It seems to me the solution is make movies where people live is a distopian society of livable, walkable, beautiful cities with culturally enriching architecture. Then, just give it a couple of decades and the problem will be solved!
Romanian here, you do not know the half of it, many, many historical old style buildings were torn down during the communist's reigns that destroyed our capital of Bucharest, called the Little Paris of Eastern Europe, the same was about Poland and several parts of Germany, Austria and Hungary were many historical classic buildings were torn down in the name of "progress", for many neo-classic & art deco lovers like myself, buildings like the Chrysler & Empire State Building are hope that one day we could return to such a thing, there an already a growing national history pride in Europe, to try and preserve, restore and upgrade some of them, wiring, piping, heating, gas etc, The burning & restoration of Notre Dame is perhaps the sign we needed to start a new path from this capitalist socialist insanity, that modernism has brought in,
In Germany it's worse, WWII destroyed many many beautiful old towns (because of you know who...). The eastern replacement: totalitarian blocks, the western replacement: brutalism and utilitarianism. Latter is way way way worse! Ugly, dirty, chaotic and scary. Also, not sure about Romania, but in Germany it seems that people do not care about what IS left, they pollute beautiful old facades with mindless spray painting, throw garbage in otherwise beautiful old streets. In one word: it's a mess post-apocalyptic mess and people seem to celebrate it!???
I think what also made cities and towns ugly is that nowadays people only design buildings and neighborhoods behind a desk, and on a drawing. With duplicates and fast cheap building methodes. In the past people designed more on location, and people just saw if it's fit in its environment, or if its fit together. And what the feeling was of the area. They made a nice environment. Especially a few centuries ago.
Of course. This was just specifically talking about futuristic city depictions. Although I think Logan's Run falls in line with non-street level city design.
That is preposterous and demonstrably untrue. Are strip malls and stroads irritating and poor for traditional village/community life? Absolutely. But are suburban areas worse than giant metropolitan cities full of concrete and steel towers? Definitely not.
@@RextheRebel a city of concrete and steel towers is too vague. The West End neighbourhood of Vancouver for example is full of 1960s era modernist towers but manages to be an extremely livable and beautiful neighborhood, full of parks, trees, greenery, etc. I think what matters more is the layout on the street than the layout in the sky. The same buildings can make entirely different neighborhoods simply based on their arrangement and streetscape
@@RextheRebelIf I had to chose I would take condensed, utilitarian steel towers over endless parking lots, and unsustainable suburbs, with a fertilized lawns that create algae blooms in nearby waterways. At least metropolis isn't a huge tax burden like suburbs.
In my opinion, the two major things that destroyed our cities were: 1) Allowing private cars into cities. This inevitably led to cities being designed around cars rather than people, and now that the cities have been built we have to have cars in order to live in them. 2) Zoning laws that banned organic mixed use development. Traditional cities had a jumble of residential, retail and commercial spaces all mixed together, often in the same building. Use was determined by natural supply and demand, not bureaucratic diktat. Put these two things together and you end up with inhuman and alienating cities that are literally bad for our psychological health.
Looking at the underground homes for the workers in Metropolis and thinking : Whoa they can afford those apartments on a working mans salary ? What a utopia!
One thing to consider as we assess the preserved old centers of beautiful cities is that they are now sanitized. The Medieval core of Rouen is quaint today, but that's because the city now has a modern sanitation system, horses aren't pooping and pissing all over the muddy streets, and (by the industrial era) smoke-belching factories and furnaces aren't turning the air into black pea soup. Riquewihr is a preserved fairytale today, but life would have been very different for people living when those buildings were new. Concepts like LeCorbusier's Garden City and modern American suburbs arose as a direct response to the blight of crowded cities. People wanted the "health" of the country with the convenience of the city. We are fortunate today that we can recreate the convenience of the density of ancient city centers and keep it more sanitary than ever before.
I’ve gotta say, if the LA of blade runner got some support for the poor and better hygiene systems, it would be a loooooot more livable than the LA we’ve got now
Lovely video! Most dream of an italian village yet expect the future to look modernist dystopian. That tells you a lot why the movement and this channel is so important.
Glad to see someone call out I.M. Pei. He’s heralded as a great architect but most of his buildings are hideous. His legacy is ushering in one of the worst architectural eras ever.
This feels like a naive take. You should visit the Barbican if you can. It's a prime example of brutalism but it's done in an inviting way (to the residents at least. It's intentionally difficult to find the entrances to increase privacy, but it is totally publicly accessible). I don't think it's that modern styles are worse than classical, but rather there needs to be an intentional focus on the human scale. Most buildings today suffer from maximising land use, so getting the most leaseable square footage out of a plot of land. If that's your focus, of course you're not going to care about how the pedestrian feels. In North America especially, everything is also built to accommodate cars, so pedestrians are also pushed aside that way. It's not the fault of the architectural style but the fault of late stage capitalism.
It would be cool to see some success stories where modernist style buildings have been replaced with something more tasteful. I think you include an example of one around 12:05, but learning about other instances - or even just proposals - would be interesting. Maybe ID some of the most 'endangered' modernist buildings that we may see replaced with better structures in the next few years?
I would happily make those kinds of videos. The Aesthetic City's video on Le Plessis Robinson is a standout. I have one on future developments coming to Charleston and Savannah.
leaving the dystopian technology behind & returning to the organic way of small scale human co creation... The bigger the city, the greater the dystopian dysfunction...
This is an excellent essay on the relation bewteen architecture, our perception of what the future is, and the hypothesis that the past was more advanced than our delussions induced by our neophilia . Thank you for your work
One effect that's almost always overlooked is how buildings appear when juxtaposed with each other. Having sets of buildings in very similar styles, of similar height, with similar ornamentation, is a hallmark of the European cities chosen here as examples of appealing architecture. The buildings in today's modernist cities are individual edifices of different heights, colors, and styles, and the effect is often jarring and chaotic. More effort needs to be put into having an overall concept, not just of a skyline, but of how the city should appear from the ground.
