This is weaponized verbiage. "My opponents are wrong because I assume they have harmful motivations." Way to dodge the actual point of contention: whether modern art styles are ugly vs classical styles. Most people should not and do not care whether the architecture "attacks progressivism", because beauty itself is the goal.
>Which is, at a minimum, weird. Why would anybody want to do that (by decree, no less) is beyond me.
This is what governments and rulers have done since Mankind started building stuff.
You're fixating in the legal tecnicalities like a law or executive order, but it has always been like that.
Governments and rulers always set the style of public buildings.
The reason for that, is left as an exercise for the reader.
While opinionated, there is nothing weird about liking classical architecture or powerful people imposing their artistic preferences.
I'm not sure how anyone could manage to spin promoting classical architecture as some sort of unpleasant scheme, but I'm sure someone is going to try. The stuff is beautiful. At some point there has to be some admission that Trump isn't wrong about literally everything.
That's not the equivalent of saying 'classical architecture is beautiful', that's the equivalent of saying 'no architecture except classical architecture is beautiful'.
Is St. Peter's Basilica ugly because it is Baroque? Is Notre-Dame ugly because it is Gothic?
Come on, far from me to espouse the "neoclassical bad" twitter-tier nonsense take, but the claim that only neoclassical should be allowed is... weird, Trump or no Trump.
The weird part was banning people from building anything that isn’t neoclassical. The order wasn’t promoting neoclassicism as much as it was attacking everything else.
If the Trump administration’s approach was just to build a lot of neoclassical buildings nobody would have cared.
The thing is, it doesn't matter what the founding fathers have written (or not). If you have to appeal to a (supposed) authority, then you're probably talking BS.
The founding fathers were important historical figures, but they were also men of their time. Did anyone ever asked "What would George Washington say about electric cars?". No, because he wouldn't have a clue.
Your point still stands, however. To think that the wisdom of white male slave owners is somewhat unquestionable is so deeply flawed i can’t assume good intentions.
You question these people's wisdom because they are "white male slave owners".
Did you ever think that because they were confronted with the reality of slavery they were much much more attuned to the issues of human rights than say a tech worker in our society who doesn't notice that almost everything they use and touch was made by slaves? Who built that iphone? Sewed your clothes? Who mined the cobalt which allows your lithium batteries?
And even in the west, slave labor hasn't gone away. We just hide it in private prisons or "illegal" immigrants.
We are much better at tech than the founding fathers, but I have no evidence that we are any better at moral and/or political philosophy (and quite a bit of evidence against).
> because they were confronted with the reality of slavery they were much much more attuned to the issues of human rights than say a tech worker in our society
I don’t think there is much evidence for that.
> And even in the west, slave labor hasn't gone away. We just hide it in private prisons or "illegal" immigrants.
More than that, we have Capitalism, that allows poor people to compete against each other about where is the point where one is too poor to have a job.
>To think that the wisdom of white male slave owners is somewhat unquestionable is so deeply flawed i can’t assume good intentions.
I don't know where you from, but maybe the USA (or any other Western country), is just not for you.
Maybe you'd appreciate more the opposite end, something like Haiti, the product of the slaves who killed those evil white males you despise so much.
I think you are trying to argue the same point as I am, so I should be more supportive.
Hati was not the best choice for a comparison. It wasn't the slave revolt which turned Hati into a hell country. It was the French insisting that the now free slaves had to "repay" for what they had "stolen" (and for the French losses when they tried to invade and re-take the country); the massive debt burden imposed by the French and supported by the other world powers crippled the country's economy for well over 100 years.
That sound like really good excuses if multiple countries haven't also been destroyed by wars, had to pay billions in debt or any other things, and managed to reach a much more developed state. Yet the usual suspects can't reach the developed status, even with lots of foreign aid.
You don't even need to go that far. Compare Haiti to Dominican Republic.
But as someone once said "Demographics are Destiny".
So GW would not have had a clue about multiple types of users sharing a street? Like he never had to consider how people with different resources and needs might have to share a common utility?
And wouldn't have a clue about how such a group of people could come to a decision which sufficiently met the needs of all???
My friend, discussions of these topics goes back at least to the ancient greeks.
>"What would George Washington say about electric cars?"
That kind of silly comparison doesn't make any sense, and it's only a maneuver to skip any serious discussion when one is trapped without arguments.
But if you ask how should the Republic operate, what kind of values and vision its public building should represent, then the opinion of the Founders is definitely very relevant.
And the author could note the wide range of opinions these founders had.
Their wisdom isn't because they spoke in a unified voice, rather the opposite. Their disagreements make visible deeply thought out ways of framing and weighing political decisions.
Wisdom isn't "Use a monorepo" or "Use microservices". Wisdom is the debate between the two, allowing you to learn the strengths and pitfalls of each.
Modern architecture and urban planning, especially in the US, really has failed, and defending the ugly, unsustainable, car-dependent human-deserted urban hells it has produced in the name of progressivism is really, really strange.
Examples of architecture and urban planning that actually aligns much better with progressivism would be the Netherlands and other places in Europe that have banned cars and appreciate the value of quiet, walkable neighbourhoods that are at a human scale, conducive to public life and align with and satisfy the aesthetic tastes of the public.
Of course, architects and urban planners really, really hate that last part. They still suffer from megalomaniacal delusions like those of Le Corbusier. They want to make statements, and if that means torturing the public so be it. (they're totally progressives though!)
Meanwhile, most people just want to exist in spaces that aren't hostile to human life and joy.
Needs more glass gurkens ... sorry, non-constructive, but the architecture appealing to the powerful is always ignoring the needs of the citizens - since medieval times.
Look at the noble towers in tuscany.. and you already can see the ugly powers-that-bee-blowjob-architecture that carries through to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa.
