One hypothesis I've been kicking around: human brains like detail.
I thought of this on a walk down a (sub)urban city street.
- High detail: I first noticed the variety of plants in just the garden strips between the sidewalk and the street. I was trying to count how many there were, and I quickly lost track. Then I started looking at each individual plant, and the amount of detail is wild---the sheer intricacy and variation in all the parts and stages of growth. Not to mention the colors (OK, and smell and movement).
Then, I looked at the human made objects around me:
- Low detail: Flat concrete road. Flat concrete sidewalk. Flat stairs. All from rectangular tiles. Metal pole handrail.
The houses around weren't much better---boxy shapes, low ornamentation.
While I think it's generally accepted that nature is more pleasing to the senses to be around human-created objects, it made me wonder whether amount of detail is a fundamental aspect of what our brains enjoy.
This rumination gets activated whenever I walk by old ornate buildings or read an article like this.
Relatedly, even low-poly games people find beautiful (Tunic comes to mind) have an extraordinary amount of detail when you dissect the textures and postprocessing effects. I'd share a video but I'm way off track now.
"While I think it's generally accepted that nature is more pleasing to the senses to be around human-created objects"
I would change that to "nature is more pleasing to the senses to be around human mass produced objects"
Human made houses and gardens and various objects can be very beautiful works of art.
But they usually aren't, because it is expensive. A permaculture garden is a joy to walk in, unlike a monoculture field. A handcrafted table with ornaments is beautiful, a common plastic table not so much. And just adding generic details would be cheap as well, but would still be ugly to me.
It is not just about details, but the right details in the right pattern that makes objects beautiful and fitting in its place.
Ideally also an house is designed to fit its surroundings. Otherwise it looks out of place. (Most do)
So I am really looking forward the robot revolution, that will (hopefully) free us from the need to produce cheap, so we can focus on producing beautiful again.
>So I am really looking forward the robot revolution, that will (hopefully) free us from the need to produce cheap, so we can focus on producing beautiful again.
Architects spend a lot of time doing "detailing", it's inevitable part of design and construction. Most of is simply not very good, or at least average human effort has hard time competing against nature. There's many aesthetically pleasing "tectonics", designs lacking in detail (ornamentation), but delightful in perception. Not that nature is always great, but on average it does feel more pleasing.
I think something can have a lot of detail (granularity) but not necessarily be appealing. I imagine it's more like patterned detail, so fractal patterns which can expand into substantial and endless detail.
This is also why I personally don’t dislike concrete as much when it’s surrounded by plants and/or in a more ruinous state, in the urbex sense. It has more complexity and less predictability.
This is how I felt looking at the Saturn V at KSP. The thing is absolutely huge, and the further up the stack one goes the more intricate the vehicle gets. Every millimeter is carefully engineered, for over one hundred meters in length and maybe ten meters in diameter. Then the crazy lander and capsule at the top. The more I examined it, the more I felt that evolved, like it is a part of human evolution.
I grew up in the wet, lush, Pacific Northwest. I absolutely loved going to light industrial business parks. Everything felt so clean and orderly by comparison. Just saying, not everyone needs detail.
Thankfully, we have big windows today, so that we can see the nature outside and running water, so that we can have plants inside too. Why would we distract from that with some ornament, that can only be a pathetic imitation of the fractal wealth of detail of nature?
The invention of the steel core made the stone facade unnecessary to support the building, so most new buildings are covered in glass instead of stone. That's related to less ornamentation, but to me that's the big distinction between beautiful old buildings and ugly new ones.
It also created a tremendous energy efficiency issue. Stone has much higher thermal mass than glass.
the steel core made it possible to made full glass facades, but it didn't make it necessary
it was even more so of a conscious decision not to use any ornamentation that they weren't limited to stone facades (btw many steel core buildings had stone facades until recently, among other materials like precast concrete - in the financial district of London most buildings pre 2010 are not glass, and most post 2010 are)
it just seems to be the case that the ruling elites like those buildings, and that's the main reason they are pervasive across skylines
Depends on where you live. In a hot, humid climate, that thermal mass works against you because it never cools off enough to let you be passively cool. In a desert that gets cold at night despite hot days, it can work.
I don’t know that the energy efficiency calculation is that simple. Stone is much more mass to move in the first place, and modern glass and insulation technology is very, very good.
