Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Brutalism (and other architectural styles)

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #76
    Originally posted by WOM View Post
    This is the architect Bart Prince's personal residence in Albuquerque. It's bizarre and lovely from almost any angle. I'd live in this in a second.

    Unless you've had something spicy for dinner, google around for the house he designed for Barbi Benton in Aspen. It's....interesting inside.

    Come on down to Burque and we'll hit it and a few other houses he designed. A little over a year ago that house was ransacked.

    I quite like this one a couple of miles away.

    This one is isolated in a rather barren stretch of nearby Rio Rancho.

    Comment


      #77
      Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
      - Edit: In reply to Amor -

      But it's something to aspire to, because it looks infinitely better than clutter, or unnecessary noisy decor. Giant windows to the outside (ideally some big natural scenery: ocean or mountains) can replace most of the decor.

      All my youth I dreamed of clean, largely empty rooms.
      Sure. Somebody is also looking at pictures of Donald Trump's penthouse and thinking, "Yeah man. That's what I want!" Aspiration comes in many forms.

      You're right we react against what we grew up. My Dad was an architect in thrall to Courbusier and Mies. We had an open plan house, Heals furniture, floor to ceiling windows, and wall-to-wall Wilton. My mother spent every day cleaning and tidying. So I wanted something else. Arts and Crafts furniture, and bookshelves made out of old wooden packing crates with tatty paper labels (very important!) I accept clutter, it's part of life's vernacular, trying to eliminate it seems dishonest to me. But, I understand why the other side of the designer moon exists, I just don't want to live there. It's too stressful.

      Comment


        #78
        Clutter just makes me feel uncomfortable and stressed. Like I can't sit down comfortably because I'm not finished.
        It's too fussy on the eyes too. I hate patterned things, for example. In our house we have a carved wooden fire surround with grape vines etc. all over it. (It was here when we moved in.) It actually makes me feel nauseous to look at it. ANd we've got picture rails (1920s house) which again make me hate them every time I see them. Give me a sharp, plain. perfectly finished wall without needless frippery. It can have colour, just not pattern. And pictures I don't mind as they're contained within a frame.
        Oddly I was really, really messy as a kid and as a teen.
        Even as an adult until about 15 years ago.
        Now though, I just find clutter incredibly tiring. Genuinely physically and mentally tiring.

        Comment


          #79
          Originally posted by johnr View Post
          Actually, there's a new thread possibility. Streetview or other images of places I've lived, or live. If I can work out how to post images (I just tried, unsuccessfully), I'll start one.
          We already did...

          Comment


            #80
            Ta, that's great.

            Comment


              #81
              Originally posted by hobbes View Post
              Clutter just makes me feel uncomfortable and stressed. Like I can't sit down comfortably because I'm not finished.
              It's too fussy on the eyes too. I hate patterned things, for example. In our house we have a carved wooden fire surround with grape vines etc. all over it. (It was here when we moved in.) It actually makes me feel nauseous to look at it. ANd we've got picture rails (1920s house) which again make me hate them every time I see them. Give me a sharp, plain. perfectly finished wall without needless frippery. It can have colour, just not pattern. And pictures I don't mind as they're contained within a frame.
              Oddly I was really, really messy as a kid and as a teen.
              Even as an adult until about 15 years ago.
              Now though, I just find clutter incredibly tiring. Genuinely physically and mentally tiring.
              I understand. My son-in-law's like that. Unfortunately my step-daughter is the total opposite. Somehow they've reached an amicable accommodation. Though — from an external perspective — she seems to be the one that's done most of the accommodating.

              And pictures I don't mind as they're contained within a frame.

              Isn't a frame just more unnecessary fussiness though?

