Most people don’t consider how architecture is important to relationships. Good architecture helps you meet and get to know people. But what few people realize is that the stores, office buildings, and houses they live in are often designed to stop this from happening.
Why would architects want to design unhappy buildings? To push an agenda. The preachers of social justice have realized architecture’s significance and used it to subtly change our behavior, our values, and beliefs. They want to change how we interact, and that includes isolating people and destroying their relationships.
Changed Sex Roles
Classic column orders
Ancient languages were infused with gender. Early people saw gender differences in everything around them. Gender became weaker and less important over time, until progressives erased gender completely. Today’s gender-neutral language inculcates a false belief that male and female are equal.
Sexes were distinct in architecture as well. The Greek Doric order, with its robust and austere proportions represented the man. The slim and decorative Ionic order represented the female. Designers emulated the inherent human roles they saw in the natural world.
But modern progressives decided that a person’s sex is just a construct of conditioning. They decided women are less useful to the economy as stay-at-home mothers and more productive in the workforce and as prodigious consumers. To change human roles they changed environmental expectations.
Just as modernists erased gender from language, they removed it from our buildings and made purely functional structure that did not speak to the sexes. Distinction is rarely made that correlates to the sexes: sturdy vs. slim, bare vs. adorned, dominant vs. subservient, geometric vs. whimsical.
“…it is necessary to understand the historic origins and enduring popular appeal of these binaries in order that we can dismantle them. The blurring of these spheres (of formal and informal economies, public and private space, core and periphery) is articulated especially clearly in… the household.” (Cities and Gender, Helen Jarvis, p. 24)
Feminists try to erase icons that promote “gender roles,” such as the “controversial” statue of a kissing couple at London’s St. Pancras Station. Heterosexual and masculine images are quickly disappearing, or “creepy” statues such as Marilyn Monroe in Chicago.
Today’s architecture pushes unnatural expectations. The Women’s Restroom Bill of 1987 mandated that men’s and women’s bathrooms be exactly the same, except what is necessary for biological differences. Before this, men’s bathrooms were communal and accommodated more people. Women’s restrooms placed toilets behind a lockable doors and had extra spaces for childcare, grooming, and resting.
But now men are forced to seclude themselves like women behind partitions, and the greater effort women need to groom themselves is not supported. The man’s restroom today is sexually insecure and the woman’s restroom makes women look sloppy.
Philip Johnson’s celebrated Glass House of 1949 made the home into an exhibitionist experience. Glass walls opened the bedroom to the world, a voyeuristic dream. Next to that, his Brick House placed the bed under churchy vaulted ceilings. Feminine textures and materials combined with a traditionally male structure to confuse gender.
Johnson’s homosexuality was recognized as the bedroom “became a queering of the cave into a vaulted chamber… Sadean pleasure palace.” (Betsky, 1997 p. 115) Such architects queered the definition of manliness by manipulating gender in their architecture.
Isolated Spaces
One of the most emulated architects of modern times, Le Corbusier, sought to change how the family interacts. His iconic Schroeder House (1924) would “redefine family life, women’s rights and the responsibilities and to each other.” (Family Matters: The Schroder House, Gerrit Rietveld and Truus Schroder p.81) He made no distinction of whom certain spaces were for. Corbusier got rid of traditional feminine elements and shared family spaces to “give the impression of being alone, and if desired completely alone.” (Eilieen Gray)
Cobusier’s client Eileen Gray may have preferred to feel lonely, as she hopped from one lesbian relationship to the next, but it does not suit normal people. An emphasis on loneliness undermined families across the world.
In Thailand, traditional dwellings in clustered apartments around communal spaces for related family groups. These families themselves had more personal shared spaces. But Thailand’s modern house, influenced by modernism, has larger personal spaces and “no place for family gatherings.” (Thai House: Vernacular Heritage, Mariana Correia, 241)
Public spaces have traditionally been associated with male and private spaces with female. The removal of masculine in today’s public areas causes confusion of public and private functions.
As Roosh recently pointed out, clubs are increasingly becoming difficult places to meet girls. Clubs once had separate spaces for socializing, with appropriate lighting, sound levels, and seating arrangements. But now, music blares, women text, and individuals rub up against each other and don’t actually talk. Why did clubs change? The removal of the male from public architecture. Today’s club may make a woman feel “safe,” like she would at home.
Oppressive Feminism Isolates Men
Wexner Center
Feminists increasingly demand to “feel safe” wherever they go. They demand that the world to conform to their crazy impulses.
Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center of 1989 is one of the most successful examples of post-modern design. But feminists complain that it makes them feel unsafe. They complain that its unusual form allows hiding spots for potential rapists, un-sheltered outdoor pathways leave them exposed to rain, marble walkways are slick, outdoor areas are breezy, windows cause glare from the sun, and stairways are dark. For these reasons, feminist Kathryn Anthony says, “The building was designed from the perspective of an able-bodied male, without much sensitivity to the different kinds of people who actually use the building.” (Designing for Diversity…, Kathryn H. Anthony, p. 18)
Examples From History
Sex roles ought to be the norm, and exceptions can be accommodated in a separate space. Early European settlers in Australia wiped out the aboriginal jilmi which accommodated a single woman’s special needs. They thought it was “prison-like” to isolate single women away from everyone else. But it turned out this was important for social cohesion. Similarly, the Law of Moses set certain standards for women in the community. The community in those days did not bow down to their needs, but rather made a separate space to accommodate them.
Ancient Egyptian, Roman, and Oriental houses had separate areas for women and men. Englishman Robert Kerr outlined gender-specific organizations and functions for each room of a house. Emphasis was placed on the man as the leader of the household. The radial paths of garden paths at the Duke of Beaufort’s residence all converged on his dining chair. (see Gender Studies in Architecture…, Dorte Routledge, p. 135) Architecture reinforced healthy expectations of human interactions.
Today’s house assigns no hierarchy of gender to its rooms, which means women take over the entire house. By designing from a female frame, less emphasis is made on the diversity of the household, its hierarchy, or of the diversity and hierarchy of the community. If the man is lucky, he can have the garage for his “man-cave.” But along with the house, public and work spaces are overtaken and forced to serve the woman’s needs.
Early Irish natives were nomadic tribes who repeatedly dismantled and rebuilt their dwellings. Over time, construction of their tents became a ritual that symbolized the marriage of the owners. Then, as today, the dwellings were constructed by men and the interior furnished by women. This distinction made the tent ritualistically “a site of creation, separation, autonomy and mobility.” (Vernacuular Architecture in the 21st Century, Lindsay Asquith, p. 80) Both men and women had a role in architecture, but in proper and distinguished ways. Today, how many men are in control of the house they live in?
Such consideration must be made in today’s architecture. The public needs to recognize the gender manipulation and oppressive expectations pushed on them by their environment. Today’s push against traditional gendered architecture isolates men. Public spaces do not help men and women meet each other, because they suit the woman’s need to “feel safe.” Private spaces do not foster a harmonious family relationship because they manipulate the natural family hierarchy.
The presence of gender in architecture helps couples meet each other in public places and live happily in domestic places. Its removal and manipulation is pushing men and women apart.
Read More: The Hypocritical Discrimination Of Relationships Between Young Women And Mature Men
This article touches on something profound.
I’d argue bad architecture is responsible for a huge number of society’s problems. Poverty mostly. But also depression and anxiety significantly.