Of the many, many differences between modern and traditional architecture is that if you look at a modern building you have absolutely no idea where it is. It could be in Melbourne, Vancouver, Chicago, Santiago, Los Angeles, etc -- it doesn't matter, because there is no notion of working with local materials, using traditional local idioms. It doesn't try to "fit" into a neighborhood, it tries to stand out. Yes, there are some exceptions, but they are very few.
The other thing that really bothers me is the lack of proper scale. It doesn't seem human scaled at all. Here walkability is a big problem as it's very unpleasant to walk around modern architecture. In the Federal building in San Francisco, which seems to be designed to intimidate, this is the view of someone walking by
I would say that the design of the federal building in SF has less to do with modern architectural trends, and more to do with the plausible (?) fear that some wacko will ram through an unprotected entrance in a van loaded with TNT.
That really doesn't require 50 foot high massive walls of blank concrete going up from the sidewalk. You can use bollards to address that threat with setbacks and still have human scale architecture. The bollards will stop any vehicle and they can look quite nice:
Then a setback can even be paved with cobblestones or slate or other material pleasant to walk on, with trees, and behind that a beautiful, human scaled building is possible.
Here are the bollards in front of the older federal building:
Granted... but if you look at the neoclassical architecture which is present all over Washington and which this “Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” order seeks to promote, it's also difficult to tell where a building is located if you aren't already familiar with it. For example, the United States Supreme Court building (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_St...) and the building of the Bavarian State Collection of Antiquities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstareal#/media/File:Staatli...) look eerily similar, because they are both modeled after ancient Greek or Roman temples...
Of course, the cure for antihuman modernism is not mindless neoclassicism. The cure is sensitivity to human needs, which includes sensitivity to local context.
Yes, but a whole city would not consist of government buildings and the consistency of style is intentional -- so that you know that this is the Federal building of a certain period (most built during FDR days) when you are in the city. I would be opposed to all buildings looking like that, but it makes sense that federal buildings have a consistent style.
Modernism, by trying to have every building be "unique", ends up looking the same. Just like a random collection of colors always ends up looking like the same grey square, a city in which every building is a modernist building will look exactly the same like any other city, and there isn't really any difference between a modernist Federal Building, university office, Corporate Headquarters, Library, Opera, apartment building, post office, or steam-trunk distribution center. You can't really tell what it is by looking at it.
And another infuriating thing about modern architecture is that it's often very hard to find the entrances to these buildings. They are also random, not very large, and also don't signify their purpose. Is this the service entrance? Main entrance? Employee entrance? You have to walk right up to it and read the sign, because the shape and look of the entrance from a distance doesn't tell you. Traditional architecture, seeing as how it evolved in response to human needs, distinguishes these entrances, and often even the type of building can be determined by the entrance. You can do that if you give up the ability to design things from scratch but work with existing traditions, making small improvements to fix specific problems. Over time, the result is something highly optimized for the community, but at the expense of the individual architect's independence. That's basically what you get with tradition.
Modernism rejects this because it would limit the freedom of the architect. But that means everything becomes less legible for the user -- the one who pays for the building -- and these buildings are really uncomfortable because even the smartest architect isn't going to be able to solve as many problems as thousands of architects sharing their improvements over hundreds of years.
Finally they just don't last very long, are hard to maintain, and don't age gracefully. The concrete starts to crack, those glass panels get clouded over or stained -- not fun cleaning glass at weird angles 70 feet up. These buildings become eyesores quickly after the photographers take their snaps and the architect gets another page in their portfolio or coffee table book.
Just on a practical level, it's really hard to deal with these buildings -- they aren't comfortable for the people who have to visit them, walk around them, or live next to them. It seems like a step backwards because it is. You have modern buildings that don't handle rain well (create splashes and water damage when it rains), don't handle wind well (create wind tunnels instead of breaking them up), don't handle sun well (create hot spots and cast too many shadows), are not good for street life, not pleasing to look at, not easy to use, not easy to maintain, pleasant to enter and exit, pleasant to work in, not easy to modify -- all the problems that were solved by traditional architecture, solved uniquely in different traditions through a process of iteration -- come rearing back in the modern building. At best the modern building might solve one of these, but because of it's lack of memory, that solution wont be ported to the next modern building and refined further. This creates a dark age of architecture, where prize winning architects can't design buildings that are able to properly handle rainwater.
I am not trying to mandate any neo-classical style per se. But definitely architecture has veered off to an anti-human track, an egotistical track, and needs to be put back into the service of human needs and promoting life in the community. Certainly with taxpayer funded buildings this should be...
Great example of a terrible, tasteless building completely out of touch with any semblance of harmony and humanity!
I love the token trees and bushes on some aspects, it's as if an evil ai designed it. "Humans, here is your greenery"
Also love the tortured angles and world war Z style giant faces of sheer concrete. "Oh, you want to walk past, or even look at this building from a distance, and have a good day? Fuck you!"
Indeed. Ugly architecture is an insult to human dignity. It is a kind of hate speech in the language of architecture. The architecture is saying "fuck you" in a very radical, anti-humanist way. He is rubbing the faces of all who ever have to use or even look at the building in a pile of architectural dung almost engineered to maximally convey contempt.
In the USA, "Federal buildings" typically have no mixed use built in. It is not clear to me if this is for security reasons, or because the bureaucrats who commissioned the buildings assumed that each bureaucrat employed there would take the most pleasure in eating lunch at the official cafeteria. Some federal buildings include internal mixed use (second-party shops which lease internal retail space) but the end result is the exteriors become long, sterile blocks for the pedestrian.
Architects very often don't design for human scale, but for their career and fame.
Human scale may be removed for some or other architectural aesthetic feature. Stuff becomes like abstract modern art. And not just on buildings, public spaces too.
An example. In this picture [0] you see the busstation of Haarlem (the monumental train station built together with Amsterdam Central station is on the other side out of view).
