Comments by "Minerva\x27s Owl" (@HighFlyingOwlOfMinerva) on "The Aesthetic City" channel.

  1.  @the_aesthetic_city  That's because newspapers usually are in cahoots with modernists and go hand in hand with 'em.
    72
  2.  @jenstrudenau9134  *sexes. There is no such thing as "gender".
    43
  3. Resident of Rotterdam here - I hate how the city looks like today. It tries to copy an American city, but fails miserably at doing so because it also still has a lot of 1950s ugly, depressing appartment blocs close to it. If you go to the Binnenrotte - Hoogstraat area, you will see what I mean. I used to go to the gym next to where the Sint-Laurenskerk lies, one of the only pre-war buildings that was preserved after 1940, and it lies around swaths of modernist buildings. I frequently saw tourists photograph the church and church only and not the other buildings around it. Then there's certain area's that suffer due to a lot of wind thanks to the high and boxy buildings present everywhere catching said wind and pushing it to the ground, to the point I need to wear a scarf in the winter because it just being too much to be pleasnt. It gets even worse when you discover what the city before 1940 looks like. Compare the area's of the Steigersgracht, Hoogstraat, Delftsevaart and Blaak then and now and you will just want to cry how awful it all is today compared to the past. Lastly, one of the few decent places, the area around the Witte Huis and Spanjaardsbrug, is far more popular than any other area by locals and tourists alike. It angers and baffles me why the city council continues to pretend the modernist "identity" Rotterdam has is somehow a good thing, when Rotterdam is a clear example of a failed experiment that would vastly improve if it underwent a rebuilding in the style of Dresden. Lastly, I've been to multiple other cities in the country, from Schiedam to Middelburg. All were vastly more pleasant to walk around than Rotterdam. Middelburg, despite having rather simple 1940s houses in the hit area's, felt MUCH more pleasant to be in than Rotterdam, and I'll certainly consider returning in the future because of it. Good architecture and city planning matters, people!
    28
  4.  @NitroNinja324  It isn't. It's word coined in the 1950s by the highly dubious "sexologist" John Money and means nothing. Use the correct word or consider shutting up.
    26
  5. Gdansk (Danzig) also springs to mind. That city was mainly rebuilt in the pre-German time, but rebuilt beautifully nonetheless. Can't say the same for Cologne, sadly...
    26
  6. Glad to see this city get some recognition! There's also some American cities built by Disney Corp. that are rather good looking and feel quite organic (for American standards anyway) and ought to get their video sometime in the (far) future. They're even planning to build a small town in France now apparently. But I feel like Heulebrug in Flanders ought to get some more love, as that project is still quite unknown. Or maybe the current developments happening in the Rotterdam area of Kralingen, like Nieuw-Kralingen? It looks promising anyway. Cheers!
    18
  7. And if they aren't torn down but renovated instead, they still somehow manage to stick out of the rest like a sore thumb. It's incredible how awful modernist architecture tends to be no matter the period it was built in.
    17
  8. Very well said! There is nothing worse than soul crushing concrete and your solutions sound pretty viable. Also, in Italy, even most of the "newer" buildings today are still built with arches, you can find them in the neighbourhoods built in the 1950s to 1980s in cities like Venice, Milan and so on. Now I wonder if the glass industry is causing similar problems for the environment, especially coupled with concrete...
    14
  9.  @NitroNinja324  It isn't, but continue the cope.
    12
  10.  @NitroNinja324  No, I don't think I will. It has no merit to be used as it's just a useless word, which is a fact.
    11
  11. >'do any research you'll find good ultra modern architecture' >proceeds to not name any examples of good ultra modern architecture >uses nothing but insults and personal attacks Incredible. We are all convinced, bravo.
    8
  12. Sometimes, not even via studying you can change things for the better. In my free time I create new Wiki articles of Rotterdam's long forgotten past. The result? What essentially was history lost to time got found and put back for everyone to read and it worked. Channels on social media picked it up and shared it, showing people what they're missing. Sometimes photo's and some info can really do more than 1000 words ever can!
    7
  13. I can taste the salt coming through the screen.
    6
  14.  @aristeon5908  They aren't wonderful - they are dreadful and depressing to live in. Concrete jungles full of ugly skyscrapers and cramped Communist-esque boxes are places you couldn't pay me to live in. I'd rather live in a museum and be happy than "develop" (for the worse) and live like an NPC in a box with depression - something that's happening in just about every modernist building today.
