Come discuss further on my discord discord.gg/US8cuerhXJ - thanks for corrections on reinforced concrete, is is strong under COMPRESSION not tension. Also I got the pantheon bit slightly mixed up - but allow me
Nice video, but I think you may be spewing a very general web here, in a few words - not all modern architecture is social housing, beauty is (as usual) relative and a lot of the study that goes into architecture nowadays deals more towards anthropology than to the idea of building something 'wicked sick
As somebody, who has lived in a "Commieblock" for the most of his life, let me say this - these buildings are not pretty, but they are also very comfortable, clean, almost maintenance free and easy to serve with public transport and all the other amenities. So, I do see the point, these architects were trying to make. Could there be a middle ground, where we take the good things from modernism, but make it a bit more humane?
@@marnuscoreyempanadaslooseb6760 Freedoms? Like the freedom of having an HOA tell you, how often you must cut your grass or what color your mailbox can be? Freedom of having to use car to get anywhere? I am not sure, if I would exchange the luxury of having a trolleybus stop right in front of my home and being able to get to the city center within 15 minutes. Every type of housing comes with its perks and drawbacks, but I highly recommend visiting any of the Central European country to see, how these Commie block neighborhoods turned out thanks to good maintenance and renovations. They have become popular among people, who prefer maintenance-free, almost hotel-like type of housing.
Having easy access to public transportation, restaurants, shops and parks can be a priority for some people. On the other some suburbs can have all these amenities. @@marnuscoreyempanadaslooseb6760
Those things might be comfortable in Eastern Europe. Here in the US, those buildings really failed. They put in nice communal spaces that turned into hotspots for vandalism, violent crime and public urination and they turned out to be unaffordable to maintain with anything like remotely sustainable vacancy rates and rent prices. The projects were often demolished relatively quickly, because even if the units were initially comfortable, they did not work long term.
“Very good, my roof is still leaking” such and underrated and savage comment by his mom, basically saying i don’t how fancy your building is if it doesn’t work
The Villa Savoye is infamous for its leaky roof as well. The family who commissioned it threatened to sue Le Corbusier after their child caught pneumonia. He ultimately paid for repairs out of his own pocket to placate them, and even then the building still had problems until a major restoration in the 80s. For the record, Villa Savoye is considered one of Le Corbusier's masterpieces. Colour me unimpressed.
This also says a lot about Le Corbusier's need for approval if this is really what she says. He never got any from his parents, so he took it from pursuing the fame as an architect.
@@C-sé.speakin it's a direct reference to the actual quotation of what she wrote, which is why it's in quotation marks to signify that it was HER remark. why does this need to be explained?
@@C-sé.speakin i don't know what context your question is addressing here, because i don't know whom you're referring to as 'American', nor can i discern where any disrespect has been incurred. in all probability, i don't think you have much of a clue what you're asking about either, but i expect on the basis of what you've written so far you'd be the last person to realise that.
I should point out that most of the essential features of Georgian architecture (and most historic styles) were not originally intended to be decorative; they were the most expedient way to make a brick building support its own weight without wasting precious lumber. The horizontal arches over the doors and windows supported the bricks above with little or no wood reinforcement. Even the ubiquitous 6 panel door was a way to make a door that was strong enough and didn't swell itself shut, using less wood than it would take to make a solid slab door. Sure, some of the shapes were embellished for ornamental effects, but few ornamental features were just stuck on. In the 20th century, modernists developed a quasi-religious stance against ANY ornamentation, even that carved into elements that were essential, so what we got were a lot of sticks and flat panels with perfectly rectangular profiles fitted together as cheaply as possible. No wonder people got tired of it. In recent years, instead of correcting that misguided thinking, modernists have added stupid embellishments like odd angles, randomly spaced "IBM card" window openings and non-vertical walls (so much for "form follows function"). What we really need is a modern architecture based on modern building methods that doesn't bar carved or extruded embellishment of the shapes of the essential elements to make them look less rectangular and boring. Some of this sort of thing happened naturally in mid-20th century buildings as builders used moldings and hardware designed around older styles, presumably because it was cheap and available. But the international-style tyrants pushed most of that out and even insisted on flattening things like metal frames that had been fluted because the apparently ornate shapes optimized the use of metal. Some of my favorite 20th Century modern buildings benefited from accidental factors that the zealots of modernism would rather have exorcized .
Really makes you wonder how much of his fanatical approach to architecture was driven by his mother’s scapegoating of him as a child. He resented the “ornamentation” his older brother received in the form of praise and wanted a world of uniformity where everyone was treated the same.
Im sorry to be that guy but i feel as a civil eng i have too..... concrete acts well in compression not tension, it acts really badly under tension hence why it needs to reinforced, the rebar takes up the tension forces
Good comment. It’s hard to find anyone these days who treats the technical as neutral. Can I ask what causes concrete to spall. The reason I ask is I used to work in the mining industry. A lot of civils are used to set up fixed plant. Cone crushers create radial forces. The concrete spalled on all the vertical surfaces below the machine.
Just a little comment to point that concrete needs to be under compression not tension. (6:25). Tension is pulling in opposite directions whereas compression is pushing in opposite directions.
my favourite part of Birmingham when I go up there on the train is the old areas made out of bricks and more bricks. The new stuff, in an attempt to appear modern, already looks plastic, artificial and outdated.
Even Bath, a city fames for being lovely to look at, suffers from this. They try to dress it up with a cladding of Bath Stone but it's still the square, flat shapes and big glass fronting everywhere.
You seem to not know the difference between tension and compression. There are some words that are confusing, I agree, like: Tension x compression Right x left Ugly x beautiful
The Pantheon? Oldest building on Earth? Whilst showing the Parthenon on screen? The oldest building on earth is Gobekli Tepe (9500BCE). The Pantheon may the oldest building on earth still in use. And it's different from the Parthenon.
@@JimmyTheGiant18:34 One utopia is another's dystopia. Vice versa. Dystopia is another's Utopia for another . Like the matter of brith rate. Is overpopulation something autopsy or dystopia . Because overpopulation makes labor cheap. That's also the reason why Businessmen love immigration.Because it lowers the price of drinking wages But dystopia for the working class.
Same for me, though I didn't pay attention to the blading videos, I was surprised when it was released but blading or not, any subject is so well covered I would even watch a section on concrete.
This ugly architecture damaged most Greek cities beyond repair after the 50’s. Unfortunately cities like Athens and Thessaloniki suffered the most. This mostly happened when people who owned land sold it in exchange for an apartment in some sort of contractual consideration (antiparochi in Greek) leading to the vast majority of the buildings looking like soviet style monstrosities.
It is frightening that we Turks are so similar with Greeks. Exact same thing has happened and still happening in Turkey. Now, classical parts of Istanbul are slums and the whole city was overtaken by these monstrosities. In my hometown, there are old Greek houses and old Turkish houses. Even in the same climate, same city, you can see what people prioritized while building their homes. Each has a character and tells a story about the people who built them. Not even two owned by same ethnicity, same religion, same socioeconomic status were the same. From their profession to number of their kids, effected their living space.
Want to see ugly modernism? View Corviale in Rome, Italy. "The longest building in Europe". The architect died shortly after its completion, legend from Rome says that he himself finished it out of remorse
I used to think council houses that were built post war in this country were ugly, maybe because i grew up in one, but now i see them as being beautiful and wished i still lived in one. What if we had more of them than the shit, we have on offer now?
to be honest i think one people seem to ignore in the debate about modern architecture when we compare it to the past is the fact we only really preserved the best of what was built, most of us would have been in thrown up shacks or packed town houses
Concrete is extremely weak in tension. It is very strong in compression. What the steel.rods do is take the tension loads, leaving the compression loads to the concrete. Also, steel and concrete expand at roughly the same rate when heated. This is why we don't see any aluminum reinforced concrete.
I mean in all honesty... walk down a street in London with Victorian era buildings and then look at these shapeless ugly towers going up everywhere... turns out aesthetics do matter. The Dutch have recently built an entire city in the old 1800s fort style and would you believe it... despite all the criticism from the so called architecture "experts", turns out people really wanted to move into a place that actually looks and feels nice
@@glorp_glorp_glorp he kinda was. He worked for the vichy government. The rest of the bauhaus and the Modern movement were socialists, but corbusier wasnt.
@@glorp_glorp_glorp He was very sympathetic to fascism, though. He probably knew his authoritarian "reform" ideas where only possible under dictators, and thus went and snuggled up to them. Read his publicized letters - he still assumed Hitler to be " a great man who will modernize europe" in ´41. After 6 wars of agression had been started.
Hitler was not a German, but an Austrian. Napoleon was not French, he was Corsican. Alexander Hamilton was not from what was to become the United States, but from the Caribbean.
After WW2, they started removing the decorative ornaments on buildings here in Vienna. So they kept the buildings (if they were still inhabitable) but made them bland. There are movements to bring back the decorations to buildings. Another thing is: the corporations planing housing today are doing it for profit, to sell the flats. If you look at the plans, most of them are not made for living. They are impractical shoeboxes and and eyesore from the outside.
@@brianbelgard5988 _"What do you think previous developers wanted?"_ In Vienna? They were often non-profit organisations that merely needed to break even. And outside the city centre a lot of housing was built by big companies with paternalistic ideologies who wanted to keep their workers "within the family", so to speak, providing them cheap housing, leisure spaces etc.
Most architects are crap, though: it's style over substance. They win awards for being edgy, then skip out and leave other people to live in their awful creations. Ditch your architect and hire a structural engineer.
@@gdutfulkbhh7537 hire an architect for aesthetic vision. have a good builder check their work for realism. structural engineers are (for the most part) for engineering commercial structures.
I live in poundbury the town you referenced at the end of the video orchestrated and envisioned by King Charles. It’s beautiful & authentic (at least externally) They have done a remarkable job of building it, which is why we moved here. But even after three years of being here I don’t love it and I can’t describe why, it feels like living in a movie set, it doesn’t feel like a real place, it has a Truman show vibe but it’s so subtle it’s hard to pin point. We have friends and neighbours here but it’s always empty, there’s no history, it’s soulless. A truly remarkable architectural experiment, that has the same social anonymity of a brutalist tower block.
Can formulate what it is that is missing? I think this is an important subject. Personally, when I walk there with streetview, I think the ornaments are not really creative, I miss some joyful exuberance, weird details or deviations. The gardens are also not flamboyant enough. My feeling is dat the streets around Longmoor street feel more natural. Is that the oldest part? In that case it may just be a matter of time.
There is another village or estate on the edge of Newquay like that. When I saw a video about it, I wondered if it was a computer simulation as it looked flawless.
Thank you for your interesting letter about what it is like to live in Poundbury. Perhaps it will be time that will give your town a sense of place, of roots, of home. Bonne Chance! (I am French).
great comment. I feel an air of uncanniness throughout the city when I explore it virtually, but I chalk it up to it being a centralised project built in a very short time frame (30 or so years in urban timespans is nothing). Another commenter proposed that with the passage of time this can change, and I agree. As it is, it feels uncomfortably close to a misplaced Disneyland or a movie set, as there hasn't been enough time for the grime and the imperfections, the human touch of the thousands of people who live there to pile up, as it happens with every city.
@arccv It's like a New Town but better designed and using traditional principles. I did a project on New Towns at school long before Poundbury was built.
Everything we call “classic” in art, music, literature and yes, architecture, is the result of hundreds of years of creativity and selection. People select naturally those works that they like, and erase, or shelf those they don’t find beautiful. Modernism is (although more than 100 years old by now) still young as art currents go. There are beautiful modernists houses and buildings. There are many ugly ones. The ugly will eventually go, be replaced.
This is quite hopeful but I feel the difference no one ever did like modernism really. It is absolutely despised now, yet it is still the dominant style. Beauty in itself, seems no longer to be something of value.
@demeritfc3655 it's cheaper for these faceless companies to build. That and the modern architecture helps promote equality! Everyone gets an ugly house lol
Not exactly true when there is a cult around modernism, especially when you see awarded buildings that either tend to have construction issues or considered ugly.
I spend my teenage years in a commi block. Haven't lived in anything remotely resembling an appartment block for at least 15 years... I don't mind the occasional pipe leakage or boiler breakdown or the constant problems with the remote for the front door... I will live in 19th century houses until the day I die.
