[HN Gopher] The window trick of Las Vegas hotels
___________________________________________________________________
The window trick of Las Vegas hotels
Author : edent
Score : 628 points
Date : 2023-01-29 14:52 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.schedium.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.schedium.net)
| amluto wrote:
| There's a converse trick: divided lites. Many newer doors and
| windows that appear to have small panes of glass ("lites")
| separated by strips of wood or metal are actually large insulated
| glass units (sets of multiple sheets of glass and their spacers
| and sealing hardware) decorated with wood, metal or plastic
| outside the glass. Sometimes a strip of something is out in
| between the panes glass as well to make it less obvious.
|
| It turns out that double- or triple-paned glass is a better
| insulator than wood, and the perimeter is a meaningful part of
| the cost, so one large unit is better for cost and performance
| than a bunch of small units.
| mikeg8 wrote:
| I'm familiar with divided lites and your description of a
| modern SDL (simulated divided lite) vs TDL (true divided...)
| but I don't think it's in the same category of "architectural
| trick". This post is on a change in scale/proportionality that
| has an optical illusion type of effect. SDLs are a change in
| construction method that has zero effect on the aesthetic of
| the architecture but solely performance and costs. Slightly
| different IMO
| hgsgm wrote:
| Why does SDL exist, instead of having no dividers? What
| purpose do they serve besides _simulating_ separate panes?
|
| Are they more economical than having no dividers at all?
| amluto wrote:
| I don't think so. But some people like the style.
| quesera wrote:
| Divided lites used to be the only way to make a large
| window. Large panes of glass were impossible or very
| expensive.
|
| That's not true any more, but the "old style" is
| aesthetically pleasing to some, and sometimes even required
| by law for old houses.
|
| Today, True divided lites are more expensive -- more
| material, more handling, more assembly.
|
| And simulated divided lites are a cheap way to pretend to
| be expensive, or historically correct.
|
| I always rip 'em out, personally.
| hosh wrote:
| Christopher Alexander has a whole lifetime work on this subject.
|
| While "order" and "variety" are something that humans crave, that
| is something that can naturally come about because of "generative
| codes". That the design process unfolds, with participation by
| inhabitants. Centers are identified, and design take all of that
| account. You end up with something that has both, universal
| invariants, while also uniquely in relation to everything around
| it and the people living within it.
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| This topic is vastly more complex that the author realizes. This
| window placement technique is one of many design facets that
| create the intended visual impact of these buildings and isn't
| close to their most significant difference to those large
| functional midcentury apartment blocks. Not only do architects
| need a 3 year graduate degree and board certification to start
| their careers, brand new architects are not the ones designing
| large public buildings. The author assuming that their musings
| about window placement on Vegas hotels could in any way inform
| seasoned and well-educated architects' design approach is pure
| hubris. Ridiculous.
|
| It reads like a non-developer reading a bunch of articles about
| tech buzzword du jour like blockchain or microservices and then
| ham-fistedly using that to _" explain"_ the architectural
| shortcomings of a bunch of complex systems that they couldn't
| hope to understand designed by heavily educated and experienced
| professionals. An actual developer would roll their eyes but if
| the author's readers aren't developers, it not only sounds _as_
| credible, it sounds _more_ credible because someone is finally
| explaining that complex thing in a way that makes sense to people
| who reason about problems the same way they do.
|
| If you want to learn about some knowledge domain like
| architecture, you're a whole lot better off reading architectural
| blogs than a technical person's musings about it. Misconceptions
| born from a similar perspective to yours are going to seem
| undeservedly credible and be a lot more difficult to parse and
| filter out.
| tinym wrote:
| Are there any architectural blogs you recommend?
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| I like Dezeen, Arch Daily, and The City Fix for more urban
| design type stuff.
| ketzo wrote:
| It seems like you know more of the things that the author is
| missing in their explanation.
|
| I think your comment would bring more value to the world if you
| actually talked about some of those design facets, instead of
| taking so much time to trash a person for their intellectual
| curiosity.
