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virtualritz 31 minutes ago [-]
I have architect friends. They can't draw, they can't sculpt, they have no clue about art history. Or color theory, if you want to go that far. Usually golden ratio/Fibonacci is kinda where it ends. One of them is a professor of architecture, no less.
That said, I'm sure there are architects today for which some or all of this is not true.
Most of the above are subjects an architect student would have had to learn about and demonstrate profienciency in, to earn their degree, a 100 years ago.
I'm sure the change in architecture's priorities played a role in this too. Industrial materials, construction efficiency. The need to mass produce housing, costs and new social ideals, yadayadayada.
And ofc the modernist rejection of any ornament; even that which is there historically, on existing architecture.
My hope is that in a future where we 3D-print buildings or construct them with robots we will see a renaissance of non-functional[1] beauty/sculpture/texture/color in architecture because the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistend.
But then, architecture is also always a mirror of the period. And from that pov it's not looking so great for beauty making it back any time soon.
[1] Yet functional because how can the happiness/joy of the perceiver of architecture be removed from what should count as functional, in architecture?
f13f1f1f1 17 minutes ago [-]
This applies to most fields. Far more people get advanced education now but just necessarily as you cater to a larger group of people you have to diminish the end goal and operate more by procedures and standardization. That reverberates and diminishes the skills of the more competent people who would have been able to learn all of the above a century ago, because now all the institutions cater to a larger body.
I disagree about it being a mirror of the period as some absolute rule though. Insurance policies, building code/zoning, educational structures and the rest are all choices people make.
The cost thing is always absurd to me as in medieval guild systems during the great plague people found resources to build great cathedrals. Acting like cathedrals were cheaper then compared to now is just absurd.
We have the resources we just choose to use it to create trash and then burn it, and to punish anyone who tries to make anything that isn't trash.
watwut 4 minutes ago [-]
It has nothing to do with that. Architecture has to branches - artistic and technical one. These people are the technical kind of architects. It is a STEM field and job. They do a lot of math, physics and that sort of thing is school. Because, the kind of jobs they get require that.
nemomarx 27 minutes ago [-]
I think it's like millennial grey. Not only is it more expensive to add ornamentation, it also hurts resale and repurposing of buildings. Ideally you want mostly identical boxes where you could change the sign to make it a church, a McDonalds, a clothing store, etc every few years.
Or that seems like the goal of commercial builders now, right?
skinfaxi 3 minutes ago [-]
This is the crux. Houses used to be built to be lived in, so ornamentation added value. Now they are commodities to be traded and sold, and variation makes a portfolio harder to manage/less uniform.
underlipton 3 minutes ago [-]
I wish people would stop calling it millennial grey. It's Gen-X grey. Kim K and Kanye were the ones who built the logical conclusion in their contrast-less white casa; millennials are born maximalists who pair tech accoutrements with actual wood grain because their fondest memories are of being sat in front of a PS2 and a CRT housed in a stained oak cabinet in their childhood den.
DubiousPusher 14 minutes ago [-]
re commerical buildings today, absolutely. Most developments, especially retail ones have the goal of being wrapped up in a commerical real estate portfolio. That might be a REIT or held by a private investor. Their goal is to collect buildings with the widest marketability for retail. They are not generally curating locations with intent. Though some owners specialize in that in high density tourist or luxury retail spaces.
To be fair, this isn't entirely new. The American West was strewn with cheap wooden structures that all looked alike with big fake fonts with hand painted signs. Those mostly rotted so they're uncommon in our lexicon outside of movies.
poloniculmov 10 minutes ago [-]
I don't understand the bit where they can draw? How did they pass the entrance exams or their classes? The architects I know basically had to draw all day, everyday.
nuancebydefault 6 minutes ago [-]
The architects you know drew mostly straight lines and arcs, i reckon.
amelius 20 minutes ago [-]
> because the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistent.
It will not happen because the rich will always keep standards of living of the average and poor people just at the low level that they will not rebel.
azan_ 16 minutes ago [-]
> It will not happen because the rich will always keep standards of living of the average and poor people just at the low level that they will not rebel.
Could you explain your exact line of thinking?
DetroitThrow 19 minutes ago [-]
>They can't draw, they can't sculpt, they have no clue about art history. Or color theory, if you want to go that far. Usually golden ratio/Fibonacci is kinda where it ends. One of them is a professor of architecture, no less.
