to the Soviet Union. Since 1920 Moscow had been the site of the Russian state-run art and technical school, a close parallel to the Bauhaus, Vkhutemas, and there had been significant cultural connection through the cross-fertilization of El Lissitzky. Russia had colossal plans for entire cities of worker housing, and an eye on acquiring German expertise. Ernst May, Stam and Schütte-Lihotzky moved there in 1930 to design New Towns like Magnitogorsk, with Hannes Meyer's so-called Bauhaus Brigade and Bruno Taut soon to follow.

But the Russian experiment was over almost before it started. Working conditions proved hopeless, supplies impossible to get, and the labor unskilled and uninterested. Stalin's acceptance of the "retrograde" Palace of Soviets entry in the February 1932 competition provoked a strong [negative] reaction from the international modernist community, particularly Le Corbusier. The modernists had just lost their biggest client. Internal Russian politics led to vicious in-fighting among Russian architects' unions, and an equally vicious campaign against foreign 'specialists'. Some designers did not survive the experience.

Others would leave Germany for Japan, or for the sizable German-exile community in Istanbul. Major architects in the modernist community ended up as far afield as Kenya, Mexico, and Sweden.

Others left for the Isokon Project and other projects in England, then eventually to the United States, where Gropius, Breuer and Berlin city planner Martin Wagner would educate a generation of students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The 1932 competition for the Palace of the Soviets, a grandiose project to rival the Empire State Building, featured entries from all the major Constructivists as well as Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn and Le Corbusier. However, this coincided with widespread criticism of Modernism, which was always difficult to sustain in a still mostly agrarian country. There was also the critique that the style merely copied the forms of technology while using fairly routine construction methods.[15] The winning entry by Boris Iofan marked the start of eclectic historicism of Stalinist Architecture, a style which bears similarities to Post-Modernism in that it reacted against modernist architecture's cosmopolitanism, alleged ugliness and inhumanity with a pick and mix of historical styles, sometimes achieved with new technology.

In other words, Stalinist architecture is not modernism, and it is not constructivism.

Stalinist architecture is something like postmodernist architecture, which is something like aggressive retardation caused by having one's head repeatedly bashed against the pavement as a child.

[quetzalcoatl]

delete

[quetzalcoatl]

You must be trolling

Yes, but I couldn't resist posting a picture of this...imposing proposed project. What do you think of Italian futurists, like Sant'Elia?

[Pants-of-dog]

Not all Bauhaus architects went to Russia. Mies van der Rohe came to Montreal and New York at the behest of Phyllis Lambert.

He refused to work with Nazis. He made the most simple and elegant buildings I have ever seen. When I walk past Westmount Square, the buildings look like they are weating tuxedos. And so demanding. The light fills the space, ensuring that every flaw in the finishes is visible. So you leave no flaws.

[mikema63]

My university is but ugly, most of it's older building are ugly brutalist monstrosities.

Some of the new buildings are much more attractive.

[Rei Murasame]

What do you think of Italian futurists, like Sant'Elia?

Futurism was okay, I have neither negative nor positive feelings about it.

Not all Bauhaus architects went to Russia. Mies van der Rohe came to Montreal and New York at the behest of Phyllis Lambert.

That's true.

He refused to work with Nazis.

I thought it was the other way around, that the Nazis refused to work with Mies because the Nazis thought that the whole of Bauhaus was 'un-German' and that Mies was also 'un-German'.

Shunning him was one of the worst decisions that the Nazis ever made. Entertaining themselves with Albert Speer was the other worst decision.

Ironically, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was 50,000% Germanic and so were his ideas, but the Nazi leaders were somehow unable to see this.

[Harmattan]

I think it's that neo-<insert-old-fashioned-European-style-here> which is monotonous, since neo-whateverism is confined to reproducing those old styles in perhaps slightly different and jumbled up ways, but it's still just the same things over and again. Brutalism is also really depressing for the same reason.

You seem to see modernism as the reject of past conventions but it is no more than Art Nouveau, Art Deco, deconstructivism, blobitecture, High Tech architecture, critical regionalism, natural architecture (although the first two are now seen as traditional).

Modernism is simply yet another opinionated architectural style. One that emphasizes unadorned flat lines and 90° angles, the emphasis of structural elements and raw materials. It's not something that gets free of the chains of the past, it's something that replaces them with new rigid ones.

Again it's good. But I fail to see why you insist to make it the alpha and omega of architecture. And more importantly I think your perception of it as the freedom movement that gets rid of the past is flatly erroneous or at least greatly reductionist.


Actually modernism dominates our era and, I think, discourages other perspectives. This is especially true for skyscrapers: the most part of the recent ones are conventional repetitions of worn out modernist variations. And the villas you showed us are certainly pretty, but they are all so déjà-vu. If not for the ecoarchitecture infusion and new materials that partly rejuvenate this style, we would all be dead of boredom already.

