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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
brutalismugly-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
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?
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.
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.
No, heavywater said something completely incorrect. And, as it happens, I don't particularly like brutalism, with very few exceptions. What I don't like is people opining from positions of ignorance, whether it is UWS liberals who complain about Citizens United doing things it didn't do, or conservatives complaining about contemporary architecture without understanding what it is.
Is this a "someone is wrong on the Internet" post?
What he said that was "incorrect" is completely irrelevant to 1) the point he was making and 2) people's ability to understand the point he was making.
I really don't care if that Starbucks coffee is a "Venti" instead of a large and "correcting" that is just pedantry.
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