> The whole decision seems like a joke to me and a lost opportunity to set a decent design standard.
That would require that the individuals involved actually have taste. Instead, as with everything else from this administration, it's a toot on their favourite dog whistle.
Nah, it's just the US reinventing the German Antiqua-Fraktur dispute from more than a century ago, where only Fraktur was appropriate for expressing serious Germanic ideas. A sans typeface is un-German... ahh, un-American!
Of course, a couple of decades after that, Fraktur was declared too Jewish and thoroughly eradicated, killing among other things the sole remaining independent strain of Latin-script handwriting (other than the dominant one invented as a book-copying aid by the Italian humanists, thus “italic”).
Wasn't it mostly Hitler's personal dislike for it? That and the fact that readers in the greater Reich (the bits outside Germany) wouldn't be familiar with, or able to read, Fraktur
> In leftist popular culture there is a love for modernist style architecture, minimalism, and a disrespect for building beautiful things that cost a lot of money or time.
Which leftist popular culture? I mean sure, there was bauhaus, but it’s not like banks are putting up neo-gothic office buildings, they’re putting up spires of glass.
I prefer the protestant restrained aesthetic. Spiritual over material. Governmental buildings should be tastefully humble. It is a signal that the government is a servant of the people.
What’s an example that you’re thinking of? I think this can make sense - I mean if you have a town of 5,000 people and a government office there or something you probably don’t need a big, giant, building (unless that’s the message you’re trying to send). It’s also impractical from a cost-standpoint.
Federal buildings though should have gravitas and signify importance. If they don’t, and/or we think the government isn’t important, I’ll take my tax dollars back, thank you very much.
You can liken this to how western countries are leaving Christianity. Who can believe in God when you drive a Jeep to your mega church next to Costco and everyone is wearing sweatpants? (I’m not particularly spiritual but I see the problems here)
In Europe, Protestant churches are generally built much more humble than Catholic ones, because they are built with different philosophies in mind. (I am not familiar with American churches, so no comments there)
Similarly, I prefer government buildings to go for a similar route. It doesn’t mean that buildings have to ugly or small. But similar to Protestant churches it can humble, functional and elegant at the same time.
I do find it faintly ironic that Sort Of Greek Or Roman Or Something architecture was the villain in Ayn Rand's novel.
Living here in DC I don't especially mind Federalist Architecture, even though it does look like somebody saw some photos of Rome and Athens and kinda mashed them together. But I don't love insisting that a 19th century view of the second century BC must forevermore be the only possible taste.
If you have another architectural style for western civilization which bases its institutions on Greece and Rome, I’d be interested in learning more about it. It’s not necessarily about a 19th century view of 2nd century BC architectural concepts (which itself is a bit of a farce of a comment) but more so about anchoring the longevity and legitimacy of governmental institutions to a historical heritage.
Similarly I wouldn’t recommend, say, that the Afghani people or Mongolia for example build federalist or Greco-Roman style architecture for their government buildings as it wouldn’t make much sense and wouldn’t have any basis in their history.
There’s also some science to it and we know the asymmetrical buildings and buildings which make entrances and other expected features hard to find cause measurable levels of stress and anxiety in the observer. Hostile architecture.
I don’t mind the overall point of your argument, but it’s funny to see a claim that Americans have more reason to use Greco-Roman architecture than a Middle Eastern country. Classical Greek art actually took a lot of influence from the Middle East, and I believe Alexander actually reached te area around Afghanistan (and a Hellenistic kingdom existed there for a while), unlike America.
Well I wouldn’t argue Afghanistan is part of the Middle East culturally or geographically, but even if you did want to argue that, Alexander came and conquered that area for a little bit and then left. It wasn’t ever really culturally Greek.
But the main point isn’t whether afghanistan is Greek; it’s not of course. The main point is that it’s funny to hear an American argue that the US has more of a claim on Greek architecture than Afghanistan.
Because its not real. He is completely right its a 19th century cargo cult of classicism. Its a modern anachronistic mashup of various old styles, I can bet if you asked an actual Greek or Roman era expert they will say these buildings combine elements 500 600 years apart.
