What about we demand safety and longevity? No more paper thin construction no more deadly cladding. Even Victorian age slums still stand today, my last office building fell apart in a decade. Yes I know what survivorship bias is but if tenements and workhouses and railways and sewerage stil stands why is the new stuff so utterly wank as well as being bland?
I’d rather demand pleasantness. Buildings, generally*, shouldn’t be art. They are things people have to live with day-in and day-out, through bad days and good ones, while they have their other concerns. Mostly they don’t want to be challenged or confronted by their office building.
So I don’t want rows of concrete boxes, but I also don’t want “interesting” brutalist structures. Bland and samey but pleasant (like many modern housing estates) is fine with me.
* Exceptions for places that are more about transient visitors who are there for an experience, like those full of museums and galleries.
2 comments
What about we demand safety and longevity? No more paper thin construction no more deadly cladding. Even Victorian age slums still stand today, my last office building fell apart in a decade. Yes I know what survivorship bias is but if tenements and workhouses and railways and sewerage stil stands why is the new stuff so utterly wank as well as being bland?
I’d rather demand pleasantness. Buildings, generally*, shouldn’t be art. They are things people have to live with day-in and day-out, through bad days and good ones, while they have their other concerns. Mostly they don’t want to be challenged or confronted by their office building.
So I don’t want rows of concrete boxes, but I also don’t want “interesting” brutalist structures. Bland and samey but pleasant (like many modern housing estates) is fine with me.
* Exceptions for places that are more about transient visitors who are there for an experience, like those full of museums and galleries.