Modernist Architects On a Crusade Against Beauty
- Thread starter Aldarion
- Start date
Yinko
Well-known member
I think part of it is ratio. Classical styles tend to be very broad, and have lines that draw the eye to how wide they are. Gothic tend to be taller and have lines that draw the eye to heaven. There are other tricks as well, I'm sure, but those are the most obvious ones I've noted.
AnimalNoodles
Well-known member
Much of modern art can be explained in terms of being a money laundering and tax evasion scheme.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
I think the hand sculpture would be better if it had more surrealist figures to balance it out. Rather than giving off the impression of something alien it looks like something odd just sort of hanging there.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Certainly. Thinking about it, Gothic architecture has several things which make it appear less "solid" compared to classical architecture:
1) As you said, ratio. Classical buildings tend to be broad, which means they fill up the visual area, while Gothic buildings go upwards. This is important because human eyes are set horizontally, so if two buildings have same area, vertical one will leave field of vision much sooner than a horizontal one.
2) Detail. Classical styles usually also tend to have more massive ornamentation, and in general details on them are just larger. Gothic architecture employed novel building techniques to allow it to be slimmer in general - it is not just that the lines draw the eye to the heaven, but building elements themselves are more gracile. And while classical buildings tended to have a large area with ornamentation (e.g. Parthenon), in Gothic architecture the ornamentation is often inset - one ornament will surround or contain a different style of an ornament (see examples here and here - notice how even if you remove the window itself in the first image or the sculptures in the second, there is still extensive ornamentation remaining. Compare this to reconstructed Partenon or Pantheon, where main decorative elements are massive and self-contained, so if you remove them, all you have left is an empty space). Basically, you could say that Gothic architecture is, in a sense, fractal. See here on why this matters.
3) Orientation. When you look at the Gothic buildings, both the building itself and the ornamentation on the building - arches, sculptures, details of the wall in general, all point upwards. Ornamentation on the Greek temples tend to be read like a book - from side to side (see example here). Sculptures on the Gothic buildings tend to be self-contained in their alcoves, and their stance and setup tend to draw the human eye upwards.
4) Utilization of light. Unlike previous building styles, Gothic architecture tends to have large windows, which again have a pointed vault. And not only windows are large, but there are several architectural elements - specifically the flying buttresses - that allow the structure to expand into the space without taking it up. Romanesque churches end where their walls end; Gothic churches do not.
Yinko
Well-known member
I think a common critique of the detail of the gothic, and later baroque and rococo styles, is that when not pulled off correctly the fractal nature can be dizzying. I think this criticism became something of a lazy stance by modernists though, perhaps thinking that fractal designs were unique to Europe.
Look at Chinese architectural joinery used as both functionally and decoratively (same is true of Japanese and Korean since it's the same carpentry tradition).
Look at the Thai, Cambodian and Burmese palaces and temples.
Look at the Fort of Agra built by the Mughals to imitate their traditional joinery and scrollwork but in red sandstone.
Look at the plaster ceilings of Granada.
These all take the same idea of fractal architecture and apply it in different ways and with different degrees of success. Personally, I prefer how the East Asian joinery styles tend to hide the details, thus allowing for the grand view to be more clean and minimalistic while the you end up finding little morsels of delight everywhere you look as you get closer. But that has more to do with the architectural philosophy than it does the specific style, just as Gothic and Rococo are, at their foundations, the same but with different philosophical sophistications.
Yinko
Well-known member
I'm a fan of art deco and whatever this is called:
26 Architectural House Styles That Built America
From the Colonial homes on the East Coast to Mediterranean-inspired California beach homes, these are the house styles that built American neighborhoods.
homebuyer.com
This is also due to the location these buildings tend to be built in. You seem to keep forgetting that a large part of architecture is just engineering and there are PRACTICAL reasons for these things.
The core reason, for instance, of the verticality of Gothic architecture is that these buildings tended to be built in cities where there was little room to expand outward. Further, expanding outward was simpler and easier from an engineering standpoint. Going UPWARDS though both utilized the space they had as well as was the more difficult thing to do, thus there was an aspect of showing off to building tall complex structures.
This is probably why Neoclassical caught on in the US over some form of Neogothic though we have some quite impressive Neogothic Cathedrals, for instance:
In the US we didn't have to account for surrounding space as much, since many of our Neoclassical buildings were built in undeveloped land.
