adma
Superstar
Perhaps if you include Charlie "Monstrous Carbuncles Suck O.K." Windsor, maybe the commonalities become clearer...
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Globe: Berlusconi's Viagra
- Thread starter wyliepoon
- Start date
Perhaps if you include Charlie "Monstrous Carbuncles Suck O.K." Windsor, maybe the commonalities become clearer...
TKTKTK
Senior Member
Other than all three engaging in criticism, I don't see the common thread through their arguments.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
They're all exploiting average Joe's sense of alienation for personal gain.
TKTKTK
Senior Member
That's ridiculous.
No criticism is valid if it criticizes the modern? It's all pandering? You guys are too in love, you've become blind.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Why would average Joe, or any sane person for that matter, be guided in issues of good design by any of these people?
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:SilvioBerlusconiBello.jpg
http://www.theselby.com/2007TomWolfe/pages/2007TomWolfe244.html
http://www.contactmusic.com/photos.nsf/main/prince_charles_1844625
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:SilvioBerlusconiBello.jpg
http://www.theselby.com/2007TomWolfe/pages/2007TomWolfe244.html
http://www.contactmusic.com/photos.nsf/main/prince_charles_1844625
TKTKTK
Senior Member
Exactly who is "guided" by them? There's a difference between blindly following some pundit's lead, and engaging in critique based on your own experiences and opinions. I hardly think Windsor, Wolfe, or Berlusconi are emptily repeating someone else's words (or hollowly defending someone else's argument). It should also be pointed out that none of the three are strangers to art or architecture (whether contemporary or historical)
You're trying to suggest that ANYONE who takes a critical stance when it comes to modern architecture is necessarily on the wrong side of the argument. That's a very close minded way to look at things, and a major stumbling block to future progress.
I realize, too, that it isn't so much an aesthetic dogmatism, as a dogmatism linked to deference to the 'elite'. You're willing to accept new, outrageous, answers; but they must come from a familiar source
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Alienated average Joe is unlikely to learn much about modernist design, and escape from his lunatic fringe ghetto, from any of those three. Berlusconi collects Canaletto, from the pre-industrial age - and what has he ever said about architecture other than this comment on Libeskind? Chucky "Poundbury" Carbuncle also wallows in pre-industrial age taste. Wolfe never met a modernist building he liked.
TKTKTK
Senior Member
You tell me. I'm not the one trying to pigeonhole his position. I don't doubt that he, like most, has varied opinions on most things. But, none of this takes away the validity of his criticism
Criticizing this building does not make you a modern hater. It makes you an ugly building hater.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
... no, just a booger-eating Italian Prime Minister.
adma
Superstar
More TKTKTK fellatio here...
http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=31&storycode=3119445&c=1
Manufacturing consent
1 August 2008
Architecture only has a walk-on part in the great drama of public life. But it’s still part of the drama so, if you want to get a better idea of what’s going on in architecture, you need to look at the whole performance.
To see how we’re governed you need to go right to the heart of public life. The government is democratic, but democracy has been in the doldrums for some time. Some call it voter apathy, the Fabian Society calls it post-democracy but mostly it’s called the democratic deficit. In recent years, and even in the past few months, the French, Dutch and now the Irish referendums have shown us just how little our governing elite trust us. Former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing summed it up nicely: “Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly.†No wonder we’ve become apathetic.
How does this fit with architecture? Cabe is a quango that has grown by mopping up the ambitions of politicians who talk up design but have no idea what to do with it. In 2004, it commissioned a survey to find out what people wanted from their houses. They’d had a survey on the same subject only two years before and found that most people liked traditional houses. Cabe is an organ of an establishment that is instinctively opposed to traditional design, so, like the EU with the Irish, they hoped that by asking the same question again they’d get the answer they wanted. When the result only confirmed that “most homebuyers favoured houses and apartments with traditional-looking exteriorsâ€, they quickly buried the figures and wrote a woolly report instead.
This research only repeated hard evidence that has consistently shown that about 80% of the British public want traditional designs for their houses. And there’s no logical reason to suppose that it’s any different for other types of buildings. The design professions, however, don’t trust the public – they know better. The suggestion that architects should design what the public says it likes is usually treated with horror and ridicule. One respected architect recently went so far as to announce that traditional designs, by definition, couldn’t be good.
If the design professionals know best, what is it that they know that ordinary people don’t? Everyone knows that buildings have to do a job. They’re supposed to function, stand up and keep the water out. There’s no mystery here. The big secret seems to be that buildings have to look as far away as possible from anything that might be described as traditional. With this in mind, the architectural establishment, architects advising planners and (frighteningly) an increasing number of planning officials themselves, do their level best to make sure that anyone who wants to make their buildings look traditional doesn’t succeed. And if anyone does, they rubbish them.
And what’s the justification for this? It’s that if you’re going to be “of your timeâ€, “for today†or “for the futureâ€, you have to be very obviously different. This is, of course, nonsense. The future isn’t fixed, it’s what we want to make it. Being different is often billed as innovation – generally a good thing in an industrialised consumer society. But this muddles up innovation in industry, which is technical, with innovation in aesthetics, which is just taste.