@GUITARTIME2024 not where I live. Unless you want to spend two to three hours a day stuck in traffic, like underfunded schools, love to not have access to supermarkets or have a couple million lying around to buy a townhouse...
Honorable mention to Erno Goldfinger! Most prominently remembered for designing residential tower blocks, and the man after whom Ian Fleming would name the James Bond villain. When Goldfinger considered taking legal action, Fleming threatened to rename the character 'Goldprick'. Eventually he decided not to sue and Fleming's publishers agreed gave him some free copies of the book note: Comment basically plagiarised from wikipedia. At least I'm not a bot.
Yours is definitely one of the best RUclips channels by a long way. There's a lot of addictive mindless crap on YT and I watch too much of it 😢 but your videos are a very different experience. Thanks Jimmy the Giant.
Adding a very important correction here. Concrete is not strong under tension. Steel is but concrete isn’t useful at all when you try to put it under a load that is pulling it apart. That’s why you have never seen anything constructed with concrete cables but the cables in a suspension bridge however will be steel instead where as the areas that are under compression because they are being pushed together will be constructed in concrete. Reinforced concrete can combine the benefits of both materials in places where you can experience both forces. One simple example is a concrete beam. Where the beam sags under load the top of the beam will be under compression as it is being pushed together, the bottom of the beam will be getting stretched apart as it’s under tension. Reinforced concrete will make the beam extremely strong in both compression and tension. Another example might be a column that is under compression but may also have to resist twisting forces that would introduce tension into the structure.
There's mansion in North Carolina called Biltmore. Every time I see the TV ad I remember about the lumberjacks making next to nothing so that Vanderbilt could have caviar, and I wish someone would dispose of that obscene display of exploitation.
Turns out Brits love a bit of Georgian architecture. Only problem is, no one can afford to live in any of it, so we all got stuck in Nelson Mandela House. Nevermind Rodders, this time next year we'll all be millionaires.
Georgian architecture doesn't have to be expensive to build. Most architectural features and ornamentation on beautiful buildings were mass-produced, and all of it can be poured concrete or similar inexpensive materials.
There are two separate points there, that are often conflated. "Nice" architecture is more expensive to build than brutalism, yes, but not by the margins that you see differentiating the two in the marketplace. A big part of the reason that "nice" buildings are more expensive than tower blocks is that people want to live in them and so people who can afford to pay more for them do so, pushing the price up. The challenge when building housing for the masses is to make it attractive enough that people _want_ to live there, without allowing the market to push those prices out of reach.
Before this thread gets sidetracked I'd just like to tell you what a beautiful comment this is. You really encapsulated British defeatist optimism and centuries of class structure in a single comment relevant to the video. Bravo.
6:27 yeah mate, you got it completely backwards! Concrete is exceptionally strong in compression and remarkably weak in tension and torsion. That's why it has to be reinforced with steel ffs
@@hugepumpkin8094 Most people know stacking toy blocks, though. Say, which of these is under tension; the archway or the rope bridge? Exactly, no PhD needed
i know its an unpopular opinion but i love the work of Le Corbusier and Brutalism in general. It does have a cold, but futuristic sci-fi look. i am a big fan of sci-fi films like A Clockwork Orange, Logans Run and I'm a fan of Retrowave music so maybe i am a little biased
Your video reminds me of the Tom Wolfe book, "From Bauhaus to Our House". First read it around 40 years ago, in college. I loved it. My professor said that was because I was a knuckle dragger. If appreciating beauty makes me primitive, I find that a rather odd worldview. One in which the very things that were once considered refined have become epithets.
Hey, so, I am from Le Corbusier's native town, Le Corbusier is from la Chaux-de-Fonds, he is not french, this city is in Romandy, the french part of Switzerland. And clearly you can see his influence in the town, there is a bus arrest named after him, and of course a whole lot of those gray concrete blocs, whether built by him or by his simps. Our city even organised a parking car place with white and black cars to make a picture of him visible from the sky 2 years ago. We can see two random places in la Chaux-de-Fonds at 8:09 Some parts of my town look like Eastern Europe, with big panel houses/plattenbaus. And growing up in this city was cool, like, i can relate with Eastern Europeans with this, those gray blocks have a cool charm, we don't really care about if it is ugly or not, it's home. Of course la Chaux-de-Fonds has a lot of other things to see, anyone reading this, if you come over, i can make you a tour :)
Ehh... It seems like he was more of an autocrat than a fascist. These gray commie blocks are mostly popular with authoritarian or socialist leaders. Mussolini and other fascists' often focused on more overly grandiose styles that tried to evoke an ancient legacy or a prosperous future.
@@ChristianBoraginele case popolari fasciste fuori da Roma sono molto più belle e "case" rispetto ai blocchi di cemento fatti nella ricostruzione negli anni 50 e poi continuati negli anni 60 e 70
@@FrancescoBedini mah dipende dalla zona, però non è che sotto il fascismo era tutto monumentale, è questo che intendevo. Poi ci sarebbe da disquisire quanto del monumentalismo è direttamente discendente dal fascismo e quanto è una forma atavica in Italia. Cmq riassumendo, il bro del commento non sa na ciola. 🤣
I mean, it's not that crazy for Italy to have huge concrete structures and apartment blocks, considering that's what Rome and other Italian cities have had for thousands of years. Yes, lots of pretty ones came after they lost the recipe for Roman concrete and population densities and population growth (not to mention many, many, many, plagues, wars, and famines) couldn't justify the massive rows of apartment towers that Rome had, but it's also not alien to the peninsula.
This is why Dostoevsky hated the Inteligencia, a man I have shared the same faith with because of ''academics''...'' There are men there with whom no one would consent to live'' and I have committed no crime.
he also hated the intelligentsia ;) ...so you're not consenting to live with my comment and me? :) Maybe one of them will come tell us we mean to say intellectuals rather than intelligentsia ... inteligencia no es mal ...?
To understand why LeCorbusier was so universally appealing, you would have to live in a world of architecture that hadn't changed for hundreds of years. His work was seen as revolutionary at the time, simple, clean lines, easy to maintain, they could be built anywhere and be unique. People were also ready for something new after WWII, the old buildings were dirty, cramped, hard to modernize, hard to heat and cool. That being said, I hate his work, and I hated how much he was pushed on me while I was in architecture school. I found his concrete works to look cheap and clunky.
Just giving a shout-out for using a This Country clip. Christ that show is hilarious, and at least outside of the UK criminally unknown despite still being so recognisable.
It honestly impresses me how many people fail to see the different details that make modernist architecture beautiful, it really shows that most people don't have a single clue about design.
It impresses me that some people can't see past their own degrees to see the abject hideousness of modern architecture, especially when architecture has such a rich history we can learn from and use to create functional and beautiful structures. Next time you look at one of these monuments to inhumanity, take all that stuff you learned and put it away, put it all away, and the shear grotesqueness of these buildings in comparison to the beautiful things that have been made will sicken you.
@@sebastianhama5624 Imagine a blank concrete wall, now imagine that wall with a mural of a sun set at a lake painted on it. Which one is more likely to make someone depressed and which is more likely to make people feel better? Esthetic matter psychologically. It is the same reason people paint their walls different collars, hang art, posters and photos, it's why people decorate their homes. When people live in places that are depressing people can get depressed, that depression can lead to self medication, meaning alcohol and drugs which can lead to alcohol and drug related crimes which makes and aria more depressing.
@@sebastianhama5624 Aesthetics are a use. If you force people to live in an environment that is objectively ugly, it will imprint itself on their psyches. Normal people (and yes, modernists are not normal people) feel depressed walking around a "modernist" city made of cheap plastic and grey concrete.
people know what's pretty and what's not, it's human nature, and a textbook doesn't make the horrible look good, modern architecture is garbage and you don't have not know anything about design to see it
I share the sentiment that this gulf separating architects' opinions and the general population's needs to be bridged asap. I don't think the solution, however, can be found in this insistence that whatever styles that were popular in the pre-modern era are the ones worth reproducing, but that's a larger dissatisfaction of mine in the anti-modernist movement. I don't believe that anti-modernist must necessarily mean traditionalist. I've been working as an architect only for a few years still, but I truly believe we're quickly approaching an inflection point in the method of designing and constructing buildings. Primarily due to the increasingly complex computerization of the process, compounded by breakthroughs in materials that could enable an explosion of "ornamental" elements that would be unheard of only a few decades ago. The kind of ornament that would give Gaudí and the Art Nouveau architects a run for their money. It would be a shame for these exciting new possibilities be lumped together with the drab Modernists and its children, and cast aside in favor of a rushed return to the past.
Yes, many styles such as art deco were definetly not traditional by any means but they were still very pleasing to look at We should have the desire to get new forms of beauty, not just go back to what has already been donw
Ornament is way more interesting than many architects think. A lot of ornament is in fact abstract art. Some of it is minimalist sculpture. But as entertainment it is also great. Ornament can tell stories, teach us about nature, can be energetic or static, it is an incredibly rich, complex language and still one that can be understood almost immediately by most people. This also means that the ornament of the past is not inaccessible to us to learn from. It draws us in, like a good novel or film, and then reveals more of its possibilities. Any architect can plunder the vaults with forgotten forms and use them or be inspired by them. Unfortunately, going half way between modernism and ornament usually gives bad results. This is because modernism is founded on a rejection of the richness and complexity of ornament. The inner resistance of architects makes them use irony, superficial references, or chaotic patterns, in order to use ornament while repressing its seductive, overwhelming power. Only when architects completely give in to their repressed desire for ornament can they learn to speak its language fluently.
As a neuroscientist, I am personally involved in research on these issues, and I want to congratulate you for the video! It's an excellent, balanced overview of the historical context and of the current situation. (Just a note, at 6.12 you say that "the Pantheon is the oldest building on Earth", which is not the case. Also, at that same time, you are showing the Erechteion of Athens)
I was born and raised in Chandigarh. AMA. I love it, it’s green, clean, organsied and one of the most prosperous and least congested cities in India. Most people I know here don’t like other cities much.
I was scrolling down looking for comments on Chandigarh. I spent significant time there and I understand why people like it. Crazy that this video all seems to be a lead up to some nuanced commentary on Chandigarh city, its planning, construction and life there.. then he barely mentions it, only says its ugly and reinforces inequality, doesnt discuss any other aspects! Deserves its own video.. I thought at least a third of this would be a discussion of Chandigarh..
The city where I work has these beautiful 1900s office buildings, apartments and hotels, yet I work in this horrible 1960s concrete block with an even more hideous multistory car park next to it (12 floors!). Each day I walk down the street admiring the old buldings - which are ornate in a non flashy way. When I get to where I work my heart sinks. It’s soulless. The building won several architecture awards and it’s definitely not the worst modern building in the city, but it’s not interesting to see or to work in. These original modern architects and the communist/socialist and fascist regimes that approved of their principles somehow totally ignored that ordinary people are inspired by beauty and variety. Sure, people want houses they can afford, but no one has respect for a concrete block.
What is up with people blaming "Communism" for the crappy buildings that CAPITALISM forced on you? "Look at all these crappy communist buildings here in London..." LOL! The villain was capitalism the whole time!
This form of building served a purpose, as you said: to house millions of people whose houses had been destroyed in the war or migrated to the cities post WWII. Ugly outside, confortable inside, the were an improvement for most of the people. The problem with brutalism is that nowadays, even rich people's houses are just plain white concrete cubes with big glass windows. Zero effort to architects, and people buy into it.
A really great video, just 2 things you mentioned that I would correct: 1. Concrete can support compression easily, and with rebarb it can better support tension. 2. Decorations and traditional architecture isn't necessarily more expensive for developers. This is a common distractions used by Modernists. There have been plenty of architects showing that it's not necessarily true. The Aesthetic City channel provides great info on this as well.
15:00 “The modernists…” *proceeds to show post modern work* Also, concrete is only strong in compression, not tension Edit: you also missed on the Maison Domino the aspect of speed. This was post Great War and a good chunk of the impetus for the design was an idea of speed of construction to allow for fast rebuilding. Lots of houses and civic buildings were lost in this time and that was one of the driving factors here
3:00 fun fact about Nietzsche - he was vehemently opposed to fascism. However, he sister (who both manipulated and published a lot of his work, after his death) - was pro-fascist in a big way. This is often why his work is misinterpreted and appropriated by fascists.