Now in the old station you could sit everywhere, dry and out of the wind. New station, none of that. No benches and you wait in the rain. Yet it cost many millions to build (contains an underground bicycle depot). See the tall (they have a small yellow light at 15 meters or so) aluminium poles? Architecture.
It looks like it was awarded to the lowest bidder. Remember, they need to spend money responsibly and the minimum possible for the entire lifetime of the structure. A tall brick allows putting the largest number of people inside a structure that can be cheaply and quickly built.
Imagine the people would be protesting if they tried to make it beautiful and it got also expensive in the process.
I call that Sim City-architecture. Because no matter how you look at it, or how many design-awards some building and its architects won, it looks all cookie cutted. It's mostly the same similar style the same way you see mostly the same chain stores and franchises downtown, in malls and airports.
Utterly boring. But looks good on Instagram with auto-HDRd pretty pictures!
edit: Thinking about it, I'm mostly favouring the stuff from the Roaring Twenties as in Art Nouveau/Jugendstil, maybe some Bauhaus, but also some parts of Brutalism/Metabolic Architecture. The buildings and their architecture alone don't account for the atmosphere, the feel, vibe of a place. 'The zoning', or socio-economic distribution of residents also matters. For instance comparison of the Barbican Center in London with its public spaces and water plays is looking nice to stay a while, maybe even living there, if one can afford to. Now compare that to some buildings of Zaha Hadid Architects which may look nice, but sit in what could be a desert for all practical purposes, because the surrounding area has almost no public amenities, or even features unfriendly elements which disencourage staying there. Some stuff of Bjarke Ingels and team is getting this mixture right, I think. Hamburg tries with the Hafen-City, but I'm wary of it. Has some uncanny valley feel to it, is mostly loud, and expensive. Anyways, isn't ready yet and has almost been stopped cold in development because 2008. Maybe it's fun and good in 10 to 20 years time.
Architects are not necessarily progressives. There was some debate a few years ago about whether Le Corbusier was a fascist. And although he wasn't a Nazi, there are other kinds of fascism, and the evidence strongly implies he leaned that way.
Demagogues who want "classical architecture" are reliably fascist. Speer and Hitler both created a watered down classicism fined tuned for functional oppressiveness. But you can see "classicist fascism" throughout Europe, especially in Italy and Spain.
It's not any less monumental and oppressive than modernism. It has much more stone, much less glass, and - sometimes - slightly more interesting windows.
I agree completely that the antidote to both is a human scale communalism. But they don't seem to teach that in most architecture schools. Or if they do, most students remain more interested in showy egotism than inspired functional, humane spaces.
My experience was that human scale communalism is highly taught in architecture schools, at the same time as idolization of celebrity architects.
It's quite the dichotomy.
The economic reality is also that most clients (who are paying) want one of two things: (1) the cheapest box that meets all their functional requirements or (2) a grand monument.
> Demagogues who want "classical architecture" are reliably fascist
dedinitely the ones who are, well, demagogues, and want state aggrandizing statement "classical" buildings, yes
but saying the only choice is between that or modern eyesores is kind of a false dichotomy, there's plenty of space for normal people who just want pleasant urban spaces for humans to happily exist in without taking it to either extreme
> Architects are not necessarily progressives. There was some debate a few years ago about whether Le Corbusier was a fascist. And although he wasn't a Nazi, there are other kinds of fascism, and the evidence strongly implies he leaned that way.
Progressive is not the same as good. I believe Eugenics (a Nazi fascination) was considered Progressive in the US in the 30s.
The Trump style ban didn’t have anything to do with walkability or scale or urban design. It only required federal buildings to have specific kinds of glued-on decorations. Not sure how you got to street planning from there.
In any case, architectural style and city planning are orthogonal. You can have nice walkable, cozy streets with “modern” buildings - there are lots of examples of this in Japan, Taiwan, and other parts of East Asia. And you certainly can have sprawling, hostile streets with neo-historical buildings - lots of examples in the US.
The biggest culprit preventing more walkable human-scaled streets in new cities tends to be governments and policy-makers, not architects. Decisions about zoning, land rights, transit investment, and even building codes, have a far bigger impact on the built environment than any architect does.
The ‘Wedding Cake’ style of architecture requires a lot of ‘fondant icing’ stuck to the outside which is made from expensive and highly labour intensive materials, hand carved stone typically. To take my cake metaphor to far, you can put too much icing on it and it becomes a sugar sculpture full of cardboard props and bits of wire, not something you would enjoy eating.
A well designed building in the renaissance style is beautiful but this style also places arbitrary constraints on the design, like symmetry, which make them inefficient and very hard to design convincingly while still meeting the brief for the modern spaces inside. That’s why they’re not built like this anymore. There are a plenty of badly proportioned late 20th Century faux classical buildings out there and to me they stick out like poor typography does to a graphic designer or bad punctuation for an editor.
As other comments have pointed out the big problem with buildings in many US cities and European suburbs that developed after ww2 is mostly with urban planning failing to create walkable cities. Spain and Holland have had different approaches but I think they are the most successful in Europe.
>The problem with this order is that it directly attacks one of the characteristics that has always been associated with art – Progressivism
That's complete and utter nonsense. What art always has been associated with is passing fads and fashions, usually inspired by previous fads and fashions. If anything Trump is the real avant-gardist here, now that the modernists have held their hegemony over the art establishment for quite some time.
I for one feel like we are ready for a more novel architectural movement, both neoclassicism and concrete UFOs seem a bit old and trite to me.
Not an architect, but cursory research on the webs seems to indicate that TFA meant to use the less political and more “art-philosophical” term “Progressive Modernism”.
For example, the design brief for the Seattle Tacoma airport mentions on page 4 (section 1.2.3)
“The primary aspect of the Design Vision is the commitment to “Progressive Modernism” as the fundamental design approach. This approach is based on the following timeless principles:...”
It is an interesting idea, but incomplete. I'd like a definition of Progressivism, and for the essay to explore the idea that modern art promotes this Progressivism.