It’s a fascinating subject. And it reaches further and deeper than most people will ever know
yep. Modern art and architecture are aimed at destroying beauty and making for ugliness, depression, etc.
Also some buildings look inappropriate, like genetalia, etc.
Rather than glorify God by create beautiful things, there is obviously an effort to make disgusting manmade things to encourage a hatred of God, atheism, etc.
“Rather than glorify God by create beautiful things, there is
obviously an effort to make disgusting manmade things to encourage a
hatred of God, atheism, etc.”
-So true. Athiesm and the rejection of God is on the rise, and all the mainstream religions indicated this would be one of the signs of the end times. I find it really pathetic and sickening when I see people acting like religion is a disease and rejection is good, which is why society is going to hell.
Uh, most athiests (and agnostics, like myself) don’t give a fuck about shitting on peoples beliefs… unless those people try to share their beliefs.
Beliefs aren’t the problem, the church is. I’m sure most Christians would agree to some degree with this statement.
More gossip without substance. IN case you haven’t noticed, there seems to be a pattern, that every single place where Christendom has been on the downfall (mainstream Christianity is destroyed) social standards and virility itself is going the way of the dodo. Whether you want it or not atheism is not natural to the human beings and opens the door to many horrors, like Russia and China have experienced before (China continues to experience…)
Well don’t blame athiests, we don’t own the media, Jews do.
Can you elaborate on the poverty idea?
Yeah. The concrete mazes that made up British council estates in the 70s and 80s were cruel and oppressive constructions that conditioned the mind to a life of entrapment and dependence
most buildings are designed for profit motive before practicality, and practicality before esthetics, thus you end up with nasty boxes, jammed up against each other, that don’t have a good flow of energy…..
my personal hate is the open plan kitchen that only looks great in brochures and when viewing the apartment… it was meant to incorporate the wife cooking with the family, but a kitchen is a noisy, messy, smelly place that should be separate, now you can’t sit in any apartment without listening to the fridge hum, the dishwasher banging away and smelling the stale fat in the air vent above the stove….. anyone wants to make a smoothie the whole apartment knows about the blender…. thus the living room lost it’s esthetics, largely on a marketing con designed to appeal to women, and developers budgets, since the open plan kitchen needs no separate window and thus saves external walls, allowing more apartments in one block…. net result people are less relaxed, more stressed and seek TV / computers to ‘unwind’ as that is the only escape left…..
the open plan kitchen is about as smart as the open plan garage…. imagine having your car parked in the side of the living room…..
the small things that make you subconsciously unrelaxed and ill at ease eventually give you cancer, heart attacks and etc…
I agree with most of this.
But public buildings were purposly designed to be oppressive.
Based on the philosophy of some nutcase french communist – the “living machine”
I think it’s slightly more complicated, although there is an obvious anti-beauty bent to all buildings now. Other reasons our buildings are so ugly is to save on cost and to accommodate cars, as well as an absolute emphasis on function and none on form. Look at modern churches. They do nothing to uplift the soul with beautiful architecture for the glory of God. Instead, they look like another place to warehouse people for,Sunday morning. Ditto for schools, office buildings, and houses.
Cost is definitely relevant. I’m not denying that.
But Britain built its best affordable family homes in the 50’s and 60s, when we were supposedly broke from the War.
Homes that were actually designed with humans in mind.
Modern architecture is aggressively anti-human
Florescent lights are also a big problem in my opinion that no one seems to talk or know about. They emit an eerie white light that I find extremely unsettling and that I believe contributes to anxiety, depression, and sleep problems among people. I read somewhere that florescents emit about half of the visible light spectrum, while incandescents emit the full spectrum. This is why people, food, and just about everything look awful in florescent lighting. Incandescents on the other hand provide a nice balanced warm light.
I want to show great work opportunity… three to five hours of work daily… Weekly paycheck… Bonus opportunities…Payscale of $6k to $9k /a month… Just few hours of your free time, any kind of computer, elementary understanding of #web and stable connection is what is required…Get informed more about it by visiting my profile>page
Ray, I like a lot of your posts, but this is ridiculous.
it’s a fact that open plan kitchens were primarily designed to save developers money and fit more into less space…. with marketing designed to appeal to women….. only a ghetto peasant wants a stinking frying pan in their living room…… I recall my grandparents living in a ‘modern’ 70s apartment and the kitchen was a separate room, with it’s own window and a hatch into the dining room – that way you could eat in a nice environment… and the living room was separate from the dining room, so you could sit and chill in peace… and the men could shove off into the living room, sit and talk while the women cleaned up the dining room and kitchen….
THIS is how it used to be done…. but hey…. why make life comfortable when you can cram 3 rooms into one and make glorious product photos to sell it to women who don’t want to feel shut out of the living room…..
I get you, but that is not really what is being stated in the article, especially its heading. Buildings don’t build a society – society builds buildings. I would then say the type of buildings being built are a reflection of where that society is at, possibly psychologically. If the buildings are ugly and crammed, that will then perpetuate that mindset. If developers want to save more money to make more profit, may that not be a reflection of a greedy society?
You’re right Ray, there’s something about modern houses and apartments that is almost anti-human.
Yep, the modern house is full of half-arsed styles accompanied by design shortcuts camouflaged as new and revolutionary vibe. Just cheap tricks, smoke and mirrors, which you’ll realise when you’re watching the game and the washing machine hums in the background.
P.S. Apparently, my “realise” is no match for “realize”, lol.
The “open plan” shit was promulgated by builders in the 60’s and 70’s, in an increasing effort to save on materials. As is often the case with fashion, the trick is to get the buyer to spend more to actually receive LESS product. Think of the money saved by contractors when they didn’t have to use the materials and the labor to frame and finish all those additional walls. It’s one of the reasons why split-levels became so popular around the same time.
I can relate to that, I feel extremely anxious at work, to the point that I can barely wait to get out of there in a couple of weeks, I seriously feel like I’m on the verge of having a panic attack all day.
I plan to go back to school and learn about the construction industry, and then begin a bricklaying apprenticeship shortly there after.
That’s how I felt when I worked in corporate America. Nearly drove me mad. I am self employed as a tradesman ( forester) and although my pay is much less my happiness is much higher
That’s because you’re independent and working in a natural environment. On the other hand, the corporate polymer laden building is made to keep you from relaxing and keeps you on your toes for the whole time.
Olympic Peninsula WA state by any chance?
No
The stress on all fronts is unbearable – no wonder most men in that environment die from heart failure before they are 60
I hear ya brother. I work in a warehouse now and it still beats the corporate atmosphere. In Corp offices there’s always a lot of small talk because everyone is too afraid to say anything meaningful.
sounds cool, what all do you do as a forester?
http://media2.giphy.com/media/lKXZAA106xwkg/200_s.gif
Architecture is not responsible for a huge number of problems. This is such a way too far a reach. Poverty has nothing to do with architecture – fucking ridiculous. If anything it’s the other way around.
No offence but this is clearly a subject you haven’t studied.
I have
Happy to be proven wrong – tell me.
I would say architecture reflects the problem.
There’s a saying here that the 1960s architects did more damage to urban Britain the the luftwaffe.
I can’t deliver a lecture on 70 years of architecture and social policy over a Disqus posting, but it’s all out there
Google
Might be a saying, but “they say is half a lie”. What do you mean by “in here”? I’m sure being bombed is better?
