Is it the architect? The developer? Or perhaps the city? The correct answer, it would seem, is whoever has the most followers on social media:
For the Norwegian branch of the social media movement Architectural Uprising, this revision was another feather in its cap. Founded in Sweden in 2014 as a public Facebook group, the Uprising is a collective of citizen design critics who object to what organizers call the “continued uglification” of developments in Nordic cities, and push for a return to classically informed design. With more than 100,000 social media followers across some 40 different branches, the group now serves as a significant platform for those who assert that the public, not just bureaucrats, architects, developers and property owners, ought to have a voice in the design of their built environments.
As a developer and person who studied architecture, I find this frustrating. Imagine you’re a painter working in a busy public square. And every time somebody walks by and shouts a new criticism, you need to change your art. How would you feel about your work?
Now assume that your painting is an expensive commission. Your clients just re-mortgaged their home to pay for it and they specifically asked you for a painting that looks like something from Henri Matisse’s “Blue Nudes” collection.
Unfortunately, the crowd in the public square wasn’t a fan of the color blue or of abstract figures, and so you’ve instead rendered dozens of well-fed Renaissance figures sitting in a lively garden eating grapes. “Sorry, hope you like it. This is what the critics wanted.”
Look, I may be stretching here. I fully appreciate that architecture is inherently a more public form of art than painting. I just think it’s important to give entrepreneurs, artists, and other creatives the freedom to experiment.
If we force everyone to look toward the past, how will the misfits ever create the future?
P.S. I have no issue with voting on publicly-funded architecture. I actually think that’s a good idea.
BRANDON DONNELLY 
Reading this, I can’t help but think of Jane Jacobs’ last book Dark Age Ahead. I’ve been thinking about this book a lot lately because there is so much in this book that resonates with this moment in time. Specifically, Brandon’s mention of Architectural Uprising makes me think of Jacobs’s chapter on safety. She speculated that the notion of safety would be leveraged in the future to enact ideas that could not be rationally defended otherwise. And so it it that Architectural Uprising is using this lever, arguing that society needs visual safety from architects and developers. Although there is some Nordic, Dutch and Danish architecture that is aggressively ugly, I wouldn’t want to constrain a developer’s vision or architectural expression because we will then preclude the possibility of the wonderful Oslo Opera and the adjacent Bar Code development from being realized.
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City planners and politicians are way out of bounds determining what a building should look like. Developers and the market are by far more efficient and it is their buck at risk. However we can never rely on developers to build suitable densities. They virtually ALWAYS want more. Very unfortunately our entire province and city have been subverted by the development industry who are running rampant – to the detriment of our entire society. It is extremely shortsighted and shameful – but even more profitable.
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I’m gonna be the devil’s advocate here and defend Architectural Uprising’s ideas here. Let’s be honest, most modern and contemporary buildings age very poorly, require regular and extensive (and expensive maintenance), because they are designed for a short lifespan (let’s call it 50 years or so for argument’s sake).
Yet, many of the public and private buildings built before the advent of modernism as a mainstream style, age much better, are much sturdier and much better loved by the public and experts alike.
There are exceptions to this in both traditional and contemporary architecture, but I think it holds true as a general principle.
Classical buildings, when well designed, are pretty much universally loved and respected regardless of the period they were built in. They are designed according to tried and true principles and just work. I think it can also be said that they adapt pretty well to a variety of uses over time.
Modernist / contemporary buildings cannot claim the same and are often very ugly or look out of date before they’re even completed.
All of this is not to say that contemporary architecture cannot be good, it can, especially when finding inspiration in classical architecture both in form and function, but we should be careful to not revere architecture that appears innovative in its day, but becomes very problematic shortly after completion.
How many of Hadid’s or Gehry’s buildings have been plagued with problems from day 1 because they were arguably too innovative for trying construction methods that were not time-tested?
A bit of conservatism for artifacts that are affecting cities for decades or centuries wouldn’t hurt an industry that is very much focused on what’s fashionable over what’s proven to work.
Nassim Taleb perfectly summarized it with the concept of the Lindy effect: The longer a human artifacts (objects or ideas) has been around, the longer it is likely to persist into the future. Conversely those that have been around for a short time (100 years is short) are equally likely to disappear into a similar time frame into the future.
I use to hate with all my might architecture that is not “of its time”, like building a neo-classical library in the 20th century (cf. Chicago central library), but as I get older I understand why. And when it’s well executed it can be wonderful.
I think, as mentioned above that architecture can be of its time and true to long-standing traditions at the same time, the problem with the architecture world is that it has thrown the baby with the bath water in an attempt at a wholesale rejection of anything that is not “modern”. I think Corbusier has a lot to do with it.
Send me you hate mail.
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Quite a contentious topic but I would agree basically with Brandon’s sentiments even though I am not a big Gehry fan for instance. I also agree that planners and politicians should avoid anything more than their own personal opinion on aesthetics (everyone is entitled to an opinion) When I practiced, we has a lot of genuine citizen participation into design but it stopped short of dictating aesthetics or choosing a formal architectural order. We also had developer clients who would return from a trip somewhere with photos of classical buildings that they wanted to recreate but we never did that either. Being contemporary does not necessarily mean being either ugly nor beautiful and reverting to the comfort of a style that is familiar solves nothing. Didn’t Trump try this in the US? FLW, by the way, now revered by many, if not most, had all sorts of leaks in his buildings as well. it was a mark of pride almost, The more buckets you had to collect leaks, the more adventurous your house design was considered to be.
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This “Uprising” is really frustrating – in Finland their main “argument” is that the architects have failed. Usually in Finland also the city has architects as planners, designers and, okay, all developers -and then those people in the “against ugly architecture and all architects” are getting more space in media and of course in social media, too. They main “supporter”,or the man to follow is – no one else than King Charles and “his own village”…
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