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| That's because I wasn't talking about design: I was talking
| about expertise.
|
| My professional discipline shares some baseline knowledge
| with architects and I enjoy architecture, but I am not an
| architect. I know enough about it to realize that you're
| better off listening to an architect talk about architecture
| than me, and _way_ better than someone with no design
| background at all.
|
| Aside from my design discipline, I was also a classically
| trained chef, and also spent quite some time as a software
| developer. The number of times a person from an engineering-
| type background haughtily "explained" my areas of expertise
| to me is gob smacking. I'm far beyond the point in life where
| I feel the need to hold my tongue when I recognize someone
| speaking with authority well outside of their expertise,
| especially if they're getting attention by doing so.
| ketzo wrote:
| Is the author really speaking with "authority," though? If
| anything, they go out of their way to remind the reader
| that "your taste may differ from mine."
|
| It just reads to me like someone sharing an interesting
| idea they discovered. I feel like any accusations of
| haughtiness are a little overblown.
| whall6 wrote:
| Likewise, is there any literature or other resources that you
| could refer us to?
|
| Im highly interested in this topic especially because I've
| seen the reverse pattern in the city where I live: a building
| that's not as tall designed to look bigger than it is. I'd
| love to learn more
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| I think Dezeen is a great place to start to keep up with
| things. When you get a little deeper, you'll have a better
| idea of where to look for more in-depth books, etc. that
| are more specific to your areas of interest.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Wow, that's a lot of words you are using to disagree with
| exactly nothing the author wrote. Commentary on builiding
| design just as with any topic is just that, not hubris. A
| person does not need degrees and 10yrs of experience to make an
| observation about the design patterns of buildings.
|
| You could maybe contribute to the discussion by perhaps
| mentioning one specific thing the author or the video they used
| as expert reference get wrong.
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| See my answers to the above comments.
| justin66 wrote:
| Your turtleneck is showing.
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| s1ck b3rn m8
| cj wrote:
| Comments like this are why I never got into blogging.
|
| If I had a blog, there's an extremely narrow domain of
| knowledge I would be "allowed" to write about by this
| commenter's standards.
|
| This particular blog post is acceptable in my opinion because
| they aren't making some crazy claims, it's just a collection of
| simple observations and amusing conjecture.
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| You can write whatever you want. If someone who knows more
| pointing out that you're off-base is that much of a
| deterrent, you're probably right to avoid it. As I said
| above, I'm far beyond the point in life where I feel the need
| to hold my tongue when I recognize someone speaking with
| authority well outside of their expertise, especially if
| they're getting attention by doing so.
| cj wrote:
| The thing is, the author doesn't seem (to me) to be
| speaking from a place of authority.
|
| The post doesn't read like a textbook. It reads like
| someone's casual musings.
|
| There are other cases where I think authors overstate their
| position of authority, but the tone of this blog post
| doesn't have that.
| rgoldfinger wrote:
| Here's an explanation I found persuasive for why the 60's and
| 70's buildings don't appeal to many of us:
| https://commonedge.org/the-mental-disorders-that-gave-us-mod...
|
| In short, the designers of these buildings experienced trauma
| during the wars that changed their brains, in a way that makes
| human features upsetting. Most buildings reference human features
| in some way (mouth, eyes), and this modernism avoids that and
| calms their brains.
|
| It aligns nicely with the astute observation about the windows,
| in that they humanize these large buildings.
| ear7h wrote:
| I saw that one in the comments section, and I pretty much only
| agree with the last sentence. We should probably make more
| human-friendly architecture. However, the rest of the article
| reeks of eugenics. "Giving input to people who deviate from the
| norm harms our society". Ironically, that's actually what was
| bad about Le Corbusier, he was an architectural fascist. It
| wasn't that his mind processed visual stimuli differently, it's
| that he hated the way other people saw things. Here's some
| quotes from "The City of Tomorrow":
|
| "There is only one right angle; but there is an infinityde of
| other angles. The right angle, therefore, has superior rights
| over other angles; it is unique and it is constant"
|
| s/right/white/ and s/angle/race/ and you probably have a direct
| quote from Hitler.
|
| "things which come into close contact with the body, are of a
| less pure geometry"
|
| You don't have to go around trying to give fake diagnoses to Le
| Corbusier to find where things went wrong. You just have to
| listen!
