I believe one common thread throughout the Tartaria movement is the dislike of modern architecture and its overabundance of glass curtain walls and sheet metal cladding. There is a certain beauty when it comes to stone architecture that can't be overlooked and for that I do sympathize with the notion that many modern structures are boring and uninspired.
While I would love cities made out of marble and stone. I don't think we have enough beautiful stone quarries to actually do that. At least for all humanity. Also when glass and steel came out. They were beautiful marvels. Today we take them for granted, because they are ubiqutous. I have a feeling we wouldn't care as much for say marble if it was just as cummon, and ubiquitous On the other hand. We still pretty much put cost over everything else. I also bring up survivorship bias. Only the beautiful historic buildings have been kept from demolishing. Over decades each beautiful historic was saved each generation. Making it seem like they always built high quality structures.
@@dianapennepacker6854 Architectural historian here - I like to push back on the survivorship bias argument. Unfortunately beauty has really never been a factor in whether buildings get demolished, and neither has the quality of their construction. Take for example NYC's original version of Penn Station, a monumental building that was demolished after the decline of railroads. Grand Central almost met the same fate until it was saved by activists responding to the Penn Station demolition. The most common reason why buildings are demolished is economic and related to outside factors, such as the original use of the building becoming obsolete or the building becoming abandoned due to ownership complications or hardship. And on the flipside, we have millions of older houses from the Victorian era today that were actually built fairly poorly but have been repaired (either in a historically sensitive way or not) by people who found it worthwhile.
I would settle for having the corrugated metal apartment buildings be painted something that isn't gray, navy blue, and mustard yellow. Like, they could have at least gotten imaginative and beautiful with the paint job, and instead what do we get? Some person's idea of cheap and inoffensive.
Someone will always loathe or distain their environment, or something placed in it. Glass curtain walls go all the way back to the crystal palace in Hyde Park. Cities build UP because certain locations are in demand (actual or perceived). The absurdity of billionaires row is evident. The Emperor _does_ have new clothes!
Come to Chicago and see modern architecture in splendid glory. And then go to the gold coast and see boring boxes next to vintage beauties. It's not the movement or style that's the problem. It's the application.
The WTYP episode on Penn Station was great in pointing out the numerous problems that the old station had, which all led to its decline and demolition in the 1960s. Those problems, like the notoriously narrow platforms, still plague it today.
@greysnake2903 not sure who you are questioning within this thread. I think there's considerable bright spots within the entire history of architecture. That includes modern and contemporary buildings.
This comment will probably get buried, BUT! I worked on the Jackson Park restoration. We uncovered tons of artifacts and I even have a few of the white blocks that were buried sitting in my backyard! It was an amazing experience and I’ve very grateful for it.
@@Nachos237these ones were some type of stone. I’m no expert, but I assumed they were granite. They could have been from any number of prior constructions, maybe not from the Columbia expo. I do know that some of the lagoons were filled in with the destroyed structures after the expo ended and the areas we were excavating were some of those filled in lagoons. Also it’s a very nice park. I know the south side of Chicago gets some flak for its area but it’s definitely worth a visit
Cheeky of you to include a shot of the Eiffel Tower when mentioning the costs of the Olympic Games. As we all know, that too was supposed to be a temporary structure for the world’s fair.
11:35 - 12:25 Allow me to correct some of your statemens that are not entirely true. While the political and security aspects of Napoléon III's plan of reshaping Paris are true, you seem to overemphasize those elements in this extract. First, Napoléon III's planning for the French capital was actually made before he took power in France. One of the reasons _why_ he wanted to make such an audacious and radical plan was an esthetical one. He saw the modern cities of London in Britain and New-York in the United States, and that greatly inspired him for his vision of a _new_ Paris. He took great inspiration from those two capitals, like when he extended the size of Paris, similary to the Great London, or also, when he tasked Adolphe Alphand to make great parks in imitation of London's greeneries. The second emperor of the french not only wanted to make the medieval city of Paris into a modern metropolis of the 19th Century, he wanted to embellish the capital to make it the most beautiful city ever built. The second reason of this bold plan is also economical and speculative. Indeed, the emperor employed more than 100 000 workers for his transformation of Paris, this in accordance to his promise to the working class to give jobs, while also enriching the many investors, bankers, landlords and speculators by erecting those brand new buildings. This massive project, would also causes to captivate foreign investments and facilitate the flow of money into the city. The construction clearly benefited to all classes and ultimatly participated to the economic growth during the period. In addition before those great works, you actually had to take a whole day to walk across Paris, and most people only walked a few streets near their appartements! So Haussmann's rationnal and srict planning made business and commerce easier by making a safer and (financially) attractive place. The third and final reason is more a social and sanitary one, the emperor was influenced (profoundly) by the works of Saint-Simon a french socialist of the early 19th Century. This is _also_ why he wanted to make such large boulevards, this was a time were urban life was unhealthy for most of the population. The streets were full of dirt, dangerous, narrow and it smelled terribly, the water was non-potable and full of diseases, and there was no electricity, sewage system and adequate housing. For example, a cholera epidemic in 1832 killed around 20 000 people in the capital alone, and remember that people back then believe that such diseases spread trought air. In response to those hard living conditions, the very saint-simonnien that was Napoléon III who believed in hygienism, sanitized Paris to improve the living conditions of the parisians. You have to understand that some streets were so narrow that there was little to no sunlight or air passing trought those unsanitary neighborhoods. As you saw it, the idea of a Napoleonian Paris cannot be reduced to an imperial evil plan against the working classes for security purposes. By focusing only on the political and safety aspects, you have missed several key points regarding the _why_ Napoléon III decided to literally rebuild Paris. And don't get me wrong, those constructions had a heavy social cost (the poor people of Paris being expropriated from their houses without compensations, and because of it were forced to settle into the peripheries) and the motive behind it was also political (Napoléon III naming great boulevards in the names of his relatives or his victories, also the need to be remembered as an Augustus who made a backward city into the city of lights we know as today) and, without a doubt, the motive was also about supressing and preventing futur plausible rebellions in the city. However, all of theses cost payed off, the 2.5 billion francs of debt was clearly worth it. Napoléon III believed in the theory of the "dépenses productives" or the productive expenditure. While some destructions were questionnable, most of the buildings that were destroyed were outdated slums who needed to get rid off because the population was growing so massively and so quickly that the urban developpement was chaotic and often not regulated. Yes, Napoléon III's plan was controvertial and its intents debatable, but he, in the end showed us that he was right, we know Paris as the city of light, of love, of beauty, of the arts, of the sciences, we recognise its uniqueness and authentic esthetic, even today. I'll quote a relevant extract of a brilliant article made by the _Pavillon de l'Arsenal_ on Paris as a model city : "At different scales and in each of its components, the Haussmannian fabric of Paris reveals a set of characteristics that guarantee a number of fundamental balances: between density and viability, between permanence and resilience, between sobriety and diversity, between long-distance and short-distance connectivity, between identity and universality, between intensity and welcoming urbanism, between attractiveness and inclusiveness..."
It is worth remembering that the wide streets didn't make much of a difference during the Commune in 1871. The rebels were able to barricade the wide avenues and squares easily with paving stones, but the army had learned that it was best not assault those strongpoints directly and would instead try to find ways around, sometimes through the same dense neighborhoods that were supposedly a big hinderance. Haussmann himself was not a military man so it is further questionable how he would have even known about any mooted security features. In my view this story persists since it is so fitting for political stories and ideologies rather than any strong basis in fact
in regards to your opening segment. I(the average person) dont even require the larger concept of the worlds fair to see this phenomena. There are plenty of photos/videos on RUclips which highlights the pro car centric modern city, contrasting the older pre car cities... These alone show that practically an entire cities worth of infrastructure in every(America )city was destroyed just in the years of 1930-1970.
Welcome to capitalism. Ignoring the obvious Worlds Fair (Expo's) temporary facades, Old = trash. Add to that the modernist architectural movement (~1930 - 1960) that disliked classic ornamentation and business that loved the reduced costs of simple glass and metal facades and we get the predominant (some say boring) buildings of today. Remember; everything is a conspiracy if you don't know how anything works.
People still believe in Theme Park architecture... that's why we have "tuscan kitchens" and "farmhouse" in the middle of suburbia. That's why people add fake box beams or LED skylights to their ceilings. Our ugly homes have driven people to engage in architectural cosplay.
Good architecture understands it's environment and works with it. But it's so common for us just to assign whatever we want wherever we want and it makes everywhere the same. It's sad.
The New York Times summed up the whole "Tartaria" thing well: this was not in any way a movement that firmly believes that Tartaria and all the "secret history" is true, it's a movement that verbalize how much modern architecture has alienated them. It's acry that what they know about beauty all their life is being directly at odds with the reality of the current status quo...
Wait until you find out modern architecture is intended to be alienating and to harm you psychologically by design. And what group of people are responsible.
Film Master's Student and Architectural Enthusiast here. This video overlooks decades of research that reflects the innate positive effects of biophillic and vernacular architectural/ landscape design. The city beautiful movement was not about showing off, but the (technically correct albeit somewhat misguided) idea that beauty enriches the environment and will spiritually/ socially/ generally elevate a population beyond the haphazard squalor of late 19th century industrial metropolises, particularly in the United States which had no where near the time or wealth to build the imperial style cities that Burnham sought to mimmic in the World's fair, which was to bring European/ East Asian city planning and design to the masses of the US. Of course, other factors like education and social services elevate the population much more, its undeniable what the baseline, immediate effect of an environment on a population was. And that was the target of the entire movement. To hide this video's defense of contemporary design, abandoning traditional and vernacular aesthetic philosophy behind a microscopic reddit conspiracy cult is both dishonest and reductive. The actual people you should be listening to are in the neo urbanist and new classical movement. It goes far deeper than feelings and paranoia. It lambasts the destruction of neighborhoods just like what the Ben Franklin parkway partially leveleled. It decries the US tunnel vision of car-centric urban design and essentially absent aesthetic culture, and most importantly, it's backed by science. Towering glass curtain walls, jagged edges, unreadable silhouettes, and exposed steel i-beams make us uncomfortable and deny our brains the millenia old biological fondness for natural, or naturalistic shape language and design. Its even worse that, despite the endless "survivorship bias" claims, our cities used to be filled with interesting and beautiful places, but events like the US interstate system development and World War 2 levelled even more neighborhoods than Ben Franklin Parkway, marginalized minority communities, destroyed cherished monuments, and in the worst of cases, influenced entire metro areas economic collapse/ stagnation. Not to mention the abhorrent environmental costs of global concrete manufacturing (water), glass, (silica sand/ thermal regulation struggles), and steel (carbon), I can link any papers below if anyone is interested.
I would argue it's not car centric design that creates this kind of architecture, because modern construction in places that are not car centric still look the same, in fact often they look more like you describe because you need to fit more people into a smaller space, so simple modular forms are more common.
@israeldelarosa5461 Some great channels are The Aesthetic City, Adam Something, Kings and Things, Not Just Bikes, Alan Fisher, Haussmann, Climate Town, and to paint a great picture of REAL places that were lost, check out Alexander Rotmensz. These range from more scientific/ editorial approaches to quite trivial & factoid based, and they aren't just on architecture, but also urban design, city life, etc.
@@ARBITRAGEandTIME They were destroyed by operating costs and government regulations "Big Oil" and GM may have buried the corpses for easy profit but they didn't kill it outright.
As a historic preservationist it absolutely drives me up a wall listening to people rant about nonsense like this. They're so close to the point and then Veer off into the lunacy.
It's funny because Tartaria was actually on ancient maps as holding vast swaths of land, but people don't realized Tartaria was a map makers short hand for the unknown "uncivilized" lands not yet properly charted
modern architecture and planning is way more guilty of this kind of thing than the subject of this video, in America especially where you almost wiped out whole cities. The right kind of neotraditional, human scale buildings offfer the chance to write at least some of these wrongs
That Tartarian Empire claim is thoroughly uninteresting to be honest. But the question in the title is a good and important one. Why can't we have beautiful buildings anymore? It is not cost. That world fair (2:40) is a dramatic illustration of how cheap decoration had become even back then. It is feasible to do this on temporary structures. So why can't we have it on our more permanent ones? We can make a white city with spray paint. Well yeah exactly (*). We can mass produce cast shapes. Yeah exactly, and we can use things like concrete if we want something a bit more durable. And in case we want something custom like at 4:50. Didn't we invent CNC routers in the meantime? And also, casting? Van Loos' argument that decoration takes too much resources is obsolete. Also the idea that decoration is not a function is quite misanthropic to begin with - I have never heard of any culture where people do not decorate their living spaces. It just so happens that cities are living spaces. So making building exteriors presentable is a really important function. (actually, didn't Van Loos write a “no guys not like that!!~~~” follow up to his ornamentation and crime essay? Maybe he saw the impending self-immolation of his entire profession coming.) Modernism destroyed our willingness to have new buildings in our neighbourhoods. Turns out making new buildings is REALLY IMPORTANT. I'm sitting here in Auckland, and most land right next to our city centre are old decaying villas built in the 1920s. They may not have any modern bells and whistles like insulation and double glazing, or up to date electric installations. They may back then have been build nastily and cheaply with mass produced (!) ornaments, but they were also not yet Modernist and some thought was given to making them presentable to passers by. Some are visibly rotting away. But they are (in a sort of oblique way) heritage protected, and we will not replace them with (small m) modern buildings until they literally fall down. This should have been a completely absurd situation that *everyone* would try to fix ASAP, but no. It seems everyone thinks it is perfectly reasonable. Why can't we have beautiful buildings anymore? I don't know. People have simply internalized this as truth. Somehow we (i.e. our past generations, not this weird empire conspiracy) could make them in the past but somehow magically it now became too expensive. Despite having laser cutters, CNC routers, casting, and other mass production technology available now. Isn't that weird? So we find ourself in a situation that no matter how dilapidated an old building is, people still expect anything that we could possibly build today to look even worse. This situation is entirely absurd. If someone has an old rusty car parked up front, it would be considered an eyesore and nobody would baulk at them replacing that car with a new one. But not so for buildings. Modernism taught us that contemporary architecture creates uncomfortable, alienating places. Nobody wants this in their own neighbourhoods. So where did we go wrong? The Mysterious Disappearance of Beautiful Buildings is a legit thing. It is in very obvious ways harming our cities. We need to fix that. And this is not really helping, because I never heard anyone blaming the disappearance of some ancient empire. (*) obligatory mention that ancient Roman buildings and statues were not actually white.
Many features of older buildings are practical as well. Cornices, window caps, peaked roofs in rainy climates. And modern architects are so dead set against adding them as practical features that it often shortens the lifespan of newer buildings
Some new condominiums went up in my town. They are orange and gray. Why would one think people want to look at orange rectangles? I've seen the same orange rectangle in the town next to me too. I wish I could include a photograph.
Melbourne has some weird similarities to Auckland in that we have enormous swathes of historic listings of complete junk. We're talking bland, single-storey workers cottages that nobody is allowed to demolish. Historic listings of concrete roads from the pre-war time. Historic listings of abandoned warehouses and factories that have been empty for half a century. History shouldn't mean we abandoned things and never touch them again, it should mean that we maintain our past as a gift to the future generations. If we don't maintain any of it, there's no point having it.
And yet today people flock to Paris for its architecture and grand designs.Its streets may have been paved with ‘bad’ intentions but it built one of the most iconic cities in all of human history.
The whining about Napoleon III at the end of this video was particularly insufferable. ‘Oh he was a TYRANT’ yeah but not nearly as much of a tyrant as the masses during the French Revolution. Just seems massively historically illiterate to try to impose 1990’s neoliberal definitions of tyranny or political repression into the rebuilding second empire period which had just made it through so much social turbulence.
Most people that question these things actually don't have set "beliefs" about the past. So labeling doesn't usually apply (like tartarians.) Most of us are just that, questioning without speculation.
Many people grew up in a time and place when “history” was about kings and emperors. For them, monumental architecture is naturally synonymous with historical architecture. I get interested in old streets, canals, and defensive structures, and I can trace most of that to the way _I_ was taught history.