It is a shame he was co-opted by both fascists and communists (who I've seen lately reinterpreting his works for their ends) because he actively despised both
@@zolarczakl6815 that’s totally fair. I’ve seen it more on the right side of the aisle, but I’m sure bad actors on both sides misuse his work. And yes, it truly is a damn shame.
How could fascism have been despised by Nietzsche when fascism hadn't even been conceptualised during his lifetime? Nietzsche can easily be considered as a proto-fascist. His idea of master/slave morality and call for a revaluation of all values were clearly influential in moulding Hitler's worldview and NS thought generally. There was no misinterpretation here. Nietzsche's thoughts on the Jews and anti-Semitism, which are not straightforward and arguably contradictory, did not fit neatly with those of Hitler or other antisemites of that era but to deny any legitimate connection with fascism and national socialism is either born of ignorance or a desire to whitewash Nietzsche's philosophy in order to prevent his demonization during the post war era. Nietzsche had no particular influence on communism per se but his moral deconstructionism did influence the far left via postmodernism despite his explicit empiricism.
@@SP-2317 he was anti-authoritarianism. He was anti-nationalist. He hated herd mentality. He hated the suppression of individualism. He was opposed to anti-semitism and specifically opposed to German nationalism. If he anything - he was a proto-anti-facist. His works have been co-opted and manipulated by actors on both the left and the right, as mentioned above. He had a significant falling out with his sister - specifically based on the grounds of her ideological beliefs. The same sister, who followed all of the tenants of Nazism (though yes, as you pointed out, shortly before Nazism actually came to fruition). But make no mistake, had she lived only 2-3 years longer, she would have been all in on Nazism. A fact that would make her brother roll in his grave.
@@olliepoplol5894 Opposed to authoritarianism? You've either never read Nietzsche or you're on another planet. He promoted master morality and despised herd morality, not "herd mentality" - in other words he promoted the aristocratic (hierarchical) principle - and he virulently despised egalitarianism. Everything you've said here is taken almost word-for-word from those who have sought to whitewash Nietzschean philosophy. His criticism of German nationalism also has to be understood in the historical context of the time. Nietzsche would've seen 1930s Germany as the revaluation of all values he had called for and considered the hierarchical neopagan worldview as a positive move. Even the most well known book on the subject, "Nietzsche and the Nazis", essentially concedes this point. The only main potential point of contention was the question of the Jews, and his thoughts on the Jewish people are not exactly straightforward.
When I was a student in the early 1970s I often would hang out with the architecture students at my school. I remember remarking that it was wonderful that the Poles were able to recreate the original exteriors of the old city in Warsaw after the war. One of them tartly told me that it wasn't wonderful, it was Disney. Modernism was his religion.
My best friend is a retired architect. Good vdo! My american ear heard Bucketham Palace at first 😆 thx for that unexpected linguistic amusement ✌️ Subbed
I think for those who have study Le Corbusier, he could hardly be considered a fascist. I think this is most clear in his argument that modern architecture ideas were the solution for class strugle, and if they were not implemented then revolution should come (there's a famous quote by him that is exactly this: "architecture or revolution"). Also, his ideas were very welcomed at the Bauhaus (known to has been anti-fascist to the point it was expelled from Nazi Germany for its clear bolchevism) and also in Soviet regimes for the same reasons.
_"I think this is most clear in his argument that modern architecture ideas were the solution for class strugle, and if they were not implemented then revolution should come"_ But that's exactly how fascism is sold to the elites: It "solves class struggle" without the need for a revolution that would endanger their wealth or social standing. That's what fascism is _for._ "The only realistic alternative to my fascist ideas is a communist revolution" is precisely what a fascist would say.
Your probably right. So a socialist then. Almost EXACTLY the same thing if you study them. They are cousins and the goal is the same but looks a little different on the surface. Both strips you of your humanity and treats you like a machine who's job is to serve. There is a lot of ignorance about the believes and origins of these including in this video.
@@MissEldira It's true, I think the same. But I think on this case it is worth pointing it out because many leftists could say "he's not one of us" when in fact he is.
I've spent a fair amount of time in Chandigarh over the years and it's very far from being a dystopia. It's cleaner and works way better than most Indian cities. People who live there are proud of it.
The fact is that things like Le Corbusier envisioned are intrinsically totalitairian. Only a central government with complete control would ever be able to just rebuild the centre of Paris. It completely ignores the fact that all these old buildings are owned and operated by private citizens and businesses who very much have their own idea how they want their place to look like. And of course these private parties simply outright own many of these buildings and the "state" really hasnt or shouldnt have the means to interfere in this. Thats why traditional cities feel so "human" by lack of a better world. Its not one style or vision, but many. Representing different tastes, different needs, different budgets, different times and all that. It ends up as a very complex representation of "reality" in a way. Almost the exact opposite of what Le Corbusier wanted: A single vision. And I can completely understand that it might be an architects dream to get this sort of carte blanche and decide for everyone how they are going to live, but a world in which this is even possible is a very ugly one. So its no surprise to me that these buildings end up ugly too. It seems like a classic tragic case of starting out with the right idea and end up going about it in the entirely wrong way.
Awesome video!! 🔥Great overview of Le Corbusier. He really did have a massive influence (unfortunately). I wasn't aware he couldn't even design a non-leaking roof for his own mother... we learn new things everyday!
Look for the french architect and planner Gaston Bardet. Bardet was a vocal critic of Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse and modernist urbanism in general. In his book "Urbanism, Utopia and Reality" (1947), Bardet argued that the Ville Radieuse was an unachievable utopia that ignored the complexity and richness of urban life."
@@deedeewinchur It was a long time ago. I was a mail clerk at the time so I had the run of the building. The details are now very fuzzy. I just remember wandering from office to office thinking how dumb the design was. Architects talk a great story but it often seems to be more about their egos than practicality. Personally I much prefer the character of old cities and towns. Give me the almafi coast over Mississauga anytime.
I’m an architect, and the way Le Corbusier is revered in the academy is just INSANE. Granted, he really marked a before and after in architecture and influenced entire generations and even the way we build, design and live today, but I feel he’s exaggeratedly overrated.
Same thing here in Finland with Alvar Aalto, who has been elevated into a godlike status. Our architects can still not shake off his shadow and just go in a different direction.
Kind of like Alvar Aalto in Finland, lots of beautiful buildings were demolished to make way to some pile of crap a kindergartener can draw, today is even worse.
Same here. He was revered as a god by the hackiest profs I had, and his works like La Villa Savoye were presented as if they were literally perfect, transcendent beyond criticism by mere mortals such as us. I myself admire the works of FLW quite a lot, but he was a flawed individual to say the least, and I would never claim that any of his buildings were perfect. Back to Le Corbusier, I would argue he overall had an extremely negative impact on humanity. I could argue that he came up with the first public housing concepts that were ungodly flawed in thought and execution.
Le Corbusier was a Swiss native born in La-Chaux-de-Fonds. Oscar Niemeyer and Santiago Calatrava have been employed by him. Several of his buildings in several countries have been listed as “World Heritage Site”. People say “it’s a comfortable living” in his buildings like in Firminy-Vert/ Firminy / France.
I live in an apartment house built with reinforced concrete. There are pillars from all apartments from the first floor. These pillars are an absolute horror because you have no idea how to incorporate them into the living space. Some people can't even open their windows fully.
I want to be an architect and have wanted to be one for years, but watching these videos made me understand why I dislike modern buildings. Watching several of these videos has inspired me to want to revolutionise architecture to what it used to be. Make buildings that inspire, make people feel safe and happy, buildings create beautiful societies and pride in their local area. Buildings that are truely sustainable and beautiful. Thanm you for this video
That little Swiss 💩 was one of the most successful con men in world history. What I hate is architecture schools forcing students to worship his concepts. Dissent is forbidden. The wealthy people who decide to erect these ugly buildings never live in them. They live in the nice neighborhoods.
As an architect, I honestly love classical post war modernism, if it’s actually build in a way, that’s supposed to create a unique and high quality living arrangement for its residents. And not create vertical low quality Ghettos for lower income „undesirables“. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence, that according to studies, the happiest living arrangement in Europe is the „Wohnpark Alterlaa“ in Vienna. A giant multi-storey living complex, completely constructed from concrete. Places like the barbarican, or the Olympisches Dorf in Munich also have ridiculously high wait times for an apartment, as people WANT to live in Spaces like that. The question that needs to be asked is „What makes those areas work“ and why is this not universally applicable to all modernist housing developments? In theory, the concept of the 1960s „Trabantenstadt“ is more relevant to our modern cost of living crisis then it was in the 60s. Building as many units as possible, using the density to free up public spaces for more greenery, separating Cars and pedestrian areas, in some projects even integrating a shopping Centre into the block itself, while also using the rooftop as even more green space (Chorweiler Cologne), thereby eradicating car dependency in everyday life, and following up on this premise by constructing Mass Transit Options (Chorweiler, Neu-Perlach, Olympisches Dorf, Langwasser, and more) thereby linking the settlement up to the real city Centre with less then 20min of travelling time, is simply peak urban development. And all of that is clearly visible, as those once hated areas are currently on the verge of gentrification, very slowly pricing out all of the problematic inhabitants. As someone who has Polish ancestry it’s also very interesting to mention, that the negative connotation of the „Commieblock“ only exists in the west. In Eastern Europe, most commieblock areas are just regular City districts with regular people living their normal lives ins peace and harmony, while profiting from the high quality of mass transit infrastructure and open spaces and greenery around the blocks. You don’t get that feeling of uneasiness or even danger when visiting a friend that lives in one of those areas, like you would in France for example. All in all, bashing modernism and its concepts is just an overcorrection of past mistakes, that takes all benefits out of consideration and will most likely shove us into another dead end of city planing, creating a different type of slum and will not solve our current situation. A lot of people like to look back at ideas of past generations and simply denounce them as wrong, and not well thought out, while in reality the planers of the past were not stupid or dumb. And that’s something we must start to understand, if we truly want to solve our current situation.
I agree, I love the aims they had. Leeds Yorkshire Quarry hill were designed after a visit to Vienna, until the drug dealers arrived the residents loved them
Many planers of the past were stupid or dumb as they are today. Just remove certain people from plinths, they aren't gods, just humans and we can move on. Nowadays we are repeating the mistakes of modernism because that's pretty much what most architects/urban planners learn, the same examples, the same guys and so on. Especially because modernism doesn't evolve, it defines itself as a tabula rasa of the past and the end of history. This hubris is intrinsic to modernism and it's most comercial/popular variants.
The Netherlands is kinda known for its livable cities (and villages and everything else) and esthetics isn't a big factor in all that. Outside of the historic city-centers, this overcrowded country with its boring landscapes is mostly filled with bland, cookie-cutter buildings from Germany to shining sea.
If The Barbican is the most famous modernist block in the UK, I could say I live in the second most famous one. On the outside, the bare concrete can be jarring, but the general shape is not too offensive to the eye and is well maintained with trees and a lovely pedestrian area in the middle. However by construction it is fundamentally flawed. If an architechtural firm tells you they can build in a 'humanist' manner, and for cheap -- it is a lie. By just the first year of living in this building, we discovered so so many issues, from poor construction quality, to design features that were straight up silly. The exterior gets dirty quick, the interior is designed in such a way that it collects water but does not drain it; I could go on and on. This block requires just as much maintenance as, say, my favourite building in London, St Pancras Renaissance (Midland Grand Hotel). The future-proofing claims of modernist architects in the 20th century turned out to be false self-grandiose assumptions. My building already barely stands the test of time. I grew to love my modernist block, given there's nothing like it if its well cared for, but most 19th century constructs in London are prettier, are better built, longer lasting, and cost just as much to maintain. I've lived in a commie block in Kyiv, I've lived in a 300 year old farmhouse, and in a modernist council-estate-gentrified block and I'm convinced that modernist architects of the 20th century made brave experiments and just failed. They broke many rules, but they forgot that those rules came to be over centuries for reasons.
@@bobalexandrovich1506 Well put. It's funny, we share similar experiences when it comes to having lived in different places from different times, but we differ geographically. I can say I understand you completely. My two most recent apartments where one made in the 2000s and one from the end of the XIX that had bits of reno (new windows for example) and my comfort is way higher in the old renovated building (less rain water everywhere, less mold, more thermal/noise comfort, etc), the 2000s apartment quality was jarring for a supposedly luxury condo.
