Why is everything so ugly?

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-44/the-intellectual-situation/why-is-everything-so-ugly/

by lucabenazzi • 3 years ago

201 303 3 years ago

Avicebron• 3 years ago

As much as I claim to like brutalitism as a design philosophy, I do think we could bring back some things like classic marble architecture. Maybe some new fountains

ekianjo3• 3 years ago

there is no money for that anymore

user_78322• 3 years ago

Perhaps brutalism is common where you live, but here in the Netherlands I would love to see more brutalist architecture as it is at the very least distinct. All houses here are (legally mandated almost) to have the same brick brown color.

braza• 3 years ago

I see it in another way: in the past aesthetics and the richness in the detail was beloved to connected with the divine and sublime, and in a more contemporary times is related something more experimental.

However, in the modern world with set of regulations plus complexities with urban places, and cost of build is not viable to have such so great ornaments around.

For instance: one of most recognised and awarded architects had a lot of criticism[1] due to a new set requirements for urban life.

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/slideshow/the-dark-side-of-oscar-n...

juggertao2• 3 years ago

Classic marble architecture is considered racist and white supremacy adjacent these days.

https://intersectionist.medium.com/american-power-structures...

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2018/11/how-classical-...

TacticalCoder• 3 years ago

Classic marble architecture is considered racist and white supremacy adjacent these days.

Probably by some insane woke ultra-leftists. Romans had white marbles. Romans also had black emperors, from Africa (yes, really).

You have to have a serious sick mind to believe "white" means "white supremacy" and that anything "black" means oppression towards black people.

I think a talk should be had about the Ottoman entire, when non-white people ruled a great part of the world, including Europe and had, shocker...

Wait for it...

White people as slaves.

Wow. What do the woke have to say about that? How comes we're not asking for retribution, today, to turkish people for the white people their ancestors used to have as slaves?

One of my brother married a japanese woman and another brother had a kid with an african woman. So my kid's two cousins are half-asian and half-african. We speak several languages at home. We've lived in four countries. And I despise this cancer on earth that are woke leftists.

zilti• 3 years ago

At this point there is so much that is claimed to be racist that the word is just about to lose it's meaning

lindig• 3 years ago

"Show, don't tell" is lost on the authors. They only talk about visual ugliness.

mewpmewp24• 3 years ago

It's hard for me to understand what the author is exactly talking about without seeing more images.

ekianjo3• 3 years ago

its a word salad rant. An exercise in style to say mostly something that could be summed up in a few sentences.

extractionmech3• 3 years ago

tldr: “cars that look like renderings”

KineticLensman• 3 years ago

Or just over two pictures, at 1 pic == 1000 words (he used ~2100 words)

antegamisou• 3 years ago

Very typical of the average HN pseudointellectual actually.

ajkjk3• 3 years ago

Ah just walk outside in literally any city.

mewpmewp24• 3 years ago

Doesn't even matter where I am from? I get different vibes in different cities and within the same city depending on the area as well. And does it specifically mean US cities only? I have been to US, but otherwise I'm from Europe.

michaelt• 3 years ago

You're going to need some more caveats for this, I'm afraid.

Most major older cities established a central core in an age where people had taste.

roenxi• 3 years ago

The entire subject is just annoying to respond to; on the topic of beauty it is much more helpful to have people advocating a positive than decrying a negative. It is too easy to complain that the world doesn't meet an unspecified artistic standard. It probably doesn't, but without some details on what standard we're talking about there is no conversation to be had. We don't do fiddly buildings these days, but that is because we're a lot better at building these days and a big building isn't automatically a masterpiece.

Although on the art front I'm looking forward to learning what storms lie in wait for the first publicly notable pro-Trump statue in the US. It'll be a real cultural discovery.

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

Perhaps as, as an artist, the author was doing a write-up as ugly as the subject he was talking about.

I could not finish it.

redcobra762• 3 years ago

Performance art, maybe.

delecti• 3 years ago

Do a google image search for "millennial beige". Alternatively, look at just about any house listed on Zillow/Redfin/etc. It's a design style that prioritizes modern designs and neutral colors.

Erratic6576• 3 years ago

The other day, I saw some workers finishing a series of 8 white shipping-sized containers each with A/C, aligned one next to the other on a plot of urban land.

I decided it had to be the expansion of a public (state) school, because I’ve read on the press about these containers being used in cases of shock-doctrine implementation.

Compared to foreign universities, Public education and public buildings in general used to be ugly, uninspiring, from the cradle (horrible huge hospitals) to the grave (horrible huge condominia-like wall with niches for a coffin).

We are transcending these thresholds to go full ugliness for the poor, in the name of economic efficiency

firtoz2• 3 years ago

There's a lot more variation nowadays imo, and you can find whatever you are looking for, consciously or not.

If you want to find ugly, you can. If you want to find vibrant bright colours, you certainly can, too. At least in the UK, in both London and Manchester, where I have lived, you can find the best and the worst of many kinds of styles. Where I visited in Belfast, also. Also in Indonesia, from Bali to Jakarta, there's so much different kinds of styles you can experience. Sure, the "average vibe" is also kind of persistent, but I think the average vibe has been quite bland in many places for a while.

This includes art, architecture and the vibe as well as interior decor.

Edit: adjusted to distinguish between "general" and "average"

hasty_pudding• 3 years ago

Theres a style I see on HN where ppl disagree with the post at the start, the halfway in agree with the post. Im not sure if thats a new thing or if I just started noticing it.

sure, the "general vibe" is also kind of persistent, but I think the general vibe has been quite bland in many places for a while.

firtoz2• 3 years ago

The article is talking about the new ugliness somewhat more, that's what I am trying to address.

But, ironically, my comment of "you can find what you look for" is applicable for your observation too ;)

Besides, it's okay to agree with some points and disagree with some points.

midasuni2• 3 years ago

Beauty isn’t valued in these areas by those with the resources to choose it.

When the majority of people and businesses live hand to mouth, those that don’t have to constantly maximise exponential returns to their owners. Who has money to burn on “valueless” beauty

Even if the cost of beauty is the same, and there is an actual value, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you are increasing maximum potential value but you are reducing the minimum (you turn off some buyers who don’t like the look). Throw in the concept changing over time (pale green bathrooms used to be a big think in the U.K. in the 80s) and people go for neutral and boring.

extractionmech3• 3 years ago

The issue is that New York decided as a strategy to rely on tourism revenue - it has nothing to do with “millenials”. I remember working as an intern building models for the disney land of 42nd street. Yes the models were cheesy (go take a look) but I mean anyone here remember Times Square before? That was one serious cesspool and I say this as a confirmed fan of late 80s New York, you know the city that your mom and dad were afraid to visit? (Anyone here remember having beers on the stoop outside of Finneli’s on Prince? AfterHours Soho was awesome..)

No one is afraid anymore so the ‘filter’ that selected ‘confirmed urbanites’ was lifted. The city reflects its new demographics. The OP and myself and the rest of urbanite that got a ‘buzz’ just walking in the city now mostly decamp to Brooklyn.

Speaking of Brooklyn, I must register my public approval of gentrification of Williamsburg. I actually lived in Williamsburg when the only (only) sign of civilization was a bagel shop next to the L. But let’s take Domino Park. That’s not ugly, is it?

