watch sci-fi movies.
dissect alien scene/set design.

interesting examples (just mute them and observe because many are horrible, at least plot-wise) :
chronicles of riddick (necromonger basilica),
stargate atlantis (wraith ships),
farscape (scarran ship interiors),
the haunting (look at how the sets morph from beautiful to formally hostile).

..and i actually think that as a full building, yeah, brutality and coercion will not result in a pleasurable experience for most people, but i do think there are specific spaces within a building where a hostile attitude has its place.



a more architectural / less complex reference, look into FLW's quotes in response to the height of most of his prairie house ceilings, and other "building defects". a lot of them can be summarized by "shut up, you should be grateful you live in a house designed by someone as awesome as me".

I have really come to enjoy Paul Virilio and Claude Parent (Architecture Principe) recently. Seeing their works only after I read some texts by Virillio is pretty amazing, considering his choice of subject.

umberto eco has a book out On Ugliness...perhaps marco frascari's book Monsters Of Architecture?

Eisenman's house VI forced the married couple to sleep in separate beds, among other things. Here's part of the client's response:

"http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3575/is_n1180_v197/ai_17277360/"

I think I also read a quote by him saying that he delights in the misery of those who visit his buildings. Maybe just my imagination.

Quick FYI on that one.

Rumor is Eisenman was banging the wife.

you should probably research and examine your own sadism. where does the impulse come from? what gets you off about it? its kinda small beans on an architcetural scale.

I don't think the brutality of Brutalism and the beton brut is about terrorizing anyone. Its just letting things be what the are.
LML's sububan candy-colored panopticon is more terrifying than Paul and Claude.
not to mention the thought of eisenman banging anything.
ewwww.

I think 90% of the built space on this planet is 'brutal' [whether through banality, commodity, entropy, decadence or actual brutality] enough without fetishizing it. You're right of course, you'll never get a design pushed through if you openly state the intention is to be unpleasant.

Actually, I was going to write a lot more but upon reconsideration I'm not. This post is so vapid, anti-intellectual, and oedipal that it's not worth it.

addictionbomb---> source?

My thesis was on forcing things (people, program elements, types of spaces) to interact in a way that would promote potential conflicts. For instance - study rooms next to a theater lobby, upper and lower income (also a racial component) housing units sharing common spaces, objects and spaces meeting in uncomfortable ways.

I think this kind of thing is ok in a theoretical sense. Part of learning about architecture is learning about how it can influence peoples actions and perceptions. In this sense, being able to make a space that someone definitely finds to be uncomfortable, shows the ability to achieve a desired result. Its better than making a space that makes you feel nothing.

The thing about it is, that this desire will have to come to an end at some point. I can't think of any instance where this would be desired in real buildings (even prisons, well maybe prisons in some 3rd world dictatorship).

Isn't that whole notion a bit wacked? I mean, shouldn't there be a Hippocratic Oath for architecture, where the point is to design ethically and not cause "misery", even at the level of talking about it "intellectually". How long would you stay in a room with a bunch of doctors discussing the "idea" of medical practice making people more sick and leading to their death?
In any case, if you want the outstanding example of an architecture that made people miserable, study Auschwitz...a bunch of blueprints and other documents have just been discovered.

Funny thing is that if Auschwitz weren't Auschwitz, its c19-20 Germanic barracks premises would actually be viewed as anything but miserable.

Also consider old critiques/defenses/theories about High Victorian Gothic, especially its William Butterfield-ian strains...

yea, real funny thing except for the electrified barbed-wired perimeter, the showers with no water pipes and no windows where no-one can hear you scream, and the very particular ovens........other than that it wasn't miserable at all.

Emilio, you know what's kind of funny... the AICP accreditation from the APA has an oath slash "code of conduct" that's similar to that.

Of course though near the end... it has a clause that you do whatever the people who you represent want you to do.

I don't think LML's example is particularly brutal. Maybe I'm missing the funny har-har joke architecture joke.

i think brutalism in architecture is different from brutality.

building cost alot, dun think anyone will spend that much just to build something to be unpleasant.

or say it with satire...

"Are you proposing to slaughter our tenants?"

or u mean this, but concentration camp is an architectural taboo...

Emilio, thinking there should be a code of ethics in design is naive beyond belief.

Whose ethics anyways? What is right and what is wrong? Would I ever be allowed to design a military base, a church or a walmart without having charges brought up to a conduct board?

Grow up.

oh really? well, I guess you told me...you're just so wise in your pronouncements...(although I suspect I have more than a few years on you). Yea, I know nothing about moral relativism, existentialism, and the design of prisons, detainment centers, and cubicle office spaces (talk about making people miserable)....I've been living in a cave, thanks for setting me straight.

