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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
Why people hate modernist "boxes" is beyond me. Same goes with brutalism. They have shape and thought, and are fascinating.
Freeform, otoh, ala frank Gary sucks ass. :vomit: |
Unfortunately it is my experience that architecture, like other disciplines, has too few of the calibre of Gropius, Gilbert Scott, Gaudi, Lloyd Wright, Brunelleschi and Goldfinger, and too many piss weak imitators creeating abortive ill thought out, poorly funded knock-offs for local authorities, governments and speculative developers.
For every Tel Aviv White City (deservedly a World Heritage site) you will get three or four Parisian banlieus full of Sarcellian nightmares or Manchester's ghastly Hulme/Moss Side crescent blocks, laughably named after some of Great Britain's best architects but enshrining the worst aspects of post war housing developments, where honest small scale red brick houses and stable communities were replaced with oppressive non-existent communities in the sky,housed in shoddily built asbestos riddled hellholes.
If form followed function, then their function must have been the institutionalized alienation of the urban poor and the enocuragement of petty street crime, drug dealing and prostitution.
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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
Robarts is an abortion. There aren't enough elevators and it is dank, brutal and horrible.
Worst: from the side it looks like a giant fowl. |
It's actually supposed to look like a Canada goose from the air. I spent two years looking at the thing from across the street - it epitomizes Toronto's love for non-stop concrete and a total lack of context.
Edit: Decent little cafeteria in it, though, as little cafeterias go.
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:34
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quote:
Originally posted by molly bloom
Unfortunately it is my experience that architecture, like other disciplines, has too few of the calibre of Gropius, Gilbert Scott, Gaudi, Lloyd Wright, Brunelleschi and Goldfinger, and too many piss weak imitators creeating abortive ill thought out, poorly funded knock-offs for local authorities, governments and speculative developers.
For every Tel Aviv White City (deservedly a World Heritage site) you will get three or four Parisian banlieus full of Sarcellian nightmares or Manchester's ghastly Hulme/Moss Side crescent blocks, laughably named after some of Great Britain's best architects but enshrining the worst aspects of post war housing developments, where honest small scale red brick houses and stable communities were replaced with oppressive non-existent communities in the sky,housed in shoddily built asbestos riddled hellholes.
If form followed function, then their function must have been the institutionalized alienation of the urban poor and the enocuragement of petty street crime, drug dealing and prostitution. |
I agree that many public housing developements that were designed ( I don't think it deserves the word ) in a modernist fashion are horrors ( and parisian near suburbia is a good example ), but that's indicative of public housing developments, sadly, not modernism. A great proof of that is post-modernist public housing buildings.
quote:
How fascinating could a large, tall box be? One just looks like another. |
The fact that they look similar, at least for me, doesn't automatically make them distasteful. I find that glass and steel buildings of the international style look spaceous and "free", by reflecting some of the sky, and if the glass is partly see-through, it makes the building look more open. In many cases they're far better than post-modernism's attempts at being ornamental, or free-form's gross looks.
Brutalism is a mixed basket, but most architecture is, really.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
... but that's indicative of public housing developments, sadly, not modernism. A great proof of that is post-modernist public housing buildings.
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Not necessarily so in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Berlin, Moscow and dare I say it, London.
The Model Dwellings for Families near the British Museum, located in Streatham Street WC1 show how to do it, as does the Artisans' Estate in Queen's Park in North Westminster, where individual houses are given a range of Victorian Gothic accents to distinguish them, one from the other.
The Bergpolder Apartments in Rotterdam, the Model Dwellings in Columbia Road in Shoreditch, even the formerly despised Trellick Tower in north Paddington show how to do it right, but the problem with many of the avowedly modernist schemes is that they imposed a solution from on high, and tried to get humans to fit the theory.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
I know there are plenty of examples of great commie-blocks. But I've always found that the problem isn't architecture: it's the social engineering. Even an good social housing can suffer if not maintained properly: That's true for most neighbourhoods, but socialized housing is the one that suffers the most because of the population dynamics in it. |
Actually what I'm really saying is that with the right amount of thought, large public housing schemes can have the same impact on the built environment and streetscape that individual townhouses or expensive Regency era crescents or city squares have.
People treasure the Crescent in Buxton, the Georgian architecture of Dublin, and Bath and Liverpool, and also some of the public housing around London and other European cities- but people don't by and large treasure or respect large Brutalist developments, especially in temperate Northern climes, because massive featureless expanses of drab concrete are depressing, in winter or out of it.
Lasdun's Royal National Theatre complex on the South Bank in London is one of those Brutalist monstrosities, and yet Lasdun was capable of the building project at 26 St. James's Place with a groovy split level interior, a distinctive block of flats overlooking Green Park with granite and bronze detailing, both of which are suited to the rigours of London's environment and seasonal climate changes.
Same architect, but one approach appears creative, resourceful and responsive to its surroundings, the other looks like a bad postwar carpark.
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