So, two items: Money, and Taste. Now we people of ‘taste’ were priced out of Manhattan. And now you have what you have.

Let’s blame Giulliani for this. I never liked the man /g

MiguelX413• 3 years ago

Is /g an abbreviation of /gen?

Arnt• 3 years ago

(I studied architecture until I switched to CS.)

It's not beauty, exactly. It's norms.

Some places have fairly strong norms. If you own a plot of land (perhaps with an old building) in such a place and go to an architect ask for a proposal to renovate/rebuild/whatever, the architect will tell you clearly what you'll be permitted to build and what not.

In such a place, your new building will look rather like its neighbours. Unless you want to try to fight the building commission, maybe you think the voters disagree with the commission and you can force the elected officials to overrule the commission.

In other places you have a lot more flexibility, and in that case you have the option to build beautifully, and you also also a lot of less beautiful options.

You may think the second question is the key: Do people who hire architects and builders choose to build beautifully or not? I think the first one is the most important factor. The second matters seldom, because even when the choice is there, the choice is usually for such a small area that you can see five or ten independent buildings, and the overall effect will lack beauty even if one or two buildings are beautiful.

jevoten2• 3 years ago

(you turn off some buyers who don’t like the look)

Fortunately the modernist minimal grayscale look is universally beloved, so no-one is turned off by that.

prewett• 3 years ago

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I am turned off by the grey. I've seen some apartments that I might have considered renting except that everything was grey. I wouldn't buy a house with a bunch of grey flooring, or I'd at least underprice by the cost to replace it.

midasuni2• 3 years ago

But nobody is more turned off. You have 3 people all disliking boring grey, and 2 grey properties for sale, you have more demand than supply and price rises

Build something pink and now you only have 1 person liking it and 2 strongly disliking it, demand now equals supply so price doesn’t rise.

Is it worth the risk?

There’s a reason rented properties are co feed in magnolia, not just because it’s cheaper to get the same paint in bulk, but because if turns off the fewest people, and those it does don’t have any choice anyway as everywhere is magnolia.

skywhopper• 3 years ago

Can’t bring myself to read a screed like this. Every few years there’s been an article making exactly this complaint for hundreds of years. Most things are ugly and/or trash. Always has been, always will be. And the current fashion will eventually change, it always does.

electric_mayhem• 3 years ago

As for the outside world, the artist is confronted by what he sees; but what he sees is primarily what he looks at." — André Malraux

jrockway• 3 years ago

Yeah I kind of jumped around to figure out what the meat of the argument is. I didn't figure it out, but I do feel bad for the authors. If everything around you is consistently terrible and every waking moment is agony... it might not be the world that's the problem. That might come from inside. Maybe talk to someone about how you feel.

moritzwarhier2• 3 years ago

The submitted link has an anchor in the middle of the article. Why?

moritzwarhier2• 3 years ago

The submitted link contains an anchor/hash pointing to the middle of the (long) article. Why?

Almondsetat• 3 years ago

Poster was as sloppy as the author himself

ekianjo3• 3 years ago

its art?

andrelaszlo2• 3 years ago

Maybe for people (like me) who stopped reading the article half-way through when it was posted about a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33894679

The title should have had an additional exclamation point.

newsclues• 3 years ago

Why do communists build brutalist buildings?

I don’t think the recent trend in abandoning aesthetics is accidental.

camdenlock• 3 years ago

Brutalism and communism are what happens when people pretend that human nature doesn’t exist.

shakow2• 3 years ago

Why do communists build brutalist buildings?

Typically because they face a huge population move from the countryside to the city areas, and thus have to build as fast as can be and on a budget, which leads to what you can see there.

You can observe a similar pattern in many countries, e.g. here[0] in France, in the Lyon suburbs.

[0] https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/image/boW0onRHUjdzzl...

Barrin92• 3 years ago

Because there's overlap between what brutalism is about and what communism is about, an exposure of the material and structure to the outside, a rejection of nostalgia and traditionalism, etc. Of course this isn't exclusive to Communism but also quite popular in the US, as the other big cultural center of modernization in the 20th century.

This has nothing to do with abandonment of aesthetics though, as Brutalism is a very explicit aesthetic and architectural movement. We did indeed abandon aesthetics but the product of this is the non-offensive, utilitarian, convenient Starbucks store, the Ikea furniture and so on, not Brutalism.

alkonaut• 3 years ago

The debate about how we can’t make classic beauty anymore will always be around (and it’s not very interesting).

But what strikes me in some “ugly” cities is how accepted it is to let things be objectively ugly, for example in some cities you can see how a building wedged between two beautiful buildings has been torn down but the effort to build a new one seems on hold. As if owning the building/land gave the right to leave a scar for any amount of time. In cities where this doesn’t happen I imagine you simply don’t get a permit to leave an ugly hole. Build it or face a stiff fine, perhaps forcing you to sell to someone who would build. Seems like the only reasonable way of keeping it tidy. A lot of UK inner city areas look like this for example.

pixl977• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure gravity may have some demands in how fast an ugly building comes down.

gary_03• 3 years ago

Yes, but isn't it cyberpunk as fuck? Welcome to living out your wildest nightmares.

unobatbayar• 3 years ago

cyberpunk is not ugly though.

gary_03• 3 years ago

Movie cyberpunk makes the ugly pretty and the sordid exciting, upping the saturation until the fluorescents become psychedelic.

The cyberpunk we are living has no such aesthetic filters. An adventure is something terrible that happens to someone else.

mw67• 3 years ago

Relevant account for those wanting more photos illustrating the article: https://x.com/culture_crit?s=21&t=vrepFz-CnvLdHpV1b9UI0A

And a great YT channel explaining these points too: https://youtu.be/C9pg2j2oGy0?si=83HrNdnZ6PdwGfrf

dzdt3• 3 years ago

Discussed previously (2022) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33894679

user_78322• 3 years ago

I’ve got a counterpoint: we finally have the time to breathe and actually notice the ugliness. You don’t care about looks in a time of war. You put a lot of effort into “looks” and loving well shortly after a war as a rebound “look now it’s so better” compensation. We’ve instead (mostly) plateaued, which, at a (mostly) global level isn’t necessarily bad.

(Of course, if art is a reflection of present-day it’s not necessarily predicting a stable future in the context of global warming/water wars etc. I wonder if more graffiti will show up on these themes over time.)

otabdeveloper43• 3 years ago

World War 3 has been going on since 2010. We are currently in one of history's times of great turbulence.

(Most people lived through the fall of the Roman Empire and didn't even notice it.)

I-M-S• 3 years ago

Why 2010 exactly?

andrelaszlo2• 3 years ago

Discussion from 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33894679

donatj3• 3 years ago

My city and apparently numerous cities in my area have passed ordinances that new buildings over a certain size have to have multiple facades to look like multiple buildings butted up to each other. The effect has been this astonishingly hideous theme park esq approximation of small town America that isn’t fooling anyone. It looks more out of place next to the actual turn of the twentieth century buildings than an unambiguously new building would.