I said nothing about conduct boards. But the poster is talking about "intellectual" discourse on architecture that makes people miserable...and I was deriding it as yet another masturbatory intellectual activity for architects ("with great lawyers I have discussed lepers and crooks"). Design whatever the fuck you want, it's your conscience and you have to be happy with yourself, but whatever happened to Commodity, Firmness, and DELIGHT? (that's delight, not misery).

and the above doesn't mean that anyone here shouldn't carry on said discourse on "the idea that design can be used to make people miserable"; whatever floats your boat, just that personally I don't see much value in it and will pop out now......so long.

dissection time:

-- "(although I suspect I have more than a few years on you)" --

cute.

-- "I was deriding it as yet another masturbatory intellectual activity for architects" --

-- "masturbatory intellectual activity" --

ok mr. ascetic.

i believe that a consideration of architecture as a way of making people miserable has some merits (even if at its worst, it becomes a sort of devil's advocate sort of activity, in practice). it floats my boat. and i like it when things float my boat. i don't have to go into a confessional booth after having impure thoughts about architecture.

-- "I said nothing about conduct boards." --
-- "I mean, shouldn't there be a Hippocratic Oath for architecture,"--

ok ok, yeah! Hippocratic oath for decor's sake! hell yeah!
come on man. please. when you you suggest stuff like that, think about the implications, don't get stuck on the first layer of thoughts that come to mind, it makes naive-looking posts.

-- "but whatever happened to Commodity, Firmness, and DELIGHT? " --

architecture as an intellectual practice should be dissociated from actual practice; much like the majority of medical research is dissociated from actual medical practice (we test drug delivery mechanisms on rats. we test architectural ideas in representation).

it allows, at its bare minimum, for actual free-inquiry without having to deal with construction budgets; at it's bare bare bare minimum.

the key here being free-inquiry.

-- "I've been living in a cave, thanks for setting me straight."

you're welcome.

It isn't architecture but Serra's Tilted Arc was designed to be overbearing and oppressive but I guess it worked a little too well....

Interesting responses this thread is getting, although I believe the example of Auschwitz isn't quite an example of an architecture of brutality at all. Sure it was a space where horrific acts of brutality took place, but how much architectural design can you say is involved in that?
druf: it interests me to here of your thesis, I was actually also considering something similar about an architecture of discomfort, perhaps due to being jaded by the bombardment of "green" projects in school (not that theres anything wrong with that). I just would like to ask how was it received? How did you start off in such a direction?

yea, ok, dissect this right over here, dude....your uninspired lecturing is a load of crap, frankly...why don't you go outside and play for a bit, little one?

Yea, I'm just writing words willy nilly, I give them no thought whatsoever...and thanks for letting me know what "free inquiry" is, I wasn't aware <<<sarcasm>>> (maybe that last will help you out).

So I mention an oath, which means you pledge to something (the oath of the Horatii), which might be that you troth yourself to do good for people, not make them miserable, and you immediately bring up conduct boards and what you are "allowed" to do and being punished, as if right conduct can only be estimated by boards and hearings, can only be imposed from above as rule and punishment (it's only wrong if I get caught).

"architecture as an intellectual practice should be dissociated from actual practice; much like the majority of medical research is dissociated from actual medical practice (we test drug delivery mechanisms on rats. we test architectural ideas in representation)."

that tells me a lot about your mind set...let's talk about the little rats that will live in our creations and contemplate how we can make them miserable...'cause, you know, it has nothing to do with real life...oh, yea, burp, pass me more of that wine. Fuck that. If the base discourse is wrong-headed at its very core, why should I waste my time on it? To me the right aim of architecture is self-evident, but I have a humanist view on all of this, and personally I don't need a board to tell me that architects, doctors, government officials, and even auto repairmen should, even in their "intellectual practice", consider how they can help and uplift people, not make them miserable. So I call bullshit on the discourse raised by vc45, but again, knock yourself out.

are you on crack?

--(we test drug delivery mechanisms on rats. we test architectural ideas in representation)--
--that tells me a lot about your mind set...let's talk about the little rats that will live in our creations and contemplate how we can make them miserable...--

you can't be so dumb as to not understand such a simple analogy....



--

also, i have no idea how to respond to that deep confessional that is your last paragraph... ok, maybe i do... guess ill just say this:

want a cookie?

also guys, i was just sketching a plan and some dude came out of my drawing and told me "ow that wall hurts!". damn rats.

No, pass, your cookie is probably designed to make people miserable.

