site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31375 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I see that neither side of the culture war right now focuses on the positive, on something beautiful. Both sides see themselves as righteous oppressed victims fighting against the evil empire of the other side, but for both it is less a Star Wars vision than a Terminator vision. War machines running over skulls at night-time, death and lasers. The culture war is bleak and stark, it has no poetry, no romance. It is a grim attrition war, trenches and minor offensives but few large breakthroughs if by breakthroughs one means reaching one's opponent and convincing him of something. Where are the creative songbirds of thought and word who would transcend this opposition and maybe get both sides to become aware that both are equally stuck in the human condition? Has rhetoric truly reached the limits of its potential power? I have so rarely seen anyone change his mind about anything more than minor details.

It is all so tiresome. Maybe it is possible to move in some orthogonal direction and flank this whole conflict from a side that has the breath of fresh air behind it?

I often think this. Who is building beautiful things these days in the public realm? Beautiful schools, libraries, railroad stations, hospitals, parks, museums, even apartment buildings? Yes, there are always a handful of examples, sandwiched between generic shitty modern buildings or awful pastiche. But not enough. No one’s thinking big. You have to inspire people.

I was watching some shitty talk show appearance by the astronauts who are supposed to be going to the moon again with NASA next year. The commenters on the YouTube video (who I presume watch a lot of talkshow clips) were saying it was the most applause they’d ever seen on the show, the audience were standing up and hollering and cheering and so on. People want to believe in something real. Yes, a return to religiosity would be a good thing, but there also has to be real progress, real improvement, something in the kingdom of earth or whatever the biblical term is that inspires and drives people, that suggests some kind of civilizational progress. ChatGPT is good, but right now it’s unclear how it’s going to improve most people’s lives and if anything most people who look into LLMs get panicked about becoming permanently unemployed.

If I was president I’d organize a huge World’s Fair for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding in 2026. Host it in New York, in Flushing Meadows park where the last big one was, around that giant sphere that once symbolized all the possibility of the late 20th century. Invite all the great corporations, every state, other countries, to come and present their vision of the future. Make it free to visit. Hire Robert Stern to design it in a vaguely mid-century Americana style. Have all the classics - the house of the future, the car of the future, the plane of the future etc. It wouldn’t solve the country’s problems (“the controversy over drag queen story hour in the California state pavilion continues…”), but I think it would be mostly fun and hopeful.

In my darker (and less sober) moments, I wonder if there's an active campaign against beauty itself. On my local city sub-Reddits I often see people complaining about "wasteful" government spending on a modicum of ornamentation on anything. Faux stone veneers on highway support columns? Wasteful. Planting trees along the highway? Wasteful. Apparently brutalism ugly-ass concrete boxes is the only acceptable architectural form these days.

Edited for Gdanning's pedantry

Brutalism hasn't been in vogue for 40+ years. See recent Pritzger winners.

Edit: No, concrete boxes are not the only acceptable architectural form. Frank Gehry does not design concrete boxes. Nor does Rem Koolhaas. Nor does Santiago Calatrava. Nor does Renzo Piano. Nor does Daniel Libeskind.

And of course there is a wide variety of styles represented here

I don't like most of the Pritzger winners, I went and looked at each of your links, and everyone except Santiago(whose building all look like different shots of the same building, lots of curves, I hate them all as well) has at least one 'concrete box' building. Sure, maybe it is actually a glass and steel box, and it is on it's side, or a glass and steel trapezoid, but personally, 'concrete box' is not a literally description. I would bet that the average person who complains about 'modern architecture', and 'brutalism', and 'concrete boxes', would also hate everything in Rem Koolhaas's portfolio, even if none of them are technically any of those things. Could you please tell me an acceptable short hand so that I can complain about these things without someone complaining that I am using the wrong terms of art. It is not as simple as all new buildings, the campus in the AIA link is mostly fine, although there are modern(though probably not technically) elements that I think strictly detract from the design. Is there a word or phrase that I can use to properly express my distaste for most (maybe all) architectural trends that have emerged over the last 50-100 years?

I don’t know why there has to be a single word, nor if there can be a single word, that encompasses this and this and this. And if there is a single word, "Brutalist" isn't it.

Moreover, none of those are boxes. OTOH, if, as you say, "concrete box" includes steel and glass boxes, then this counts, yet I dare say that most who complain about post-WWII architecture would find that more attractive than the examples above.

Moreover, most of these are better described as concrete boxes than any of the examples at the top. As is this. Heck, the Empire State Building is essentially a box with spire stuck on top.

And, frankly, if someone said, "I hate Rem Koolhaas because I hate concrete boxes," I would have a hard time taking him seriously.

Upon further reflection, I believe the term I'm looking for is 'inhuman.' To me, those three buildings feel inhuman, ugly, and unnatural. They seem like the creations of a lotus eater who began with a peculiar shape, and then attempted to transform that design into a functional building after the fact, rather than starting with human-friendly, functional spaces and adding aesthetic elements later to enhance their beauty.