We can all see quite clearly this block long apartment building isn’t actually 5 buildings. Yet, now we have to suffer five hideous facades.

dzdt3• 3 years ago

And there is no economic possibility for small developers to actually build multiple buildings organically anymore. This is because of the economics of scale of complying with stringent building code requirements along with endless zoning board approval meetings, environmental reviews, traffic studies, etc etc etc.

mgaunard3• 3 years ago

Actually if you're talking about the US there are actually laws that prevent small developments; it's not just financials.

ajkjk3• 3 years ago

Sounds hilarious. Where's that?

donatj3• 3 years ago

Minneapolis Suburbs. There’s been a huge apartment building boom, and cities with leftover small town vibes have passed these ordinances.

xtiansimon• 3 years ago

That’s funny. I don’t know about any ordinance, but you’re describing my town’s new downtown. [1]

Just around the corner is a 75+ yro brick building (to the right of this street view) [2] with a detailed facade fashioned to have a small personal scale and plays with ornament to align with other older buildings on this street. (And this is some firm’s same solution/plan that you can find in at least one development miles away. [3])

The building to the left of the street view is a monstrosity, and here is another around the corner [4]

I’ve heard many long-time residents complain bitterly about the experience of walking our downtown, so I hope this new building will move the needle in the right direction for folks.

For the speed the new building went up and the challenge to develop in such a central area on a large plot, I think the result is positive (though, I’m sure I could not afford to rent there).

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/XKzYWUhiV5WTUBXv7?g_st=ic

[2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/fGY9DYCvH6xZdNbz5?g_st=ic

[3] https://maps.app.goo.gl/pgBMZ3wLUr3yCGvL8?g_st=ic

[4] https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yj1Mk9pAE9BFMrNm6?g_st=ic

everybodyknows• 3 years ago

For most hideous misfeature of [1], I nominate this clash of siding styles: The turrets of mid-mod aluminum rectangles not merely abutting, but actually projecting out of their base walls of faux-wood-lap siding.

zip1234• 3 years ago

It's actually often enforced in zoning codes as "breaking up the massing".

NoPedantsThanks5• 3 years ago

Wow, what a misguided and dumb "solution." If they're going to be that controlling, at least they could have enforced a truly helpful set of aesthetic guidelines.

jszymborski2• 3 years ago

I just wanted to echo the gray frustration here. I went to buy vinyl flooring (I can't afford hardwood) and the sheer amount of inexplicably "grey wood" planks was staggering. Why! Like, it's as if some alien only saw wood in an episode of I Love Lucy and wanted to replicate it.

ToucanLoucan• 3 years ago

I blame house flippers honestly. They buy up houses that are in rough shape on the cheap, then renovate strictly to sell, not for personal taste. The incentives at play are to shoot for a very dull, milquetoast instagram-ish aesthetic that anyone can sort of get along with, so you won't lose people for not liking whatever hardwood or paint colors you picked.

FerretFred• 3 years ago

Yeah! Watching any episode of (UK) daytime-TV's "Homes Under the Hammer" will reveal any number of properties - some with real character - refurbished with every shade of grey you can imagine. It looks awful to be honest and really, what kind of philistine paints over real wood anyway? What really bugs me is the way the estate agents visit afterwards and say "how tastefully it's been renovated".

Scene_Cast2• 3 years ago

But what if you look at it from an auction theory perspective. If there's a set of buyers with a set of bids, you're trying to get a large set of buyers (if you're pulling samples from a distribution, more samples = higher max), but you're also trying to increase the value these buyers are willing to pay (shift the distribution to the right). I wonder if there's some amount of customization, in a healthy housing market (tons of buyers) that you can do that increases the expected max bid despite decreasing number of prospective buyers.

FooBarBizBazz• 3 years ago

HGTV's Home Town goes for a more vernacular look, so is to be applauded. What they do seems more labor intensive though.

account-5• 3 years ago

Nothing wrong with vinyl, you can get some real good quality vinyl flooring.

jszymborski2• 3 years ago

Totally, I'm really happy with the functional properties of the vinyl I ended up buying. That said, I truly love how hardwood looks.

petepete• 3 years ago

I thought this grey decor trend was a British phenomenon - glad it's not just us!

KerrAvon• 3 years ago

Millennials in America apparently actually like the monotone look; it’s not just the resale thing. The process of making the house more bland for resale used to be called ‘beige-ing‘ by realtors (estate agents?) in the US; it’s not new, but it wasn’t always white and gray.

dylan6043• 3 years ago

No, you've infected the rest of us as well. Congrats!

secretsatan• 3 years ago

I remember all my rental properites in the uk had hideous beige woodchip wallpaper back in the nineties, and cheap carpets everywhere, surely it's an improvement on that.

yostrovs• 3 years ago

When selling our previous property, the seller agent recommended we paint it in "agreeable gray," supposedly the current color that is neutral and will not affect anyone negatively.

nytesky2• 3 years ago

Is that like greige ?

https://www.thespruce.com/greige-best-neutral-color-ever-797...

Ekaros2• 3 years ago

I have been trained to prefer off-white... So I find that grey or brown somewhat offensive and think off-white is actually better for light and everything... Even when my choice is as non-personal.

wonderwonder3• 3 years ago

What I find really interesting is that women can see shades that men cannot. My wife painted several shades of grey on the wall, including "agreeable gray" and I could not tell the difference, all looked the same. I experienced the same thing when she was looking for a grey / green for the kitchen cabinets. I could not tell the difference and all looked grey. She was also able to see shades of blue where all I saw was grey.

I have asked around and I am not the only male in my acquaintances that experiences this.

doubled112• 3 years ago

Like when you look at new builds.

You have builder grey, builder white, builder off white, and builder beige.

juggertao2• 3 years ago

The current advice is when you buy something to already think about the resale value of the item.

So this excludes all colors for everything. Black, white, gray everything.

CooCooCaCha3• 3 years ago

Call it capitalism, call it competition, call it an optimization process or w/e but this is a common phenomenon. Whenever you have people trying to maximize some value they'll copy the strategy they view as most successful and other factors take a back seat.

Maximizing the resale value of a home involves making it appeal to the largest number of people. Adding character risks lowering demand by appealing to niche markets. So you end up with lots of white and grey.

You see similar things all over the place. Want to maximize your career? Better suppress your individuality in favor of copying how successful people speak, act, and dress.

If you've ever heard the term "TikTok Beat" that's a similar phenomenon where the most popular music on TikTok gets copied like a meme by wannabe famous music producers.

It's a process that ends up with bland results as variety is reduced over time. It's also dehumanizing as humanity is slowly stripped away due to inefficiency.

linster• 3 years ago

I think luxury goods, and the privilege of living within your means, is to be able to buy goods and instantly depreciate them.

I buy electronics equipment, computers, furniture, clothes, and cars with the mindset I will be the last owner of them, and they will have no resale value.

“I bought this, and I will assume it’s instantly worthless”

It keeps me from buying the same thing twice and causes me to save up for the thing I really want, and keep it for as long as possible. It also lets me be picky about my preferences and really scope out exactly what I want on a relaxed timeframe.

