[syl_sau]

On the subjectivity of "beauty" in modern architecture: - if you average the "subjectivity" of most people (in the USA at least), you get "we prefer traditional architecture": https://www.civicart.org/americans-preferred-architecture-fo... - when you study "composition" in painting or photography, it's obvious that there are some "rules" to make some pictures better than others. Of course there is intent, but there's also this aspect of making things pleasant to look at. Maybe it's the intent of harmony, I don't know. What these rules would be is subject to debate, but it's not unusual to think there aren't natural aesthetics rules in architecture. It ultimately stems from our interaction with the world and the patterns we see in nature. To me this untold magic is best shown in one of the most famous greek sculpture "Laocoon and His Sons". An upside down Chrysler Building would look incredibly off.

On survivorship bias: look at the buildings in this painting: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/view-of-washington-dc-ed... . Do they look exceptionally ugly? To be fair they look almost exactly like the ones in the "old town" part of the city where I live (just more red and less orange), which is the most-visited part of my city (because it's pretty and also walkable).

"It was WWI/WWII" -- Modern art debuted before WWI even happened. Marcel Duchamp's first oeuvre was in 1912, his famous Fountain is from 1917. The fracture didn't happen with WWI/WII even though people keep hammering these points. What started however at the start of the century was the rise of global ideologies: Communism mainly. This is not to say it's communism's fault, it's simply to say that the idea of a bright egalitarian future seem to have coincided with a general renounciation to beauty. And as the brilliant (communist) essayist Lukacz puts it, artistic expressions are reflections of the consciousness of a people at any given time. Modern aesthetics is modern ideology.

"Modern architecture is cheaper" -- It's really not. There's plenty of projects everywhere that were built "classically" and are still comparatively cheaper to their modern counterparts.

Some of you have mentioned Scott Alexander's piece (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria and the very important follow-up https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-co...). The only comment who did argue at length for an opposite case was from... an architect. (Yes I've read all of the comments on both articles, yes this topic is my pet-peeve). Of course, he argues that beauty is subjective ("that's your opinion man") and when challenged on the fact that most people seem to find the buildings he champions as frankly repulsive, he defers to the usual "well you have to understand the point of view of the architect"... And no, no I really don't, and in fact nobody ever needed to do that for any building, ever. Except a certain class of architects when it comes to modern buildings.

I could write an essay on this topic, but I've got to stop here.