I can’t go with the feminism and architecture thing – this is getting ridiculous.
Architecture and social policy are very different to speculation about architecture destroying relationships. Just downright ridiculous.
Hitler knew the power of architecture and hired one architect for all (or most, I’d have to double-check) of his buildings. I believe architecture plays a big part in how people feel. Not arguing with anyone (or replying to you directly), just adding my 2 cents.
Yeah, that was albert speer. But that had nothing to do with relationships, and the destruction thereof. Nazi architecture served a different purpose. Architecture has nothing to do with women, relationships, feminism etc It’s just too big of a relational stretch.
Not just in the way we feel, but how we interact with eachother. Think of older towns that encouraged people to mingle, walk, and gather. Where can people do that nowadays? WalMart?
If you want to deny the psychological and societal implications of building and city design.. well so be it.
You won’t mind living in a cave or a sewerage system will you. After all, it’s all the same
As someone who grew up in Bradford, I can agree with that, many people lament the colonisation of the areas of Bradford that actually have some large beautiful Victorian houses and parks, where the rich industrialists once lived, but also the ugliness of 60 s architecture of mainly flats,sprawling council estates and even six lane roads, often at the expense of old neighbourhoods that were actually better looking than the shit that replaced them.
Amazingly, recently the 60 s monstrosities in the city centre have been pulled down to be replaced by that solution to all western economic problems…. A shopping centre
The 60s Marxist, trade unionist designers definitely made some of the worst architectural disasters with their grey buildings and design that could rival some of the worst of the worst in Soviet Union. But, all this stems from the lack of housing, the horrible suburbia planning and the dickheadness of the construction industry which sought to keep the prices high AF, which is happening now.
London is one big village; original cramped British architecture works in smaller towns but not in big ones.
You know what, I think I agree with that, a bigger city might have been able to accommodate such architecture a lot easier than mine
Name Albert Speer – who also served as Minister of Armaments after 1942. He also wrote a fascinating memoir about his experiences I highly recommend.
yeah, and god forbid going for a walk and not having to worry about getting hit by a fucking car!
Your daily surroundings will affect mood and motivation
If you live in ugly, poorly constructed buildings, there will be less drive to take care of them, which causes decay. There’s also the soul killing aspect of living in places that look like prisons.
I don’t know how it is where you live but I have noticed a lot of public school building and state correctional centers look alike!
James Kunstler touched on it years ago with “The Geography of Nowhere”.
http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-Landscape/dp/0671888250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422894462&sr=8-1&keywords=geography+of+nowhere
Good point.
Well said, Lucas.
Pretty cool article.
Makes you think, when you look at subjects like these, of all the underlying psychology people have going on about them which they hardly realize.
Look at Communist Russia, from the lens of communism being essentially “herd-like” as all females tend to be.
What happened to the great art, architecture and literature of Russia’s past after they absorbed a communist/feminist way of living? Their artistic expression was utterly destroyed – not only because of men falling by the wayside in their ambitions, but also because such a society stifles innovation and any “going against the herd.” The result was the grand ballets of Russia turning into a version of the Harrison Bergeron story.
It’s not just that females don’t produce the level of genius men do in the areas of philosophy, science, art, architecture and literature, but that “their system” actively supresses it in men too!
This is a great article, Moser. Very well done, thoroughly documented, and thoughtfully executed. I’m going to retweet this. I’ve heard that the book “The Geography of Nowhere” by James Kunstler touches on the same subject.
Thanks! The Geography of Nowhere teaches lessons that apply now more than ever. That book opened my eyes to the idea that spaces get “lost” when they are rendered useless. I recommend it.
This is a very big stretch – irrespective of it being well done. Eventually you can see something in everything.
Toronto has some of the worst modern architecture known to man. I think it’s not only meant to confuse genders but to confuse period. The extension of the Royal Ontario Museum, the Sharpe center at OCAD, the AGO and not to mention all these ugly condos springing up. Modern buildings have a snap together plastic appearance. They just look cheap and ugly.
Fascinating – and look at the effect of this bleak architecture on the average church. For whatever reason I’ve always felt more comfortable in a Gothic, old church than the minimalist pieces of shit they call churches nowadays.
I’m not religious in any way, but the old churches were quite impressive. Even if you didn’t go there to worship (just weddings, etc), they still emanated a certain feeling and aura.
Modern architecture comes multi-faceted. Public projects may be designed for “safety” and socialist goals, but many private projects for people who actually afford them are more social then ever before. Completely separate living spaces for men and women are antiquated – besides the man should decide what style is chosen – also if possible, then both should have their own female and male rooms.
The problem with the current public works are anti-social tendencies and with the private buildings the fact that men are pussies and let their women rule the place. Architects just follow suit as their clients pay them to do.
these ‘modern’ places, and i’ve lived in a few waterfronts like this…. are about as relaxing as the local hospital waiting room… they look great in pictures, but they are just boxy show homes built to impress, inflate the price using cheap but fancy looking materials and give the appearance of more, while actually providing less…. notice how everything about the place invites you only to look at it, rather than use it and relax in it….. net result you live in a place like this you are constantly on edge, never relaxed, OCD about it’s order… and when people come over, holding your dick in your hand waiting for their comments on how great it is… but in the back of your mind you are thinking… i fucking hate this up tight sterile box….. where even a single bottle of beer already looks messy…..
Correct – the example I put up lacks warmth. I’ve lived in those places too, but at least there the designer made it cozy through smart interior design. This place lacks that and many of the stifled modernist places lack that too missing the fact that you could actually make minimalist spaces very enjoyable and alive – much more alive than old architecture. There may be a certain top-down desire to sterilize and dehumanize architecture, but I’ve encountered some who were aware of that and countered that by making it more enjoyable and comfortable than anything – soft carpets, walls of plants, smart lighting, cozy fires – personally never felt more comfortable in old places as in some of those modern ones.
I’m going to sound like an American here, but. I love well built log houses. They are homey and organic, and seem to invite one to live life within their walls, in contrast to what you’ve described above.
“Today’s gender-neutral language inculcates a false belief that male and female are equal.”
I’m not sure if the author is aware that English is not the only language in the world spoken today. English is gender-neutral, but there are many languages that are not, i.e. French, Spanish, Arabic
It’s too bad more English speakers don’t understand how the word “sex” was morphed into “gender” (following the linguistics of languages like French) in order to allow “an expansion of the mind” so that people would accept sexuality in terms other than merely “male or female.”
Enlarging the verbal concept to include more ways than just two was intentionally done to alter people’s minds. It is subtle, but it works!
The same is done in art and architecture.
Visual concepts such as art and architecture are designed to move people with their imagery.
It is the whole point of it!
Those interested in this subject more should research how Communist regimes used their nationally supported “art” to try and influence the masses for the benefit of the collective.
A thousand upvotes would not be enough.
Even the modern legal system has cast aside its formely gender-specific, most often Latin, terms-of-art. For example, the custom now is to use the gender-neutral “personal representative” or “executor” for both a male and female, as opposed to using that form for a male and “executrix” for a female.
Maybe the idea is that it is a lot easier to break people’s spirits and turn them into mindless obedient automatons when you surround them with ugliness. If you give them beauty they might get in a good mood and want to interact with other people instead of being good little wage slaves isolated in their cubicles.
One thing people who visit Japanese traditional tea houses seldom realize is that the reason the top of the doorway into the tea house is built so low is to force you to bow as you enter. The architects built an automatic system for making sure the entering person is humble.
