> in what were originally brick warehouses, factories and power stations
That sometimes happens, but how much of that is attributable to survivorship bias, market pressure from increasing density, and maybe some favorable grandfathered-in legal quirks? (As opposed to raw architectural appeal.)
Maybe all the uglier and worse-proportioned and lower-quality warehouses and factories and power-stations tend to get demolished long before anyone could think of converting their interiors to apartments or offices--or they persist but in unfavorable locations.
survival bias is the last refuge of the modern architect
Abandoned power stations found in the middle of rural California built by nameless workers simply using pattern books are more aesthetically significant buildings than most high end projects today
> Abandoned power stations found in the middle of rural California built by nameless workers simply using pattern books are more aesthetically significant buildings than most high end projects today
I would say that the time will tell.
I bet it will definitely hold true for some cases (as you are imo correct, there are plenty of awful high end projects out there), but I am not so sure if it will hold true proportionally (i.e., the ratio of aesthetically significant to non-significant buildings among nameless abandoned power stations vs. high end projects).
A lot of it is also just about the tastes of time. I remember when brutalism felt overplayed to hell by the end of the 20th century (in eastern europe especially, which is where I lived at the time), and I was somewhat sick of it myself. But as the time went, brutalism fell out of favor, and the dust was settling, I reversed my opinion on it. I disliked it because it was overplayed and annoying, but in balanced amounts, I really appreciate certain aspects of it now.
Brutalism will never be anything more than an eyesore to the vast majority of people. Architecture is as much about agreeability as anything, which is the problem: most architects (and most intellectuals) have an adversarial relationship with the majority of the people they share an aesthetic space with.
That sometimes happens, but how much of that is attributable to survivorship bias, market pressure from increasing density, and maybe some favorable grandfathered-in legal quirks? (As opposed to raw architectural appeal.)
Maybe all the uglier and worse-proportioned and lower-quality warehouses and factories and power-stations tend to get demolished long before anyone could think of converting their interiors to apartments or offices--or they persist but in unfavorable locations.