Butts In the Seats: Tyler Cowen of the Marginal Revolution blog posted a short video meant as a preview of a long movie project discussing how we have eliminated ordinary beauty from our lives in the name of efficiency.
Sheehan Quirke moves about London comparing ornate, though mass produced objects from the Victorian era like lamp posts, door fixtures, etc., arguing that design has moved toward simple functionality and abandoned offering beauty in every day objects.
13 comments:
I agree so much with this article. I think that craftsmanship has been devalued in exchange for efficiency because making things beautiful costs more money. It costs the bottom line for companies then making things efficiently does. I think that in the very consumerist world that we live in, things are not valued for their beauty and their craftsmanship as much as they are valued for how cheap they are, how cheap they are to produce, and how much profit they give to the people at the top. This I feel like relates to planned obsolescence and how things nowadays are also not designed with the intention of lasting in mind. In some cases they are not only going to break eventually because of poor quality of craft, but are actually intentionally designed to break over time so that someone has to re-buy.I just wish we took more time for things to be beautiful in everyday life rather than the capitalist hellscape we currently reside in.
This is such a sad truth in our reality. Not only has beauty been sacrificed for function, but it's also been sacrificed so it doesn't distract us from reaching maximum efficiency and business. Cities and cars are now designed to make us look away from them so we can look at things to consume and buy. Such as how cars are designed to be grey, black, and white so they don't make us look away from bright colored fast food restaurant signs. The world is designed to be bleak in the guise of “modern and clean” when it's just full on utilitarianism so we can escape in our phones or the tv. Things are cheaper to build, and not made to last. It's funny how our late stage hypercapitalist world looks a little architecturally soviet. This connects to the bigger issue of the erasure of the third space, which really just shows how public spaces, streets, and cities aren't designed for use unless they cost money.
I think about this all the time, especially as a scenic designer who looks at all the details of a building I encounter. I think in this country the rushed, fastest way we’ve found to manufacture the details in our architecture has led to a bland, sanitized culture. The past is littered with problems and societal standards that we should never return to… but why did we have to lose the ornate mouldings and attention to quality? People love old homes because they have character and are no longer being built when faceless tan apartment buildings go up by the hundreds with no distinguishable differences between them in an entire neighborhood. I see this concept of modern day manufacturing making everything bland come into play with scenic design. Often the preferred more historical or more aesthetic option is more expensive and has to be cut and replaced with a cheaper alternative that has less detail to fit into the budget.
I remember seeing this youtube video pop up on my for you page the day it was released and watching it. This article touches on some of the most applicable and important parts of the video, but I think one of the most pertinent points that Sheehan Quirke makes in his video is that we’re sacrificing “beauty” for efficiency in too many of the things we create in the modern world. He attributes a lot of this to “cutting edge” being a very pared down modern aesthetic which is immensely popular worldwide but that this aesthetic came from attempting to cut all of the vestigial beauty from our things in order to make them the most functional for the least cost. In discussing ornate lamp posts he calls them “quaint” but they’re really quite beautiful and full of character and warmth that so many smooth soulless lampposts lack. He points out that these lamps may not run the most efficiently or have been the cheapest to make but that their value comes from parts of itself besides those two factors. I really like this take and think it’s something we should be moving towards in the future especially with public works.
This article really made me think about how much of the small stuff we’ve lost without even noticing and it's really sad. Everything now feels super clean and simple which is nice sometimes but kind of boring too. Like benches used to have carvings, streetlights had cool shapes, buildings had random little details that made them feel unique. Now everything’s gray and just sort of there. I get that people want things to look modern and efficient but it makes everything feel the same. There’s no surprise or personality anymore, just smooth lines and blank walls. It’s weird how we've lost all character without even fully realizing it. I started spiraling thinking about how even tiny things, like an old door handle or a colorful sign, can make you stop for a second. Those are the moments that make a place feel alive, not just like another copy and paste design.
This is actually an issue that I've been thinking about for a long time. You can even see it in how they construct buildings like skyscrapers. Even the ones that do look nice are not as intricate as the older buildings that you see from the 1800s or from earlier generations. Every time I go into downtown Pittsburgh I see all of these beautiful older buildings, and then a soulless, glass covered skyscraper that doesn't have that same individual heart or care put into it. You can even see it in the difference between a building like Wean and a building like the CFA building. I think it's a tremendous shame because even if we don't think about it too much, we spend a lot of our lives in these in-between places. It's sad to think that we're not spending our lives around the beauty that we could enrich ourselves with.