I only have a couple of architect friends, but wow, they actually have exactly these skills and interests. Amazing artists and designers in their own right. They seem to know a lot about how philosophy interacts with architecture too! Interesting to know they might be the exception.
BobBagwill 48 minutes ago [-]
I think contemporary architecture is perfect:
Cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable metal and glass rectangular prisms filled with cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable workers. Form follows function!
That old architecture implied things like spirit, transcendence, community, beauty. Outmoded concepts for sure!
I read the end of the first phrase as "Farm follows function!". Would not have been a bad typo.
FranzFerdiNaN 30 minutes ago [-]
I love that the site has a banner that says 'the future of architecture is human' and every photo on that page is of corporate soul destroying misery.
recursivedoubts 43 minutes ago [-]
Read from bauhaus to our house, by tom wolfe. In america we had the Arts & Crafts movement (e.g. greene & greene) as a native folk form.
It was all killed because two dynamics came together to push "the yale box": corporate america's love of cheap buildings (although the buildings are cheap to build but often nightmares to maintain and use... somebody else's problem) and the ideological purity spiraling post WW2 driven by the academic environment and the rise of abstract architectural criticism over the practical building arts.
post modernism acknowledged the failure of the yale box but, because going back to traditional building forms was unthinkable (of course), had to do ironic kitsch instead
kimi 8 minutes ago [-]
> the rise of abstract architectural criticism over the practical building arts.
i.e. "any mason can build a brick house, but an architect will create an ugly box that no mason would ever have built".
DubiousPusher 21 minutes ago [-]
Uh, I guarantee you a 1970 ranch is a far easier building to maintain than a craftsman bungalow.
Edit: I love me a craftsman bungalow but matching dry rotted custom milled trim from 90 years ago is an mfer.
bluGill 8 minutes ago [-]
Very much. However I've lived in both over the years. Both need to be torn down and replaced! There are a lot of practical things that anyone who has compared living in a house built in 2026 vs something older will not like.
Of course building a new house is expensive. There are a lot of sunk costs in an existing house and generally while there is a lot to not like about an old house, in generally keeping it and doing small remodels to make it better is a better use of money even though ideally you would replace it.
It is also interesting to read about the Amsterdamse School, an early 1900's style with "mass appeal" of which you can see many beautiful examples throughout the city, which were also only built thanks to strong support from the political sphere. https://architecture-history.org/schools/AMSTERDAM%20SCHOOL....
vslira 54 minutes ago [-]
I think the part of this post that is a push back at the “trad critique” doesn’t really work: at a point the author basically says that modernism has its hold due to being a (and I’m paraphrasing uncharitably here) cheap and easy shot at architectural respectability, which is not only not a defense of it, but pretty much the point of the “trad critique”
fsloth 58 minutes ago [-]
Not mentioned in the article - Helsinki has a large collection of Art Nouveau ("Jugend") buildings, though not quite matching Riga.
"Helsinki is indeed a unique city of Art Nouveau architecture on the global scale, boasting no less than 600 “Jugend” buildings – more even than in Barcelona or Brussels."
Incipient 23 minutes ago [-]
I just wanted to say thank you for posting this. It was a wonderful break from the norm, and I've enjoyed reading everyone's comments. I haven't enjoyed anything here or in general in a while.
Thank you!
rad_val 54 minutes ago [-]
I think the answer to this question is deeply uncomfortable in 2026.
Softly put, it's discipline, focus and a sense of greater purpose, far above the monetary value of things, fame and fortune.
In other words, exactly what our current, consumer-oriented society lacks. (for better or worse)
cogman10 42 minutes ago [-]
It's not those things, it's money.
You can buy discipline, focus, and a sense of greater purpose. But it ain't cheap and few with the means to do it have the will to want it.
Consider my office. The original drafted designs for it had an airy look, full ceiling, windows connecting the rooms for added light, doors.