Only then could I really evaluate the assertion that Trump's executive order was an attack on it.
As it stands, any argument here whether it is or is not an attack on Progressivism stands on shifting ground.
Some extras/links: the full text of the executive order; pictures of the specific buildings the EO refers to; the full text of the NCAS arguments. These would help me to get a full context of what's at stake, if anything.
To my mind, modern art is largely apolitical, with some very specific exceptions (e.g Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Dadaism et. al.) In fact, Futurism was self- consciously Fascist; whatever the definition of Progressivism would turn out to be, I'm certain it would not include Fascism.
It seems to me, the writer is doing that which he declared to be irrational and deceptive: believing himself to know what modern artists (or supporters of the EO, for that matter) "had in mind".
Progressivism, in this context, can be defined as "the idea of progress in which advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition"[1]. In particular is reflects the sort of 1939 World's Fair enthrallment with technology and the post-WWII "we can science our way out of all our problems" attitudes.
I do appreciate the definition. Still, even there, "The meaning of progressivism has varied over time and differs depending on perspective". I don't know what the author Ben Soto meant when he wrote Progressivism. Enlightenment faith in the civilizing influence of technology? Bernie Sanders-style progressive taxation and social justice? Something else? It's a guess as to what he actually meant.
Well, I did give you the Wikipedia definition, so I can't fault you for being skeptical, but is there something in about article that suggests that definition doesn't fit, and if so, what? Does it bring to mind a different definition for you?
I could also speculate that the author, who I don't know anything about, knows a bit about art history and is specifically referring to the Progressive Era in art and architecture. That would lead to the ideas that came out of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in the late 19s and early 20th centuries.
The article is pretty clear but the term is vague, as the article itself states.
What is core to the term? Can I be pro social-reform and anti-technology, and be Progressivist?
We can speculate about what Soto the author meant, but a well-written essay would have thrown in a sentence or two to remove ambiguity and get the reader up to speed.
I'm a bit frustrated by that, because it's a debate I would like to have.
So, for the record, I think it's a stretch that aesthetic constraints on architecture are an attack on social reform. In a way, requiring government buildings to be aesthetically pleasing is arguably pro social. But, again, the specific text of the EO would help us understand better whether this EO is an attack on anything at all related to "social reform" or "progress" in any respect.
I'm going to just go ahead and guess that this essay is a tribal chest-thumping rallying cry wherein true statements are secondary to the primary purpose of staking out a political view. That's why nothing is defined. It's not the purpose.
> requiring government buildings to be aesthetically pleasing is arguably pro social.
I don't think anyone is debating that, but the linchpin of the discussion is really about who gets to decide what is "aesthetically pleasing". What if I happen to really love Brutalist buildings? In 1962 Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture”[1], but specifically cautioned against an official style. He wrote, "The design of Federal office building... must provide visual testimony to the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American Government."[2] What was wrong with that guide?
As an aside, personally, I'd be fine with Brutalism. It's one of my favorite movements.
But leaving that aside, if no one decides, then we'll have only function and utility and lowest cost decide, with beauty being not a consideration at all.
But I wrote all of that without reading your links. You have not lead me astray yet, so I'll follow those and give you my thoughts later
If by anyone you mean the author of the essay, I don't actually know what he's arguing. With sincere respect, I don't think you can say you do, either.
You and I have happily decided to, as I see it, have a debate irrespective of the OP, and define terms that we can both agree on.
So, good, you and I agree that there should be aesthetic considerations and constraints of some kind on Federal buildings.
> [1]
Apparently I am live-responding. Your first link appears to be speculation about the as-yet unpublished EO. Since then, the EO has been published, so I'm going to skip that without prejudice, so to speak, and revisit as it becomes necessary.
Overall this sounds really reasonable, to me. I especially like:
The development of an official style must be avoided. Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government and not vice versa.
I also like the two-pronged consideration when evaluating an architectural proposal:
First, it must provide efficient and economical facilities for the use of Government agencies. Second, it must provide visual testimony to the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American Government.
For me now the investigation becomes answering these questions: How has the GSA guidelines worked so far? Are the buildings built under those guidelines generally aesthetically successful? If not, how and why did they fail? Are the aesthetic failures at least interesting? Does the Trump EO address the failures, if any? Would the EO fix these failures or create new ones? Finally, since President Biden has the powers to revert this EO, has he done so? If not, why not?
After all that, I'd feel comfortable being able to say whether or not the EO was an attack on Progressivism as we defined it (essentially, lifting it from the Wikipedia essay).
Regarding the actual EO itself, without a deep-dive, is a direct critique of the GSA directives and of the buildings they enabled. Specifically, that the new buildings built under those guidelines have been:
* often unpopular with Americans
* ranged from the undistinguished to... unappealing
* clashed with the existing local architecture, specifically classical architecture in Washington D.C.
* often selected... with little regard for local input or regional aesthetic preferences
* sometimes impresses the architectural elite, but not the American people who the buildings are meant to serve
* not even visibly identifiable as civic buildings
These are the buildings highlighted by the EO as examples:
> The order is not targeted toward actually changing the design of federal buildings. Rather, it is being used to attack modern art and suppress the ideals that it stands for.
Strongly disagree: it's both. The makers of the order, and its supporters, really do care about architectural styles and they really do think modern buildings are ugly.
The essay-writer is assuming that their political opponents are acting in bad faith, but that kind of suspicious conspiratorial thinking does little to help understanding here.
Think the whole argument on both sides is a bit extreme, traditional planning permission should consider whether a building proposal/modification is in keeping with the character of an area, this being just one aspect means its application is dynamic and can change with the times and needs for the area.
"The problem with this order is that it directly attacks one of the characteristics that has always been associated with art – Progressivism."
