The Source of Ugliness

There is a noticeable ugliness inwards much 20th-century architecture, design, too town planning that expresses a deeply rooted work inwards the means nosotros convey learned to think. The problem, equally I endeavor to present inwards my book, tin locomote traced dorsum to Descartes (or fifty-fifty farther to William of Ockham). If I may caricature somewhat, Descartes lay the foundations of modern instrumental argue yesteryear reducing everything to positions on a conceptual grid. Very efficient, real helpful - similar putting the earth on a slab inwards social club to ship a post-mortem (or vivesection). The industrial method is similar - for the sake of volume production too sectionalization of labour (sometimes called Taylorism). This is what Christopher Alexander says almost it: "Mass production, high industry, too lower arts and crafts techniques advocated inwards the 20th century, equally a resultant of Taylorism, led to a earth where it was idea efficient or practiced to brand things out of massive ultra-simple elements similar huge prefabricated concrete panels, which would too then locomote joined inwards the simplest ways, too without pregnant differentiation at the joints..." Everything has to check into "brutalized rectangles". On his website too inwards his books, such equally Pattern Language too The Nature of Order, listed inwards the Links section, you lot volition detect Alexander's detailed analysis of this phenomenon too his solution to it.

The contrast betwixt buildings produced from the Cartesian analytic mentality and, for example, the medieval Gothic cathedrals or the plant of Antoni Gaudi inwards the 20th century could non locomote to a greater extent than extreme. The latter are participatory too organic inwards project design too execution, equally is nearly all traditional architecture the earth over. There are lessons hither non exclusively for architects too designers of sacred spaces, exactly for those who pattern buildings for secular use, too fifty-fifty for managers of organizations too communities. Please authorities annotation that I am not saying that all modern architecture is ugly, or that Gothic is best, exactly that yesteryear comparison the worst of the modern amongst the best of the ancient too medieval, nosotros tin larn something truthful too useful.

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