Image © Jose & MidJourney
This post might ruffle some feathers. And I will be connecting some dots that might feel counterintuitive. Hang in there.
I was driving around Boston with family today, up north, yesterday we went West and inwards, and as drive around we keep complaining about the same, the general ugliness of houses. Yes, there are exceptions. It’s not about cheap or expensive homes, because the large estates are just as ugly. Maybe I should use a different term for political correctness, or at least explain what I mean with the term ugly. I mean houses that all look the same, houses trying to be something else, informed by some European distant counterpart, castle cakes of layered boxed extrusions with plastic siding, manicured gardens and asphalt driveways to garages that are many times the size of a house somewhere else. Hardly any modern homes, when they exist, they look like a sore eye amid their context. Mid-Century houses agglomerate themselves in specific areas, as the folly of some architect and planner from another time. By now, there are bona fide architects and planners rolling their eyes about another opinionated commentator. You might be right.
This week a TED Talk from April 2022 by Thomas Heatherwick entitled “The Rise of Boring Architecture, and the Case for Radically Human Buildings” popped up in my feed. The intro to his talk reads “Where did all the lumps and bumps on buildings go? When did city architecture become so … dull?”. I guess dull is better than ugly, dull is more in line with boring, and ugly slips into that muddy terrain of value and taste, I still stand by my earlier terminology. Some of you may know Thomas because of his work in the Hudson Yards called The Vessel, which ended up in the news for tragic news, a topic that would require an entire post about. If you visited, stood in front, or climbed the steps of The Vessel, you would probably remember the experience.
Many, many years ago I read the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, and then ended up seeing the black & white film released in 1949, directed by King Vidor with Gary Cooper as the architect Howard Roark. At the time, the book and film impressed me, I was a young designer and felt deeply about the mission of design, only later I discovered how politicized Ayn’s body of work became, and focused more on the message, less on the messenger. This discussion is far from over, the current discourse on Brutalist architecture in the U.S. involves a complex evaluation of its historical and aesthetic value, with some connections to the philosophical themes presented in Ayn Rand’s work, particularly regarding the role of the architect and the integrity of design. And there is a new film out there called The Brutalist, which is drawing inspiration from Rand’s exploration of architectural integrity and individualism, haven’t seen it yet, but intend to.
What I felt in my weekend drive, and the use of the term ugly to describe it, is in fact a critique to a dehumanized, utilitarian design, and if you ask me what I am missing I would cite values like emotional connection, individual creativity, beauty. Thomas talks about the proliferation of uninspired, flat, and emotionless architecture. Brutalist architecture was originally celebrated for its honesty in materials and functionality, but is now often criticized for creating cold, alienating spaces that lack human warmth or emotional resonance. But the response to this should not be ornamentation and detail just for the sake of it, especially if instead of being context related is a really about nostalgia and out-of-place romanticism. Ayn and her work critiques conformity and mediocrity in architecture, advocating for designs that reflect individuality and vision, rather than societal or functional compromises. It seems we have lost the battle for beauty and aesthetics, we lost sight of the value and function of emotion. I understand the impact of having architecture be the playground of creative architects sponsored by deep pocketed investors wanting to create their own obelisk, but I think we have gone too far to the other side of the pendulum, we have homogenized human experience and humans along the way. Bllahhh!