Perhaps it’s a side effect of growing up with hand me downs, and knowing anything our family owned was one step to junk, but it does keep spending in check now that I am doing okay in my career.

mint22• 3 years ago

I don’t know about that, gray in houses exudes a feel of cheapness. If I see gray and especially gray vinyl it screams budget build and corner cutting. If one looks at rental housing, like half of them have gray floors and those ones are always cheaply renovated.

BeFlatXIII• 3 years ago

I make a show of disrespecting people who follow that advice instead of buying what makes them happy.

latency-guy22• 3 years ago

I firmly dislike cherrywood, anything that is more red than brown is absolute shit to me. My parents loved it, thought it was the pinnacle of wealth.

Now you might be questioning why I dislike cherrywood. The answer doesn't actually matter though, I dislike it. Most importantly, I am not the only one.

I like vinyl, because I spent a few weeks of my life (probably at most a few hours total actual wall clock hours on it) replacing flooring in a couple of rooms through a few houses. The beginning, and the rest of my answer here though, also does not matter. It only matters that I like it and will pay money for it over wood. I am also, not the only one.

Gray is used for many reasons in new builds, its a neutral color, and because many builders build a house/apartment, THEN sell to customers. Very few customers buy a plot of land, contract an architect, make customizations, and then build the building. It comes with the realization that people will substitute out the things they want on their own, not requiring someone else figure out everything they like and being creative all on their behalf for $0.

pixl977• 3 years ago

No idea why you're downvoted for this, but I guess pointing out the obvious on HN makes some people mad.

waynesonfire• 3 years ago

Had you started your post with i like vinyl, i would have stopped reading sooner.

KptMarchewa3• 3 years ago

Gray is used for many reasons in new builds, its a neutral color, and because many builders build a house/apartment, THEN sell to customers. Very few customers buy a plot of land, contract an architect, make customizations, and then build the building. It comes with the realization that people will substitute out the things they want on their own, not requiring someone else figure out everything they like and being creative all on their behalf for $0.

Interesting. Here in Poland when you buy an apartment from developer, you generally get it unfinished, like this: https://www.domoweklimaty.pl/app/uploads/2018/10/co-dokladni...

It's up to you to find contractors to finish it the way you want it - maybe together with interior architect if you want one.

Ekaros2• 3 years ago

My current place have this. I don't care to pay to replace it, but I would much prefer something light wood. Which is somewhat traditional indoors. It would also go with most things.

morkalork• 3 years ago

Forget flooring, why are carpets and rugs with a grey and washed out faded look so popular? If you want a muted look, just don't buy one! Their whole purpose is to add color and style to a room and yet so much of what's available looks terrible.

bobthepanda2• 3 years ago

The AirBnB/house flip aesthetic is truly quite lowest common denominator.

shiroiuma5• 3 years ago

No, one big purpose of a rug is to keep your place warmer and give you a softer and warmer place to walk or put your feet. So in front of your sofa, for instance, where your feet are usually on the floor, is better covered with a rug, so your feet don't get cold from the floor.

They also help reduce the noise caused by walking around, so your neighbors don't complain.

wonderwonder3• 3 years ago

After a flood, I bought pine? colored Luxury Vinyl Plank at my wife's insistence. Previously we had dark engineered bamboo which looked good but it constantly scratched (chairs and dogs) which really bothered her and I was always worried about water getting on it. I was against the vinyl just because it was vinyl. I was wrong. This stuff is awesome. Looks great, close to water proof short of a flood and pretty much no scratches in a year plus of being down. It was not that much cheaper though vs engineered wood but a good deal less expensive than hardwood.

Gigachad• 3 years ago

That’s surprising. From the interior design content I watch, the white and grey aesthetic is very much considered outdated and a mistake. Warm wood tones are much higher regarded.

NoPedantsThanks5• 3 years ago

When my parents were selling their house, their realtor told them they needed to paint a bunch of stuff grey because "that's what Millennials want."

Now we mock everything grey as "Millennial grey."

ryandrake• 3 years ago

Same when we sold our house. We had some pretty muted pastel colors in our rooms, nothing flamboyant like bright pink or whatever, and the first thing our realtor said was "we need to repaint everything light gray." We also offered to leave some of our furniture around in order to make the home appealing and show better. Again, nothing wacky, just a few sofas, tables and generic non-family pictures on the walls. Realtor said "nope, you need to stage it for 30-40 year olds" (with the most generic, bland, airbnb-like non-furniture I've ever seen). I can't argue with the results--she successfully sold the house in the recent toughest house market we've seen in 10 years. But, wow, that's the aesthetic now??

firstplacelast• 3 years ago

Hey, pretty things are hard. Why isn’t half of HN looking their best at least once a week?

It costs money and time. I work with people in shirts that are only befitting for elementary school kids.

You can have the niceties, just have to pay for them.

But I think this is about where the market is going. People (with the money for homes) don’t care, so that’s how they’re catered to.

proc0• 3 years ago

Maybe not a in a typical house, but I can see a minimalist architecture with white walls, cement pillars, grey wood floors, and a single tree branch sculpture.

Night_Thastus• 3 years ago

One of the carpet companies I was recommended exclusively makes browns and greyscale. No. NO!

And getting my car, the only options were grey and white. :(

I hate the greypocalypse that has happened. So depressing.

apantel• 3 years ago

A whole article about ugly things with no pictures of them?

65• 3 years ago

I don't trust the author if he's not giving any visual examples. Why should I trust his opinion?

logicprog• 3 years ago

Yeah, I immediately skimmed the article to see if there were any pictures of what the author considers ugly so I could get a sense for what their tastes are and adjust for that accordingly, or even conclude that their opinions weren't relevant to me, and the one single picture of an example ugly thing that I was able to find looked absolutely perfectly fine to me, in fact I liked it. I think a lot of the complaints around ugly architecture are just matters of difference of aesthetics: I'm autistic and a have certain amount of brain damage to my vision centers and so I deal with sensory overload a lot, and so I tend to prefer interfaces and environments that are clean and simple, made of just enough shapes and colors to communicate the structure of things and that's it, with no extraneous ornamentation or gradients or whatever, so a lot of modern architecture looks fine or even nice and refreshing to me, like a glass of cool water. Meanwhile, most of the people I find complaining about this sort of thing are the typical hipsters and grouchy conservatives — both of the "I was born too late" variety and the "I was literally born a long time ago" variety — that are looking fondly on a past age just out of their own personal preferences and predilections, and probably without any real understanding of what it was like to live surrounded by overly ornate architecture all the time, which is perfectly fine for them, but then they make these Grand think pieces and statements about how things should be, which is frustrating since I would rather gouge my own eyes out then live in the world they would prefer oftentimes.

s1artibartfast• 3 years ago

I don't think the intent is to convince people with visual evidence, or "bring the receipts".

Not every article is or should be targeted at convincing the resistant reader, and visual examples can be a distraction or simplification of a broader idea.

It is valid for an article to simply connect ideas together, in a way the reader may not be aware of. A reader may have their own examples to think about, which are much more powerful.

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

It's even weirder than that — the movie that is mentioned, "Army Soldier II" is not coming up in my searches.