I have experienced this kind of loss. I grew up in a gorgeous, older neighborhood in Denver. I lived in a smallish home (by modern standards) on a double lot. The home was torn down so that two homes could be built in its place. Of course, the two new homes are modern and ugly when compared to the old brick home that I grew up in. I am not going to be believing in the Tartarians any time soon, but this sentiment makes more sense.
The reason behind the loss of grand architecture is the lowering of the top marginal corporate tax rate. Without the pressure to find something to do with all their earnings, lest Uncle Sam take 95% of it, businesses no longer have an incentive to show off their wealth through the hiring of tradesmen and architects. We live in the era of the MVP: the minimum viable product. Corporations need not spend away their punitively-taxable liquidity in the manufacture of beautiful buildings when monolithic glass dicks built by migrant labor are cheaper and there is no taxation anymore. Raise taxes on corporations, FORCE them to reinvest their capital instead of hoarding it or giving it away to billionaires (who also need a top marginal tax increase), and you will INSTANTLY see corporations restart conspicuous consumption in the name of the Tax Write-Off, which in itself is an artform that is long passed (you don't need to lower your tax bracket when you're not being taxed at the upper brackets.) We still might not be able to afford homes for awhile after that, but at least things will LOOK better from our tents.
This is the most ridiculous reason I've heard for increasing corporate tax rate, who gives a rats ass about corporations building "nicer looking" office towers? Making a classical looking facades for multi-million dollar projects is a drop in the water, theres not change in structure, there's just no point because modern corporationa prefer not to seem like they're linked to old money and values.
@@jansenart0 You're whole statement is based on the assumption that Corporations don't operate with tax law (the Tax Write-Off, as you say) influencing their decisions anymore. I assure you, tax write-offs are still fully in play. The way the rest of your comment is worded sounds just like something the people who claim Corporations have _too many_ write-offs would say. In other words, always blame the Corporations, and always tax them (and rich people) as much as possible.
@@BaltimoreAndOhioRR It's simple accounting, and it's clear in the name of the concept: after you breach the top-level corporate tax rate by billions in revenue, you cannot logically write-off enough to bring the rate down! You can't deny the facts: there was more liquidity among the people and fewer billionaires when taxation on corporations was at its height. We are now living in neofeudalism and it took only 40 years to get here.
@@jansenart0 fewer billionaires means nothing. Those are just some words to make your argument sound better to the masses who hate corporations and rich people. Guess what? There were fewer $100,000aires during then, also! And fewer $50,000aires, too! NO WHERE in these United States is a 95% tax rate ever justified! (Yes, I know it's on the amount above a specific, made up, value). We are not the Soviet Union, we are not Communist China.
If I am not mistaken, the Art Museum at the end of the Ben Franklin Parkway was leftover the 1876 Centennial Exposition. There were other building nearby of the same style, but they were demolished after the Exposition. The wide boulevards in addition to hindering the erection of barricades, facilitated the use of artillery to quell disturbances. The City Beautiful movement also gave many cities large urban parks, with green spaces and places of recreation, so it was not aall bad.
This notion that "progress" is inevitable, or that those who resisted it were fools wasting their time is wrong. Even the people demanding a halt to AI advance are not wasting their breathe.
You are partly mistaken. The Philadelphia Museum of Art was chartered with the 1876 exposition but the building at the end of the parkway wasn't begun until almost 1900. Up until that point the Fairmount waterworks reservoir was on top of the hill. The water works, a feat to themselves, was also an exhibition in city-wide potable water delivery
@@SubvertTheState That's why when I hear the word "progress" used, I ask to what. So many profess the word but most cant answer that simple question and blind progress is a fools folly.
I'm kinda not sure what the point of this video is. Most of our architecture was borrowed from somewhere to some degree. Philadelphia's early architecture borrows heavily from English architecture. Los Angeles' from Spanish tradition. Main thing I agree with is that architecture should be inspired from local traditions. I'm sure the Tartaria movement has more to do with a disdain for modern architecture than a love for any particular architectural style. Its funny how many people I meet who dislike modern architecture. Almost everyone I've met prefers traditional styles. Yet a majority of what's built now is modern style. And that's very alienating to people. People can innately recognize beauty.
Modern architecture is all technical and zero craftsmanship. Very few have the talent to carve beautiful figures from stone. But any worker can construct a glass curtain wall section in a factory. There’s a feeling of connection to the craftsman’s talent and humanity you don’t get from mass produced buildings. And yes I know even most Victorian ornamentation was horsehair plaster facsimile, but your mind still connects it to ancient craftsmanship.
@@franciscodanconia4324 There was some good modern architecture up to the early 2000s but that stuff has also gone away. I am talking about amazingly crafted marvels with often oodles of glass and steel done in whimsical ways. Elevators that let you see the mechanical pieces turning, grand skylights, gently curving walkways, chunky pillars, areas with ample plantlife and warm wood, locations for rest and recreation, and often controlled splashes of bold color to calm the senses. You can see them around sometimes, but many are being torn down because they don't suit the tastes of the people who want bland boxes that they can sell to people with as little risk as possible. Buildings with identity mean that there's a likelihood that some would be turned away from it based on aesthetics alone. But blank boxes allow attachment of signs and decorations, which can be easily removed rather than needing renovation or demo to change. This drives the potential demand up. It's efficient, but ugly. It also means that businesses which ape the startup model are more common, since they're less distinct from those who want to build a legacy. This is likewise destabilizing to a community. Basically, loads of businesses are spirit halloween now, with a 3-5 year rather than a 3 month lifespan and no way to tell that the store you like has a VC behind it who wants his return.
I think it’s less that what was was made as a facade hiding a darker truth, but rather that we could make the world more beautiful now without sacrificing functionality, but that doesn’t happen due to the desire to get every ounce of functionality with the least amount of money, and that act causes so many intangible losses that can be felt, but it hard to describe. It’s hard to argue for beauty when someone asks why we need it. But everyone can appreciate it when it exists and knows it is something that would be a shame to loose.
Beauty = individuality individuality = non-universal non-universal = limited amount of buyers limited amount of buyers = less likely to sell/get a new tenant when the old one goes away That is the purpose of the bland buildings. They're investments by people who aren't trying to build a legacy. This applies to both commercial AND residential property. So many people buy homes with the express plan of ditching them at some point and recouping their investment, rather than passing it down in the family.
11:30 that was such a sudden and sharp turn in the tone for your conclusion. It ignored all the other reasons a modern city needs wide boulevards: traffic flow, sanitation, public health, air circulation, civic pride, economic growth, green spaces… just look at Geddes metaphors comparing a city to the human body, parks are the lungs, avenues are the veins, etc. Your conclusion ignored all that to focus on despotic social control. I feel your conclusion smacks of another instance where the modern tries to demonize the classical. Equating a preference for grand classical architecture as belonging to an internet conspiracy cult. But maybe that’s just me?
I get what you're saying, but read it differently. I took it as a call to action to design our cities thoughtfully based our present needs, rather than merely repeating historic standards wholesale.
disingenuous to compare a real desire for more beautiful architecture to a crazy conspiracy theory i mean sure, those provided examples may not be the greatest examples of neoclassical and beaux art archictecture but that doesnt deminish the fact that many of the greatest "classical" works of architecture were actually part of that kind of neoclassical revival
and yeah...no calling this style of architecture oppressive because "some french king used it to exert and show of power" is bullshit first of all, its not just kings who used to commission these sorts of buildings, but they were also popular amongst the more well-off parts of the general populace to show of their own level of wealth and prosperity industrialization has indeed made it possible to mass produce these building parts which has actually allowed these excessive styles of traditional architecture to be made available to many people britain has many famous examples of revivalist styles (not as baroque as the french i suppose, but the idea still stands) and with britain being more of a long standing democracy than a monarchy those buildings are more about overall national pride rather subservience to a king and of course, the US literally has its own history of neoclassicism and many of the US historic landmarks that built the country are neoclassical buildings these are like some really sweeping generalizations made in this video that are entirely ignorant to the culture behind this style of architecture
Demoralisation is the ethos of these government agents. Sell people the belief that once was will never be and what is is as good as it will be. It's objectively true to anyone with an eye to see that we are not living in the most technologically advanced time of the history of this planet. The whole Tartaria story is similar to the flat earth movement in that it serves to shoehorn free-thinking individuals into a group to believe a specified narrative. The reality is likely to be much more nuanced. Humans deserve and will receive much better very soon
I think people are latching on to Second Empire Paris and these Exhibitions because those are the most recent examples of grand classical architecture available to them. Their paranoia is rooted in a more existential hunger for beauty. Modernism was founded on a puritanical reaction against decadence in the lower classes. Mass production made it possible for middle class people to have an ersatz knock off of wealthy opulence. Was it cheap and tacky? Often times, yes, but the modernists wanted to impose their vision of stark utilitarian "authenticity." A project that ultimately only appealed to wealthy people who could flaunt what we call Voluntary Simplicity today. Modernism was widely embraced by builders and mass producers because it was CHEAP to produce. After WW2 there was a legitimate need to make vast quantities of everything quickly and utilitarian anti-design could be marketed as Space Age. Today, we live in an aesthetic wasteland. There is NO beauty in the contemporary cityscape. Even Mies van der Rohe and Les Corbusier would be horrified by what they set in motion. A conspiracy theory about Tartarians is just more glamorous and satisfying than the fact our quality of life has been, and continues to be, co-opted and defiled by the avarice of Capitalistic Corporate greed.
Well said! With today's technology. I suspect the actual cost to creating well designed facades would not be as expensive as it would have been around WWII. Today one can carve out granite using CNC machines in the fraction of the time it would have taken even two or three decades ago. And one can get fairly fancy if we also incorporate the use of CGI into various CAD projects like CNC stone cutting. Literally create stone artwork. Even making aethietic columns is pretty practical. Same with overhangs etc. The cost would be much lower today with the correct applications
Voluntary Simplicity - ha ha that's a great term for it. I always see it described as "minimalism" but it's really not when consumption is even higher due to everything being handled via services on demand rather than keeping things at hand.
@@Aubreykun I think it's sort of fallen out of fashion lately but, for a while, Voluntary Simplicity was a fad among upper middle class people who gave away all of their jumble and clutter, and reduced their wardrobe to a dozen well chosen pieces. It's a low key self-righteous philosophical social statement for people whose remaining possessions are the best quality possible and who can buy more whenever they choose. Those who can scarcely afford more than a dozen garments call it abject poverty and find it far less amusing.
@@brucetidwell7715 Yup. Also allows some wealthy enough to show off that they can have anything they need at their beck and call with a few taps on their phone.
I think a lot of this comes from the feeling that modern architecture is just......ugly. Those older buildings with their visual hierarchies, their classical proportions, and their detail and their decoration were beautiful. So much of modern construction- especially the 'monumental' buildings of the 20th and 21st centuries, lack visual hierarchy, classical proportions, or attention to detail. Their beauty often pales in comparison to what came before. What was considered beautiful was largely unchanged in principle for nearly 2000 years. And then modernism and post-modernism came around, and with some exceptions, failed to deliver.
Tartaria was labeled on many old world maps (you can see these maps very clearly on the library of congress archives online). While it was not some "cover up" the true reason for embedding sacred geometric symbols, principals and proportions into our buildings of the past runs much, much deeper than "pretty ornamentation" as you say and aligns with the astrological ages of man, the law of one and the many cycles of the rising and the falling of the collective consciousness.
Thanks for an excellent and informative essay! Now, if only we could find the missing civilization behind the 1967 Montreal Expo. What a world that must've been!
Thank you for a thought provoking video! Paris may have been planned for military strategy but thank the French that it's well planned and beautiful. In the best scenario, the economic driver of a project isn't divorced from civic value. And vice versa. The setbacks on the wide boulevards allow light to bathe the city and provide plenty of space for cultural events. Military parades? Sure, the Arc de Triomphe is an exclamation point on that concept. But is there a more famous avenue for culture than the Champs-Élysées? It was correct for Paris to limit the height of buildings. That would not have been right for Chicago. I celebrate both! Chicago did well to preserve the Cliff Wall and allow for incredible innovation in other places. I'm not a fan of all building styles but I appreciate that there are building blocks, learning and progression. There's value in that. I'm glad that Chicago has great examples of this. I like Federal plaza but boxes of windows have become soulless in parts of the city. On the other hand, without Van der Rohe, would we have 333 Wacker? Forgive my ramblings.
The reason behind the loss of grand architecture is the lowering of the top marginal corporate tax rate. Without the pressure to find something to do with all their earnings, lest Uncle Sam take 95% of it, businesses no longer have an incentive to show off their wealth through the hiring of tradesmen and architects. We live in the era of the MVP: the minimum viable product. Corporations need not spend away their punitively-taxable liquidity in the manufacture of beautiful buildings when monolithic glass dicks built by migrant labor are cheaper and there is no taxation anymore. Raise taxes on corporations, FORCE them to reinvest their capital instead of hoarding it or giving it away to billionaires (who also need a top marginal tax increase), and you will INSTANTLY see corporations restart conspicuous consumption in the name of the Tax Write-Off, which in itself is an artform that is long passed (you don't need to lower your tax bracket when you're not being taxed at the upper brackets.) We still might not be able to afford homes for awhile after that, but at least things will LOOK better from our tents.
You have a point but it has more to do with weaker governments than corporate taxes. European nations tax everyone more and they invest it into infrastructure along with strong regulations to ensure the building is there to last and meet the style. Americans have delegated that responsibility to the elite and they essentially decide what the city looks like not the government (people).
There is not that much liquidity in corporations, so that take misses the mark by a wide margin. What there is, is an extreme tendency to avoid risk coupled with a lack of a sense of trust, unity, and loyalty to the groups of people who make up these companies - fueled by (again) risk-avoidance. But specifically, risk-avoidance in the manner of trying to beat the peter principle via the practice of hiring to fill middle/upper vacancies rather than promoting people from within and continuing to hire at the lower rungs. The rampant job-hopping means the entire structure is full of interpersonal holes and people don't really care if the company lives or not or how the products or services are. It just results in: Why would you build a monument (beautiful architecture) to something you don't care about?
I think this same mentality needs to be turned towards any modern construction or post-modern architecture as well. Many of those neighborhoods that were "destroyed" by way of the City Beautiful movement were in fact crowded, smoggy, smoke-filled slums. As many know, 75% of those polled rank Classical architecture as the most beautiful style. Following this logic, if we are to make way for new monuments and redesigned cities, they need to incorporate this knowledge. Modern architects, just like those "insensitive Victorians", are just as guilty (more-so, possibly) of subjugating the desires of residents and patterns of vernacular cities and towns to the corporate executives that need vessels for their real-estate holdings, or new office blocks for workers. The CEO and board room have become the new Napoleons: dictating the lay of the land and impacting style on a scale he could only have dreamed of. Napoleon, indirectly at least, inspired untold masses with the style that eventually made its way to the forefront of a more idealistic and egalitarian America. Most of those buildings on Franklin Parkway were designed for the benefit of the public. Can we just accept that beautiful buildings, full of light and a human touch, are better than Brutalist, post-modern polygons that break our minds and fill our souls with dread?
Many of those big fair buildings were not made of stone, but plaster and wood only meant to stand for the duration of the fair. In the Omaha at a museum I was surprised to learn Omaha had a pretty big fair of its own in 1898 the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition. Some buildings were reused once, but afterwards it was torn down because it wasn’t meant to last.
People obsessed with neoclassical aesthetics, stark white marble buildings and statues always conveniently overlook that just about everything in Ancient Greece was painted in bright garish colors.
I've known about the Chicago world fair thing for some time now, but this is the first time I'd ever seen someone try to make it into a conspiracy involving the Tartars. I think this might be one of those situations where someone tries to attach a belief to another group of people that they don't have much contact with.
Um… that entire Subreddit has considered it a conspiracy for YEARS. Did you see the dates on those posts? This video author is trying to DEBUNK those lunatics.
A grand event like a World's Fair or Exposition owed a great part of its success to the very fact of its temporary nature. When the opportunity to witness a spectacle was limited (and therefore valuable), FOMO ruled, and eager throngs would travel far at considerable expense to attend. Such a thing was perhaps the most exciting event of many people's lives.