Every single one of those things got nixed because it meant $$$ and the people running my company didn't want to foot the bill. So instead what we ended up with is cheap carpet, no ceiling (I can see all the joists and the ductwork), and paper thin cardboard walls which you can hear discussions from across the building. But the conference room where the C Levels commonly meet is fantastically decorated.
brookst 34 minutes ago [-]
I’m curious about “you can buy discipline”. For oneself?
nemomarx 25 minutes ago [-]
You can pay an architect to be very disciplined if you find a good one. Or you can pay a personal trainer to do discipline for you, a dietician, a personal assistant to be disciplined about your time...
rolisz 1 hours ago [-]
I'm lucky to live in an Art Nouveau City :) (Oradea, Romania)
fishTastesGood 28 minutes ago [-]
Hi, I visited Oradea in 2024, the Piata Unirii was very pretty and I also loved the Fortress and the museum inside. I'm happy to hear more areas are getting renovated, many areas looked a bit run down, but I visited in October so it was cloudy and rainy. I need to visit again with better weather. I also had dinner at a restaurant with Mama in the name I think, it was delicious.
hommelix 54 minutes ago [-]
Which area/building would you recommend to see Art Nouveau in Oradea?
rolisz 52 minutes ago [-]
Casa Darvas is a nice museum, with a good coffee shop in the garden.
The Central Square (Piata Unirii) has been renovated nicely and looks very good. The old main street is still in renovation, so it's not so nice now.
Gravityloss 58 minutes ago [-]
I went to Sagrada Familia and then to Mies van Der Rohe Pavilion.
The latter had a bikini fashion shoot ongoing.
Maybe something to do with it. The world and society completely transformed. Mass media, fashion, loss of religiosity, sexual liberation, globalization, social mobility...
diego_moita 6 minutes ago [-]
This reminds me when I lived in Brazil and had to temporarily work in a building designed by the famous architect Oscar Niemeyer.
The place was horrible. With few windows and poor ventilation, it was close to a rainforest. Because of that, it was moldy and a nurturing place for respiratory diseases. Add to this the fact that in Southern Brazil no one knows how to build with proper insulation against cold and you get what many Brazilian architects say in secret about Niemeyer: "as an architect, he was an excellent sculptor".
toyg 53 minutes ago [-]
One thing nobody ever mentions, probably because it's not fashionable, is that all these buildings require maintenance after getting built. Maintaining a modernist block, with its flat surfaces and straight lines, is utterly trivial compared to more decorative styles - where you have to constantly fight pigeons and the elements to not appear derelict. Also, it is typically complicated to fix decorative pieces when they break, as they often do.
I do understand and share the view that the current mainstream is utterly boring, but I also acknowledge the (somewhat) irresistible forces that shape it: money, time, effort. And I don't believe AI can do anything to counter them in a significant manner, sadly.
tocs3 17 minutes ago [-]
I have worked to repair houses both old and new. You are right about fancy fixtures and whatnot in older houses, but modern construction is problematic also. It seems that houses are never built to be maintained.
hmokiguess 1 hours ago [-]
Unrelated but while scrolling, when I scrolled up, the asterisk thingy appeared on the top right corner and I thought it was a spider or some glitch and had a mini freakout before realizing it was the actual branding
teddyh 1 hours ago [-]
Like those paper cutouts of lizards that people put on walls in order to fascinate cats.
hmokiguess 1 hours ago [-]
Thank you for this idea, my cats are in for a treat today.
ctolsen 1 hours ago [-]
Sagrada Família is an amazing building. Going inside it is an awesome experience.
But it is a _lot_. Putting aside the artistic skill and construction cost of it, I'm glad I don't live in a city where everything is like that. I feel like it'd be overstimulating much like an analog version of the Las Vegas strip.
weatherlight 31 minutes ago [-]
I live in Barcelona, it's a very pleasant city (if you can aford to live here), The city has almost 2000 years of history and architecture. It's inhabitants left its mark. Eixample (the Extension) was planned kinda all at once by Cerda and thats why theres an over representation of specific styles of architecture, and why Eixample feels a bit like an open air museum.
If you go to the "Gothic quarter" or to Gracia you won't see much "Art nouveau."
Its a very varied city.
I live in a building in the "Modernisme" style and its lovely.
loloquwowndueo 54 minutes ago [-]
Did you visit other Gaudí buildings? La pedrera is open for visiting and a very nice apartment building. I wouldn’t mind a city where most buildings are like that.
Sagrada Família is very purposefully a total exaggeration but so are most large churches when viewed as part of their surrounding context. They’re designed to stand out.
rad_val 1 hours ago [-]
The level of detail can vary while keeping the idea intact. You wouldn't be more overwhelmed than when you walk down on any european old city centers.
Filligree 1 hours ago [-]
It’s no different from living in a beautiful natural landscape. I can tell you from experience that no, you get used to it.