It also shows some traces of Neoclassical. Note the square pillars and the triangle structure on the entry.According to that list it'd probably be called "Cottage Style". It's a fairly common and inoffensive housing style that is popular with real-estate industries due to its resale-ability.26 Architectural House Styles That Built America
From the Colonial homes on the East Coast to Mediterranean-inspired California beach homes, these are the house styles that built American neighborhoods.
Yinko
Well-known member
During the formation of the United States there were two major contributing factors to the architecture chosen by the nascent government: the popular style at the time trended towards being more classical in England (this is the Georgian period where they were trying to blend together staid English Baroque with clean Classical) the US just took it one step further and went full classical.
The further reasons for this were that the US was in desperate need for mythology and cultural roots, they were claiming a heritage of Athenian democracy to conceal the link to their actual parliamentarian origins. There were similar justifications for other things as well, dollars and cents come from Spanish currency in order to snub the English, and myths about figures like Washington were to provide a constructed origin story for people to unify around.
It's all about engineering cultural stability, given that the Revolutionary War was closer to a civil war with families and communities torn apart by having chosen different sides, if there was no way to heal the social fabric then the country would have been still-born.
What crap is this?
Look, I get revisionism about the American Founders and Framers is common, but this is utter nonsense. We have EXTENSIVE writing by the Founders and Framers about their thoughts on government and why they chose the things they did, and "hiding their parliamentarian origins" never appears in any of the writings on government. Further, the founders and framers had a very low opinion of Athenian democracy, to the point where they mentioned Athens it was as a warning AGAINST letting democracy go to far. They made no claims to the heritage of Athens and wanted nothing to do with Democracy seeing it as akin to anarchy and inherently easily corrupted.
Who they purposefully were harkening back to is right there in what they decided on the country was: A REPUBLIC. Further, there's a reason the upper chamber of the Federal government was called the SENATE. The classical architecture, the model for government, they were all meant to reference ROME, not Athens.
Further, there's almost nothing of the British Parliamentarian system in the American system. About the only thing is common is a bicameral legislature, but bicameral legislatures are hardly unique to the British Parliamentary system, and the US was not originally going to even adopt a bicameral system initially until it was proposed as part of the compromises that formed the US Constitution as a power balancing measure between the large states and small states. None of the prior plans until the Great Compromise feature a bicameral legislature, despite all the US States at the time having bicameral legislatures. The US' Federal government had much more in common with the State governments that had developed after the Revolution than with the British Parliamentary system. There's a reason, for instance, we have strictly separate Executive branches in the US whereas in British Parliamentary systems the Executive branch tends to be subordinate to the Parliament: this traces back to Executive authority in the colonies being held by the crown-appointed governor while the local state legislatures, which were locally elected, held legislative power. The governor position became a locally elected position in the aftermath of the Revolution, rather than crown appointed, but continued to remain separate from the Legislation. The US President, while many see it as being an elected "king" as a comparison to the British system, has much more in common with both in power and position as State Governors.
I get it, people love deconstructing the "origin myths" of the US, but the fact is when it comes to the form and structure of the US government we have truly ridiculous amounts of writings from public essays to personal letters going over the reasons and motivations for the decisions they made at the Constitutional Convention, and ascribing things like "they were just trying to hide them copying the Parliamentary system" is not anywhere among them.
Given that the Founding Fathers (I believe) often talked about pressing their birthright as Englishmen, and initially only sought further representation in Parliament, I reckon they still did take a surprising amount of inspiration from England’s ancient constitution. However, what makes America unique, is how they tried to fuse that with the Roman Res Publica with quite a bit of success in my opinion.
It’s a curious hybrid of Magna Carta and SPQR, but it ended up conquering the world so there’s a lot to be said for it.
It’s a curious hybrid of Magna Carta and SPQR, but it ended up conquering the world so there’s a lot to be said for it.
We did learn a lot from the british but I think the important one was. Actually write down your consitution and the limitations on the government that said consitution provides. In doing this we gave all of those petty tyrants in life who just live to fuck over other people less power and more restrictions.
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
Well, an example from Poland's backyard. What do you think it is?
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
Because up close, from a distance it looks like a lemon squeezer
And this thing, is supposed to be a Catholic church. More specifically, the Church of the Divine Providence in Wilanów, a 'prestigious' district of Warsaw.
it was built by communists.