I have a budding rose garden that I would like to adorn with statuary. One problem is that I have a tight budget. A second problem is that if you look at garden centers you will see its easy to find 9000 different cast stone frogs: frogs meditating, frogs reading books, frogs thinking, frogs with a purse and shopping bags, frogs in an Adirondack chair, frogs hugging, reclining frog, etc. It is surprisingly difficult, however, to find cast stone classical or ancient sculptures outside of a few pastiche renditions.
I find this extremely odd! I would think there would be a large market for beautiful cast stone things. Instead, there is (apparently) an extraordinary market for concrete frogs.
I figured that in the era of 3D printing and widespread 3D models[1], it might be fairly inexpensive to make my own mold and pour my own casts, even if I do destructive casting techniques. Here again I was disappointed: To order a 3D plastic print from a site like ShapeWays came out to over $1300 for something fairly small. So that's off the table, too.
I expected more democratization of ornament than there really has been, given the tech today. It's surprising to me that no one is trying to make silicone molds available of famous statues, generally, but I guess there's just no interest or no perceived demand. Or maybe there is a big market, and I've missed it, because I was not searching for silicone molds of frogs.
Why not cast on site? A silicone mould is light and durable, and while pouring concrete isn't easy, I don't think it's prohibitively challenging. You could ship the mould, cast on location, and return the mould for a refunded deposit.
Because that won’t be cheaper. Yes shipping statues is expensive, but setting up an impromptu workshop in your garden then tearing it down only after one cast is going to cost even more.
I assume you wouldn't just cast one thing. Obviously it's not ideal if you just want one statue, but the concept scales well. You could get two moulds and do a dozen statues over a couple weeks.
You're going to have a hell of a time getting very many objects out of a mold meant to hold concrete for an interesting lawn ornament. Especially when in the hands of a renter who's probably by definition never used the process.
I dunno, some light searching reveals that they lots of latex moulds for lawn ornaments are for sale on Etsy. It seems like these things are out there.
There are several sites with instant quotes that are cheaper than Shapeways.
PCBWay and JLCPCB both offer similarly-priced very cheap 3d printing and CNC services out of China. Weerg in Italy also offers 3d printing and CNC services and I'm probably going to try them out for the next thing I need printed. The only non-marketplace service I've seen in the US that offers instant quotes is i-solids in Texas, but they have quite high startup costs and seem to be more geared towards small-medium production runs.
I’ve done cast stone… poured into cast silicone… which was cast from 3D printer molds… which was printed from my own 3D models… and silicone was by far the most expensive part.
It only made sense because I was casting a lot of stone molds.
UK here. Our garden centres do have faux classical statues but then again we also have plastic garden gnomes. As in the film Gnomeo and Juliet but without the Elton John back catalogue.
Buy a quality printer for their asking price and make your own molds. If it's fairly large, you may want to put the mold in sand for support, or cast in sections. Just remember to leave yourself pick points for lifting, and use dowels to join your segments. Embed a little steel, like a mesh, if any parts may be in tension or subject to bending.
I like the idea that technology might eventually change or increase the variance of McMansion outdoor decor tastes.
It seems reasonably within expectations that ornamental concrete frogs are a bigger market than ornamental naked dudes holding up a severed head, tough, no?
One cheaper and easier thing to do is to shape foam which can be done with hot wire 3D cutters into fairly large sizes (like baby elephants) and then put mesh and concrete on the surface. They look heavy depending and can last outside for decades if done properly, but are much easier to move than concrete versions. When you see a lot of large commercial outdoor concrete or mosaic structures this is how they're made.
Further clarification: the reason I’m asking is because I’m a member of a hackspace in Oxford, and this is the kind of project we would both love to support a member with and have all the tools to help. Obviously i don’t imagine that you live close to us, but maybe you have other similar places near you?
My theory is population growth. When population doesn't grow more older buildings get reused and fewer ones are built, so society can afford to ornament new constructions. When the babies boomed, you got Sears catalog houses.
Here's my take: large format sheet glass that is safe and durable, has become much more available due to technological change, allowing for construction of buildings with much more sunlight, enabling interior designs which are both a lot more pleasant and let extract more rent. Glass exterior leaves less space for ornament and also makes the ornament less visible and even somewhat of an eyesore.
