Quote:
Originally Posted by X-fib
I just think that architectually we need to stop reviving the past and start inventing the present.
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Why? The buildings of the past worked and considering the I-wanna-be-a-European mindset of most any urban-minded American, those buildings are still working. They're also working great in America's historic areas, like Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, and the old parts of all our major cities.
More often than not, modern buildings don't work. They're ugly, they're alienating, and they usually replaced something really nice, which gives people even more reason to hate them.
That, and historic buildings were designed for their climates and surroundings. As out of place as a fancy British building might look in Mumbai, India, or Singapore, that building was still functional in a hellish climate, as were the early buildings of America's uncomfortable areas such as Arizona and Florida. If the power goes out and you're in an old building in one of those areas, you're still okay. Open the windows. Let the summer heat rise and flow out the windows in the dome. If you're in a modern building, not only is it designed with little more than the architect's ego in mind, you're screwed. Work lets out early because otherwise you'll bake in your glass and steel box.
Perhaps modernist architecture would work if it was designed to still function in primitive surroundings, but it's not. It's either designed as a dismally boring plain box determined to show the world that it was built on a budget or alternately in the case of high-concept modern architecture, it's designed to make a boorish statement, or perhaps as a challenge to the architect -- "How many uneccesary curves and needless angles can I work into
this baby? Awkward floorplates are teh good!" At least in the case of old buildings, that decoration served a purpose toward looking pretty. Modern buildings with enough curves and angles and twists and turns to look like a large-scale model of the digestive tract just serve the purpose of informing the public that the architect paid attention during the classes that talked about cantilevering.