Are Modern Buildings Ugly?

Survivorship Bias alone doesn't explain the preference for older buildings

Let's briefly return to the subject of architecture.

This article, Against Survival of the Prettiest, is a rejection of Survivorship Bias as an explanation for the widespread perception that older buildings are more aesthetically pleasing than newer ones.

The author starts by asking the question: Why is it so hard to find ugly buildings built before 1930, and even harder to find ones built before 1830?

The "Survival of the Prettiest" is the argument that we don't see ugly old buildings because they were torn down (because they were ugly), whereas the more attractive and well-built examples survived. This leads us to mistakenly think that all old buildings were beautiful, when in fact they weren't—we just see the best examples around today.

The author argues that this is not the case based on the following evidence:

1.) There are numerous paintings and photographs of cities before 1900 when the surviving building stock was much older. These pieces of evidence fail to show much in the way of ugly buildings.

Of course, when it comes to artwork like paintings, it's certain that the most beautiful areas of cities were deliberately chosen—the whole point of the painting is to be beautiful, after all. But places to film or photograph were chosen much more randomly.

2.) There are places where the older building stock has been preserved more-or-less intact. Ironically, this is often because such areas tended to be occupied by poorer residents, and so there wasn't as much impetus for economic development. For this reason, older buildings were preserved in these areas. Such places show little in the way of ugly buildings, and many have since become highly desirable places to live.

Downtowns and commercial centers are places where there has been the most development due to high land values. Therefore, a lot of the older building stock has indeed been town down in these areas, therefore it's more likely that survivorship bias has affected them to some degree. However, these areas are also the best documented in old photographs. The photographs reveal that, even when the demolished buildings are represented, such commercial districts boasted little in the way of ugly buildings compared to what is seen in those same places today.

The author makes an exception for rural architecture, especially rural houses and cottages of the poor, most of which have disappeared. But despite this, the surviving examples of vernacular architecture preserved in rural villages are still seen by most people as aesthetically pleasing. People typically find such villages quaint and scenic despite the relatively simple construction techniques and amateur building quality.

In many respects, the history of housing conforms approximately to a progressive narrative: the homes we live in are a great deal better built and better insulated than those of our ancestors, and (housing crisis notwithstanding) they are generally much less crowded.

But with respect to their aesthetic character, this picture becomes more doubtful. Ugliness seems to be quite common among new buildings, but rare and marginal among old ones. What has emerged here is that although survivorship bias probably does contribute to that to some extent, it is not the main explanation: premodern buildings may on average have been a bit less beautiful than those that have survived, but they still seem to have been ugly far less often than recent buildings are...

Suppose...that our eyes are to be trusted. If this is so, strange and eerie truths rise before us: that ugly buildings were once rare, that the ‘uglification of the world’ is real and that it is happening all around us.

So what's going on?

1.

One thing I want to emphasize is how many more buildings there are around today. A helpful analogy might make this more clear.

Imagine two music groups that have remained together for a long time—say twenty-five years or so.

The first band has released only one lone studio album in their entire career. However, every single track on the album is a masterpiece. Not a single one is anything less than spectacular from the opening track to the final track. Every song on the album has become a massive hit single in its own right.

The second band has a career that's far more typical for most groups. They release an album every couple of years. The first few tracks tend to become breakout hits because they are the best songs, but the ones toward the end are less and less memorable. Occasionally, even some lousy tracks sneak onto the albums just to round out the playlist.

Now, both bands may end their careers with the same number of hit songs. However the first band's hits are all one album. The second band's hit songs are scattered across perhaps a dozen albums.

In the first case, we might ask, where are Band A's bad songs? Why can't we find any? However, in the case of Band B, we would have no difficulty in finding quite a large number of mediocre, forgettable, and even regrettable songs. But that's not because the members of band B are terrible musicians and the members of band A are all musical geniuses.

I don't know if there's a formal term for this phenomenon, but it's different than survivorship bias. There are plenty of beautiful modern buildings around, but they tend to get much less attention than ugly ones because their presence is so diluted. A prominent ugly building gets ten times more attention that the masterpieces of modern design that are much less often encountered by the general public. The sheer number of buildings around today mean that we're far more likely to see plain or ugly buildings in our day-to-day lives than beautiful ones simply because we encounter so many more buildings than ever before.

2.

Perhaps you've heard the term, "handcrafted, small batch" with regards to certain products. These tend to be popular with hipsters—bourbon, bread, chocolate, beer, soap, and so on. Or, perhaps you've heard the term, "artisanal" with regard to things like baking or distillation. Clearly such terms are designed to distinguish certain types of products from others.