I feel this shift to simple architecture and public resources is also in a big part due to inventory. The less variety that you have, the less overhead you need and the lower your manufacturing costs can be. It also creates the situation of if you have a polarizing design that one person loves and one hates, and a simple design which both parties are pleasantly neutral on, you have two customers instead of one. On the consumer end, I’ve noticed that the simplest extra details and slightly higher quality materials will drive prices up exponentially. If you’re buying more than one piece, the markup stops being worth the style very quickly. Now, even with a million online shops, they all ship the same exact copy-paste listing, so you can’t even find something else across most platforms. In this economy? I’m thrifting something and adding my own details with epoxy sculpt at this point.
I think that the dullness of many modern cities is a problem that needs to be addressed. In many cities it feels like you just see concrete building after concrete building. Of course if you actively seek out art you can find it but not everyone has the time to go to an art museum on a regular basis. I think that it would greatly increase the mental health of many living in cities if more effort was put into making the city as a whole less dull rather than focussing entirely on a few portions. I think that the idea of older cities being prettier as a whole, possibly being survivorship bias because the duller parts changed over the years but the pretty parts were preserved, was interesting. It’s easy to think of this as being a problem of the modern era but I suppose it’s entirely possible that cities have been dull for much of history.
I AGREE AND IT IS SO FRUSTRATING. Most of the THINGS (and this can be literally anything) that are made now are just SO UGLY. Houses are just rectangular boxes of white and gray while they used to be absolutely gorgeous and beautiful. And one could argue that this is better because it’s more affordable but somehow it’s NOT because the cost of living is higher than it used to be (back when things were still nice to look at.) All making things ugly does is line the pockets of the people who are creating them. By taking the art out of everyday things, we make the act of creation a business decision: it’s not what would make people happy or make lives more pleasant, but about what will hand the highest payout to the person at the top. I think my biggest gripe with this type of thing is houses, but it can go for anything—cars, public spaces, furniture, benches, clothes, silverware.
I fully agree with this article. Ever since I was young I have loved intricate architecture and I used to see it more when I was younger and now I don’t get to see it as much. I loved seeing victorian homes especially and now you just don’t see them often. I get that everything is becoming efficiency and cost over beauty, but it takes the character out of the world around us and everything is just beginning to look boring. Like genuinely why are all the houses I see in the suburbs the exact same? I have always disliked the modern look of houses and buildings and I love intricate details. I also feel like it’s not just the buildings that are becoming boring, it’s everything from cars to people. I love the style of old cars like an old 69’ mustang but nothing looks like that anymore and it’s disappointing.
I found this article to have a really interesting perspective. It really made me think about how most things in our lives are now just designed for practicality and efficiency without any regard for its design of beauty and inspiration. I loved the example of the ornate sewage pumping station. It serves as a great reminder that even these workplaces can be designed in ways that spark imagination and creativity, and not just serve its practical purpose. At the same time, we most likely aren't seeing all of the old and ugly buildings because they have been torn down. We are only seeing the pretty and inspiring ones from the past. This distorts our view, because now we see all buildings in the past as being ornate and inspiring as those are the only ones we still have. Still, the larger idea that everyday beauty and inspiration can impact our appreciation for art and our own creativity is strong!
Boy oh boy do I hate minimalism, and a lot of modern "design," of lack therof. This whole trend of everything being ugly but efficient is just a little evil capitalistic devil on your shoulder. This is an issue of mass production. A lack of design is cheaper to produce, but it takes aspects of humanity out of the thing itself, we start viewing things as products since they’re no longer art. We prioritize what is cheap over what is high quality and beautiful because we are told that it doesn’t matter, we start treating ourselves like machines rather than people by simplifying everything around us. Sure it’s easier to live in a room painted the same off-white it was when you moved in, only the cheapest most boring pieces of cookie cutter Ikea furniture littering your cell of a house, but what about the feeling that promotes? If we all live in the same colored house with the same colored furniture I hypothesise we’d all be the same amount of sad. Self proclaimed “minimalists” are probably some of the world's most depressed people, what’s the point of doing that to yourself? I’m sorry, I’ll calm down and let people do what they want to do… even if it’s ugly. I just hope all the minimalists know how much happier they could be if they let anything of theirs be well designed.
I love this. I recently read a study on the impact of literally slowing down how we move through life and how it impacts our nervous systems. For example, when taking a show slowing down the moments made when washing your hair. I had never thought about this before but the next time I went to wash my hair I realized how fast I usually move and then I made the conscious decision to slow down and it really did make me feel less frantic. This study goes hand in hand with this video and article. We have quite literally been trained to unconsciously move fast and focus our attention on fast moving and flashy things. When I force myself to physically move slower I do notice different things because my nervous system is calmer. When I watched the video I did notice the speed at which it was filmed and it was very reflective for me.
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