    6
  15. There is no "reactionary dogma" in tried and tested idea's and this video in itself is the very proof of that. The only genuine reactionary dogma is that of modernism that runs after the "new" and "hip" thing (while being the exact same intellectually lazy thing over and over by now) which is also being aided by lazy developers and propagandists disguised as "city planners", and ironically, traditionalism has far more genuinely unique styles that have been created, be it the Roman era, Middle Ages, 1800s, 1930s or post-2000s. Similar looking, sure, but never "the same" - something I can't say of modernism with its dull Soviet-era appartment blocs or "futurist" skyscrapers (both of which can give you depression, by the way).
    5
  16. Too bad your idea is still dead wrong, as multiple quotes from Hitler himself confirm that he indeed was just as much of a nationalist as he was a socialist.
    5
  17. Or that it is literally illegal, like in your country. It's bizarre to think about, but apparently it is, as Not Just Bikes mentioned it multiple times.
    5
  18. I'd rather live in Disneyland than horribly bloated megacities - something Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore all are today.
    5
  19. Yes, because the modernist (depressing) neighbourhoods being built in the USSR and Yugoslavia at the time definitely came about normally, right?
    4
  20. Disneyland > Soviet Union
    4
  21.  @Game_Hero  Some believe that Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Jügendstil are "modern" styles. Some styles even explicitly label itself as 'modernist' like Catalan modernism, yet when people look at them all they aren't exactly modernist as they lend some elements from traditionalism unlike the brutal, soul crushing post-WWII styles, which in itself are extreme inventions from the USSR and the U.S. What was new before WWII wasn't bad for the large part after +100 years, what was new after WWII still is just utter shit for the large part after as early as 75 years, this isn't new or shocking and certainly no "reactionary dogmatic thinking" like you originally implied. And yes, a lot of people advocate for this mindset. Can you honestly blame them for living under such insolence for the last, what, 80 years? I wouldn't blame them in the slightest. Look at before/after video's and photo's of cities like Berlin, Cologne or Rotterdam and you'll understand why.
    4
  22. And here we have yet another one uttering the bankrupt "muh Disneyland" theory.
    3
  23. But it does. It has all that you need in a city. Just because it's not some depressing and anonymous MeGaCiTy concept like what the Americans have, doesn't mean it doesn't work.
    3
  24.  @aristeon5908  Oh cool, I love being featured in a cherrypicked modernist article full of copes on how glass & steel buildings who often cost more than their traditional variants and brutalist appartment blocs that make area's resemble Yugoslavia are actually good! Are you going to feature how man-made parks consist as "nature" instead of, you know, genuine nature as well? Or how flashing neon lights and camera's everywhere are actually not totally weird at all also? Be sure to send it when it's ready, I'll be sure to not read it. ;)
    3
  25.  @LA_HA  It is, actually. Not my fault Weimerika has been sucking since the 60s, lmao.
    3
  26. Sorry man, but it is Europeans that built the most and best architecture. Don't like this reality? Cry about it.
    3
  27. That's a lot of words to say "I hate beauty and tradition and vote left-wing parties".
    3
  28. "These guys are trying so hard to make modernism sound bad, it is not." It is. No one wants to live in soul-crushing area's that look like Yugoslavia or Hong Kong. High-rise appartment blocs are just fancy prisons and the skyscrapers are even worse. These buildings don't even make it to 100 years if they're not renovated and cost more to maintain than you think. My appartment bloc (that was built in the 80s) already has mold growing out of the walls, go figure.
    2
  29. Now ask yourself: what kind of people were they even? Were they even from Europe? If not, then remigration solves that problem. ;)
    2
  30. They always complain that "the poor" are hit, but they'll never tell you what kind of "poor" are affected. Tell me, how much of a succes story are the Banlieues again?
    2
  31. No way that Maarten van Rossem supports you on Patreon, that's awesome! Now, regarding Dubai - I have no idea what it's like as I've never been there, but it does look overblown and overrated, in the same way that the average modernist and internationalist city in Qatar, Bahrain and now Saudi Arabia is trying to be. This stuff only works insofar they have money, but given the change of the environment, that'll eventually become unsustainable. It's like a worse version of Las Vegas. The Arabian world has more interesting places to be and it's an actual shame they didn't apply these practices instead of wasting time, space, money and resources on this.
    2
  32. "marginalised groups" you mean non-Europeans which weren't even supposed to be there in the first place?
    2
  33. And also make a comparison to cities like Cologne that refuse to acknowledge that beauty and tradition matter and look pretty ugly to really bring it home. There's of course also Dresden and even certain urban improvements going on in Berlin and Hamburg.
    2
  34. I find it funny how they complain that places like this are "for the rich" when there are plenty of modernist settlements which are genuine gated communities, yet you never hear anything about them. Let's be real journo's: you don't hate the rich, you hate beauty.
