Less is more – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Less is a bore – Robert Venturi
In a recent post, Alex Tabarrok discussed the problem of modern architecture. Why can’t architects produce the kind of beautiful old buildings we see in many European cities? Alex cites an article by Samuel Hughes, which refutes another popular explanation—the theory that rich decoration becomes more expensive, especially since there are fewer skilled craftsmen to produce fine carved details. Hughes shows that this explanation is not tenable, and that modern technology can allow ornaments to be produced at low cost. Instead, he makes some sort of “market failure” argument. Ugly, boring and barren buildings were introduced to society by a group of elite intellectuals back in the 1920s:
to exaggerate a bit, it really happened that every government and every company on Earth was influenced by the Swiss watchmaker’s wild architectural theory. [Le Corbusier] and the group of German Socialists, so that they began to demand something different from what they had demanded in all previous periods. It can be said that this is a mystery. But the mystery is real, and if we want to understand the truth, that’s what we have to face.
In this post, I will argue that there is no market failure. In a sense, modernism is what society wants. And not just in architecture, but in almost every aspect of life.
Hughes’ theory is not new. Back in 1981 Tom Wolfe made a similar argument From Bauhaus to Our House. Unfortunately for Wolfe, the “problem” did not end with architecture, so he had to write another book (The Painted Word) explaining why the beautiful old styles of realistic painting are being replaced by abstract art. Here are a few examples from the Netherlands.
In terms of architecture, visitors generally prefer the more ornate old buildings of Amsterdam to the modern buildings of Rotterdam, which replaced buildings destroyed in WWII. But buildings are not built for tourists, they are built for residents and workers.
Even two TomWolfe books are not enough to fully explain modernism, which has affected (infected?) almost all areas of modern life. A person with no formal education in art theory can quickly see the difference between the complex and ornate traditional styles and the plain and simple modern styles. So, consider how Coca-Cola containers have evolved over time:
Even the name is simplified: “Coke”. I will show that a similar change has occurred in almost every aspect of life. But first we need to clarify a few concepts. People often compare “modern” and “classic” styles. Here classical means “from the past”. But art historians are more likely to use the word classical to represent simple, elegant and symmetrical architecture, while romanticism represents various types of complex, asymmetrical and highly decorated architecture.
Britain’s Houses of Parliament were built in the mid-1800s, while the Jefferson Memorial was built in the 1940s. But the Jefferson Memorial is classical and the Houses of Parliament are a type of romanticism (mostly neo-gothic.) Certainly the modern government buildings of Brazil (see below) are more “high-class” than Pugin’s 19.th the art of the century.
Tabarrok and Hughes are right that at least in some respects people prefer more traditional styles of architecture. Consider the famous “painted ladies” of San Francisco:
But traditionalists downplay the extent to which modern trends have even influenced consumers’ residential decisions. More than 100 years ago, Frank Lloyd Wright revolutionized architecture by replacing vertical box houses full of strictly separated rooms with a free-flowing horizontal style where public rooms flow seamlessly into one another. Few people are rich enough to afford a work of art like this Martin House in Buffalo, but Wright’s style influenced the postwar craze for “farmhouses” with large picture windows and open floor plans.
The term “painted ladies” is a reminder that modernism also affected women’s fashion. Back around the 1900s, wealthy women wore extremely luxurious clothing. In the 1920s, (the era of Le Corbusier), women’s fashion was very simple—very “modern”. In his memoir titled “The World of Yesterday”, Stefan Zweig sees this change as a positive change, and links it to healthy cultural changes that allowed young men and women to interact in a natural and free way. Thus, old corsets and constrictive dresses were a kind of metaphor for painfully restrictive social norms.
If it’s really true that in architecture old fashion is good and modern is bad, why doesn’t this also apply to women’s fashion? Did Le Corbusier also force women to abandon richly decorated dresses and replace them with simple black dresses? Certainly, there is a sense that the fashions of the Parisian fin-de-siècle were more elegant than the clothes of today. But is this what women want today? I do not think so. They want to be modern. “That’s the style.”
What about cars? Why people now buy simple styles, not more fancy styles in the 1940s? I suppose you could argue that this partly reflects government fuel economy regulations, but there are too many other such examples to name.
I encourage people to go to an antique furniture store and look at all the richly decorated (and often stylized) items on display. You’ll see things like large oak tables with carved clawfoot legs and dark wood cabinets. Then step out of the store and visit the furniture store with bright Scandinavian teak wood designs. The furniture will immediately look “modern”. It will seem very attractive to many people. Did Le Corbusier reintroduce modern furniture to society? Was that particular style of furniture enforced by corporate regulators? Apparently not. Why consumers stop buying decorated silver vessels and switch to modern teapots are in order? The examples of our modern preference for simplicity are almost endless.
The guy who said, “Less is a bore” also wrote a book with the title Studying in Las Vegas. But it is not one of the lessons of Vegas that it is not easy to fit traditional styles to modern needs. Las Vegas is an unusually bad city. However, surprisingly it’s not that bad by its modern standards. The worst parts of the strip are the places where the traditional styles are attached inappropriately to the terrible 3000-room hotels, while the questionable Vegas buildings are a few simplified modern towers like Hotel Aria. That’s not to say that buildings like the Bellagio aren’t interesting—as a visitor I’d rather walk through its lobby than a sterile modern building. But it doesn’t really work as architecture. It is very grand in its neo-Italian style.
This does not mean that traditional styles do not work. Epic Systems’ headquarters just outside of Madison is packed beautiful buildings based on various legends. In contrast, an apple headquartered in Silicon Valley is a soft, high-quality circle of consumer products. In terms of aesthetics, Apple’s architecture is very successful. But Epic campus is probably the most fun. To each their own. Companies have incentives to use properties that allow them to attract desirable employees.
And I wouldn’t suggest that later is always better. I prefer the best paintings of 1600-1670 or 1850-1925 to the best editions of the last 100 years. I prefer mid-century modern architecture to 1970s and 1980s modern architecture. I prefer pop music from 1965-72 to music from 7 years ago. I prefer movies from 1950-1980 to 30 years ago. Tastes vary, and your preferences may vary.
But the fact that modernism has swept the field in so many areas suggests that it is not a market failure that was imposed by out-of-touch architects back in the 1920s. It is a style that is very suitable for today’s world. And that is true even if many older buildings are somehow “better”. I wouldn’t want Gerhard Richter or Anselm Kiefer to copy the style of Velazquez or Vermeer. I don’t want David Mamet to copy Shakespeare’s style. I wouldn’t want Beyonce or Taylor Swift to copy the Beatles or Bob Dylan. Each generation tries to find its own style. That’s the market at work.
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