Whatever the rationales of the order, this, I think, is a preposterous remark. Big "P" Progressivism is divine providence for atheists. All manner of hideous things have been justified under the woolly mantle of "Progress". That Progressivism has invaded art and turned it into a fad-driven enterprise full of inscrutable fluff and pretense does not mean that is what art is or what it has always been. That art can change, improve, discover new beauty, etc. does not mean that it must, and even here this is not the same as Big "P" Progressivism because the Progressive, despite the misleading appellation, worships change. Change, for him, is this mystical Progress. Just look at his political slogans, but don't ask him for the measure of the Progress. That is his undivine mystery. That is the his Faith. To inquire is to blaspheme. At least Christianity holds mystery to be thoroughly intelligible, if exceeding human capacity to exhaustively know.
The author then writes:
"The supporters of this order only wish to retain the classical architecture that is found around the capital because for them it represents a distant past that is always superior to the present and cannot be interrogated."
As noted, if there is anything that resists interrogation, it is Progressivism. Note how the author, out of malice or out of foolishness, reduces support for the order to some nostalgia for a mythical past that never was. People like that surely exist, but this is not only uncharitable, it is an unjust dismissal of all those who have better reasons for preferring such architecture. Some modern architecture has its merits, it has its interesting contributions, but there is also a great deal, a great deal of anti-humanism and downright nihilist, to despise in it. The Progressive star architect is more interested in building monuments to his proverbial cock than he is in serving the people who will need to use that building and look at it for years to come.
"it is counterintuitive to assume that a progressive group of individuals would prefer to embrace outdated designs as opposed to new and progressive forms of modern architecture."
That word, "outdated", is one of the most pernicious words in the English language. It conflates the passage of time with improvement. You can only speak of something being better relative to an end, and the end itself must either be the nature of a thing, or in service of the thing (technology, for example, is in a sense an extension of man; you cannot make sense of technology except in terms of human nature).
So you tell me what is so "outdated" about the Stoa of Athens and yet so great about the Strata Center? Believe me, in two hundred years, people will still admire the timeless beauty of the Stoa and will look at the Strata with laughter, amusement, and disgust, if they even remember it at all. Maybe that's the lesson: we ought to reach for the timeless within our own time and place.
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[ 1733 ms ] story [ 2072 ms ] thread> the actual point of contention: whether modern art styles are ugly vs classical styles
This is not the point. The point it (from TFA):
> this executive order would place restrictions on the architectural design of federal buildings
Which is, at a minimum, weird. Why would anybody want to do that (by decree, no less) is beyond me.
This is what governments and rulers have done since Mankind started building stuff. You're fixating in the legal tecnicalities like a law or executive order, but it has always been like that. Governments and rulers always set the style of public buildings.
The reason for that, is left as an exercise for the reader.
Identitarian politicians have done it for ages. It’s about shaping a population’s view of themselves based on an idealised past.
I'm not sure how anyone could manage to spin promoting classical architecture as some sort of unpleasant scheme, but I'm sure someone is going to try. The stuff is beautiful. At some point there has to be some admission that Trump isn't wrong about literally everything.
That's not the equivalent of saying 'classical architecture is beautiful', that's the equivalent of saying 'no architecture except classical architecture is beautiful'.
Is St. Peter's Basilica ugly because it is Baroque? Is Notre-Dame ugly because it is Gothic?
Come on, far from me to espouse the "neoclassical bad" twitter-tier nonsense take, but the claim that only neoclassical should be allowed is... weird, Trump or no Trump.
If the Trump administration’s approach was just to build a lot of neoclassical buildings nobody would have cared.
I cannot believe that someone that writes this has ever read anything the American Founding fathers have written.
They were very prolific writers, and pretty much everything is available online for free.
The author should read those before trying to imply that people who disagree with him are some tasteless and ignorant fools.
The founding fathers were important historical figures, but they were also men of their time. Did anyone ever asked "What would George Washington say about electric cars?". No, because he wouldn't have a clue.
Your point still stands, however. To think that the wisdom of white male slave owners is somewhat unquestionable is so deeply flawed i can’t assume good intentions.
You question these people's wisdom because they are "white male slave owners".
Did you ever think that because they were confronted with the reality of slavery they were much much more attuned to the issues of human rights than say a tech worker in our society who doesn't notice that almost everything they use and touch was made by slaves? Who built that iphone? Sewed your clothes? Who mined the cobalt which allows your lithium batteries?
And even in the west, slave labor hasn't gone away. We just hide it in private prisons or "illegal" immigrants.
We are much better at tech than the founding fathers, but I have no evidence that we are any better at moral and/or political philosophy (and quite a bit of evidence against).
I don’t think there is much evidence for that.
> And even in the west, slave labor hasn't gone away. We just hide it in private prisons or "illegal" immigrants.
More than that, we have Capitalism, that allows poor people to compete against each other about where is the point where one is too poor to have a job.
I don't know where you from, but maybe the USA (or any other Western country), is just not for you. Maybe you'd appreciate more the opposite end, something like Haiti, the product of the slaves who killed those evil white males you despise so much.
I think you are trying to argue the same point as I am, so I should be more supportive.
Hati was not the best choice for a comparison. It wasn't the slave revolt which turned Hati into a hell country. It was the French insisting that the now free slaves had to "repay" for what they had "stolen" (and for the French losses when they tried to invade and re-take the country); the massive debt burden imposed by the French and supported by the other world powers crippled the country's economy for well over 100 years.
You don't even need to go that far. Compare Haiti to Dominican Republic.
But as someone once said "Demographics are Destiny".
So GW would not have had a clue about multiple types of users sharing a street? Like he never had to consider how people with different resources and needs might have to share a common utility?
And wouldn't have a clue about how such a group of people could come to a decision which sufficiently met the needs of all???
My friend, discussions of these topics goes back at least to the ancient greeks.
That kind of silly comparison doesn't make any sense, and it's only a maneuver to skip any serious discussion when one is trapped without arguments.