I like how it looks but its also lazy and cheesy, I can't blame people who think we need more styles.
You’re missing the point. The styles aren’t meant to be 1-1 matches of Greek or Roman architecture, they’re rather good attempts at building and designing our governments buildings which that they harken to where our legal and cultural traditions hail from. That’s why the Capitol looks the way it does.
I’m not sure how that’s lazy or cheesy. I’m certainly open minded to other styles but they need to be rooted in western civilization. Otherwise you wind up with silly things like replicas of the Eiffel Tower in weirdly designed and inappropriate little French mockup towns, or you wind up with the lowest common denominator - Wal-Mart and strip malls.
Its literally in the name, neoclassicism. All I am saying is why did you say its "farcical" that its a modern view of an old style?
I think it is a lazy copy paste of old tropes. I know because I can see these tendencies in myself too. I like some old styles and if I had my way I could keep listening to newer bands that replicate this style my whole life. But the thing is, without the original inspirational fire behind the style its just a nice copy.
I see you had dissed on brutalism some time before, I really don't understand why. I feel at least in some ways brutalism is a non-pastiche manner achieves things like the imposing sense of grandeur and power of classical architecture.
> If you have another architectural style for western civilization which bases its institutions on Greece and Rome, I’d be interested in learning more about it.
Carolingian architecture didn't just cargo cult, they literally pilfered Roman columns and integrated them into anachronistic designs. If I recall my art history class correctly, the columns from Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel were "repurposed" (looted) from a Roman temple. [1]
This is also an example of architectural skeuomorphism: designing something in a way reminiscent of an older thing, to borrow the associations people have with it. In this case, Roman authority.
As an American I think they’re tacky too. That style of architecture for an airport doesn’t make sense really. Well. I bet it could be pulled off. But the “architects” designing the airports are the same people designing Greco-Roman architecture on disfigured American McMansions.
Art Decó, on the other hand, would look pretty Americana and elegant for your buildings.
It's basically the classical American city depiction for Europeans (noir movies, Superman, old comic strips from newspapers...)
Yea I don’t mind Art Deco at all. I think the car company Cadillac, which is based in the Detroit area, which is in my mind where I think of as the home of that style (even if it’s not), started including Art Deco as part of their design language and I think it’s a good use.
The leftists think trump is a dictator. The right thinks trump is an irresponsibly spending warmonger. And everyone thinks the entire damn government is rife with all sorts of bad things.
What Trump and Friends(TM) are doing here is basically stylizing the government to mimic things people associate with legitimacy since that's in short supply to the government these days. Serif fonts that harken back to when documents were for serious things and handwriting was the less formal format. Greco-roman government buildings and other "antique-ish" styles that subtly imply the legitimacy of the institution therein always has been and always will be.
Likewise I would bet a lot of money that over the next 20yr we don't see many/any 1920s-60s government buildings renovated to remove that aesthetic because people associate those decades with government that seemingly was functional.
Your last paragraph has it totally backwards. The government puts on this huge stupid show of looking big and important and fancy in order to distance itself from the fact that at the end of the day it's an organization that's fairly capriciously deploying violence.
Well, to encapsulate your point here - you don’t believe in the legitimacy of government so of course any attempt by the government to legitimize itself you’d find disagreeable. Is that right?
Projecting an image of legitimacy behooves the government because it makes everything they do (and there is almost always someone who loses dearly whenever the government does something) that much less likely to be resisted. Government is always pushing at the limits of its authority or at least going right up to them so just "seeming" a little more legitimate in the minds of as many people as possible pays back because at the margin that turns into a bunch of fights you don't have to fight, all the work you don't have to do to justify your actions, the appeals that aren't filed, etc, etc.
Think about how HN just takes whatever the EPA says at face value vs scrutinizing ICE. Every office, department, etc, etc, aspires to get the EPA treatment from as much of society as possible. Acting the part is part is part of that.
That would require that the individuals involved actually have taste. Instead, as with everything else from this administration, it's a toot on their favourite dog whistle.