Why Are New Apartment Buildings So Ugly?
Nobody likes new designs, so why do we waste money on them?
Does anybody like the look of new apartment buildings?
Why are they so pointlessly complicated?
Why are their overhangs, ledges, and windows scattered so randomly? What's the overall pattern?
They look like an IQ test question where they show you the picture for 15 seconds and then you are supposed to draw everything you remember, and I get 7 points out of a possible 100.
This new building is in Los Angeles, the only city I know at all well in this century. Perhaps other architecture isn’t as bad as in Los Angeles lately, but I’m not optimistic. Los Angeles, for all its sins, is pretty influential.
In recent years, articulation for the sake of articulation seems to be the guiding principle of apartment building design in L.A. (and, I fear, elsewhere).
Wouldn’t a plain 1960 Bulgarian concrete box apartment building look a little less annoying?
A reader suggests this looks like a houseboat.
Perhaps God will announce to Los Angeles: “Remember that rainbow deal I made with Noah about not destroying the world anymore? Well, after watching you guys, it’s all off. Starting now, it’s going to rain for 40 days and 40 nights on Los Angeles.” But the developers of the ark-shaped apartments will safely sail off to Mt. Ararat?
Why not build a cheaper, simpler box, and then spend the rest of the budget on decoration, the way that art deco architects would have done a century ago? Granted, what did art deco architects ever accomplish?
Postmodern architect Robert Venturi observed long ago that most of architecture is “decorated sheds.”
That was actually a smart insight.
Why do we now waste money making the mostly rectangular shed needlessly complex in shape when you could instead spend the budget decorating a rectangular shed?
The world-conquering 5-over-1 apartment building style was invented in downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo (Casa Heiwa) in 1996 by architect Tim Smith.
Note that Tim Smith is not, however, …
Paywall here.