But if you ask how should the Republic operate, what kind of values and vision its public building should represent, then the opinion of the Founders is definitely very relevant.
They can express their opinion in the voting booth, then.
Their wisdom isn't because they spoke in a unified voice, rather the opposite. Their disagreements make visible deeply thought out ways of framing and weighing political decisions.
Wisdom isn't "Use a monorepo" or "Use microservices". Wisdom is the debate between the two, allowing you to learn the strengths and pitfalls of each.
Examples of architecture and urban planning that actually aligns much better with progressivism would be the Netherlands and other places in Europe that have banned cars and appreciate the value of quiet, walkable neighbourhoods that are at a human scale, conducive to public life and align with and satisfy the aesthetic tastes of the public.
Of course, architects and urban planners really, really hate that last part. They still suffer from megalomaniacal delusions like those of Le Corbusier. They want to make statements, and if that means torturing the public so be it. (they're totally progressives though!)
Meanwhile, most people just want to exist in spaces that aren't hostile to human life and joy.
Look at the noble towers in tuscany.. and you already can see the ugly powers-that-bee-blowjob-architecture that carries through to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa.
The other thing that really bothers me is the lack of proper scale. It doesn't seem human scaled at all. Here walkability is a big problem as it's very unpleasant to walk around modern architecture. In the Federal building in San Francisco, which seems to be designed to intimidate, this is the view of someone walking by
the north side: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7795358,-122.4125483,3a,75y,...
East side: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7798315,-122.4116884,3a,75y,...
south side: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.778619,-122.4117745,3a,75y,3...
West side: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7785627,-122.412846,3a,75y,4...
Suffice it to say, it doesn't promote walkability. Meanwhile, here is a much older federal building just a few blocks down:
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7808148,-122.4143869,3a,75y,...
https://www.degemmill.com/content/uploads/2017/07/Bollards-_...
Then a setback can even be paved with cobblestones or slate or other material pleasant to walk on, with trees, and behind that a beautiful, human scaled building is possible.
Here are the bollards in front of the older federal building:
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7807829,-122.4146106,3a,75y,...
EG https://www.tymetal.com/crash/crash-bollards/security-plante... or https://www.grainger.com/category/security/access-barriers-a...
Modernism, by trying to have every building be "unique", ends up looking the same. Just like a random collection of colors always ends up looking like the same grey square, a city in which every building is a modernist building will look exactly the same like any other city, and there isn't really any difference between a modernist Federal Building, university office, Corporate Headquarters, Library, Opera, apartment building, post office, or steam-trunk distribution center. You can't really tell what it is by looking at it.
And another infuriating thing about modern architecture is that it's often very hard to find the entrances to these buildings. They are also random, not very large, and also don't signify their purpose. Is this the service entrance? Main entrance? Employee entrance? You have to walk right up to it and read the sign, because the shape and look of the entrance from a distance doesn't tell you. Traditional architecture, seeing as how it evolved in response to human needs, distinguishes these entrances, and often even the type of building can be determined by the entrance. You can do that if you give up the ability to design things from scratch but work with existing traditions, making small improvements to fix specific problems. Over time, the result is something highly optimized for the community, but at the expense of the individual architect's independence. That's basically what you get with tradition.
Modernism rejects this because it would limit the freedom of the architect. But that means everything becomes less legible for the user -- the one who pays for the building -- and these buildings are really uncomfortable because even the smartest architect isn't going to be able to solve as many problems as thousands of architects sharing their improvements over hundreds of years.
Finally they just don't last very long, are hard to maintain, and don't age gracefully. The concrete starts to crack, those glass panels get clouded over or stained -- not fun cleaning glass at weird angles 70 feet up. These buildings become eyesores quickly after the photographers take their snaps and the architect gets another page in their portfolio or coffee table book.
Just on a practical level, it's really hard to deal with these buildings -- they aren't comfortable for the people who have to visit them, walk around them, or live next to them. It seems like a step backwards because it is. You have modern buildings that don't handle rain well (create splashes and water damage when it rains), don't handle wind well (create wind tunnels instead of breaking them up), don't handle sun well (create hot spots and cast too many shadows), are not good for street life, not pleasing to look at, not easy to use, not easy to maintain, pleasant to enter and exit, pleasant to work in, not easy to modify -- all the problems that were solved by traditional architecture, solved uniquely in different traditions through a process of iteration -- come rearing back in the modern building. At best the modern building might solve one of these, but because of it's lack of memory, that solution wont be ported to the next modern building and refined further. This creates a dark age of architecture, where prize winning architects can't design buildings that are able to properly handle rainwater.
I am not trying to mandate any neo-classical style per se. But definitely architecture has veered off to an anti-human track, an egotistical track, and needs to be put back into the service of human needs and promoting life in the community. Certainly with taxpayer funded buildings this should be...
I love the token trees and bushes on some aspects, it's as if an evil ai designed it. "Humans, here is your greenery"
Also love the tortured angles and world war Z style giant faces of sheer concrete. "Oh, you want to walk past, or even look at this building from a distance, and have a good day? Fuck you!"
Human scale may be removed for some or other architectural aesthetic feature. Stuff becomes like abstract modern art. And not just on buildings, public spaces too.
An example. In this picture [0] you see the busstation of Haarlem (the monumental train station built together with Amsterdam Central station is on the other side out of view).
Now in the old station you could sit everywhere, dry and out of the wind. New station, none of that. No benches and you wait in the rain. Yet it cost many millions to build (contains an underground bicycle depot). See the tall (they have a small yellow light at 15 meters or so) aluminium poles? Architecture.
[0] https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nJfzjF4-S68/WK5o6jdzP4I/AAAAAAAAS...
Imagine the people would be protesting if they tried to make it beautiful and it got also expensive in the process.