That's why, imo, NYC is a beautiful city and Dubai is ugly. NYC has a variety of building styles, spanning at least 2 centuries, with varying heights and uses. Whereas a city like Dubai was built all at once and doesn't have the same charm or aesthetic as a city that grew organically over time.
Uniformity can be rather dull. After living for so long in the wildly diverse architectural chaos of Bucharest, I don't see myself living in most places around, say, the Netherlands, I admire their perfect architecture from a distance, but I can't relate.
Without any considerations for cost, this video feels incomplete. Yes, I would love for cities to be aesthetically pleasant. But people need to be housed, hospitals and schools need to be built, businesses have to operate, all of this in a cost-effective and timely manner. As much as I loved being in Köln and gaped at the magnificent architecture of her cathedral, I also recognize that the reason I gaped is that the time as craftsmanship it probably took was astronomical, not to mention the actual cost to build it. We may frown at the brutalist appearance of commie blocks in Eastern Europe, but truth be told, it was an effective way to quickly build decent housing. Unless, of course, we want to go back to a time when the aristocracy have their lavish palaces while the peasantry live in mud huts.
Any idea what the costs of widespread adoption of neoclassical revival architecture would be? Asking this as someone who just thinks we need more affordable housing and all, no matter the style. Personally, all this debate between "all neoclassical" versus "all modern" is rather unsavory and all too ideological - I believe more than a few people can appreciate European walkable old town aesthetics but also rich-looking sleek minimalism.
@@ionescuflorin7307 I have no idea of the cost of neoclassical architecture. It certainly looks expensive. I love the aesthetic of the style, but housing in particular should above all else be affordable. As for cities being walkable and generally pleasant, it has a lot less to do with architecture and a lot more to do with city planning and proper transportation. As an example, I would name the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. For Dutch standards it is a modern city, since it is somewhat recent. It lacks that classical architecture you see in more traditional Dutch cities. Eindhoven is still very pleasant, with bike lanes and decent transportation everywhere, green areas, and excellent urban planning, even in the older industrial region.
There’s a danger in making old styles kitsch thinking that copying them will revive them. Vitality is not stagnation. The idea should be to create beautiful engaging buildings in an ultimately humanistic way. Not to *dehumanize with oppressive copies of prescribed orthodoxy.
@@RextheRebel lol the stagnant? It’s human nature to get used to things sooner or, yes, later. My point though was to do more of what he was saying in vital new ways, *not* to argue against it.
This video is rather subjective as modern architecture has changed dramatically in the last 30 years just because you don’t like modern architecture doesn’t mean others don’t..
Of course there is beautiful modern architecture, but it’s extremely rare. For every Disney concert hall there are 10,000 souless slabs of concrete or cubes of glass.
Great Video!! A strange thing is, all the modern day architects that design ugly unliveable buildings almost always live in old beautiful buildings themself. I think there is a shift coming soon though, in the coming decades towards the old classical principles and styles. It is alredy here in some small ways. I see it aldredy🙂 so there is hope!
Andor uses the impressive, monotone yet also inhumanely scaled and bare brutalist and modernist buildings just as Metropolis did. Comes to show that it’s a recurring theme
Verry interesting Video, on a realy importand topic🔥! Especially if one take into account that sience nowadays comes more and more to the conclusion that the simple lack of beauty, detail and nature can have a bad impact on the human psychology. This goes to the point, that a single tree near our home can lower the chance of getting depressed, whilst an ugly, unhuman environment can slow down the healing process of an ill person. It is realy sad that modernists just ignore those facts, desperatly searching for a utopian future, that never will be and that nobpdy wants.😢
All their jobs were outsourced so the young left for the growing cities. Wmen have been convinced to forgo motherhood and domestic duties, instead being encouraged to eliminate their own offspring to pursue their own career, subverting the value of labor in a tighter market with service predominant jobs. Those are the two major reasons.
You're focusing on architectural styles, but what you should be focusing on is scale. The dystopian cities in those movies are massive, with the intention of dwarfing the humanity that live in them. Whereas the cities you seem to prefer are smaller scaled, with shorter buildings and more open space. Building scale is what makes a city either a pleasant place to be, or a nightmare to live in.
The reason why Brutalism became such a thing was actually because of the USSR. The Stalinist principles after the 50s made grey appartment blocs common in every then "province" of the USSR, from East Germany to Grozny in Chechnya. Why? Well, the grey concrete was the perfect soul crushing mechanism. The idea was that if people lived in such a place, they would become so docile that they'd never revolt against the system ever again. Before that ironically enough, Socialist Classicism was the standard for architecture and, just like National Socialist and Fascist architecture, looked _considerably_ better in many ways. How and why western Europe and north America thought it'd ever be a good idea to copy this is beyond me, but given how the first modernist architects in my city were inspired by the USSR in the 1930s says enough I think. Great video and thanks for showing those films, I had no idea they existed!
1. East Germany wasn’t a "province“ of the USSR 2. The story why our buildings look like the way they do, is because of architectural movements like the Bauhaus school and architects like Mies Van der Rohe, Walter Gropius or Le Corbusier. It was part of the "form follows function“ movement which is the reason why everything looks plain and simple nowadays (not just buildings became simple and boring but also furniture or cutlery for example) And the most important factor, that style was also very popular with investors and producers since plain and simple things without ornaments are cheaper, easier and quicker to build.
I love you Alexander. Thank you for being on this subject. I wish Stewart Hicks and architecture schools could be inoculated with you and learn what beauty is. God bless you!
@@connors3356 because suburbs are terrible I saw with my own eyes the country land and forests I grew up around turn into ugly rich homes for people out of state to move to it’s disgusting and needs to be stopped we need natural land not a bunch of spread out houses destroying beauty
Man I need to show YIMBYs this who argue that design isn’t as important when building new apartment buildings. 5/1s are just so terrible to look at. Even some of the more interesting ones as they don’t use classical design approaches.
