The Architect Has No Clothes: Why so much modern design looks harsh and feels inhospitable

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org



The Architect Has No Clothes
Why so much modern design looks harsh and feels inhospitable

By Michael Mehaffy & Nikos A. Salingaros



For 40 years, people have been talking about how to fix Boston's City Hall Plaza. (Credit: Photo by "Project for Public Spaces":www.pps.org )


1. Seeing the World Differently

Have you ever looked at a bizarre building design and wondered, “what were the architects thinking?” Have you looked at a supposedly “ecological” industrial-looking building, and questioned how it could be truly ecological? Or have you simply felt frustrated by a building that made you uncomfortable, or felt anger when a beautiful old building was razed and replaced with a contemporary eyesore? You might be forgiven for thinking “these architects must be blind!” New research shows that in a real sense, you might actually be right.

Environmental psychologists have long known about this widespread and puzzling phenomenon. Laboratory results show conclusively that architects literally see the world differently from non-architects. Not only do architects notice and look for different aspects of the environment than other people; their brains seem to synthesize an understanding of the world that has notable differences from natural reality. Instead of a contextual world of harmonious geometric relationships and connectedness, architects tend to see a world of objects set apart from their contexts, with distinctive, attention-getting qualities.

There are many such confirming studies. For example, Gifford et al. (2002) surveyed other research and noted that “architects did not merely disagree with laypersons about the aesthetic qualities of buildings, they were unable to predict how laypersons would assess buildings, even when they were explicitly asked to do so.” The researchers traced this disagreement to well-known cognitive differences in the two populations: “Evidence that certain cognitive properties are related to building preference (was) found.”

This phenomenon has important consequences for the kinds of structures that architects produce — consequences whose seriousness we believe are largely under-appreciated, and, very likely in some cases, repressed. We can begin to explain common contradictions as, for example, when architects produce a building they clearly think is wonderful, but a large majority of non-architects are found to hate it. The phenomenon of “architectural myopia” may also explain the repeated mistakes that architects make in fashioning built environments for others, which turn out to be woefully unsuccessful in what may seem obvious ways to laypeople. Lastly, “architectural myopia” explains the often-disastrous attempts that architects have made to fashion urban schemes for entire neighborhoods and cities. Architects do not see how certain designs disconnect and isolate people and create hostile environments that cannot be shared. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/architect-has-no-clothes

[msongs]

1. hmm, a few illustrations would be helpful to that article lol nt

[gateley]

2. Interesting. nt

[provis99]

3. the same can be said about artists and musicians.

Too many crappy post-modernist artists and musicians produce junk unbearable to the layperson, yet they seem to have a high opinion of it.

[Warpy]

4. City Hall Plaza isn't the only place there where you feel like a bug on a plate

The same bunch also screwed up Copley Square, although I understand that one has been made just a little bit more humane with benches and trees.

The justification at the time when those horrors were being bricked and paved was that they were going to be like the grand plazas in Italy, some idiot architect having admired them there but completely missing the scale of the surrounding buildings and the presence of multiple sidewalk cafes and flower stalls and other amenities for pedestrians. The ones they planted in Boston were bare, sterile, icy and windy in winter, and absolutely like griddles in summer.

I was one of the few who didn't object to the City Hall architecture, aggressively modern but interesting and a little less like something out of a fascist paradise than the Pru. However, that huge expanse of bare brick surrounding it has always been a horror.

They'd paved over Scollay Square, a honky tonk area of strip clubs and gin mills and I suppose the other idea was to erase it completely. In so doing, they erased any possibility of useful space.

If anyone here ever gets onto a City Council, beware of people who want to bring anything European into a US city unless they've really considered scale, surroundings, amenities, and climate. Otherwise, you're going to find yourself with a bricked over moonscape, sterile and unfit for anything living.

[Demeter]

7. You Explain Precisely Why I Could Never Warm Up to Boston

The best building in the area is the Isabella Stuart museum...a palazzo she brought over from Italy.

[snagglepuss]

5. Interesting but dubious as the argument wouldn't apply to Wren or any other

classic architect. It wouldn't even apply to Victorian architects. The arrogence of not caring about surrounding buildings seems to have started with the Bauhaus.

[Demeter]

6. We have a new branch library

Looks like a rusty garbage scow hauled up upon land





and the interior wastes space like nobody's business.

The only good feature is the underground parking.

[supernova]

8. a kind of Asperger's?

The idea that many modern buildings are built for the quirks of the architect and not for the care and habitat of the people who will use the building.

[prairierose]

9. Read Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House...

a very good explanation of modern(ist) architecture.

[no_hypocrisy]

10. Way to go, Howard Roark!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead

[Manifestor_of_Light]

11. ugly, sterile, not usable by humans.

No curved lines, rigid squares, no textural interest for your hands, no touchie, no ornamentation to look at, not to human scale, no visual interest, no color, just silver and white and black and gray.

[xchrom]

12. great topic -- seems to me you have to start w/ gaudi and other spanish modern architects,

the Bauhaus and their thoughts about mass production, FLW and why he didn't exert more influence, etc.

[Frontop]

13. good opinion

Sometimes, architects should collect people's opinions in order to avoid "a large majority of non-architects are found to hate it"