Hacker News Reader

Comment by man-and-laptop | Hacker News Reader

Regarding modern architecture, I'm not a fan. It's not like a painting which you can hang up on your wall at your own leisure. No, these are buildings that people have to live in and around. I think London is worse off with the Shard.

I can't comment on the rest.

[edit: removed a paragraph about a tangential topic]

View on HN

If you go back and read Gropius' old books about the New Architecture, the original point of steel-and-glass skyscrapers was that by building up instead of out, you could devote the rest of the surface to other uses, like parks or shops. There would be enough space between buildings so every window gets sunlight, and there would be livable and walkable space all around. The taller the building, the more space you need between buildings to ensure every floor gets direct light.

We've totally butchered the spirit by packing them back-to-back-to-back, and removing all the green. It's like "We took a Beethoven symphony, and made it more efficient by removing all the rests!" No, you ruined it. The space between was part of the work.

I think part of that is, as it turned out, how the towers in a park model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park) was implemented wasn't actually very conducive to human-scale living.

But the abhorrent, sterile steel-and-glass isn't the only style that can be built up. The many art deco or gothic revival skyscrapers should serve as a suitable counter-example.

Modern architecture wasn't a monolithic movement (and it has changed a lot in the last 100 or so years. It is generally explained and contextualized badly (I spent years in architecture school) partly because architecture is a very anti-intellectual discipline at the best of times.

The key modernist move was to throw away history (the classical orders and ornaments) and to some extent this meant throwing away existing techniques and theories as well.

So that's why defenders of traditional architecture are often aligned with a certain kind of Enlightenment intellectualism. In a sense, traditional architecture sits easily with faith in reason and analysis, whereas modernism is stereotypically distracted by the need to be avant garde and to avoid kitsch. Within the profession of architecture, though, there is a very strong sense of continuity in terms of architectural values. It might not seem plausible from a surface inspection, but the percentage difference in the genomes of traditional and modern architecture is slight. The continuity inherent in the fairly restricted possibilities for rational, economical assembly of building materials guarantees that the golden rules of construction don't change very much, although superficial appearances might. There are new construction technologies, but tectonics is pretty much a timeless art.

The types of accommodation that are created have changed a lot, for example the genre of the office building has developed into something very new and not necessarily something that will last. But if you look at how the Shard is actually put together, I think a 17th C architect seeing it for the first time would get it immediately. They might find the economic/business side of the building's purpose completely inscrutable, though.

A major theme of Bauhaus design was avoiding pretentiousness or "striving for effect". Simplicity and economy of means was seen as psychologically preferable to the alternative, which was moribund 19th C ornamentation and kitsch. That went for frivolous things like Bauhaus jewellery just as much as essential programmes like urgently needed housing. Maximum effect with as little wasted effort as possible was the guiding principle across the board.

Obviously prestigious, expensive and pretentious buildings, like the Shard, are now built in a modernist style (that didn't take long to start happening at all). That's really architecture slipping back into its old ways (as a symbol of wealth and power, of excess rather than economy). Personally I think the Shard is a great building, but as far as I know it doesn't have a good reason to exist. The major Bauhaus theorists would have hated that.

It seems that the Bauhaus were trying to make a political point as much as an engineering point.

Also, where's the evidence that the simpler geometric forms and use of cheap materials (concrete in Brutalism) resulted in anything cheaper, more functional, better-looking or long-lasting? How much of it is just a fad?

They "Bauhaus"ed the Windows GUI to remove all the ornamentation, and people didn't report it was any easier, more usable (no shadows for buttons, so you don't know what you can click on), or more pleasing to look at (many, including myself, found it childish). Some people say it's faster for the computer, but I suspect that the improvements are very marginal.

It sounds very much like an engineer's view to split design into a "political point" and an "engineering point"! I think they would say they were trying to make a point about life and the nature of things. Everything is being labeled "politics" these days, even when I can't tell what it has to do with politics. Is "avoiding pretentiousness" now a political issue?

I'm not sure what you mean by "Bauhaus"ed the Windows GUI. If you're talking about Windows 10, I've never heard anyone at Microsoft say that this was intended to be in the Bauhaus style, nor anyone involved with the Bauhaus say that Windows 10 was a design in their style. I wouldn't describe it that way.