I think you might find Chongqing interesting. It's planned with a Chinese emphasis on modernity, but the chaotic streetfronts, old areas, architectural quirks (eg. trees on buildings), and natural environment is a very nice contrast (it's nicknamed "mountain city" or 山城 in China). Besides Baidu Maps street view, idk any good English-language sources on the non-modern urbanism parts because the Chinese government isn't really proud of that (maybe tourism blogs/vlogs might have something?). In any case visiting is always ideal, it's a massive city for domestic tourism in China for a reason.
Yet again, impeccably done. I am so fortunate to live in beautiful Middelburg (The Netherlands) which boasts a delightful, inviting, enchanting, car-free town centre. On this wonderful, sunny morning, I savoured sitting at a sidewalk café... watching people, drinking tea, and eating pastry. "Geweldig!" "Fantastique!" This is the life!
People can like European walkable old town aesthetics and also ultra-modern sleek architectural too, why does it have to be either/or? Is the neoclassical revival style actually climate-proof and sustainable? Mere ideological agenda won't help it become widely adopted. If it's still labor intensive, there's no future for it outside luxury sector. And right now we need more affordable construction, not even less.
What was learned wa priceless regardless of the ills. The historical building lost and the suffering of peoples is a sad thing. Let's learn from that and not repeat it or echo it in anyway including rhyming.
The brutal Boston City Hall and City Hall Plaza is but a piker that cannot compete with the brutal ugliness of the typical American stroad or strighway with its frequent strip malls, roadside franchise businesses, traffic lights, and high speed roadway design.
@@Electrolux219 I know expecting basic honesty and capacity to answer without twisting other's words is demanding way too much from your lot. Please point out where the words "obsolete" or "my better style" were written, if you're at least able to read. Modernism and its ideology must be erased because they are horsesh1t and a disgrace to the world: aesthetically, functionally, energetically, economically, environmentally, socially. And all these things are proven and quantifiable, unlike your lot's empty jargon. Now proceed on pointing out where did I write those words, please. Oh but I guess you'll flutter away as usual with your lot of losers
@@Electrolux219 I know expecting basic honesty and capacity to answer without twisting other's words is demanding way too much from your lot. Please point out where the words "obsolete" or "my better style" were written, if you're at least able to read. Modernism and its ideology must be erased because they are tihsesroh and a disgrace to the world: aesthetically, functionally, energetically, economically, environmentally, socially. And all these things are proven and quantifiable, unlike your lot's empty jargon. Now proceed on pointing out where did I write those words, please. Oh but I guess you'll flutter away as usual with your lot
@@Electrolux219 I know expecting basic honesty and capacity to answer without twisting other's words is demanding way too much from your lot. Please point out where the words "obsolete" or "my better style" were written, if you're at least able to read. Modernism and its ideology are plain and simple a disgrace to the world: aesthetically, functionally, energetically, economically, environmentally, socially. And all these things are proven and quantifiable, unlike your lot's empty jargon. Now proceed on pointing out where did I write those words, please. Oh but I guess you'll flutter away as usual with your lot
@@Electrolux219 so? Where's the text or the meaning you pointed out? I'm waiting. You didn't make up stuff and put words in other's mouth to suit your intentions in absence of arguments, did you?
Give me Classical, Gothic or Art Deco over modernist crap any day. Honestly I feel like modernist architecture is worse today then ever. At least in the 60s it had the benefit of being novel. Now it is simply uncreative, dull, and often seems to nakedly bee deigned around a budget as opposed to any ideal of beauty. Architecture is dead and modernism killed it.
while i agree with your point to an extent, i think that the focus on older styles and viewing them as timeless and enjoyable styles ignores the survivorship bias in those buildings. They were built during times of slums, cheap buildings ready to collapse in on themselves. We need to consider the buildings that survived, who financed them, and how they were treated. the reality is that we live in a commodified land system where developers build buildings for profit above all else. Companies wont pay for metropes, for masonry, for craftsmanship when that's so expensive and rare. The video I think also dismisses some people's reactions to skyscrapers. I have recently met someone who was in awe of skyscrapers just due to their size. And the dig against YIMBYists I think is also a bit eesh. The person who said to build a bunch of them in local cities is likely wanting a solution to the housing crisis that grips much of the UK and the Global North. Buildings that house 20,000 people would be a massive benefit and deprecation of rent, making it more affordable for people to live. Don't get me wrong, I want beautiful buildings in my cities. But we need to understand the system in which buildings were and are built.
Any building large enough to house 20,000 ppl is part of the problem. Housing ppl is essential, but housing 20,000 in a skyscraper is the opposite of essential. It's the reason everything sucks.
@@RextheRebel I'd say the fact that affordable housing has been bought up and rent prices are going up and most zoning allowed is less dense than even the historic buildings in cities is a bigger contributor. Like forget a building large enough to house 20,000 people, most cities struggle to even allow a building that can house 12! (on most of their land) Also I'd say before you bash the building, maybe look at the units they provide. I'm not saying that it's an actually good building, but it very much is a livable residence that isn't a slum. But yeah "oh housing ppl is essential, but not THIS way" is silly. It's addressing the problem, a problem that cities in the west are dragging their feet to address.
Is modern architecture really that bad? It was terrible in the 60s, but it’s a bit better now. I feel like modern architecture could be beautiful if they used bright colors and creative ideas. I want to say that this is actually being applied in lots of new developments to make them more inviting and I look forward to exploring them when I find them
it may not be "as bad" as it once was, but it's still no where near as good as traditional architecture. a polished turd is still a turd. and I gotta be honest, I have never once looked forward to exploring modern architecture and city planning, at least not like I look forward to exploring the older cities in my country.
Most modern buildings are function over form. Some of them are getting better than they once were, but most likely they have minimalist design and poor street interaction compared to something built in classical style. It's better than the beige boxes of the 60s and 70s, but it still misses the mark. Fact of the matter is its simply cheaper to do it the way they do it. Classical style architecture is not likely to return as long as bottom dollar is the only thing that matters, and that's something I don't see changing any time soon.