Yeah definitely a "Bug Man" brain level video here. People desire beauty. It is a human need. I am a true believer in Tartaria. The world's fair is a convenient excuse do destroy our Beautiful heritage. There are many beautiful in the late 1800s that never had any world's fairs and still got demolished. Cincinnati is really good example of this. The before an afters are wild.
Parisian beauty does have to be sold to you. Chicago is inherently beautiful, because it eventually carved its own identity. Not because it became Paris 2.0.
@@someone2987 Misanthropic mentality where one has been convinced that everything would be be better if most people were to simply be cogs in a grand machine with limits and restrictions on what we can consume and demand, as well as many decisions being made for us so we aren't burdened by the stress of agency. All in the name of harmony, security, and safety.
"For everyone to enjoy", that statement is a lie. The Palace of Versailles is a testament to French Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical beauty as expressed through architecture and garden design, but most of France were not allowed to enter the palace, much less the land it is built on until the French Third Republic. Neuschwanstein Castle is the most beautiful of the "Mad King" Ludwig II's projects that were completed, but this building and all the other buildings WERE off-limits to the public until after the King's death and the Bavarian government deciding to open it up for public visits. The Forbidden City and the Old Summer Palace in Beijing are testaments to East Asian architecture and garden design yet they were only open to the public in 1924, 12 years after the fall of the Chinese Empire. Even the Kingdom of Hawaii has the Iolani Palace that was off-limits to the public until the overthrow of the monarchy. Point is... Most of the most beautiful buildings on earth are built NOT FOR THE BENEFIT OD EVERYONE. They were built as monuments to their patrons. Shelley's Ozymandias captures the rationale of such monuments well...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 sure, but we have now the means to design out cities like emperors were able to design their palaces and gardens. I don't get that mentality of "welp, stalin drank water so i guess it's time to die from dehydration"
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 By 1900s the sense that 'beauty in public spaces was for all' was already a principle of European public architecture. In the _belle epoque_ luxury and gracious spaces were being democratized on an unprecedented scale. See, for example: Paris, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, old Havana...
@@sohlasattelite"Civic Architecture" is a recent concept that can be traced to Rome but it finds expression with countries and states that have a republican government. Florence during its time as an independent city state - especially under the Medicis - spend on building public spaces like Piazzas and cathedrals partially as a way to buy the public approval of their rule. Same with Venice with the Plaza of San Marco. What did the Kings of England or the Holy Roman Emperor or even the Chinese Emperor built for the public benefit before the French Revolution? As I said, rulers don't build things for the public good most of the time, they were built mostly to satisfy their ego, and if they built anything like that they are off-limits to most of the public...
@@harbl99My point is that for most of its history between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the French Revolution, any state that doesn't rely on the patronage of the "popular" masses don't build things for their benefit...
The impetus driving the Tartaria myth isn’t some philosophical nonsense about “erasing history”, it’s the fact that buildings in the past were objectively better looking and we appear to have lost the ability to build them.
Guys, there are whole YT channels dedicated to revealing the “Old World” buildings in American cities, where the old world refers to previous civilizations with modern design and construction technologies. The thinking is that, since people before circa mid-1900s couldn’t possibly build grand buildings like, say, the old St Louis Courthouse or the Cologne Cathedral, they must have been leftover from a previous civilization and discovered when our civilization moved in. In this telling, the world wars and depression are an Orwellian rewrite of history to explain the collapsed ruins that had to be bulldozed away to erect our cities around these still-standing old world structures. It’s really quite the conspiracy theory!
It literally has to be true considering the population and the timeline of some of these places where these grand buildings were “built”. Your not building a cathedral with a town population of 1000 people and horse and buggy in 1 years time it simply makes no sense
This whole Tartarian conspiracy theory just boggles the mind with the whole ancient globe-spanning civilization stuff and I just don't get what it has to do with historic preservation of these City Beautiful buildings. It's like they've never heard of the neoclassical architecture movement in vogue at the time! It's certainly an interesting footnote to the story of these beautiful forgotten buildings but I feel like the pseudohistory detracts from the story as a whole. I definitely think this was a well-produced, fascinating, and informative video, but in my opinion the pseudohistory mentioned in the start leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
All you have to do is ask how the buildings were built with horses and wagons. No one has an answer. Especially the issue was not addressed in the subject video.
I mostly agree with you, although your analysis of Napoleon III and the work of Haussman is a little bit simplistic, lol. It's true that there was a political aspect in opening the medieval quarters with big boulevards since they were easy to occupy for revolutionaries, but it was also a time of industrialization, enlightenment and rationalization : bviously the "Ville Lumière" would be up-to-date in terms of urbanism and very audacious at it. Napoleon III is pretty loved by the French people to this day, and isn't remembered as a tyran. He first had this idea of urbanistic renovation of Paris during his stay in London when witnessing their new modern quarters. Haussman's work was indeed extremely controversial and destructive, that's a fact, but also necessary to bring Paris into a modernity and get rid of the dangerous maze-like slums of the old medieval quarters. Also, it wasn't just a cynical and control driven renovation ; Haussman literally moved entire domes to fit at the end of its boulevards, simply for aesthetics... The city is now better for it, even if we lost a big part of its history.
It’s interesting because the jewel of San Diego, Balboa Park, has a similar story with it being a world’s fair and the buildings being temporary. But they were preserved and have been the inspiration for a lot of architecture in SoCal. I suppose you could call it theme park architecture, but I call it beautiful and resonant and far preferable to a lot of current architectural trends.
Often some fair buildings were built to last, see also 1904 world's fair in St. Louis. Depending on how low quality the original, it may have been replaced (see San Francisco Palace of fine arts) as well.
One of the Columbian exposition buildings survived. The fine arts building is now the griffin museum of science and industry. I think I read somewhere that for a while it was the home of the field museum before it's current building was constructed.
Who cares that these were temporary. We all know most of the world’s most beautiful buildings were replaced by cinder block nasty ghetto buildings or parking lots.
I think a hard pill for modern architects to swallow is that modern architecture is boring most of the time it doesn’t bring joy or excitement that old forms of architecture brings. I think it’s a bit disingenuous to insinuate paris is bad because it’s wide boulevards make for easy military or having uniform architecture is bad like when send boulevards provide natural light greenery easier form of transportation (which is what a lot of cities need now more the ever), uniform architecture can be really beautiful especially when said architecture is beautiful.
Thank you. 100% Agree. I usually like Stuart's topics, but this attack on the City Beautiful movement feels like a complete departure in tone and substance.
We WERE going towards some beautiful stuff. There were obvious eyesores that got approved like The Blob (Selfridges Building in Birmingham) but overall there was this idea of trying to make things cool and futuristic up until the mid-2000s or so, with examples that still exist despite many being torn down already. But that fell out of favor in place of intentionally-bland boxes made in the interest of reducing risk. A few places have interesting stuff but visionary architects just aren't given as much of a shot anymore. For example, there's some buildings in bolivia put up within the last decade that look amazing, but I don't believe the guy who designed them (Freddy Mamani) has been take up for much outside his local area.
@@williamdunklincity beautiful movement of the late 19th to early 20th century was about giving people living in cities access to modern amenities and green space and comparing it to the “city planning” of the 1950s and onwards that prioritized suburbs and that destroyed historic downtowns of cities to make space for automobiles is just crazy these two are completely opposite of each other the only thing they have in common is that they are a form of city planning. One was to help people in the city, the other one was to kick people out of the city.
I don't think the style of architecture matters as much as the rarity of public spaces now days. Dallas has Fair Park with an esplanade featuring several buildings in Art Deco/ Art Moderne. You could have a public space done in Brutalism and it would work... almost.
Without a doubt, this is one of the best constructed, written and realized informational videos I’ve ever seen on RUclips. I’m an architecture buff and I knew very little of this. I had never heard of the Tartarian theory (wackadoo!!) nor how Napoleon rebuilt Paris. Excellent job!
It’s kind of hilarious. Especially when one of them has a drawing of a grand building, like there’s one of a proposed city hall for Cleveland, and they failed to consider the building wasn’t destroyed it was never built because it’s a drawing not a photograph 😂
@ I know, right? There are people who have souvenirs from the Chicago World’s Fair that their great grandparents left them and stories written about the experience and yet these people assign an alternate history to it. All anyone has to do these days is just write or say something on the internet and there’s a subculture of Dunning Kruger madmen ready to embrace it. 🤣
But where did the name of this theory come from? The Tar Tar people lived in Central Asia and were mostly wiped out by the Mongols hundreds of years before these buildings were conceived.
@@duB420Grass that’s a good question. While these people are crazy, they do know how to look things up. Another question is why did they assign this classic architecture a culture that existed before there even was grand architecture as we know it today?
No conspiracy is required to explain why one century of civilization builds wonderful things and the next century destroys it - it's just human nature to remove the old and replace it with the new, like it or loathe it.
It's so weird cause they are just looking at neo classical buildings like... Roman and Greek inspired things that are indeed empires that affected the whole world.
and western european culture which has dominated by hundreds of years now. Although one can argue post-war it has declined in power, and architectural prowess.
Photos were illegal for all World's Fair attendees. They had a large police force ONLY to enforce no photos. If the word cover-up had an event, it was the Fairs.
Thanks, Stewart. This was excellent! Another, slightly more recent example these Tartarian-types might want to look at is Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. It was built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition out of plaster and wood, like the Chicago Exhibition, but the architecture was so grand and popular that it was retained after the Exhibition closed. Of course it deteriorated over the decades. There are numerous photos of it in its later years where you can see plaster elements have fallen off, and the underlyting wood framework and wire lathe are clearly visible. It was eventually demolished and replaced with a concrete replica in the late 60s. The old photos show that it was really just an outdoor stage set, but it is magnificent, and it is set in a beautiful park. Your story about Franklin Boulevard in Philadelphia reminds me that the kind of sweeping, monumental changes made by these sorts of city planners lasted a very long time. When I was a little kid, Lincoln Center in NYC was being built. It replaced a neighborhood called San Juan Hill, which was a typical working-class neighborhood. By the 1940s it was considered "blighted." All the property was taken by eminent domain and Lincoln Center went up in its place. Even though it was built in a modernist manner, the buildings obviously owe a debt to the kind of architecture that Baron Hausman and Daniel Burnham built decades before. In addition, Lincoln Center was almost completely shut off from the city around it, and on its back side, it was like a fortress, with no visible access to the plaza level or any of the music and theater facilities, with the exception of an entrance to a public library branch. Efforts have been made since to connect it more effectively with the neighborhood, but it's still an alien and rather hostile presence.
That Beaux Arts World Fair architecture is my all time favorite. But in St. Louis the Art museum was built to last and the Museum of S&I in Chicago too. A big difference from the rest built from staff. It's not that confusing. But I run into these Tartarians online all the time.
Even though there are a ton more criticisms that can apply to a lot of one world theories, I appreciate how this video both focused on one core perspective and validated said theorist feeling of lack of place despite asserting that the facts of this architectures spread in America are effectively the opposite of what these internet sleuths believe.
I gave you a thumbs up, I hated this video for how short it was. Such a complex and profound topic deserves a long deep dive, not some shallow 15 minute collaboration... I don't know what I expected really I typically love your videos. This left me hungering for more. Maybe one day you'll drop us a feature length Magnum Opus, but until then I'll just wait for the next short one
A thing to remember about Daniel Burnham and Chicago was that he was doing this in 1893, just 20 years after much of the city was reduced to cinders in the Great Chicago Fire. The Exposition and subsequent Burnham Plan tapped into a civic ideal of rising from the ashes. A final note on the Tartarians is the contempt for Modernism, but what Modernism does when it’s at its best (such as in Mies Van Der Rohe’s Federal Plaza) is to restore the sense of human scale. When you’re actually there, the open glass facades and austere interiors, draw your attention to the people walking, working, and gathering in those spaces. Quite a remarkable feat for a 40 story skyscraper.
First the U.S destroyed most of it's own 18/19th century & art-deco/art nouveaux architecture . And now it visits Europe to watch old buildings (that were often re-build after WW2) and invents the mythical Tartaria.
Buildings are just that, buildings: Assembled constructions with varying and temporary purposes. Imagine if the people from the 1500s felt that the best looking buildings were from the 1400s and that people kept thinking this way. We'd be stuck in the same place for the last 500 years. Architecture reflects its era and the population building it and is bound to evolve and change.
You saw the same kind of movement in Europe as well, but decades earlier than in the US. For example, Mainz in Germany still has a Medieval feeling (although it was 80% destroyed in WWII) whereas Wiesbaden across the river has a much more Beaux Arts or "City Beautiful" feel to it. Mainz was an important city for centuries while Wiesbaden was just a village which didn't start growing till the early 1800s. Vienna also replaced a lot of its medieval city with much more elaborate Beaux Arts architecture.
The city I’m familiar with, Tulsa, was originally built in the 1890’s but by 1917 the skyscraper came into the city. City beautiful didn’t really hit Tulsa like it did Philadelphia. Instead the new city beautiful of urban renewal became an issue for many city’s like those city’s who did similar with city beautiful. I’m curious how urban renewal took off and compared it to other movements like city beautiful.
Worth mentioning that Paris as we know it today was redesigned by Haussmann. Unlike when London was rebuilt after 1666 when much of the city burned down, Paris was rebuilt without any such tragedy. It was an intact and functional city when Napoleon III ordered Haussmann to redesign it. Many thousands of homes were destroyed to build what Paris is today. Thankfully, Paris turned into a functional and beautiful city, but there were significant concerns that the layout of the streets with wide boulevards was a conspiracy from Napoleon III to prevent riots, since it enabled the police to act quickly and shut down any protests that popped up. This conspiracy is actually true, and Napoleon III wanted to prevent any future revolution like had happened in 1789.
The 'Tartarian empire' might only have been spray painted wood and plaster exhibition halls; but with modern materials, moulding, forming, and 3D printing, why can't we achieve more than the flat warship-grey cladding found on so many city buildings?
We certainly can and often do build non-modern themed buildings (see for example McMansions). However, it seems that builders do not have incentives to build more authentic older style homes for many reasons, such as demand for greater space per person, more bathrooms, open concepts, and of course zoning and safety codes that make for example "missing middle" traditional flats or elaborate cornices infeasible.
@@szurketaltos2693 And that occurs because of people seeing homes as investments rather than places to settle (in the frontiersman sense of the word, not the "particles in a glass of water" sense). The concept of a legacy has become life insurance and a numerical assets in a will.
The same thing happened in San Francisco when they had the fair. They built one building to last, The Palace of Fine Arts, and everything else was built out of plaster, wood, and chicken wire. When the fair was done, the fake buildings were torn down. If your really want a beautiful city, you need to maintain cultural connection, otherwise your just re-imagining Disneyland.
Ironically, Disneyland was built to last (being intended as a *permanent* attraction) by people with experience building movie sets, no less. Some of it more than others - the demolition of the Monsanto House of Tomorrow is a story in itself, the wrecking ball bounced off it!
Palace of fine arts did not in fact last. The current building is a recreation. Compare to the St. Louis world's fair, the St. Louis art museum did last as well as a couple other buildings.
If you wanted to make a video about the City Beautiful Movement then I think you should done that, instead of pretending to do a video on the disappearance of beautiful buildings. The disappearance of beautiful buildings is a question that applies to outside of America too. I don't think it's right that you could make a video that purports to be about the disappearance of beautiful buildings without talking about the Modernist and Brutalist movements in architecture and how the aesthetic sensibilites of architects changed. If you were going to actually look at the mystery of the title and not just use it to talk Architecture in American socio-political history then you might look at the example of the King's (then Prince of Wales') architectural project, Poundbury, as an example of different competing aesthetic sensibilites.
Great video .... however you failed to address a few of the main tartaria questions . 1. The mud flood 2. Speed of building during the 1860-1914 periods in towns with tiny populations.
What the "tartarian theory" taps into is our yearn for the revival of our intrinsic human ability to craft meaning into our environment. An intrinsic human ability that has developed separately in all traditional societies but somehow shares a certain timeless quality which reveals a deep profound understanding of the branch of mathematics known as fractal physics.