Bauhaus design was never about ignoring human factors, or hiding the boundaries of objects -- quite the opposite.

When I said "Bauhaus"ed, I'm referring to the simpler shapes and lack of ornamentation, like a piece of modern architecture. I'm not claiming they took any direct influence from Bauhaus. But on that note... The "Metro" design that's used in W8/W10/WM was influenced by the New York subway's graphic design, which may if you follow the chain back lead to Bauhaus.

Also, I'm not really an engineer. And I'd find your dismissal patronising even if I was. Stop putting people into buckets.

> Also, where's the evidence that simpler geometric designs are better than more complex or detailed designs, in either cost, functionality, appearance or long-lasting-hood?

Not the OP and I don't have any hard-data at hand, but the no-ornament prefabricated apartment-blocks like they used to build in much of Eastern Europe after WW2 [1] were definitely a lot cheaper to build in a shorter period of time compared to buildings which had ornaments and unique features.

In fact, I do have data supporting this, but it's not easily accessible online and it's not in English, more exactly I do have a collection of Romanian architecture magazines published throughout the 1950s where the architects of that time (meaning those that had not been imprisoned by the communists) were discussing about the cheapest and fastest ways to build housing for the country's working class. Those (in-)famous apartment-blocks that started springing up shortly after that (I'd say beginning of the '60s) were the result.

You can see details about this on the wiki page for the Khrushchyovka apartment-blocks [2]:

> Traditional masonry is labor-intensive; individual projects were slow and not scalable to the needs of overcrowded cities. To ameliorate a severe housing shortage, during 1947–1951 Soviet architects evaluated various technologies attempting to reduce costs and completion time. During January 1951, an architects' convention, supervised by Khrushchev (then the party director of Moscow), declared low-cost, quick technologies the objective of Soviet architects.

and

> During 1954–1961, engineer Vitaly Lagutenko, chief planner of Moscow since 1956, designed and tested the mass-scale, industrialized construction process, relying on concrete panel plants and a quick assembly schedule. During 1961, Lagutenko's institute released the K-7 design of a prefabricated 5-story building that became typical of the Khrushchyovka. 64,000 units (3,000,000 m2 (32,000,000 sq ft)) of this type were built in Moscow from 1961 to 1968.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Plattenb...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka

Fair enough. They may be cheaper short-term. But I'm noticing from the flat roofs that they might not be so long-lasting (how likely are they to cave in from snow or rain?). So they might not be cheaper long-term. But I guess they might have their place.

The planning of Soviet prefabricated concrete housing was definitely ideological as well as economic.

Bauhaus was a bit more idealistic, you're right. There was a notion that building large numbers of minimum houses was the only just way to use scarce resources. There was a housing shortage, and building for the Existenzminimum was seen as the Pareto optimal thing to do (anything more costly/luxurious would be unfair to those left waiting).

The best critical book I know about this period is by Hilde Heynen.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=hGFZl9sHIhUC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA...

BTW, flat roofs have a bad reputation because of problems with the timber rotting due to condensation in the wrong places. With proper use of vapor barriers, a modern timber flat roof should last as well as the alternatives.

How many winter-years of flat roofs would be convincing that they are effective?

Also those chairs are really uncomfortable.

I was in a satellite office of my company in Poland a couple of months ago, and scattered around the place were these meter high plastic egg pod things that looked like robots from a Portal game. Took me a while to realize they were garbage cans. For god's sake, people, can't we even let a trash can be itself?

Sadly I can't remember where I heard it, it may have been in the documentary "Objectified", but there's a designer that raises an interesting point. It's something along the lines of: "Why are there still uncomfortable chairs? It's a solved problem, we know how to design chairs."

Honest question: where do I find out how to design a comfortable chair?

Not all chairs should be comfortable. Really comfortable chairs in the subway would be ridiculous.

Why?

The design principle of this chair is something you don't see: "accessible to everyone".

An uncomfortable but functional chair that you can afford and own is preferable to a comfortable chair you can't afford and don't own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com