Quote:
Originally Posted by Reed Solomon
If people want to call it ugly, then democratically, no matter what some architect somewhere says, no matter how much people might scoff at the average persons lack of understanding about architecture, if at the end of the day people hate looking at it, it is ugly.
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Fair enough. I was coming at it knowing that what's called "ugly" often becomes the next demolition site - and I'm just saying that, in the long run, cities have more to gain by preserving their "character" buildings and examples of period architecture, than by tearing down what a fickle public calls "ugly".
They very well may be the buildings that people will say "What a shame they destroyed it - what were they thinking?!" about 20-40y from now, the same way we say the same about turn-of-the-century buildings preserved only in photographs now, and wish we had more districts/neighbourhoods with history to them (at least, in Regina anyway - Winnipeg may have done a better job of keeping a variety of architectural styles intact).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reed Solomon
I disagree. While I can appreciate some modernist buildings, visually, to the average person, they are cold and sterile, wheras victorian/chicago school buildings may have been torn down, but for entirely different reasons... old, need something new
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Those pretty much are the same reasons though, you're just spinning them differently - you're substituting objective adjectives ("cold", "sterile") for the same subjective opinions ("old", "need something new"). The same way how Modernists used "excessive", "grotesque", "pompous" when they thought Victorian was "old" and they "need something new".
Maybe more needs to be done to educate the public about architecture and and design. If people had opportunities to learn more about historic buildings - I see that Winnipeg already has a
Doors Open programme (like
Ottawa,
Toronto, etc; it looks like
Heritage Canada sponsored one in Saskatoon in '05, but I don't think there's been one in Regina. Maybe something like that can be expanded beyond the one/two-day open houses, and include permanent plaques or markers that better explain why a building looks the way it does. Or stories/memories people can call up and hear (like
Murmur) that put a building into context.
The UK has a
Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and the
Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment that actively work with government and private construction to do things better, and help educate the public; I couldn't find a Canadian equivalent, but that's something that might be helpful too.
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. As for the sturdy stone, I think that it's a fantastic building and an excellent way to house a parking lot with some sort of architectural design.
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