These buildings remind me of high-fashion that seldom leaves the runway, worn perhaps only by the designers themselves, or the avant-garde in gastronomy featuring frozen bubbles of crab purée crowned with sea water-infused foam. The objective there isn't to create good clothes or delicious food, rather to create 'art', and in doing so, the primary purpose, and an ineffable authenticity is lost.

When you couple this with the degradation of fine art more generally, I think everything comes together. Modern architects, it seems, are crafting ugly art installations that begrudgingly take on the role of 'buildings' out of necessity.

Yes, that is probably a better term. Though it doesn't capture why. But no single term could.

Though I would take issue with your assumptions about lack of functionality. The first one, as far as I can tell, is perfectly functional. It appears to be, essentially, a set of rectangular boxes stacked on top of one another, just like a regular building. The boxes are just stacked very differently. The Seattle Central Library building is pretty much a standard big library inside. Also, I can attest that when this was used as an art museum, it was highly functional, and clearly designed to facilitate patron flow between galleries. The Walt Disney Concert Hall is renowned for its acoustics and this article by a professional musician says, "I am always speechless when architec­ture manages to support the purpose of the space so congenially."

Finally, as for aesthetics, the first link above evokes a treehouse to me, which is a nod both to nature and childhood. The last, to me, evokes flight or a sense of soaring, which for many people is emotionally resonant. So I am not sure that inhuman or unnatural are entirety fair descriptors; at the very least, reasonable minds can differ.

Heck, the Empire State Building is essentially a box with spire stuck on top.

Oh come now.

The point is that it is no less a "concrete box" than most of what dude is calling a "concrete box." Ie, it is a bunch of boxes glued together. His terminology doesn’t work.

More specifically, I personally think that the Empire State Building is more attractive than the Bilbao Guggenheim, but obviously not because it is less of a "concrete box" as he defines it. Ditto re this building versus Bilbao

Again, his terminology doesn’t capture the relevant differences.

And, I like the Empire State Building more than whatever they are calling the Sears Tower these days, despite having them having same essential form of a bunch of rectangles glued together. The differences lie elsewhere.

Few would describe works such as the 2020 or 2012 winners as beautiful. The term brutal might even be used, of course that would be completely wrong because the academic definition of the word denies any usage by common folk.

Yeah, these are pretty freaking ugly. Like, the whole Brutalist thing made sense after WWII, when European cities were bombed out, industrial machinery was available to a greater extent than in ages past, and reinforced concrete was fairly inexpensive. At least, it made sense to some degree...figuring out how to build cheap half decent buildings out of reinforced concrete is a worthy goal.

This is the usual facile reply to complaints about the ugly architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Uh, you complain about the ugliness of modern brutalist buildings, but actually modernism and brutalism are separate architectural movements, and the current-year trend of ugly concrete boxes and geometric turds is called something else.

You don't need to be versed in the jargon of an insular artfield to criticize its output, especially for architecture where this output is forced upon millions of unwilling victims to suffer daily.

Dude, modernism predates Brutalism. The point is not that contemporary architecture is beautiful, nor that is ugly. It is that if you are going to criticize contemporary architecture, then it helps to come across as knowing what you are talking about. Take a look at the newest buildings built in NYC, for example. How many are brutalist?

  • -12

It is that if you are going to criticize contemporary architecture, then it helps to come across as knowing what you are talking about.

This is exactly the attitude that fmaa was talking about. Sorry I didn't learn the specifics of what various kinds of concrete boxes are called but that doesn't mean I automatically have to defer to the aesthetic tastes of someone with a better grasp of the vocabulary and jargon. Whatever you want to call it, it's ugly and I hate it.

No one says you have to defer to anyone. But it is impossible to have a conversation unless we have a common understanding of terms. If someone says, "I hate contemporary architecture because I hate brutalism," I would think he would be happy to learn that most contemporary architecture is not Brutalist. Ditto if he says "I hate contemporary architecture because I hate concrete boxes," he should be happy to learn that most contemporary architecture is not concrete boxes. See,eg, Frank Gehry and other "starchitects."

And, guess what? With some exceptions, I don’t like brutalism either. But I like plenty of more contemporary stuff. Because they aren't synonyms.

  • -11

Lol, everyone did have a common understanding of the terms - everyone knows what @heavywaternettipot meant, and what they were referring to, even you know what they are talking about. You stopped the conversation and turned it into an endless back and forth on the definition of words, like you always do when people are discussing things you don't like.

More comments

You're not saying outright that I have to defer, but your statement "It is that if you are going to criticize contemporary architecture, then it helps to come across as knowing what you are talking about" certainly carries the implication that I ought to be deferring to those with the right vocabulary.