>>>> Baumol illustrated ‘cost disease’ with the example of a string quartet. A string quartet produces no more live music today than it did in the nineteenth century, but the cost of hiring one has risen greatly.
Has anybody actually studied the cost of hiring a string quartet?
Based on my very limited experience running events, you could easily hire a professional one for a single performance for a few thousand dollars. For an amateur group, hundreds.
Modern logistics and construction has significantly reduced secondary costs. Cost per calorie of food is nearly free compared to the past.
Indeed, and my experience comes from being a musician. I'm in a jazz quartet, but both of my kids are in string quartets, one is a professional.
One thing that might make it hard to study is that the cost depends on the event and what's actually being delivered. Everybody charges a premium for weddings and corporate events. But those things also have to run absolutely like clockwork. On the other hand, the bands I'm in are also happy to charge a lower price for a "budget" wedding that isn't a $100000 Disney blowout.
Everybody charges different if travel is involved. What most ensembles do is, first, book as many high-dollar gigs as possible. Then, fill in the holes in the schedule with lesser gigs. The best musicians in my locale will take a $50 gig if the alternative is staying home.
This is insanely expensive by historic standards. $1000 worth of purchasing power back in medieval Europe would pay laborer wages for a year, not a day.
No, this is adjusted by inflation. People simply have no idea how poor our ancestors were.
For $1000, you can hire someone to work for a year today, in Burundi, Somalia, or any of the other countries that are as poor today as Englishmen were in 1100.
There's no question that general standards of living have improved enormously, with some areas having much more improvement than others.
The comparison isn't US$1000 exchanged to Somali Shillings and looking at purchasing power. A Somali quartet is not earning anywhere near $1000 after conversion, and the price of many other products and services would be much cheaper compared to the US as well.
Nor is the comparison $1000 US dollars in 2024 and looking at what that same nominal amount would purchase in distant history.The quartet would be earning much less in nominal amounts, but the nominal amounts of everything are cheaper as well.
Here are some hard figures. Using the year 1800 as the comparison.
USA economy
$1000 in 2024 = $40 in 1800. A 2388% increase attributed to inflation.
String quartet gig in 2024 = $1000
For 1800 it's hard to find earnings for anything outside of labor and manufacturing however the wage for a teacher was around $1 per day.
If we make a big assumption that teachers and musicians pay were equivalent, then it would appear that the purchasing power of a string quartet has 10x the purchasing power today after accounting for inflation $40 / 4 persons / $1 = 10).
10x is quite consistent across all occupations that I can find equivalents for (skewed heavily toward labouring and manufacturing, very few services are reported in 1800).
So in that sense the string quartet isn't an outlier, for the most part we are all enjoying around 10x the purchasing power since 1800.
One day's earnings now is equivalent to 10 days in 1800. This is great, but not anywhere near 1 day = 1 year.
Estimating inflation back to 1100 would be very difficult .. as would determining day wages, the economic system was very different.
Americans in 1800 were enormously wealthier than Englishmen in 1100. Again, I’m not comparing nominal values. I’m comparing purchasing power and typical wages. The purchasing power of $1000 today is more than what an Englishman in 1100 had available for a year. If you offered $1000 of today’s dollars worth of purchasing power to an Englishman in 1100 to work for you for a year, he would jump at the opportunity to do so. An American in 1800 would not do so, because Americans were much wealthier in 1800 (or, for that matter, in 1650).
It's interesting to think that rather than being destroyed by becoming too expensive, ornamentation may have died because it became too cheap. A lot of ornamentation existed to show off wealth and status, but if everyone can have it thanks to improvements in production then it doesn't do that anymore.
It's unfortunate that making buildings look nice seems to be secondary to other types of status signaling. It's hardly a new issue either. When the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930 it was criticized for being gaudy for having the nerve to actually try to have some style.
>"Lewis Mumford, a supporter of the International Style and one of the foremost architectural critics of the United States at the time, despised the building for its "inane romanticism, meaningless voluptuousness, [and] void symbolism".
I'll say one thing: ornamentation is harder to clean.
If you're in charge of cleaning your own things, perhaps you desire surfaces that are easier and quicker to deal with. If you're in a position to hire people to do it, maybe you don't care as much.
