Yeah so I ended up rewatching the long version of that Jordan Peterson talk after linking it yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxGPe1jD-qY
Oh my God there's a point in this video about 42:30 minutes in where it almost seems like he's making the case that the reason Canadians don't have creative/aesthetic looking buildings is because Canadians are nice/bland.
It's funny how he criticises Canadians for being nice. He has this real issue with 'niceness.' My favourite teacher was from Minnesota and that's not Canada but there's a similar kind of stereotype associated with that state and he was very friendly and bubbly I would say. Also at one point he threw pizza parties for people who passed maths tests but the head teacher nixed that idea because other students in other classes might get envious.
English stereotypes - moreso the South are like: Cold, unfriendly, reserved/unemotional, repressed, sarcastic, cynical. You don't want everyone to be like that. There's an extreme kind of... Lack of optimism? Here and it's not always fun. And that was something that having an American teacher exposed me to more than anything because you don't necessarily notice but he was so bubbly compared to most people. I came across an English person online who was talking about how they moved to America and how they liked the attitudes of people there more. I can't remember exactly what they said but I think it was something along the lines of they don't crush dreams as much and are less negative.
Our new buildings these days (over the past several decades,) are also often less 'aesthetic' imo. The reason Canada doesn't have more aesthetic looking buildings is because it's a reasonably new country. So 'medieval German villages' aren't going to crop up. Neither are castles. Stuff that often required a lot of work over a longer period of time also not happening. There's some gothic revival architecture apparently. This issue seems to exist in lots of Western countries including Western Europe. I think there are several things going on personally:
Practicality and I think the avoidance of pretension. Kind of ashamed of itself so architecture reflects that.
The kind of 'hypernormalisation' thing where people adjust to increasing deprivation. Fascinated by decay etc.
People are living more transiently and also online now so probably less focus on something so material.
A fixation on masculinity aesthetically. So lots of stuff is quite blocky with lots of edges, and once again utilitarian. This is the same thing people complain about in regards to Western video games - but only when it comes to female characters because women are less visually demanding on average. (I mean because it's mostly men complaining.)
I don't care because I think it's unreasonable to demand that all fictional characters be beautiful and in some cases that even breaks immersion for everyone to be conventionally attractive. At least for me, just look at the CW network. I think that's the network. Why do they all look like models on all the shows? It feels like there's a lack of character. I don't suppose it helps that the acting and writing is also often bad on a lot of these sorts of shows. The Roswell sequel. And I kept watching it - nearly quit - but continued on but it's mostly awful. But even the original had numerous flaws. Damn I wanted that to be good so bad as well. Desert, aliens. So many boxes. ticked. Why is it not more like Buffy. But yes if you want attractive 3D characters look to Japanese games. And nobody cared about this lol until 2014ish as I've said before. They were more focussed on gameplay.
Back to architecture - at the same time a kind of shift away from naturalistic styles I think. Compared to say (just an excuse to talk about one of my favourite styles hahaha,) art nouveau. Which is more feminine and naturalistic imo:
So people don't tend to like stuff that deviates from that because Humans evolved in nature.
Some stuff that's quite harsh/austere can be pretty interesting though. Like this one image I saw that looked like it comes out of a Star Wars film or something. It was a building interior, may have been a church. Probably not going to be able to find the image now. People were criticising it because they didn't like it I think but I thought it was interesting though it's also possible I've just recreated it a bit in my memory haha.
I think H.R. Giger's work is very interesting. I didn't actually continue with it but I wanted to create a kind of 3D model of a gothic cyberpunk kind of cathedral thing and at that time I was very inspired by his work. I first stumbled on his work I think in the Tate Modern in the gift shop actually lol. I think so anyway? Not in the actual gallery lol.
So he created the alien from the Alien film series, and was also part of the special effects team on that film. But he has a lot of other interesting work.
Makes use of a lot of organic forms combined with industrial imagery like pipes etc.
I think the Sedlec Ossuary is quite interesting too. I don't know when I first became aware of that place I kind of wanted to go there. It reminds me of his work a bit:
^ this is the bar in the HR Giger museum.
So of course lots of people are now generating various AI images based on his work that's popping up in results too. He was kind of like AI before AI in a way lol.
This bedroom image is pretty interesting I think:
https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/...r_giger_house/
Though some of the images I saw in that reddit post I don't care for so much because they seem very smooth. I think that's what's bugging me maybe. Part of it at least.
I am not a big fan of grey so it's a lot more grey then I'd want most of those images. It's the shapes etc that are more appealing there or at least visually interesting. Lately people around here have been buying these new doors - there are a couple with a similar design - all grey. I noticed this one house while out for a walk that was relatively new and entirely grey. Just far too much grey. And the shops that have been remodelled recently shades of grey.
Oh good so it's not just me.reddit post
But HR Giger's work is an interesting link to the past because it's kind of gothic but it's also futuristic. You get like all these cables and wires that are kind of like vines as well. You can't just recreate the same forms over and over and over and over again. So just going back to the medieval villages etc doesn't seem like it will work out.reddit post
That's also why Brutalist architecture can be more interesting when you throw in a bunch of plants because then you get the juxtaposition. But also this is a kind of focus for me because I always liked the idea of nature reclaiming buildings to the point of I think once writing a weird cringe poem and that kind of fight but also the attempt to integrate these things. You know like my weird sexual fantasies about plant elves with the Humans representing technology etc. It's all very cliche. All very already done. Not a great idea for a concept at this point James Cameron (Avatar) - Japanese writers do it a lot better every time.
Also like urban decay generally though. I've often been living right in the 'hypernormalisation brain state.' Probably inevitable given where I grew up.
This is what I mean:
This is also part of the millennial mindstate too though I mean millennials became more focussed on activism, but they still have that focus generally on experience over objects and the material so.
I didn't get a chance to see this despite being there days ago but I saw it while looking around google maps. Also kind of interesting:
The Tower of Light is a 40-metre tall tower supporting and enclosing flues for a new low-carbon energy centre in Manchester?s city centre. The biomimetic structure has built on the decade-long innovation and research, Shell Lace Structure, pioneered by Tonkin Liu and developed in collaboration with engineers at Arup. Learning from geometries in nature, the tower's form is its strength.Mmhmm. It's also a little like Gandalf the White's staff. Also again kind of futuristic.Shell Lace Structure is a unique technology using biomimicry to abstract principles from natural structures, specifically mollusc shells. Below are some of the projects that have involved the application of the technique, the result of thirteen years of intense practice-based research in collaboration with engineers at Arup and scientists at the Natural History Museum.
Also all this being said I do agree with him that hell is dropped ceilings and fluorescent lights. I greatly dislike fluorescent lighting. edit: Well, no hell is twitter. But if twitter had lighting it would be fluorescent. And I've always compared large social media sites like twitter to shopping malls. They're kind of the spiritual virtual successor to the mall. Malls have more soul now that they've become slightly gothic ironically:
No not that mall goth lol one of the other gothics.