So why did we suddenly abandon all standards and decide to build ourselves dreary things like these instead:
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Mysteries of the Universe II
As you drive towards the centre of Goulburn - or any town really - you are also moving back through the decades, at least in architectural terms. What I notice in Australia, whenever I time travel in this way, is how pretty our domestic buildings, even the smallest and cheapest of them, always used to be:
So why did we suddenly abandon all standards and decide to build ourselves dreary things like these instead:
I blame the architects. These ones, for example, given the choice of a street full of pretty buildings - indeed, a town full of them - decided to set up in this:
So why did we suddenly abandon all standards and decide to build ourselves dreary things like these instead:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Those modern houses are truly awful. The older buildings seem truly Australian - a successful modification of a British design to a different climate. The newer houses could be anywhere.
ReplyDeleteOne of my biggest bugbears about modern houses in Britain is the thinness of the walls. Why, in the age of radio, television and hi-fi, have builders created homes with such poor sound insulation?
Barbara - I think architects should sign a contract to live in anything they design for a minimum of three years.
ReplyDeleteSteerforth - I agree about the thin walls and I heard on the radio that the problem is made worse by people mounting televisions onto partition walls, which means that the people living next door get the sound from their neighbours' televisions reverberating through more than ever.
Hehe, I recognise some of those! Very close to where I used to live (Faithfull Street).
ReplyDeleteSo many of your pictures are reminiscent of Armidale - the good, the bad and the ugly.... many could have been taken here, though there are some stylistic differences.
ReplyDeleteVery true. I work in a town called Hammonton that Walt Whitman once called "the liveliest town on the way to the sea" (from Camden,NJ, that is). As you say, the center of town is its historical heart. It really is a bit like time-travel to come to work. And, by the way, for someone who used to make fun of her own camera skills, you sure produce some good pictures these days.
ReplyDeleteDenis, I think it was just the way things were done once (ie properly, with care and attention and craftsmanship)
ReplyDeleteAmeeee - I suspect you're not missing it much, and when you are, there's always Harry's shoulder to cry on
Chris - thank you, re cameras. I think the great thing about photographing buildings is the fact that they usually stay in one place while you aim
Not missing it at all - my place was quite nice inside - but horrendous from the outside.
ReplyDeleteThe shift to the smaller, plainer houses was economic, but it was also ideological. Many Modernists, especially proponents of the International Style, believed (among other things) that ornamentation bred class envy. They expressed this ideology, at least here in the U.S., in big public buildings, but the idea trickled down to home-building, too (and conveniently coincided with the needs of budget-conscious builders).
ReplyDeleteAmusingly, it didn't take. Even after three generations of this stuff, most people still know a pretty building from an ugly building.
In 'Our Mutual Friend', I seem to remember Dickens making fun of ornamentation, which I think at the time was used to disguise bad building, but I'd never realised it was thought to breed class envy by the Modernists. Fascinating.
ReplyDelete