And I wonder if that's one reason for less ornamentation. There's also a desire for more simplicity, I guess as a reaction to the layers of complexity we wrap our lives up in, and again, perhaps ornamentation in that case becomes psychologically unsettling.
Interesting notion. Perhaps the same is happening with LED lamps and fixtures now, in the UK. Every rental is flooded with lights in all kinds of shapes. They are sold extremely affordably everywhere. To me at this point the novelty has worn off and it looks tacky. Also, most damning, they aren’t replaceable or repairable so all it’s doing is creating future e-waste…
The Chrysler Building critique is not totally crazy (and I say this as a Chrysler Building stan) - it's not hard to imagine it having a very different public perception outside the context of its time and place. Not every building gets to be the cuter, shorter sibling of the Empire State Building, the Sam the Eagle of NYC skyscrapers.
I don’t know, you can look at it as because gaudy, ostentatious displays of wealth have become impossible, we’ve become able to focus on other things (yes, including subtler displays of wealth).
If the ornamentation had value outside of signaling, it’s now readily available to everyone, as the article says.
But I’m not sure how much I believe that. Fashion is fashion. I’m sure there is a hypothetical present where minimalism isn’t valued nearly as much. But I still think that’s mostly orthogonal to how much people care about aesthetics.
We've lost more than intricate ornamentation. We've lost ornament as a thing that regular people 'ought' to be around. I think it's interesting how Americans often assume that ornament is meant to display wealth, and is thus some sign of show-offness. I think the opposite is often the case. Ornament displayed in public is actually meant for public enjoyment. It's a form of philanthropy when done by a private wealthy individual, and a form of public works when done by the state. Humans deserve to live in beautiful environs. We should strive for that, but we've regressed greatly, with even wealthy neighborhoods being devoid of nice beautiful public spaces (except for a handful in particular cities).
The average Roman peasant would have been exposed to more ornamentation in their life than the typical American. Whereas Americans would be driving by endless McDonalds, Starbucks, and strip mall number 523, a Roman peasant would have seen the great triumphal arcs, the facades of the great buildings, etc. It's just a complete loss. Anyone who's been to an older city in Europe or Asia knows exactly what we're missing. When ornament is a thing that exists, whether private or public, the whole public enjoys it regardless.
The average Roman peasant would have been exposed to more ornamentation in their life than the typical American.
You'd have to count ornamentation very selectively for that to be true. Every corporate logo is ornamental. A modern American farmer probably encounters more ornamentation before they get into their ornamentally bright-green tractor. The rivet in their pants is ornamental, the mirror-polish on the bezel of their phone is ornamental, the 'World's Best Mom' on their coffee mug is ornamental, etc.
This raises issues, but may be missing some important points.
Regarding the philosophy of ornament or not, brutalist architects were obsessed with texture. Many buildings that may seem at first to be without ornament actually had a huge amount of effort put into casting their concrete forms with rows of fins that stick out and are later roughly pounded back to form a particular look. This cost a lot of extra money even though it comes off as a rather plain texture to many.
And when it comes to cost analysis this take is very shallow. An interesting counterexample is the recent rebuilding of a hospital in Chinatown, San Francisco. The initial designs were extremely plain and boxy based on the idea that every bit of money spent on ornament could be spent on life saving devices instead. Only when a foundation was formed to raise money specifically for ornamentation of the building was that added to the design.
It's weird that the obvious wasn't mentioned in the article nor here: cars change how you perceive cities.
When you're walking you have time to apreciate ornaments on nearby buildings and you can see the whole buildings around you.
When you're driving you don't have time to see anything that is close (as it whizzes by), the car roof occludes anything higher than the 1st floor, and anything that is far you can't see in detail. What's the point of ornaments when 90% of people won't see them? So instead of detailed ornaments people design buildings that look nice from 2 km away.
Even the difference between walking and biking is huge. The same street visited by bike feels completely different than on foot. With cars you're basically half-blind. You no longer see the buildings around you - at best you might see the skyline on the horizon.
I blame cars for the modern buildings' lack of decorations.
Personally, I prefer brutalism over ultra-modern glass buildings. That's because at least brutalism has an aesthetic and a commitment to communicating something through its design. At least it looks like something.
In that respect I think it's more similar to older ornamented aesthetics than it is to modern glass and steel skyscrapers or McMansions.