Depends on what you mean by 'principles of the classical architecture'. Brutalism almost always follows the proportions and draws inspiration from Antiquity-Romanesque/Gothic architecture. The principles are the same, the execution is overtly different. What you are trying to advocate for is the ornamental architecture, not abstract classical principles. Modernism was attempting to be the monument to humanity and its ability to bend nature, which good modernism does splendidly. I was recently sitting on the middle of Mies van Der Rohe's TD Centre and it is awe-inspiring, even during the day. Most current architecture is just badly done with designs being stripped down to the bare minimum to save money.
@@michael.diamant modernism doesn't brutalism often does. A lot of brutalist ethos comes from Roman experiments with concrete that are upgraded by modern technology and intertwined with imposing and grim neo-Romanesque/gothic features. It is also made functional, to a degree. Brutalism is trying to adapt to some aspects of the environment whereas modernism clearly defies the pre-existent.
@@ramzanninety-five3639 brutalism is just horrible and no one cares about its supposed relationship with classical. It is imaginary and just a way to elevate anti human architecture.
@@CosmicMapping high buildings are bad urbanism and bad for the people living in them. And what is wrong with advocating for the classical framework that has a proven track record of working?
and then you realised you were all alone in the alley way with your dubious critique of traditionalist architecture that lacked any proper reason other than labelling it as a fetish
@@norger Building vertically is the only way to fit more people in a smaller place. If you don’t like it try going back to the past more than a Hundred years ago.
I completely disagree with the author of this video. Those neoclassical buildings are old & outdated with overly decorated facades. I prefer the functionality and practicality of modern architecture. We live in the 21st century. We need to build for the 21st century and beyond. Creating the Cities of Tomorrow is better than being glued in the past. People have something to look forward to and see real progress with change. Move Forward not Backwards. What those Dystopian movies have in common is Capitalist & Corporate Greed and other Manmade Disasters.
What is frustrating about this channel is that I agree that we need more human scale architecture, but I whole heartedly disagree that classical/neoclassical architecture is needed for human scale building. What we need is for cities to remove the barriers that make building the “missing middle” illegal.
the idea of building for the 21st century is so nebulous and empty. Who gets to decide what the future has to look like? Designing full glass, monotonous buildings is 50 years out of date and so isn't futuristic at all. the mdoern style creates cookie cutter cities with no cultural or aesthetic value, its time to decide on a different future
@@Stargate2077 the neoclassical style provides a good solution, but its not the only one, the most important thing is that architecture becomes less cheap and actually cares about, and tries to make better the built/ natural environment in which people live, the plastic/ glass giant sheds that are currently being built help nobody but the wallets of the developer, creating a textured, quality environment with nature and pedestrians in mind is paramount. i think the best thing to happen would be an explosion of emerging new (and neo) styles to create the vibrant street scapes of the future. im english, where the missing middle is more prevelant, and not only is it important that you have it, it is also how it looks
It hás been shown time and time again that people vastly prefer classical. It has been psychologically shown how they stimulate people in a thousand different ways unlike soulless squares of concrete and glass. Experiments have gone as far as remodeling old neighborhoods to classic style and at the end they became some of the most desired and sought-after places to live and spent time at.
a human mind doesn't values efficiency over aesthetics, that's the problem with most communists they are detached with psychological reality of human nature
I must say that the dystopian city in Logans Run looks more visually appealing than the ugly, dark, dirty industrial cities in Metropolis and Blade Runner movies. The Logan Runs city had a considerable amount of greenery (inside and out), and a couple of lakes(5:53). The buildings are smaller, bright and do have some interesting curve designs. Not too brutalistic I might say.😊
I’d love to see a video on unbuilt cities or projects that should have been built
Great idea
You won't. All you will see are complaints about what we have. That's how the internet works. Bored and spoiled people have time to complain.
Let's start building things we want!
fresno california
There's a channel out there
It seems to me the solution is make movies where people live is a distopian society of livable, walkable, beautiful cities with culturally enriching architecture. Then, just give it a couple of decades and the problem will be solved!
Duloc in Shrek? Sandford in Hot Fuzz?
Romanian here, you do not know the half of it, many, many historical old style buildings were torn down during the communist's reigns that destroyed our capital of Bucharest, called the Little Paris of Eastern Europe, the same was about Poland and several parts of Germany, Austria and Hungary were many historical classic buildings were torn down in the name of "progress", for many neo-classic & art deco lovers like myself, buildings like the Chrysler & Empire State Building are hope that one day we could return to such a thing, there an already a growing national history pride in Europe, to try and preserve, restore and upgrade some of them, wiring, piping, heating, gas etc,
The burning & restoration of Notre Dame is perhaps the sign we needed to start a new path from this capitalist socialist insanity, that modernism has brought in,
In Germany it's worse, WWII destroyed many many beautiful old towns (because of you know who...). The eastern replacement: totalitarian blocks, the western replacement: brutalism and utilitarianism. Latter is way way way worse! Ugly, dirty, chaotic and scary. Also, not sure about Romania, but in Germany it seems that people do not care about what IS left, they pollute beautiful old facades with mindless spray painting, throw garbage in otherwise beautiful old streets. In one word: it's a mess post-apocalyptic mess and people seem to celebrate it!???
Interesting that you blame modernism on capitalism and then cite communist countries for their terrible decisions.
@@stischer47 And you point is, if it ugly its ugly, if its beautifully its beautiful,
I think what also made cities and towns ugly is that nowadays people only design buildings and neighborhoods behind a desk, and on a drawing. With duplicates and fast cheap building methodes. In the past people designed more on location, and people just saw if it's fit in its environment, or if its fit together. And what the feeling was of the area. They made a nice environment. Especially a few centuries ago.
Strip malls and stroads are worse than any brutalisy building in a city that interacts with the street level.
Of course. This was just specifically talking about futuristic city depictions. Although I think Logan's Run falls in line with non-street level city design.
i like strip malls because i enjoy getting naked
That is preposterous and demonstrably untrue. Are strip malls and stroads irritating and poor for traditional village/community life? Absolutely. But are suburban areas worse than giant metropolitan cities full of concrete and steel towers? Definitely not.
