Comments on: What Does Beauty Have to Do With Sustainability?

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:17:46 +0000

The post the Benfeld references is arguably more relevant to this discussion.

http://placeshakers.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/preservation-through-beauty/#comment-17

I was reflexively wary of the effort to quantify beauty somehow. Doyon writes:

"In a 2003 paper, V. Patnaik and others examine the human face and demonstrate how we culturally establish a shared understanding of beauty, concluding it’s the “relational proportion of our physical features that is the primary factor in determining the perception, conscious or subconscious, of beauty.”

More simply, certain proportions and arrangements are more pleasing than others. Not as a matter of personal opinion but as a collective, cultural agreement. We may not, as a nation of individuals, want to admit that we essentially view beauty in the same light, but tough luck. We do.

That’s why it’s not such a leap to conclude that our buildings and infrastructure work the same way. Most would agree that, at some point, our built environment stopped responding to a shared, cultural understanding of what’s beautiful and started expressing – at the upper end – the personal artistic ambitions of its designers and – at the lower end – the need to cut costs."

I think this is a very promising hunch that would of course require much more research. But if can be proved that beauty is not entirely subjective, it could be factored back into the planning process in a number of ways.

By: Omri

Omri — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:51:43 +0000

Warren: that is often true, but not as often as you think. Tearing down Boston City Hall and building something else will pay for itself in saved heating costs in pretty short order, for example.

By: Warren

Warren — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:17:00 +0000

As "da" alluded to with the quote above - just like you can buy the greenest car in the world, but the environmental impact of choosing not to drive will far outweigh it, you can build the greenest building in the world, but choosing to re-use an existing building is still the greener option. As ugly as some of these buildings are, I think the key word will be "adapt" as the economy shrinks and resources get scarce. We just can't afford (and nor can the planet) to re-build everything fresh.

By: AlexB

AlexB — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:12:08 +0000

In New York, it is not illegal to tear down a hundred year old brownstone if it is not in a historic district or particularly landmarked. Despite the inherent wastefulness of building a building on the site of an already existing building, it is inevitable with the passage of time and economic progress. To think that Americans would ever prevent the destruction of incredibly ugly buildings which are as close as it gets to disposable architecture is laughable, and a hypothetical proposition at best.

By: da

da — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:15:16 +0000

Unclear about beauty, but preservation has a huge role to play in sustainability.

As Rohit Aggarwala said at last year's "Sustainable Park Slope" public forum, sponsored by the Park Slope Civic Council:

“The greenest building is the one that is already built."

By: Rhywun

Rhywun — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:59:39 +0000

I think Americans have an innate understanding that most of the stuff we've built in the last 50 years is crap, even if they haven't given it much thought. Most people would probably laugh at the idea of preserving a Wal-Mart, and they'd be right. This stuff wasn't even built to last--why should we preserve it?

By: Jeffrey Ribeiro

Jeffrey Ribeiro — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:32:15 +0000

If there was a Walmart of exceptional architectural quality, then perhaps it would make sense to protect such a building. An idea like beauty is not a relevant criterion for preservation, as it is subjective but also temporal. In the 1960s, we lost many beautiful Beaux-Arts buildings because they were out of style. Today, many of our Modern buildings face similar, regrettable fates.

The Walmart analogy reminds me in particular of the elegant Austin Nichols Warehouse in Williamsburg, designed by Cass Gilbert. The City Council failed to see the beauty in this structure, despite Landmarks opposing large scale alteration. Perhaps we can hold out for a rare, beautiful Walmart just as Williamsburg got one exceptional warehouse.

Buildings should be protected on merits of their architectural and historical significance and importance. A building, whether 50 years old or 200 years old, should never be saved simply because of it's age.

By: Lewis Kelley

Lewis Kelley — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:10:28 +0000

James Howard Kunstler talks extensively about bringing back aesthetic standards into our communties. Part of the problem for the last 50 years is the utter lack of caring for our public spaces, because the American Dream allowed people to retreat into their own world (single family home) and forget about the outside. If we are to build communities along New Urbanism principles, we must once again take care in designing buildings and public places that make people appreciate their surroundings.

By: Larry Littlefield

Larry Littlefield — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:15:57 +0000

"Are we going to start saving Walmarts, which the National Trust has opposed in one community after another, when they are 50 years old just because they are 50 years old?"

On present trends, yes. Today what pretends to be environmentalism, historic preservation, and "community planning" is generally opposition to change and nothing more, by people who would be adversely affected or falsely believe they would be adversely affected. True environmentalists are as rare as true conservatives.

Just try to take something like this down -- or put something like this up.

http://www.citgo.com/AboutCITGO/BostonSign.jsp