You can try not to bow, but then you’ll just be kneeling or crawling to enter. Just another way architecture can influence behavior.
I think feminazis are the least happy of anyone. All they do is complain and moan about things that aren’t broken, because they themselves are broken.
Cool story about the teahouses!
In 1993 I visited my parent’s home country of The Netherlands.
I my father’s hometown, my uncle took me to the church they went to as children… it was built in the 1200’s, apparently. In that time, the Dutch were conquered and occupied by nothern forces… ie. the Normans.
They allowed the Dutch to maintain their religious affiliation with Christianity, apparently, but what they also did was “brick in” all the entrances to the church except for the one facing North…. thus, in order to enter the building to do your worship, you first were forced to “bow” (to get under the bricking in of the entrance – it was made so low you had to stoop) to the Norse gods before worshipping your own God of Christianity.
Fascinating, to say the least. You still have to bow to the Norse gods to get into the church, 800 years later.
A strange post. The Normans never conquered The Netherlands, the Normans as a lineage largely dissapeared during the 1200’s and the Normans were Christian.
I think you are a talking about the desecration of Catholic churches by the protestants who never outright banned Catholicism but did deface their churches and made humiliarting rules for the catholics to follow.
Nah, you’re talking reformation days, when Holland was the center of religious refuge… I’m talking much earlier.
The Friesians are “different” from the rest of the Dutch – lol, any Dutchman will tell you that even today. They descended from the Scandinavians – They aren’t a subset of the traditional Dutch… lol, and are laughed at about as much as Canadians laugh at Quebecers.
They also still very stubbornely speak their own language. Even Fries immigrants here in North America, they cling to their language – even though many can only speak it but not read or write it. (My father spoke fluent friesian, but only my Mom was taught it in school… as a second language, which was actually her first in the home, as was everyone else’s)
Btw, Frisian is apparently one of the three languages which comprise modern English, or so I’ve read before. Also, Friesland was one of the points where the Invasion of England originated from…
The Fries weren’t “Dutch” until around 1400 or so… I think. They used to be an independent state. Although, I am no expert on their historical record – at all.
I was born in north Holland in 1971 – never heard this shit before – where in Holland was this?
In Friesland. There was an old church off to the side of the village made of stone – it was one of the coolest churches I’ve even been in.
OK. Friesland is a whole different story. Where in Friesland? My grandmother was Fries.
The name of the village where my father grew up was Ureterp… I think that’s how you spell it. It is about a half hour from Leuwaarden (sp?).
Lol! I don’t know, dude. I was last there in 1993… it was quite a long time ago… but I’m pretty sure I remember it right. I also know I also went to some sort of old “viking settlement” that was reconstructed in the area, from when the Friesians were considered descendants from the Vikings in the old days.
But I may be totally wrong… lol! It was over 20 years ago when I was last there and people were translating both Dutch and Fries to me in English. So… it is quite possible I am mistaking… but I’m still pretty sure that’s how I remember it… in fact, I think I still have pictures of that church somewhere.
Anyway, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s not something I have studied in depth nor claim to be an expert on. It was just some church I went to one afternoon.
I heard Vikings built low doors so that attackers could be easily dispatched as they came through the door.
I personally think that modern buildings lack expression. They are cold, dim and don’t seem to have any “human input” in them. Older buildings on the other hand, look like they have a bit of history and not just 30-40 years, but a hole lot of features from a variety of architectural styles (greek, roman, gothic, byzantine, arabic, victorian), think the White House.
Functionalism isn’t a new thing. The peasants cabin was made to house his family, and just that, there were no dorian collums, no roman arches, no byzantine mosaics. It was made for his family, not to impress anyone.
When the wealth to do so became available, the middle classes started copying the styles of the aristocracy, most of the time they didn’t do so very well. Just take a look at the McMansions. Collumns, arches, marble… they have it all. A historical blend with all the forms lost in translation. The interpretation is purely visual, the thoughts behind it are lost, creating something that is merely pretty at best and a garish wedding cake at worst.
Good modern architecture lacks this desire to appeal to a class that it cleary doesn’t belong to. It is simple, masculine, like the cabin of the lumberjack who doesn’t give a damn what the count will think of his dwelling.
And yet the lumberjack’s cabin is attractive and doesn’t look a bit like Public Art or a brake lining factory.
The peasants cabin may have been rough, but without pretensions. All the vinyl, concrete, and plastic on modern buildings makes everything look like a simulacrum of what a building actually should be. We’re living in big mirages.
The author is doing the same thing the feminists are doing, shoehorning everything into their worldview of eternal psychological warfare. Everything is oppressive, everything is part of the all emcompassing conspiracy that is The Enemy. The article uses the language of deconstruction, which is more like a rorschach test than an analysis.
Interesting article but the author is over analyzing things.
lol when did the manosphere become the complain o sphere
This.
What is with leftists and poor aesthetic taste? Even they can’t define the stuff they create, and somehow that counts as profound.
Beauty threatens them, because beauty and truth are the same, so they worship ugliness. Confusion goes with lies, so everything the create is full of discord and lack harmony.
Very well put. Hence piss Christ, the vagina monologues and other such garbage.
Most of the architecture students at my college were gay or pot smokers. That’s typical of course work that requires art studies. Not many women.
Humans went tens of thousands of years without any long-term structures, so there can’t be any objective “masculine” or “feminine” aspects. Utility drove architectural development (higher quality, durable materials such as stone and hard woods). Men (or at least those who build things) prefer functionality, women (those who use things without the burden of having had to build them) prefer ornament. Once a surplus exists – once a society has its basic survival needs easily met – such as Greece, Rome, various European eras, late 1800s USA, ornament can most easily be tolerated because the cost is marginally trivial. Concrete is the modern form of stone, and much easier to manipulate while offering thermal mass to lower heating/cooling bills. Large glass windows allow free sunlight, and visibility of outside. Steel and aluminum are stronger materials than wood and last longer.
Deconstructivist architecture (Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind random angles, shapes) is worth attacking, as it’s pure ornamental waste without function, but uses the modern materials that DO have merit. It’s a mistake to conflate architecture that merely uses modern materials, with talentless modern art (Pollock, Picasso, Rothko, Cy Twombly). Philip Johnson’s glass house is beautiful, functional. It’s a heartbeat away from how our ancestors lived: under the night sky, full view of nature, natural circadian sunlight exposure. Ideal. Optimal. Joseph Eichler designed homes are also great buildings. The crap we live in today that came from the 1950s, the absurd functionless shutters, the tiny windows, closed boxes… that’s not living.
Hmmm… all that said, there’s still something about the small shuttered house centered around the kitchen with a big simple wooden table, and a couple of pretty lasses in nice yellow sundresses makin’ me some damn sammiches.
Keep the kitchen (domestic food production is a critical part of daily life), keep the wooden table (though I prefer Eero Saarinen-style pedestal tables, easier to get in/out, sweep), and pretty females happily presenting their expertly produced food, and then open the view to the outside with huge floor-to-ceiling glass windows, plenty of house plants, and keep the sqft to what is actually needed (cozy).
” . . .then open the view to the outside with huge floor-to-ceiling glass windows . . .”
We of the drapes industry salute you, sir.
The opaque window film and sleep mask industries salute me just a tad bit more.
I really like the idea of small but luxurious homes.