              Comment


                #82
                Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                If they were built post the 50s horrorshows of the MacMillan Admin (to get the housebuilding stats up they threw up smaller gaffs with substandard materials) public housing is probably larger than modern “luxury” apartments. Cos evil bastard Nicholas Ridley (father of evil bank killing climate change denying wank Matt) abolished minimum sized private housing. At the very least, social housing has to abide by the minimum size required by a 60’s docker. Which probably causes admin problems when private developments in distress (Leith Docks, Glasgow Harbour, Crosbies Yard in similar market happily decides minimum space Ireland) end up allocating properties to councils or housing associations.
                Built mid seventies. Not sure if LCC or Westminster Council. The councillors were, judging from Andrew Hoskens book on Shirley Porter, fairly relaxed at that time. The sort of place you can imagine architects being left alone.

                Comment


                  #83
                  she seems to be the one that's done most of the accommodating.
                  Hah. Completely the other way round in my gaff.

                  Comment


                    #84
                    Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post

                    And pictures I don't mind as they're contained within a frame.

                    Isn't a frame just more unnecessary fussiness though?
                    Picture frames are fine, as long as they're clean, straight lines and neutral tones, and not those dreadful ornate gilt things that only look sensible on giant Delacroix paintings in the Louvre, where they look tasteful and refined compared to Napoleon III's apartment.

                    Comment


                      #85
                      Great vintage footage here about Park Hill (Sheffield) and its famous "streets in the sky". Saving Britain's Past -- Streets in the sky -- Park Hill:

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWx6...utu.be&t=8m55s

                      Said "streets in the sky" concept was modelled on Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseilles. I used to live 2 miles away from Park Hill, my wife even worked within the huge Park Hill complex in the late 1990s too, pretty scary place at the time. Renovation has been ongoing for several years now, was given listed building status in 1998.



                      Park Hill: Who lives here now? (BBC News): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwC5Yer-2B0

                      Looks dead posh now… Park Hill: Commercial Update July 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8wAIxVGjc

                      Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 29-11-2017, 17:50.

                      Comment


                        #86
                        Oh yes, those Urban Splash developer yokes. Not too many original residents living in the refurbed part I’d say.

                        Hang on, office space? Didn’t they find enough game gentrifiers for apartments in the refurb part, or are they going “mixed use”?
                        Last edited by Lang Spoon; 29-11-2017, 18:31.

                        Comment


                          #87
                          We used to joke that our house was called Objets Trouvés, cuz very little in it was purchased a) new or b) at all. I could go room by room, but our master bed and the couch are the only two bought-new items in the house. Everything else was found, given, bought used, built, repurposed or...I guess that's about it. Maybe it works...maybe not. But Amor's 'orange crate book-case' comment is pretty close to the aesthetic.

                          Comment


                            #88
                            Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                            Oh yes, those Urban Splash developer yokes. Not too many original residents living in the refurbed part I’d say.
                            I don't know how popular it was with previous residents. Robin Hood Gardens wasn't. That's not to accuse them of being philistine or anything, the surroundings aren't nice with loads of traffic. Not sure that even a good faith offer would be all that attractive, with years of works and likely big leaseholder charges.

                            Comment


                              #89
                              You could offer to rehouse them while the works are ongoing, then move those who want to back in when it’s ready.

                              Comment


                                #90
                                Le Corbusier wasn’t just anti-Semitic and a committed Nazi sympathiser as I wrote here but he was also a brutalist vandal. In the name of modernity, this common barbarian was on a mission to destroy the centre of Paris and replace it with a sprawling, utter monstrosity: a forest of ugly as fuck cruciform-shaped 60-storey high-rises and blocks of flats/offices, with this ghastly carbuncle of a place crisscrossed by expressways and fast slip roads.

                                Page 531 of The History of Western architecture (David Watkin) that I was perusing last night:

                                One of the most significant cultural events of the 1920s was the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925 as the first international exhibition of decorative arts since the Great War. In the periphery of this exhibition was an architectural time-bomb, ignored or despised by many: the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, designed by Le Corbusier and his partner and cousin, Pierre Jeanneret. This stark white box with a tree growing through the middle of it had an annexe containing a model for Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris, which proposed ripping out much of the historic centre of the city and replacing it with a group of gigantic skyscrapers.

