# Why Do People Dislike Modern Architecture? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 15, 2008, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539 "2008-01-15T00:15:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/21 "2008-01-15T04:02:32Z")
[QUOTE=Key Lime Guy] I think you’re critiquing photography rather than architecture. [/QUOTE] Maybe, but in the end it’s the same. “How a building interacts with its context” is largely a matter of perspective, light, vantage point, etc. In other words, all the things that go into making a good photograph. ---
**Author:** ![Key\_Lime\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/48db29/32.png) [@Key\_Lime\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Key_Lime_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/22 "2008-01-15T04:06:04Z")
[QUOTE=MichaelQReilly] I don’t disagree about the quality of the buildings you linked to, but what _I_ find frustrating is the oft repeated defense that modern is characterized by its worst buildings while we selectively remember only good buildings from the past. My rebuttal to this, which I’ve offered before, is that the ratio of good to atrocious buildings in modernism, brutalism, and the like is unconscionably high. For every quality modernist building you can cite, I can find dozens examples of the style which are horrific failures. No other historic style has that kind of dismal record. [/QUOTE] 1. So would you characterize rock music by Led Zeppelin, or by the “unconscionably high” numbers of bands playing tonight in local bars? 2. The worst buildings from prior periods/styles (let’s say Victorian for example) are GONE. The same will be true of modern architecture in another generation. 3. Postmodernism’s record is equally dismal. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/23 "2008-01-15T04:23:56Z")
[QUOTE=Key Lime Guy] If you think modern housing was “Boxy and antiseptic [with] No warmth” you need to check out [Richard](http://www.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek06/0811/0811tc_3troxellres_b.jpg)[Neutra](http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11324) or [Rudolph](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41V62ZVNXYL.jpg)[Schindler.](http://www.modernsandiego.com/images/SchindlerPueblo.jpg) [/QUOTE] Meh. Those examples really don’t much challenge my “architecture for androids” characterization. It still looks antiseptic, austere, and cold to me. I’ll take some curves, please (and some comfortable-looking furniture, while we’re at it). YM(obviously)V ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/24 "2008-01-15T04:29:45Z")
[QUOTE=Key Lime Guy] 1. So would you characterize rock music by Led Zeppelin, or by the “unconscionably high” numbers of bands playing tonight in local bars? [/quote] This is analogy doesn’t work here. The OP asked for, and I am critiquing, modern architecture. When doing so, it is perfectly appropriate to evaluate the style as a whole. The fact that there are some good modernist buildings doesn’t doesn’t mean that I can’t also consider the many more horrible ones. Further, the problem with many of the architectural movements of the last century, is that the very ideas that defined the style are largely what made them failures. So again, its perfectly apropriate to damn the style for all of the bad buildings it produced. The other reason you analogy doesn’t work is because by the very nature of music, I (for the most part) hear what I want to hear. All the bad bands, therefore, don’t affect me in any way. Its not quite so easy to avoid a building. [QUOTE=Key Lime Guy] 2. The worst buildings from prior periods/styles (let’s say Victorian for example) are GONE. The same will be true of modern architecture in another generation. [/quote] This is one area where we will have to agree to disagree. I’ve seen tons of pictures from pre-1950 of many of the towns in the area where I live. In many cases the best buildings were the ones that didn’t survive. [QUOTE=Key Lime Guy] 3. Postmodernism’s record is equally dismal. [/QUOTE] True, but then again, postmodernism is a style only in the sense that it isn’t modernism. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/25 "2008-01-15T04:30:11Z")
American residential architecture took a deep plunge in the baby boom, post-Craftsman era and never looked back. The old Craftsman-style homes (and the simple prairie houses from which the form was derived) utilized natural materials, clean lines, and high quality artisanship to build enduring structures, creating a warm and inviting habitat that emphasized communual areas (large kitchen, front living room, shaded porch) over ginormous bathrooms and bedrooms. The downsides–the small amount of closet space and often sparse windowing–could be corrected in modern designs, but the artisanship to build those structures is all but completely gone, replaced by hacktastical would-be carpenters that would probably wack themselves in the head with a hammer if they had to use one. The trend toward standardization and homogeneity–a high virtue in the I-Like-Ike 'Fifites–led to mass produced shells of often increasingly questionable build quality, and culimated in the cheap