It would be hard for me to have a lower opinion than I do about architects since WWII; and they seem to get worse.
The bad architecture of the 1950s-70s was boxy and nasty - but cheap and broadly functional. Since the 1990s, however, buildings are boxy, nasty, expensive and grossly dysfunctional.
The above is an ariel picture of the new primary school, built in the latter 2000s, to replace a reasonably attractive but very badly neglected Victorian school. Both my kids attended, across years spanning before, during, and after the rebuild.
Instead constructing an ugly, expensive, and badly dysfunctional design.
The major dysfunctionality of this school was related to the large population of the school - 700 kids - and a small site; such that there was never much space for the children to do things outside.
However, as can be seen from the ariel view; the site had the advantage of being almost square; so that a-designed-from-scratch school could - in principle - make-useful nearly-all of the available space; most obviously by building close-to and parallel-with the edges of the site.
Instread, the architects (and education authority) squandered this advantage; by building much of the school at about 45-degrees angle with the boundaries; thereby reducing much of the precious outdoor space to small and useless triangles (plus other small and useless "corridors" where buildings are set needlessly far back from boundaries).
So, generations of children have-had, and will-have, their already restricted outdoor space gratuitously reduced even further...
And all for no good reason at all - except the whim of architects in thrall to their idiotic "fashions", and presumably the dumb gullibility/ bribability of local government officials.
Ugly architecture is my bugaboo. I've come to the same conclusion; architecture since the post war period is absolutely hideous. It seems there was a collective drive to throw up buildings purely for the sake of efficiency. In America almost all new apartment buildings I see are glass and steel blocks. Cold , lifeless. It's poisonous to the soul.
ReplyDeleteIt used to be that architects would design buildings to be pleasing to eye, to bring a bit of beauty into this world that would be appreciated by generations hence. I wonder though, have even the French abandoned beauty for the sake of efficiency? They gave us art nouveau after all.
What do you think of art Deco?
“Evil for the sake of evil” drives every form of creative endeavor (movies, books, music, theater) we should not be surprised it has also infected architecture. In each case the gatekeepers of the field won’t let anything beautiful get through except by fortunate accident.
ReplyDelete@B - "every form of creative endeavor" - Indeed, but architects blight the lives of almost everyone; those who cannot avoid seeing their stuff; but especially of those who must work and dwell in their buildings - so I hate architects the most.
ReplyDeleteNot only that, but the rooflines of the school are a mess, and the odd angles of the building ensure that many rooms cannot be laid out efficiently: rectangular desks, shelves, tables, etc. don't work well in rooms that are not rectangular.
ReplyDeleteI hate postwar architecture. The modernists used to say that form follows function, but as you say, the modernist builidings *don't function.*
My personal bugaboo when it comes even to recently built houses that are at least trying to employ the vernacular of traditional houses: odd shaped windows for no reason, and incoherent agglomerations of rooflets that add no shelter but cost a lot.
@Kristor - Good point about inner shapes.
ReplyDeleteAnother aspect is that buildings of the past needed to be, and were, adapted to enable changing organization and function - dividing a large space into rooms, opening two rooms into one, adding extensions. The post-millennial buildings are almost impossible to adapt adequately - they are monoliths.
I worked in auniversity department building, constructed around 2000; that had a large open plan space with a high ceiling, about fifty feet? All the upper space was wasted permanently - and could not be divided horizontally because of the materials used.
And for similar reasons the space could not be subdivided when it was realized (which took about three days!) the open plan was useless equally for supervising students and scientific research.
It ended up very quickly subdivided into cubicles, which were almost useless because offering no privacy or security - but somewhat more useful than than the single open space that had been designed.
Also, as per usual, the flat roof (which depended on 100 integrity of "rubber" seals between large plates of glass - ie. subject to thermal expansion and contraction) began to leak within a few weeks of the buildigs occupation.
Depsite all this - the building was shortlisted for an architectural award.
@SWC - My point here is that since the millennium (at least) the buildings are Not efficient, they are not even trying to be efficient - they are ugly (and very expensive) and dyfunctional to boot. There is no excuse for this - it is evil for the sake of evil.
ReplyDeleteI like Art Deco, or at least most of it. The last valid architectural movement.
The Agatha Christia Poirot series starring David Suchet was set in the early 1930s, and every episode features different Art Deco buildings (occasionally they use the same building more than once) - it's quite an education!