                                (It goes on to explain how Le Corbusier was influenced by architects such as Peter Behrens and Auguste Perret, the bloke who redesigned Le Havre’s centre after WWII in a rather brutalist style. Le Havre’s centre was considered a repulsive eyesore in France hardly a decade ago but is now suddenly revered by hipsters and talked about as some sort of architectural wonderland; I suppose the fact it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2005 has a lot to do with it but still. I’m not knocking Perret’s Le Havre here, there is a certain aesthetic to the centre, it’s an interesting place to visit, it’s a lively, down-to-earth city etc. but it’s this binary, manichean contrast between unfashionable and fashionable which rankles with me here: yesterday an absolute dump, today a “fascinating” gem.)

                                Page 533:

                                One of the most extreme expressions of Le Corbusier’s approach was his Plan Voisin for the arrogant destruction of much of the centre of Paris between Montmartre and the river Seine. This was named after Gabriel Voisin, proprietor of one of the motor firms, Peugeot and Citroën, who subsidized the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau. In its utter disregard for the site and for local customs, it can in some ways be regarded as the reductio ad absurdum of Beaux-Arts planning, though similar failures were to recur in his city of Chandigarh in the 1950s. With their axially placed skyscrapers linked with giant highways for high-speed traffic, the Ville Contemporaine and the Plan Voisin provided a seductive imagery which was to be adopted throughout the world with unhappy effect after the Second World War, though central Paris has so far largely escaped this treatment. The historical sensitivity which Le Corbusier had learned from Camillo Sitte had been replaced by a worship of the poetry of speed and machinery: “The city that has speed”, he claimed, “has success.”

                                Thankfully, Paris’s urban planners had more sense, they thought that his silly, immature plans were ugly and far too radical, consequently they were never acted upon. Thank God for that as apparently, had he got his way over this, he planned to carry on in the same vein elsewhere in Paris and France.

                                Architectural model of Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin for Paris (you can see the Seine and the Louvre, top right (right next to his fucking Ville Contemporaine and Plan Voisin bollocks, so this was Paris's hypercentre this thug wanted to obliterate):



                                The exegetical spin that Le Corbusier put on his delirious master plans for Paris is a joy to read:

                                http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/c...sysParentId=65

                                From the New York Times:

                                There’s still a myth surrounding Le Corbusier, that he’s the greatest architect of the 20th century, a generous man, a poet,” Mr. de Jarcy said. That vision, he added, is “a great collective lie.”

                                This gardian piece on “Corb” is interesting and revealing too (he was such a paranoid, chippy, venal, racist, misogynist, misanthropic, fabulously egotistical cad of a man - and worse I'm sure):

                                From the archive, 11 September 1965: An awkward interview with Le Corbusier

                                And finally, from the corresponding wiki:

                                The centerpiece of this plan was a group of sixty-story cruciform skyscrapers built on steel frames and encased in curtain walls of glass. The skyscrapers housed both offices and the flats of the most wealthy inhabitants. These skyscrapers were set within large, rectangular park-like green spaces.

                                At the center of the planned city was a transportation hub which housed depots for buses and trains as well as highway intersections and at the top, an airport.

                                Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and glorified the use of the automobile as a means of transportation. As one moved out from the central skyscrapers, smaller multi-story zigzag blocks set in green space and set far back from the street housed the proletarian workers.

                                Robert Hughes spoke of Le Corbusier's city planning in his series The Shock of the New:

                                "...the car would abolish the human street, and possibly the human foot. Some people would have aeroplanes too. The one thing no one would have is a place to bump into each other, walk the dog, strut, one of the hundred random things that people do ... being random was loathed by Le Corbusier ... its inhabitants surrender their freedom of movement to the omnipresent architect."