Old buildings tend to reflect this "artisanal, handmade" character. I think this is a big reason why we perceive them more aesthetically pleasing. We recognize the handcrafted nature of them at a subconscious level, despite their lack of modern amenities.

It's clear that the need for buildings in the twentieth century meant that we needed far more than handcrafted, small batch buildings could provide. We needed mass production. A glance at a population graph will confirm this. Mass production techniques transformed every industry—from automobiles to food production—including the construction industry. But it also meant that the handcrafted, artisanal character of buildings fell by the wayside. To a large extent we exchanged quality for quantity as we did in so many other aspects of life.

Mass-produced panelized systems became the norm. These systems were designed to be installed quickly—primarily by unskilled labor. This is the deskilling process I talked about before. In the past, most large-scale buildings were lovingly created by dedicated teams of highly-trained and well-paid artisans. Remember that before the Industrial Revolution—unlike in today's world—labor was cheap and materials were expensive. Now it’s the opposite.

In the preindustrial world, time wasn't money, and so it could be used much more generously. That's a cultural shift. Go back in the past and see how often "efficiency" was considered a virtue in-and-of itself. Traditional buildings may indeed be beautiful, but they are not efficient. In a world where efficiency is the highest priority, there is little room for the kind of handcrafted, small batch buildings of yesteryear. The notion that time is money is not some timeless, universal truth—it’s a modern convention.

Hence, buildings of today reflect the industrial, mass-produced nature of modern construction. That means that there are a lot more buildings around today than ever before. But it also means that there are also more ugly buildings around too, especially in a world where the bottom line rules everything. The Guardian's architecture critic, Rowan Moore, notes:

It would be easy to say that these [ugly] buildings are simply the products of meanness and greed, of property developers trying to maximise their floor area and minimise their expenditure. This is indeed often the case. There are serial offenders among building types, including student accommodation, mid-range hotels and rural housing, where deadly efficient formulae were established long ago, and innovation consists mostly of yet more ruthless ways to drive down costs...

But it’s more complicated than that. A large factor is modern construction techniques, which systematise and compartmentalise the different parts of the building. If you see an older building that you like, whether Victorian or brutalist, it’s probable that there is some degree of integration and rapport between its parts, that the woodwork of a window frame might inflect towards the shape of its opening, or that the proportions of a balcony might relate to those of a lift tower. Modern buildings are mostly assemblies of factory-made packages, which get thrown together on building-site blind dates...

It’s not that you can’t design good buildings with modern techniques, but it takes skill and thought. It also takes a degree of influence over detail that modern building contracts, which tend to empower contractors to do what they like, often deny to architects...The truth is that ugly buildings have always been with us, and there’s only so much architects can do about it. So there’s no magic bullet. But it would help if everyone – architects, developers, builders, planners – had a stronger idea of what makes a building good, which starts with the way it is made.

The rise and rise of ugly buildings (The Guardian)

It gets back to what I said before—our buildings reflect the society we live in, and ours is a society centered around efficiency, driving costs down, perpetual growth, and profit maximization. And while it may be overstating the case to say that the preindustrial world prioritized things like beauty, spirituality, craftsmanship, and community, those aspects of life were far more prevalent in the lives of ordinary people who created the kinds of buildings and cities that we admire so much today, even as we consider their worldview quaint and unrealistic in our modern world.

So really, its no mystery—it's simply a reflection of the world we live in. The "uglification of the world" runs far deeper than surface appearances—it is a reflection of something deeper and more intangible in the way our societies operate. That's why—contra Pinker—not every aspect of life can be captured by statistics alone. And it won't be solved by simply by designing modern buildings to look like older ones.

3.

Even when we take all this into account, is there a case to made that the buildings of the past were more aesthetically pleasing on the whole than those being built presently?

I think there is.

The question of what makes a building beautiful is one that has perplexed artists and designers for centuries. Even when a building is widely recognized as beautiful, it is hard to articulate exactly why this is. It is much easier to understand the practical realities of how to make a building stand up, or how to control its temperature through mechanical means. Is there some quality that older buildings possess that newer ones do not? And if so, what are those qualities?

Christopher Alexander was one of the first modern architects to grapple with this question. His approach was to identify certain consistent patterns that were present in the kinds of places that people found the most attractive, magnetic, and spiritually nourishing. He claimed that these patterns existed on multiple levels simultaneously—at the level of a region, a town, a neighborhood, a building, and even a single room.