fake brick and cheap, tacked-on vernier panelling. And the less said about linoleum, the better. The replacement of this by vinyl siding and sheetrock in faux-Colonial style is a marginal improvement (although build quality continues to sink) but is nowhere near how solid and inviting the Craftsman style is. All that said, Modern can be done very well, albeit not with concrete and glass block (which is well gone by the past due date and needs to be retired along with Joe Camel signs and salmon-colored silk jackets), but not inexpensively, nor with as little skill as contemporary tract housing. I’ve been in a number of Modern-style homes that are very well done and timeless. But these were not inexpensive houses (for the square footage), were carefully designed by the owners working with a dedicated architect, and would not have been suited for rainy or cold climates. In general, Modern architecture, despite its ostensible endorsement of utility and rejection of ornament, seems to be more about itself than its inhabitants, and often creates a very unflattering, harsh, oft-called ‘soulless’, and often unergonomic environment, both for inhabitants and pedestrians. I’d much rather take a stroll down one of Pasadena’s streets of old neighborhoods than across some glass-and-concrete boxes. The same goes for commercial architecture, only moreso. With rare exceptions, Modern architecture just isn’t done very well; even when it looks good from a distance, it rarely functions well either as a habitable space or in terms of its resistance to elements. (Yes, I am talking about the Strata Center; why, how ever did you guess?) On occasion a structure can be a work of art, but more often it ends up being a stunt, like freshmen trying to one-up each other on who can be more gross. And the lest said about postModernism–whatever the hell it is–the better. Modern can be done well, but only with great effort, and not suited (at least as this point) to mass architecture. Oh, and for the Frank Gehry fans in the audience, yes, his house in Santa Monica would not look out of place in backwoods Arkansas; it really does look like a heap of junk. [Here](http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Gehry_House.html) are some pictures on the ironically-titled “[GreatBuildings.com](http://GreatBuildings.com)” site. It actually looks worse in person. It’s still not as bad as the Disney Concert Hall, which is one of those buildings that must have looked good in some abstract drawing but has turned out to be not only an eyesore but a serious pain-in-the-ass to maintain, and obtusely offensive to nearby residents on which it’s reflected glare shined into windows until the city sanded down the exterior to a matte finish. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/26 "2008-01-15T05:07:27Z")
[QUOTE=Key Lime Guy] 2. The worst buildings from prior periods/styles (let’s say Victorian for example) are GONE. The same will be true of modern architecture in another generation. [/QUOTE] What - you’re saying that developers only tear down ugly buildings, and carefully preserve nice buildings? :dubious: Doesn’t match what I’ve seen of developers and urban renewal - normally, local citizen groups have to fight like hell to preserve old buildings from the wrecker, and they’re not always successful. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/27 "2008-01-15T05:35:49Z")
[QUOTE=Key Lime Guy] If you think modern housing was “Boxy and antiseptic [with] No warmth” you need to check out [Richard](http://www.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek06/0811/0811tc_3troxellres_b.jpg) . . . or [Rudolph](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41V62ZVNXYL.jpg) . . . . [/QUOTE] Yes, those are excellent examples of houses that are boxy and antiseptic with no warmth. The first is merely uninviting, while the second is as repellant as an airport waiting area. They are art objects that make good use of natural light, but ultimately, they are a far cry from warm and inviting homes. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/28 "2008-01-15T05:40:50Z")
I had to suffer through brutalist architecture at several universities. Having to function in that soul crushing crap was more than enough to leave a very bitter taste in my mouth. ---
**Author:** ![Frosted\_Glass](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frosted_glass/32/3926_2.png) [@Frosted\_Glass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frosted_Glass)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/29 "2008-01-15T05:43:08Z")
[QUOTE=Key Lime Guy] We’ve done this a thousand times before and IMO it’s one of the most frustrating sources of doper ignorance. I don’t know why, but modern architecture is the only period or style that is characterized by its worst examples, every other period is characterized by its good examples. If you think modern housing was “Boxy and antiseptic [with] No warmth” you need to check out [Richard](http://www.