My favorite quotation from my favorite Architecture critic was Ada Louise Huxtable. She said, "Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves... And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."
I recently saw a video someone had posted of American "architectural wonders" that had been tragically demolished and looked over many comments, even some from people in Europe, about how these "old world traditional buildings" had been lost forever. But from the demolition photos, including one of a building that was already sagging from fire damage, it was apparent that most of the buildings had steel frames, and that the "traditional" elements were just parts of the non-structural facades. But, in an important way, that's beside the point. History has always given the world pretentious and fake buildings (eg. the fake-stone Regency building boom in 19th century England, or even Mt. Vernon or the White House) that, as they age and become part of the familiar landscape, become beloved icons, and it's only human to miss them when they disappear, even if they were hated when first completed. We adopt these buildings just as Americans adopted the VW Beetle, the boondoggle of a German dictator against whom we fought the most deadly war in history, as a cute counter-cultural icon of the 1960s. Of course, the White City buildings are an exception, since they were not built to last and would have been almost impossible to maintain, but it's easy to picture the "City Beautiful" buildings being cherished, even if the process under which they were built was riddled with arrogance and shadiness. Whatever its origins, it's still nicer to walk through a glorious plaza than a jumbled "organic" slum.
@@worldisbetter The beauty of the "haussmannian" architecture in Paris does not depend on the fact that Napoleon could send his troups down the large boulevards to combat a potential local uprising. It is beside the point but, he could have done the same if the buildings were ugly.
@@drgyt2469and actually bland oppressive buildings lining the boulevards would be more in keeping with someone wanting to keep the people subdued (look at Soviet architecture). Inspiring beautiful buildings instill pride in the city residents.
Commercial space economics has changed a lot in the last 150yrs. back then your building location really mattered and they was really really high land value in really concentrated space. At those locations so it was worth alot to put an eyecatching building there. But today with commercial space so spread out probably due to automobiles its not worth a lot economically to make buildings that are really expensive to build and maintain. there is also a problem that these traditionally beautiful buildings don't scale well into the really big buildings we have today.
adding a bike lane alone to a shop has been shown to increase revenue by 20-100%. Car dependent shops do far worse than pedestrianized shops. Foot traffic is far more important than cars flying through the road your shop happens to be on.
This video is full of jealousy. Modernists have always tried to make an ideal city and failed. But now it is suddenly classical architects who 'fool people into believing the theme park could become real'. While of course it could become real, there are real cities as beautiful as theme parks. Ever walked through Prague? Also modernists have always been accused of destroying local charm, in this video the classicists are accused of the same and connected to tyranny. This is a dirty move. This is just a cheap revenge video. Also the idea of timeless beauty is rejected by warning: it could just be plaster. But the truth is of course, that some shapes have a timeless power to move us, made of plaster or not. And the timeless shapes are not modernist shapes (repetitive grids) but rounded forms and ornament. I understand, it is incredible painful that people feel more love for a plaster building from 140 years ago than the 'honest' Van der Rohe skyscraper that you like. But just take your loss instead of inventing convoluted arguments against beauty.
What a curious, flailing diatribe. The video is stating simple historical facts. The Haussmann regularisation did in fact have a sweeping political aim, including the aspects mentioned in the video. The Beaux-Art school of architectural thought was revisionist. These are widely accepted facts and not in question. And the world fair did in fact consist of fake facades and mass produced decorations to sell people the story of a grand and noble city. Architectural history is full of similarly grand notions, and late 19th century neoclassicism is not alone in trying to peddle a throughly untenable vision. There are loads of equally guilty isms and schools of thought. It is one of the more pernicious, however. Especially because people who buy in to it wholesale tend to think all we need from architecture are fluted colonnades, volutes and grandiose avenues. It’s more complicated than that. Immensely so. Any first year student can draw a Greek temple, but ask them to arrange a proper door schedule or provide adequate space for plumbing or door swings, and they come up short. Architecture is hard, and not a matter of Instagram worthy marble fantasies.
Hogwash. I would take a modern city with all of its infrastructure over some piece of stone vanity any day of the week. More people live in cities today than ever. WTF do you mean modernist cannot build a city? That is the eye of the beholder. I think two things some of you suffer from is one. You don't appreciate modern structures, and the constraints ancient structures have. You see a glass skyscraper, and are not impressed, because it is so ubiquitous. Secondly, you fail to see the survivorship bias at play. Only the high quality buildings were kept, and maintained. Over generations those buildings added up, with the average or poorer ones torn down. Over generations it turned into the cities we love today. Rome and Prague were not made in a single day. Some of those land marks were centuries apart. Oh did I mention many stone quarries would be depleted if we went back to building everything with classical architecture. It is a non renewable resource. It costs a hell of a lot more to mine, and transport it these days with so many cities having already depleted the local stone in some.
@@rasmusjp You are completely missing the point. Of course there are big flaws in Haussmannian destruction, ideology, of course there are lazy copies of old buildings and they can be unpractical or leaky or whatever. The real point is that the majority of the population can quickly develop an emotional connection to classical styles (also to not so classical styles as art nouveau or art deco) a connection which after 100 years they still have not developed for modern styles. So you can throw a thousand good, valid arguments against classical architecture and 19th century city design on a pile and it still doesn't change the fact that we feel good when we walk though a city from before 1940 and we feel bad when we walk through a city from after 1940. All the effort that goes in making these videos could have gone in research in what people actually like, but modern architects just don't care. They present themselves as empathic sociologists, concerned about poverty and segregation, but actually they think they know better than the people and try to smuggle in their repressive dogmas together with their empathy.
Off topic a bit but interesting nonetheless. Louis Sullivan designed the Transportation building which was not in that style. Nicola Tesla installed the AC electric lights which was a first for the world at that scale. The current Museum of Science and Industry was the Palace of Fine Arts and built to be permanent, and is the only original building from the fair still standing.
Tesla also had the first remote controlled drone there as well, in the form of what could be described as a toy boat. The US Navy was not interested if I recall correctly.
I prefer traditional over modern architecture. With that said I think it would be boring if all the buildings were the same style. I might be hard to believe but we would get just as sick of neoclassical buildings if that was all that was built. So, I don't mind an occasional modern building if it is well designed and ages well. I think Paris looks cool with the modern dark and imposing Tour Montparnasse towering over the uniformity of the city.
public, government-funded buildings should only be designed and built in such a way that the people will treasure it, and to demolish it would be unthinkable. the most sustainable building is one that people want to keep around.
Architecture is art and if we are forced to look at it, it should be beautiful art, or it could even be meaningful, but modern architecture is neither beautiful or meaningful. I hate to think the movement to beautify public spaces is being sidelined as something only conspiracy theorists value. Cities have planning and zoning committees, they represent the public interest, we can demand beautiful buildings in our cities.
i dont care to watch this whole video as the amount i watched already seems extremely misleading to the point where the title seems to be obviously a clickbait sort of title in order to trap tartarian believers into watching a video which will make them feel stupid at best... ur condescending little tone is not appreciated
Trying to make the claim? It's a fact...and with a little common sense and research it will become clear ....we didn't build these structures with a donkey and cart technology . We can't build them now...just like we can't get to the moon. We forgot and lost the tech. Gimme a break ...
I have to say my tastes are quite conservative. I don't know why we have to live in a world full of copy-pasta miserable architecture when we know what we prefer and that it'll likely cost little more improve the general vista of everyone. I blame rentier capitalism.
just like the destruction of american cities in the 50-80's we also are familiar with its ugly head here in Europe.. Rotterdam..birmingham... the hague,hamburg.. dresden.. and ofcourse the bigwig cities such as vienna,berlin and brussels all lost so much of our historical grandeur architecture,this is definitely not by accident as it is by design,modernist ''architects'' with dubious political beliefs have been ruining our city's social fabric since atleast the 60's.
''b-but some of these cities got carpet bombed'' inb4,look at poland. almost entirely wiped off the map yet for some reason they seem to be able to rebuild beautifully,look at GDansk.
The main questions that are rarely ever answered much less even given the most basic information about are 1. Where did all these “builders “ come from thousands of massive buildings were built at the same time in the largest cities to the smallest. Where did they live? Who feed them? 2. Where did all the materials come from? Who mined them? Who quarried them? Who made the millions of bricks ? Who moved them on non existent roads or at best dirt paths to the sites? How did they move them? We are never given any information on these things. Its even more questionable when we are given so many grand buildings with an architect who had never designed a building before or at best a much smaller one. And almost every single building of importance from that time has a fire in its story as well … even ones that were fireproof.
Huge missing segment from this video: why people generally wanted City Beautiful, why they wanted what they saw in Chicago 1893 and St Louis 1904. Specifically, why people-not tyrants, governments, and master planners-disliked the cities wrought by the Industrial Revolution by the end of the 1800s. And this is hugely important, because it also explains why people started escaping the city when first streetcars and the automobiles gave them the chance. It explains why everyone jumped at urban renewal and futurama. Essentially, you’re leaving out the whole driving force behind 1900s urbanism.
Really appreciate your analysis here, especially the rhetorical inversion of the anxieties that are reflected by Tartarian conspiracy theorists. However, I think that there is a crosscutting issue going on here. Specifically, fascism -- or at least the sort of tendencies that underlie it. Reading through their reddit spaces, Tartarians are aesthetically aligned with these instances of grand architecture -- partly *because* of the totalitarian aspects (both practical,a la Haussmann, but also aesthetic, a la expressions of power). I think your video does a great job of diagnosing the historical context that explains the negative impulse of the Tartarians ("they took this from us"), but it doesn't address why the positive complaint ("I want an architecture of power") comes about. 10/10 video. wonder what you think?
Solve my anxiety. How were the buildings built? Architecture is childs play compared to the physical realities of building massive stone castles, cathedral and dare I say state capitols.
@@eyespymenu I'm not sure I completely understand the question. I suppose it depends on which buildings you mean? You are definitely right, that the logistical and technological (not to mention economic) realities of building monumental architecture are staggering. If you mean medieval cathedrals, then yeah those took many lifetimes to build -- literal generations would pass during the construction of a single building. If you mean a modern cathedral, say the national cathedral in DC, then it was much faster (mainly due to advances in the use of steel and combustion powered cranes and vehicles etc.) Even still, it took 83 years for the final touches to be done. The construction of the national cathedral is extremely well documented and I suggest checking out their website for some really neat archival photographs etc. It should also be said that, horrifically, many instances of grand architecture in the United States (where I think you are writing from) we also built by slaves (including the US Capitol Building, the White House, and Trinity Church in New York). I hope this answers your question.
I always like your content, but I think this is one of the worse videos you made. You talk about grand beautiful building with contempt for demolishing what came before it, but you conveniently leave out the fact that this is exactly what modern buildings do and did in the past with results that are as ugly as they could get compared to those architectural masterpieces that are bothering you. Oh and the Paris redevelopment project in the 19th century was primarily about improving Paris more so than the militaristic intention that you are imposing on it. The purpose of building new sewers, aqueducts, parks, hospitals, schools, city halls, theaters, churches, markets, and other public buildings are not for the benefit of the military but rather to address things like sanitation and to improve the city. So, yes, I think any American would take the plan of Paris or city beautiful over the architectural monstrosity that we have now and which destroyed our neighborhoods and local identity anyway.
TIL about tartaria why am I not surprised joe rogaine is promoting russian nationalist historical revisionist non-sense to his millions of impressionable listeners
As 2024 will soon be history, I salute your achievements this year and your relentless efforts making this knowledge accessible to most, given they have some interest for it. And the graphics constantly get better and better! But nothing is perfect: you should know that it is the ‘École des Beaux-Arts’ (‘des’ for plural), and that in ‘arts’ both ‘t’ and ‘s’ are mute. I know this sounds picky, however I would have remained silent would the words ‘saucisse’, ‘étang’ or ‘ferraille’ had been misspelled or mispronounced.
If any architect of our time could repeat something like this in plaster and on a smaller scale, he would be one of greatest men of our time, even though rain would immediately dissolve his structure
Architecture is philosophy/religion put into wood and mortar. Lo and behold, as society de-humanized people with secular ideological assumptions, the buildings stopped being built according to human scale, and they became oppressing.
A fantastic, super interesting topic! Thank you. Perhaps it would be worthwhile (speaking of falsifying history) to talk about the reconstruction of European cities after the war and - even more so - after the fall of the Soviet Union. For example, the GDR government blew up the ‘’Berliner Stadtschloss‘’ in 1950 in order to open the ultra-modern ‘’Palast der Republik‘’ right there in 1975. And this was torn down again after 1990 and a kind of replica of the ‘’Stadtschloss‘’, a theme park in the truest sense of the word, was built in its place.
I believe one common thread throughout the Tartaria movement is the dislike of modern architecture and its overabundance of glass curtain walls and sheet metal cladding. There is a certain beauty when it comes to stone architecture that can't be overlooked and for that I do sympathize with the notion that many modern structures are boring and uninspired.
While I would love cities made out of marble and stone. I don't think we have enough beautiful stone quarries to actually do that. At least for all humanity.
Also when glass and steel came out. They were beautiful marvels. Today we take them for granted, because they are ubiqutous. I have a feeling we wouldn't care as much for say marble if it was just as cummon, and ubiquitous
On the other hand. We still pretty much put cost over everything else.
I also bring up survivorship bias. Only the beautiful historic buildings have been kept from demolishing. Over decades each beautiful historic was saved each generation. Making it seem like they always built high quality structures.
@@dianapennepacker6854 Architectural historian here - I like to push back on the survivorship bias argument. Unfortunately beauty has really never been a factor in whether buildings get demolished, and neither has the quality of their construction. Take for example NYC's original version of Penn Station, a monumental building that was demolished after the decline of railroads. Grand Central almost met the same fate until it was saved by activists responding to the Penn Station demolition. The most common reason why buildings are demolished is economic and related to outside factors, such as the original use of the building becoming obsolete or the building becoming abandoned due to ownership complications or hardship. And on the flipside, we have millions of older houses from the Victorian era today that were actually built fairly poorly but have been repaired (either in a historically sensitive way or not) by people who found it worthwhile.
I would settle for having the corrugated metal apartment buildings be painted something that isn't gray, navy blue, and mustard yellow. Like, they could have at least gotten imaginative and beautiful with the paint job, and instead what do we get? Some person's idea of cheap and inoffensive.
Someone will always loathe or distain their environment, or something placed in it.
Glass curtain walls go all the way back to the crystal palace in Hyde Park.
Cities build UP because certain locations are in demand (actual or perceived). The absurdity of billionaires row is evident.
The Emperor _does_ have new clothes!
Come to Chicago and see modern architecture in splendid glory. And then go to the gold coast and see boring boxes next to vintage beauties. It's not the movement or style that's the problem. It's the application.
I feel so sad that the Singer Building and the original Penn Station were demolished in New York
Ditto!🤘
The WTYP episode on Penn Station was great in pointing out the numerous problems that the old station had, which all led to its decline and demolition in the 1960s. Those problems, like the notoriously narrow platforms, still plague it today.
The Singer Building, had it survived until today, may have been another candidate for residential conversion like 40 Wall Street.
Are you the guy that prefers modern architecture?
@greysnake2903 not sure who you are questioning within this thread. I think there's considerable bright spots within the entire history of architecture. That includes modern and contemporary buildings.
This comment will probably get buried, BUT! I worked on the Jackson Park restoration. We uncovered tons of artifacts and I even have a few of the white blocks that were buried sitting in my backyard! It was an amazing experience and I’ve very grateful for it.
Whoa, so cool!
What was the quality of the artifact. I heard they were cheap plaster
@@Nachos237these ones were some type of stone. I’m no expert, but I assumed they were granite. They could have been from any number of prior constructions, maybe not from the Columbia expo.
I do know that some of the lagoons were filled in with the destroyed structures after the expo ended and the areas we were excavating were some of those filled in lagoons.
Also it’s a very nice park. I know the south side of Chicago gets some flak for its area but it’s definitely worth a visit
Cheeky of you to include a shot of the Eiffel Tower when mentioning the costs of the Olympic Games. As we all know, that too was supposed to be a temporary structure for the world’s fair.