@@RextheRebel a city of concrete and steel towers is too vague. The West End neighbourhood of Vancouver for example is full of 1960s era modernist towers but manages to be an extremely livable and beautiful neighborhood, full of parks, trees, greenery, etc. I think what matters more is the layout on the street than the layout in the sky. The same buildings can make entirely different neighborhoods simply based on their arrangement and streetscape
@@RextheRebelIf I had to chose I would take condensed, utilitarian steel towers over endless parking lots, and unsustainable suburbs, with a fertilized lawns that create algae blooms in nearby waterways. At least metropolis isn't a huge tax burden like suburbs.
It's interesting to wonder what our cities could've looked like.
In my opinion, the two major things that destroyed our cities were:
1) Allowing private cars into cities. This inevitably led to cities being designed around cars rather than people, and now that the cities have been built we have to have cars in order to live in them.
2) Zoning laws that banned organic mixed use development. Traditional cities had a jumble of residential, retail and commercial spaces all mixed together, often in the same building. Use was determined by natural supply and demand, not bureaucratic diktat.
Put these two things together and you end up with inhuman and alienating cities that are literally bad for our psychological health.
Looking at the underground homes for the workers in Metropolis and thinking : Whoa they can afford those apartments on a working mans salary ? What a utopia!
Quite well done. May our cities become beautiful once again.
One thing to consider as we assess the preserved old centers of beautiful cities is that they are now sanitized. The Medieval core of Rouen is quaint today, but that's because the city now has a modern sanitation system, horses aren't pooping and pissing all over the muddy streets, and (by the industrial era) smoke-belching factories and furnaces aren't turning the air into black pea soup.
Riquewihr is a preserved fairytale today, but life would have been very different for people living when those buildings were new.
Concepts like LeCorbusier's Garden City and modern American suburbs arose as a direct response to the blight of crowded cities. People wanted the "health" of the country with the convenience of the city.
We are fortunate today that we can recreate the convenience of the density of ancient city centers and keep it more sanitary than ever before.
The problem is, city planners in the mid 20th century threw the baby out with the bathwater.
I’ve gotta say, if the LA of blade runner got some support for the poor and better hygiene systems, it would be a loooooot more livable than the LA we’ve got now
That's true
The city planning isn't that bad, it's more the dirtiness, porverty and the surveillance of its citizens.
@@backroomserklärt yep
Lovely video! Most dream of an italian village yet expect the future to look modernist dystopian. That tells you a lot why the movement and this channel is so important.
Thank you as always Michael! Can't wait to have you back on soon ;)
Glad to see someone call out I.M. Pei. He’s heralded as a great architect but most of his buildings are hideous. His legacy is ushering in one of the worst architectural eras ever.
This feels like a naive take. You should visit the Barbican if you can. It's a prime example of brutalism but it's done in an inviting way (to the residents at least. It's intentionally difficult to find the entrances to increase privacy, but it is totally publicly accessible). I don't think it's that modern styles are worse than classical, but rather there needs to be an intentional focus on the human scale. Most buildings today suffer from maximising land use, so getting the most leaseable square footage out of a plot of land. If that's your focus, of course you're not going to care about how the pedestrian feels. In North America especially, everything is also built to accommodate cars, so pedestrians are also pushed aside that way. It's not the fault of the architectural style but the fault of late stage capitalism.
I’ve actually been to the Barbican. Not a fan, especially when entering from the street.
the damage world wide is too big. our future cities are just the same glass modern buildings.
It would be cool to see some success stories where modernist style buildings have been replaced with something more tasteful. I think you include an example of one around 12:05, but learning about other instances - or even just proposals - would be interesting. Maybe ID some of the most 'endangered' modernist buildings that we may see replaced with better structures in the next few years?
I would happily make those kinds of videos. The Aesthetic City's video on Le Plessis Robinson is a standout. I have one on future developments coming to Charleston and Savannah.
You'd be shocked to find out what cities like Potsdam or Dresden look like before and now. It is a *MASSIVE* improvement I can tell you.
Nice video! Important topic
Thank you!
Cost+ Labor + Materials + Maintenance. You forgot to mention those.
leaving the dystopian technology behind & returning to the organic way of small scale human co creation... The bigger the city, the greater the dystopian dysfunction...
This is an excellent essay on the relation bewteen architecture, our perception of what the future is, and the hypothesis that the past was more advanced than our delussions induced by our neophilia . Thank you for your work
We need to build some cool new, charming walkable towns again - with Nice architecture. If anyone wants to help me, let me know
One effect that's almost always overlooked is how buildings appear when juxtaposed with each other. Having sets of buildings in very similar styles, of similar height, with similar ornamentation, is a hallmark of the European cities chosen here as examples of appealing architecture. The buildings in today's modernist cities are individual edifices of different heights, colors, and styles, and the effect is often jarring and chaotic. More effort needs to be put into having an overall concept, not just of a skyline, but of how the city should appear from the ground.
That's why, imo, NYC is a beautiful city and Dubai is ugly. NYC has a variety of building styles, spanning at least 2 centuries, with varying heights and uses. Whereas a city like Dubai was built all at once and doesn't have the same charm or aesthetic as a city that grew organically over time.
Uniformity can be rather dull. After living for so long in the wildly diverse architectural chaos of Bucharest, I don't see myself living in most places around, say, the Netherlands, I admire their perfect architecture from a distance, but I can't relate.
Underrated video. I wish more people in my country watched it (I’m Brazilian).
Without any considerations for cost, this video feels incomplete. Yes, I would love for cities to be aesthetically pleasant. But people need to be housed, hospitals and schools need to be built, businesses have to operate, all of this in a cost-effective and timely manner.
As much as I loved being in Köln and gaped at the magnificent architecture of her cathedral, I also recognize that the reason I gaped is that the time as craftsmanship it probably took was astronomical, not to mention the actual cost to build it.
We may frown at the brutalist appearance of commie blocks in Eastern Europe, but truth be told, it was an effective way to quickly build decent housing.
Unless, of course, we want to go back to a time when the aristocracy have their lavish palaces while the peasantry live in mud huts.