Yes, but brutalism is anything but beautiful. It wouldn't make sense in an article showcasing cathedrals and statues to then say "here's a concrete eyesore that looks as if the concept of fascist bureaucracy manifested as a machine that feeds on human souls."
Brutalism is anything but fascistic (social housing). In fact brutalism is the extreme emphasis of simplicity and minimalism through mathematical forms. Fascist architecture (and fashion and art in general) on the other hand is extremely ornamental. But in a world that quickly forgets what Nazism and Fascism really is you might be forgiven for your ignorance.
Fascists were surprisingly "progressive" in the original meaning of the word. Hitler himself was quoted saying that form follows function and if you look at the plans for their new capital, I would not call it particularly ornamented. I guess "imposing" would be a better description. It's a similar story with the more detailed blackletter fonts - "Your alleged Gothic internalization does not fit well in this age of steel and iron, glass and concrete"
It is a big mistake to conflate traditionalism/conservatism with fascism/nazism, these movements were inherently modern, even when the majority of people under them were not (as is the case in most of the world - the politically active minority creates revolutionary ideologies which are then stripped down to only the essentials by the pragmatic masses).
Nazis and fascists were progressive in so far as they copied Bolsheviks (state control of the key sectors of economy and social programs). In fact they initially marketed themselves to the working class as socialists with nationalist and traditional values, as opposed to the cosmopolitan values of the communists.
A lot of things are imposing but are not Nazi or Fascist. However Nazism and Fascism without traditionalism doesn't make sense. Both (especially Nazism) draw heavily on nationalistic mythology. This is not to say that traditionalism implies either Nazism or Fascism. That should be obvious. My point is that Brutalism has nothing to do with either Fascism or Nazism.
that's my point. brutalism is ugly. concrete without ornamentation is ugly. but concrete can look beautiful with ornamentation.
it's not the concrete that makes brutalism ugly, but the lack of ornamentation.
i didn't mean that the article should showcase brutalist examples, but where it talks about more modern architecture using less and less ornamentation, brutalism is the worst outgrowth of that, so i thought it would make sense to at least mention that.
I'd add a few ingredients to brutalism, the idea that pure geometry and macro structures were the main factor to evaluate quality. A lot of post 60s projects were like that, large spaces, simple lines and curves, big blocks and connections. A top down architect game.
Concrete lasts longer. Concrete also absorbs CO2 from air. In its lifetime, it is expected to absorb all the CO2 emissions.
Emissions do not really matter for a material that can last hundreds of years. Genociding old growth forests in Europe for biomass "renewable" energy, though. That's a problem.
Architecture at large scale is built by the rich, it's the product of their minds. They could decorate it any way they want, but they choose not to, as it "doesn't add value", "it's not efficient" and "it's not productive". Architecture shows what their minds look like: machine-like, ugly in their raw efficiency. The common folk still decorate their houses and front yards if they have one. It's still unheard of to live in a grey cube with concrete slabs instead of the lawn and flowers.
This slow shift in architecture style also means an eclipse of the ability of humanity to perceive beauty in general. The eclipse is temporary, but it lasts for centuries and we are yet to see its darkest moment. All this talk about productivity and efficiency is another face of this eclipse.
One hypothesis I've been kicking around: human brains like detail.
I thought of this on a walk down a (sub)urban city street.
- High detail: I first noticed the variety of plants in just the garden strips between the sidewalk and the street. I was trying to count how many there were, and I quickly lost track. Then I started looking at each individual plant, and the amount of detail is wild---the sheer intricacy and variation in all the parts and stages of growth. Not to mention the colors (OK, and smell and movement).
Then, I looked at the human made objects around me:
- Low detail: Flat concrete road. Flat concrete sidewalk. Flat stairs. All from rectangular tiles. Metal pole handrail.
The houses around weren't much better---boxy shapes, low ornamentation.
While I think it's generally accepted that nature is more pleasing to the senses to be around human-created objects, it made me wonder whether amount of detail is a fundamental aspect of what our brains enjoy.
This rumination gets activated whenever I walk by old ornate buildings or read an article like this.
Relatedly, even low-poly games people find beautiful (Tunic comes to mind) have an extraordinary amount of detail when you dissect the textures and postprocessing effects. I'd share a video but I'm way off track now.