Thats because he is still in deep denial
11:35 - 12:25
Allow me to correct some of your statemens that are not entirely true.
While the political and security aspects of Napoléon III's plan of reshaping Paris are true, you seem to overemphasize those elements in this extract.
First, Napoléon III's planning for the French capital was actually made before he took power in France. One of the reasons _why_ he wanted to make such an audacious and radical plan was an esthetical one. He saw the modern cities of London in Britain and New-York in the United States, and that greatly inspired him for his vision of a _new_ Paris. He took great inspiration from those two capitals, like when he extended the size of Paris, similary to the Great London, or also, when he tasked Adolphe Alphand to make great parks in imitation of London's greeneries. The second emperor of the french not only wanted to make the medieval city of Paris into a modern metropolis of the 19th Century, he wanted to embellish the capital to make it the most beautiful city ever built.
The second reason of this bold plan is also economical and speculative. Indeed, the emperor employed more than 100 000 workers for his transformation of Paris, this in accordance to his promise to the working class to give jobs, while also enriching the many investors, bankers, landlords and speculators by erecting those brand new buildings. This massive project, would also causes to captivate foreign investments and facilitate the flow of money into the city. The construction clearly benefited to all classes and ultimatly participated to the economic growth during the period. In addition before those great works, you actually had to take a whole day to walk across Paris, and most people only walked a few streets near their appartements! So Haussmann's rationnal and srict planning made business and commerce easier by making a safer and (financially) attractive place.
The third and final reason is more a social and sanitary one, the emperor was influenced (profoundly) by the works of Saint-Simon a french socialist of the early 19th Century. This is _also_ why he wanted to make such large boulevards, this was a time were urban life was unhealthy for most of the population. The streets were full of dirt, dangerous, narrow and it smelled terribly, the water was non-potable and full of diseases, and there was no electricity, sewage system and adequate housing. For example, a cholera epidemic in 1832 killed around 20 000 people in the capital alone, and remember that people back then believe that such diseases spread trought air. In response to those hard living conditions, the very saint-simonnien that was Napoléon III who believed in hygienism, sanitized Paris to improve the living conditions of the parisians. You have to understand that some streets were so narrow that there was little to no sunlight or air passing trought those unsanitary neighborhoods.
As you saw it, the idea of a Napoleonian Paris cannot be reduced to an imperial evil plan against the working classes for security purposes. By focusing only on the political and safety aspects, you have missed several key points regarding the _why_ Napoléon III decided to literally rebuild Paris. And don't get me wrong, those constructions had a heavy social cost (the poor people of Paris being expropriated from their houses without compensations, and because of it were forced to settle into the peripheries) and the motive behind it was also political (Napoléon III naming great boulevards in the names of his relatives or his victories, also the need to be remembered as an Augustus who made a backward city into the city of lights we know as today) and, without a doubt, the motive was also about supressing and preventing futur plausible rebellions in the city. However, all of theses cost payed off, the 2.5 billion francs of debt was clearly worth it. Napoléon III believed in the theory of the "dépenses productives" or the productive expenditure. While some destructions were questionnable, most of the buildings that were destroyed were outdated slums who needed to get rid off because the population was growing so massively and so quickly that the urban developpement was chaotic and often not regulated. Yes, Napoléon III's plan was controvertial and its intents debatable, but he, in the end showed us that he was right, we know Paris as the city of light, of love, of beauty, of the arts, of the sciences, we recognise its uniqueness and authentic esthetic, even today.
I'll quote a relevant extract of a brilliant article made by the _Pavillon de l'Arsenal_ on Paris as a model city :
"At different scales and in each of its components, the Haussmannian fabric of Paris reveals a set of characteristics that guarantee a number of fundamental balances: between density and viability, between permanence and resilience, between sobriety and diversity, between long-distance and short-distance connectivity, between identity and universality, between intensity and welcoming urbanism, between attractiveness and inclusiveness..."
the author of this video obviously has no intention on being truthful, he is just trying to defend his aesthetic choices...
It is worth remembering that the wide streets didn't make much of a difference during the Commune in 1871. The rebels were able to barricade the wide avenues and squares easily with paving stones, but the army had learned that it was best not assault those strongpoints directly and would instead try to find ways around, sometimes through the same dense neighborhoods that were supposedly a big hinderance. Haussmann himself was not a military man so it is further questionable how he would have even known about any mooted security features. In my view this story persists since it is so fitting for political stories and ideologies rather than any strong basis in fact
Came to say this, he's just repeating a common myth without providing any sources. It's the same as saying Napoleon Bonaparte was short.
in regards to your opening segment. I(the average person) dont even require the larger concept of the worlds fair to see this phenomena. There are plenty of photos/videos on RUclips which highlights the pro car centric modern city, contrasting the older pre car cities... These alone show that practically an entire cities worth of infrastructure in every(America )city was destroyed just in the years of 1930-1970.
Welcome to capitalism. Ignoring the obvious Worlds Fair (Expo's) temporary facades, Old = trash. Add to that the modernist architectural movement (~1930 - 1960) that disliked classic ornamentation and business that loved the reduced costs of simple glass and metal facades and we get the predominant (some say boring) buildings of today.
Remember; everything is a conspiracy if you don't know how anything works.
That doesn't explain the phenomenon in europe where they put fugly buildings in places where cars are banned too.
That’s because maintaining old buildings often worse than building new ones on resources - you people are really really dense
the European cities banning cars is mostly a decade or two old for the most part. cars have existed for ~100 years. hope this helps
Many of the European cities lost buildings in WW2, others (like the US) essentially bombed themselves to make room for cars.
People still believe in Theme Park architecture... that's why we have "tuscan kitchens" and "farmhouse" in the middle of suburbia. That's why people add fake box beams or LED skylights to their ceilings. Our ugly homes have driven people to engage in architectural cosplay.
there is no faulting architectural cosplay as long as its done right
@pigeon_the_brit565 worse than the real thing, better than not trying at all.
Good architecture understands it's environment and works with it. But it's so common for us just to assign whatever we want wherever we want and it makes everywhere the same. It's sad.
@pigeon_the_brit565 Like the abandoned suburbs in Turkey.
They learned it from Vegas.
The New York Times summed up the whole "Tartaria" thing well: this was not in any way a movement that firmly believes that Tartaria and all the "secret history" is true, it's a movement that verbalize how much modern architecture has alienated them. It's acry that what they know about beauty all their life is being directly at odds with the reality of the current status quo...
The issue is these kinds of movements have habit of becoming people believing the fiction
Wait until you find out modern architecture is intended to be alienating and to harm you psychologically by design. And what group of people are responsible.
@@tann_manLet me guess, the people you're hinting at [[Echo Throughout History]]?
@@daviddavidson1417 yes
@@tann_man In which way modern architecture hurt your little feelings? You might be a weak individual.
Film Master's Student and Architectural Enthusiast here. This video overlooks decades of research that reflects the innate positive effects of biophillic and vernacular architectural/ landscape design.
The city beautiful movement was not about showing off, but the (technically correct albeit somewhat misguided) idea that beauty enriches the environment and will spiritually/ socially/ generally elevate a population beyond the haphazard squalor of late 19th century industrial metropolises, particularly in the United States which had no where near the time or wealth to build the imperial style cities that Burnham sought to mimmic in the World's fair, which was to bring European/ East Asian city planning and design to the masses of the US.
Of course, other factors like education and social services elevate the population much more, its undeniable what the baseline, immediate effect of an environment on a population was. And that was the target of the entire movement.
To hide this video's defense of contemporary design, abandoning traditional and vernacular aesthetic philosophy behind a microscopic reddit conspiracy cult is both dishonest and reductive.
The actual people you should be listening to are in the neo urbanist and new classical movement. It goes far deeper than feelings and paranoia. It lambasts the destruction of neighborhoods just like what the Ben Franklin parkway partially leveleled. It decries the US tunnel vision of car-centric urban design and essentially absent aesthetic culture, and most importantly, it's backed by science.
Towering glass curtain walls, jagged edges, unreadable silhouettes, and exposed steel i-beams make us uncomfortable and deny our brains the millenia old biological fondness for natural, or naturalistic shape language and design. Its even worse that, despite the endless "survivorship bias" claims, our cities used to be filled with interesting and beautiful places, but events like the US interstate system development and World War 2 levelled even more neighborhoods than Ben Franklin Parkway, marginalized minority communities, destroyed cherished monuments, and in the worst of cases, influenced entire metro areas economic collapse/ stagnation.
Not to mention the abhorrent environmental costs of global concrete manufacturing (water), glass, (silica sand/ thermal regulation struggles), and steel (carbon), I can link any papers below if anyone is interested.
I wish I could give this likes more than just once
But do you know any other YT channels that cover the topics that you speak of?
I would argue it's not car centric design that creates this kind of architecture, because modern construction in places that are not car centric still look the same, in fact often they look more like you describe because you need to fit more people into a smaller space, so simple modular forms are more common.
The tram systems were destroyed by Big Oil and General Motors.
@israeldelarosa5461 Some great channels are The Aesthetic City, Adam Something, Kings and Things, Not Just Bikes, Alan Fisher, Haussmann, Climate Town, and to paint a great picture of REAL places that were lost, check out Alexander Rotmensz. These range from more scientific/ editorial approaches to quite trivial & factoid based, and they aren't just on architecture, but also urban design, city life, etc.
@@ARBITRAGEandTIME They were destroyed by operating costs and government regulations "Big Oil" and GM may have buried the corpses for easy profit but they didn't kill it outright.
As a historic preservationist it absolutely drives me up a wall listening to people rant about nonsense like this. They're so close to the point and then Veer off into the lunacy.
It's funny because Tartaria was actually on ancient maps as holding vast swaths of land, but people don't realized Tartaria was a map makers short hand for the unknown "uncivilized" lands not yet properly charted
Yeah I also believe everything I was taught in school and never question history because that would make me sound crazy
Cope
Makes sense why the fekkit says this. All you do is cope
😂🤡@@andrew2131
modern architecture and planning is way more guilty of this kind of thing than the subject of this video, in America especially where you almost wiped out whole cities. The right kind of neotraditional, human scale buildings offfer the chance to write at least some of these wrongs
That Tartarian Empire claim is thoroughly uninteresting to be honest. But the question in the title is a good and important one. Why can't we have beautiful buildings anymore?
It is not cost. That world fair (2:40) is a dramatic illustration of how cheap decoration had become even back then. It is feasible to do this on temporary structures. So why can't we have it on our more permanent ones? We can make a white city with spray paint. Well yeah exactly (*). We can mass produce cast shapes. Yeah exactly, and we can use things like concrete if we want something a bit more durable. And in case we want something custom like at 4:50. Didn't we invent CNC routers in the meantime? And also, casting?
Van Loos' argument that decoration takes too much resources is obsolete. Also the idea that decoration is not a function is quite misanthropic to begin with - I have never heard of any culture where people do not decorate their living spaces. It just so happens that cities are living spaces. So making building exteriors presentable is a really important function. (actually, didn't Van Loos write a “no guys not like that!!~~~” follow up to his ornamentation and crime essay? Maybe he saw the impending self-immolation of his entire profession coming.)
Modernism destroyed our willingness to have new buildings in our neighbourhoods. Turns out making new buildings is REALLY IMPORTANT. I'm sitting here in Auckland, and most land right next to our city centre are old decaying villas built in the 1920s. They may not have any modern bells and whistles like insulation and double glazing, or up to date electric installations. They may back then have been build nastily and cheaply with mass produced (!) ornaments, but they were also not yet Modernist and some thought was given to making them presentable to passers by. Some are visibly rotting away. But they are (in a sort of oblique way) heritage protected, and we will not replace them with (small m) modern buildings until they literally fall down. This should have been a completely absurd situation that *everyone* would try to fix ASAP, but no. It seems everyone thinks it is perfectly reasonable.
Why can't we have beautiful buildings anymore? I don't know. People have simply internalized this as truth. Somehow we (i.e. our past generations, not this weird empire conspiracy) could make them in the past but somehow magically it now became too expensive. Despite having laser cutters, CNC routers, casting, and other mass production technology available now. Isn't that weird?
So we find ourself in a situation that no matter how dilapidated an old building is, people still expect anything that we could possibly build today to look even worse. This situation is entirely absurd. If someone has an old rusty car parked up front, it would be considered an eyesore and nobody would baulk at them replacing that car with a new one. But not so for buildings. Modernism taught us that contemporary architecture creates uncomfortable, alienating places. Nobody wants this in their own neighbourhoods. So where did we go wrong?
The Mysterious Disappearance of Beautiful Buildings is a legit thing. It is in very obvious ways harming our cities. We need to fix that. And this is not really helping, because I never heard anyone blaming the disappearance of some ancient empire.
(*) obligatory mention that ancient Roman buildings and statues were not actually white.
Many features of older buildings are practical as well. Cornices, window caps, peaked roofs in rainy climates. And modern architects are so dead set against adding them as practical features that it often shortens the lifespan of newer buildings
My understanding is that the cost is labor-related, not technology-related; but then again, I'm no architect.
Some new condominiums went up in my town. They are orange and gray. Why would one think people want to look at orange rectangles? I've seen the same orange rectangle in the town next to me too. I wish I could include a photograph.
👍💖
Melbourne has some weird similarities to Auckland in that we have enormous swathes of historic listings of complete junk. We're talking bland, single-storey workers cottages that nobody is allowed to demolish. Historic listings of concrete roads from the pre-war time. Historic listings of abandoned warehouses and factories that have been empty for half a century. History shouldn't mean we abandoned things and never touch them again, it should mean that we maintain our past as a gift to the future generations. If we don't maintain any of it, there's no point having it.
And yet today people flock to Paris for its architecture and grand designs.Its streets may have been paved with ‘bad’ intentions but it built one of the most iconic cities in all of human history.
💯
The whining about Napoleon III at the end of this video was particularly insufferable. ‘Oh he was a TYRANT’ yeah but not nearly as much of a tyrant as the masses during the French Revolution. Just seems massively historically illiterate to try to impose 1990’s neoliberal definitions of tyranny or political repression into the rebuilding second empire period which had just made it through so much social turbulence.
Haussmann rebuilt Paris because it was overcrowded and didnt have sewers. Not bad intentions ^^'
Most people that question these things actually don't have set "beliefs" about the past. So labeling doesn't usually apply (like tartarians.) Most of us are just that, questioning without speculation.
Many people grew up in a time and place when “history” was about kings and emperors. For them, monumental architecture is naturally synonymous with historical architecture. I get interested in old streets, canals, and defensive structures, and I can trace most of that to the way _I_ was taught history.
I have experienced this kind of loss. I grew up in a gorgeous, older neighborhood in Denver. I lived in a smallish home (by modern standards) on a double lot. The home was torn down so that two homes could be built in its place. Of course, the two new homes are modern and ugly when compared to the old brick home that I grew up in. I am not going to be believing in the Tartarians any time soon, but this sentiment makes more sense.
The reason behind the loss of grand architecture is the lowering of the top marginal corporate tax rate.
Without the pressure to find something to do with all their earnings, lest Uncle Sam take 95% of it, businesses no longer have an incentive to show off their wealth through the hiring of tradesmen and architects. We live in the era of the MVP: the minimum viable product. Corporations need not spend away their punitively-taxable liquidity in the manufacture of beautiful buildings when monolithic glass dicks built by migrant labor are cheaper and there is no taxation anymore.
Raise taxes on corporations, FORCE them to reinvest their capital instead of hoarding it or giving it away to billionaires (who also need a top marginal tax increase), and you will INSTANTLY see corporations restart conspicuous consumption in the name of the Tax Write-Off, which in itself is an artform that is long passed (you don't need to lower your tax bracket when you're not being taxed at the upper brackets.)
We still might not be able to afford homes for awhile after that, but at least things will LOOK better from our tents.
This is the most ridiculous reason I've heard for increasing corporate tax rate, who gives a rats ass about corporations building "nicer looking" office towers? Making a classical looking facades for multi-million dollar projects is a drop in the water, theres not change in structure, there's just no point because modern corporationa prefer not to seem like they're linked to old money and values.