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| Animals also have eyes and hands, and people of the past were
| also traumatized, but did not decide to have buildings without
| something expressing features such as eyes and hands (how would
| you even)
| ArchitectAnon wrote:
| Or maybe it's a form of abstract 'high art' like jazz and you
| don't understand it. I studied architecture and I understand
| how to interpret what these designers were trying to do with
| the opportunities provided by the new technology of reinforced
| concrete. There was a lot of hubris in the post war period and
| a lot of experimental stuff was built. Some examples are poor
| designs, some are incredible.
|
| Here's an example: In the 80's, in London and elsewhere in the
| UK, plenty of brutalist towers were demolished and replaced
| with more traditional brick two story houses, only for the
| residents to realise that they had taken a big downgrade to
| smaller darker houses, and were still living in a community
| with the same social problems as before that people said would
| be fixed by changing the style of architecture.
|
| Brutalist architecture is a branch of modernism, like jazz and
| abstract paintings. Most of it is experimental, some of it is
| shit design and sticking plastic ionic columns on it wouldn't
| fix it. I don't think you can seriously dismiss the whole genre
| as the product of mental illness.
| jdm2212 wrote:
| That doesn't answer the question of "why did anyone let them
| build this crap". Why didn't the non-brain-damaged architects
| get to put up buildings?
| slim wrote:
| That question has an obvious answer : those architects are
| better at architecture than normal brain architects.
| Architecture is mainly functional, not esthetical
| mmcnl wrote:
| Citation needed? Architecture is ofcourse esthetical.
| mmcnl wrote:
| And also the conclusion that modern architecture is literally
| the result of brain disorders seems a bit too much.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Brutality architecture is _cheap and easy_. It uses minimal
| materials: typically concrete and steel, and is simple to
| construct for poor people.
| psychphysic wrote:
| It's a ridiculous premise but as to why let an architect
| build how they want? And why do they all look so similar?
|
| Just fads. Same way web site designs follow trends.
|
| You can revert a website with some difficulty, good luck
| reverting a 5-10 building project!
| hgsgm wrote:
| There theory is that pretty much everyone in Europe and USA
| had PTSD from the Great War.
| sofixa wrote:
| World War II more so than the Great War. The former
| basically destroyed most of Europe, displaced millions and
| resulted in the massive collective traumas from
| deportations, mass murder, carpet bombing, etc.
|
| Brutalism really only emerged in the 1940/1950 after WWII.
| IshKebab wrote:
| How do most buildings reference human features? I don't think
| most buildings reference human features at all. Buckingham
| palace doesn't have a mouth or eyes.
|
| You'd have to stretch the meaning of "eye" or "mouth" out so
| thin it becomes "opening"...
| lucideer wrote:
| > _Obviously, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so maybe you
| think that these buildings are pretty. In that case, good on you.
| But I guess there are also a lot of people who find them quite
| ugly._
|
| > _I often wondered what makes these buildings so ugly and
| distressing (unless you like them, I 'm not questioning anyone's
| personal taste), and whether there was beauty in them which I am
| not capable of seeing, maybe because of my own biases._
|
| > _maybe you don 't find [Las Vegas hotels] attractive_
|
| > _The Monte Carlo [...] is more orderly and pleasant than the
| monster building thanks to its symmetry and some decorative
| patterns._
|
| > _I am not saying that Las Vegas hotels look beautiful._
|
| The author spends a lot of the article telegraphing the fact
| their view is subjective and may not gel with others, so
| apologies for falling into this trap myself, but... using Vegas
| hotels as an aesthetic example to follow really jarred with me.
|
| This is indeed subjective, but I can't help but feel the author
| is in a minority here? No?
| ec109685 wrote:
| If it wasn't aesthetically pleasing to the majority, I don't
| think they would keep employing it. There aren't architectural
| requirements on the strip as far as I know that mandate this
| style.