At any rate, I've edited my comment from "brutalist" to "ugly-ass concrete boxes" because that's what's getting built in my area. As I stated in my original reply to you, my city/county/state certainly isn't hiring Pritzker-nominated architects to design its public buildings.

Edit: Stupid auto-correct.

More comments

I'm aware of the difference. Part of my point was that naming a specific artstyle "modern" and then sneering when people use that word to mean contemporary is just being a condescending asshole and bad at communicating.

The other, bigger part was that no, you don't need to know the jargon to complain about things being forced on you. I'm not going to find lists of NYC buildings, but I think like 90% of that Pritzker prize list is ugly and about half of it is concrete boxes. It really doesn't matter to anyone living in/near them if these particular ugly concrete boxes don't count as brutalist according to architects.

No one says you have to accept anything, nor that those Pritzker winners are attractive. But if you go to your local planning commission and say "no contemporary architecture because I hate brutalism and concrete boxes, you cant complain if this gets built down the street from you.

  • -11

Treating bureaucrats and architects like malicious genies might not be wrong, but would hardly make them blameless. Though really the most fantastic part of this scenario would be them caring what you say in the first place.

Not in vogue, you say? (That's the 2020 winner)

And the other 39 winners over the last 40 years?

  • -11

I think you are on a loser here. The prize announcement for the 2006 winner says:

The new laureate began his career in the 1950s and was part of what was then considered the avant-garde in São Paulo, known loosely as creators of the Paulist brutalist architecture—practicioners whose work, often using simple materials and forms, emphasized an ethical dimension of architecture. He is widely considered the most outstanding architect of Brazil.

Exposed raw concrete is the essential element of brutalism:

Among his most widely known built works is the Brazilian Sculpture Museum, a non-traditional concept of a museum, nestled partly underground in a garden in São Paulo. He made bold use of a giant concrete beam on the exterior that traverses the site. His Forma Furniture Showroom in the same city is considered an icon of his approach to architecture.

How many winners need to be officially considered brutalist for you to be wrong?

The 2019 winner was Arata Isozaki.

Notable early works include the Ōita Prefectural Library (1966), Expo '70 Festival Plaza in Osaka (1970), Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, and Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art in Fukuoka (both 1974). Several of his works from this era are considered definitive examples of Japanese brutalism.

These works were cited in the Pritzker prize announcement.

I don’t understand why you think references to buildings designed from the 1950s to 1974 refutes the claim that brutalism has not been in vogue for 40 years.

  • -12

You asked about the winners of the Pritzker prize. I gave two from the last 20 years who were cited as brutalists by the Pritzker announcements. The award is now a lifetime achievement award, it seems, and they cite brutalist buildings in the award announcements.

More comments

I don't disbelieve you, but it think it's fair to point out that my state and local governments probably aren't hiring Pritzger-winning architects to design and install infrastructure and government buildings. The rational part of my brain knows this is driven far more by cost than aethestics; way less to just slap up an ugly-ass concrete structure without any kind of regard for appearance.

2020 and 2021 both look pretty brutalist -- although that's perhaps overly charitable to 2020, which kind of looks more like a Mexican parking garage, and is a School of Architecture so should get some sort of bonus points.

2020 is a central example of brutalism, 2021 is a related modernist style, 2022 is arguably brutalist. But 2020 is enough to demonstrate that Brutalism has been in style more recently than 40 years ago.

2020 is Brutalistesque, but 2021 is not Brutalist at all. The point is that "Apparently brutalism is the only acceptable architectural form these days" is clearly incorrect.

  • -10

"Blocky forms made out of concrete" is brutalist enough for me -- what would you call the style of the 2021 winner?

Also what is "brutalistesqe"? 'esqe' as a suffix usually means 'similar to' -- so if buildings in a style similar to brutalism are winning architechture prizes, I would say this means that brutalism is still en vogue at least to some extent?

Blocky forms made out of concrete" is brutalist enough for me -- what would you call the style of the 2021 winner?

That's what I meant by brutalesque.

What's the difference? Are there some sort of Brutalism Police that we need to watch out for here?

And if there are, do they work for wikipedia? Because wikipedia has the following photos in their article on brutalism:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/The_History_Faculty%2C_Cambridge_%282354442890%29.jpg/1920px-The_History_Faculty%2C_Cambridge_%282354442890%29.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Norfolk_Terrace.JPG/1024px-Norfolk_Terrace.JPG

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/Habitat_67%2C_southwest_view.jpg/1920px-Habitat_67%2C_southwest_view.jpg

More comments

In the spirit of conciliation, perhaps "Apparently brutalism is the only institutionally-acceptable architectural form these days" is closer to the spirit of the original statement?

But, were that true, wouldn't that be reflected in the Pritzker prize awards? What reflects the institution of the architecture profession better than that?

  • -11

I was unclear. Acceptable to the customer-institutions who are deciding on what to have built; not to the institution of the architectural profession. Apologies for that.

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats