This actually looks like the building Gary Cooper blew up in the movie adaptation of The Fountainhead............
Posted on 03/21/2017 12:39:14 PM PDT by Lorianne
The key to a happy life, it’s been discovered, is living near to Georgian architecture and a Waitrose. Bath, York, Chichester, Stamford, Skipton, Harrogate, Oxford and Cambridge are among the towns listed in the Sunday Times 20 nicest places to live in Britain survey.
Almost all these areas have one thing in common: they all feature a great deal of Georgian housing. And they’re all mostly unaffordable. There is a fair amount of research suggesting that traditional architecture, such as Georgian and Victorian terraces and mansion blocks, contributes to our wellbeing. Beauty makes people happy.
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This can be measured through house prices, which consistently show bigger increases for more traditional buildings. A study from the Netherlands showed that ‘even controlling for a wide range of features, fully neo-traditional houses sell for 15 per cent more than fully non-traditional houses. Houses with references to tradition sell for 5 per cent more.’
London terraced houses built before the First World war went up in value by 465 per cent between 1983 and 2013, compared to 255 per cent for post-war property of the same type. Beauty sells, but because it’s rare, it’s exclusive.
So why don’t the authorities at local and national level do the obvious thing and make more town centres look like Edinburgh or Cambridge, and so make beauty available to more people? Imagine if parts of Birmingham were as beautiful as Bath or bits of Manchester looked more like Prague or Bruges – I’m pretty sure it would be popular with locals. Manchester, which took such a battering from town planners in the post-war period, looks set to have two large towers plonked right in the centre, against some strong local opposition.
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There is obviously a place for skyscrapers in modern cities, but these clearly do not complement the surrounding streets. Mid-size northern European cities like Copenhagen, Edinburgh or Helsinki tend to compete on liveability; since capital and labour is now so mobile it really pays to make somewhere an attractive place to live (including things like proper cycle lanes). Copenhagen, for instance, has areas of beautiful traditional Danish Legoland architecture, and it also has districts with very cutting edge and interesting modern buildings, but they do not just plonk one on top of the other because that would not look beautiful, and beauty makes people happy.
There are two major reasons that more British cities are not beautiful. Firstly, there are the architects themselves, who tend to prefer innovative buildings over traditional ones. In 1987 a psychologist called David Halpern did a survey of students rating buildings by attractiveness and while almost everyone had similar tastes, uniquely the architecture students rated everyone else’s favourite as their least favourite and vice versa. Curiously the longer someone had been studying architecture the more contrarian their tastes.
This makes sense, in the same way that people who study music their whole lives tend to prefer more idiosyncratic and unpopular artists and styles than what’s played on Capital Gold. But there may be a status aspect too; just as deliberately unpopular modern art is a status signal – because any idiot can like a Rembrandt – so unloved architecture sends a similar message.
However the bigger problem is British planning law, under which Georgian architecture is impossible to build because of well-meaning regulations; some of the most beautiful and sought after houses in London break up to 12 different rules.
The nonsensical thing is that, while south-east England is in desperate need of new housing, the most popular type, Georgian terraced, is actually very high density, more so than the often ugly tower blocks people resent having near them. As the Create Streets groups argue, residents are far less likely to object to new housing near them if it is built in a traditional style – quite understandably.
It’s very frustrating for the increasing numbers of people priced out of housing to read the endless litany of new developments blocked by locals, but then you can hardly blame some of them. Here, for example, was the plan for a quite depressing-looking tower in Mile End.
This is an existential problem for Conservatives; conservatism as a philosophy depends on affordable family formation, because conservatives can’t stay in power without the support of a broad middle class comprised of nuclear families. Yet Tory politicians at both national and local level have incentives to restrict the supply of housing, therefore making family formation impossible for many. In particular they depend on the support of dozens of green belt constituencies in the Home Counties, which is what makes it hard for them to encourage looser planning regulations.