Once those patterns were identified and articulated, Alexander believed, they could be replicated and recombined to create an infinite variety of buildings and places which would capture this "timeless" quality: "A pattern language gives each person who uses it, the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buildings, just as his ordinary language gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences." (TWOB; p. 167) He detailed his observations in a series of books publishing in the 1970s: A Pattern Language; The Timeless Way of Building; and The Oregon Experiment.

The books read almost as a series Zen Koans or Taoist riddles, and it's often frustrating to try and translate them into practice. For example, they are full of passages like this one:

"The Timeless Way. It is a process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves; it cannot be attained, but it will happen of its own accord, if only we will let it in."

Passages like this meant that Alexander's work was largely ignored by the architectural mainstream, but his work found a following among the "alternative" design community and traditional builders (as well as computer programmers!). His books succeeded in being able to articulate to some degree what makes certain places special and unique, but it's hard given the remit of unitary buildings that most architects have—together with strict programs and budgets and code/zoning requirements—to put his ideas into practice. The books themselves contain few illustrations, and most of those are grainy, low resolution black-and-white photos of existing buildings and spaces or abstract diagrams. Many of the patterns he lists are far too general or too specific to be of practical use to most designers.

In subsequent books such as The Nature of Order, and Notes on the Synthesis of Form, he articulated what he believed were the universal patterns common to all good design:

1. Levels of Scale

2. Strong Centers

3. Thick Boundaries

4. Alternating repetition

5. Positive Space

6. Good Shape

7. Local symmetries

8. Deep interlock and ambiguity

9. Contrast

10. Gradients

11. Roughness

12. Echoes

13. The void

14. Simplicity and inner calm

15. Not seperatedness

More info on these principles can be found here.

The New Urbanist movement, which began in the 1980s, was another reaction to the widespread perception that older, pre-War communities were more desirable to live in than the amorphous, suburban sprawl which succeeded them. Today living in these communities commands a premium, such that they have become gentrified and the previous residents pushed out into the inner-ring post-War suburbs surrounding major cities ("slumburbia"). In previous eras, even the poorest citizens had access to close-knit walkable neighborhoods, even if the quality of buildings in those neighborhoods was often lacking. That’s all but gone now.

New Urbanism was a misnomer; in fact, it was an attempt to revive previous, older town planning principles that had fallen by the wayside in the desire to build every aspect of life around the automobile. They focused on creating medium-density, appropriately-scaled, walkable communities centered around transit with plenty of local amenities and green spaces. They tended to emphasize traditional building designs with mixed-uses at odds with the predominant exclusionary zoning practices. Léon Krier, a long-time critic of modern architecture, has had some success in reviving traditional approaches to urban design in Europe.

More recently, a number of mathematicians have become interested in the puzzle of what makes buildings aesthetically pleasing (Alexander was himself originally trained as a mathematician). To some extent, there has always been a relationship between mathematics and art with the concepts of scale and proportion. The most famous of these is the "golden ratio" of 1 to 1.618, or ɸ, which has been found in all sort of natural phenomena from nautilus shells to plant growth to coastlines.

The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot articulated the concept of fractals in the 1970s. He described them as, "a shape made of parts similar to the whole in some way." The application to architectural detail and ornamentation was soon recognized by a number of mathematicians, in particular Nikos Salingaros, who pivoted to studying architecture and design with heavy influence from Alexander's work.

Explainer: What Scaling and Fractals Are, and How Designers Can Use Them (Metropolis Magazine)

The idea was that humans were innately attracted to fractal patterns which mimicked certain underlying mathematical relationships in the natural world. This was related to the concept of biophilia as described by the late biologist E.O. Wilson. Biophilia was the notion that what we find aesthetically pleasing is not totally random or entirely subjective, but rather is a legacy of our evolutionary heritage, in particular our history living in natural environments like the forest canopy and the savannas of Africa.

The most basic of these concepts is symmetry. All biological organisms exhibit symmetry, where both sides mirror each other (although not perfectly). Therefore, we perceive symmetry inherently comforting and find asymmetry inherently disturbing. Often these perceptions are at a preconscious level—we cannot articulate exactly why we feel this way; we just do. Critics of modern architecture point to the fact that many modern designs are often asymmetrical and way out of proportion, causing the occupants to feel disturbed and disoriented.

Fractal patterns are commonly exhibited in religious architecture all around the world—for example, in Gothic cathedrals, Chinese pagodas, and the ancient temple architecture of India. The organic pattern of streets in medieval towns often resembles the branching of a tree or the pattern of veins on a leaf.