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| I think the author was saying that the order of Vegas is better
| than the seemingly disorganized look of those apartment
| buildings. I doubt he was trying to argue that Vegas
| architecture is the best design possible
| sbarre wrote:
| Huh I've walked in front of the Bellagio hotel many many times
| and I never even thought about this, but it's totally true.
|
| Those windows are massive but the proportions are deceptive.
| Neat.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| It reminds me of building a simple home or structure in
| Minecraft, and then trying out a "build a house" tutorial where
| the proportions are completely different. But for good reason,
| and the result is pretty legit.
| [deleted]
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| >In a lecture about the universal characteristics of classical
| architecture, professor Nathaniel Walker argued that human beings
| crave two things: order and variety. If there's too much order,
| it's boring and oppressive. If there's too much variety, it's
| chaotic and unpleasant. In his view, classical architecture all
| over the world aims at creating a "delicate balance between order
| and variety."
|
| It's how 'fractal' things are. There is at least one 3b1b video
| about this. I think humans prefer a fractal number of about 1.5
| or so, which is about what nature is.
| flakeoil wrote:
| " I think humans prefer a fractal number of about 1.5 or so,
| which is about what nature is."
|
| Is it the Golden ratio you refer to maybe (~1.6)?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
| hgsgm wrote:
| Humans tend to prever Fractal Dimension 1.3-1.5 (in 2D
| imagery)
|
| https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/2116/1/Pihel_J_110524.pdf
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| _Swedish_ humans tend to do so. Might not extrapolate to
| the whole world
| roywiggins wrote:
| Specifically, college students from Malmo University...
| skrebbel wrote:
| I'm not sure that someone's Bachelor thesis should be given
| this much weight.
| sclarisse wrote:
| No.
| supernewton wrote:
| Absolutely not. Unless you have a strong _mathematical_
| reason to expect it to show up, instances of the golden ratio
| is largely numerology bullshit.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| ^citation required
| crazygringo wrote:
| Here are some articles on why the golden ratio having
| supposed aesthetic properties is a myth:
|
| https://eusci.org.uk/2020/07/29/myth-busting-the-golden-
| rati...
|
| https://plus.maths.org/content/myths-maths-golden-ratio
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-
| designs...
|
| So it's more like, citation required for any scientific
| evidence it _does_ have unique aesthetic properties. At
| the end of the day, it 's just a myth that keeps getting
| repeated, not much different from anything else in:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptio
| ns
|
| (Which also mentions the golden ratio in one of its
| bullet points.)
| finnh wrote:
| This reminds me of film "analysis" that shows how the
| director keeps creating wonderful triangles between three
| points of tension, and our eye naturally finds such
| triangles pleasing.
|
| Neglecting that any three points make a triangle, so this
| is basically just saying "a frame with three things in
| it".
| bee_rider wrote:
| On one level there's some intellectual wanking about
| triangles, then as you point out any shot with thee
| things will have a triangle. I wonder, though, ignoring
| any attempts to over-analyze, if three is a nice number
| of things to have in a shot. The viewer can only focus on
| so many things after all.
|
| Three is also a sort of especially unspecial number. Zero
| things is sort of special in the sense that there's no
| concentration of focus (shot of a landscape that just
| establishes the environment). If the focus is on one
| thing, then that's really drawing a ton of attention to
| that thing (camera zooms in on the murder weapon and
| lingers). Two things can often be focused on the contrast
| between them (the villain towers over the hero). Three is
| the lowest number that doesn't have a ton of baggage.
| carlob wrote:
| Especially so in an exponent...
| rattray wrote:
| Very interesting. Know of any buildings which embody this well?
