Comments by "Gabe" (@gabetalks9275) on "The Aesthetic City" channel.

It's amazing to me how mid-20th Century humanity collectively made all the wrong decisions possible. We traded sustainability, beauty, and urbanism that was once working wonders for everyone for greed, ugliness, and segregation. Even when the economic bubble is bursting and the planet is being rapidly destroyed for short-term profit, we still continue to destroy ourselves in name of greed and hatred for our fellow humans. It's sickening.
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You make a video on Charleston, South Carolina. The city has implemented an architectural review board, so the city has preserved its old architecture and is building its new buildings in that style. As a result, it has become one of America's most desirable and fastest growing cities. However, it unfortunately isn't affordable due to places like Charleston being very rare to find here in America today. I think it would be nice to highlight a success story that isn't in Europe for once.
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100% agreed. I think people overhype classical architecture as the only possible form of beauty. It's a pretty elitist and pretentious stance to take. There are plenty of modern styles that are beautiful. Art Deco immediately comes to my mind. It's the style the Empire State Building was built in. And don't forget the iconic New Formalist Twin Towers. Sometimes simplicity can be beautiful.
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This video is honestly so refreshing. I keep seeing this very prevalent sentiment that if it's not Beaux-Art, then it's ugly. It's so nice to see architecture starting to be seen as a form of local cultural expression again, rather than just something that needs to be either extremely grand or "innovative" solely for the sake of being different. There's actually another example of a city prioritizing traditional beauty in the US. Newburyport, Massachusetts. Modernists were beginning to bulldoze their historic downtown into a car-centric mall until the residents rallied together to save it. They rebuilt their downtown for pedestrians and made restoring the unified colonial character of the neighborhood a priority. The Rural Urbanist made a great video about it, and there's even a documentary about it.
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While I'm glad that beauty is making a comeback, I don't think it's impossible for modern structures to be beautiful. The Empire State Building, the Twin Towers, the Sydney Opera House, and the Eiffel Tower are all masterpieces of modernism. Art Deco has even been making a comeback in NYC recently.
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@baronvonjo1929 The reason why Charleston is so expensive is because cities of its kind are a rarity in the US. Compared to most other states, South Carolina is one of the most affordable, so there's no reason why the same shouldn't also apply to Charleston if most other American cities were built like it.
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@pierrecimarra3695 Of course, but I think people obsess over how ornate a building is. It doesn't have to be. The old colonial towns of the US are also beautiful and they aren't grand by any means. I also really love that iconic New York brownstone.
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@Classical19821 Are you an American by any chance?
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There's actually a growing movement to rebuild Old Penn Station. A proposal created by local advocacy group ReThinkNYC have created designs and renderings of a rebuild Penn Station by three architects, and it has the support of other architects and the National Civic Arts Society. I really hope it's successful. The destruction of Old Penn Station was a crime against the arts. A heinous act of public vandalism.
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@davidr.walters371 I don't understand a word you just said. 💀
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@bart_u There's a growing movement to rebuild Old Penn Station. A proposal created local advocacy group ReThinkNYC have created designs and renderings of a rebuild Penn Station, and it has the support of architects and the National Civic Arts Society. I really hope it's successful.
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@Daniel_Zhu_a6f I'm not talking about slavery. I'm talking about urban planning before the automobile.
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@yuzan3607 Not everything needs to be complex in order to be beautiful. Simplicity can be beautiful too. They'll probably grow on you over time. And they aren't glass cubes. Those are actually small steel beams that divided the windows into very small sizes. The architect behind them, Minoru Yamasaki, did that on purpose because he was afraid of heights. The beams start in in the shape of gothic arches above the lobby, then go straight up.
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@snakedogman That's completely wrong. Art Deco is an early modern style.
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@benjaminvleugels5609 The Twin Towers weren't Art Deco. They were New Formalist.