Still, to this point:

Such bad lighting — and such large portions! We exit the movie theater to a bright realization: our films are exactly as overlit as our reality. As our environment has become blander, it has also become more legible — too legible. That’s a shame, because many products of the new ugliness could benefit from a little chiaroscuroed ambiguity

Cool that I learned a new word. Having just watched "Badlands" last night from 1973, I definitely agree modern cinema has become way too "graded".

bhewes• 3 years ago

I think it is a reference to "Red Notice 2"

gary_03• 3 years ago

Strong Sad taught me that word back in 2003: https://homestarrunner.com/sbemails/58-dragon

qgin• 3 years ago

Pictures risk having people disagree with the author's personal taste and the article hinges on there being a single correct taste

karaterobot• 3 years ago

Another article on the same topic, is "Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture" by Adrian Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/why-you-hate-contempo...

The two don't necessarily disagree, but I think the one I linked is better written. Plus, something about having all the block quotes be from tweets always makes me feel like the author isn't doing enough research or reading widely enough to be authoritative.

chatallo• 3 years ago

fwiw I don't think the block quotes are from tweets, I think that's just a link to share the quote on twitter

Jeema101• 3 years ago

Oh man. There is this building in the city where I live. It's SO uncompromisngly gray and ugly that sometimes I think maybe it's actually a parody of this particular style. It kind of looks like a prison from the outside too... but it's actually condos! I hate it so much that I love it. :)

Anyway here's a great photo of it I found on Google:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipMKvYH4OHFU5o4gZlSZ...

waldothedog• 3 years ago

I kinda like it! The rivets are interesting, and the window proportions too. Plus the photo has nice light, which doesn’t hurt.

j4yav6• 3 years ago

Wow you weren’t kidding. Looks like a sheet metal factory.

toastedwedge• 3 years ago

It looks like it's straight out of an urban scene for Equilibrium.

reportgunner• 3 years ago

This is pretty to me.

joegibbs• 2 years ago

It looks like something that you'd put in a movie to show the oppressive miserableness of a British coal town in the 1970s.

dzdt3• 3 years ago

Missing context: I believe the building referred to as "The Josh" is the Gluck+ affordable housing development Van Sinderen Plaza. [1]

Compare the colorful panel surfacing to the description "Our new neighbor is a classic 5-over-1: retail on the ground floor, topped with several stories of apartments one wouldn’t want to be able to afford... We spent the summer certain that the caution tape–yellow panels on The Josh’s south side were insulation, to be eventually supplanted by an actual facade. Alas, in its finished form The Josh really is yellow, and also burgundy, gray, and brown."

The coy phrasing about "apartments one wouldn’t want to be able to afford" is a disguised reference to the fact that the apartments are reserved only for low-income residents; the author would not want to live in Brooklyn on the poverty-level income required to be eligible for the housing development.

The pictured sculpture the author dislikes is "Waiting" by the artist KAWS (Brian Donnelly). [2]

[1] https://gluckplus.com/project/van-sinderen-plaza-affordable-... [2] https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/kaws-waiting-brook...

woodruffw• 3 years ago

I don't think it's that building: the visual description matches, but Brownsville has (thus far) resisted the gentrification that the author describes in the associated area.

My educated guess is that the building in question is somewhere in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, or maybe Bushwick.

abhaynayar• 3 years ago

I misread it as everyone and was disappointed when I realized.

Throw849495• 3 years ago

Go and spend summer in Russia, it is the perfect antidote. St. Petersburg is amazingly beautiful! Museums, architecture, cultural performances, no morbidly obese people on streets, no graffiti, even metro is nice!

CamperBob2• 3 years ago

I'd rather visit sunny Magnitogorsk: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn...

(Actually I'd rather visit Kyiv but I've heard that now's not a good time.)

Throw849495• 3 years ago

You can visit Kyiv.

Regiojet.com has daily trains from Krakow to Kyiv, with guaranteed connection at UA border. It takes about 14 hours and 50 euro. Or dozens buses every day, but you will have to wait for several hours at border (train skips queue).

hooverd• 3 years ago

Hey, you forgot to add the grey filter.

BizarreByte3• 3 years ago

An areal photo during the winter isn't very fair to the city. Looking around on street view during the summer months it doesn't look nearly as bad. A bit run down, but that's common for nearly all ex-soviet cities.

hbarka• 3 years ago

Contrast it with beautiful areas like the Amalfi Coast or any old town in the Mediterranean. They have color and trees. The advent of concrete, specifically Portland cement, brought on the gray brutalism. Builders would rather leave the stark concrete raw than color it.

detourdog• 3 years ago

I see quality building as a materials problem. I'm little surprised at the number of comments promoting that color is tied to quality.

I see color generally as the least significant feature of design. There are situation where color becomes important to communicate ideas. These moments I see as design details. I don't see them generally as intrinsic to design.

Mosts of the factors I see discussed in this thread are more related to mass manufacturing and trying to guess what people want.

Everything is ugly becuase few people take personal responsibility in making the world better.

hindsightbias2• 3 years ago

The new Prius is actually not that awful.

snakeyjake• 3 years ago

After New York replaced the sodium-vapor lights in the city’s 250,000 streetlamps with shiny new LEDs in 2017, the experience of walking through the city at night transformed, almost . . . overnight. Forgiving, romantic, shadowy orange gave way to cold, all-seeing bluish white.

Before the late 1970s, NYC was illuminated at night by pinkish-white incandescent bulbs.

When the yellow monstrosities were rolled out people almost rioted. Their harsh orange glow invaded bedrooms creeping between gaps in curtains and assaulting the eyes, destroyed the soft and warm ambiance that had set the night scene for generations, and muted all colors into a monochromatic hellscape.

After just 30 seconds on TimesMachine I found an article from 1982 about the transition and how some residents were hesitant and one jurisdiction rejected the change out of hand. It took a long time for NYC to gain its orange glow and people didn't like it. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1982/09/12/137...

Lol here's another article from the 40s: "Sodium light is not suitable for city streets, Commissioner Goodman said, because it gives a person a sallow appearance not liked by women."

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/05/26/iss...

People of my age view them as a nuisance born out of the austerity of the 1970s, a temporary suboptimal fix that persisted due to inertia. A reminder of the rot and desperation of the that era.

Now this dude is nostalgic for them?

dghlsakjg2• 3 years ago

People hate new things more than they hate the mediocrity they know.

renewiltord4• 3 years ago

Most of these aesthetic criticism people are just conservative people. They don't like change. The world was best when they arrived somewhere.

That's pretty much it. SF is full of a similar kind.

achileas• 3 years ago

This is the only real takeaway of the article. “I don’t like this because it’s new to me, therefore it’s universally bad.”

I live in Boston and there was a similar freakout about the gas lamps in Beacon Hill being replaced by LEDs. Not a single person I talked to about it knew that the gas lamps were only added to the neighborhood in the late 70s to make it look more quaint and historic.

inglor_cz2• 3 years ago

Are you sure?

Many more people admire Taj Mahal or Ancient Greek/Roman buildings than, say, brutalist architecture. Heck, even Art Deco, while distinctly modern, seems to be likeable.