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek06/0811/0811tc_3troxellres_b.jpg)[Neutra](http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11324) or [Rudolph](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41V62ZVNXYL.jpg)[Schindler.](http://www.modernsandiego.com/images/SchindlerPueblo.jpg) [/QUOTE] Personally, I still find these examples to be “boxy” and “sterile”. I will fully admit that I also find them elegant and fascinating but they are places of residence and not museum exhibits to be studied while passing by. You hit one of the bigger problems on the head in post #18. There is a problem with the way we photograph architecture. People are included as an afterthought and the environment is rarely inviting. Photographs of modern architecture fascinate me as an architecture student but they turn me away as a person. Usually, the subject ends up looking like that room that your mother would not let you go into when you were a child. I cannot blame people for rejecting the movement that produces these feelings. [QUOTE=Muffin] I had to suffer through brutalist architecture at several universities. Having to function in that soul crushing crap was more than enough to leave a very bitter taste in my mouth. [/QUOTE] Hehe, fortunately for me I am in the College of Fine Arts and our building is pleasant and inspirational. If I had to suffer through the Brutalist monstrosity that is our Engineering Hall every day, I too might be ready to pull my hair out like my Engineer friends. ---
**Author:** ![Sockmunkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f17d59/32.png) [@Sockmunkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sockmunkey)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/30 "2008-01-15T10:35:12Z")
My personal favorite has always been Falling Water by Frank Lloyd Wright. > **[Falling Water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_water)** > > Falling Water or Fallingwater may refer to: ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/31 "2008-01-15T11:49:05Z")
To be fair, the house described in the OP sounds like an atrocity - who mixes 15th century architecture with classical pillars? > [@](#): > > It’s because modernism has produced so many bad examples. I’m not trying to be facetious here. I rarely see a modern building that I like. Not only that, but there’s so many high profile examples of architectural atrocities. Take the Scottish Parliament, right bang in the middle of Edinburgh. From Arthur’s Seat, you look out, observe the castle, the Edwardian stone buildings, Sir Walter Scott’s monument on Princes Street, and then on to [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Edinburgh_Scottish_Parliament01_2006-04-29.jpg) modern horror. If the best architects in the land are producing crap like this, then _who_ can do “modern” architecture well? > [@](#): > > If you think modern housing was “Boxy and antiseptic [with] No warmth” you need to check out Richard Neutra or Rudolph Schindler. Sorry, those aren’t in the least bit persuasive. Even worse, they appear to be examples from homes. Are people supposed to relax in those rooms? ---
**Author:** ![Wallenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5a626/32.png) [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/32 "2008-01-15T13:03:10Z")
I too suffered from actually having to use a “[modernist masterpiece](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Seeley_Library.JPG)”… freezing in winter, boiling in summer, too bright under the galss and gloomy away from it. Just awful. Compare it to [this library](http://www.scudamores.com/cam/graphics/backs/trinity.jpg), just down the road, which remains a joy to use after 300 years. Modernism stresses “form follows function”, where the opposite is often regrettably the case… the visual impact takes precedence over the use of the building. The inside joke among architects I know is that there is a direct link between the number of awards a building wins and the number of complaints you’ll get from its users. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/33 "2008-01-15T13:09:34Z")
Just an aside here, as an explanation as to why the 20th Century took a veer away from the perfectly pleasing architecture of the past in favor of big, dumb geometry. Maybe it had to do with the fact that the occupants of those old wedding cakes were themselves useless ornamentation. Or worse, taking the Modernists at their faith in Marx, these occupants were sitting at the top of a social order that brutally suppressed labor reform; and taking Freud at face value were perpetuating a morality that drove people crazy. After blundering in 1914 into a war that fed nine million people through a meat grinder, it was an “old” well worth breaking with. When evaluated for what the old styles represented at the time, perhaps we can understand if not forgive the excesses of that break. ---
