am I lonely in seeing how ugly architecture is? how ugly a sight the pouring of viscous grey concrete molasses is that threatens to drown out any flight of fantasy , the aggresive abrasiveness of steel rods, the olympian heaviness of what you would wish to be the lightest of elements, a glass pane...You walk into a 'beautiful, space, and you see this surface that has been smoothened over by a pair of hands that grew up in poverty and fled to another country to make some money to feed another pair of tiny hands growing up without its dad...What a beautiful space, what light, what arch-angels that dance around these manmade crystalline stars, what a wonderful joint, what appeasing reuinion between tile and tile and tile and tile that was spat out by the cold neck-tied rationale of people wanting to make money from your joy, money money money. and, growing up in a real zone, a war zone, a water and mineral zone, you know what materials look like. the contractor is the ugly side of the construction industry because he knows how ugly materials are, how many deaths they could or did cause to his team, how unobedient, messy and impenetrable by the imagination they are. consider this when you spew out that nonsense about beauty of materials or that other nonsense about performative material systems. architecture is not about expressing the beauty of materials, it is about repressing their ugliness...and that is where architecture's ugliness lies: it is the dorian grey portrait of the ugly construction industry...a deception trading in ugliness and biding its time.
i'm not convinved. i'm convinced that there must be a spark of self-loathing in every architect, hidden, shameful...but still there.
hello Micah. i see this ugliness in the making-of and in the designing-of. there is too much being made of the beauty or intrigue of architecture (Lackey) and too much nonchalance regarding its undeserving-of-commentary normalcy (dutch) and not enough attention is paid to its insuduous, abiding and calculating ugliness. i think it deserves being voiced. or must we only alternate between the channel of soft porn experiential phenomenology about licking the granite walls and sticking yuor fingers into dark porous crevices and the hard core channel of hard corn porn that shows the no-bullshit neo-positivistic banker-engineer-architects getting down to business?
Our world is ugly. Zoom in a on super model's skin and you'll see how unattractive pores really are. Zoom in on anything and you see the nastiness that is our world, everything from the survivor-of-the-fittest to a black hole. So much destruction and death, and yet we still find beauty in all of it.
Architecture is beautiful, in this regard, and is something we create out of ugliness. It can be ugly, and, indeed, most of it is, but I would contend that architecture is the potential for beauty to be created out of the mundane, boring and lifeless.
Go zoom in, if you must, but don't overlook the larger picture. Architecture merely represents a human possibility to create beauty out of nothing, just as nature does around us, every moment, every day, at every scale.
Are you convinced there are exceptions? What about materials Designed, formed, and assembled by habita for humanity volunteers, by architecture for humanity volunteers, by members of eco illages building and maintaining their own structures, or by well-paid craftsmen and tradesmen who understanding and love their materials as memebers of their family?
Agreed. Architecture is merely a by product of so many sentient mammals. If architecture disgusts you then I wonder what your thoughts are on the human condition?
...some slightly kooky ecologists yearn for the end of humans for the sake of the planet...
Nov 23, 11 8:27 am ·
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how convinced are you?
am I lonely in seeing how ugly architecture is? how ugly a sight the pouring of viscous grey concrete molasses is that threatens to drown out any flight of fantasy , the aggresive abrasiveness of steel rods, the olympian heaviness of what you would wish to be the lightest of elements, a glass pane...You walk into a 'beautiful, space, and you see this surface that has been smoothened over by a pair of hands that grew up in poverty and fled to another country to make some money to feed another pair of tiny hands growing up without its dad...What a beautiful space, what light, what arch-angels that dance around these manmade crystalline stars, what a wonderful joint, what appeasing reuinion between tile and tile and tile and tile that was spat out by the cold neck-tied rationale of people wanting to make money from your joy, money money money. and, growing up in a real zone, a war zone, a water and mineral zone, you know what materials look like. the contractor is the ugly side of the construction industry because he knows how ugly materials are, how many deaths they could or did cause to his team, how unobedient, messy and impenetrable by the imagination they are. consider this when you spew out that nonsense about beauty of materials or that other nonsense about performative material systems. architecture is not about expressing the beauty of materials, it is about repressing their ugliness...and that is where architecture's ugliness lies: it is the dorian grey portrait of the ugly construction industry...a deception trading in ugliness and biding its time.
i'm not convinved. i'm convinced that there must be a spark of self-loathing in every architect, hidden, shameful...but still there.
you escape in your e-scape
at least you have one
Simply - the point of architecture is to be "inside".
Maybe in fantasyland people can magically will themselves "inside", but in reality it requires the use of materials and a labor force.
Your attempt at describing how ugly architecture is only made me think of how complex and interesting architecture is...
and thats besides the point as well
t a m m u z: who knows what you were going for there, but i found that inspiring.
hello Micah. i see this ugliness in the making-of and in the designing-of. there is too much being made of the beauty or intrigue of architecture (Lackey) and too much nonchalance regarding its undeserving-of-commentary normalcy (dutch) and not enough attention is paid to its insuduous, abiding and calculating ugliness. i think it deserves being voiced. or must we only alternate between the channel of soft porn experiential phenomenology about licking the granite walls and sticking yuor fingers into dark porous crevices and the hard core channel of hard corn porn that shows the no-bullshit neo-positivistic banker-engineer-architects getting down to business?
i did say corn porn ... yes i did
Our world is ugly. Zoom in a on super model's skin and you'll see how unattractive pores really are. Zoom in on anything and you see the nastiness that is our world, everything from the survivor-of-the-fittest to a black hole. So much destruction and death, and yet we still find beauty in all of it.
Architecture is beautiful, in this regard, and is something we create out of ugliness. It can be ugly, and, indeed, most of it is, but I would contend that architecture is the potential for beauty to be created out of the mundane, boring and lifeless.
Go zoom in, if you must, but don't overlook the larger picture. Architecture merely represents a human possibility to create beauty out of nothing, just as nature does around us, every moment, every day, at every scale.
Are you convinced there are exceptions? What about materials Designed, formed, and assembled by habita for humanity volunteers, by architecture for humanity volunteers, by members of eco illages building and maintaining their own structures, or by well-paid craftsmen and tradesmen who understanding and love their materials as memebers of their family?
Sorry for typos. Tuped on iphone didnt work so well.
Agreed. Architecture is merely a by product of so many sentient mammals. If architecture disgusts you then I wonder what your thoughts are on the human condition?
...some slightly kooky ecologists yearn for the end of humans for the sake of the planet...
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