Any idea what the costs of widespread adoption of neoclassical revival architecture would be? Asking this as someone who just thinks we need more affordable housing and all, no matter the style. Personally, all this debate between "all neoclassical" versus "all modern" is rather unsavory and all too ideological - I believe more than a few people can appreciate European walkable old town aesthetics but also rich-looking sleek minimalism.
@@ionescuflorin7307 I have no idea of the cost of neoclassical architecture. It certainly looks expensive. I love the aesthetic of the style, but housing in particular should above all else be affordable.
As for cities being walkable and generally pleasant, it has a lot less to do with architecture and a lot more to do with city planning and proper transportation.
As an example, I would name the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. For Dutch standards it is a modern city, since it is somewhat recent. It lacks that classical architecture you see in more traditional Dutch cities. Eindhoven is still very pleasant, with bike lanes and decent transportation everywhere, green areas, and excellent urban planning, even in the older industrial region.
What can I say, great analysis and video!
There’s a danger in making old styles kitsch thinking that copying them will revive them. Vitality is not stagnation. The idea should be to create beautiful engaging buildings in an ultimately humanistic way. Not to *dehumanize with oppressive copies of prescribed orthodoxy.
What you call stagnation, others call familiarity and structure.
@@RextheRebel lol the stagnant? It’s human nature to get used to things sooner or, yes, later. My point though was to do more of what he was saying in vital new ways, *not* to argue against it.
Why not both? You can imitate old styles but also create new styles that build on traditional motifs.
Reconstructions should respect the original.
I have never been more disappointed by the "future" not looking anything like any art ever predicted.
This video is rather subjective as modern architecture has changed dramatically in the last 30 years just because you don’t like modern architecture doesn’t mean others don’t..
Of course there is beautiful modern architecture, but it’s extremely rare. For every Disney concert hall there are 10,000 souless slabs of concrete or cubes of glass.
Great Video!! A strange thing is, all the modern day architects that design ugly unliveable buildings almost always live in old beautiful buildings themself. I think there is a shift coming soon though, in the coming decades towards the old classical principles and styles. It is alredy here in some small ways. I see it aldredy🙂 so there is hope!
The future will be more like the Shire than NYC…
They wanted to make homes "machines to live in" - and it resulted in homes that machines live in. They still build them.
Andor uses the impressive, monotone yet also inhumanely scaled and bare brutalist and modernist buildings just as Metropolis did. Comes to show that it’s a recurring theme
Criminally underrated channel 👮♂️
Verry interesting Video, on a realy importand topic🔥! Especially if one take into account that sience nowadays comes more and more to the conclusion that the simple lack of beauty, detail and nature can have a bad impact on the human psychology. This goes to the point, that a single tree near our home can lower the chance of getting depressed, whilst an ugly, unhuman environment can slow down the healing process of an ill person. It is realy sad that modernists just ignore those facts, desperatly searching for a utopian future, that never will be and that nobpdy wants.😢
Rustbelt and rural Appalachia has 50% less population than in 1950.
America is a dying nation
All their jobs were outsourced so the young left for the growing cities. Wmen have been convinced to forgo motherhood and domestic duties, instead being encouraged to eliminate their own offspring to pursue their own career, subverting the value of labor in a tighter market with service predominant jobs.
Those are the two major reasons.
4:35 small complaint but Michael Graves is Post Modern meaning he criticized many elements of modernist architecture.
You're focusing on architectural styles, but what you should be focusing on is scale. The dystopian cities in those movies are massive, with the intention of dwarfing the humanity that live in them. Whereas the cities you seem to prefer are smaller scaled, with shorter buildings and more open space. Building scale is what makes a city either a pleasant place to be, or a nightmare to live in.
There's nothing more dystopian than having a city whose layout is similar to most Japanese cities, but having to commute by car/motorcycle.
The reason why Brutalism became such a thing was actually because of the USSR. The Stalinist principles after the 50s made grey appartment blocs common in every then "province" of the USSR, from East Germany to Grozny in Chechnya. Why? Well, the grey concrete was the perfect soul crushing mechanism. The idea was that if people lived in such a place, they would become so docile that they'd never revolt against the system ever again. Before that ironically enough, Socialist Classicism was the standard for architecture and, just like National Socialist and Fascist architecture, looked _considerably_ better in many ways.
How and why western Europe and north America thought it'd ever be a good idea to copy this is beyond me, but given how the first modernist architects in my city were inspired by the USSR in the 1930s says enough I think.
Great video and thanks for showing those films, I had no idea they existed!
1. East Germany wasn’t a "province“ of the USSR
2. The story why our buildings look like the way they do, is because of architectural movements like the Bauhaus school and architects like Mies Van der Rohe, Walter Gropius or Le Corbusier. It was part of the "form follows function“ movement which is the reason why everything looks plain and simple nowadays (not just buildings became simple and boring but also furniture or cutlery for example)
And the most important factor, that style was also very popular with investors and producers since plain and simple things without ornaments are cheaper, easier and quicker to build.
the future isn't exactly inevitable ...
Is time going to stop or reverse or something
@@archimetropolis time won't stop , but our whole setup just might cease to be
I love you Alexander. Thank you for being on this subject. I wish Stewart Hicks and architecture schools could be inoculated with you and learn what beauty is. God bless you!
I've heard of Logan's Run before, but this video actually made me want to watch it finally.
It is a great and weird film.
I hope the US one day builds more high density residential
why
@@connors3356 because suburbs are terrible I saw with my own eyes the country land and forests I grew up around turn into ugly rich homes for people out of state to move to it’s disgusting and needs to be stopped we need natural land not a bunch of spread out houses destroying beauty
@@DeeRuss you liked your own comment
@@connors3356 No they didn’t. I did.
@@Ac_aSuburbanites can't fathom the idea that anyone disagrees with them.
Man I need to show YIMBYs this who argue that design isn’t as important when building new apartment buildings. 5/1s are just so terrible to look at. Even some of the more interesting ones as they don’t use classical design approaches.