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@the_aesthetic_city The plan is a counter proposal to Governor Hochul's corrupt "urban renewal" plan that's going to bulldoze the entire neighborhood around Penn Station, along with 10 historic buildings, and replace them with boring glass office towers. The plan unfortunately is already underway, and historic Hotel Pennsylvania, one of the last surviving remnants of the original Penn Station is already gone. But fortunately, the plan is stalled because the investors are pulling out due to high interest rates and lack of demand for office space. Plus, Madison Square Garden's lease over Penn Station expires this June, and Manhattan Burrough Council, meaning the public, has voted against renewing it's permit. Other proposals for a new or improved Penn Station have been made, but ReThinkNYC's is definitely the most popular one. Not just because Old Penn Station was an iconic national landmark and artistic treasure, but also because ReThinkNYC hopes to unite all the tri-state area railroads into a single unified regional rail network with full regionwide through-running. As for MSG, they've proposed three spots to relocate it. The Port Authority Bus Terminal, Hudson Yards, or right across the street from Penn Station at Herald Square on Broadway.
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@pietervoogt I think the idea that buildings can make you depressed is honestly ridiculous. Yes, they're boring, but you can't tell me what with a straight face that the brutalist building down the street gave you chronic depression. Yes, traditional architecture should come back, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This "modernism bad" mentality is just pretentious and elitist. Not everything needs to be grand and ornate in order to be beautiful. Simplicity can be beautiful too.
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@pietervoogt The problem I have with your argument is that you seem to think that the definition of beauty is objective. It's not. Beauty is subjective. Also, no. Buildings don't cause suicide. That's absurd. People commit suicide because they're already depressed and feel they have no way to escape. Imagine someone committing suicide because of trauma, addiction, and/or bullying, and then blaming it on the brutalist office building next to their house.
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@pietervoogt I'm not saying that traditional architecture should be disregarded and that everything should stay ugly. But I think the distain that people have for anything that's modern solely because it's modern is really toxic. Modern architecture can be beautiful and creative. Holding to a totally anti-modernist extreme just suppresses the freedom of expression of artists everywhere. Also, while it's true that anything in life can have multiple causes, I don't the ugly office building down the street is the last thing a suicidal person would ever be concerned about. A suicidal person is desperate for the intimacy of people to help them, love them, and support them. Not an ornate building. The beauty of a building has no effect on what a person is suffering behind closed doors, so you putting ugliness right next to extremely serious things like abuse and addiction as a cause for suicide is honestly really insulting to people battling depression.
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@Classical19821 Because suburbanization was built on redlining which cut off government funding to any neighborhood that was majority of color and made it illegal to sell mortgages to anyone of color. HOA's also excluded anyone of color from moving in. This is why suburbs are still overwhelmingly white to this day. You probably wouldn't know that if you weren't American since this is was a uniquely American thing.
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@unconventionalideas5683 No, it most definitely wasn't. All of this was spearheaded by the perfect combination of corporate greed, classism, and segregationism we've ever seen over the past century. We destroyed our cities and gentrified them, destroyed the environment, and manufactured a housing crisis solely to keep the "undesirables" out so that the the rich could thrive at the next generation's expense. Let that sink in. We live in a world that is so desperate to avoid so much as breathing the same air as the "undesirables," that we are actually willing to literally destroy ourselves just to preserve that. It's so pathetic and sad. Just wait until Gen Alpha finds out the motivation behind what caused climate change.
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@Daniel_Zhu_a6f ...Strawman... I'm referring to the actual urban form of cities. Not working conditions.
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@dancotterman1267 How on Earth did you come to the conclusion that I'm talking about Russia?
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@westelaudio943 Because they still incorporated stone into the structures, often encasing the steel beams underneath the stone. Postmodern structures on the other hand, which are built with only steel and concrete however, are deteriorating very fast.
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They made multiple designs for the WTC and literally every single one looks hideous.
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@user-gu9yq5sj7c I hadn't considered the effect architectural beauty has on people in that way before, so thank you for that. But yes, variety is important, because I constantly see people saying that anything that isn't ornate is ugly unironically as if being grand and ornate is the only form of beauty that exists.
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