@@jansenart0 You're whole statement is based on the assumption that Corporations don't operate with tax law (the Tax Write-Off, as you say) influencing their decisions anymore. I assure you, tax write-offs are still fully in play. The way the rest of your comment is worded sounds just like something the people who claim Corporations have _too many_ write-offs would say.
In other words, always blame the Corporations, and always tax them (and rich people) as much as possible.
@@BaltimoreAndOhioRR It's simple accounting, and it's clear in the name of the concept: after you breach the top-level corporate tax rate by billions in revenue, you cannot logically write-off enough to bring the rate down!
You can't deny the facts: there was more liquidity among the people and fewer billionaires when taxation on corporations was at its height.
We are now living in neofeudalism and it took only 40 years to get here.
@@jansenart0 fewer billionaires means nothing. Those are just some words to make your argument sound better to the masses who hate corporations and rich people. Guess what? There were fewer $100,000aires during then, also! And fewer $50,000aires, too!
NO WHERE in these United States is a 95% tax rate ever justified! (Yes, I know it's on the amount above a specific, made up, value). We are not the Soviet Union, we are not Communist China.
If I am not mistaken, the Art Museum at the end of the Ben Franklin Parkway was leftover the 1876 Centennial Exposition. There were other building nearby of the same style, but they were demolished after the Exposition. The wide boulevards in addition to hindering the erection of barricades, facilitated the use of artillery to quell disturbances.
The City Beautiful movement also gave many cities large urban parks, with green spaces and places of recreation, so it was not aall bad.
Progress is a voyage where there are more drowning than on the ship
This notion that "progress" is inevitable, or that those who resisted it were fools wasting their time is wrong.
Even the people demanding a halt to AI advance are not wasting their breathe.
You are partly mistaken. The Philadelphia Museum of Art was chartered with the 1876 exposition but the building at the end of the parkway wasn't begun until almost 1900. Up until that point the Fairmount waterworks reservoir was on top of the hill. The water works, a feat to themselves, was also an exhibition in city-wide potable water delivery
Not correct. Both the PMA and the parkway were constructed decades after the bicentennial-by bulldozing dozens of blocks of the city.
@@SubvertTheState That's why when I hear the word "progress" used, I ask to what. So many profess the word but most cant answer that simple question and blind progress is a fools folly.
I'm kinda not sure what the point of this video is. Most of our architecture was borrowed from somewhere to some degree. Philadelphia's early architecture borrows heavily from English architecture. Los Angeles' from Spanish tradition. Main thing I agree with is that architecture should be inspired from local traditions. I'm sure the Tartaria movement has more to do with a disdain for modern architecture than a love for any particular architectural style. Its funny how many people I meet who dislike modern architecture. Almost everyone I've met prefers traditional styles. Yet a majority of what's built now is modern style. And that's very alienating to people. People can innately recognize beauty.
Modern architecture is all technical and zero craftsmanship. Very few have the talent to carve beautiful figures from stone. But any worker can construct a glass curtain wall section in a factory. There’s a feeling of connection to the craftsman’s talent and humanity you don’t get from mass produced buildings. And yes I know even most Victorian ornamentation was horsehair plaster facsimile, but your mind still connects it to ancient craftsmanship.
@@franciscodanconia4324 There was some good modern architecture up to the early 2000s but that stuff has also gone away.
I am talking about amazingly crafted marvels with often oodles of glass and steel done in whimsical ways. Elevators that let you see the mechanical pieces turning, grand skylights, gently curving walkways, chunky pillars, areas with ample plantlife and warm wood, locations for rest and recreation, and often controlled splashes of bold color to calm the senses.
You can see them around sometimes, but many are being torn down because they don't suit the tastes of the people who want bland boxes that they can sell to people with as little risk as possible. Buildings with identity mean that there's a likelihood that some would be turned away from it based on aesthetics alone. But blank boxes allow attachment of signs and decorations, which can be easily removed rather than needing renovation or demo to change. This drives the potential demand up. It's efficient, but ugly. It also means that businesses which ape the startup model are more common, since they're less distinct from those who want to build a legacy. This is likewise destabilizing to a community.
Basically, loads of businesses are spirit halloween now, with a 3-5 year rather than a 3 month lifespan and no way to tell that the store you like has a VC behind it who wants his return.
That's because many architects are brainwashed and/or malignant narcissists and/or weak sheep who do what they think won't stir the pot too much.
I think it’s less that what was was made as a facade hiding a darker truth, but rather that we could make the world more beautiful now without sacrificing functionality, but that doesn’t happen due to the desire to get every ounce of functionality with the least amount of money, and that act causes so many intangible losses that can be felt, but it hard to describe.
It’s hard to argue for beauty when someone asks why we need it. But everyone can appreciate it when it exists and knows it is something that would be a shame to loose.
Thank you. 😊
Beauty = individuality
individuality = non-universal
non-universal = limited amount of buyers
limited amount of buyers = less likely to sell/get a new tenant when the old one goes away
That is the purpose of the bland buildings. They're investments by people who aren't trying to build a legacy. This applies to both commercial AND residential property. So many people buy homes with the express plan of ditching them at some point and recouping their investment, rather than passing it down in the family.
11:30 that was such a sudden and sharp turn in the tone for your conclusion.
It ignored all the other reasons a modern city needs wide boulevards: traffic flow, sanitation, public health, air circulation, civic pride, economic growth, green spaces… just look at Geddes metaphors comparing a city to the human body, parks are the lungs, avenues are the veins, etc.
Your conclusion ignored all that to focus on despotic social control.
I feel your conclusion smacks of another instance where the modern tries to demonize the classical. Equating a preference for grand classical architecture as belonging to an internet conspiracy cult. But maybe that’s just me?
Not just you. I have a somewhat similar comment
I get what you're saying, but read it differently. I took it as a call to action to design our cities thoughtfully based our present needs, rather than merely repeating historic standards wholesale.
Oh, well if there's a metaphor for how it's related to the human body, I guess it must be true.
disingenuous to compare a real desire for more beautiful architecture to a crazy conspiracy theory
i mean sure, those provided examples may not be the greatest examples of neoclassical and beaux art archictecture but that doesnt deminish the fact that many of the greatest "classical" works of architecture were actually part of that kind of neoclassical revival
and yeah...no calling this style of architecture oppressive because "some french king used it to exert and show of power" is bullshit
first of all, its not just kings who used to commission these sorts of buildings, but they were also popular amongst the more well-off parts of the general populace to show of their own level of wealth and prosperity
industrialization has indeed made it possible to mass produce these building parts which has actually allowed these excessive styles of traditional architecture to be made available to many people
britain has many famous examples of revivalist styles (not as baroque as the french i suppose, but the idea still stands) and with britain being more of a long standing democracy than a monarchy those buildings are more about overall national pride rather subservience to a king
and of course, the US literally has its own history of neoclassicism and many of the US historic landmarks that built the country are neoclassical buildings
these are like some really sweeping generalizations made in this video that are entirely ignorant to the culture behind this style of architecture
yeah this guy is a hack. Barely worth listening to.
Demoralisation is the ethos of these government agents. Sell people the belief that once was will never be and what is is as good as it will be. It's objectively true to anyone with an eye to see that we are not living in the most technologically advanced time of the history of this planet. The whole Tartaria story is similar to the flat earth movement in that it serves to shoehorn free-thinking individuals into a group to believe a specified narrative. The reality is likely to be much more nuanced. Humans deserve and will receive much better very soon
So true Misato
I think people are latching on to Second Empire Paris and these Exhibitions because those are the most recent examples of grand classical architecture available to them. Their paranoia is rooted in a more existential hunger for beauty. Modernism was founded on a puritanical reaction against decadence in the lower classes. Mass production made it possible for middle class people to have an ersatz knock off of wealthy opulence. Was it cheap and tacky? Often times, yes, but the modernists wanted to impose their vision of stark utilitarian "authenticity." A project that ultimately only appealed to wealthy people who could flaunt what we call Voluntary Simplicity today. Modernism was widely embraced by builders and mass producers because it was CHEAP to produce. After WW2 there was a legitimate need to make vast quantities of everything quickly and utilitarian anti-design could be marketed as Space Age. Today, we live in an aesthetic wasteland. There is NO beauty in the contemporary cityscape. Even Mies van der Rohe and Les Corbusier would be horrified by what they set in motion. A conspiracy theory about Tartarians is just more glamorous and satisfying than the fact our quality of life has been, and continues to be, co-opted and defiled by the avarice of Capitalistic Corporate greed.
The streamlined toaster! (which is actually practical - "streamlined" household objects are easier to dust than ones with fussy detail.
Well said! With today's technology. I suspect the actual cost to creating well designed facades would not be as expensive as it would have been around WWII. Today one can carve out granite using CNC machines in the fraction of the time it would have taken even two or three decades ago. And one can get fairly fancy if we also incorporate the use of CGI into various CAD projects like CNC stone cutting. Literally create stone artwork. Even making aethietic columns is pretty practical. Same with overhangs etc. The cost would be much lower today with the correct applications
Voluntary Simplicity - ha ha that's a great term for it. I always see it described as "minimalism" but it's really not when consumption is even higher due to everything being handled via services on demand rather than keeping things at hand.
@@Aubreykun I think it's sort of fallen out of fashion lately but, for a while, Voluntary Simplicity was a fad among upper middle class people who gave away all of their jumble and clutter, and reduced their wardrobe to a dozen well chosen pieces. It's a low key self-righteous philosophical social statement for people whose remaining possessions are the best quality possible and who can buy more whenever they choose. Those who can scarcely afford more than a dozen garments call it abject poverty and find it far less amusing.
@@brucetidwell7715 Yup. Also allows some wealthy enough to show off that they can have anything they need at their beck and call with a few taps on their phone.
I think a lot of this comes from the feeling that modern architecture is just......ugly. Those older buildings with their visual hierarchies, their classical proportions, and their detail and their decoration were beautiful. So much of modern construction- especially the 'monumental' buildings of the 20th and 21st centuries, lack visual hierarchy, classical proportions, or attention to detail. Their beauty often pales in comparison to what came before.
What was considered beautiful was largely unchanged in principle for nearly 2000 years. And then modernism and post-modernism came around, and with some exceptions, failed to deliver.
We need to build more cool, walkable towns - with nice architecture again!
Tartaria was labeled on many old world maps (you can see these maps very clearly on the library of congress archives online).
While it was not some "cover up" the true reason for embedding sacred geometric symbols, principals and proportions into our buildings of the past runs much, much deeper than "pretty ornamentation" as you say and aligns with the astrological ages of man, the law of one and the many cycles of the rising and the falling of the collective consciousness.
Thanks for an excellent and informative essay! Now, if only we could find the missing civilization behind the 1967 Montreal Expo. What a world that must've been!
Thank you for a thought provoking video!
Paris may have been planned for military strategy but thank the French that it's well planned and beautiful. In the best scenario, the economic driver of a project isn't divorced from civic value. And vice versa.
The setbacks on the wide boulevards allow light to bathe the city and provide plenty of space for cultural events. Military parades? Sure, the Arc de Triomphe is an exclamation point on that concept. But is there a more famous avenue for culture than the Champs-Élysées?
It was correct for Paris to limit the height of buildings. That would not have been right for Chicago. I celebrate both! Chicago did well to preserve the Cliff Wall and allow for incredible innovation in other places.
I'm not a fan of all building styles but I appreciate that there are building blocks, learning and progression. There's value in that. I'm glad that Chicago has great examples of this.
I like Federal plaza but boxes of windows have become soulless in parts of the city. On the other hand, without Van der Rohe, would we have 333 Wacker?
Forgive my ramblings.
The reason behind the loss of grand architecture is the lowering of the top marginal corporate tax rate.
Without the pressure to find something to do with all their earnings, lest Uncle Sam take 95% of it, businesses no longer have an incentive to show off their wealth through the hiring of tradesmen and architects. We live in the era of the MVP: the minimum viable product. Corporations need not spend away their punitively-taxable liquidity in the manufacture of beautiful buildings when monolithic glass dicks built by migrant labor are cheaper and there is no taxation anymore.
Raise taxes on corporations, FORCE them to reinvest their capital instead of hoarding it or giving it away to billionaires (who also need a top marginal tax increase), and you will INSTANTLY see corporations restart conspicuous consumption in the name of the Tax Write-Off, which in itself is an artform that is long passed (you don't need to lower your tax bracket when you're not being taxed at the upper brackets.)
We still might not be able to afford homes for awhile after that, but at least things will LOOK better from our tents.
You really want to make sure the Paris before 1789 is a physical reality...
You have a point but it has more to do with weaker governments than corporate taxes. European nations tax everyone more and they invest it into infrastructure along with strong regulations to ensure the building is there to last and meet the style.
Americans have delegated that responsibility to the elite and they essentially decide what the city looks like not the government (people).
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 Paris was much better pre-revolution. yes.
There is not that much liquidity in corporations, so that take misses the mark by a wide margin. What there is, is an extreme tendency to avoid risk coupled with a lack of a sense of trust, unity, and loyalty to the groups of people who make up these companies - fueled by (again) risk-avoidance. But specifically, risk-avoidance in the manner of trying to beat the peter principle via the practice of hiring to fill middle/upper vacancies rather than promoting people from within and continuing to hire at the lower rungs. The rampant job-hopping means the entire structure is full of interpersonal holes and people don't really care if the company lives or not or how the products or services are.
It just results in: Why would you build a monument (beautiful architecture) to something you don't care about?
God, would you look at all the anti-tax bots i riled up.
I think this same mentality needs to be turned towards any modern construction or post-modern architecture as well. Many of those neighborhoods that were "destroyed" by way of the City Beautiful movement were in fact crowded, smoggy, smoke-filled slums. As many know, 75% of those polled rank Classical architecture as the most beautiful style. Following this logic, if we are to make way for new monuments and redesigned cities, they need to incorporate this knowledge. Modern architects, just like those "insensitive Victorians", are just as guilty (more-so, possibly) of subjugating the desires of residents and patterns of vernacular cities and towns to the corporate executives that need vessels for their real-estate holdings, or new office blocks for workers. The CEO and board room have become the new Napoleons: dictating the lay of the land and impacting style on a scale he could only have dreamed of. Napoleon, indirectly at least, inspired untold masses with the style that eventually made its way to the forefront of a more idealistic and egalitarian America. Most of those buildings on Franklin Parkway were designed for the benefit of the public.
Can we just accept that beautiful buildings, full of light and a human touch, are better than Brutalist, post-modern polygons that break our minds and fill our souls with dread?
Many of those big fair buildings were not made of stone, but plaster and wood only meant to stand for the duration of the fair. In the Omaha at a museum I was surprised to learn Omaha had a pretty big fair of its own in 1898 the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition. Some buildings were reused once, but afterwards it was torn down because it wasn’t meant to last.
I am a Nebraskan and never knew this. Thanks for the information.
13:27 "You, you're a details person. You check at least half a dozen reviews before making any big ticket purchase..."
I feel exposed, Stewart!
People obsessed with neoclassical aesthetics, stark white marble buildings and statues always conveniently overlook that just about everything in Ancient Greece was painted in bright garish colors.
I'm not sure how garish they were. We can identify the pigments used, but a lot of info on tints and shades are lost to us.
I've known about the Chicago world fair thing for some time now, but this is the first time I'd ever seen someone try to make it into a conspiracy involving the Tartars. I think this might be one of those situations where someone tries to attach a belief to another group of people that they don't have much contact with.
Um… that entire Subreddit has considered it a conspiracy for YEARS. Did you see the dates on those posts? This video author is trying to DEBUNK those lunatics.
@@VAULT-TEC_INC.cope
A grand event like a World's Fair or Exposition owed a great part of its success to the very fact of its temporary nature. When the opportunity to witness a spectacle was limited (and therefore valuable), FOMO ruled, and eager throngs would travel far at considerable expense to attend. Such a thing was perhaps the most exciting event of many people's lives.
Cope
This guy actually makes the argument that beauty has to be sold to you and not that there is natural demand.
Bug man psychology.
Yeah definitely a "Bug Man" brain level video here.