I am fairly conservative myself, but I like some new Czech buildings, such as the Masaryčka project by Zaha Hadid. It has a soaring soul that is hard to describe, but nevertheless you can feel the positive vibe of the structure when you walk underneath it.

https://www.masarycka.com/cs/o-projektu/

On the other hand, Le Corbusier architecture (mostly older than me, so I should have been used to it) looks like deliberate insult to anything human: look at this concrete prison I made for you and weep and gnash your teeth because there is no escape from its rotting ugliness, you worm.

bufio• 3 years ago

Do you really prefer hospital lighting over yellow lighting?

Tanoc• 3 years ago

When you're an artist who tries to recreate things from the past you learn very quickly the limitations of what we use nowadays. Tradeoffs in efficiency are often paid for with quality of life. For example many of the older high pressure sodium lamps were better for human eyesight because of their colour spectrum being a segment of daylight allowing better contrast perception and not straining the upper limits of the cones in your eyes for night vision. Their falloff was also much better, preventing harsh shadows inherent to fluorescent and LED lights that hide things all too easily and create unwelcoming chiseled depth on architecture. Sadly adding in those little quality of life benefits costs more fractions of a cent per unit, so the modern LED bulbs capable of recreating them go without.

The other thing, about the "McCentury Modern" architecture, has been proven time and again over the last decade. Flat shapes without detail with random splashes of colour cause anxiety because the human mind needs visual definition and coherency. There are ongoing studies about whether or not modern architecture causes depression because so many people have noticed. At least in the past the cheapest stuff used bricks for facades, but developers think even those are too expensive now. That and the proliferation of grey is entirely about money, because it's easier to sell the lowest common denominator without a hint of individuality. This is especially true when it comes to market instability, because when tenant turnover is in the range of months grabbing the cheapest thing and throwing together the least personable environment to rope in anybody at all will keep you from having a vacancy of longer than a few weeks.

The films thing is just... Nobody actually looks at physical examples anymore, so they have no idea how things should look. With practical effects you were manipulating and testing what already existed instead of trying to recreate it as an approximation. There's a surrealist level of detail in almost anything created via CG, only worsened by the lighting needing to be flattened to cover up the unfinished work done because of an impossible schedule and masked with digital colour correcting. Real waves don't have that much foam, real diamond weave cloth doesn't have that specular profile, real explosions don't have such low luminosity and so many particles, so on and so forth.

A lot of people realize things are very wrong with the world, they just don't have the expertise or the vocabulary to explain it. So they point at things they know other people will innately understand as examples. Don't say they hate change because of that limitation.

codelikeawolf• 3 years ago

A reminder of the rot and desperation of the that era.

I think there's a tendency to romanticize this kind of thing, a la an early Tom Waits song. I've lived in Portland for a little under 5 years. I feel like it has been moving in the "ugly" direction the author describes for a while, and it started before I moved here. People that have been here much longer describe how it used to be much more "gritty" and dangerous. They say it with sort of a twinkle in their eye, almost as if they miss it. Part of me would have loved to see how it was, but the other part of me knows what's its like to be in the wrong part of town. At least you have the wherewithal to see why a move to LED lights was probably a smart move. Just because it's new and different doesn't make it bad.

ghaff3• 3 years ago

When someone mentions the "disneyfication" of Times Square I'm declined to think they have either very selective memories or they were never around that area and 42nd Street in the 80s especially late at night. They can still hang out at the Port Authority if they want to experience echoes of that time.

vondur• 3 years ago

My main memory from the 70s as a child was the ugly fluorescent light everywhere outside.

Paianni• 3 years ago

Chances are the pre-1980s lamps were mercury-vapour, not incandescent. Incandescent lamps were obsolete for road lighting by the 1950s. Sodium lamps caught on because they were much more efficient than both.

mp05• 3 years ago

People of my age view them as a nuisance born out of the austerity of the 1970s, a temporary suboptimal fix that persisted due to inertia. A reminder of the rot and desperation of the that era.
Now this dude is nostalgic for them?

You could just as readily be talking about a cassette tape.

argiopetech7• 3 years ago

The cassette tape has a lot of things going for it. They play for longer than CDs, they don't skip, they are simple to duplicate and record onto (with most cassette decks capable of one, if not both, actions), and the occasional tape tangle teaches patience and encourages mechanical understanding of the system. They can't compete with my phone and a bunch of FLAC for fidelity, but I wish they weren't effectively dead technology.

Next, let's talk about how I miss CRTs...

crazygringo• 3 years ago

Now this dude is nostalgic for them?

No, they really were better for sleep.

With the orange-ish sodium lights, I could go to sleep with their light still coming through the bedroom window. The amber glow was reminiscent of the glow of fire.

The harsh blue light now tells my brain it's daytime. I had to buy blackout curtains to be able to fall asleep.

It's the same principle as using the amber-hued Night Mode on your phone in the evening.

I never experienced the pinkish-white, but the transition from orange to blue has been horrible for sleep. Nighttime lighting around homes should be amber, not blue. (Contrast with highways where you do want people to stay awake, so blue makes sense.)

ricardobeat2• 3 years ago

Contrast with highways where you do want people to stay awake, so blue makes sense

I remember some kind of study around yellow light being ideal for roads actually. The human eye is more sensitive in the green/yellow part of the spectrum, the lights are more efficient and cut through fog better.

saghm2• 3 years ago

With the orange-ish sodium lights, I could go to sleep with their light still coming through the bedroom window. The amber glow was reminiscent of the glow of fire.
The harsh blue light now tells my brain it's daytime. I had to buy blackout curtains to be able to fall asleep.

When I moved in with my fiancee (at the time my girlfriend), I noticed after a couple months that I had a bit of trouble sleeping due to her often falling asleep later than me and being on her laptop for a bit. Since blackout curtains don't help with that, I bought a sleep mask for a few dollars from Amazon (basically a piece of nylon fabric and a strap, nothing specialized), and it's not an exaggeration to say that it's been life-changing. As a child, I'd often struggle to fall asleep due to literally any amount of light in my bedroom, and when I was in elementary school it got bad enough that it would take me several hours of lying in bed to finally fall asleep, and I ended up getting prescribed insomnia medication that I continued taking for a couple of decades. It turned out that with the sleep mask, I was able to taper off the prescription sleeping medication within a year or so, and I'm even able to get up earlier without being quite as groggy due to my quality of sleep increasing so much.

If anyone else has similar issues with lighting interfering with their sleep, especially if it's from things within their building rather than outside, I'd highly recommend investing a few bucks to try this out. Obviously my sample size is only one, but given how drastic the effect was and how low-cost it is to try out, it would almost feel irresponsible for me not to suggest this to people.

pants2• 3 years ago

By the way, if you or others have issues with the cool-white LED street lights, you can fix that with a color filter, duct tape, and a ladder. I fixed all the street lights on my street and my neighbors thank me every time they see me. They have been holding strong for a few years now.

Try the "LEE Filters 206R: Converts 6500K Daylight Sources to 4600K"

c0pium2• 3 years ago

The evidence that blue light is bad for sleep is much worse from an experimental standpoint than the evidence that it improves cognition and reaction time, which are obviously rather important considerations in street lights. Consider for instance that placebo glasses which filter the so-called harmful blue light wavelengths have been shown to fully reverse the apparent effect on sleep quality. This is despite them just being clear glass with no appreciable filter effect on visible light.

It is literally true that human mind is suggestible to an unimaginable degree.