This is backed up by the emerging science of neuroarchitecture. Neuroarchitecture uses sophisticated instruments like electrocardiograms, electroencephalograms, or sweat sensors tools to measure people's responses to different architectural stimuli. For example, we can detect what kind of environments people find particularly relaxing or uncomfortable by measuring the galvanic skin in response to being in various places. We can also use instruments like eye tracking tools to measure how people "read" building facades. Virtual reality is the latest tool which can be used to simulate the experience of being in different places to measure people’s psychological and physiological reactions.

What these experiments consistently find is that certain spaces are indeed more calming than others. What people favorably respond to is often in accordance with the principles of traditional and classical design, while many modern buildings and places create a sense of unease. We tend to prefer enclosed spaces, symmetry, proportion, hierarchy, human scale, visual complexity, and natural materials. We are uncomfortable with asymmetry, unenclosed spaces; sharp edges; unnatural proportions; gigantism; visual monotony; and cold, hard surfaces. For example, it's been found that fractal patterns relieve stress.

Traditional architecture gives better sense of well-being than contemporary glass and steel buildings (ScienceNorway.no)

A common theme is that the methods and practices of traditional and vernacular design represent knowledge accumulated through a complex evolutionary process which has been refined by countless designers and builders generation after generation for hundreds—or even thousands—of years. Proponents of traditional design argue that these techniques should not have been discarded wholesale in the headlong rush to embrace new technology, novelty, and the cult of the individual genius. They argue that traditional designs are seen by people as objectively beautiful because it was through this evolutionary process that certain forms emerged organically which were in accordance with our innate sense of beauty which is ultimately derived from nature and experienced on a subconscious level.

In the context of fractal architecture, we have a strong liking for such buildings because we are hardwired to prefer fractal structures and to feel relaxed by them. At least one of the main reasons that fractal architecture aesthetically appeals to us is that it reminds us, on some level, of our ancient, natural habitats. This could further shed light on why living in a city with little exposure to fractals in nature (or architecture) can create an unsettling, alienating, and bleak feeling; our biology – whether we know it or not – is in need of more fractality.

In cities, there is a discrepancy between the craving for fractal forms and the degree of fractal forms actually present. Simple Euclidean forms instead dominate cities. Russ Parsons argued in a 1991 paper that this discrepancy can lead to an increased release of stress hormones, damaging human health in the long-term, while Eleonora Gullone suggested in a 2000 paper that the discrepancy could be one factor that contributes to mental disorders in westernised societies. As I have argued elsewhere, the design of buildings can have a profound impact on our mental health.

The Aesthetic Appeal of Fractal Architecture (Sam Wolfe)

Neuroarchitecture offers the tantalizing potential to discover an objective, scientific assessment of what people find attractive, comfortable, and reassuring, much of which comports with subjective assessments of people concerning their surrounding environments. A number of books have been published expounding these ideas, such as Cognitive Architecture by Ann Sussman and Justin B. Hollander.

The mathematical, neurological, and pattern-based approaches provide a framework for bridging the gap between traditional and modern design, and new construction technologies like 3D printing and generative design make these approaches economically viable again. These discoveries are just in their infancy, but I would encourage architects and urban designers to embrace them and not "circle the wagons" in an attempt to preserve the status quo, or dismiss all of their critics as merely reactionaries or philistines. The potential for new and successful approaches to design is enormous. See this design, for example:

Sadly, much of the advocacy of traditional architecture in recent years has come from the extreme far right who have hitched it to ideas of white supremacy and conspiracies about the alleged subversion of "western values" by a rotating cast of villains (Jews, Communists, “Post-modern neo-Marxists,” etc.). However, modern architecture also has its critics on the political Left, such as the socialist magazine Current Affairs. It would be a tragedy if traditional and classical architecture became exclusively associated with reactionary political movements aimed at a wholesale rollback of the Enlightenment. Traditional design is an approach to architecture and design that is not confined to any particular culture, ethnic group, time period or political program. It's time to have better and more fruitful conversations about these topics.

If traditional architecture is to make a comeback, it needs not just advocates on the internet but clients willing to foot the bill for putting these designs into practice. For now, there have been very few individuals with wealth and clout willing to step up to the plate and put their money where their mouth is aside from Prince Charles of the United Kingdom. While many disparage and ridicule his efforts, I, for one, don't see a problem with what he is doing. But what's most essential is for this dialogue take place in an atmosphere of mutual respect rather than recrimination and blame, which is all too often the approach taken by of those critical of modern architecture.