Comments by "" (@bart_u) on "The Aesthetic City" channel.

  1. Let those who seek and create BEAUTY rise!
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  2. Yeah, same with "similar" places like Las Vegas or megacities in China, sadly... What were they thinking? :/
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  3. Such an incredibly important video! We need to stand up for our cities. ❤ The first money I ever donated was for the rebuilding of Dresden's Frauenkirche. Ever since then, I was involved to make this city beautiful again. It was an honor and pleasure to interview the local heroes for this video. Greetings from the Berlin studio of The Aesthetic City, Bart Urban
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  4. India has such a rich and beautiful architectural heritage! It can have immense success by renovating this and rejuvenating its traditions. Please don't repeat the mistakes of the West and China!
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  5. There's a reason why the best universities actually have almost exclusively classically styled campuses: Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge etc. Even when they built new, they go for new classical architecture. It just elevates and serves the minds and spirits best, that's easy to recognize when you're there. <3
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  6. Beauty shall be available for all! ❤
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  7. ❤ "Beauty matters. It is not just a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need we find ourselves in a spiritual desert." - Roger Scruton 🏛 We just want beauty! That's all. Not being reduced to "machines" that just need to "function". To live and enjoy life.
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  8. Oh yes please, so needed in the US!
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  9.  @Zaabi  Cities can grow more "organical", in contrast to very artificial top-down modernist planning
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  10. ​ @johnperic6860 the notion that modernism is derived from Arts & Crafts is nonsense. The latter advocated the use of, well, crafts, and learning from the vernacular. The opposite of the machine-like and industrialised approach that modernists took.
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  11. Dubai looks like a fantastic sci-fi movie set... until people try to live in it. Few walkable streets, extreme heat, and endless traffic – it's a city built for cars, not people. When will they realize urban sprawl isn't the future? 🚗🌆 They seem to slowly get that they need to change something.
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  12. Street noise is a huge problem if you don't have courtyards at all
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  13. Oh yes please! Where are you from?
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  14. So moving to read that, actually. When people have this wonderful "aha moment". :) Welcome aboard the movement! ⛵👨‍✈🚢
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  15. Yes, totally. What is addressed here is mostly the destructive forms of modernism though: the ever-repeating profit-maximized bland boxes, international style monotony, socialist same-ness, show-off monstrosities, brutalism, etc. Classical and traditional vernacular styles can be very simple, too btw. Check for instance traditional Japanese or Arabic houses. Or the styles on the verge to modernism you mention: Art Deco, Streamline Moderne, Expressionism. Early modernist styles definitely are a good nod to start new from. But the nihilism of the past decades needs to end, it just gives people depression.
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  16. Beauty matters! So let's build beautiful ♥️⛲
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  17. The Roman concrete also used volcanic ash for better composition.
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  18.  @Zaabi  It wasn't what?
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  19.  @bhadawar01  Pleas help start an Architecture Rebellion in India! Get back to the Uprising people via the links in the description of this video :) It's so, so needed there
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  20. ​ @tanjavanderknoop8497 Hi Tanja, yeah that's definitely a welcome addition here and there. :) Though I have to admit, the actual historical centre of Dresden is TINY, compared to the vast wastelands of commie buildings surrounding it. These drab areas need proper greenery the most, as usually they just have this depressing "distancing green" with strips of unkept lawn separating the buildings. Immediate old town centres work well with little islands of greenery, as the architecture wants to be fully experienced and appreciated. For example in the middle of Rome, Venice, Prague or said Dresden. They usually have green courtyards where such solutions are a beautiful addition. ❤
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  21. Macedonia made some honorable efforts, but at least in my view they didn't match the classical proportions in many of the projects. Maybe it improved lately though.
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  22. Construction materials are an important aspect. At the same time, beautiful architecture in classical styles can also be done with newer materials, as was done in the early 20th century already. The most important aspects are the urbanism, functionality and the human-friendly aesthetics, everything else comes after that.
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  23. There are quite a number of studies that show common objective truths about beauty. Watch one of the earlier videos here.
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  24. This is so true! Classical and traditional styles are ageless, they go through times easily and gracefully.
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  25. No. It was ideology. They were very, very deliberate about which buildings they left in ruins, which they rebuilt and which they blew up.
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  26. It's there already, look in the links in the description! :)
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  27.  @MikeAG333  If that would be true, then there wouldn't be architecture offices with a track record of beautiful buildings, like David M. Schwarz, Sebastian Treese, Quinlan Terry, Robert Adam, John Simpson, Tobias Nöfer, etc. Architects have to have some aesthetic principles and stand up for them, or else they are a slave to developers indeed.
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  28.  @matyasrichter9774  Actually, developments like that are exactly what is envisioned in architecture schools or free competitions without the pressure of developers. Architecture students should be taught about proportions, urbanism, aesthetics much more.