Izkata2• 3 years ago

Your links require a subscription to view.

Now this dude is nostalgic for them?

An easily-unrealized benefit until people were forced to use them, they didn't ruin our low-light vision, at least not nearly as much as the new ones. You could easily see into unlit areas, or go from an unlit area to a lit one without your vision having to adjust.

flyinghamster• 3 years ago

Now this dude is nostalgic for them?

I stopped reading there. I'll take LEDs over ugly orange any day (or mercury-arc, as well). When my town converted, they picked neutral-white lights for the side streets and ones with a very slight yellow tint for the major streets. Either of these is far better as far as I'm concerned.

Even the old mercury-arc lights weren't that great - either sickly greenish or a color-corrected version that was blue-white. The 175W mercury-arc streetlight on my corner was replace by a 40W LED, with better lighting to boot.

Low-pressure sodium is even worse - an absolute monochromatic yellow. If you forgot where you parked your red car, good luck finding it. Been there, done that.

mint22• 3 years ago

Actually neutral white and blue tinged white (the most common led shade) is terrible for night vision, glare, and light pollution all due to the actual physics of light.

ironmagma• 3 years ago

You seem to make no room for the possibility that the people rioting were correct in both cases, that the current lights are worse than the yellow, and the yellow lights are worse than the pinkish.

NoPedantsThanks5• 3 years ago

The problem with LEDs is the massive increase in light pollution they cause.

smileysteve• 3 years ago

But do they? LEDs are directional vs Sodium is omnidirectional and reflected; So given a similar housing, LEDs causes less light pollution.

JohnFen• 3 years ago

It's amazing how people get used to stuff. I remember well how awful those sodium lamps were when they were first put in, and how nearly everyone hated them in part because they made everything look ugly.

Now, people get nostalgic for them. People are weird.

cs7022• 3 years ago

Well, I for one don't think everything is ugly.

Apple devices and stores look clean and elegant to me.

Tesla vehicles feel and look simple and beautiful to me.

If given a choice, I'd rather live in new buildings with bright, light-filled interiors than in old buildings with darker, mustier interiors.

I could provide more examples of things I don't think are ugly. The main point is this:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

JadeNB4• 3 years ago

Tesla vehicles look beautiful to me.

As you say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder—but, seriously, the Cybertruck as a thing of beauty? (This is from someone who actually liked the boxy car designs of old.)

pixl977• 3 years ago

Every family has that ugly cousin no one talks about.

cs7022• 3 years ago

Yes, the Cybertruck looks great to me.

Is it different? Yes. But ugly? Not in my view.

Have you seen it in person?

martythemaniak• 3 years ago

Cybertruck fan here, I wouldn't describe it as either ugly or beautiful. It is bold and different, and utterly unlike anything else out there, much the same way modern architecture was 70 years ago and modern art 100+ years ago. I find this very appealing.

at_compile_time3• 3 years ago

If you don't like the Cybertruck, you can close your browser tab and not be offended further. Tesla 3s and Ys exist in the real world, and they're more pleasant to look at than most vehicles.

vagab0nd• 3 years ago

Your comment just proved the point of gp. Even if you think something is ugly, why not acknowledge the fact that some might consider it beautiful?

GolfPopper• 3 years ago

The Cybertruck looks like something from the Rigger Black Book for Shadowrun. (Whether that's good or bad is, as JadeNB says, left as an exercise for the viewer. But for me it definitely fits its name.)

bigstrat2003• 3 years ago

What gets me about the Cybertruck is that it feels like it's almost a cool design. I feel like if I squint my eyes, I can almost see a modern version of the DeLorean design (which was cool as hell). But it went wrong somewhere, and Tesla took a left turn into the ugly zone.

maximus-decimus• 3 years ago

I like the look of the cybertruck. I also like the look of my Thinkpad 420. GIVE ME BIG ANGULAR THINGS.

I for sure find the cybertruck prettier than 99% of cars on the roads anyway. The SUVs are especially ugly imo.

randomdata2• 3 years ago

What's beauty? It seems like a bit of a handwavy term.

jurgenaut23• 3 years ago

We are talking about beauty here, and the first thing that comes to mind is freakin' Apple devices and Tesla vehicles? Even by HN standard, that feels like ... weird.

KptMarchewa3• 2 years ago

This is what a lot of negative comments were about, so there's nothing weird about also commenting on that.

throwaway295729• 3 years ago

As soon as they added the 3-eyed protruding camera, iPhone’s lost a lot of their appeal.

Tesla vehicles look fairly bland, dry and devoid of emotion to me.

There are things that objectively make something more beautiful. Symmetry for example. Not all beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

sph• 3 years ago

Dupe from last year, 500+ comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33894679

They lied on the publication date.

ojintoad• 3 years ago

Odd, do you mean they lied back in 2022? Definitely confusing at the least!

https://web.archive.org/web/20221206160651/https://www.nplus...

argiopetech7• 3 years ago

    Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

-- Hanlon, Robert

accoil• 3 years ago

I dunno. I can see how Dec 2022 could be Winter 2023 for New York, but basing publication dates off seasons seems purposefully vague.

iamgopal• 3 years ago

Why good looking car expensive when cheap car and expensive car used same Color steel and lights ?

z5h• 3 years ago

When we believed that our institutions (religious, governmental, cultural, corporate) took care of us (whether or not they did), we would invest our efforts in return. The jig is up. Why invest more than “minimum viable caring” at this point?

As an Ontarian who recently took a road trip through Quebec (where a faith in culture still presides), it seemed like there was more “giving a shit” about all institutions and it came through in quality across the board.

mglz• 3 years ago

My crackpot theory: This is in part due to CAD:

* Colors other than gray don't look nice in CAD and aren't the default.

* It's super easy to just stack a bunch of rectangles (looking at you, architects...)

* You can chamfer and fillet but that's the end of what most people do. More complex shapes are hard to due due to the clunky spline tools. Hence elaborate ornaments are left out.

somewhereoutth• 3 years ago

Not such a crackpot theory in my opinion - the tools we use to communicate design surely will influence what we design.

jareklupinski• 3 years ago

that makes sense

in the era of blueprints, where you had to draw literally everything from scratch every time, human pride would necessitate taking the time to add flourishes or small details to every page, just to keep the talent who is producing them from losing their minds

look at old bibles, full of small details that are ultimately useless for the message being conveyed, but still announce the presence of a poor soul doomed to reproduce these glyphs for eternity

nowadays... you can just open an old drawing, hit copy-paste, and be down by the pub at 11am.... not a bad deal for the drawer, but for the people looking up on the sidewalk...

esperent• 3 years ago

I think this is valid, but it's only one part of the equation - and I would guess it's the smaller part. The other side is manufacturing. In an era of mass production, making things like buildings look unique is expensive.

If your building is made from rectangles, lines, and few curves, you can use off the shelf panels to build it. Order them from a factory, have a truck deliver them, stick them together with cement and bolts.

On the other hand, even if you do pay someone for the extra time to create beautiful, unique, complex designs in a CAD program (which is not that hard), actually making those parts is extremely expensive so they will get rejected by most architectural and construction firms.

