5 Reasons the Modern World Is so Ugly

one of the great generalizations we can make about the modern world is that it is to an extraordinary degree an ugly world if we were to show an ancestor from 250 years ago around our cities and suburbs they would be amazed at our technology and wealth but shocked by what we had built why are things often so ugly there are at least five reasons since the dawn of construction it was understood that the task of an architect was not only to make a building serviceable but also to render it beautiful even if the building was a practical one like an aqueduct or a factory architects would strive to give it a maximally pleasing appearance the romans understood that a water pumping system might be as beautiful as a temple the early victorians felt that even a factory could have some of the aesthetic properties of an elegant country house the milanese knew that a shopping arcade could carry some of the ambitions of a cathedral but when architecture reached modern times the very word beauty became taboo the architects of the modern movement began to wage a war on what they now described as the effeminacy waste and pretension of all the previous beautifying moves in an essay called ornament and crime in 1910 the austrian modernist adolph luz argued that to decorate a building with anything pretty was a sin as modernism declared form must follow function in other words the appearance of a building should never be shaped by consideration for beauty all that should matter is a basic material purpose at the outset this sounded bracing yet liberating the 19th century had produced some pretty over-decorated buildings in which the beautifying impulse had reached a decadent stage at the same time many early modernist buildings especially those for wealthy clients were extremely elegant in a way that felt novel and cleansing unfortunately the dream quickly turned sour when property developers heard that the artistic avant-garde was now promoting a concept of functionalism they rejoiced from the most high-brow quarters the most mean-minded motives had been given a seal of approval no longer would these developers have to spend any money on anything to do with beauty in no time sheds and brutal boxes abounded modernity became ugly because we forgot how to articulate that beauty is in the end as much of a necessity for a building as a functioning roof the ugliness of the modern world rests on a second intellectual error the idea that no one knows what's attractive in architecture in the pre-modern world it was widely assumed that there were precise rules about what made buildings pleasing in the west those rules were codified in a doctrine known as classicism created by the greeks and developed by the romans classicism defined what elegant buildings should be like for more than a thousand five hundred years recognizably classical forms were used all over the west from edinburgh to charleston bordeaux to san francisco then gradually a degree of polite disagreement broke out some people began to make a case for other styles for example for the gothic way of building or perhaps the chinese alpine or thai styles in time these debates were resolved in an extremely respectful way that happened unfortunately to provoke some very bad practical consequences it was decreed that in matters of visual taste no one could really win an argument all tastes deserved a hearing there was no such thing as an objective standard of beauty attractiveness in architecture was just a multifaceted subjective phenomenon once again this was music to property developers ears suddenly no one would be allowed to describe a building as ugly after all taste was merely subjective you and your friends might dislike a new district even a democratic majority might loathe it but that was only in the end a personal judgment not some kind of important edict one might need to listen to cities grew ever uglier but no one was ever allowed to say that there was such a thing as ugliness after all isn't taste just a very very personal thing for most of history it was well understood that the last thing one needed in an architect was originality no more than one would want originality in a carpenter or a bricklayer the job of an architect was just to turn out a building roughly like all the others architecture was beautifully impersonal and repetitive but in the early 20th century a troubling idea came to the fore that the architect was a distinctive individual with a unique vision which needed to be expressed this might have been liberation for architects but society as a whole paid an enormous price for this creative release suddenly architects began to compete to create the most outlandish and shocking forms we lost our ability to say that what we really craved was buildings that looked a bit like they'd always done buildings that one wouldn't ever have to wonder who did them for most of history humans lived in tightly organized neatly aligned streets and squares not because anyone thought this was especially attractive though it is but because it was convenient when you had to get around on foot or at best on horseback it paid to keep things close together furthermore it was safer because invaders might attack at any time and it was crucial to ring your town with a wall adding further impetus to keep everything well arranged inside like a compact cutlery drawer or tool kit but without anyone quite noticing with the spread of cars in the 1920s the pressure to use space neatly evaporated one could now lounge on the earth or sprawl lazily across it highways could meander between towers bits of scrub land and scatterings of warehouses the nervous and precise among us who like things to be neatly lined up who were disturbed when a picture is slightly askew or the knife and fork aren't equidistant from the plate grew ever more sorrowful architects had once had no option but to build in materials that were both natural and local this had two advantages firstly as a general rule one can't go very wrong with natural materials you have to try very hard to make an ugly stone or wood building it's difficult to build very high in them for a start so your eyesore is guaranteed a certain modesty and the inherent organic beauty of timber and limestone granite or marble attenuates any errors at the level of form secondly it can help to orient us and connect us to particular places if they don't look like they could be anywhere on earth if jerusalem is built in one sort of stone and bath in another but modernity introduced glass and steel out of which large and imposing structures could quickly be formed and it suggested that it would be as daft to have a local kind of architecture as it would be to have a local kind of mobile phone or bicycle the argument once again forgot about human nature when we say that a building looks like it could be from anywhere we're not praising its global ambitions we're expressing a longing for buildings to remind us of where on the earth we really are we pay dearly for bad architecture a dumb book or song can be shelved and disturb no one a dumb building will stand to facing the earth and upsetting all who must look at it for 300 years at least architecture is on this basis alone the most important of the arts and yet it's also the one we're never taught anything about all the way through school the promise of the modern age has been to make the most important things available cheaply to all no longer should lovely food or clothes holidays or medicines be just the preserve of the very rich industrial technology should open up quality for everyone but paradoxically one key ingredient we all long for has been rendered far more exclusive than ever through our inability to think clearly about architecture the one thing we haven't been able to mass produce are beautiful buildings as a result the nice architecture there is most of which was built before 1900 is hugely oversubscribed and collapsing under a weight of tourists and the few pleasant streets that remain are costlier than they ever were at the height of the aristocratic era we have democratized comfort but we have made beauty appallingly exclusive the challenge now is to remember our longing for beauty and to fight the forces that would keep us from acting on it our book what is culture for helps us find compassion hope and perspective in the arts you

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Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, how, to, hack, modernism, five reasons the modern world is so ugly, architecture 101, 现代世界如此丑陋的5个原因, 5 razones por las que el mundo moderno es tan feo, 5 कारण आधुनिक दुनिया इतनी बदसूरत है, 5 raisons pour lesquelles le monde moderne est si laid, urbanism, Modernism, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, urban sprawl

Id: qgNxLiuwFDY

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/GoncalvoMendoza]

I'd like to add that I don't think the title of this video fits with the actual video itself - it's more about why modern architecture has changed so much from traditional architecture from 5 different angles and why we should resurrect the concept that beauty matters.

[u/CountVP]

Appreciate it but i dont think post-modernists can be won over with arguments.

Architecture is very emotional. I for example never understood how we decayed untill it visited Paris.

Family took me to the Museé d'Orsay which was the most jaw dropping place i've ever been up to that time and then they took me to a modern art museum who is "known for its revolutionary architecture" and the shock was the spark that lead me to how i think right now.

Exposure is our best weapon i'd argue.

[u/CrotchWolf]

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this video. on one hand I agree, modern architecture has fallen to a point where aesthetics and design become an afterthought over cost and function. On the other hand, the presenter suggests that modern architecture in general has no real aesthetic beauty even despite providing a couple examples that say otherwise.