I’d rather live in a 750sf well-built cottage with granite counters and high end flooring etc., than a 2300sf (two floor) cheaply built 4 Bedroom Spec-Home.
I don’t mean this in a facetious way, btw, but rather, if you are a “MGTOW” or a “Gaming Man”, we all end up in the same place – living old age alone, or at least with the realization we could die alone.
I am now mid forties… i’ve shagged the double digits of women by now… and all I want to do is “Go Proneke!”
Well, maybe not that far… but… on my own, with my own wits… having a few friends at the pub (unlike Proneke),… I think I could do it… and then just die alone while hoeing my garden.
Oh God! Please let me die in the silence of the garden, without Eve chirping at me from behind about how stupid I was to eat of the apple!
That bitch has to go!
My problem is not really with the Glass House, but the Brick House. The bedroom is unnatural. It has a light, curved feminine form yet is stripped of ornament and has a hard, masculine texture. This is actually important, and it affects people. There are plenty of examples of good modern architecture. But they are built from the same values that have always built them, which includes an honest expression of humanity.
So how much money do I have to pay an architect to design a bachelor pad for me that will draw hot babes?
I’m glad to see this topic explored on ROK. Containerizing life into impractical spaces wasn’t born out of just artsy architectural influence. The McMansion era of home building in the late 90’s early 00s cemented the structures we call homes into show piece houses with consumerist women as the driving force.
The very idea that men, who build literally everything, bow down to women (e.g. how renovation shows), and the “man cave” advent stemmed from female’s desire, not men at all, except those fulfilling egotistical exuberance projecting their wealth to ultimately impress women, is backwards. So much wasted, environmentally conditioned space just chewing through energy to remain inhabitable.
The amount of resource and material we’ve extracted to accommodate blaze structures that “look attractive” yet fulfill average-at-best artistic expression is absurd, and taxing on social development.
This is just too big a stretch.
There’s been comments here before about out utterly poisonous suburbia can be to society.
When I was a kid there were four or five families in my street with kids we’d play with.
Since then, ALL of them have gotten divorced and moved away. My parents are about the only ones still together.
Nowadays, I have no idea who our new neighbours are, hardly ever see them. Ted Bundy could be living next door for all I know.
The Asian style – with apartments surrounding a central communal area, seems the way to go. Things should be a lot more compact and open. Don’t let people seal themselves off from the world – it ruins people’s personalities and makes corporations billions.
The guy who posted this article wants to go to Romania and settle down? What the fuck? You been there?
Romania is one of the worst places in Europe to live. Maybe he just wants to have it cheap, in that case he should go to the Ukraine, average income earner of the 1st world is a millionaire in the looted Ukraine.
Once they enter the EU they’ll have similar prices to the west, maybe a bit cheaper for certain products such as bread and beer. If you have a steady steam of income of approx. $1500 p/m you will be fine.
As for Romania, is not that bad to be honest. I mean, it’s better than East Berlin for starters and if you have some experience and a degree in IT you could find a well paying job.
Different countries have different prices regardless. Ukraine is never gonna join anything anyways, its gonna collapse within a year or two. It has been looted for the third time in the last 20 years, now they have no gold reserves, their currency is worth half it was in early 2014, average salary is 2500 USD a year, the standard of living is 1/3 of what it was in the Soviet Union and even then it was pretty low. There is a civil war going on, the Ukrainian soldiers are getting absolutely trashed, the nazis are also mad at the president and there have been reports of them stockpiling weapons so it is possible for the civil war to get three ways.
Excuse my pessimism but the Ukraine seems to be only good to get a pretty girl cheaply, however I do not see any future for the country.
Yeah I agree with you on the point about girls, but the western part is going to join both NATO and EU. The industrial heartland of the country, which was built by the Russians (with its vast resources), is in Donetsk and Mariupol. With this place in the hands of the Russians, it has nothing but agricultural land which is being bought by the Chinese and the rest will fall into the hands of foreign corporation.
The Nazis? please. This is some nationalist government that sought an identity and looking back, the Ukrainian SS and Bandera’s mob are the only ones that they have. They are not riding around the countryside in half-trucks wearing Hugo Boss uniforms
Where do you get the information that they are gonna join nato? Ukraine in NATO = WW3. I have serious doubts anyone is going to risk it. Ukraine is just not worth it. I see possibility with EU though.
If Russia manages to create a buffer zone eastern Ukraine, then what’s the western part gonna do? Be a single country with no connections?? In situations like these, you have to be in NATO if you want to join the EU. Finland and France are EU countries who are not part of NATO, but they have no qualms with Russia.
I believe that the increasing ugliness of all real things (Archictecture, painting, sculptures, landscapes…), which at the same times correlates with the growing omnipresence of the virtual world (TV series, movies, Internet, Smartphones, electronic books, social networks, porn…) is a sure sign that the real Matrix is slowly building around us.
This article is one of the reasons I love Return of Kings. Where else could I read about gender in architecture and the effects of its removal in modern society? I thought you were off the wall before I read your article, but you convinced me.
Strangely enough, you made me flashback to my reading of “The Fountainhead”, by Ayn Rand. Her protagonist was all about “modern” architecture and had no tolerance for Greek-like columns and spirals and such like. Yet she was a feminist who seemed to worship the masculine (as long as she was included in it). If not for cuckolding of her husband with her 20 years younger protege Nathaniel Branden, from her writings I would have assumed she was a butch dyke.
Anyway, very interesting article. It made me mourn for what I’ve never known: A Space for Men. Sadly, today the only male-only space is a men’s gym aka gay bathhouse.
I once heard someone say that the physical environment always mirrors the internal mental landscape and I’ve always felt this to be very true. When we shape space the the space around us we’re representing internal states, or at least the internal states we’d like to have. Its easy to do but its a great mistake to underestimate the effect of living space and architecture on our lives. The fact that so many people hate modern architecture demonstrates that it isn’t doing its job in making people feel positive about themselves. I agree with those that dislike massive open glass houses and the like. To be honest the only buildings I really like were built in the 18th or 19th centuries, have high ceilings and sash windows.
Solid article.
Here are a few of my least favorite modern trends in building:
– Soviet apartment blocks being imported to the west. I know there has been much criticism of suburbia in these comments and others on this site, but I will take a house with a yard over a cramped flea box in an ugly, badly constructed tower living in tight proximity to a big bunch of people I probably want nothing to do with.
– “Urban hubs”: unnecessary, poorly planned light food and retail districts, usually incorporated into the street levels of the apartment blocks. Heavily frequented by hipsters, very commonly built near universities. At best, the end result is a coffee shop, a 24 hour gym (those things that are 95 percent treadmills), and a lot of permanently empty store spaces.
– The fact that both of these things encourage urban density, which is bad because it is forcing many groups of people, all of different backgrounds, to share a limited space. Large groups destroy individuality, which in fact leads to increased isolation as opposed to increased connecting.
To top it all off, these things are fueled by sketchy financing. Built cheaply, sold at vastly inflated prices. You would have to be an idiot to buy or invest in one of these developments, since you’re guaranteed to come out of it worse off than when you bought in.
Soviet apartment buildings were imported from the west to the eastern bloc, not the other way around. It was just used more in the eastern bloc since it was cheaper.
hey, the “soviet” apartment blocks that you see in europe are most likely public housing projects, it’s not that anybody wished he lived there
Interesting article. I think there is indeed something to this. Can you provide some visual examples of architecture that is good for male & female interactions?