It would not be a lot. It would fade into the background, except that any time you want to see beauty you just have to look up and focus.
luqtas 59 minutes ago [-]
nature has proven calming effects on humans... bird sings, even plants on the roof of an urban area can have positive effects just because of the vision
i highly doubt a christian church has the same effect. everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited by the religion and alienation
skinfaxi 57 minutes ago [-]
> i highly doubt a christian church has the same effect. everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited by the religion and alienation
Maybe not the exact same effect as nature but it is indeed calming to me at least. Stepping into a cathedral, or masjid, or temple and the noise of the world falls away (and I'm not even religious). I'm sure I'm not the only one.
luqtas 48 minutes ago [-]
i'm also not religious and having lived in a remote place for more than a year, i lost count of the amount of times i sat at the grass in a completely meditative state by starring at clouds, mountains and sunsets
tocs3 52 minutes ago [-]
everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited
Not to downplay atrocities committed in the name of Christianity but I am pretty sure every large ideology has its share of of atrocities.
luqtas 42 minutes ago [-]
yes but when you have it talking basically exclusively about "love", it's much harder to swallow
tocs3 14 minutes ago [-]
Most ideologies have their keywords. Love, peace, freedom, fairness, ... and the atrocities keep coming.
skinfaxi 59 minutes ago [-]
Compare Sagrada Familia to Times Square.
DubiousPusher 22 minutes ago [-]
Dude, it's labor. It is no coincidence that essentially every intricate form of architecture gave way to simplified forms at the exact same time that wages for trade workers were rapidly rising.
Hand placed parquet that took a master craftsman several weeks to lay disappeared. Intricate carvings upon otherwise utilitarian and common structures likewise.
Art Deco itself is a compromise with this creeping reality. Not fully modern minimalist but economically efficient in using flattened elements, prefabs and striaght accents for detailing.
When a trad person posts their diatribe online it is a simple tell. They know next to nothing about how the built world is actually created. And they don't understand how wages came to form the basis of respect for working people. The act of decrying the utilitarian transition is itself a form of disrespect via ignorance. Because what you are essentially saying is that your aesthetic preferences are more important than the time of expert laborers, whether you know it or not.
amarcheschi 11 minutes ago [-]
Counterpoint, a relative of mine works in a sector where he sees a lot of luxury villas (we're from Tuscany, so it's full of wealthy oligarchs on the coast). I've seen some of the photos and I'd say none of them look good to me, they're just modernist regular shaped blocks of something that makes a house, and inside the kitchiest decorations possible just to flaunt money. And yet, they could afford to pay for any style they wanted
That said, I'm sure there are architects today for which some or all of this is not true.
Most of the above are subjects an architect student would have had to learn about and demonstrate profienciency in, to earn their degree, a 100 years ago.
I'm sure the change in architecture's priorities played a role in this too. Industrial materials, construction efficiency. The need to mass produce housing, costs and new social ideals, yadayadayada.
And ofc the modernist rejection of any ornament; even that which is there historically, on existing architecture.
My hope is that in a future where we 3D-print buildings or construct them with robots we will see a renaissance of non-functional[1] beauty/sculpture/texture/color in architecture because the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistend.
But then, architecture is also always a mirror of the period. And from that pov it's not looking so great for beauty making it back any time soon.
[1] Yet functional because how can the happiness/joy of the perceiver of architecture be removed from what should count as functional, in architecture?
Or that seems like the goal of commercial builders now, right?
To be fair, this isn't entirely new. The American West was strewn with cheap wooden structures that all looked alike with big fake fonts with hand painted signs. Those mostly rotted so they're uncommon in our lexicon outside of movies.
It will not happen because the rich will always keep standards of living of the average and poor people just at the low level that they will not rebel.
Could you explain your exact line of thinking?
I only have a couple of architect friends, but wow, they actually have exactly these skills and interests. Amazing artists and designers in their own right. They seem to know a lot about how philosophy interacts with architecture too! Interesting to know they might be the exception.
Cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable metal and glass rectangular prisms filled with cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable workers. Form follows function!
That old architecture implied things like spirit, transcendence, community, beauty. Outmoded concepts for sure!
https://architizer.com/projects/tiktok/
It was all killed because two dynamics came together to push "the yale box": corporate america's love of cheap buildings (although the buildings are cheap to build but often nightmares to maintain and use... somebody else's problem) and the ideological purity spiraling post WW2 driven by the academic environment and the rise of abstract architectural criticism over the practical building arts.
post modernism acknowledged the failure of the yale box but, because going back to traditional building forms was unthinkable (of course), had to do ironic kitsch instead
i.e. "any mason can build a brick house, but an architect will create an ugly box that no mason would ever have built".