People desire beauty. It is a human need. I am a true believer in Tartaria. The world's fair is a convenient excuse do destroy our Beautiful heritage. There are many beautiful in the late 1800s that never had any world's fairs and still got demolished. Cincinnati is really good example of this. The before an afters are wild.
What does "Bug man psychology" mean?
Parisian beauty does have to be sold to you. Chicago is inherently beautiful, because it eventually carved its own identity. Not because it became Paris 2.0.
@@someone2987 Misanthropic mentality where one has been convinced that everything would be be better if most people were to simply be cogs in a grand machine with limits and restrictions on what we can consume and demand, as well as many decisions being made for us so we aren't burdened by the stress of agency. All in the name of harmony, security, and safety.
I can’t fathom that we as a society all over the world moved away from building grand, beautiful spaces for everyone to enjoy 😢
"For everyone to enjoy", that statement is a lie. The Palace of Versailles is a testament to French Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical beauty as expressed through architecture and garden design, but most of France were not allowed to enter the palace, much less the land it is built on until the French Third Republic. Neuschwanstein Castle is the most beautiful of the "Mad King" Ludwig II's projects that were completed, but this building and all the other buildings WERE off-limits to the public until after the King's death and the Bavarian government deciding to open it up for public visits. The Forbidden City and the Old Summer Palace in Beijing are testaments to East Asian architecture and garden design yet they were only open to the public in 1924, 12 years after the fall of the Chinese Empire. Even the Kingdom of Hawaii has the Iolani Palace that was off-limits to the public until the overthrow of the monarchy.
Point is... Most of the most beautiful buildings on earth are built NOT FOR THE BENEFIT OD EVERYONE. They were built as monuments to their patrons. Shelley's Ozymandias captures the rationale of such monuments well...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 sure, but we have now the means to design out cities like emperors were able to design their palaces and gardens. I don't get that mentality of "welp, stalin drank water so i guess it's time to die from dehydration"
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 By 1900s the sense that 'beauty in public spaces was for all' was already a principle of European public architecture. In the _belle epoque_ luxury and gracious spaces were being democratized on an unprecedented scale. See, for example: Paris, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, old Havana...
@@sohlasattelite"Civic Architecture" is a recent concept that can be traced to Rome but it finds expression with countries and states that have a republican government. Florence during its time as an independent city state - especially under the Medicis - spend on building public spaces like Piazzas and cathedrals partially as a way to buy the public approval of their rule. Same with Venice with the Plaza of San Marco. What did the Kings of England or the Holy Roman Emperor or even the Chinese Emperor built for the public benefit before the French Revolution?
As I said, rulers don't build things for the public good most of the time, they were built mostly to satisfy their ego, and if they built anything like that they are off-limits to most of the public...
@@harbl99My point is that for most of its history between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the French Revolution, any state that doesn't rely on the patronage of the "popular" masses don't build things for their benefit...
The impetus driving the Tartaria myth isn’t some philosophical nonsense about “erasing history”, it’s the fact that buildings in the past were objectively better looking and we appear to have lost the ability to build them.
exactly
It's kind of interesting how those "objectively better looking" building, look so bloated and downright horrible.
Cope. You haven’t dug deep enough
@@Crosbie85 oh stop with the nonsense
Please consider doing a video on crime prevention by design!
Yeah! Start with the island of Mykonos! Really interesting stuff
I heard that even keeping lawns mowed can reduce crime.
Guys, there are whole YT channels dedicated to revealing the “Old World” buildings in American cities, where the old world refers to previous civilizations with modern design and construction technologies. The thinking is that, since people before circa mid-1900s couldn’t possibly build grand buildings like, say, the old St Louis Courthouse or the Cologne Cathedral, they must have been leftover from a previous civilization and discovered when our civilization moved in. In this telling, the world wars and depression are an Orwellian rewrite of history to explain the collapsed ruins that had to be bulldozed away to erect our cities around these still-standing old world structures. It’s really quite the conspiracy theory!
It’s true
It literally has to be true considering the population and the timeline of some of these places where these grand buildings were “built”. Your not building a cathedral with a town population of 1000 people and horse and buggy in 1 years time it simply makes no sense
The exhibition was basically a filmset
This whole Tartarian conspiracy theory just boggles the mind with the whole ancient globe-spanning civilization stuff and I just don't get what it has to do with historic preservation of these City Beautiful buildings. It's like they've never heard of the neoclassical architecture movement in vogue at the time! It's certainly an interesting footnote to the story of these beautiful forgotten buildings but I feel like the pseudohistory detracts from the story as a whole.
I definitely think this was a well-produced, fascinating, and informative video, but in my opinion the pseudohistory mentioned in the start leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Average Joe isn't aware of all the different architectural periods that have occurred.
All you have to do is ask how the buildings were built with horses and wagons. No one has an answer. Especially the issue was not addressed in the subject video.
I mostly agree with you, although your analysis of Napoleon III and the work of Haussman is a little bit simplistic, lol. It's true that there was a political aspect in opening the medieval quarters with big boulevards since they were easy to occupy for revolutionaries, but it was also a time of industrialization, enlightenment and rationalization : bviously the "Ville Lumière" would be up-to-date in terms of urbanism and very audacious at it. Napoleon III is pretty loved by the French people to this day, and isn't remembered as a tyran. He first had this idea of urbanistic renovation of Paris during his stay in London when witnessing their new modern quarters. Haussman's work was indeed extremely controversial and destructive, that's a fact, but also necessary to bring Paris into a modernity and get rid of the dangerous maze-like slums of the old medieval quarters. Also, it wasn't just a cynical and control driven renovation ; Haussman literally moved entire domes to fit at the end of its boulevards, simply for aesthetics... The city is now better for it, even if we lost a big part of its history.
It’s interesting because the jewel of San Diego, Balboa Park, has a similar story with it being a world’s fair and the buildings being temporary. But they were preserved and have been the inspiration for a lot of architecture in SoCal. I suppose you could call it theme park architecture, but I call it beautiful and resonant and far preferable to a lot of current architectural trends.
Often some fair buildings were built to last, see also 1904 world's fair in St. Louis. Depending on how low quality the original, it may have been replaced (see San Francisco Palace of fine arts) as well.
One of the Columbian exposition buildings survived. The fine arts building is now the griffin museum of science and industry. I think I read somewhere that for a while it was the home of the field museum before it's current building was constructed.
8:37 That is not a majestic boulevard. That is a car sewer that only Le Corbusier and General Motors could love.
Facts.
I don’t think you know what boulevard is….
Who cares that these were temporary. We all know most of the world’s most beautiful buildings were replaced by cinder block nasty ghetto buildings or parking lots.
I think a hard pill for modern architects to swallow is that modern architecture is boring most of the time it doesn’t bring joy or excitement that old forms of architecture brings.
I think it’s a bit disingenuous to insinuate paris is bad because it’s wide boulevards make for easy military or having uniform architecture is bad like when send boulevards provide natural light greenery easier form of transportation (which is what a lot of cities need now more the ever), uniform architecture can be really beautiful especially when said architecture is beautiful.
Thank you. 100% Agree. I usually like Stuart's topics, but this attack on the City Beautiful movement feels like a complete departure in tone and substance.
I for one can agree that this concept of modern architecture is absolutely ridiculous. It lacks so much character.
We WERE going towards some beautiful stuff. There were obvious eyesores that got approved like The Blob (Selfridges Building in Birmingham) but overall there was this idea of trying to make things cool and futuristic up until the mid-2000s or so, with examples that still exist despite many being torn down already. But that fell out of favor in place of intentionally-bland boxes made in the interest of reducing risk.
A few places have interesting stuff but visionary architects just aren't given as much of a shot anymore. For example, there's some buildings in bolivia put up within the last decade that look amazing, but I don't believe the guy who designed them (Freddy Mamani) has been take up for much outside his local area.
@@williamdunklincity beautiful movement of the late 19th to early 20th century was about giving people living in cities access to modern amenities and green space and comparing it to the “city planning” of the 1950s and onwards that prioritized suburbs and that destroyed historic downtowns of cities to make space for automobiles is just crazy these two are completely opposite of each other the only thing they have in common is that they are a form of city planning.
One was to help people in the city, the other one was to kick people out of the city.
I don't think the style of architecture matters as much as the rarity of public spaces now days. Dallas has Fair Park with an esplanade featuring several buildings in Art Deco/ Art Moderne. You could have a public space done in Brutalism and it would work... almost.
public spaces suffer from the tragedy of the commons. Private spaces are MUCH better.
I think the style of architecture certainly does matter; like Milton Keynes, for example
@@tann_man troll harder
@@C.Petsos I'm not trolling.
Without a doubt, this is one of the best constructed, written and realized informational videos I’ve ever seen on RUclips. I’m an architecture buff and I knew very little of this. I had never heard of the Tartarian theory (wackadoo!!) nor how Napoleon rebuilt Paris. Excellent job!
It’s kind of hilarious. Especially when one of them has a drawing of a grand building, like there’s one of a proposed city hall for Cleveland, and they failed to consider the building wasn’t destroyed it was never built because it’s a drawing not a photograph 😂
@ I know, right? There are people who have souvenirs from the Chicago World’s Fair that their great grandparents left them and stories written about the experience and yet these people assign an alternate history to it. All anyone has to do these days is just write or say something on the internet and there’s a subculture of Dunning Kruger madmen ready to embrace it. 🤣
But where did the name of this theory come from? The Tar Tar people lived in Central Asia and were mostly wiped out by the Mongols hundreds of years before these buildings were conceived.
@@duB420Grass that’s a good question. While these people are crazy, they do know how to look things up. Another question is why did they assign this classic architecture a culture that existed before there even was grand architecture as we know it today?
No conspiracy is required to explain why one century of civilization builds wonderful things and the next century destroys it - it's just human nature to remove the old and replace it with the new, like it or loathe it.
Cope
It's so weird cause they are just looking at neo classical buildings like... Roman and Greek inspired things that are indeed empires that affected the whole world.
and western european culture which has dominated by hundreds of years now. Although one can argue post-war it has declined in power, and architectural prowess.
Actually, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry is a surviving structure of the exposition.
Photos were illegal for all World's Fair attendees. They had a large police force ONLY to enforce no photos. If the word cover-up had an event, it was the Fairs.
Thanks, Stewart. This was excellent! Another, slightly more recent example these Tartarian-types might want to look at is Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. It was built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition out of plaster and wood, like the Chicago Exhibition, but the architecture was so grand and popular that it was retained after the Exhibition closed. Of course it deteriorated over the decades. There are numerous photos of it in its later years where you can see plaster elements have fallen off, and the underlyting wood framework and wire lathe are clearly visible. It was eventually demolished and replaced with a concrete replica in the late 60s. The old photos show that it was really just an outdoor stage set, but it is magnificent, and it is set in a beautiful park.
Your story about Franklin Boulevard in Philadelphia reminds me that the kind of sweeping, monumental changes made by these sorts of city planners lasted a very long time. When I was a little kid, Lincoln Center in NYC was being built. It replaced a neighborhood called San Juan Hill, which was a typical working-class neighborhood. By the 1940s it was considered "blighted." All the property was taken by eminent domain and Lincoln Center went up in its place. Even though it was built in a modernist manner, the buildings obviously owe a debt to the kind of architecture that Baron Hausman and Daniel Burnham built decades before. In addition, Lincoln Center was almost completely shut off from the city around it, and on its back side, it was like a fortress, with no visible access to the plaza level or any of the music and theater facilities, with the exception of an entrance to a public library branch. Efforts have been made since to connect it more effectively with the neighborhood, but it's still an alien and rather hostile presence.
That Beaux Arts World Fair architecture is my all time favorite. But in St. Louis the Art museum was built to last and the Museum of S&I in Chicago too. A big difference from the rest built from staff. It's not that confusing. But I run into these Tartarians online all the time.
Even though there are a ton more criticisms that can apply to a lot of one world theories, I appreciate how this video both focused on one core perspective and validated said theorist feeling of lack of place despite asserting that the facts of this architectures spread in America are effectively the opposite of what these internet sleuths believe.
I gave you a thumbs up, I hated this video for how short it was. Such a complex and profound topic deserves a long deep dive, not some shallow 15 minute collaboration... I don't know what I expected really I typically love your videos. This left me hungering for more.
Maybe one day you'll drop us a feature length Magnum Opus, but until then I'll just wait for the next short one
A thing to remember about Daniel Burnham and Chicago was that he was doing this in 1893, just 20 years after much of the city was reduced to cinders in the Great Chicago Fire.
The Exposition and subsequent Burnham Plan tapped into a civic ideal of rising from the ashes.
A final note on the Tartarians is the contempt for Modernism, but what Modernism does when it’s at its best (such as in Mies Van Der Rohe’s Federal Plaza) is to restore the sense of human scale.
When you’re actually there, the open glass facades and austere interiors, draw your attention to the people walking, working, and gathering in those spaces. Quite a remarkable feat for a 40 story skyscraper.
Penn Station was not plaster over wood. The theme should be, "Don't destroy what you can not build".
First the U.S destroyed most of it's own 18/19th century & art-deco/art nouveaux architecture . And now it visits Europe to watch old buildings (that were often re-build after WW2) and invents the mythical Tartaria.
Maybe🤔 they create the conspiracy and control the narrative and then shoot it down. But the fact that they destroyed marble buildings
Buildings are just that, buildings: Assembled constructions with varying and temporary purposes. Imagine if the people from the 1500s felt that the best looking buildings were from the 1400s and that people kept thinking this way. We'd be stuck in the same place for the last 500 years. Architecture reflects its era and the population building it and is bound to evolve and change.
Your 3D models are fantastic.
You saw the same kind of movement in Europe as well, but decades earlier than in the US. For example, Mainz in Germany still has a Medieval feeling (although it was 80% destroyed in WWII) whereas Wiesbaden across the river has a much more Beaux Arts or "City Beautiful" feel to it. Mainz was an important city for centuries while Wiesbaden was just a village which didn't start growing till the early 1800s. Vienna also replaced a lot of its medieval city with much more elaborate Beaux Arts architecture.
The city I’m familiar with, Tulsa, was originally built in the 1890’s but by 1917 the skyscraper came into the city. City beautiful didn’t really hit Tulsa like it did Philadelphia. Instead the new city beautiful of urban renewal became an issue for many city’s like those city’s who did similar with city beautiful. I’m curious how urban renewal took off and compared it to other movements like city beautiful.
Worth mentioning that Paris as we know it today was redesigned by Haussmann. Unlike when London was rebuilt after 1666 when much of the city burned down, Paris was rebuilt without any such tragedy. It was an intact and functional city when Napoleon III ordered Haussmann to redesign it. Many thousands of homes were destroyed to build what Paris is today. Thankfully, Paris turned into a functional and beautiful city, but there were significant concerns that the layout of the streets with wide boulevards was a conspiracy from Napoleon III to prevent riots, since it enabled the police to act quickly and shut down any protests that popped up. This conspiracy is actually true, and Napoleon III wanted to prevent any future revolution like had happened in 1789.
The 'Tartarian empire' might only have been spray painted wood and plaster exhibition halls; but with modern materials, moulding, forming, and 3D printing, why can't we achieve more than the flat warship-grey cladding found on so many city buildings?
We certainly can and often do build non-modern themed buildings (see for example McMansions). However, it seems that builders do not have incentives to build more authentic older style homes for many reasons, such as demand for greater space per person, more bathrooms, open concepts, and of course zoning and safety codes that make for example "missing middle" traditional flats or elaborate cornices infeasible.
@@szurketaltos2693 And that occurs because of people seeing homes as investments rather than places to settle (in the frontiersman sense of the word, not the "particles in a glass of water" sense). The concept of a legacy has become life insurance and a numerical assets in a will.
This was excellent. I’m glad the algorithm knows I’d like it.
it wan't
They call it plaster and staff. It's incredible what can be built out of plaster and staff when labor is cheap. That's the key, cheap labor.
Well, cheap labor and also new technologies. You need both, otherwise your cheap labor isn't skilled enough to create the fine details.