All this is propped up by a crazy formula: being different is good + the public doesn’t like different things = if the public doesn’t like it, it must be good. In the past few weeks a very old and very honoured architect let it be known that he was under the sad delusion that his 50-year-long design routine was still shocking. It never occurred to him that it stopped being shocking ages ago; it is now predictable and boring and people don’t like it.
But still architects hang on, convinced that they are right and history will prove it. To paraphrase Giscard: “Public opinion will come round, whether they like it or not, if we keep presenting them with something they don’t like.†It hasn’t.
Perhaps architects should stop insulting the public and devote their creativity to making what the public likes, only better.
Postscript :
Robert Adam is director of Robert Adam Architects
http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=31&storycode=3119445&c=1
Manufacturing consent
1 August 2008
Architecture only has a walk-on part in the great drama of public life. But it’s still part of the drama so, if you want to get a better idea of what’s going on in architecture, you need to look at the whole performance.
To see how we’re governed you need to go right to the heart of public life. The government is democratic, but democracy has been in the doldrums for some time. Some call it voter apathy, the Fabian Society calls it post-democracy but mostly it’s called the democratic deficit. In recent years, and even in the past few months, the French, Dutch and now the Irish referendums have shown us just how little our governing elite trust us. Former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing summed it up nicely: “Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly.†No wonder we’ve become apathetic.
How does this fit with architecture? Cabe is a quango that has grown by mopping up the ambitions of politicians who talk up design but have no idea what to do with it. In 2004, it commissioned a survey to find out what people wanted from their houses. They’d had a survey on the same subject only two years before and found that most people liked traditional houses. Cabe is an organ of an establishment that is instinctively opposed to traditional design, so, like the EU with the Irish, they hoped that by asking the same question again they’d get the answer they wanted. When the result only confirmed that “most homebuyers favoured houses and apartments with traditional-looking exteriorsâ€, they quickly buried the figures and wrote a woolly report instead.
This research only repeated hard evidence that has consistently shown that about 80% of the British public want traditional designs for their houses. And there’s no logical reason to suppose that it’s any different for other types of buildings. The design professions, however, don’t trust the public – they know better. The suggestion that architects should design what the public says it likes is usually treated with horror and ridicule. One respected architect recently went so far as to announce that traditional designs, by definition, couldn’t be good.
If the design professionals know best, what is it that they know that ordinary people don’t? Everyone knows that buildings have to do a job. They’re supposed to function, stand up and keep the water out. There’s no mystery here. The big secret seems to be that buildings have to look as far away as possible from anything that might be described as traditional. With this in mind, the architectural establishment, architects advising planners and (frighteningly) an increasing number of planning officials themselves, do their level best to make sure that anyone who wants to make their buildings look traditional doesn’t succeed. And if anyone does, they rubbish them.
And what’s the justification for this? It’s that if you’re going to be “of your timeâ€, “for today†or “for the futureâ€, you have to be very obviously different. This is, of course, nonsense. The future isn’t fixed, it’s what we want to make it. Being different is often billed as innovation – generally a good thing in an industrialised consumer society. But this muddles up innovation in industry, which is technical, with innovation in aesthetics, which is just taste.
All this is propped up by a crazy formula: being different is good + the public doesn’t like different things = if the public doesn’t like it, it must be good. In the past few weeks a very old and very honoured architect let it be known that he was under the sad delusion that his 50-year-long design routine was still shocking. It never occurred to him that it stopped being shocking ages ago; it is now predictable and boring and people don’t like it.
But still architects hang on, convinced that they are right and history will prove it. To paraphrase Giscard: “Public opinion will come round, whether they like it or not, if we keep presenting them with something they don’t like.†It hasn’t.
Perhaps architects should stop insulting the public and devote their creativity to making what the public likes, only better.
Postscript :
Robert Adam is director of Robert Adam Architects
Redroom Studios
Senior Member
sorry for jumping in midstream here, but ...
while I do like Adam's dedication and talent to continuing traditional building styles, I cant quite buy the logic of his essay. To me its clear that he comes from a biased point of view (for better or worse) and then he crafts his argument to suit that bias. There will always be a part of the population that is edgy and wants to see something new - as many as 20% according to Adam's own quoted statistics! Architecture isnt democratic. There can always be something different to appeal to the wide range of tastes out there.
Perhaps his argument is more cut and dry when applied to rural England...
while I do like Adam's dedication and talent to continuing traditional building styles, I cant quite buy the logic of his essay. To me its clear that he comes from a biased point of view (for better or worse) and then he crafts his argument to suit that bias. There will always be a part of the population that is edgy and wants to see something new - as many as 20% according to Adam's own quoted statistics! Architecture isnt democratic. There can always be something different to appeal to the wide range of tastes out there.
Perhaps his argument is more cut and dry when applied to rural England...