Norte Dame Cathedral springs to mind. It is awe inspiring and incorporates masculine and feminine symbology. Of course there are countless more humble churches from the not so distant past that incorporate the same ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosslyn_Chapel
For feminine, look at Mildred Cooper chapel by E Fay Jones, though I don’t think a church should be feminine, Hawa Mahal and Gardens by the Bay Singapore. For masculine, look at Schloss Schwerin and I would say Therma Vals Spa.
Thanks…
Excellent article, and some very perceptive comments here as well.
Mildred Cooper chapel by E Fay Jones is good feminine design, though I don’t think a church should be feminine. Look at Hawa Mahal and Gardens by the Bay Singapore. For masculine examples, look at Schloss Schwerin and I would say Therma Vals Spa.
Apt buildings made out of shipping containers. bet they are drafty.
http://ny.curbed.com/tags/shipping-containers
I can see where you are going with this. You could even add the rise of giant chain stores across america replacing locally owned stores. People have exhanged quality of a good to the quantity of a good. They’d rather get 2 loafs of some shit bread with all kinds of chemicals in it than the local baker who made it with egg, flour, yeast, and etc. These ideas that are being pushed on us are now reflecting in our culture, Everything is becoming more uniform.
It all ties together with the worship of Mammon. The cheapest, I.e. most profitable, thing to build is a square box. Voila, outstanding Soviet architecture. And who brought us the glorious Bolshevik people’s republic?
Fascinating perspective highlighted in the article (also admirably sourced/researched)!
I never thought architecture is a symbol of gender “struggles” (to use a Marxist term).
Can someone stop the circlejerk and deliver more material on this?
Architecture and psychology go hand in hand. The films of Antonioni have something to say about this, particularly Red Desert. and it’s not a coincidence that prisons look as ugly as they do.
I’ve always felt that the reason most of the best art came from Europe traditionally was because the beauty of their surroundings constantly inspired them, but modern European suburbs are almost as ugly as American ones. Everyone talks about how beautiful Paris is. Yes, the historic centre is beautiful as are the inner suburbs, but drive further out and all you see is faceless apartment blocks and ugly supermarkets. Athens is even worse. At least Athenians are social though and there are plenty of things to do at night so there is no reason to be stuck indoors, but Parisians are not very friendly at all.
Anyway, I feel uneasy in sterile modern buildings. A friend of mine recently bought a new shoebox apartment with nice features etc, but I always feel anxious whenever I go there; ditto for a friend of mine who lives in a renovated loft. It looks like something out of a bad sci-fi movie.
All the passive agressive non confrontational Pastel colors that you find in a modern building of business, all the colorful posters and meaningless art you find decorating the walls of college campuses,all the flamboyancy you find in modern architecture, has only one purpose…to make women comfortable. Women are very nervous un-confinedent creatures, the feminine architecture gives them some security. Also notice how Men were heavily portrayed in the media/entertainment industry from 2008-2013 as completely useless un-confrontational feminized twerps, this was also another attempt to give women feelings of security and comfort in a false attempt to make her feel “In-charge”. Anything masculine automatically triggers the natural God given response in a woman’s mind to be submissive.The idea is to get women to mindlessly spend as much money as possible, women are only emotional thinkers, if a place feels rigid, masculine, and conservative, she may not spend as much because she is nervous, if a place feels open and colorful and liberal in design she will feel more comfortable and probably spend more. Likewise at the office if Men who work at the office are all non-confrontational metrosexuals it’s a less intimidating work environment for women, the more women that work the more money that is spent.
A timely article!
The planners intend to make things even worse.
There’s A Plan Floating Around Davos To Spend $90 Trillion Redesigning All The Cities So They Don’t Need Cars
Here’s one way to solve global warming: Spend $90 trillion (£59 trillion) over the next few years to redesign all the cities — as in all the cities on Earth — so people live in more densely packed neighbourhoods and don’t need cars.
Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/plan-to-spend-90-trillion-redesigning-cities-without-cars-2015-1#ixzz3QWVcLlYp
90 trillion, that’s nothing for Obozo.
I don’t know if this plan will make things worse or better, but the communities of Latin America or Europe where one can easily travel on foot are much more human and warm than the typical American city where one must get inside his own metal box and travel down the freeway. I have found that when I walk just a few blocks from my home, I see things that I have never noticed when driving by them hundreds of times. I see people, speak to them, notice details, feel alive and integrated into my community. I would welcome a city which did not need cars.
The plan is to stack people up. That can’t be good.
I don’t anticipate a response from the author on this, but for the record, I think this rather shallow analysis of modern architecture from a forced gender perspective gives rise to some very skewed conclusions.
First off – Eisenman’s work is horrible; if there was any justice in the world, he would be hanging from a gibbet. I live in Columbus, and have seen the Wexner Center up close. It is, in fact, hideous. Like many of Eisenmans’ buidings, it is – purposefully – a grotesque parody echoing buildings from the past, in this instance, the National Guard Armory that previously occupied the site. (note the brickwork that seems vaguely castle-like). The tangle of white steel tubes – when not rusting and dripping orange water on pedestrians below and requiring constant maintenance, does indeed form a tight, gauntlet-like corridor where attacks actually have taken place. The interior, incidentally, had even more problems resulting from poor design, to the point that institutions would refuse to exhibit items there because the HVAC systems, and roof design was so poor that insurance policies were not available due to problems with moisture, leaks, and so forth. I spoke with one of the principles of Schooley-Caldwell, the firm that was tasked with rectifying these issues, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, who confirmed that the building is a nightmare. In short, the building is poorly detailed, and the design is, as is often the case with modern architecture lacking in many respects. Ditto for the Columbus Convention Center in Downtown Columbus, another Eisenman abomination, that looks more like a circus funhouse than a respectable edifice in a state capital – but yet is supposed to echo the demolished train station, which previously occupied the site. But the source of this shit is primarily the ego of the oligarchs who contribute large sums to impose their vision on the populace and get resulting naming rights (in this case, Les Wexner, owner of Limited Brands).
Don’t get me wrong, Johnson WAS a pretentious pervert, and Le Corbusier was a damn commie (like most of his International Style practicianers), and I hate this diversity shit, and this oppressive Universal Design approach (which you didn’t address here but should) whereby we have to accommodate any cripple that could possibly even step near the building in the foreseeable future, but your arguments are not soundly formulated and are clumsily stated. Modern architecture’s problems arise from the suggestible, fashion-conscious hive mind of gullible elitists, not from feminism.
You nailed it man. I just wrote up something of a similar post, but this is what I felt too. The author comes across as having a very shallow understanding of architecture and tries shoehorning disparate ideas into some poorly strung together points. Are you an architect by chance?
Close! I’m a structural engineer that works on a lot of architectural projects, and architecture is kind of a “‘hobby”. I could opine for literally DAYS on what is good and bad about architecture today (in my opinion, of course). But you’re criticism is precisely what I felt, and so I was compelled to rebut this article’s point, somehow…
To be honest, I think architecture has improved immensely in the last 15 years or so. There’s a lot of shit going up too, as always, but quite a few handsome buildings of every conceivable category – a much better track record than the entire second half of the 20th century.
Part of ROK’s SOP, I believe, is that anyone can write an article and there’s no peer review, resulting in well-meaning, but mistaken, conclusions. I’m just a mechanical engineer here, so I can help with the load bearing structures, but architecture is a meld of form and function, so I can’t claim to be an expert. I recognize enough to be reasonably informed, though. Carry on, obsrac.