Edit: I love me a craftsman bungalow but matching dry rotted custom milled trim from 90 years ago is an mfer.
Of course building a new house is expensive. There are a lot of sunk costs in an existing house and generally while there is a lot to not like about an old house, in generally keeping it and doing small remodels to make it better is a better use of money even though ideally you would replace it.
It is also interesting to read about the Amsterdamse School, an early 1900's style with "mass appeal" of which you can see many beautiful examples throughout the city, which were also only built thanks to strong support from the political sphere. https://architecture-history.org/schools/AMSTERDAM%20SCHOOL....
https://www.myhelsinki.fi/visit/helsinki-art-nouveau-archite...
"Helsinki is indeed a unique city of Art Nouveau architecture on the global scale, boasting no less than 600 “Jugend” buildings – more even than in Barcelona or Brussels."
Thank you!
Softly put, it's discipline, focus and a sense of greater purpose, far above the monetary value of things, fame and fortune.
In other words, exactly what our current, consumer-oriented society lacks. (for better or worse)
You can buy discipline, focus, and a sense of greater purpose. But it ain't cheap and few with the means to do it have the will to want it.
Consider my office. The original drafted designs for it had an airy look, full ceiling, windows connecting the rooms for added light, doors.
Every single one of those things got nixed because it meant $$$ and the people running my company didn't want to foot the bill. So instead what we ended up with is cheap carpet, no ceiling (I can see all the joists and the ductwork), and paper thin cardboard walls which you can hear discussions from across the building. But the conference room where the C Levels commonly meet is fantastically decorated.
The Central Square (Piata Unirii) has been renovated nicely and looks very good. The old main street is still in renovation, so it's not so nice now.
The latter had a bikini fashion shoot ongoing.
Maybe something to do with it. The world and society completely transformed. Mass media, fashion, loss of religiosity, sexual liberation, globalization, social mobility...
The place was horrible. With few windows and poor ventilation, it was close to a rainforest. Because of that, it was moldy and a nurturing place for respiratory diseases. Add to this the fact that in Southern Brazil no one knows how to build with proper insulation against cold and you get what many Brazilian architects say in secret about Niemeyer: "as an architect, he was an excellent sculptor".
I do understand and share the view that the current mainstream is utterly boring, but I also acknowledge the (somewhat) irresistible forces that shape it: money, time, effort. And I don't believe AI can do anything to counter them in a significant manner, sadly.
But it is a _lot_. Putting aside the artistic skill and construction cost of it, I'm glad I don't live in a city where everything is like that. I feel like it'd be overstimulating much like an analog version of the Las Vegas strip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfN517mqhC8 (Absolutely worth watching if you want to know why Barcelona was planned the way it was.)
If you go to the "Gothic quarter" or to Gracia you won't see much "Art nouveau."
Its a very varied city. I live in a building in the "Modernisme" style and its lovely.
Sagrada Família is very purposefully a total exaggeration but so are most large churches when viewed as part of their surrounding context. They’re designed to stand out.
It would not be a lot. It would fade into the background, except that any time you want to see beauty you just have to look up and focus.
i highly doubt a christian church has the same effect. everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited by the religion and alienation
Maybe not the exact same effect as nature but it is indeed calming to me at least. Stepping into a cathedral, or masjid, or temple and the noise of the world falls away (and I'm not even religious). I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Not to downplay atrocities committed in the name of Christianity but I am pretty sure every large ideology has its share of of atrocities.
Hand placed parquet that took a master craftsman several weeks to lay disappeared. Intricate carvings upon otherwise utilitarian and common structures likewise.
Art Deco itself is a compromise with this creeping reality. Not fully modern minimalist but economically efficient in using flattened elements, prefabs and striaght accents for detailing.
When a trad person posts their diatribe online it is a simple tell. They know next to nothing about how the built world is actually created. And they don't understand how wages came to form the basis of respect for working people. The act of decrying the utilitarian transition is itself a form of disrespect via ignorance. Because what you are essentially saying is that your aesthetic preferences are more important than the time of expert laborers, whether you know it or not.