It's said with justice that a nation's architecture reflects its soul. A soul which is beautiful, good and true will build accordingly, see the great gothic cathedrals. A soul which is ugly, bad and false will create monstrosities, obviously. We create, mirroring God, in our own image, and what an image that most abundantly is. Walk into any post World War II Western city and behold its ugly, brutal, dehumanizing, unlivable buildings.
"Oh, look at that block of concrete, glass and pale brick. I want to live there!" said no one pretty much ever, and go figure, they don't unless they have to.
To put it another way, why do tourists go to Trafalgar Square and Oxford instead of Slough and the Elephant & Castle? Because the former's beautiful and the latter most definitely isn't. Granted, but what possessed our architectural elite to go full ugly?
Let's cut to the chase. Because the architectural and artistic department of our world went full Cultural Marxist, Bolshevik nihilist. Their goal? To tear down and destroy, which they most certainly did, and then erect their hideous structures which deliberately mock the human soul. Or something like that and you can read all about it in Tom Wolfe's excellent From Bauhaus to our House and the American Conservative. But here's the thing.
It doesn't have to be this way, we don't have to surround ourselves with soul-destroying ugliness. We can and should build beautifully, to uplift the spirit. And we will, when we return to God and the Faith once delivered. Build, punters, back better.
Here Endeth The Lesson,
LSP
21 comments:
With visions of heat sinks dancing in their eyes..
My dear Ritchie, we do what we can.
This area was getting more and more "modern" buildings until the people put a stop to it. New buildings in most of the older areas are now required to keep the look, feel, and aesthetic of the surrounding ones.
Nearby is a wonderful community college with several branches. Their new buildings are hideous. It is one thing to build for the maximum bang for the buck. Think any four story extended stay motel. It is something else to build buildings that should last for centuries. Public dollars vs private dollars?
"Used to imagine shooting this one with missiles."
Whatever made you stop? Seems a relatively harmless hobby.
For now.........
Those old buildings of the 1880s-1920s or so showed something more esthetic than cost efficiency.
King Charles warned about this 40 years ago.
They love Flak Towers? From my experience, brutalist architecure leaks like a seive, is almost impossible to repair, and costs a fortune to knock down. It was and is a job creation scheme for architects and cowboy builders.
I enjoy finding photos of my city from 100 years ago and comparing them with today. I do not enjoy seeing the beautiful buildings destroyed for modern efficiencies and replaced with "brutalist" architecture. I understand the "it costs too much to maintain" to a point but it was/is rampant. I had the privilege of living in a Victorian gothic house from the 1870's while in school (it was my frat house - no kidding). The school told the guys to scram 5 years ago because it would "cost too much" to bring up to code. Thankfully someone bought it to make a bed and breakfast out of it. They were going to tear it down.
The same kind of thing happened in my mom's part of Dallas, and thank God for that. Nice looking part of town, btw.
WSF, short term greed and follow the money's certainly part of it. That in mind, has a culture ever produced more ugly buildings, at scale, than our own?
The thing is, Wild, I used to live within sight of that thing and often planned out defensive perimeters for the neighborhood, Napoleon of Notting Hill style. Somehow that strayed into sending guide by wire rockets into that concrete monstrosity.
Then I moved and the project lay mostly forgotten until now. I think it may have been knocked down, please.
Totally agree, Anon. They at least attempted to be pleasing to the eye and very often were.
I was thinking that too, Anon. He did, and good for him.
Anon, Flak Towers! Now you've got me thinking Berlin. Nice one.
Seamus, I was pretty much brought up in Victorian houses in England, and miss them. The last was a 19thC vicarage in Cheltenham, quite large, but comfortable with it. When my parents moved out to the States in the mid '90s the Church of England tore it down and built four little brick things on the land. Yes, it was too expensive to bring "up to code."
Here in Texas I've been blessed with an old house, 1910(?), which belongs to the church, one of the few vicarages left in the diocese.
Flakturm at least are visually interesting and useful. Seriously, they actually look neat. Like castles. Form and function combined.
Not like these concrete shoebox buildings.
And thus the reason why President Donald Trump (who had a fantastic State of the Union address Tuesday night) in both his first term and the current term has specified a return to neo-Federalism designs for all US federal government buildings constructed.
The thing is, a lot of people, especially modern architects, don't understand the functions behind the frou-frou of old time buildings. Big windows (that open) to allow cooling and heating and natural lighting. Lots of interesting trim and attention to pretty details that make the facilities easy on the eyes.
Now build those new buildings in the styles of late Victorian/Gilded Age/Federalist buildings with modern materials. Strong, stable buildings full of delight and whimsy, art and architecture combined to make a living building that people want to go to.
Form follows function. Decorative, ornate doodaddery as architecture is juvenile crap.
Minneapolis has a classic Brutalist building complex that is now the center of Lil' Mogadishu, we call it "The Crack Stack".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_Plaza
Marxist monoliths were all the rage - but that may have ended with the coming of the Golden Age.
Post a Comment