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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28766 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Below, in the discussion of Architectural philosophies, @Primaprimaprima provides an admirably concrete statement:

There's no cognitive dissonance because there's no evil here, anywhere.

Eisenman's buildings range from "fine" to "pretty darn cool" in my view. "...Architecture that similarly alludes to a deeper or alternate view of reality" in a Lovecraftian fashion is also cool. Rad, even. I want more of that. Sign me up. This isn't even some complex "well we have to understand the dialectical nature of suffering and how even negative emotions can be valuable" shit. This is just very straightforwardly an architect who makes cool buildings that he thinks are cool and other people think are cool. There's no malfeasance here, no shenanigans.

To me, your question sounds akin to someone saying "how exactly can you support Harry Potter books pushing Satanic propaganda on our children?" It's hard to provide an answer because I disagree with the entire framing.

If the framing is the issue, perhaps it would help to examine that framing from the ground up, as it were. Is there such a thing as "evil" architecture? Should we recognize this as a thing that exists?

Here are a half-dozen variations on the theme of "prison cell": 1 2 3 4 5 6

Considering the above six images:

  • would you expect that the ordering of the above images was random? If the ordering was not random, how would you describe the ordering principles?

  • What details of the environments seem emotionally salient to you? What colors, textures, contrasts, symmetries or asymmetries, rhythms, etc stand out?

  • This question is a bit awkward to phrase, so bear with me: If we ordered these images by the most prominent mental and emotional effects we expect them to induce on their occupants, would you expect the given order to change? What are the antipodes of the strongest gradient you recognize, and does that gradient require a re-ordering of the images to convey continuously?

  • Would the ranking change if you ordered them by which "looks cool"? For example, if you were picking prison cell designs for a movie set or a video game level, do you think the ordering would change? Note that we can actually make this question strictly empirical by looking at actual prison cells in actual movies and video games.

  • Would the ordering change if you ranked them by which you would rather be a prisoner in?

  • Would the order change if you ranked them by which you would rather actual convicts be housed in?

  • Suppose a person prefers the given ranking if they were a prisoner, and prefers the reverse ranking for convicts, would you describe this as a morally-neutral preference?

  • Assuming that the emotional gradient you perceive is relatively positive-to-negative, suppose that a person prefers the max-negative antipode for both themselves and for convicts. Does this show that the max-negative antipode would actually be "good" for convicts? Why or why not?

Elsewhere in the thread, we are provided with a link to this Japanese highschool gymnasium as a positive example of Eisenman's general style of architecture.

  • If you ordered the various shots of the exterior and interiors of the gymnasium, which do you consider the best, and which the worst? What principles seem most salient to this ordering? What patterns emerge?

  • If we compare and contrast the gymnasium interiors to our original six cells, what commonalities emerge in environmental detail and in expected mood? Which of the six do these interior shots seem to naturally group with? at which end of the various gradients do they fall?

  • The gymnasium is, clearly, not a prison. Despite this, are there relevant principles identified in your analysis of the cell variations that you think should carry over to analysis of the gymnasium?

  • leaving cell interiors unpainted would obviously be cheaper than painting them. Would it be better to leave cell interiors unpainted, similar to the gymnasium interiors? Is the preference to paint or not paint cell interiors morally neutral?

  • More generally, presuming the design of the Gymnasium is a good one, should similar principles be applied to the design of prisons? It's hard to deny that prisons could certainly look cooler than they do. Perhaps we could even make them look Rad. Presuming that this would not compromise first-order expenses or impose first-order security concerns, would it be a good idea to do this?

  • Among the gymnasium images, there's a shot of a classroom. Why do you suppose the designer has chosen to make the back wall of the classroom, facing the teacher, smooth and relatively low-detail compared to the front wall of the classroom, facing the students? What would you expect the results of this design choice to be on the intended function of the room?

  • Do you consider the preceding question to be a reasonable one?

Bonus Round:

  • Consider hostile architecture. How might we apply principles gleaned from the above questions to this separate branch of architecture and design?

  • Do you think hostile architecture is morally neutral? Morally positive? Morally negative? Why?

  • If someone believes that hostile architecture "looks cool", do you think that should be a persuasive argument in its favor?

  • Do you expect that those who enjoy and support the sort of architecture typified by the nikken sekkei gymnasium also support and enjoy hostile architecture? What about those who oppose it?

Relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/27/spain.arts

Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and Itten, as well as the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel and his friend Salvador Dali, were said to be the inspiration behind a series of secret cells and torture centres built in Barcelona and elsewhere, yesterday's El Pais newspaper reported.

The cells, built in 1938 and reportedly hidden from foreign journalists who visited the makeshift jails on Vallmajor and Saragossa streets, were as inspired by ideas of geometric abstraction and surrealism as they were by avant garde art theories on the psychological properties of colours.

Beds were placed at a 20 degree angle, making them near-impossible to sleep on, and the floors of the 6ft by 3ft cells was scattered with bricks and other geometric blocks to prevent prisoners from walking backwards and forwards, according to the account of Laurencic's trial.

The only option left to prisoners was staring at the walls, which were curved and covered with mind-altering patterns of cubes, squares, straight lines and spirals which utilised tricks of colour, perspective and scale to cause mental confusion and distress.

Lighting effects gave the impression that the dizzying patterns on the wall were moving.

A stone bench was similarly designed to send a prisoner sliding to the floor when he or she sat down, Mr Milicua said. Some cells were painted with tar so that they would warm up in the sun and produce asphyxiating heat.

If your artistic output is taken as inspiration for torture chambers designed to inflict psychological damage on prisoners of war, then something has gone seriously wrong. Likewise, if your gymnasium is designed to look like a WW2 bomb shelter that's been riddled with shell holes, then something has gone wrong. There is no need to innovate just for the sake of innovation. We knew how to build beautiful buildings or at least normal, utilitarian buildings. If the goal of your building is mounting high calibre flak guns and resisting high explosives, then it should indeed look like a flak tower - huge amounts of unpainted concrete is appropriate. Otherwise, make it look good. Windows! Air and light!

A vanishingly small number of people would design their house in Minecraft to look like Eisenman's constructions. None would win awards for it: https://old.reddit.com/r/Minecraftbuilds/top/

The vast majority of people make houses and buildings that evoke a traditional, cozy style. Or they make them look like a familiar object - a Nintendo Switch or a Rubik's Cube, a sword or an angler fish. Or they make monuments: a big pyramid with a gate, a statue, a dystopian underwater city with skyscrapers rising out of the waves. That's the general principle on which buildings and monuments should be designed - anything but random or deliberately malign assortments of shapes that require a PHD to be 'interpreted'.

If your artistic output is taken as inspiration for torture chambers designed to inflict psychological damage on prisoners of war, then something has gone seriously wrong.

Your modus ponens is my modus tollens. His work may have been used as inspiration for a torture chamber; but Klee was obviously a fantastic artist regardless. So we can conclude that that is no great indictment of him.

Given the content at the links this reads like thick irony.

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