                                Comment


                                  #91
                                  Yikes. On a much smaller scale the post-war Corporation seriously thought about demolishing the entire Glasgow grid centre, to be replaced by rectangular blocks and roads galore. Thankfully it was pulled, though the craziness of cutting a motorway round the inner city (in a place with the lowest car ownership in Scotland) did come to pass, scarring the city forever.

                                  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Report#
                                  Last edited by Lang Spoon; 29-11-2017, 19:53.

                                  Comment


                                    #92
                                    Architects are dicks I guess is the moral of Corbusier.

                                    Comment


                                      #93
                                      This was great (shown 3 months ago on BBC4):BBC - Frank Lloyd Wright: The Man Who Built America (2017)

                                      Comment


                                        #94
                                        Originally posted by Kev7 View Post
                                        being random was loathed by Le Corbusier
                                        As someone who finds Probability the closest thing to a God I will ever accept in my life, I hate Le Corbusier for this one thing alone.

                                        Fascinating read, Kev. Thanks!

                                        Comment


                                          #95
                                          Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                                          You could offer to rehouse them while the works are ongoing, then move those who want to back in when it’s ready.
                                          Yeah, I don't know what offer was made. Probably they wanted it knocked down, so phrased it accordingly.

                                          Comment


                                            #96
                                            They wanted to have it renovated by Urban Splash and fill it with private residents for a whack of money. Less council housing in the city but hey! Regeneration! Iconic! (I believe Sheffield has one of Europe’s most laughable property bubble provincial cock waving Towers as its great legacy of the Blairy reign. I’m not slagging Sheffield its use of the hills makes it look great on photos.)

                                            Though I guess the Great Recession put pay to that original dream, unless they always planned an office element along with first time buyers (more like buy to let near Seniors playing at being rentiers to stretch a pinshun).
                                            Last edited by Lang Spoon; 29-11-2017, 20:18.

                                            Comment


                                              #97
                                              Originally posted by Cal Alamein View Post
                                              Come on down to Burque and we'll hit it and a few other houses he designed. A little over a year ago that house was ransacked.

                                              I quite like this one a couple of miles away.

                                              This one is isolated in a rather barren stretch of nearby Rio Rancho.
                                              Is that “Googie” architecture? As far as I can make out it’s a term for 60s hyper modern yet rococo with pointless bits and frills. Vegas Modernism. Those pictures look great.

                                              Comment


                                                #98
                                                Yeah, see I'm trying to figure out what you could say his 'style' is. It's all over the place. I like his home, but that one with the '64 1/2 Mustang is a bit too 'Memphis Milano' for my tastes. And I'm not sure what to think of those 'oil rig / stilts' houses.

                                                Comment


                                                  #99
                                                  Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                                                  They wanted to have it renovated by Urban Splash and fill it with private residents for a whack of money. Less council housing in the city but hey! Regeneration! Iconic! (I believe Sheffield has one of Europe’s most laughable property bubble provincial cock waving Towers as its great legacy of the Blairy reign. I’m not slagging Sheffield its use of the hills makes it look great on photos.)
                                                  Never been to Sheffield. My impression of it, in terms of Phil and Kirsty house hunters, is that it's pretty nice, the sort of place where you'd do lots of outdoors stuff you wouldn't do if you live in Birmingham. It looked pretty easy to get out of the city and into the hills. God knows what revamped Park Hill flats cost, but I can see in principle that they'd be attractive to some people, economy willing.

                                                  Comment


                                                    Yeah, I just think it’s kind of immoral they get renovated and then not put out for social rent (even if not all to the original occupants).

                                                    But this is where the fiscal and legal powers culling of local Govt since Evil Herself at least makes such basic decency impossible.

                                                    And the Labour Party and their shitty councilors have been complicit all the way down as well. Obviously, with great regret etc... another estate falls down no matter what the residents think. Something definitely not even “affordable” is built in its place. Dawn Foster’s twitter feed is depressing (leavened by sarky) Truth.
                                                    Last edited by Lang Spoon; 29-11-2017, 21:10.

                                                    Comment

                                                    Working...
                                                    X