"Almost a religion" - you said it! I studied architecture in the 80s and Corb was adulated. We were taught to design like him, draw like him, think like him. Me, I preferred Gaudí and Wright and John Soane. I really appreciated lots of Corb buildings, and I read his books with a mix of laughter and dread - I couldn't shake how fascistic it sounded. (In Italy the Fascist movement grew quite literally out of an art movement that called itself the Fascists.) The rows I had with my dad, me trying to intellectually defend what I found morally scary (but felt I had to BELIEVE in) and him being such an easy target traditionalist with Prince Charles on his team. Brilliantly put together documentary. Your take on it - gratitude for what it functionally did for the working class, and a desire to move away just because it's all so grim - sums it up.
The modernism of the Fascist period in Italy between 1923-1938 is referred to as “Italian Rationalism”. And it’s ironic to note that while every other Fascist regime in Europe, Stalinist Russia and the New Deal US embraced a stripped down and sometimes very austere version of Classicism, Fascist Italy purposely embraced modernism as a propaganda technique of its representation of “The New Man” Italian Rationalism had a strong emphasis on the relationship of modern building design and the existing urban context, seeing the city as a continuous work in progress to be embraced not rejected. Many works from that period still exist, and some are elegant examples of how modernity can be successful inserted into and live in relative harmony within its particular site. Of course you can argue that the patron of their movement was LITERALLY the first fascist. However all architects in history have required patrons to build. They always serve a master, be it the nobility, the Soviets or the Comcast Corporation. 🫤
Like many things, with modernism the poison is in the dosage. And like most movements, different things were happening in different places. Some of the same incentives popularized American Craftsman style bungalows - which retained aspects of traditional design and technique but also later blended into Prairie style architecture like that of Frank Lloyd Wright.
if there is something i can't help noticing, was the social conscience early modernist architects had. a good deal of what they did was getting rid of slums.
I think Poundbury as you highlight is such a key developement to how we don't all have to live in square boxes with few windows, and go shopping in glass boxes with some coloured plastic on the side.
My very favorite story about Le Corbusier is that he was commissioned by the Phillips company to design their pavilion for the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. He was, at the time, not very invested in that project, but _very_ obsessed with his guts due to some gastrointestinal issues he was suffering. So he drew the floorplan in the shape of a human stomach, and shoved it off on his assistant. His assistant at the time was Iannis Xenakis, a Greek engineer (who had lost an eye fighting in the Greek resistance movement against Axis occupation), who was also a composer of avant-garde music. Xenakis was working at the time with parabolic curves, and so designed the roof of the pavilion using them (as he did for all of the parabolic curves you see in other Le Corbusier buildings; Xenakis was a collaborator on many of them). Xenakis would later reuse his sketches to compose his most famous orchestral piece, _Metastasis_ (or maybe he just used his sketches for the roof design; I forget the exact sequence). That building was designed to showcase Philips' ability to control multi-track tape playback and mixing, and to do this they commissioned Edgard Varese to compose his most famous electronic piece: _poeme electronique_ , which modern listeners can enjoy remixed by Amon Tobin as the track "Proper Hoodidge." It's one of the most fascinating convergences of technology, art, architecture, and creative talent of the early postwar, and my favorite part of it is that the center of it consists of Le Corbusier saying, "screw it, here's a stomach, _you_ do something with it!"
Modern builds are not only architecturally ugly, but the majority of trades do not have a high skill base, and very little pride in their workmanship, working on a price!
I've visited a couple of Le Corbusiers buildings, and to be fair they were rather lovely and well designed. The concrete exteriors actually look pretty great in Marseille, where I visted Le Corbusier's unite d'habitation, the bright sun making them look warm and bringing out the texture of the concrete. Concrete doesn't look so great in Bradford though! ( where I come from!) A lot of the problem with bad modern architecture is trying to make it too cheap, and then not maintaining it properly. The Barbican is a great example of fantastic modern architecture that still looks great while making full use of the properties of reinforced concrete to allow for large spans and light airy interiors uncluttered by supporting walls. The trouble is the Barbican wasn't cheap to build or maintain, but I would argue it's worth the money to build decent housing. It effects your daily life and is a relatively small amount of money extra to build good housing rather than the terrible crap that's being erected in the UK now. Most of the cost of a house is in the land cost and planning to allow a house to be built. We really need to drastically raise our standards, as good housing is a boon for everyone living there in both cofort and money (we could insulate our buildings so much better in the UK, it isn't rocket surgery). Go to somewhere like Germany and look at the quality of their windows, it really is shocking what builders get away with in the UK. (actually it's not the builders, it's the developers and architects who are at fault, the builder is just building what they've been instructed to build)
You don't understand. The working masses also wanted to live in non-damp, centrally heated homes with running water, electricity, internal bathrooms, water toilets, big windows that look toward the sun... while the middle class just wrinkled their noses. They said: sprawling 1-family houses with gardens, garages and, if possible, servants, are much better. But the vast majority answered - OK, let us first build the good, then we can discuss the better. Do you mind? They solved the great housing crisis after two world wars, moved into modern apartments, and tastes changed. But they reached their goal. If now tastes have shifted, then make something better. Don't just bad-mouth what you see. In a fifth dimension, every apartment could have it's own garden, orchard, greenhouse, garage, why not a hunting estate? Try it.
That baffled me in school. The instructors tried to excuse it, I remember one saying the rough texture was because they couldn't find quality wood after WW2 to use for forms -- but for god's sake you can rub it out with a finish coat! Le C's work was purposely ugly and rough and unadorned and uncolored, and we are right to call it out for being such.
As an Architecture student in the 1960's Le Corbusier was a god. I sought out his buildings in France. I still think he was a great designer of space, an artist, but a totalitarian. He had the typical French arrogance and at the time was loved by both intellectual and ruling class. Your lecture is brilliant...well done.
Was there any dissenting voices in the 60s, any one calling out Corb for the authoritarian psychopath that he was? anyone calling out the cult of Corb that have done so much damage to architecture and urban planning in the decades since?
@maxrolland3148 Oh dear let's split hairs. You remind me of my mother. When I showed her a design with a lovely high ceiling space....she said "but how do you clean up there".
@@JohnBurman-l2l I don’t believe someone’s nationality to be an insignificant detail. Would be like saying Donalt Trump is canadian, Oscar Wilde an englishman and Bruce Lee a japanese.
The "Habitation Unit" that Le Corbusier made is considered the first building on the "brutalist" architecture style, which I personally love. Now, the style evolved more from it and buildings instead explored bold and interesting geometry as ornament, with monumental spaces becoming it's staple. I can understand that some people hate it, but for me ornamented buildings tire me after some time due sense overload, and a "machine to live" feels more comforting and calm. For my fellow music nerds, it's like the difference between a "wall of sound" song produced by Phil Spector against something out of the "music for airports" albums from Brian Eno.
Modernists building make people depressed. Depressed people makes modern building.... And is goes on and on and on in a revolving motion. Never evolving...
As an architect in the socialist Bauhaus approved International Style, Le Corbusier was hardly a fascist. Mussolini and Hitler favoured neo- grecian/ roman, see Speers blueprints for Germania. Fascists prefer grandeur to utilitarian
Nazis are fascists but their flavor of hyper nationalism was probably a long the lines of "Everything Germany has done so far is great, just cast out non German stuff unless it's Greek/Roman" while Italy was like "Italy sucks, but the people are great and we can make it suck less." Fun fact, it sucked far more and so did Germany. Never trust hyper nationalists, they know how to manipulate and rile people up but little of anything else.
Absolutely excellent example how architecture can be explained to people that have no interest in architecture at all, and keep them hooked. Splendid video!!!
Come discuss further on my discord discord.gg/US8cuerhXJ
- thanks for corrections on reinforced concrete, is is strong under COMPRESSION not tension. Also I got the pantheon bit slightly mixed up - but allow me
why did you change the title
to see if more people click it
Nice video, but I think you may be spewing a very general web here, in a few words - not all modern architecture is social housing, beauty is (as usual) relative and a lot of the study that goes into architecture nowadays deals more towards anthropology than to the idea of building something 'wicked sick
@@JimmyTheGiant love the videos
thanks Jim
As somebody, who has lived in a "Commieblock" for the most of his life, let me say this - these buildings are not pretty, but they are also very comfortable, clean, almost maintenance free and easy to serve with public transport and all the other amenities. So, I do see the point, these architects were trying to make. Could there be a middle ground, where we take the good things from modernism, but make it a bit more humane?
No person should have to live in these things. I’m sorry you haven’t been able to enjoy the freedoms of the Australian house in the suburbs.
@@marnuscoreyempanadaslooseb6760 Freedoms? Like the freedom of having an HOA tell you, how often you must cut your grass or what color your mailbox can be? Freedom of having to use car to get anywhere? I am not sure, if I would exchange the luxury of having a trolleybus stop right in front of my home and being able to get to the city center within 15 minutes. Every type of housing comes with its perks and drawbacks, but I highly recommend visiting any of the Central European country to see, how these Commie block neighborhoods turned out thanks to good maintenance and renovations. They have become popular among people, who prefer maintenance-free, almost hotel-like type of housing.
Having easy access to public transportation, restaurants, shops and parks can be a priority for some people. On the other some suburbs can have all these amenities. @@marnuscoreyempanadaslooseb6760
Those things might be comfortable in Eastern Europe. Here in the US, those buildings really failed. They put in nice communal spaces that turned into hotspots for vandalism, violent crime and public urination and they turned out to be unaffordable to maintain with anything like remotely sustainable vacancy rates and rent prices. The projects were often demolished relatively quickly, because even if the units were initially comfortable, they did not work long term.
@@unconventionalideas5683 Well that's not the buildings' fault. It's the people.
“Very good, my roof is still leaking” such and underrated and savage comment by his mom, basically saying i don’t how fancy your building is if it doesn’t work
Good thing he didn't build boats.
the best architecture critic ever....
The Villa Savoye is infamous for its leaky roof as well. The family who commissioned it threatened to sue Le Corbusier after their child caught pneumonia. He ultimately paid for repairs out of his own pocket to placate them, and even then the building still had problems until a major restoration in the 80s.
For the record, Villa Savoye is considered one of Le Corbusier's masterpieces. Colour me unimpressed.
This also says a lot about Le Corbusier's need for approval if this is really what she says. He never got any from his parents, so he took it from pursuing the fame as an architect.
Still they haven't found a way to make flat roofs that doesn't leak unless piles of maintenance.
His mum is a savage 😂 “that’s great. My roof is still leaking”
she probably hated his work as much as the rest of us
Sadly she died 7 seconds after you wrote your comment; it would be appreciated if you replaced the "is" with a "was".
@@C-sé.speakin it's a direct reference to the actual quotation of what she wrote, which is why it's in quotation marks to signify that it was HER remark. why does this need to be explained?
@jamesriver9267 Why are Americans so disrespectful to the deceased?
@@C-sé.speakin i don't know what context your question is addressing here, because i don't know whom you're referring to as 'American', nor can i discern where any disrespect has been incurred. in all probability, i don't think you have much of a clue what you're asking about either, but i expect on the basis of what you've written so far you'd be the last person to realise that.
I should point out that most of the essential features of Georgian architecture (and most historic styles) were not originally intended to be decorative; they were the most expedient way to make a brick building support its own weight without wasting precious lumber. The horizontal arches over the doors and windows supported the bricks above with little or no wood reinforcement. Even the ubiquitous 6 panel door was a way to make a door that was strong enough and didn't swell itself shut, using less wood than it would take to make a solid slab door. Sure, some of the shapes were embellished for ornamental effects, but few ornamental features were just stuck on. In the 20th century, modernists developed a quasi-religious stance against ANY ornamentation, even that carved into elements that were essential, so what we got were a lot of sticks and flat panels with perfectly rectangular profiles fitted together as cheaply as possible. No wonder people got tired of it. In recent years, instead of correcting that misguided thinking, modernists have added stupid embellishments like odd angles, randomly spaced "IBM card" window openings and non-vertical walls (so much for "form follows function"). What we really need is a modern architecture based on modern building methods that doesn't bar carved or extruded embellishment of the shapes of the essential elements to make them look less rectangular and boring. Some of this sort of thing happened naturally in mid-20th century buildings as builders used moldings and hardware designed around older styles, presumably because it was cheap and available. But the international-style tyrants pushed most of that out and even insisted on flattening things like metal frames that had been fluted because the apparently ornate shapes optimized the use of metal. Some of my favorite 20th Century modern buildings benefited from accidental factors that the zealots of modernism would rather have exorcized .