[quetzalcoatl]

Actually modernism dominates our era and, I think, discourages other perspectives. This is especially true for skyscrapers: the most part of the recent ones are conventional repetitions of worn out modernist variations. And the villas you showed us are certainly pretty, but they are all so déjà-vu.

The architectural forms of skyscrapers are subject to the engineering limitations of modern building materials. A certain large-scale sameness develops over time. The way out is a creative use of color and geometry combined with a certain sense of fun.

[The Immortal Goon]

No, it is objectively correct.

Fail.

Materialism exists.

[Dialectic materialism] is a supernatural force prophesied to direct future events in a way that is not empirically observed.

Do you think the fact that things change is a supernatural force?

Since you seem to have trouble understanding what dialectic materialism is, here it is explained to children:

Everything Changes

Young people grow old.
Days turn into nights.
Short hair grows long.

Some things change all at once.

Like a popcorn kernel that suddenly pops.
Or a birthday party when everyone shouts, "Surprise!"
Or a cloudburst that drenches everyone to the bone,
Or a lamp that changes a room from dark to light.

Some things change more slowly.

Like a tree growing a little every day,
Or an ice cube melting in a cold drink,
Or the way the clock moves when you're
waiting for recess to begin.

Some changes are happy and exciting

Like the day in Spring when green buds appear
Or the start of a race when all the runners take off
Or when you leave home to go on a vacation.

Some changes are scary

Like a house burning down
Or a car screeching to a stop
Or an earthquake that shakes the ground

Some changes are both exciting and a little bit scary

Like the first day of a new school
Or a roller coaster ride
Or learning to swim, or ride a bike.

How Things Change

Change happens only when something makes it happen--something inside or outside, pushing or pulling, holding or letting go, saying 'yes' or saying 'no'.

A sturdy tree stands many years, until lighting or wind comes along
to knock it down.
Traffic keeps moving, until a red light tells it to stop.
We keep drinking until we aren't thirsty anymore.

Change is like a tug-of-war with two sides pulling in opposite directions. For something to change, one side has to pull harder than the other.

When a door is stuck, you need to push or pull hard to open it.
An elevator has to be very strong to lift up a load of people
weighing it down.
Sometimes you have to argue very hard to change someone's mind.

One side is usually stronger, more important, or easier to see than the other side.

When one team is winning, they are the stronger side at that
moment.
When your body is stronger than any germs, you feel healthy, not
sick.
When a volcano is erupting, it is so strong that not even a mountain
can hold it down.

Changes start little by little with each side pushing or pulling against the other.

We blow up a small balloon, and it gets bigger and bigger.
A baby tooth ready to come out gets looser every day.
Our bedroom starts out neat and clean, but gets messier and
messier as time goes by.
A cold popcorn kernel being cooked gets hotter and hotter

Turning Points

In time there comes a turning point.

When a balloon gets too big, it pops.
When a new tooth pushes far enough, a loose baby tooth falls out.
At some point your room becomes so messy that you decide to
clean it up.
When the tiny drop of water inside a popcorn kernel turns to steam,
the popcorn pops--all at once.

Like the popping balloon and popcorn some turning points are easy to see.

When a match is struck, it bursts into flame
When our sleeping bodies are rested, we wake up.
When a piñata gets one last solid "Whack", the candy spills out.
One day, when it is ready, a butterfly pops out of its cocoon.
When snow on a mountain gets too deep, it falls in a thundering
avalanche.

Other times the turning point is hard to see, but it still happens.

Children grow a little every day, until one day there they are--
all grown up.
Over many, many years, wind and rain can change mountains into
grains of sand.
If you start with a big bag of Halloween candy, and eat a little
every day, one day it becomes more empty than full.
Icy winters change into balmy summers, day by day.

Some turning points mark an ending

Like a street that comes to a dead end
Or going to bed at the end of a day
Or the last day of school before summer vacation.

Some endings are happy.

Like the kiss at the end of a wedding.
Or a home run that wins a ball game for your team.

Some endings are sad.

Like falling off a bike.
Or saying good-bye to a friend if you move away.

But since changes never stop, even endings are new beginnings.

When the school year ends, summer vacation begins.
If you fall off a bike, you can get up and try to ride again.
If you move away, you can make new friends, and keep in touch
with all your friends by email.

Circles and Spirals

Some changes go in circles, returning to where they started.

Like a Ferris wheel that goes up and comes back down to the same
spot.
Or the day which turns into night and then into day
Or the seasons--Winter--Spring--Summer--Fall--and Winter again
Or our breathing--in and out and in

Some changes go in spirals--they look like they come back to where they started, but something is different.

Like a winding staircase that moves in a circle, but comes around to
a higher point.
Or going to school and coming back home, but learning more about
the world every day.
Or losing something; then finding it, and then putting it in a special
place so you won't lose it again.
Or like children growing up to be parents with children of their own.

Making Changes

Now you know how things change. Do you also know that you are powerful and that you can make all sorts of changes?

Some changes are simple to make.

If you don't like a TV show, you can change the channel or turn the
TV off.
If you don't like your hair style, you can cut it differently next
time.