Utterly boring. But looks good on Instagram with auto-HDRd pretty pictures!
edit: Thinking about it, I'm mostly favouring the stuff from the Roaring Twenties as in Art Nouveau/Jugendstil, maybe some Bauhaus, but also some parts of Brutalism/Metabolic Architecture. The buildings and their architecture alone don't account for the atmosphere, the feel, vibe of a place. 'The zoning', or socio-economic distribution of residents also matters. For instance comparison of the Barbican Center in London with its public spaces and water plays is looking nice to stay a while, maybe even living there, if one can afford to. Now compare that to some buildings of Zaha Hadid Architects which may look nice, but sit in what could be a desert for all practical purposes, because the surrounding area has almost no public amenities, or even features unfriendly elements which disencourage staying there. Some stuff of Bjarke Ingels and team is getting this mixture right, I think. Hamburg tries with the Hafen-City, but I'm wary of it. Has some uncanny valley feel to it, is mostly loud, and expensive. Anyways, isn't ready yet and has almost been stopped cold in development because 2008. Maybe it's fun and good in 10 to 20 years time.
https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/6/2/article-p196_196.xm...
Philip Johnson is another architect with far-right sympathies.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/dept-of-design/philip-john...
Demagogues who want "classical architecture" are reliably fascist. Speer and Hitler both created a watered down classicism fined tuned for functional oppressiveness. But you can see "classicist fascism" throughout Europe, especially in Italy and Spain.
It's not any less monumental and oppressive than modernism. It has much more stone, much less glass, and - sometimes - slightly more interesting windows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_architecture
I agree completely that the antidote to both is a human scale communalism. But they don't seem to teach that in most architecture schools. Or if they do, most students remain more interested in showy egotism than inspired functional, humane spaces.
It's quite the dichotomy.
The economic reality is also that most clients (who are paying) want one of two things: (1) the cheapest box that meets all their functional requirements or (2) a grand monument.
Plenty of artists want to be celebrities, and there will always be tension between that goal and progressive politics.
dedinitely the ones who are, well, demagogues, and want state aggrandizing statement "classical" buildings, yes
but saying the only choice is between that or modern eyesores is kind of a false dichotomy, there's plenty of space for normal people who just want pleasant urban spaces for humans to happily exist in without taking it to either extreme
Progressive is not the same as good. I believe Eugenics (a Nazi fascination) was considered Progressive in the US in the 30s.
In any case, architectural style and city planning are orthogonal. You can have nice walkable, cozy streets with “modern” buildings - there are lots of examples of this in Japan, Taiwan, and other parts of East Asia. And you certainly can have sprawling, hostile streets with neo-historical buildings - lots of examples in the US.
The biggest culprit preventing more walkable human-scaled streets in new cities tends to be governments and policy-makers, not architects. Decisions about zoning, land rights, transit investment, and even building codes, have a far bigger impact on the built environment than any architect does.
A well designed building in the renaissance style is beautiful but this style also places arbitrary constraints on the design, like symmetry, which make them inefficient and very hard to design convincingly while still meeting the brief for the modern spaces inside. That’s why they’re not built like this anymore. There are a plenty of badly proportioned late 20th Century faux classical buildings out there and to me they stick out like poor typography does to a graphic designer or bad punctuation for an editor.
As other comments have pointed out the big problem with buildings in many US cities and European suburbs that developed after ww2 is mostly with urban planning failing to create walkable cities. Spain and Holland have had different approaches but I think they are the most successful in Europe.
That's complete and utter nonsense. What art always has been associated with is passing fads and fashions, usually inspired by previous fads and fashions. If anything Trump is the real avant-gardist here, now that the modernists have held their hegemony over the art establishment for quite some time.
I for one feel like we are ready for a more novel architectural movement, both neoclassicism and concrete UFOs seem a bit old and trite to me.
For example, the design brief for the Seattle Tacoma airport mentions on page 4 (section 1.2.3)
“The primary aspect of the Design Vision is the commitment to “Progressive Modernism” as the fundamental design approach. This approach is based on the following timeless principles:...”
https://www.portseattle.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/Desi...
“Progressivism”, on the other hand, seems to be a wholly political movement.
Only then could I really evaluate the assertion that Trump's executive order was an attack on it.
As it stands, any argument here whether it is or is not an attack on Progressivism stands on shifting ground.
Some extras/links: the full text of the executive order; pictures of the specific buildings the EO refers to; the full text of the NCAS arguments. These would help me to get a full context of what's at stake, if anything.
To my mind, modern art is largely apolitical, with some very specific exceptions (e.g Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Dadaism et. al.) In fact, Futurism was self- consciously Fascist; whatever the definition of Progressivism would turn out to be, I'm certain it would not include Fascism.
It seems to me, the writer is doing that which he declared to be irrational and deceptive: believing himself to know what modern artists (or supporters of the EO, for that matter) "had in mind".
The "World of Tomorrow" of the late 30s Progressivism definitely informed Fascism. See e.g https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/8/2/article-p179_179.xm...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
I could also speculate that the author, who I don't know anything about, knows a bit about art history and is specifically referring to the Progressive Era in art and architecture. That would lead to the ideas that came out of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in the late 19s and early 20th centuries.
The article is pretty clear but the term is vague, as the article itself states.
What is core to the term? Can I be pro social-reform and anti-technology, and be Progressivist?
We can speculate about what Soto the author meant, but a well-written essay would have thrown in a sentence or two to remove ambiguity and get the reader up to speed.
I'm a bit frustrated by that, because it's a debate I would like to have.
So, for the record, I think it's a stretch that aesthetic constraints on architecture are an attack on social reform. In a way, requiring government buildings to be aesthetically pleasing is arguably pro social. But, again, the specific text of the EO would help us understand better whether this EO is an attack on anything at all related to "social reform" or "progress" in any respect.
I'm going to just go ahead and guess that this essay is a tribal chest-thumping rallying cry wherein true statements are secondary to the primary purpose of staking out a political view. That's why nothing is defined. It's not the purpose.