Really makes you wonder how much of his fanatical approach to architecture was driven by his mother’s scapegoating of him as a child. He resented the “ornamentation” his older brother received in the form of praise and wanted a world of uniformity where everyone was treated the same.
Move along! Nozzink Freudian to zee here! Move along, move along....
You see, back in Gimmelshtump, his brother Roger was always adored by his mother due to his talent at kickball…
His mom better not having him...
Im sorry to be that guy but i feel as a civil eng i have too..... concrete acts well in compression not tension, it acts really badly under tension hence why it needs to reinforced, the rebar takes up the tension forces
I came to the comments to say this and I'm not an engineer, just a run of the mill pipefitter.
@@tryaluck honestly dont trust us engineers trust the foreman they know more
@@plastiquepaddyVR shut up.
Good comment. It’s hard to find anyone these days who treats the technical as neutral. Can I ask what causes concrete to spall. The reason I ask is I used to work in the mining industry. A lot of civils are used to set up fixed plant. Cone crushers create radial forces. The concrete spalled on all the vertical surfaces below the machine.
Don't be sorry, people like you are heroes the internet needs.
Just a little comment to point that concrete needs to be under compression not tension. (6:25). Tension is pulling in opposite directions whereas compression is pushing in opposite directions.
Never let facts get in the way of a good Socialist narrative👍
@@LoremIpsum1970 whats socialist about it?
@@TVRUclips-ow9xu Not been listening much to the last couple of videos, then. It's a shame they're not fact-checked.
@@LoremIpsum1970 ok but what does that have to do with concrete
@@marusdod3685 ...because the fact-checking in these videos isn't great...it's not hard to get the simple things correct.
my favourite part of Birmingham when I go up there on the train is the old areas made out of bricks and more bricks. The new stuff, in an attempt to appear modern, already looks plastic, artificial and outdated.
good architecture is timeless. can't remember who said it but it's true.
and those ugly buildings get filled up with non-white invaders
Even Bath, a city fames for being lovely to look at, suffers from this. They try to dress it up with a cladding of Bath Stone but it's still the square, flat shapes and big glass fronting everywhere.
He designed the most comfortable chair / chaise lounge ever, though, and my back is thankful for that.
I agree with you: he should have kept designing only chairs
You seem to not know the difference between tension and compression.
There are some words that are confusing, I agree, like:
Tension x compression
Right x left
Ugly x beautiful
Except it is thought to be largely the work of his associate, Charlotte Perriand.
The Pantheon? Oldest building on Earth? Whilst showing the Parthenon on screen? The oldest building on earth is Gobekli Tepe (9500BCE). The Pantheon may the oldest building on earth still in use. And it's different from the Parthenon.
Exactly! He is in fact showing the Erechteion, next to the Parthenon on the Acropolis.
Karahan Tepe is older.
@@billwillson890 Gobekli tepe is a temple
GT is the oldest ruin of a building. Pretty good nick, all things considered, but it's clear what he was aiming at and GT doesn't qualify.
I guess it was a comment bait. Even if GT doeen't count, we still have Egyptian pyramids and temples
"if you don't know about walls, I am not even sure how you got to this video, seems like there are a lot of things you need to learn in life" 🤣😂
I mean he's not wrong lol
Can some please explain roofs? Always wondered what those things were
@@Anal_Annihilator next vid dw
@@Anal_Annihilator Ask Clarke Gable and Ruth Tile? I would research for you more but I've got shingles.
@@JimmyTheGiant18:34 One utopia is another's dystopia. Vice versa. Dystopia is another's Utopia for another .
Like the matter of brith rate. Is overpopulation something autopsy or dystopia . Because overpopulation makes labor cheap. That's also the reason why Businessmen love immigration.Because it lowers the price of drinking wages But dystopia for the working class.
I'm a Rollerblader and an Architect so it's been quite interesting over the past few years watching the progression of your videos..
Same here Man. I enjoy it all but do wish he occasionally did more sports videos
I'm not an architect but l have somehow nonetheless ended up spending a significant amount of my time around buildings.
Lol you enjoy someone who can't define fascism talking about it🫵😂
Same for me, though I didn't pay attention to the blading videos, I was surprised when it was released but blading or not, any subject is so well covered I would even watch a section on concrete.
This ugly architecture damaged most Greek cities beyond repair after the 50’s. Unfortunately cities like Athens and Thessaloniki suffered the most. This mostly happened when people who owned land sold it in exchange for an apartment in some sort of contractual consideration (antiparochi in Greek) leading to the vast majority of the buildings looking like soviet style monstrosities.
That was my impression of Athens in the seventies. Totally ruined the classical parts.
It is frightening that we Turks are so similar with Greeks. Exact same thing has happened and still happening in Turkey. Now, classical parts of Istanbul are slums and the whole city was overtaken by these monstrosities. In my hometown, there are old Greek houses and old Turkish houses. Even in the same climate, same city, you can see what people prioritized while building their homes. Each has a character and tells a story about the people who built them. Not even two owned by same ethnicity, same religion, same socioeconomic status were the same. From their profession to number of their kids, effected their living space.
I so agree...I was enormously disappointed by Athens ( architecturally ) when I visited years ago
Want to see ugly modernism? View Corviale in Rome, Italy. "The longest building in Europe". The architect died shortly after its completion, legend from Rome says that he himself finished it out of remorse
I used to think council houses that were built post war in this country were ugly, maybe because i grew up in one, but now i see them as being beautiful and wished i still lived in one. What if we had more of them than the shit, we have on offer now?
to be honest i think one people seem to ignore in the debate about modern architecture when we compare it to the past is the fact we only really preserved the best of what was built, most of us would have been in thrown up shacks or packed town houses
Like Kenya 😢
Working areas are gentrified and the most charming areas nowadays.
Thats far from the truth, even shanty towns back then used to be charmy and filled with greenery, now we have gray hellholes in every western country
look at how medieval and Renaissance normal houses were, most were not preserved, and they were made for utility, but yet still are works of art
@@cabinessence_timely_hellobecause they didn't have a utilitarian mindset they were humans they like pretty things
Concrete is extremely weak in tension. It is very strong in compression. What the steel.rods do is take the tension loads, leaving the compression loads to the concrete.
Also, steel and concrete expand at roughly the same rate when heated. This is why we don't see any aluminum reinforced concrete.
"Very good, my roof is still leaking." Has to be the hottest burn delivered in the history of humanity.
No praise is more ignored, no chastisement is more severe than from that of a parent.
@@Tarik360😂
I mean in all honesty... walk down a street in London with Victorian era buildings and then look at these shapeless ugly towers going up everywhere... turns out aesthetics do matter.
The Dutch have recently built an entire city in the old 1800s fort style and would you believe it... despite all the criticism from the so called architecture "experts", turns out people really wanted to move into a place that actually looks and feels nice
Well, of course, they would. Why would you move into a place that costs money if you don't like it?
@@coolman3074 there are many reasons why people would do that lol. In London it's mainly necessity because all the jobs are there
@@TiGGowich But isnt it crazy expensive there?
If London looks like the photos then I never want to go there. It looks oppressive.
King Charles III actually did this as well founding the town Poundbury. It's a very beautiful town.
Finally, someone understands my deep hate for le corbusier as a French person.
yeah, but that guy was not a fascist
As a Dutchman, I share this hatred for any of his proteges.
Architecture that not even a mother could love.
@@glorp_glorp_glorp he kinda was. He worked for the vichy government. The rest of the bauhaus and the Modern movement were socialists, but corbusier wasnt.
@@glorp_glorp_glorp He was very sympathetic to fascism, though.
He probably knew his authoritarian "reform" ideas where only possible under dictators, and thus went and snuggled up to them.
Read his publicized letters - he still assumed Hitler to be " a great man who will modernize europe" in ´41. After 6 wars of agression had been started.
Le Corbusier was not French. He was from the French speaking part of Switzerland.
Hitler was not a German, but an Austrian. Napoleon was not French, he was Corsican. Alexander Hamilton was not from what was to become the United States, but from the Caribbean.
It was said multiple times in the video, people assumed he was French
c'est une partie de la France, comme la Belgique
@@baklei7100🤡
Get used to that, it's no use.
- Someone from Ticino
After WW2, they started removing the decorative ornaments on buildings here in Vienna. So they kept the buildings (if they were still inhabitable) but made them bland. There are movements to bring back the decorations to buildings.
Another thing is: the corporations planing housing today are doing it for profit, to sell the flats. If you look at the plans, most of them are not made for living. They are impractical shoeboxes and and eyesore from the outside.
What do you think previous developers wanted?
@@brianbelgard5988 _"What do you think previous developers wanted?"_
In Vienna? They were often non-profit organisations that merely needed to break even. And outside the city centre a lot of housing was built by big companies with paternalistic ideologies who wanted to keep their workers "within the family", so to speak, providing them cheap housing, leisure spaces etc.
Le Corbusier's mom was right about the roof leaking, technically speaking he was a terrible architect even though he loved modern tecnology
I studied in a 1970s university and we had to walk around buckets on the floor.
same w/FLW. great architects are more designers than constructors.
I could do better
Most architects are crap, though: it's style over substance. They win awards for being edgy, then skip out and leave other people to live in their awful creations. Ditch your architect and hire a structural engineer.
@@gdutfulkbhh7537 hire an architect for aesthetic vision. have a good builder check their work for realism. structural engineers are (for the most part) for engineering commercial structures.
Jimmy is the only one holding the secret for tensile concrete
what is more : tensile concrete found propping up the parthenon ... or was it sky hooks from the firmament ?
The super secret rebar.
@@carlost856 that would be reinforced concrete then ;)
The secret, Asbestos... 😂
Maybe that philosopher "Neechee" knows it too though
I live in poundbury the town you referenced at the end of the video orchestrated and envisioned by King Charles. It’s beautiful & authentic (at least externally) They have done a remarkable job of building it, which is why we moved here. But even after three years of being here I don’t love it and I can’t describe why, it feels like living in a movie set, it doesn’t feel like a real place, it has a Truman show vibe but it’s so subtle it’s hard to pin point. We have friends and neighbours here but it’s always empty, there’s no history, it’s soulless. A truly remarkable architectural experiment, that has the same social anonymity of a brutalist tower block.
Can formulate what it is that is missing? I think this is an important subject. Personally, when I walk there with streetview, I think the ornaments are not really creative, I miss some joyful exuberance, weird details or deviations. The gardens are also not flamboyant enough. My feeling is dat the streets around Longmoor street feel more natural. Is that the oldest part? In that case it may just be a matter of time.
There is another village or estate on the edge of Newquay like that. When I saw a video about it, I wondered if it was a computer simulation as it looked flawless.
Thank you for your interesting letter about what it is like to live in Poundbury. Perhaps it will be time that will give your town a sense of place, of roots, of home. Bonne Chance! (I am French).
great comment. I feel an air of uncanniness throughout the city when I explore it virtually, but I chalk it up to it being a centralised project built in a very short time frame (30 or so years in urban timespans is nothing). Another commenter proposed that with the passage of time this can change, and I agree. As it is, it feels uncomfortably close to a misplaced Disneyland or a movie set, as there hasn't been enough time for the grime and the imperfections, the human touch of the thousands of people who live there to pile up, as it happens with every city.
@arccv It's like a New Town but better designed and using traditional principles. I did a project on New Towns at school long before Poundbury was built.
"I love the germans, they clear space so that I can build my abominations." -Sun 'Le Corbusier' Tzu, probably
Everything we call “classic” in art, music, literature and yes, architecture, is the result of hundreds of years of creativity and selection. People select naturally those works that they like, and erase, or shelf those they don’t find beautiful. Modernism is (although more than 100 years old by now) still young as art currents go. There are beautiful modernists houses and buildings. There are many ugly ones. The ugly will eventually go, be replaced.
This is quite hopeful but I feel the difference no one ever did like modernism really. It is absolutely despised now, yet it is still the dominant style. Beauty in itself, seems no longer to be something of value.
@demeritfc3655 it's cheaper for these faceless companies to build. That and the modern architecture helps promote equality! Everyone gets an ugly house lol
Not exactly true when there is a cult around modernism, especially when you see awarded buildings that either tend to have construction issues or considered ugly.
"Very Good, my roof is still leaking."
THAT! That's what genius looks like.