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Presumably, he means a single window we see is made up of 4-6
| panes and those panes are bigger than a single story
|
| I am having trouble seeing the 4-6 windows combined from the
| photos of the Bellagio. The close up does not help.
|
| The first mentioned buildings seem brutalist esp. the second one.
| It is a form of utilitarian architecture that has great appeal to
| me. I think in part because it is rare now.
|
| I find them far more pleasing to the eye than the giant glass
| clad high rises that was the fashion for a long time. I have read
| that it is now going out of fashion, but I have not yet seen any
| examples locally.
|
| Wanting to give my dogs new and exciting places to sniff and pee
| I try to walk around in different neighborhoods in the area. As
| have been doing this for many years now and the unexplored
| neighborhoods are getting farther and farther out.
|
| About two years ago, at random, I found a brutalist single family
| dwelling. It is a big house for a single family but it is the
| smallest such building I have ever seen, it is beautiful. (to me)
|
| I truly stands out from all the other nearby houses. I have
| visited that area often to take pictures and just look at it. I
| would love a chance to see the inside.
|
| If I had the money and I most certainly do not, id love to live
| in a house like that. It would make giving directions a lot
| easier as well.
|
| I wonder if there exists brutalist "tiny homes". That would be
| something to behold
|
| For an explanation of the term brutalist see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut
| rmk wrote:
| You may like this brutalist church in Palo Alto.
|
| https://sika.scene7.com/is/image/sika/usa-first-methodist-ch...
| number6 wrote:
| Meh, to round
| rmnwski wrote:
| It's not that small but Brandlhuber built a single family
| brutalist building fairly recently called Anitvilla:
| https://www.archdaily.com/627801/antivilla-brandlhuber-emde-...
| pcrh wrote:
| Looks great! I would completely dig living in such place.
| jq-r wrote:
| This looks like a mixture of a building in a war zone and a
| house-sized prison. Looks very repulsive to me and I like
| brutalism.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| This is awesome, I didn't know what this style is called. I
| love these environments though, they can be paradoxically
| cozy. Strategic lighting, right furniture, maybe wooden
| elements and it's a dream.
| number6 wrote:
| I love it, my wife would hate it
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I had the same reaction. They staged it to increase the
| starkness. If they'd used bright, natural fibers in the
| interior it would go a long ways towards making it feel
| more livable.
| rwmj wrote:
| It looks like a building site.
| doublesocket wrote:
| I struggle to imagine someone actually living there. To me it
| looks like an art piece, and perhaps it is only intended as
| such.
|
| The PVC curtains seem particularly icky to me, reminding me
| of naff shower curtains and hospitals.
| tschumacher wrote:
| You might enjoy the movie Columbus (2017). It's a drama about
| two people connecting through their passion for architecture
| with gorgeous shots of the modernist/brutalist buildings in
| Columbus, Indiana.
| pimlottc wrote:
| > I am having trouble seeing the 4-6 windows combined from the
| photos of the Bellagio. The close up does not help.
|
| You can see it better in this high-res photo from Wikimedia
| Commons [0]. Each of the square windows appears to span four
| rooms on two floors, while the lower floor rectangular windows
| appear to span three floors, making it six rooms.
|
| 0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bellagio_hotel.jpg
| treis wrote:
| Do the windows span multiple floors?
| svat wrote:
| Yes. A comment on the post points to the TASS building in
| Moscow, which nicely illustrates this trick at a smaller
| scale: https://discovermoscow.com/en/places/dostoprimechate
| lnosti/z... -- at first glance and from a distance it seems
| to have four floors. But it has nine, as is clear if you
| look more closely or compare nearby buildings (https://uplo
| ad.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Moscow_T... is the
| same image).
| bonsaibilly wrote:
| Yeah. What looks like 1 window from the outside is actually
| 4 windows for four rooms, two below and two above. The
| scale is hard to get a sense of but those subwindows are
| quite wide floor-to-ceiling windows in each of those rooms
| (at least in Treasure Island's case; I'd assume others are
| similar).
|
| That's why it shrinks the apparent visual scale of the
| hotel, which has twice as many floors and twice as many
| rooms per floor as it seems from the "window" frames
| outside.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of things about the Strip in Vegas, deliberately or
| not, really throw your sense of scale off. "Oh it's just
| the next hotel over, how far can it be?" A ways it turns
| out.
| adamm255 wrote:
| Totally. "Ah just over there no problem".
|
| 30 minutes later...