Some changes take a bit more effort.

If you want to play the piano, you can study and practice and learn.
If you are shy or lonely, you can join a club and find people who
like the same things you do.
If you are mean to someone, you can say you're sorry.
And if someone is mean to you, you can learn to forgive.

In our world, if you work with other people, you can help make many changes.

For safer streets people can work to put up stop signs and traffic
signals.
To make our neighborhoods clean, we can help pick up trash.

If everyone pulls together we can learn how to solve even big problems. We can change--

Sickness to health
Poverty to wealth
War to peace
Famine to feast.

Now you are coming to another turning point--the end of this web page. Has reading this made a change in you?

Marxism is simply acknowledging this and then looking at how history has changed and may change.

No. Marxism does not study why things change. It simply ASSUMES that a supernatural force will make them change in certain prophesied ways, even though they in fact do not change in those ways. Marxism is logically equivalent to a biological "science" -- like Lysenkoism -- that says evolution has to produce a certain type of organism in the future, even though that type of organism has never been observed.

Source?

A typical Marxist non sequitur. Socialism is defined in the dictionary. It's not just whatever you say it is.

I had assumed that you understood context and defined socialism in the Marxist sense of the word, which is actually an acceptable definition of "socialism."

a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

It seems that you have difficulty reading. Do you have difficulty with words like, "drawer?" Sometimes it helps to use context. For example, it can mean something you store things in, or someone that draws.

[Pants-of-dog]

I thought it was the other way around, that the Nazis refused to work with Mies because the Nazis thought that the whole of Bauhaus was 'un-German' and that Mies was also 'un-German'.

Shunning him was one of the worst decisions that the Nazis ever made. Entertaining themselves with Albert Speer was the other worst decision.

Ironically, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was 50,000% Germanic and so were his ideas, but the Nazi leaders were somehow unable to see this.

The Nazis tried to shut down the Bauhaus, so van der Rohe went to meet them and worked out a deal to keep it open. The next day he turned around and shut the school down himslef, citing the deplorable conditions the Nazis would have imposed.

[Rei Murasame]

You seem to see modernism as the reject of past conventions but it is no more than Art Nouveau, Art Deco, deconstructivism, blobitecture, High Tech architecture, critical regionalism, natural architecture (although the first two are now seen as traditional).

There's a reason that the first two are seen as traditional now though. It's because they are. Art Nouvaeu and Art Deco were basically some of the most reactionary things imaginable.

Modernism is simply yet another opinionated architectural style. One that emphasizes unadorned flat lines and 90° angles, the emphasis of structural elements and raw materials. It's not something that gets free of the chains of the past, it's something that replaces them with new rigid ones.

Again it's good. But I fail to see why you insist to make it the alpha and omega of architecture. And more importantly I think your perception of it as the freedom movement that gets rid of the past is flatly erroneous or at least greatly reductionist.

Well, to recycle what I said in TLTE on the same issue, basically I see it like this. Fundamentally speaking, what is a house? If you approach it with a completely blank mindset and with no preconceptions, much like the first stilted house builders did at the dawn of sedentary agrarian society, except looking at modern tools rather than ancient tools as the tools that can be marshalled, what you are going to end up with would and should look different (like the kind of things I've posted, they are different because the era is different), different from anything that the regressives are presently trying to claim is acceptable.

Why? Because the regressive people only use tools to more accurately imitate things from 400+ years so that they can pat themselves on the back at country clubs, whereas modernists use tools because they want to build something. If Karl Marx were alive, he'd have a lot to say about this as well, and I think he'd actually be on my side on this one.

Why do people have affection for the old designs at all? What is supposed to be romantic about the ideological messages which are bound up in houses built by people during a time period where people were constrained by the inadequacy of their tools and manufacturing methods, and during a time and place (mainland Britain and its colonies particularly) when most people couldn't even have proper windows because windows were being taxed? In my view there is nothing to yearn for there, their buildings are not magically standing outside of time and space, they are subject to the flow of time, the changing of the era, and to being analysed through the lens of historical materialism just like everything else.

[Harmattan]

There's a reason that the first two are seen as traditional now though. It's because they are. Art Nouvaeu and Art Deco were basically some of the most reactionary things imaginable.

I do not think they were reactionary in their respective contexts but I would have to check.

Fundamentally speaking, what is a house? If you approach it with a completely blank mindset and with no preconceptions, much like the first stilted house builders did at the dawn of sedentary agrarian society, except looking at modern tools rather than ancient tools as the tools that can be marshalled, what you are going to end up with would and should look different (like the kind of things I've posted, they are different because the era is different), different from anything that the regressives are presently trying to claim is acceptable.

But they would not come up with the modernist rules of emphasizing structural elements or keeping materials raw. Besides maybe they would come up to favor the sphere rather than the rectangle (and each have their pros: space usage versus energy).

Modernism is yet another opinionated take at architecture, not the neutral reinvention you depict.

It's not modernism versus old designs. It's modernism versus alternative modern designs.