Yea, I got your idiotic analogy: no misunderstanding there, bro, that paragraph is exactly what's wrong with your argument, because it pretends that such "intellectual discourse" (such as only "discussing" designing something to make people miserable, or designing a drug to make someone go mad) stays at the level of intellectual play, and never ends up eventually degrading and perverting practice...'cause we know there's no examples of that in human history (that's sarcasm too, by the way). So that seeming "disassociation" is your opinion at best.

but really, yawn....these Archinect sword-waving one on ones are boring and pointless (and I've taken part in more than a few, with adversaries much sharper and more interesting than you), and I've had enough of morons like you who immediately come on with ad hominem bullshit right off the bat, and to show you what I mean I will "dissect" your first response to me and how it could have gone.

You could have just civilly said "You know, emilio, your notion of an oath for architects has legal and interpretive implications that you may not have considered" to which I might have replied "Well, mine was just an analogy to another profession (sound familiar?), more of a "first do no harm" pledge, and I would be interested in discussing the implications of this notion to architecture, maybe as a side bar to this thread."

but instead you came out with this presumptious crap

Emilio, thinking there should be a code of ethics in design is naive beyond belief.

followed by the jump-the-gun/paranoiac

Whose ethics anyways? What is right and what is wrong? Would I ever be allowed to design a military base, a church or a walmart without having charges brought up to a conduct board?

and if that weren't enough, you close with the smugly-parenting/asinine

Grow up.

The whole thing was really very aggressive and insecure, and one would at that point be inclined to give up any civil discourse and (theoretically) answer something like:

Fuck you.

(and notice I did not respond in that way).

but enough of this...see you in the funny papers, addictionboob.

to induce certain horror/uncomfort or different state of being has been done but only temporary- its called the amusement park...


for architectural discourse can refer to 'normal & the pathological" by george canguilham, zone books publication... according to him being pathological as in illness is part of process to transform the self...

to induce horror "permanently" or kill ppl, i think those belongs to criminal case.

emilio, last response to you, baddie. i use that term simply because i feel as if im reading a video game forum where i made some 12 year old really e-angry because i told him he's bad at this game.

--"Yea, I got your idiotic analogy: no misunderstanding there, bro, that paragraph is exactly what's wrong with your argument, because it pretends that such "intellectual discourse" (such as only "discussing" designing something to make people miserable, or designing a drug to make someone go mad) stays at the level of intellectual play, and never ends up eventually degrading and perverting practice...'cause we know there's no examples of that in human history (that's sarcasm too, by the way). So that seeming "disassociation" is your opinion at best."--

partial credit on that. but again, i made the analogy between the test rat and the drawing. you had to get all emotional, misread and misinterpret my post and decide that humans are rats. seriously, reading comprehension ftl or are you just raging mad and unable to reason adequately? drop the crackpipe. post in the morning.

--"You could have just civilly said "You know, emilio, your notion of an oath for architects has legal and interpretive implications that you may not have considered" to which I might have replied "Well, mine was just an analogy to another profession (sound familiar?), more of a "first do no harm" pledge, and I would be interested in discussing the implications of this notion to architecture, maybe as a side bar to this thread." --

be more succinct, i think what you're trying to say is: [insert childish WAAAAA] you hurt my feelings, AB, [another Waaaah!], plz dont use bad words with meh. [final waaaah!].

seriously, i cannot believe that in this day in age someone can have such fragile e-feelings

-- "but instead you came out with this presumptious crap" --

sorry mr. humanist. mr. imma save the world with my e-rants. mr. god forbid a child scrape his leg on one of my stairs.


--"Fuck you."--

get raged son.

on to addressing actual content.

<troll="usual Orochi">"I've had enough of morons like you who immediately come on with ad hominem bullshit right off the bat"</troll>

I'm making blueberry loaf cake!

yawn

"yea, real funny thing except for the electrified barbed-wired perimeter, the showers with no water pipes and no windows where no-one can hear you scream, and the very particular ovens........other than that it wasn't miserable at all."

Except that the actual barracks premises of Auschwitz predated all of that. What you're talking about represents its, uh, "adaptive reuse".

Emilio: why do you even continue to bother with this post?
And out of curiosity, what buildings have you designed?

Brutality can happen in the most picturesque of places.re:pathology to health (which probably goes back to nietzsche's view on sickness and health which builds on and to some exten t, parallel to Christian sensibility, reverses the directionality of aristolean catharsis such that pain in itself is of value) Sometimes it seems to me that a lot of western philosophy is like a huge sadomasochistic ogre born from a painful theistic abdominal wound.

Reverses so that the protagonist's pain is of value that is. This is exaggerated during Roman times where strife in itself is the spectacle rather than an outcome of ethical tribulations

Correction: aristotelian
And I was thinking of the oath as a ritualistic formal baptism. Verbal proclamation in religion (Islam for example with the 'shahada') and citizenship (pledging allegiance ) as instances in joining communities. I personally don't like formal commitments towards a greater abstraction -god or nation- though; I like when people assume I have good intentions. Holding bad intentions is for people less lazy and.more ideological
than myself.