The solution, it seems to me, is to devolve planning altogether, so that London has complete control over what it builds, and can even opt out of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. Since the capital is a lost cause to the Tories it makes no difference to them, and it would allow the city to build up through the most efficient method, Georgian and Victorian-style terraced streets, while letting the Conservative-voting shires continue to restrict if they so wish. That way the British dream of a Georgian terrace and a Waitrose would be open to the many, not the few. I would vote for pretty much any candidate in the 2020 mayoral election who made this their clarion call – Make Beauty Affordable Again.
Because classical architecture is pretty.
Leftists worship ugliness.
They're affordable for somebody, or they would be vacant. Maybe it's being rich that is making the residents happy.
Because it’s really expensive, generally short, and wastes a ton of space on pillars and grand entrances. In general building get built because somebody wants to DO something with it, usually the inside of it.
Reason: Communist party goals #22 and 23.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1595013/posts
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963
Post WWII architecture really sucks. Go to most any city and you really have no idea where you are. All the same. Ugly East German inspired concrete slab architecture. No family owned stores or businesses. Want to grab a bite? Pandora, Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Chang.
LOL...I had the same thoughts!
But then there is always this:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=brutalist+architechture&t=ffsb&iax=1&ia=images
Also, because it is more expensive?
But I agree. :)
Good point.
Mass production saves time and money.
I noticed that practically all those buildings were bare concrete on the outside.
If they were painted in bright colors in diverse places they might actually look welcoming. As they are they look like prisons on some sci-fi movie set...............
This actually looks like the building Gary Cooper blew up in the movie adaptation of The Fountainhead............
I suspect the older buildings are closer to the center of the city so that is a big reason why they are more expensive.
If you go by HGTV, the modern industrial look is in. I wonder how much of it is because it is cheaper to make.
I have to agree with you there. I have met very few on the left who appreciate traditional architecture.
Of course it does not have to be either or. There are good and bad examples of both. But the article cites studies that people have a clear preference for good traditional architecture.
Not surprising. Just look at the precious snowflakes getting advanced degrees in one of the fill-in-the-blank studies categories. They're all desperately sniffing around, looking for some previously unrevealed trace of oppression, discrimination, marginalization, perceived slight, you-name-it, so they have something mildly unique to base their thesis on. The longer you're in higher ed, the more pressure to develop unique research. Even if you have to make it up.
Yep. Everything same same, including one-size-fits-all government.
Except, in “The Fountainhead”, the sleek modern lines were interrupted with add-on Grecian Columns and Porticoes.
Which is why Howard blew them up! :-)
When historians 200 years in the future look back, they will define ours as the Materialist Age. Whether politically Left or Right - seemingly very different positions in our present terms, both will still be seen to have circled around the main question of maximizing economic efficiency, who controls it, and who benefits from it.
A corollary to this will be about DEBT - and how it was spread around the world as part of the Materialist Age. It will be about how debt has twisted society and people’s lives and actions in thousands of different ways.
Many things in society or ugly because the overriding focus on Materialism and feeding it with debt.
Classical architecture stinks, and there's nothing even remotely compelling about it.
/s
These are two of my favorites buildings in New Orleans, St. Joseph's Church on Tulane Avenue, and the chapel at Loyola University.
Anytime I passed these buildings on my bike, I just had to stop and marvel at how magnificent they are.
Had to shrink that second one of the outside of St. Joseph's down so the mods don't get mad at me for posting giant panoramic pictures. Hated to do that, I love that church!
Our city recently knocked down an old (well, early- to mid-60s construction) Brutalist theater that had been part of a large state institution. There were some who wanted to save and renovate it, but had no real plan to raise the money needed. The city said, nope, you don’t have the money, the city isn’t spending that kind of money, it’s gone. It was ugly, and would have been ridiculously expensive to renovate and operate, and would have been an ongoing large maintenance cost.
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