I spend my teenage years in a commi block. Haven't lived in anything remotely resembling an appartment block for at least 15 years... I don't mind the occasional pipe leakage or boiler breakdown or the constant problems with the remote for the front door... I will live in 19th century houses until the day I die.
There's more than those 2 choices.
@GUITARTIME2024 not where I live. Unless you want to spend two to three hours a day stuck in traffic, like underfunded schools, love to not have access to supermarkets or have a couple million lying around to buy a townhouse...
Honorable mention to Erno Goldfinger! Most prominently remembered for designing residential tower blocks, and the man after whom Ian Fleming would name the James Bond villain. When Goldfinger considered taking legal action, Fleming threatened to rename the character 'Goldprick'. Eventually he decided not to sue and Fleming's publishers agreed gave him some free copies of the book
note: Comment basically plagiarised from wikipedia. At least I'm not a bot.
That's what a bot would say.... Exposed
Goldfinger is based Charles Engelhard , of islin nj . Sold to basf in 2006 for $5 billion.
Yours is definitely one of the best RUclips channels by a long way. There's a lot of addictive mindless crap on YT and I watch too much of it 😢 but your videos are a very different experience. Thanks Jimmy the Giant.
6:12
"you can even see [concrete] in the pantheon, which is the oldest building on earth."
> shows parthenon
> neither are oldest building on earth
Adding a very important correction here. Concrete is not strong under tension. Steel is but concrete isn’t useful at all when you try to put it under a load that is pulling it apart. That’s why you have never seen anything constructed with concrete cables but the cables in a suspension bridge however will be steel instead where as the areas that are under compression because they are being pushed together will be constructed in concrete. Reinforced concrete can combine the benefits of both materials in places where you can experience both forces. One simple example is a concrete beam. Where the beam sags under load the top of the beam will be under compression as it is being pushed together, the bottom of the beam will be getting stretched apart as it’s under tension. Reinforced concrete will make the beam extremely strong in both compression and tension. Another example might be a column that is under compression but may also have to resist twisting forces that would introduce tension into the structure.
Im glad you're covering this topic. Not enough people are.
Maybe not enough care, can you blame them?
He had already made a sort of a part 1 on this topic with the decline of the
dystopian estates video. Interesting subject indeed.
@@cristianjuarez1086yes
Didn’t he start the video with a run down on the amount of coverage this topic is getting online?
These replies are immune to sarcasm
Reinforced concrete + Parametric CAD modelling + Unleashed architects
= CRAZY BUILDING DESIGN.
+ Communist values
There's mansion in North Carolina called Biltmore. Every time I see the TV ad I remember about
the lumberjacks making next to nothing so that Vanderbilt could have caviar, and I wish someone would dispose of that obscene display of exploitation.
My city was turned into a soul-crushing dystopia by Daniel Libeskind, when are you making a video on him?
@@billwillson890 Jew
What city is that?
@@fifi2go a city in Germany.
Turns out Brits love a bit of Georgian architecture. Only problem is, no one can afford to live in any of it, so we all got stuck in Nelson Mandela House. Nevermind Rodders, this time next year we'll all be millionaires.
Georgian architecture doesn't have to be expensive to build. Most architectural features and ornamentation on beautiful buildings were mass-produced, and all of it can be poured concrete or similar inexpensive materials.
There are two separate points there, that are often conflated.
"Nice" architecture is more expensive to build than brutalism, yes, but not by the margins that you see differentiating the two in the marketplace.
A big part of the reason that "nice" buildings are more expensive than tower blocks is that people want to live in them and so people who can afford to pay more for them do so, pushing the price up. The challenge when building housing for the masses is to make it attractive enough that people _want_ to live there, without allowing the market to push those prices out of reach.
Before this thread gets sidetracked I'd just like to tell you what a beautiful comment this is. You really encapsulated British defeatist optimism and centuries of class structure in a single comment relevant to the video. Bravo.
@@mickey4125 Thanks mate. Nice to know someone got it.
See, we don't have that issue in the North West. Most of the land is protected reserve. 😅
We have homelessness tho.
6:27 yeah mate, you got it completely backwards! Concrete is exceptionally strong in compression and remarkably weak in tension and torsion. That's why it has to be reinforced with steel ffs
Honestly, most people do not have PhDs in material science
@@hugepumpkin8094 Most people know stacking toy blocks, though. Say, which of these is under tension; the archway or the rope bridge? Exactly, no PhD needed
i know its an unpopular opinion but i love the work of Le Corbusier and Brutalism in general. It does have a cold, but futuristic sci-fi look. i am a big fan of sci-fi films like A Clockwork Orange, Logans Run and I'm a fan of Retrowave music so maybe i am a little biased
High five, I've never understood a bad attitude towards brutalism
Your video reminds me of the Tom Wolfe book, "From Bauhaus to Our House". First read it around 40 years ago, in college. I loved it. My professor said that was because I was a knuckle dragger. If appreciating beauty makes me primitive, I find that a rather odd worldview. One in which the very things that were once considered refined have become epithets.
Hey, so, I am from Le Corbusier's native town, Le Corbusier is from la Chaux-de-Fonds, he is not french, this city is in Romandy, the french part of Switzerland. And clearly you can see his influence in the town, there is a bus arrest named after him, and of course a whole lot of those gray concrete blocs, whether built by him or by his simps. Our city even organised a parking car place with white and black cars to make a picture of him visible from the sky 2 years ago. We can see two random places in la Chaux-de-Fonds at 8:09 Some parts of my town look like Eastern Europe, with big panel houses/plattenbaus. And growing up in this city was cool, like, i can relate with Eastern Europeans with this, those gray blocks have a cool charm, we don't really care about if it is ugly or not, it's home.
Of course la Chaux-de-Fonds has a lot of other things to see, anyone reading this, if you come over, i can make you a tour :)
Ehh... It seems like he was more of an autocrat than a fascist. These gray commie blocks are mostly popular with authoritarian or socialist leaders. Mussolini and other fascists' often focused on more overly grandiose styles that tried to evoke an ancient legacy or a prosperous future.
you clearly never saw a "casa popolare" in italy hahaha
Guess you didn't hear the news, but everything that's bad is automatically right-wing and therefore fascist. Despite reality.
@@ChristianBoraginele case popolari fasciste fuori da Roma sono molto più belle e "case" rispetto ai blocchi di cemento fatti nella ricostruzione negli anni 50 e poi continuati negli anni 60 e 70
@@FrancescoBedini mah dipende dalla zona, però non è che sotto il fascismo era tutto monumentale, è questo che intendevo. Poi ci sarebbe da disquisire quanto del monumentalismo è direttamente discendente dal fascismo e quanto è una forma atavica in Italia. Cmq riassumendo, il bro del commento non sa na ciola. 🤣
I mean, it's not that crazy for Italy to have huge concrete structures and apartment blocks, considering that's what Rome and other Italian cities have had for thousands of years. Yes, lots of pretty ones came after they lost the recipe for Roman concrete and population densities and population growth (not to mention many, many, many, plagues, wars, and famines) couldn't justify the massive rows of apartment towers that Rome had, but it's also not alien to the peninsula.
This is why Dostoevsky hated the Inteligencia, a man I have shared the same faith with because of ''academics''...'' There are men there with whom no one would consent to live''
and I have committed no crime.
All men are ugly underneath. Its just weather you are open to it. Some men are able to rise above it.
he also hated the intelligentsia ;) ...so you're not consenting to live with my comment and me? :) Maybe one of them will come tell us we mean to say intellectuals rather than intelligentsia ... inteligencia no es mal ...?
To understand why LeCorbusier was so universally appealing, you would have to live in a world of architecture that hadn't changed for hundreds of years. His work was seen as revolutionary at the time, simple, clean lines, easy to maintain, they could be built anywhere and be unique. People were also ready for something new after WWII, the old buildings were dirty, cramped, hard to modernize, hard to heat and cool. That being said, I hate his work, and I hated how much he was pushed on me while I was in architecture school. I found his concrete works to look cheap and clunky.
Just giving a shout-out for using a This Country clip. Christ that show is hilarious, and at least outside of the UK criminally unknown despite still being so recognisable.
It honestly impresses me how many people fail to see the different details that make modernist architecture beautiful, it really shows that most people don't have a single clue about design.
It impresses me that some people can't see past their own degrees to see the abject hideousness of modern architecture, especially when architecture has such a rich history we can learn from and use to create functional and beautiful structures. Next time you look at one of these monuments to inhumanity, take all that stuff you learned and put it away, put it all away, and the shear grotesqueness of these buildings in comparison to the beautiful things that have been made will sicken you.
i actually like brutalism and other similar styles, why waste resources on useless decoration?
@@sebastianhama5624 Imagine a blank concrete wall, now imagine that wall with a mural of a sun set at a lake painted on it. Which one is more likely to make someone depressed and which is more likely to make people feel better?
Esthetic matter psychologically. It is the same reason people paint their walls different collars, hang art, posters and photos, it's why people decorate their homes. When people live in places that are depressing people can get depressed, that depression can lead to self medication, meaning alcohol and drugs which can lead to alcohol and drug related crimes which makes and aria more depressing.
@@sebastianhama5624 Aesthetics are a use. If you force people to live in an environment that is objectively ugly, it will imprint itself on their psyches. Normal people (and yes, modernists are not normal people) feel depressed walking around a "modernist" city made of cheap plastic and grey concrete.
people know what's pretty and what's not, it's human nature, and a textbook doesn't make the horrible look good, modern architecture is garbage and you don't have not know anything about design to see it
Another banger as usual
I share the sentiment that this gulf separating architects' opinions and the general population's needs to be bridged asap. I don't think the solution, however, can be found in this insistence that whatever styles that were popular in the pre-modern era are the ones worth reproducing, but that's a larger dissatisfaction of mine in the anti-modernist movement. I don't believe that anti-modernist must necessarily mean traditionalist. I've been working as an architect only for a few years still, but I truly believe we're quickly approaching an inflection point in the method of designing and constructing buildings. Primarily due to the increasingly complex computerization of the process, compounded by breakthroughs in materials that could enable an explosion of "ornamental" elements that would be unheard of only a few decades ago. The kind of ornament that would give Gaudí and the Art Nouveau architects a run for their money. It would be a shame for these exciting new possibilities be lumped together with the drab Modernists and its children, and cast aside in favor of a rushed return to the past.
Yes, many styles such as art deco were definetly not traditional by any means but they were still very pleasing to look at
We should have the desire to get new forms of beauty, not just go back to what has already been donw
Ornament is way more interesting than many architects think. A lot of ornament is in fact abstract art. Some of it is minimalist sculpture. But as entertainment it is also great. Ornament can tell stories, teach us about nature, can be energetic or static, it is an incredibly rich, complex language and still one that can be understood almost immediately by most people. This also means that the ornament of the past is not inaccessible to us to learn from. It draws us in, like a good novel or film, and then reveals more of its possibilities. Any architect can plunder the vaults with forgotten forms and use them or be inspired by them. Unfortunately, going half way between modernism and ornament usually gives bad results. This is because modernism is founded on a rejection of the richness and complexity of ornament. The inner resistance of architects makes them use irony, superficial references, or chaotic patterns, in order to use ornament while repressing its seductive, overwhelming power. Only when architects completely give in to their repressed desire for ornament can they learn to speak its language fluently.
6:14 “the Pantheon…” _shows picture of the _*_Parthenon_*
Also not the oldest building
As a neuroscientist, I am personally involved in research on these issues, and I want to congratulate you for the video! It's an excellent, balanced overview of the historical context and of the current situation. (Just a note, at 6.12 you say that "the Pantheon is the oldest building on Earth", which is not the case. Also, at that same time, you are showing the Erechteion of Athens)
What's so balanced about calling brutalism and modernism a piece of crap multiple times during the video?
I was born and raised in Chandigarh. AMA. I love it, it’s green, clean, organsied and one of the most prosperous and least congested cities in India.
Most people I know here don’t like other cities much.
I was scrolling down looking for comments on Chandigarh. I spent significant time there and I understand why people like it. Crazy that this video all seems to be a lead up to some nuanced commentary on Chandigarh city, its planning, construction and life there.. then he barely mentions it, only says its ugly and reinforces inequality, doesnt discuss any other aspects! Deserves its own video.. I thought at least a third of this would be a discussion of Chandigarh..
