Comment by somewhereoutth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somewhereoutth | Hacker News Reader

The author is head of housing at the Centre for Policy Studies, a UK based right-wing think tank. Therefore we should not be surprised if this article is informed by the wider conservative philosophy (old is good, new is bad).

However, let's take it on its merits. The distinction it makes between architectural competence (what it calls 'goodness') and style is correct and important. But I don't think it successfully makes the argument that it is easier to be competent using old styles. See McMansions for an example of how a vernacular can be twisted into bricks and mortar (and drywall) horror, and there are plenty more examples of modern interventions ruined by hackneyed attempts at traditionalism. Furthermore, I'd argue that bright architects, most likely to produce competent work, are not going to be drawn to cookie cutter trad style starter homes (for example).

It calls out Brutalism specifically, but that style has been out of fashion since before many of us were born - though remains a favourite bug-bear of the reactionary right.

It rightly notes that architecture is a public art - but given that so few buildings are actually designed by architects (as it also notes), those that are should challenge the public. Not always and everytime, but if art does not challenge us, it ceases to be art and becomes merely decoration of culturally barren lives.

A counter-point to the central thesis - that architecture should be easy: Central Lisbon is a wet dream for this idea, trad everything, and very beautiful too. Yet it feels suffocating and sterile - no room for the future. I'd rather it had gleaming tower blocks, full of hopes and dreams, like downtown SF. Crossing the Bay Bridge in SF you feel a sense of excitement, adventure and potential. Whereas every time I cross the '24th Abril' I get depressed - the most notable feature I can see is the cruise ships parked at the terminal.

I don't think re-classifying a widely disliked building as "challenging" is doing anybody any favors. When you build a sidewalk for the public, you don't make it "challenging" by, for example, only making it as wide as a balance beam.

A building must suit its purpose, and part of its purpose is to mesh with its surroundings. You shouldn't build a building that looks like Megatron exploded in the middle of a neighborhood of half-timbered buildings, no matter how challenging it may be to the people who look at it every day.

And let's not forget, a lot of traditionalist design took into account a world without HVAC and other hacks. If you want energy efficiency, looking to solutions that tackled the problem in a more fundamental way is a good thing, rather than papering over the problem with technology.

But you are correct about McMansions twisting the vernacular. The crime I always see is how the garage is, inevitably, front and center. It may be a Neo-Georgian whatever around the front door, but right there next to it is the hallowed automobile temple, like a phylactery to the Saints of petroleum refinery.

>And let's not forget, a lot of traditionalist design took into account a world without HVAC and other hacks. If you want energy efficiency, looking to solutions that tackled the problem in a more fundamental way is a good thing, rather than papering over the problem with technology.

A lot of these houses were heated with a coal fire in every room, they are completely uninsulated and sitting anywhere near the window in the dead of winter would be very cold! There is something to be said for applying modern passive solar design techniques, insulation and airtightness coupled with heat recovery ventilation. Of course, this does mean you can only have big Georgian style windows on south(ish) facing facades.

> the hallowed automobile temple, like a phylactery to the Saints of petroleum refinery

Ha, I'd say this is a completely mixed metaphor, except it is a simile... Phylacteries are used by Jewish men, and contain verses of the Torah inside, which are worn on the head and the arm (following a literal interpretation of "bind these words to your forehead and to your arms"). Jews do not have "saints", they have "tzadikim" (righteous ones). Christian saints, on the other hand, are either venerated with an ikon (an image of the saint) or through a relic (generally a bone of the saint) housed in a reliquary. Although a reliquary is way too small for a garage, so maybe a chapel which houses the reliquary. A "shrine" may also house a reliquary, I'm not sure, I tend to think of "shrine" as being to a non-monotheistic god. Generally Christian houses of worship are not "temples", except for some Pentecostally churches in the 1960s, and Jews only have a "Temple", which would be in Jerusalem if there were one.

"like a shrine to the petroleum industry" would be

I also think that focusing on single buildings, like the author of the article mostly does, is not helping anyone. Exquisite building after exquisite building might end up creating a total non-sense, while on the other hand boring building after boring building can create a really nice and liveable thing.

Back to the exquisite buildings, I'm now on the coast of South-Western Greece and I can see this first hand, as there are lots and lots of villas scattered around the hills here which villas, taken individually, have a decent enough modernist architectural style, but when you look at them as a whole is a cacophony pure and simple (ignoring the habitat destruction, that is).

On the other hand the very boring buildings from the downtown small Greek town where I'm now staying have almost nothing going for them individually and from an architectural pov, if not for some details here and there, but taken together the discourse changes completely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com