    2
  35. Bullshit. Skyscrapers have never been good for humanity to begin with but let's hypothetically assume they were - architects like Hans Kollhoff instantly prove that not building with glass and steel is possible and should be the standard. Defending these horrid, half empty skyscrapers that are soulless and genuinely kill birds due to them flying into the glass is lazy.
    2
  36.  @NilsKung  Oh yeah, I love Stripped Classicism, yeah. The EUR is a good example of it, as is the Fro Italico, but the New Reich Chancellary and Volkshalle have something mystic I haven't seen in ages, and same goes for the Federal Bank building in the U.S. and some Soviet architecture. It combines the old and new beautifully, as opposed to modernist works like the International style. With that said, a general reminder for everyone: you don't have to like the ideologies attached to said architecture. I doubt anyone today still likes Feudalism, yet everyone loves some of the architecture built during that time, for example.
    2
  37. Fantastic video! Though if I may be able to bring in some constructive criticism - slow down a bit with the transitions. I feel like currently the transitions are a bit too fast, when in reality I want the time to really let the images sink in and analyze them. Delaying them with a second or two would make a great difference already. As for the rest of the video - there are many more similar firebombings that happened in Germany, I found out. Not just in what is today considered Germany, but also in places now in Poland like Szczecin (Stettin), Gdansk (Danzig) and Świnoujście (Swinemünde). I'll save you the horrible details of the many that brutally died in what I'd call deliberate firestorms, but the cities itself fared little better. Luckily they have been rebuilt for the most part, but these bombings seem to have been long forgotten. And also, the DDR buildings can go for all I care. Not just because having nostalgia for a regime as brutal as the DDR is just... cringe, but especially because the houses itself look in a bad shape and you could achieve a similar but much nicer result with the designs you showed. I am very glad this video is made, thank you The Aesthetic City! Here's hoping you'll make one on Gdansk next in the future, that city has an interesting history of its own regarding reconstruction. Cheers!
    2
  38. There are many examples of cities that could and should be restored just in Germany alone (*cough* Cologne *cough), but there's plenty of often overlooked cities outside 'em that could also deffo use some improvement. Be it the UK (Birmingham), Netherlands (Rotterdam), Flanders (Antwerp), Italy (Milan) and so on, the war is still leaving deep scars on them and it didn't help that post-war car-centric minds destroyed the places even further. Hell even the outer edges of Amsterdam have been (partially) ruined by this thinking and with them many other cities. It's criminal and ought to be rectified within now and 50 years.
    2
  39. Cope and seethe.
    2
  40.  @Joshua-dc4un  So, two buzzwords and doesn't refute what I said, most likely because he knows I'm right. I believe the correct term here would be: seethe and cope, goober.
    2
  41. No, that's Cologne, and unsurprisingly that place is built in the modernist style. :)
    2
  42.  @tatianaes3354  "MUH construction industry MUH parasitic system" The only parasite I see around me are non-Europeans slurping up what little houses are left that should be going to us. If you are okay with open borders and endless mass migration of non-Europeans into Europe yet still think you have a right to anything, you deserve to sleep under a bridge for all I care. Tradition and beauty come first, I don't care how many internationalist building companies will go tits up as a result. Learn to improve, or perish in bankruptcy.
    2
  43. My guess is that it's done because of the sun, but yeah a few more colours wouldn't have hurted. But, unlike bad design, painting a wall is luckily not such a difficult thing to fix.
    2
  44.  @ligametis  No, you just have no taste.
    1
  45.  @quangduongsong373  Oh they do, but that the end of the day they still look better on a good day, whereas ugly buildings just keep on looking ugly even on a good day. Also - fuck overpopulation. Places like China need population shinkage to make it liveable, not Europe. Also Africa, but that's a story for another day. "Muh investor" I don't give a flying fuck about what investors who only care about gaining infinite capital say or think, and I'll be glad for the day your type of "architects" will be replaced by our type of ways again. Cheers.
    1
  46.  @xShadowChrisx  There is no such thing as "gendered" - it's either male or female. Cry about it.
    1
  47. - You don't have to build mini-Yugoslavia to "house the poor" (which wouldn't even be a problem as bad as it is now if non-Europeans were remigrated half as often as happens now) - Beauty is objective, you just have no taste. - You sound like a Communist, which is extremely cringe. - This is a way to build cheap and environmentally friendly, as opposed to costly modernist garbage which overrides costs more often than not and looks like ass doing so. - Poverty and rental prices aren't a problem - immigration is. Fix that, and you don't have the other two. ;)
    1
  48.  @cletusbufford  What the hell do you know about neighbourhoods in Europe?
    1
  49. There is no love to be shown for something that is soulless and purely made for profit anyway.
    1
  50.  @TheGinglymus  Are you actually dense or do you get off to replying snarkily?
    1