I am curious to know if there are any architects reading this. I am an architect.
There are many disparate and sometime contradictory points here (some I feel are valid) that the author has tried to string together. I agree completely that modernist architecture/planning was and is a failure. It ignores fundamental and intrinsic human behavior and instead idealizes and abstracts the city form into something that is, for lack of a better word, unnatural. The most extreme concepts of Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine as applied to many developments, including the “projects housing”, have all failed. Pruit Igoe was the most obvious example of this. But still, more subtle design choices that stray from the basic human biology and psychology are being made to this day. Harsh and cold pubic spaces, as illustrated in the cover photo for this article, is an example.
But I think the author is focused too much on style vs actual architectural form and is confused about what makes a space/building work. The author praises the Wexner Center designed by Eisenman, yet fails to realize that post-modernist design often fails from the very issues of modernist design. The buildings do not consider the human experience and scale. They are designed in abstracted and utopian vacuums.
Ask yourself why old cities worked and why “post-war” cities, filled with skyscrapers, strip malls, parking lots, etc. don’t seem to work as well. Old cities were designed around the human scale and form. They were designed with public and private spaces in mind. They responded more directly to our more primal behavior and psychology. New cities, the skyscrapers, the stripmalls, the parking lots, create an isolated experience – a commodotized one.
Additionally, as many people are noting, you can’t really blame architects (with the exception of public buildings) for the shape of most cities. They aren’t the masterminds and hand of god for a city that they are often thought to be. The form of a city is mostly determined by the profit seeking developers, and ultimately consumers who are happily paying a high price for shit.
If you want a relevant red pill analogy: regarding the state of sexual relationships, who is to blame? The women for acting like boars and still being accepted, or the men who are accepting this sort of behavior? Similarly, who do you blame, the developers for building shitty, cheap, poorly designed buildings, or the consumers for happily buying it up?
My point with Wexner Center was to show how feminists and other SJWs tear down anything that doesn’t make them feel “safe”. Regardless how you feel about it, it is a leading example of post-modernism.
“regardless of how you feel about it?” Dude, that is a male architect speaking with you. He’s not feeling; he’s thinking. Better rebuttal, please.
I think this is a stretch. Feminists and SJWs aren’t the only ones complaining that some spaces are designed in such a way that they are not conducive to feeling safe. I’m sure many people feel this way about many spaces. It is a fact that “eyes on the street”, good lighting and urban design reduce crime and increase public safety. Modernist and many post-modernist buildings flat out ignore and relationship to the public realm and do indeed create pockets of unusable space that are completely isolated from any observing eyes. Social surveillance is important for creating a stable community and society (many of the greater civilizations knew this, perhaps intuitively). Instead, you have these “ego” monstrosities of buildings that do this job poorly so we have to go and install cameras and security systems, security guards, to do what could have been achieved through thoughtful, human, design. Same problem we face in new suburbs. Houses barely have fronts, just garages, and open up only to the private back yard. This is not how great communities and trust are developed.
I never argued that the Wexner Center is not a leading example of post-modernism (although I think there are better), I am simply saying that post-modernism is pretty shit in general.
Many comments here are astounding. It is truly a masculine instinct to design and construct, and I have been edified by these insights. Ten Book on Architecture should be standard reading, along with Aristotle and the rest. Every time when I look to see how I can improve my designing, I find the answer with Vitrivius.
Jane Jacob’s call for “eyes on the street” helps solve the problem, I agree. But even that makes feminists feel unsafe. You saw that video of the girl walking around New York City getting whistled at? The push to privatize public spaces is not by accident. It is the feminine instinct to fence away the nest, which takes over the man’s instinct to explore and integrate.
When was I first starting out, I was working on a school. I noticed that the previous guy had labeled some rooms, “men’s locker room” and “girl’s locker room.” After all, who says “women’s locker room”? But then it got me thinking, a men’s locker room is such a different place than a girl’s locker room, even though the form and function is pretty much the same. Design language doesn’t really respond to the difference, and it should. Gender is missing, or it is confused. Concentrating on human scale or community involvement isn’t enough. And you are correct, it isn’t a matter of this style versus that style. It is a matter of public awareness and appreciation, being willing to pay a little more for a house that will make them happy. Men need to be aware of the deficiencies slipping in to their surroundings and just how uplifting it could be.
I think we agree on quite a few things. I just have a hard time buying the whole gender in architecture argument. I can’t think of many examples of this in history really. Even in old tribal villages, the old cities of Babylon, older European cities, There is minimal traces of “gendered” spaces. It seems similar to arguments made by feminists about architecture being signs of the patriarchy or some other such nonsense. With the exception of ornament, most buildings were made to be practical and functional.
Anyways, as an aside, the profession of architecture has been completely overrun with women in the last 30 years. It went from basically a male only profession to a 50/50 split. We had an office meeting today and one of the partners spent a good 5 minutes talking about gender equality in the hiring process and how nearly half the office was female. They didn’t mention that most of the new male hires are gay. Guess who’s making the decisions as to who gets a job? Women of course. But guess who’s running the firm? Two of the most manly, old school, business dudes you’ll ever meet. What will happen when they retire? chaos.
I totally agree. It appears to be the same in all technical professions, this push to integrate women. There are some great women architects, like Julia Morgan and Zaha Hadid, but women overall just tend to be interested in other professions. That’s how it should be.
Also, in theory, I believe that minimalism is masculine. Ornamentation is not. So I can’t fundamentally agree with most of this article.
One must be careful with sweeping statements. Yes, a minimalist Henry David Thoreau cabin is masculine. But so is Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
Pretty soon there will be no men left in the west with the skill and training and desire to create the beautiful trim and detail on our buildings such as in the 1920s-30s. Fait accompli.
Feminism destroyed my baseball field
I’m so glad to see this article. I live in a top 50 major metro area in the USA. We recently built a new baseball field downtown, moving it from the suburbs. When you go to the field, the idea is that you feel that you are in the city, the location and place is important, it is a style and reminds you of where you are, as opposed to being in a suburb that looks like any other in America.
However, the real experience is that instead of looking at the city skyline, seeing the buildings and landmarks that give you a sense of place, instead the ballpark is rotated 90 degrees away from this, and you are left looking at the ugly hospital and some parking decks. It is precisely the opposite experience of being in say, Wrigley Field, where the experience of being there is distinctly Chicagoan.
I found out about a year after the field opened, a woman giving an architectural tour of the city told me that, yeah, the group of experts hired to design the stadium, likely with experience in the sport of baseball and trained in asthetics and architecture, men in a national firm who are trained and paid for their expertise in stadium design, originally had the park facing the city skyline. But then she and her group of feminist busybodies, as part of some local “architectural review board” had them rotate the park 90 degrees because it would be facing a city park, and some bullshit about the “invisible leading lines” from your eyes penetrating the fung shei space of the park, which is bullshit because you can’t even see the park, the stadium is too high. I was / am so pissed. For the next 60 years, or however long this stadium lasts, generations of people will be condemned to the awful experience of driving downtown and then sitting and looking at this monstrosity, staring at concrete parking garages and industrial hospital buildings instead of the 1930s art deco unique buildings which are hidden from view.
https://geekalabama.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/163510_10151529972689044_1623655551_n1.jpg
Perhaps write and submit an article on this? Include pictures of the opposite view.