Perhaps as we come into the era of 3d printing, more complex structures will come back into vogue again. It will be kind of ironic if 99% of all futuristic cities depicted in scifi, all clean lines, spires, and cylinders turns out to be wrong and the skyscraper of the future looks more like the Sagrada Familia, but built in six months instead of three centuries.

(Although personally I'm hoping the future looks like forested garden cities.)

rgrieselhuber• 3 years ago

Aesthetics has always seemed like the front line of the war for civilization against chaos.

corethree• 3 years ago

There's a stupid article like this every decade where the writer thinks he's being edgy when he's actually just regurgitating the same shit spewed by regular people every 10 years. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but really stupid people who write articles like this think their eyes are the center of the universe.

Take a look at this from over a decade ago: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5gynqq/what-v11n11

Part of the article laments how the shape of cars have turned into "cough drops" and "globular tears". Clever but I can also write a edgy article about how idiots in the past designed cars as if they were hideous boxes and the concept of a curve was too advanced for their square minds to comprehend.

TheCleric• 3 years ago

Call me overly practical, but as long as we have a shortage of housing, build all the ugly you can. I’d rather have people housed in ugly buildings they can afford over waiting for something aesthetically beautiful.

keenmaster• 3 years ago

It’s possible for everyone to like beautiful things but not build them when given the chance.

The “problem” is, everyone has a different preference.

Let’s say I like mid-century modern, and spend $75,000 extra on building (tastefully) in that style.

Now it’s 10 years later and I want to sell the house. A potential buyer likes everything except the mid-century modern. Their favorite style is neoclassical.

To them, mid-century modern styling has a value of zero or even -$25,000. So if I didn’t build in that style, they might have been willing to pay 75k-100k more.

The paradox here is that a divergence in preferences, due to cultural atomization and the internet, has led to lower returns on investment in beauty (and atrophying of craftsmanship and the ability to build beautifully to begin with).

If you ask me, a tasteful aesthetic monoculture is a good thing, and can result in timeless beauty which will be appreciated long after that monoculture evolves/ends. Sameness is not inherently bad! See: Florence, Venice, Andalucia, 1800’s Paris, etc…

barrysteve• 3 years ago

All the new builds in my area share a rendered concrete and jail-bar fencing aesthetic that is monstorous, undesirable and ugly. There are no sensible features to look at. The corners of the build look so sharp, you'd cut your hand if you touched them.

The hundred-million dollar shopping centre was done up last year and it removed most of the internal landmarks and created a series of flat hallways. There is nothing to rest your eyes upon, nothing to look at.

It's one flat, dated shop after another. Usually based on some dead subculture from 10yrs ago and recent ladies' fashion trends.

The apartments went up as part of the build and that are flat cubes, copy pasted with doors and windows cut into a wall behind a front patio of flat wooden slats. Minecraft aesthetic for ferrari prices.

It is physically irritating to look for a pattern or a boundary line or a landmark and find nothing to anchor yourself. Everything is textureless and shapeless. I avoid the place.

The concept of an aspirational home is dead in my books. The traditional homes may raise the blood pressure a touch too much and seem complex.. The contemporary builds are ugly and irritating.

A sense of balance, proportion, beauty and differentiated shapes, physically calms me. It has to be updated traditional. Neo classical or french colonial or some such new variation on an outdated style.

fleventynine• 3 years ago

We need more housing, and we needed it yesterday. Ugly is better than nothing. Folks that care about aesthetic quality over quantity are part of the problem.

tomcam• 3 years ago

WE LIVE IN UNDENIABLY UGLY TIMES. Architecture, industrial design, cinematography, probiotic soda branding — many of the defining features of the visual field aren’t sending their best.

One of these things is not like the others

surfingdino• 3 years ago

I blame the preset hustle.

opportune• 3 years ago

This article is trying too hard to be intellectual and incorporate artsy prose. A lot of it is just nonsensical or self-contradictory.

Basically the author is self-aware that others’ preferences and economic conditions have led to a built environment that’s incompatible with their tastes, and that they don’t actually have the right to dictate what others choose to build and buy. So they decide to snobbily denigrate them because… (makes them feel better? some kind of psychological need to establish superiority?)

Tastes change. There has been a pretty continual oscillation within architecture between more minimalist and austere styling and ornately decorated styling. Feels pretty pointless to get caught up in argument that boils down to red being a better color than blue

throwaway220033• 3 years ago

West is not just ugly, it’s also dirty, its streets smell pee, it has no moral compass, no standard in anything. It promotes abandoning traditions in favor of degeneration and the result is ugly and disgusting.

Its politicians have orgies and organize festivals to run naked on the street once a year in the name of “pride”. Art is not art anymore, they’re producing “artists” who put candles in their ass and walk like dogs for “art”. Same as poets or singers. So much nakedness, nothing deep or beautiful. There’s no more good art, novels or movies coming out of Western culture. Careful people even take steps to protect their children from it.

audunw• 3 years ago

A lot of that isn’t unique to the west.

China tore down most of its beautiful temples (the contrast between mainland and Taiwan is striking), totally obliterated any moral compass among its people, its politicians are just comically corrupt (when it’s politically convenient to prosecute one of them they need trucks to unload the literal ton of cash in their homes), etc. Their movies are now mostly pointless propaganda with zero appeal outside China.

And the examples you list are incredibly niche. There’s still plenty of good art if you care to look. There’s always been weird niche art and trashy popular art, all throughout the history of civilisation.

What country do you look to as a good example?

zeroday28• 3 years ago

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.

From The Original Complete List Of The 45 Declared Goals.

incomingpain2• 3 years ago

WE LIVE IN UNDENIABLY UGLY TIMES.

We live in undeniably depressed times. Where people don't stop and smell the flowers or pet the dog. They don't see the bald eagle flying over.

You are surrounded by utter wonderful beauty and you can't see it.

https://www.pagani.com/

Sunsets/Sunrises/Landscapes have gone nowhere.

Music is literally at all time peak for beauty because it's understood far better than ever.

Special FX has reached a point where they are simulating younger/dead people like Leia in Rogue one?

Acts of kindness and charity are now made easier then ever. I'm checking out at some big box store and you're offered a 99% charity to donate to... Yes, please, every time.

incomingpain2• 3 years ago

I'm surprised how quickly I got downvoted on this one.

Guess I can't have a positive message?

k99x55• 3 years ago

Related: Why Many Cities Suck from Not Just Bikes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4kmDxcfR48

spicyusername• 3 years ago

I like to refer to pieces like this as weaponized pessimism.

They have a certain junk food allure, but their tone isn't really something we should strive to feel in our lives.

leg100• 3 years ago

Gah! Blinded by the intense glare of an LED streetlamp, we bump right into said streetlamp. Fortunately there’s an urgent care across the street, still open in the dwindling dusk. We’re no doctor — at least not until they start giving out PhDs in walking around — but we can tell that our knee is bleeding.

Who is this "we" they keep referring to...are they Siamese twins?

dusted• 3 years ago

I guess design is more about the amount of emotion evoked, rather than the quality of emotion evoked. Destruction is easier than creation.

Creating something so ugly that it induces a negative emotion is probably easier than creating something so beautiful that it induces a positive emotion.

That would also explain modern UI design.

Why is everything so ugly?

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