I loved the Images at the end🤩
I think you might find Chongqing interesting. It's planned with a Chinese emphasis on modernity, but the chaotic streetfronts, old areas, architectural quirks (eg. trees on buildings), and natural environment is a very nice contrast (it's nicknamed "mountain city" or 山城 in China).
Besides Baidu Maps street view, idk any good English-language sources on the non-modern urbanism parts because the Chinese government isn't really proud of that (maybe tourism blogs/vlogs might have something?). In any case visiting is always ideal, it's a massive city for domestic tourism in China for a reason.
One city of the future that should never be built is called Brasília. The capital of Brazil.
I think when you look at places like coruscant from Star Wars I would love to live there
Yet again, impeccably done. I am so fortunate to live in beautiful Middelburg (The Netherlands) which boasts a delightful, inviting, enchanting, car-free town centre. On this wonderful, sunny morning, I savoured sitting at a sidewalk café... watching people, drinking tea, and eating pastry. "Geweldig!" "Fantastique!" This is the life!
The neotraditional postsecular transhistorical metamodern era/paradigm is here.
thats so cute and wholesome that your first $4 patreon was your dad, GREAT WORK!!
Bladerunner: the future nimbys want 😬
People can like European walkable old town aesthetics and also ultra-modern sleek architectural too, why does it have to be either/or?
Is the neoclassical revival style actually climate-proof and sustainable? Mere ideological agenda won't help it become widely adopted. If it's still labor intensive, there's no future for it outside luxury sector. And right now we need more affordable construction, not even less.
They not cities they're nests.
What was learned wa priceless regardless of the ills. The historical building lost and the suffering of peoples is a sad thing. Let's learn from that and not repeat it or echo it in anyway including rhyming.
but japan built it in reality and nobody calls it ugly
The brutal Boston City Hall and City Hall Plaza is but a piker that cannot compete with the brutal ugliness of the typical American stroad or strighway with its frequent strip malls, roadside franchise businesses, traffic lights, and high speed roadway design.
I agree to a certain extent that car centricity is the greatest sin, but aesthetics and street level urban design are also extremely important.
The way things are going I suspect.the most accurate prediction of thr future id either Mad Max or Judge Dredd.
Cologne Cathedral is hardly 'classical'.
Classical principles. It’s a very broad.
...And they have to be destroyed! Modernism and modern architecture must be opposed at all costs, in all places!
That’s a very modernist sentiment from someone who doesn’t like modernism. ‘This style is obsolete & must be replaced with my, better, style’.
@@Electrolux219 I know expecting basic honesty and capacity to answer without twisting other's words is demanding way too much from your lot.
Please point out where the words "obsolete" or "my better style" were written, if you're at least able to read.
Modernism and its ideology must be erased because they are horsesh1t and a disgrace to the world: aesthetically, functionally, energetically, economically, environmentally, socially. And all these things are proven and quantifiable, unlike your lot's empty jargon.
Now proceed on pointing out where did I write those words, please.
Oh but I guess you'll flutter away as usual with your lot of losers
@@Electrolux219 I know expecting basic honesty and capacity to answer without twisting other's words is demanding way too much from your lot.
Please point out where the words "obsolete" or "my better style" were written, if you're at least able to read.
Modernism and its ideology must be erased because they are tihsesroh and a disgrace to the world: aesthetically, functionally, energetically, economically, environmentally, socially. And all these things are proven and quantifiable, unlike your lot's empty jargon.
Now proceed on pointing out where did I write those words, please.
Oh but I guess you'll flutter away as usual with your lot
@@Electrolux219 I know expecting basic honesty and capacity to answer without twisting other's words is demanding way too much from your lot.
Please point out where the words "obsolete" or "my better style" were written, if you're at least able to read.
Modernism and its ideology are plain and simple a disgrace to the world: aesthetically, functionally, energetically, economically, environmentally, socially. And all these things are proven and quantifiable, unlike your lot's empty jargon.
Now proceed on pointing out where did I write those words, please.
Oh but I guess you'll flutter away as usual with your lot
@@Electrolux219 so? Where's the text or the meaning you pointed out? I'm waiting. You didn't make up stuff and put words in other's mouth to suit your intentions in absence of arguments, did you?
i ❤️ portland building
Totally agreed! 👍
Give me Classical, Gothic or Art Deco over modernist crap any day. Honestly I feel like modernist architecture is worse today then ever. At least in the 60s it had the benefit of being novel. Now it is simply uncreative, dull, and often seems to nakedly bee deigned around a budget as opposed to any ideal of beauty. Architecture is dead and modernism killed it.
love this channel, thanks!
you need a "$thanks" button, however you get that thing...i quit patreon, and i ain't going back, sorry.
Good video
while i agree with your point to an extent, i think that the focus on older styles and viewing them as timeless and enjoyable styles ignores the survivorship bias in those buildings. They were built during times of slums, cheap buildings ready to collapse in on themselves. We need to consider the buildings that survived, who financed them, and how they were treated.
the reality is that we live in a commodified land system where developers build buildings for profit above all else. Companies wont pay for metropes, for masonry, for craftsmanship when that's so expensive and rare.
The video I think also dismisses some people's reactions to skyscrapers. I have recently met someone who was in awe of skyscrapers just due to their size.
And the dig against YIMBYists I think is also a bit eesh. The person who said to build a bunch of them in local cities is likely wanting a solution to the housing crisis that grips much of the UK and the Global North. Buildings that house 20,000 people would be a massive benefit and deprecation of rent, making it more affordable for people to live.
Don't get me wrong, I want beautiful buildings in my cities. But we need to understand the system in which buildings were and are built.
Any building large enough to house 20,000 ppl is part of the problem. Housing ppl is essential, but housing 20,000 in a skyscraper is the opposite of essential. It's the reason everything sucks.
@@RextheRebel I'd say the fact that affordable housing has been bought up and rent prices are going up and most zoning allowed is less dense than even the historic buildings in cities is a bigger contributor.