Thanks. Do you write for ROK? I submitted an article (different topic) a couple of months back which was approved, but it took over a week to get a response, and the staff wanted me to repost it to another blog or something strange, which I couldn’t do at that point as I only kept it around for about a week, and apparently they couldn’t publish it for me.
Try again. I found ROK staff extremely polite and helpful. You have good insight and I would like to read more. I would be happy to help as well.
I have noticed the change in mens restrooms but never consciously until you stated it here. As a child, the mens restroom was a masculine place where often one peed publicly and openly into a shared vat (I remember at football games these big round steel things were 6 or so men could pee into them at once). Now a men’s restroom is very clinical and institutional. Often there is only one urinal, and a man must go lock himself in a closed toilet room to pee alone like a woman.
My favorite current tv program is Downton Abbey, a look at WW1 era life in Britain, as the monarchy and aristocracy begin to wane. There was a great line recently, where a developer approached the Earl of Grantham (main character) and wants to build tract homes on a beautiful field he owns. His response: “I won’t have fifty ugly, modern houses built over a field of mine”
and dismissively states “So, we’re paid once, and in return the field is lost, the village is spoiled and Mr Wavell moves on in search of his next victim.”
Today everything is motivated by short term profit. The feminine and the state have intruded everywhere. Good article.
“The Architect as Totalitarian: Le Corbusier’s baleful influence”
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_otbie-le-corbusier.html
There’s less space today, and also less building materials relative to the population. So perhaps it’s an issue of practicality rather than agenda.
You can’t really have separate man areas and women areas if you’re running out of raw materials.
This reminds me of the scene from fight ,where a man can be happy living in an old dilapidated house ,because its a remnant of a different time.
Ancient languages were infused with gender. Early people saw gender differences in everything around them. Gender became weaker and less important over time, until progressives erased gender completely. Today’s gender-neutral language inculcates a false belief that male and female are equal.
As a hobbyist linguist, I find this rather hard to put into context. The removal of gender designations from the Germanic Anglo-Saxon language, which over time evolved into modern English, predates SJW’s by at least a thousand years if not more. The large, hairy, scary warriors of 700 A.D. did not give a flying shit about “gender” when it came to language. In fact, the word “she/her” did not even exist in the language at the time.
Additionally, gender is still highly relevant in most other Indo-European languages to the point of tediousness.
Maybe there is something to the simple round hut or tepee..
viking homes
Nice
Coincidence that feminism and the last great cities happened around the same time? We need more people thinking about this:
The modern English Language itself is gender neutral lacking the masculine and feminine forms of many other languages.
This article makes me “feel unsafe” and I have a crazy impulse that you should go fuck yourself.
Excellent article. If we aren’t being zombified by media, henpecking by the lowliest female strangers and stupified by retarding vaccines with sterilants, we could all be walking into ‘dome’ shaped earth dwellings that have flapping doors that ooze slime and the keyhole to the door is shaped like a clitoris. A PUSSY HOUSE. I’m sure some bitch designer would get a spot at a home show with that.
The distinction between Dorian, Ionic and Corinthian all seems elaborate and detailed compared to modern simple geometry that seems to defy gravity. The distinctions between the three become thus blurred. The Greek designs are all fine standards and unique. Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs have rectangular slabs which resemble diving boards – for DIVING INTO A PUSSY?
Modern interiors are smoothened and finished over to conceal the connective nuts and bolts of the superstructure. You cannot see any connective mechanism and cannot see what holds the structure up or together. You take it all for granted.
In auto design, the Jeep is like a tractor where every vital system is visible and accessable from the door hinges to the drive train. It is a MAN’S vehicle compared to a posh minivan with electric sliding pussy ‘flap doors’ on both sides and movie viewers above the reclining individual seats. The all important engine is silent and concealed like it was UGLY or something. And troublesome to service? Hell you have to unattach the top engine mount and pry the engine foreward just to change the rear three plugs or service the rear head in some GM models. A PUSSY PLEASURE VEHICLE. On the other hand the Jeep should go all the way and have a CLEAR PLEXIGLAS HOOD so all the world can see she MALE INGENUITY that propels everything.
The capitol rotunda REPRESENTS A BREAST – A BOSOM. Lawmakers and henpeckers of every stripe gather round both sides like TICKS ON A DOG or like BETA ORBITERS around some featured porn queen that makes a featured appearance at the local GENTLEman’s club. The men are GENTLE in there. They have to behave subservient to the hypnotic swirling flying mesmerizing pussy monolith symbol on a stick and can’t ‘GRAB’ when the pierced twat is smeared on their baseball cap. They have to sit there like their hands were bound or something. How much more ‘PUT IN YOUR PLACE’ can you get BOY. .
Finally the obelisk which represents man’s overcoming of ancient BITCH RULE, like a towering pointed and unchopped or uncircumcised DICK arising from a conquered ‘mother’ earth must make a resurgence not as miniscule tombstones but as the massive centerpiece in every city that has thwarted the enslaving dominatrix whip cracking ‘bitch rule’ and instead embraces ALMIGHTY DICK POWER.
I’m trying to figure now how the BALLS can figure into the architecture for the order restored. I’ve noticed Target stores have RED BALLS beside the entrance which has a Target sign above the entrance. Hmm. Symbolizes ‘BALLS DEEP’!
I’m no architect but i think the real problem with architecture today
can’t immediately be defined as a ‘gendered’ (I hate that word) issue. I
think the main problem is that most buildings today are either purely
functional or nothing more than an expression of the designer and the
patron’s egos (The Wexner Centre is a perfect example). Post Modernism
in general is shit and in itself is nothing more than a trendy rejection
of modernism as it relates to leftist-consumerist product cycles (Simply put modernism became uncool because it was around for too long.). In cases where we could see such ‘gendered’ design in the modern era, the problem is that the architects will seek to embed their designs with their socio-political views (leftist, as they have attended such universities.) and this is what will make the building ‘appeal to women’. It’s more likely that most previous civilizations simply built what worked until they got to the opulent stage and had the time to explore. Of course culturally speaking any sex-specific interactions with the environment will be frowned upon in the west, which is partially why open plan apartments and the likes are so prominent (the other part being the economic aspect as others have mentioned.), but the case here is that architecture has become a ‘gender’ issue because women and the left have made it so and in order to do that everything prior to their influence has to be polarized into opposition so they can label it as ‘bad’. Architecture prior to the cold war culture battles, women’s lib and expressionism was simply ‘architecture’, everything since then has been politically correct expressions of art, politics and money.
This article is good in that it encourages the reader to explore the concepts it presents. But i doubt most people willing to read up on them would come to the same conclusion immediately.
Michel Foucault is that you? Awesome article. Hardly few people talk about how architecture affects society and interactions.
Excellent article, 10/10. I’ve never even thought about how architecture plays a role in facilitating the differences between the sexes. I knew that the Latin languages had most everything assigned a certain sex, but it hit me like a load of bricks reading this article what a profound impact that has on the psychological and cultural makeup of a country.
I was also reminded of this documentary, I highly recommend it:
https://vimeo.com/112655231
‘But Thailand’s modern house, influenced by modernism, has larger personal spaces and “no place for family gatherings.” (Thai House: Vernacular Heritage, Mariana Correia, 241)’
Family gatherings are always outside, on the porch or in the garden.