**Author:** ![Wallenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5a626/32.png) [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/34 "2008-01-15T13:31:08Z")
Don’t forget that in Europe, especially Britain, rapid rebuilding was required after 1945. Concrete is cheap, easy to use and quick to erect. Towns and cities didn’t have the cash to invest in elaborate buildings, they needed something functional that could be up-and-running within a year. Coventry, for example, was pretty much flattened by German carpet bombing - a wholesale rebuilding programme was needed, but the city was broke after the war, so they took what they could. Flat side and “blocky” design is much cheaper and quicker than turrets, pillars and crennalations. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/35 "2008-01-15T13:53:22Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] Meh. Those examples really don’t much challenge my “architecture for androids” characterization. It still looks antiseptic, austere, and cold to me. I’ll take some curves, please (and some comfortable-looking furniture, while we’re at it). YM(obviously)V [/QUOTE] Yeah, they had to work hard to make wood so cold. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/36 "2008-01-15T14:47:10Z")
Well, as pointed elsewhere, one thing is Modern Architecture and another is Contemporary Architecture. The bottom line with Modern Architecture is that it was _intended_ to be ugly, in as much as the basic premise was to get rid of needless ornamentation; the problem is that leads to a box as the minimalist living space. As boring as watching the concrete on your box-house walls dry. The things is, that minimalism seeps the soul out of people, we are not machines and shouldn`t live in a machine. There`s more to home than an efficient and lean housing solution; beauty it`s not superfluous for the human being, it provides an stimulating environment to keep us feeling alive. Now for Contemporary Architecture… _“Full of sound and fury, signinfying nothing”_ That`s the kind of architecture that gets the flak; buildings made to gather ows and wows from people looking at the pictures but that completely abandon the human scale that makes people confortable to be around or inside them. Now you see monstrosities built for the purpose of showing that it can be built to defy nature, taller, unbalanced, sharp and sterile. Architectural Shock and Awe. Thankfully not all contemporary architecture is infected with the attitude that, if it`s outrageous it stands out, so it`s a good design. There are many buidlings that manage to look modern, be functional, awesome on their scale but yet pleasing to the eye. The Sydney Opera House, Burj al Arab just give (IMHO) two well known examples. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/37 "2008-01-15T15:28:39Z")
[QUOTE=Ale] Well, as pointed elsewhere, one thing is Modern Architecture and another is Contemporary Architecture. The bottom line with Modern Architecture is that it was _intended_ to be ugly, in as much as the basic premise was to get rid of needless ornamentation; the problem is that leads to a box as the minimalist living space. As boring as watching the concrete on your box-house walls dry. The things is, that minimalism seeps the soul out of people, we are not machines and shouldn`t live in a machine. There`s more to home than an efficient and lean housing solution; beauty it`s not superfluous for the human being, it provides an stimulating environment to keep us feeling alive. [/QUOTE] Wellll . . . Don’t forget traditional Japanese architecture (so influential on Frank Lloyd Wright). A pre-industrial Japanese house is minimalist in ornamentation (compared to, say, Chinese equivalents), but it’s beautiful as a whole. But that’s from the application of esthetic standards developed over centuries – part of the package modernism tossed over the side. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/38 "2008-01-15T15:36:50Z")
[_How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built,_](http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200411025&sr=8-1) by [Stewart Brand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand), offers some very specific and concrete practical criticisms of some of the assumptions of contemporary architecture. And the results. (Did you know that Wright’s famous Fallingwater is uncomfortable to live in and impossible to maintain? That Fuller’s geodesic domes tend to leak at every seam, and they’re all seams? That suburban McMansions are built in such a way as to make later add-ons inconceivable?) ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/39 "2008-01-15T15:56:39Z")
[Lauinger Library](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lauinger_Library.jpg) at Georgetown University was supposed to be a modernistic interpretation of [Healy Hall](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Healy_hall_gtu.JPG). What a fucking monstrosity. What bugs me about some modernist architecture is that its motives are Puritanical in nature, and therefore extremely anti-modern. Consider the architect Adolf Loos, who described ornament as ‘degenerate’ and wrote in his book _Ornament and Crime_, “The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects.” Blech. Let’s be sure not to wear buttons, and to cover our hair too. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539/40 "2008-01-15T16:21:07Z")
[QUOTE=Ludovic] Yeah, they had to work hard to make wood so cold. [/QUOTE] Sorry, but wood doesn’t automatically equal warmth. Not when the wood is cut into harsh straight lines and boxy uncomfortable-looking furniture. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-dislike-modern-architecture/433539.md?page=3)