@@pristinerecordsthis way planned than other shitty unplanned city
I toured there last year, loved the trees and slower pace after coming from Jaipur
Jimmy the best on the platform
The city where I work has these beautiful 1900s office buildings, apartments and hotels, yet I work in this horrible 1960s concrete block with an even more hideous multistory car park next to it (12 floors!). Each day I walk down the street admiring the old buldings - which are ornate in a non flashy way. When I get to where I work my heart sinks. It’s soulless. The building won several architecture awards and it’s definitely not the worst modern building in the city, but it’s not interesting to see or to work in.
These original modern architects and the communist/socialist and fascist regimes that approved of their principles somehow totally ignored that ordinary people are inspired by beauty and variety. Sure, people want houses they can afford, but no one has respect for a concrete block.
What is up with people blaming "Communism" for the crappy buildings that CAPITALISM forced on you?
"Look at all these crappy communist buildings here in London..."
LOL!
The villain was capitalism the whole time!
This form of building served a purpose, as you said: to house millions of people whose houses had been destroyed in the war or migrated to the cities post WWII. Ugly outside, confortable inside, the were an improvement for most of the people.
The problem with brutalism is that nowadays, even rich people's houses are just plain white concrete cubes with big glass windows. Zero effort to architects, and people buy into it.
A really great video, just 2 things you mentioned that I would correct:
1. Concrete can support compression easily, and with rebarb it can better support tension.
2. Decorations and traditional architecture isn't necessarily more expensive for developers. This is a common distractions used by Modernists. There have been plenty of architects showing that it's not necessarily true. The Aesthetic City channel provides great info on this as well.
15:00 “The modernists…” *proceeds to show post modern work*
Also, concrete is only strong in compression, not tension
Edit: you also missed on the Maison Domino the aspect of speed. This was post Great War and a good chunk of the impetus for the design was an idea of speed of construction to allow for fast rebuilding. Lots of houses and civic buildings were lost in this time and that was one of the driving factors here
The pantheon isn't the oldest building on earth
And it's not even close
@@luizarthurbrito was it Shaky's house
It's the oldest still in use
Also shows a picture of the Parthenon in Athens 😔
@@clearsight456Also no. For multiple reasons.
3:00 fun fact about Nietzsche - he was vehemently opposed to fascism. However, he sister (who both manipulated and published a lot of his work, after his death) - was pro-fascist in a big way.
This is often why his work is misinterpreted and appropriated by fascists.
It is a shame he was co-opted by both fascists and communists (who I've seen lately reinterpreting his works for their ends) because he actively despised both
@@zolarczakl6815 that’s totally fair. I’ve seen it more on the right side of the aisle, but I’m sure bad actors on both sides misuse his work. And yes, it truly is a damn shame.
How could fascism have been despised by Nietzsche when fascism hadn't even been conceptualised during his lifetime? Nietzsche can easily be considered as a proto-fascist. His idea of master/slave morality and call for a revaluation of all values were clearly influential in moulding Hitler's worldview and NS thought generally. There was no misinterpretation here. Nietzsche's thoughts on the Jews and anti-Semitism, which are not straightforward and arguably contradictory, did not fit neatly with those of Hitler or other antisemites of that era but to deny any legitimate connection with fascism and national socialism is either born of ignorance or a desire to whitewash Nietzsche's philosophy in order to prevent his demonization during the post war era. Nietzsche had no particular influence on communism per se but his moral deconstructionism did influence the far left via postmodernism despite his explicit empiricism.
@@SP-2317 he was anti-authoritarianism. He was anti-nationalist. He hated herd mentality. He hated the suppression of individualism. He was opposed to anti-semitism and specifically opposed to German nationalism.
If he anything - he was a proto-anti-facist. His works have been co-opted and manipulated by actors on both the left and the right, as mentioned above.
He had a significant falling out with his sister - specifically based on the grounds of her ideological beliefs. The same sister, who followed all of the tenants of Nazism (though yes, as you pointed out, shortly before Nazism actually came to fruition). But make no mistake, had she lived only 2-3 years longer, she would have been all in on Nazism. A fact that would make her brother roll in his grave.
@@olliepoplol5894 Opposed to authoritarianism? You've either never read Nietzsche or you're on another planet. He promoted master morality and despised herd morality, not "herd mentality" - in other words he promoted the aristocratic (hierarchical) principle - and he virulently despised egalitarianism. Everything you've said here is taken almost word-for-word from those who have sought to whitewash Nietzschean philosophy. His criticism of German nationalism also has to be understood in the historical context of the time. Nietzsche would've seen 1930s Germany as the revaluation of all values he had called for and considered the hierarchical neopagan worldview as a positive move. Even the most well known book on the subject, "Nietzsche and the Nazis", essentially concedes this point. The only main potential point of contention was the question of the Jews, and his thoughts on the Jewish people are not exactly straightforward.
When I was a student in the early 1970s I often would hang out with the architecture students at my school. I remember remarking that it was wonderful that the Poles were able to recreate the original exteriors of the old city in Warsaw after the war. One of them tartly told me that it wasn't wonderful, it was Disney. Modernism was his religion.
My best friend is a retired architect. Good vdo!
My american ear heard Bucketham Palace at first 😆 thx for that unexpected linguistic amusement
✌️ Subbed
Interestingly all the leftwing professors at architecture faculties love him.
So he's to blame for Plymouth.
I can't remember who it was, but I know there was a comedian who described Plymouth as "a post-apocalyptic wind tunnel."
I think for those who have study Le Corbusier, he could hardly be considered a fascist. I think this is most clear in his argument that modern architecture ideas were the solution for class strugle, and if they were not implemented then revolution should come (there's a famous quote by him that is exactly this: "architecture or revolution"). Also, his ideas were very welcomed at the Bauhaus (known to has been anti-fascist to the point it was expelled from Nazi Germany for its clear bolchevism) and also in Soviet regimes for the same reasons.
_"I think this is most clear in his argument that modern architecture ideas were the solution for class strugle, and if they were not implemented then revolution should come"_
But that's exactly how fascism is sold to the elites: It "solves class struggle" without the need for a revolution that would endanger their wealth or social standing. That's what fascism is _for._ "The only realistic alternative to my fascist ideas is a communist revolution" is precisely what a fascist would say.
Your probably right. So a socialist then. Almost EXACTLY the same thing if you study them. They are cousins and the goal is the same but looks a little different on the surface. Both strips you of your humanity and treats you like a machine who's job is to serve. There is a lot of ignorance about the believes and origins of these including in this video.
@@MissEldira It's true, I think the same. But I think on this case it is worth pointing it out because many leftists could say "he's not one of us" when in fact he is.
@@agirrium Exactly!
Le Corbusier was really hurt when his architecture was rejected by the Soviets because it looked like shit.
Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is the oldest building. If you wish to use a place with a roof it's the Palace of Columns in Egypt.
I've spent a fair amount of time in Chandigarh over the years and it's very far from being a dystopia. It's cleaner and works way better than most Indian cities. People who live there are proud of it.
"There's strength in arches." - Joe Wilkinson
But they'd just be columns if the didn't span distance.
The fact is that things like Le Corbusier envisioned are intrinsically totalitairian. Only a central government with complete control would ever be able to just rebuild the centre of Paris. It completely ignores the fact that all these old buildings are owned and operated by private citizens and businesses who very much have their own idea how they want their place to look like. And of course these private parties simply outright own many of these buildings and the "state" really hasnt or shouldnt have the means to interfere in this.
Thats why traditional cities feel so "human" by lack of a better world. Its not one style or vision, but many. Representing different tastes, different needs, different budgets, different times and all that. It ends up as a very complex representation of "reality" in a way. Almost the exact opposite of what Le Corbusier wanted: A single vision.
And I can completely understand that it might be an architects dream to get this sort of carte blanche and decide for everyone how they are going to live, but a world in which this is even possible is a very ugly one. So its no surprise to me that these buildings end up ugly too. It seems like a classic tragic case of starting out with the right idea and end up going about it in the entirely wrong way.
Awesome video!! 🔥Great overview of Le Corbusier. He really did have a massive influence (unfortunately). I wasn't aware he couldn't even design a non-leaking roof for his own mother... we learn new things everyday!
quite frankly, ensuring the roof didn't leaked was the builder's job, not the architect's
'very good, my roof is still leaking' ... *chef's kiss*, the perfect critique
Look for the french architect and planner Gaston Bardet. Bardet was a vocal critic of Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse and modernist urbanism in general. In his book "Urbanism, Utopia and Reality" (1947), Bardet argued that the Ville Radieuse was an unachievable utopia that ignored the complexity and richness of urban life."
I worked in the Toronto city hall.
It was the most useless building I have ever experienced.
@@deedeewinchur It was a long time ago. I was a mail clerk at the time so I had the run of the building. The details are now very fuzzy. I just remember wandering from office to office thinking how dumb the design was.
Architects talk a great story but it often seems to be more about their egos than practicality.
Personally I much prefer the character of old cities and towns. Give me the almafi coast over Mississauga anytime.
my town of origin, Plymouth UK, has not yet recovered from Corbusier and is busy cutting down mature trees...
I’m an architect, and the way Le Corbusier is revered in the academy is just INSANE. Granted, he really marked a before and after in architecture and influenced entire generations and even the way we build, design and live today, but I feel he’s exaggeratedly overrated.
Brutalism is the negation of God erected into a form of architecture. It is soulless architecture for soulless people.
Same thing here in Finland with Alvar Aalto, who has been elevated into a godlike status. Our architects can still not shake off his shadow and just go in a different direction.
Kind of like Alvar Aalto in Finland, lots of beautiful buildings were demolished to make way to some pile of crap a kindergartener can draw, today is even worse.
Agreed, but architecture is a work of art, so neither hatred nor reverence for one particular style is undesirable
Same here. He was revered as a god by the hackiest profs I had, and his works like La Villa Savoye were presented as if they were literally perfect, transcendent beyond criticism by mere mortals such as us.
I myself admire the works of FLW quite a lot, but he was a flawed individual to say the least, and I would never claim that any of his buildings were perfect.
Back to Le Corbusier, I would argue he overall had an extremely negative impact on humanity. I could argue that he came up with the first public housing concepts that were ungodly flawed in thought and execution.
Le Corbusier was a Swiss native born in La-Chaux-de-Fonds.
Oscar Niemeyer and Santiago Calatrava have been employed by him.
Several of his buildings in several countries have been listed as “World Heritage Site”.
People say “it’s a comfortable living” in his buildings like in Firminy-Vert/ Firminy / France.
And your point is...? As if the "World Heritage" label makes everything OK!
I live in an apartment house built with reinforced concrete. There are pillars from all apartments from the first floor. These pillars are an absolute horror because you have no idea how to incorporate them into the living space. Some people can't even open their windows fully.
I want to be an architect and have wanted to be one for years, but watching these videos made me understand why I dislike modern buildings. Watching several of these videos has inspired me to want to revolutionise architecture to what it used to be. Make buildings that inspire, make people feel safe and happy, buildings create beautiful societies and pride in their local area. Buildings that are truely sustainable and beautiful. Thanm you for this video
building new stuff that looks crap is bad, but the tearing down of old beauty to do it is far worse, which is what happens too much here.
That little Swiss 💩 was one of the most successful con men in world history. What I hate is architecture schools forcing students to worship his concepts. Dissent is forbidden. The wealthy people who decide to erect these ugly buildings never live in them. They live in the nice neighborhoods.
As an architect, I honestly love classical post war modernism, if it’s actually build in a way, that’s supposed to create a unique and high quality living arrangement for its residents. And not create vertical low quality Ghettos for lower income „undesirables“.
I don’t think that it’s a coincidence, that according to studies, the happiest living arrangement in Europe is the „Wohnpark Alterlaa“ in Vienna. A giant multi-storey living complex, completely constructed from concrete. Places like the barbarican, or the Olympisches Dorf in Munich also have ridiculously high wait times for an apartment, as people WANT to live in Spaces like that.
The question that needs to be asked is „What makes those areas work“ and why is this not universally applicable to all modernist housing developments?
In theory, the concept of the 1960s „Trabantenstadt“ is more relevant to our modern cost of living crisis then it was in the 60s. Building as many units as possible, using the density to free up public spaces for more greenery, separating Cars and pedestrian areas, in some projects even integrating a shopping Centre into the block itself, while also using the rooftop as even more green space (Chorweiler Cologne), thereby eradicating car dependency in everyday life, and following up on this premise by constructing Mass Transit Options (Chorweiler, Neu-Perlach, Olympisches Dorf, Langwasser, and more) thereby linking the settlement up to the real city Centre with less then 20min of travelling time, is simply peak urban development.