Too bad. It's a neat debate topic.
I don't think anyone is debating that, but the linchpin of the discussion is really about who gets to decide what is "aesthetically pleasing". What if I happen to really love Brutalist buildings? In 1962 Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture”[1], but specifically cautioned against an official style. He wrote, "The design of Federal office building... must provide visual testimony to the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American Government."[2] What was wrong with that guide?
1. https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/14466-will-the-...
2. https://www.gsa.gov/real-estate/design-construction/design-e...
As an aside, personally, I'd be fine with Brutalism. It's one of my favorite movements.
But leaving that aside, if no one decides, then we'll have only function and utility and lowest cost decide, with beauty being not a consideration at all.
But I wrote all of that without reading your links. You have not lead me astray yet, so I'll follow those and give you my thoughts later
If by anyone you mean the author of the essay, I don't actually know what he's arguing. With sincere respect, I don't think you can say you do, either.
You and I have happily decided to, as I see it, have a debate irrespective of the OP, and define terms that we can both agree on.
So, good, you and I agree that there should be aesthetic considerations and constraints of some kind on Federal buildings.
> [1]
Apparently I am live-responding. Your first link appears to be speculation about the as-yet unpublished EO. Since then, the EO has been published, so I'm going to skip that without prejudice, so to speak, and revisit as it becomes necessary.
I'll leave here a link to the EO itself here: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...
I'll read it next.
> [2]
Overall this sounds really reasonable, to me. I especially like:
The development of an official style must be avoided. Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government and not vice versa.
I also like the two-pronged consideration when evaluating an architectural proposal:
First, it must provide efficient and economical facilities for the use of Government agencies. Second, it must provide visual testimony to the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American Government.
For me now the investigation becomes answering these questions: How has the GSA guidelines worked so far? Are the buildings built under those guidelines generally aesthetically successful? If not, how and why did they fail? Are the aesthetic failures at least interesting? Does the Trump EO address the failures, if any? Would the EO fix these failures or create new ones? Finally, since President Biden has the powers to revert this EO, has he done so? If not, why not?
After all that, I'd feel comfortable being able to say whether or not the EO was an attack on Progressivism as we defined it (essentially, lifting it from the Wikipedia essay).
Does all that seem reasonable?
* often unpopular with Americans
* ranged from the undistinguished to... unappealing
* clashed with the existing local architecture, specifically classical architecture in Washington D.C.
* often selected... with little regard for local input or regional aesthetic preferences
* sometimes impresses the architectural elite, but not the American people who the buildings are meant to serve
* not even visibly identifiable as civic buildings
These are the buildings highlighted by the EO as examples:
* Hubert H. Humphrey Department of Health and Human Services Building : <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Hubert+H.+Humphrey+Department+of+H...>
* Robert C. Weaver Department of Housing and Urban Development Building : <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Robert+C.+Weaver+Department+of+Hou...>
* San Francisco Federal Building : <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=San+Francisco+Federal+Building&iax...>
* Salt Lake City’s Federal Courthouse : <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Salt+Lake+City%E2%80%99s+Federal+C...>
* George C. Young Federal Courthouse : <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=George+C.+Young+Federal+Courthouse...>
There were some exceptions, according to the EO, examples being:
* Tuscaloosa Federal Building : <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Tuscaloosa+Federal+Building&iax=im...>
* Corpus Christi Federal Courthouse : <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Corpus+Christi+Federal+Courthouse&...>
Interesting. What do you think?
Strongly disagree: it's both. The makers of the order, and its supporters, really do care about architectural styles and they really do think modern buildings are ugly.
The essay-writer is assuming that their political opponents are acting in bad faith, but that kind of suspicious conspiratorial thinking does little to help understanding here.
Whatever the rationales of the order, this, I think, is a preposterous remark. Big "P" Progressivism is divine providence for atheists. All manner of hideous things have been justified under the woolly mantle of "Progress". That Progressivism has invaded art and turned it into a fad-driven enterprise full of inscrutable fluff and pretense does not mean that is what art is or what it has always been. That art can change, improve, discover new beauty, etc. does not mean that it must, and even here this is not the same as Big "P" Progressivism because the Progressive, despite the misleading appellation, worships change. Change, for him, is this mystical Progress. Just look at his political slogans, but don't ask him for the measure of the Progress. That is his undivine mystery. That is the his Faith. To inquire is to blaspheme. At least Christianity holds mystery to be thoroughly intelligible, if exceeding human capacity to exhaustively know.
The author then writes:
"The supporters of this order only wish to retain the classical architecture that is found around the capital because for them it represents a distant past that is always superior to the present and cannot be interrogated."
As noted, if there is anything that resists interrogation, it is Progressivism. Note how the author, out of malice or out of foolishness, reduces support for the order to some nostalgia for a mythical past that never was. People like that surely exist, but this is not only uncharitable, it is an unjust dismissal of all those who have better reasons for preferring such architecture. Some modern architecture has its merits, it has its interesting contributions, but there is also a great deal, a great deal of anti-humanism and downright nihilist, to despise in it. The Progressive star architect is more interested in building monuments to his proverbial cock than he is in serving the people who will need to use that building and look at it for years to come.
"it is counterintuitive to assume that a progressive group of individuals would prefer to embrace outdated designs as opposed to new and progressive forms of modern architecture."
That word, "outdated", is one of the most pernicious words in the English language. It conflates the passage of time with improvement. You can only speak of something being better relative to an end, and the end itself must either be the nature of a thing, or in service of the thing (technology, for example, is in a sense an extension of man; you cannot make sense of technology except in terms of human nature).
So you tell me what is so "outdated" about the Stoa of Athens and yet so great about the Strata Center? Believe me, in two hundred years, people will still admire the timeless beauty of the Stoa and will look at the Strata with laughter, amusement, and disgust, if they even remember it at all. Maybe that's the lesson: we ought to reach for the timeless within our own time and place.