Like forget a building large enough to house 20,000 people, most cities struggle to even allow a building that can house 12! (on most of their land)
Also I'd say before you bash the building, maybe look at the units they provide. I'm not saying that it's an actually good building, but it very much is a livable residence that isn't a slum.
But yeah "oh housing ppl is essential, but not THIS way" is silly. It's addressing the problem, a problem that cities in the west are dragging their feet to address.
Is modern architecture really that bad? It was terrible in the 60s, but it’s a bit better now. I feel like modern architecture could be beautiful if they used bright colors and creative ideas. I want to say that this is actually being applied in lots of new developments to make them more inviting and I look forward to exploring them when I find them
it may not be "as bad" as it once was, but it's still no where near as good as traditional architecture. a polished turd is still a turd.
and I gotta be honest, I have never once looked forward to exploring modern architecture and city planning, at least not like I look forward to exploring the older cities in my country.
Bright colours and creative ideas will still leave it empty and void from culture.
It is awful!!!
Modernist architecture will never be enduring.
Most modern buildings are function over form. Some of them are getting better than they once were, but most likely they have minimalist design and poor street interaction compared to something built in classical style. It's better than the beige boxes of the 60s and 70s, but it still misses the mark. Fact of the matter is its simply cheaper to do it the way they do it. Classical style architecture is not likely to return as long as bottom dollar is the only thing that matters, and that's something I don't see changing any time soon.
You will so be living in a shoe box!
I gave a like but I didn't love what seemed to be an unwaivering obsession with the past
Depends on what you mean by 'principles of the classical architecture'. Brutalism almost always follows the proportions and draws inspiration from Antiquity-Romanesque/Gothic architecture. The principles are the same, the execution is overtly different. What you are trying to advocate for is the ornamental architecture, not abstract classical principles. Modernism was attempting to be the monument to humanity and its ability to bend nature, which good modernism does splendidly. I was recently sitting on the middle of Mies van Der Rohe's TD Centre and it is awe-inspiring, even during the day. Most current architecture is just badly done with designs being stripped down to the bare minimum to save money.
@@ramzanninety-five3639 no he is advocating for the classical framework. Brutalism or any other form of modernism has zero to do with that framework.
@@michael.diamant modernism doesn't brutalism often does. A lot of brutalist ethos comes from Roman experiments with concrete that are upgraded by modern technology and intertwined with imposing and grim neo-Romanesque/gothic features. It is also made functional, to a degree. Brutalism is trying to adapt to some aspects of the environment whereas modernism clearly defies the pre-existent.
@@ramzanninety-five3639 brutalism is just horrible and no one cares about its supposed relationship with classical. It is imaginary and just a way to elevate anti human architecture.
Until modernism and onwards gives us something pleasing to the eye we will have to rebuild the past.
We have no choice (literally)
I was with you 1000% until you got to the weird anti-verticality and traditional fetishism stuff lol
@@CosmicMapping high buildings are bad urbanism and bad for the people living in them. And what is wrong with advocating for the classical framework that has a proven track record of working?
and then you realised you were all alone in the alley way with your dubious critique of traditionalist architecture that lacked any proper reason other than labelling it as a fetish
@@norger Building vertically is the only way to fit more people in a smaller place. If you don’t like it try going back to the past more than a Hundred years ago.
@@Ac_astop trying to fit more people in less space then, build new cities instead of cramming more people into existing ones
I came here to say this. Typical projection of one’s own subjective opinions onto the rest of the world.
You know God promised us a new Earth. There won't be any more buildings at all! People who want that will be in the lake of fire!
I completely disagree with the author of this video. Those neoclassical buildings are old & outdated with overly decorated facades. I prefer the functionality and practicality of modern architecture. We live in the 21st century. We need to build for the 21st century and beyond. Creating the Cities of Tomorrow is better than being glued in the past. People have something to look forward to and see real progress with change. Move Forward not Backwards. What those Dystopian movies have in common is Capitalist & Corporate Greed and other Manmade Disasters.
ok commie. Moving forward doesnt mean moving towards ugliness and dehumanization
What is frustrating about this channel is that I agree that we need more human scale architecture, but I whole heartedly disagree that classical/neoclassical architecture is needed for human scale building. What we need is for cities to remove the barriers that make building the “missing middle” illegal.
the idea of building for the 21st century is so nebulous and empty. Who gets to decide what the future has to look like? Designing full glass, monotonous buildings is 50 years out of date and so isn't futuristic at all. the mdoern style creates cookie cutter cities with no cultural or aesthetic value, its time to decide on a different future
@@Stargate2077 the neoclassical style provides a good solution, but its not the only one, the most important thing is that architecture becomes less cheap and actually cares about, and tries to make better the built/ natural environment in which people live, the plastic/ glass giant sheds that are currently being built help nobody but the wallets of the developer, creating a textured, quality environment with nature and pedestrians in mind is paramount. i think the best thing to happen would be an explosion of emerging new (and neo) styles to create the vibrant street scapes of the future. im english, where the missing middle is more prevelant, and not only is it important that you have it, it is also how it looks
It hás been shown time and time again that people vastly prefer classical. It has been psychologically shown how they stimulate people in a thousand different ways unlike soulless squares of concrete and glass. Experiments have gone as far as remodeling old neighborhoods to classic style and at the end they became some of the most desired and sought-after places to live and spent time at.
Apparently, Brasilia is horrible.
aesthetics dont matter compared to efficiency in my opinion
@@TheMadProgrammersOfficial well, aesthetics is efficiency since it affects our behaviour so much in a positive way.
a human mind doesn't values efficiency over aesthetics, that's the problem with most communists they are detached with psychological reality of human nature
Aesthetics absolute matter. It's the crucial difference between living and walking around in Paris or Yugoslavia.
it absolutely does
I must say that the dystopian city in Logans Run looks more visually appealing than the ugly, dark, dirty industrial cities in Metropolis and Blade Runner movies. The Logan Runs city had a considerable amount of greenery (inside and out), and a couple of lakes(5:53). The buildings are smaller, bright and do have some interesting curve designs. Not too brutalistic I might say.😊
7:23 Baltimore represent