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  29.  @ekszentrik  brrr, that sounds terribly wrong and hopefully will never happen. We can create an artificial material with the same upsides of ivory, yet more firm and stable.
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  30. About time for Greece! Welcome aboard the revolution! ⛵👨‍✈🚢
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  31. Welcome aboard! ⛵👨‍✈🚢
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  32. Costs can be equal or even lower for new classical buildings actually. It depends on the actual case and execution. Though this channel intends to make a video specifically about this topic.
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  33.  @nyutubeI1  I agree with what you say. I feel one of the main issues today are the production requesites for buildings. In the past, you had a lot of individual, small scale landowners who would just hire skilled craftsman to create the houses, or build by themselves. Today you mostly have big companies doing it, or small landowners that hire bland architecture offices or pre-fab companies. An increase in crafts and small-scale ownership will certainly help with better building culture. Also I'm hopeful for AI, Midjourney and Adobe Firefly etc. already show that you can create much more beautiful designs as a normal person than most architects nowadays- in just minutes. :)
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  34.  @intbau_germany  well put! <3
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  35.  @encantada271  you're very welcome :)
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  36. Indeed, the missing links between classical and modernist motifs are especially interesting: Jugendstil, Secession, Modernisme (Gaudí), Art Deco, Expressionism, Streamline, etc. We can re-start architecture from there as well. Tobias Nöfer from Berlin does beautiful work in this regard, or David M. Schwarz architects from the US.
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  37. It's not just about style, agreed. The good buildings in modernist styles are like 0,3% of the overall output though, while more than 99% of truly classical buildings range from neat/nice to amazing. So we need to rediscover the classical qualities to then create better new stuff. Places like the building in Moscow or Le Plessis-Robinson are far from perfect, but early steps in a direction to improve building culture by relearning what worked in the past. We can innovate from that base.
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  38. Hopefully! The building craze got to a much needed halt lately. Gives everyone time to think more thoroughly in what kind of cities we want to live and change course. Btw, the Uprising has its own group in Finland! Many are in Helsinki, like Marjo Uotila.
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  39. Nothing wrong with having various cultures in one places, but that shouldn't mean uniformity. The modernist ideology isn't one of variety or mixing interesting motifs, but of numbing aesthetics down to the mere smallest amount possible.
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  40. Most of what you say doesn't make any sense. "ineffective and resource heavy buildings of past" - simply not true. Building construction was a largely CO2 neutral and resources saving area before the advent of reinforced concrete in the 20th century. Also, urbanism is considered here, and other qualities than just style. But obviously, what bothers people the most, is the sheer ugliness of today's most new buildings. They wouldn't have to be classical, but at least humane, lovely, appealing, feeling natural to our senses. " the classical often misses the same qualities" - very rarely. The problem mostly occurs due to buildings being too big and only offering a single use that may not serve the public. Then you get dead zones, like in many government districts or financial districts.
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  41. Glass covered buildings are pure horror to be in!
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  42. Ah well. Classical American cities, Latin American, Swiss, medieval Hanseatic cities etc. were also beautifully built by just a melange of citizens acting together. No need to have monarchs or autocrats for that. But indeed the cities need to give design guidelines as to what is allowed to be built.
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  43. Most new classical buildings are actually same price or even cheaper than modernist ones. Especially at scale.
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  44. Not all the buildings are minimalist in their designs though. Deconstructivism, brutalism, postmodern irony, show-off autocratic stuff... Can all be very lavish and overdesigned, and still incredibly ugly. There's no fitting word to encompass them all so far. Maybe we invent one? "Uglyism" :D Because that's what binds them all.
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  45. BS. Nature is beautiful, even when it's cruel looking, like a lion hunting down a zebra. But brutalism is just choosing to be ugly, that's not what is representing the true nature of life, it's the opposite. And thus a lie. What is true is also beautiful.
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  46. "Leave aestethics to the professionals" - to me, THAT is the actual definition of a technocratic totalitarianism. Super arrogant and ivory-towerish, oppressing.
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  47. True, yet Berlin has a wonderful selection of great architects, like Treese, Nöfer, Höhne, Jordi, Kahlfeldt, Patzschke, and some more ❤
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  48. I get your point. At the same time, I think we need to rediscover and re-learn the classical proportions and principles - to actually create something new that convinces our natural aesthetic senses. Just like the early modern movements like Nouveau, Art Deco, Modernisme, Expressionism etc. still mastered the classical way of building design, and thus could come up with innovation rooted in older motifs that just worked. When we re-learned at large, we can innovate much better forth. AI might also help with that, 3D printing etc. as well.
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  49.  @desolate_leng  Exactly! In short, our human eyes crave patterns and fractals, like we find them in nature. Arranged in a somewhat organic or nature-like order.
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  50. Modernisme and Art Deco are great styles to restart from! Classical is pretty much unlimited in its abilities though. You can do almost anything with it.
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