And all of that is clearly visible, as those once hated areas are currently on the verge of gentrification, very slowly pricing out all of the problematic inhabitants.
As someone who has Polish ancestry it’s also very interesting to mention, that the negative connotation of the „Commieblock“ only exists in the west. In Eastern Europe, most commieblock areas are just regular City districts with regular people living their normal lives ins peace and harmony, while profiting from the high quality of mass transit infrastructure and open spaces and greenery around the blocks. You don’t get that feeling of uneasiness or even danger when visiting a friend that lives in one of those areas, like you would in France for example.
All in all, bashing modernism and its concepts is just an overcorrection of past mistakes, that takes all benefits out of consideration and will most likely shove us into another dead end of city planing, creating a different type of slum and will not solve our current situation.
A lot of people like to look back at ideas of past generations and simply denounce them as wrong, and not well thought out, while in reality the planers of the past were not stupid or dumb. And that’s something we must start to understand, if we truly want to solve our current situation.
I agree, I love the aims they had.
Leeds Yorkshire Quarry hill were designed after a visit to Vienna, until the drug dealers arrived the residents loved them
Many planers of the past were stupid or dumb as they are today. Just remove certain people from plinths, they aren't gods, just humans and we can move on.
Nowadays we are repeating the mistakes of modernism because that's pretty much what most architects/urban planners learn, the same examples, the same guys and so on. Especially because modernism doesn't evolve, it defines itself as a tabula rasa of the past and the end of history. This hubris is intrinsic to modernism and it's most comercial/popular variants.
The Netherlands is kinda known for its livable cities (and villages and everything else) and esthetics isn't a big factor in all that. Outside of the historic city-centers, this overcrowded country with its boring landscapes is mostly filled with bland, cookie-cutter buildings from Germany to shining sea.
If The Barbican is the most famous modernist block in the UK, I could say I live in the second most famous one. On the outside, the bare concrete can be jarring, but the general shape is not too offensive to the eye and is well maintained with trees and a lovely pedestrian area in the middle. However by construction it is fundamentally flawed. If an architechtural firm tells you they can build in a 'humanist' manner, and for cheap -- it is a lie. By just the first year of living in this building, we discovered so so many issues, from poor construction quality, to design features that were straight up silly. The exterior gets dirty quick, the interior is designed in such a way that it collects water but does not drain it; I could go on and on. This block requires just as much maintenance as, say, my favourite building in London, St Pancras Renaissance (Midland Grand Hotel).
The future-proofing claims of modernist architects in the 20th century turned out to be false self-grandiose assumptions. My building already barely stands the test of time.
I grew to love my modernist block, given there's nothing like it if its well cared for, but most 19th century constructs in London are prettier, are better built, longer lasting, and cost just as much to maintain.
I've lived in a commie block in Kyiv, I've lived in a 300 year old farmhouse, and in a modernist council-estate-gentrified block and I'm convinced that modernist architects of the 20th century made brave experiments and just failed. They broke many rules, but they forgot that those rules came to be over centuries for reasons.
@@bobalexandrovich1506 Well put. It's funny, we share similar experiences when it comes to having lived in different places from different times, but we differ geographically. I can say I understand you completely. My two most recent apartments where one made in the 2000s and one from the end of the XIX that had bits of reno (new windows for example) and my comfort is way higher in the old renovated building (less rain water everywhere, less mold, more thermal/noise comfort, etc), the 2000s apartment quality was jarring for a supposedly luxury condo.
"Almost a religion" - you said it! I studied architecture in the 80s and Corb was adulated. We were taught to design like him, draw like him, think like him. Me, I preferred Gaudí and Wright and John Soane. I really appreciated lots of Corb buildings, and I read his books with a mix of laughter and dread - I couldn't shake how fascistic it sounded. (In Italy the Fascist movement grew quite literally out of an art movement that called itself the Fascists.) The rows I had with my dad, me trying to intellectually defend what I found morally scary (but felt I had to BELIEVE in) and him being such an easy target traditionalist with Prince Charles on his team.
Brilliantly put together documentary. Your take on it - gratitude for what it functionally did for the working class, and a desire to move away just because it's all so grim - sums it up.
The modernism of the Fascist period in Italy between 1923-1938 is referred to as “Italian Rationalism”. And it’s ironic to note that while every other Fascist regime in Europe, Stalinist Russia and the New Deal US embraced a stripped down and sometimes very austere version of Classicism, Fascist Italy purposely embraced modernism as a propaganda technique of its representation of “The New Man”
Italian Rationalism had a strong emphasis on the relationship of modern building design and the existing urban context, seeing the city as a continuous work in progress to be embraced not rejected.
Many works from that period still exist, and some are elegant examples of how modernity can be successful inserted into and live in relative harmony within its particular site.
Of course you can argue that the patron of their movement was LITERALLY the first fascist. However all architects in history have required patrons to build. They always serve a master, be it the nobility, the Soviets or the Comcast Corporation. 🫤
This was of your best videos ever. Thanks, mate.
Like many things, with modernism the poison is in the dosage.
And like most movements, different things were happening in different places. Some of the same incentives popularized American Craftsman style bungalows - which retained aspects of traditional design and technique but also later blended into Prairie style architecture like that of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Ah, so LC is patient zero of architects wearing goofy glasses 🤓
Guy seeking the vindication of traditional architecture: “I’m not fascist, you are”
if there is something i can't help noticing, was the social conscience early modernist architects had. a good deal of what they did was getting rid of slums.
@@josetrindade3550 a lot were amoral opportunists like Corb, Gropius, van der Rohe
I think Poundbury as you highlight is such a key developement to how we don't all have to live in square boxes with few windows, and go shopping in glass boxes with some coloured plastic on the side.
My very favorite story about Le Corbusier is that he was commissioned by the Phillips company to design their pavilion for the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. He was, at the time, not very invested in that project, but _very_ obsessed with his guts due to some gastrointestinal issues he was suffering. So he drew the floorplan in the shape of a human stomach, and shoved it off on his assistant. His assistant at the time was Iannis Xenakis, a Greek engineer (who had lost an eye fighting in the Greek resistance movement against Axis occupation), who was also a composer of avant-garde music. Xenakis was working at the time with parabolic curves, and so designed the roof of the pavilion using them (as he did for all of the parabolic curves you see in other Le Corbusier buildings; Xenakis was a collaborator on many of them). Xenakis would later reuse his sketches to compose his most famous orchestral piece, _Metastasis_ (or maybe he just used his sketches for the roof design; I forget the exact sequence).
That building was designed to showcase Philips' ability to control multi-track tape playback and mixing, and to do this they commissioned Edgard Varese to compose his most famous electronic piece: _poeme electronique_ , which modern listeners can enjoy remixed by Amon Tobin as the track "Proper Hoodidge."
It's one of the most fascinating convergences of technology, art, architecture, and creative talent of the early postwar, and my favorite part of it is that the center of it consists of Le Corbusier saying, "screw it, here's a stomach, _you_ do something with it!"
Modern builds are not only architecturally ugly, but the majority of trades do not have a high skill base, and very little pride in their workmanship, working on a price!
One utopia is another's dystopia. Vice versa. Dystopia is another's Utopia for another
I've visited a couple of Le Corbusiers buildings, and to be fair they were rather lovely and well designed. The concrete exteriors actually look pretty great in Marseille, where I visted Le Corbusier's unite d'habitation, the bright sun making them look warm and bringing out the texture of the concrete. Concrete doesn't look so great in Bradford though! ( where I come from!)
A lot of the problem with bad modern architecture is trying to make it too cheap, and then not maintaining it properly. The Barbican is a great example of fantastic modern architecture that still looks great while making full use of the properties of reinforced concrete to allow for large spans and light airy interiors uncluttered by supporting walls.
The trouble is the Barbican wasn't cheap to build or maintain, but I would argue it's worth the money to build decent housing. It effects your daily life and is a relatively small amount of money extra to build good housing rather than the terrible crap that's being erected in the UK now. Most of the cost of a house is in the land cost and planning to allow a house to be built.
We really need to drastically raise our standards, as good housing is a boon for everyone living there in both cofort and money (we could insulate our buildings so much better in the UK, it isn't rocket surgery). Go to somewhere like Germany and look at the quality of their windows, it really is shocking what builders get away with in the UK. (actually it's not the builders, it's the developers and architects who are at fault, the builder is just building what they've been instructed to build)
Brilliant narration, great storytelling, outstanding visuals ! Thank you!
Famously, Le Corbusier did NOT design the UN HQ in New York. They were afraid that he'd win the competition, so they put him on the judging panel.
You don't understand. The working masses also wanted to live in non-damp, centrally heated homes with running water, electricity, internal bathrooms, water toilets, big windows that look toward the sun... while the middle class just wrinkled their noses. They said: sprawling 1-family houses with gardens, garages and, if possible, servants, are much better. But the vast majority answered - OK, let us first build the good, then we can discuss the better. Do you mind? They solved the great housing crisis after two world wars, moved into modern apartments, and tastes changed. But they reached their goal. If now tastes have shifted, then make something better. Don't just bad-mouth what you see. In a fifth dimension, every apartment could have it's own garden, orchard, greenhouse, garage, why not a hunting estate? Try it.
Imagine thinking you’re a genius seeing liquid rock & keeping it as boring concrete instead of molding into something nice
That baffled me in school. The instructors tried to excuse it, I remember one saying the rough texture was because they couldn't find quality wood after WW2 to use for forms -- but for god's sake you can rub it out with a finish coat! Le C's work was purposely ugly and rough and unadorned and uncolored, and we are right to call it out for being such.
Ronchamp is the standout exception to this
As an Architecture student in the 1960's Le Corbusier was a god. I sought out his buildings in France. I still think he was a great designer of space, an artist, but a totalitarian. He had the typical French arrogance and at the time was loved by both intellectual and ruling class. Your lecture is brilliant...well done.
Was there any dissenting voices in the 60s, any one calling out Corb for the authoritarian psychopath that he was? anyone calling out the cult of Corb that have done so much damage to architecture and urban planning in the decades since?
He wasn’t French tho,
He was Swiss, born and raised. 🇨🇭
@maxrolland3148 Oh dear let's split hairs. You remind me of my mother. When I showed her a design with a lovely high ceiling space....she said "but how do you clean up there".
@@JohnBurman-l2l
I don’t believe someone’s nationality to be an insignificant detail.
Would be like saying Donalt Trump is canadian, Oscar Wilde an englishman and Bruce Lee a japanese.
i absolutely love the idea of shops and restaurants INSIDE the apartment block, but it yeah it shouldnt be ugly
Articulate, well researched, and wonderfully edited. Great video.
The "Habitation Unit" that Le Corbusier made is considered the first building on the "brutalist" architecture style, which I personally love. Now, the style evolved more from it and buildings instead explored bold and interesting geometry as ornament, with monumental spaces becoming it's staple.
I can understand that some people hate it, but for me ornamented buildings tire me after some time due sense overload, and a "machine to live" feels more comforting and calm. For my fellow music nerds, it's like the difference between a "wall of sound" song produced by Phil Spector against something out of the "music for airports" albums from Brian Eno.
Modernists building make people depressed. Depressed people makes modern building.... And is goes on and on and on in a revolving motion. Never evolving...
As an architect in the socialist Bauhaus approved International Style, Le Corbusier was hardly a fascist. Mussolini and Hitler favoured neo- grecian/ roman, see Speers blueprints for Germania. Fascists prefer grandeur to utilitarian
He did write a book called “A new French fascism”, though. As an architect, I studied him thoroughly while in uni.
Apparently he wasn't a very good fascist.
That's Nazi's, not Fascists. Le Corbusier's ideas and aesthetics weren't that far removed from Italian Fascist Architecture
Nazis are fascists but their flavor of hyper nationalism was probably a long the lines of "Everything Germany has done so far is great, just cast out non German stuff unless it's Greek/Roman" while Italy was like "Italy sucks, but the people are great and we can make it suck less."
Fun fact, it sucked far more and so did Germany. Never trust hyper nationalists, they know how to manipulate and rile people up but little of anything else.
Absolutely excellent example how architecture can be explained to people that have no interest in architecture at all, and keep them hooked. Splendid video!!!