Exactly. Howe could anyone comfortably live there? A pizza box and a couple of mugs on the table, a jacket thrown over the couch, kids’ toys on the floor – add any touches of daily life to that sort of set piece and it would look like someone threw grease on a painting rather than a place where people took their shoes off and had their friends over and hung out.
Probably the biggest reason for the OP is that people confuse “modern architecture” with “mass manufactured living and working spaces that are utterly devoid of any interest or esthetic consideration”. IMO tract houses and bland stores and offices are not architecture; they are merely protection from the elements. True architecture is the province of the elite, who can spend the money to create houses and other buildings which inspire as well as merely function.
That made me do a double take – at first I thought it was the Weldon library at the University of Western Ontario – yet another pile of concrete excreted in what otherwise for the most part is quite a nice campus: http://www.ontarioarchitecture.com/Brutalistlondon.jpg
Sure - and my great-grandparents lived in a sod hut on the Prairies when they homesteaded, because wood was expensive and dirt was, well, dirt cheap. 
But that doesn’t mean that they chose to live in sod huts for the rest of their lives, or that they thought sod huts were an improvement on previous architecture - as soon as they could, they built a wooden frame house and moved out of the dirt.
Nor did it mean that architects on the prairies were influenced by the thousands of settlers living in dirt huts - they didn’t try to turn sod into a new style of architecture.
It’s a continuum - but the key point is that rock music has general appeal, whether in the hands of a super-star band or the locals down at the pub. People generally like the music, while perhaps being critical of the execution in some cases. But what I’m hearing here on this thread, and in numerous other discussions of modern architecture, is that people don’t like the underlying principles.
David Szondy’s Tales of Future Past website includes some biting critiques of modernist conceptions of cities and homes.
Where I live, Ontario, Canada, we never had to rebuild anything, and the worst of the brutalist concrete buildings were built in the 1960s and 1970s, which was a period of tremendous prosperity here. Obviously cost was a factor – it usually is – but that is no excuse for throwing humanity out the window.
Worst of all, Lauinger is right on the quad, which is supposed to be the centerpiece of an American campus, and which is otherwise quite lovely and surrounded by attractive old buildings.
There’s nothing wrong with concrete as a construction material. It’s strong, easy to work with and keeps out the heat, and as long as you remember to cover it with plaster or clad it with marble or limestone it can look fine, too. It’s only when architects decide to let us see the concrete do we have a problem.
Exposed concrete is good for machine gun emplacements. Nothing else.
What, are you saying soldiers don’t deserve a cozy work environment? Why do you hate Amer…er, Israel?
What would happen if you left it to modernist architects to design not just a building here and there, but an entire city? And not just an enitre city, but a capital of a large country?
You’d end up with Brasilia.
I rest my case.
Ha, that’s lovely compared with the dark castle of doom that is U of T’s Robarts Library:
Lord, how I hated that building. No windows within its airless stacks … we used to joke that it was build for an insectoid race known only as “Them”, who would emerge from the misterious upper floors to feast on the nightmares spawned by students passed out in the stacks while studying. 
The gun slits to be used by “Them” in holding off the vengeful forces of humanity are clearly visible …
Some modern architecture is kinda fun, though. If you don’t mind everything looking like a bowling alley.
I suffered at that one for a few years as well. Both truly dreadful buildings. When the lights were turned on, I found Weldon darker in the stacks than Robarts, but that’s splitting hairs on a zombie’s head, for both are no more than elevated bunkers.
Does that library at U of T with the glass floors slung in space between the multi-story stacks still exist? I can’t remember the name of it – it backed on Queen’s Park Crescent/Circle south of Sig Sam.
In my day, we called Robarts “Fort Book,” although we turned things around–we figured we were defending Fort Book (through the gun slits yet!) against some enemy. Why, I have no idea; Robarts was the place you wanted to escape from–or at least allow to be conquered because with any luck, the conquerers would put in real windows. 
Here’s an article that a friend of mine wrote during the controversy at UVA over choosing Robert Stern to design the new business school. I think it articulates many of the flaws of modern architecture, especially campus architecture, pretty well:
:eek:
Looks like the set for a mediocre sci-fi movie. There’s no sense whatsoever of real human beings inhabiting that landscape, except perhaps as drone slaves of the galactic overlords.
And the thing about a lot of older colleges and universities in the US (like UVA and the little liberal arts school (also in Virginia) I went to) is that they have a theme going that provides a kind of unity and harmony. To drop some modernistic hulk in there is jarring and inappropriate. Even if the hulk is otherwise aesthetically pleasing, it is inappropriate for the setting.
Concrete is strong in compression, but has virtually no tensile strength. It tends to crack during heat/cold cycling, and once cracked is difficult to repair permanently. It is also a poor insulator, with about 3% the R-value of fiberglass batting, and about 6.5% the R-value of soft wood lumber. By virtue of its density it does make for a pretty decent thermal mass, but that’s only useful in a temperate climate where day/night thermal cycling is sufficient to be of use. It’s also difficult to get stuff to cleanly adhere to it without anchoring.
Really, the only virtues of concrete as a construction material are that it is almost literally dirt cheap and that it can be ‘worked’ in numerous ways with minimal carpentry skill, hence its use in small bridges and building foundations. Reinforced cellular or aerated concrete can be useful in building large arched prestressed structures but is a poor material for a residence.
For residential structures wood, and especially hardwoods, is a nearly ideal material for residential house framing in that is workable by hand tools into numerous shapes, provides passable insulation and can be formed into hollow sections to be filled with batted or blown insulating material, is readily modified, and survives thermal and seismic loads without extensive reinforcement.
Plus, when worked by skilled craftsmen and not covered up by bloody gypsum board, it looks nice.
Stranger
Not sure - it has been years (I was an undergrad in the late 80s early 90s).
What I hated was how inescabable Robarts was. Pretty well all of my courses required books from there, so I spent more time there than anywhere else - the most hated building was also the most used!