The same thing happened in San Francisco when they had the fair. They built one building to last, The Palace of Fine Arts, and everything else was built out of plaster, wood, and chicken wire. When the fair was done, the fake buildings were torn down.
If your really want a beautiful city, you need to maintain cultural connection, otherwise your just re-imagining Disneyland.
Ironically, Disneyland was built to last (being intended as a *permanent* attraction) by people with experience building movie sets, no less. Some of it more than others - the demolition of the Monsanto House of Tomorrow is a story in itself, the wrecking ball bounced off it!
I'd rather live in Disneyland than in a dystopian, cold, grey concrete hell.
Palace of fine arts did not in fact last. The current building is a recreation. Compare to the St. Louis world's fair, the St. Louis art museum did last as well as a couple other buildings.
@@szurketaltos2693 I stand corrected. Thank you. It appears that Walter S. Johnson gift of $2 million helped turn it into a permanent structure.
@@Feynman981 Disneyland is a description of all that is fake. The land of lies and hollow optimism.
If you wanted to make a video about the City Beautiful Movement then I think you should done that, instead of pretending to do a video on the disappearance of beautiful buildings.
The disappearance of beautiful buildings is a question that applies to outside of America too.
I don't think it's right that you could make a video that purports to be about the disappearance of beautiful buildings without talking about the Modernist and Brutalist movements in architecture and how the aesthetic sensibilites of architects changed. If you were going to actually look at the mystery of the title and not just use it to talk Architecture in American socio-political history then you might look at the example of the King's (then Prince of Wales') architectural project, Poundbury, as an example of different competing aesthetic sensibilites.
It's worth the effort to get details right. The correct name of the school in Paris is: École des Beaux-Arts [Beaux, not Baux]
Great video .... however you failed to address a few of the main tartaria questions .
1. The mud flood
2. Speed of building during the 1860-1914 periods in towns with tiny populations.
Ummm... He failed to grasp the simplest concepts. I'm leaning towards the hypothesis although a lot of their views are silly
What the "tartarian theory" taps into is our yearn for the revival of our intrinsic human ability to craft meaning into our environment.
An intrinsic human ability that has developed separately in all traditional societies but somehow shares a certain timeless quality which reveals a deep profound understanding of the branch of mathematics known as fractal physics.
Tha k you for the Chicago content that has implications far beyond our great city!! 😊
My favorite quotation from my favorite Architecture critic was Ada Louise Huxtable. She said, "Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves... And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."
I recently saw a video someone had posted of American "architectural wonders" that had been tragically demolished and looked over many comments, even some from people in Europe, about how these "old world traditional buildings" had been lost forever. But from the demolition photos, including one of a building that was already sagging from fire damage, it was apparent that most of the buildings had steel frames, and that the "traditional" elements were just parts of the non-structural facades. But, in an important way, that's beside the point. History has always given the world pretentious and fake buildings (eg. the fake-stone Regency building boom in 19th century England, or even Mt. Vernon or the White House) that, as they age and become part of the familiar landscape, become beloved icons, and it's only human to miss them when they disappear, even if they were hated when first completed. We adopt these buildings just as Americans adopted the VW Beetle, the boondoggle of a German dictator against whom we fought the most deadly war in history, as a cute counter-cultural icon of the 1960s. Of course, the White City buildings are an exception, since they were not built to last and would have been almost impossible to maintain, but it's easy to picture the "City Beautiful" buildings being cherished, even if the process under which they were built was riddled with arrogance and shadiness. Whatever its origins, it's still nicer to walk through a glorious plaza than a jumbled "organic" slum.
So we just have to accept parking lots, strip malls, stick frame houses, monolithic glass box skyscrapers
No. Those are for bug men.
We will only accept greatness.
🐝🐜
Sometimes your ideological social lens distorts the essence...
this feels like the word soup version of the “rule of cool.” please elaborate, i can’t tell if this is a reference or something
@@worldisbetter The beauty of the "haussmannian" architecture in Paris does not depend on the fact that Napoleon could send his troups down the large boulevards to combat a potential local uprising. It is beside the point but, he could have done the same if the buildings were ugly.
@@drgyt2469 well said, thanks for elaborating
@@drgyt2469and actually bland oppressive buildings lining the boulevards would be more in keeping with someone wanting to keep the people subdued (look at Soviet architecture). Inspiring beautiful buildings instill pride in the city residents.
Commercial space economics has changed a lot in the last 150yrs. back then your building location really mattered and they was really really high land value in really concentrated space. At those locations so it was worth alot to put an eyecatching building there. But today with commercial space so spread out probably due to automobiles its not worth a lot economically to make buildings that are really expensive to build and maintain. there is also a problem that these traditionally beautiful buildings don't scale well into the really big buildings we have today.
adding a bike lane alone to a shop has been shown to increase revenue by 20-100%. Car dependent shops do far worse than pedestrianized shops. Foot traffic is far more important than cars flying through the road your shop happens to be on.
This video is full of jealousy. Modernists have always tried to make an ideal city and failed. But now it is suddenly classical architects who 'fool people into believing the theme park could become real'. While of course it could become real, there are real cities as beautiful as theme parks. Ever walked through Prague? Also modernists have always been accused of destroying local charm, in this video the classicists are accused of the same and connected to tyranny. This is a dirty move. This is just a cheap revenge video. Also the idea of timeless beauty is rejected by warning: it could just be plaster. But the truth is of course, that some shapes have a timeless power to move us, made of plaster or not. And the timeless shapes are not modernist shapes (repetitive grids) but rounded forms and ornament. I understand, it is incredible painful that people feel more love for a plaster building from 140 years ago than the 'honest' Van der Rohe skyscraper that you like. But just take your loss instead of inventing convoluted arguments against beauty.
Go to the website - "The Aesthetic City" or search on Google - 'The Architecture Uprising'
What a curious, flailing diatribe. The video is stating simple historical facts. The Haussmann regularisation did in fact have a sweeping political aim, including the aspects mentioned in the video. The Beaux-Art school of architectural thought was revisionist. These are widely accepted facts and not in question.
And the world fair did in fact consist of fake facades and mass produced decorations to sell people the story of a grand and noble city.
Architectural history is full of similarly grand notions, and late 19th century neoclassicism is not alone in trying to peddle a throughly untenable vision. There are loads of equally guilty isms and schools of thought. It is one of the more pernicious, however. Especially because people who buy in to it wholesale tend to think all we need from architecture are fluted colonnades, volutes and grandiose avenues. It’s more complicated than that. Immensely so. Any first year student can draw a Greek temple, but ask them to arrange a proper door schedule or provide adequate space for plumbing or door swings, and they come up short. Architecture is hard, and not a matter of Instagram worthy marble fantasies.
I think the point I took is more that master-planning a city is bad no matter what the style is.
Hogwash. I would take a modern city with all of its infrastructure over some piece of stone vanity any day of the week.
More people live in cities today than ever. WTF do you mean modernist cannot build a city?
That is the eye of the beholder. I think two things some of you suffer from is one. You don't appreciate modern structures, and the constraints ancient structures have. You see a glass skyscraper, and are not impressed, because it is so ubiquitous.
Secondly, you fail to see the survivorship bias at play. Only the high quality buildings were kept, and maintained. Over generations those buildings added up, with the average or poorer ones torn down. Over generations it turned into the cities we love today. Rome and Prague were not made in a single day. Some of those land marks were centuries apart.
Oh did I mention many stone quarries would be depleted if we went back to building everything with classical architecture. It is a non renewable resource. It costs a hell of a lot more to mine, and transport it these days with so many cities having already depleted the local stone in some.
@@rasmusjp You are completely missing the point. Of course there are big flaws in Haussmannian destruction, ideology, of course there are lazy copies of old buildings and they can be unpractical or leaky or whatever. The real point is that the majority of the population can quickly develop an emotional connection to classical styles (also to not so classical styles as art nouveau or art deco) a connection which after 100 years they still have not developed for modern styles. So you can throw a thousand good, valid arguments against classical architecture and 19th century city design on a pile and it still doesn't change the fact that we feel good when we walk though a city from before 1940 and we feel bad when we walk through a city from after 1940. All the effort that goes in making these videos could have gone in research in what people actually like, but modern architects just don't care. They present themselves as empathic sociologists, concerned about poverty and segregation, but actually they think they know better than the people and try to smuggle in their repressive dogmas together with their empathy.
Off topic a bit but interesting nonetheless. Louis Sullivan designed the Transportation building which was not in that style. Nicola Tesla installed the AC electric lights which was a first for the world at that scale. The current Museum of Science and Industry was the Palace of Fine Arts and built to be permanent, and is the only original building from the fair still standing.
Tesla also had the first remote controlled drone there as well, in the form of what could be described as a toy boat. The US Navy was not interested if I recall correctly.
I prefer traditional over modern architecture. With that said I think it would be boring if all the buildings were the same style. I might be hard to believe but we would get just as sick of neoclassical buildings if that was all that was built. So, I don't mind an occasional modern building if it is well designed and ages well. I think Paris looks cool with the modern dark and imposing Tour Montparnasse towering over the uniformity of the city.
public, government-funded buildings should only be designed and built in such a way that the people will treasure it, and to demolish it would be unthinkable. the most sustainable building is one that people want to keep around.
Architecture is art and if we are forced to look at it, it should be beautiful art, or it could even be meaningful, but modern architecture is neither beautiful or meaningful.
I hate to think the movement to beautify public spaces is being sidelined as something only conspiracy theorists value.
Cities have planning and zoning committees, they represent the public interest, we can demand beautiful buildings in our cities.
i dont care to watch this whole video as the amount i watched already seems extremely misleading to the point where the title seems to be obviously a clickbait sort of title in order to trap tartarian believers into watching a video which will make them feel stupid at best... ur condescending little tone is not appreciated
Trying to make the claim? It's a fact...and with a little common sense and research it will become clear ....we didn't build these structures with a donkey and cart technology . We can't build them now...just like we can't get to the moon. We forgot and lost the tech. Gimme a break ...
I have to say my tastes are quite conservative. I don't know why we have to live in a world full of copy-pasta miserable architecture when we know what we prefer and that it'll likely cost little more improve the general vista of everyone.
I blame rentier capitalism.
getting the same fire safety, thermal insulation, etc., when using "pretty" materials -- probably not going to cost just a little more
@@pukpukkrolik I dunno. There's a movement in Europe to try to make buildings much less 'meh' and fit into the built environment. It's a choice.
just like the destruction of american cities in the 50-80's we also are familiar with its ugly head here in Europe.. Rotterdam..birmingham... the hague,hamburg.. dresden.. and ofcourse the bigwig cities such as vienna,berlin and brussels all lost so much of our historical grandeur architecture,this is definitely not by accident as it is by design,modernist ''architects'' with dubious political beliefs have been ruining our city's social fabric since atleast the 60's.
''b-but some of these cities got carpet bombed'' inb4,look at poland. almost entirely wiped off the map yet for some reason they seem to be able to rebuild beautifully,look at GDansk.
The main questions that are rarely ever answered much less even given the most basic information about are 1. Where did all these “builders “ come from thousands of massive buildings were built at the same time in the largest cities to the smallest. Where did they live? Who feed them? 2. Where did all the materials come from? Who mined them? Who quarried them? Who made the millions of bricks ? Who moved them on non existent roads or at best dirt paths to the sites? How did they move them? We are never given any information on these things. Its even more questionable when we are given so many grand buildings with an architect who had never designed a building before or at best a much smaller one. And almost every single building of importance from that time has a fire in its story as well … even ones that were fireproof.
13:40 Give Well, a wonderful charitable organization.
Guys, he’s part of the conspiracy…
Huge missing segment from this video: why people generally wanted City Beautiful, why they wanted what they saw in Chicago 1893 and St Louis 1904. Specifically, why people-not tyrants, governments, and master planners-disliked the cities wrought by the Industrial Revolution by the end of the 1800s.
And this is hugely important, because it also explains why people started escaping the city when first streetcars and the automobiles gave them the chance. It explains why everyone jumped at urban renewal and futurama. Essentially, you’re leaving out the whole driving force behind 1900s urbanism.
Really appreciate your analysis here, especially the rhetorical inversion of the anxieties that are reflected by Tartarian conspiracy theorists. However, I think that there is a crosscutting issue going on here. Specifically, fascism -- or at least the sort of tendencies that underlie it. Reading through their reddit spaces, Tartarians are aesthetically aligned with these instances of grand architecture -- partly *because* of the totalitarian aspects (both practical,a la Haussmann, but also aesthetic, a la expressions of power). I think your video does a great job of diagnosing the historical context that explains the negative impulse of the Tartarians ("they took this from us"), but it doesn't address why the positive complaint ("I want an architecture of power") comes about. 10/10 video. wonder what you think?
Solve my anxiety. How were the buildings built? Architecture is childs play compared to the physical realities of building massive stone castles, cathedral and dare I say state capitols.
@@eyespymenu I'm not sure I completely understand the question. I suppose it depends on which buildings you mean? You are definitely right, that the logistical and technological (not to mention economic) realities of building monumental architecture are staggering. If you mean medieval cathedrals, then yeah those took many lifetimes to build -- literal generations would pass during the construction of a single building. If you mean a modern cathedral, say the national cathedral in DC, then it was much faster (mainly due to advances in the use of steel and combustion powered cranes and vehicles etc.) Even still, it took 83 years for the final touches to be done. The construction of the national cathedral is extremely well documented and I suggest checking out their website for some really neat archival photographs etc. It should also be said that, horrifically, many instances of grand architecture in the United States (where I think you are writing from) we also built by slaves (including the US Capitol Building, the White House, and Trinity Church in New York). I hope this answers your question.
I always like your content, but I think this is one of the worse videos you made. You talk about grand beautiful building with contempt for demolishing what came before it, but you conveniently leave out the fact that this is exactly what modern buildings do and did in the past with results that are as ugly as they could get compared to those architectural masterpieces that are bothering you. Oh and the Paris redevelopment project in the 19th century was primarily about improving Paris more so than the militaristic intention that you are imposing on it. The purpose of building new sewers, aqueducts, parks, hospitals, schools, city halls, theaters, churches, markets, and other public buildings are not for the benefit of the military but rather to address things like sanitation and to improve the city. So, yes, I think any American would take the plan of Paris or city beautiful over the architectural monstrosity that we have now and which destroyed our neighborhoods and local identity anyway.
TIL about tartaria
why am I not surprised joe rogaine is promoting russian nationalist historical revisionist non-sense to his millions of impressionable listeners
Great explainer!
Stewart, this presentation / thesis does not come even close to suspending my disbelief.
You didn't even scratch the surface,there's so much more everywhere.
As 2024 will soon be history, I salute your achievements this year and your relentless efforts making this knowledge accessible to most, given they have some interest for it. And the graphics constantly get better and better! But nothing is perfect: you should know that it is the ‘École des Beaux-Arts’ (‘des’ for plural), and that in ‘arts’ both ‘t’ and ‘s’ are mute. I know this sounds picky, however I would have remained silent would the words ‘saucisse’, ‘étang’ or ‘ferraille’ had been misspelled or mispronounced.
If any architect of our time could repeat something like this in plaster and on a smaller scale, he would be one of greatest men of our time, even though rain would immediately dissolve his structure
Architecture is philosophy/religion put into wood and mortar. Lo and behold, as society de-humanized people with secular ideological assumptions, the buildings stopped being built according to human scale, and they became oppressing.
Its the opposite
As societies became more egalitarian and humanist
The buildings turned into bug hives to reflect the new equality
we Judaized
I'm impressed. Your anti-secular comment only took two replies to descend into antisemitism.
@@Fauntleroy. this guy gets it
@@Fauntleroy. you are easily impressed
A fantastic, super interesting topic! Thank you.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile (speaking of falsifying history) to talk about the reconstruction of European cities after the war and - even more so - after the fall of the Soviet Union.
For example, the GDR government blew up the ‘’Berliner Stadtschloss‘’ in 1950 in order to open the ultra-modern ‘’Palast der Republik‘’ right there in 1975. And this was torn down again after 1990 and a kind of replica of the ‘’Stadtschloss‘’, a theme park in the truest sense of the word, was built in its place.