Hovdetoppen - Why Modern Architecture SUCKS

A word of warning, though: if you wish to maintain your cultural respectability, it is absolutely essential that you don’t say any of this out loud. If you must make a point about the deficiencies of the contemporary urban environment, then make sure that you blame the planners or motorists or just about anyone but the architects. After all, you wouldn’t want to end up like Sir Roger Scruton, would you?

The code of silence of the haute bourgeoisie has served the professions well, and the architects most of all. It’s why our politicians are so reluctant to talk about beauty – and why, when they occasionally do, they quickly lose their nerve. What the worship of ugliness can’t do, however, is make beautiful buildings disappear or stop the rest of us from gathering in their awesome presence. When our untutored eyes behold the greatness of Notre Dame and then flick to, say, the Pompidou Centre, the combined might of the cultural establishment cannot stop us from drawing the obvious conclusion.

Any other profession would be embarrassed to be overshadowed by the accomplishments of their forebears. Imagine if medical treatments had been more effective a hundred years ago? Today’s doctors would be mortified. Or what if the computers and mobile phones of the previous decade were considered to be faster and more fashionable than today’s gadgets? The alpha-geeks would blow a fuse.

Today’s architects, however, have to endure the general public’s enduring love – indeed, reverence – for buildings built centuries and sometimes millennia before the modern age. And it’s not as if this appreciation of old architecture is limited to its historical value. People will pay tens of thousands of pounds extra to live in a Victorian or Georgian house as opposed to contemporary dwelling. If Le Corbusier was right and a house really is just “a machine for living in”, then it seems that the architects of old built better machines than their 21st-century counterparts. - Peter Franklin

- The hideous spread of ‘spreadsheet architecture’

Paul Joseph Watson has every reason to be angry, and so have we all if what he says is true, and every word is true. One need not accept his verdict on modern art in order to accept his verdict on modern architecture. His discourse thankfully includes clips from such generally less pottymouthed thinkers as Prince Charles, Roger Scruton and James Howard Kunstler. (Coincidentally, the latter two blurbed my new book Lost Providence.)

Toward the end of the video, Watson expresses this overarching truth about our era: “In an age of ugliness, a work of beauty is an act of defiance.” He concludes, “We must never accept ugliness as a form of beauty.” Enjoy. - David Brussat

Føler du deg maktesløs kan det kanskje hjelpe å kjøpe ei t-skjorte med Arkitekturupprorets logo på, som en liten, stille protest. Bestill den her.

- Making the Garden — Christopher Alexander

Etter å ha levert barna i dag tidlig stakk jeg en tur oppom Eiktunet for å nyte morgenkaffen til den flotte utsikta, som jeg så ofte har gjort det under min tid på Gjøvik. Men nå er det ikke lenge igjen før jeg ikke lenger kan gjøre dette, og jeg vil heller ikke igjen kunne spasere opp på Hovdetoppen for å finne ro for sjelen. Aldri igjen vil jeg kunne skue opp mot Hovdetoppen, da utsynet av UFOen vil gjøre meg syk. Hele mitt liv vil jeg, hvis jeg flytter tilbake til Gjøvik, være dømt til å gå med bredbremmet hatt og stirre ned i asfalten. Aldri igjen vil jeg kunne løfte blikket, fordi uansett hvor man er i denne byen, vil man se UFO-Hotellet på Hovdetoppen.

I Oslo kan man tross alt leve hele livet på Grünerløkka uten å ta turen ned til Barcode, slik at man slipper å bli psykisk syk og utmattet, men UFOen på Hovdetoppen er man som gjøvikenser dømt til å leve med uansett, da toppen ligger midt i byen.

Gjøvik var toppenes by, mens Oslo var fjordbyen. Fjordbyen Oslo fikk ødelagt sin karakter med finanselitens nyrike tannglis mot Oslofjorden, mens Gjøvik vil miste sin karakter med UFO-landingen.

Om sommeren, når flomlyset i Hovdebakken ikke står på, ligger Hovdetoppen lik en mørkets øy i byen. Hovdetoppen, en øy for mørke, stillhet og refleksjon. Vi trenger disse verdiene mer enn noensinne!

I tillegg til UFOen på toppen kommer det en ny, liten suburb i solhellinga til toppen, der de nå hogger, og denne er selvsagt regulert for funkisboliger😫

-Flickr.