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| That is the absolute worst. You walk halfway there and it
| looks exactly as far away as when you started.
|
| We watched Penn and Teller at the Rio. You look at a map,
| see its a block over from the strip, no problem. You walk
| out your hotel room and see the giant Rio sign, totally
| fine look how close it is!
|
| 20 minutes later you stare in horror at the same sign
| wondering how it hasn't gotten an inch closer to you.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| How are you getting "a block over" from the map? Just
| because almost no streets go through there doesn't make
| it a block! The strip hotels, especially those on the
| west side, are several blocks deep (counting their
| parking lots) themselves, then there's a dead zone of the
| freeway, then the multiple blocks of the Rio. There's
| little room there for practical streets although in most
| places there's one street behind the casinos.
| derefr wrote:
| Is that really how "city blocks" are supposed to be
| modelled? AFAIK a "block" is one atomic unit of a
| particular _grid_ of city streets -- and a city can have
| multiple such grids, with different block sizes. Like a
| computer with disks with different block sizes. It 's my
| impression that the Las Vegas strip forms its own
| distinct grid, with very large blocks.
| ghaff wrote:
| The point is that someone accustomed to regular city
| downtowns is used to ordinary city blocks and hotels that
| sit within a block. A quick glance at a map doesn't
| really communicate the scale of the casinos on the strip
| or the distance you need to walk to get from one to the
| other in many cases.
|
| (It's not all that bad. The Venetian really is more or
| less across from the Mirage and Caesar's Palace is then
| reasonably close.)
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Since when is there a standardized distance for a
| "block"? My entire point is that one block (ie. the
| distance between two streets perpendicular to the one you
| are on) is much larger on the strip than in a regular
| city.
|
| Going down Flamingo, the only intersection between the
| Bellagio and the Rio is I15. You could say maybe a block
| and a half, but that's still nowhere close to 30 minutes'
| walk.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| The reason for this is the same reason they employ the
| window trick in the headline: the properties on the strip
| are enormous, scaled completely outside most people's
| day-to-day experience; the Bellagio property, for
| instance, covers 77 acres and has just shy of 4000 rooms.
| ehnto wrote:
| I had the exact opposite experience in really dense
| cities funnily, you look at a map and see dozens of
| streets between you and where you're going, and it seems
| like it's half a city away. In reality it's just a 15
| minute walk.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Yeah, depends on what you're used to. I've grown up in
| fairly dense cities so I was not expecting the density of
| the strip.
|
| It doesn't help that there's nothing in between the Rio
| and the rest of the strip. I've gone up and down the
| strip before and there's at least things to keep you
| occupied for those distances. But seeing _nothing_ but
| that stupid sign is hell.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That place was not meant for humans to exist in it. At
| least not at the scale it happens right now.
| kortilla wrote:
| It's not really any different from other places that
| require environmental support to make it livable (e.g.
| New York).
|
| The only reason Las Vegas even has water issues is
| because of water rights, not anything that makes it
| inherently worse than the rest of the southwest.
| ehnto wrote:
| It's car sized, much of American signage and affordances
| are designed to be viewed from your car at speed.
| ghaff wrote:
| No one is driving down the Las Vegas Strip at speed.
|
| It's about a certain type of spectacle.
| User23 wrote:
| I always blow away my step goal in Vegas, and that's even
| though I spend at least 4 hours a day at the tables.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's quite easy to imagine if you combine the inside
| shots for the rooms[1] with the outside one.
|
| 1: https://bellagio.mgmresorts.com/en/hotel.html
| pimlottc wrote:
| Yes, it's easier to tell in night time photos:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Las_Veg
| a...
| ziml77 wrote:
| Thank you! I couldn't see what the article was telling me
| I should from the photo the author used. This photo makes
| it very clear how the windows are designed.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| That makes it far more obvious, cheers :)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Zoom in on the wikimedia commons high-res one (thanks for
| that high res link!), and then look at the balconies in the
| middle column of the building. See the door in the balcony?
| Each of those four-window blocks is two stories high. Which
| means each "pane" is pretty big -- others have said each of
| those four-window blocks is actually four hotel rooms.
|
| The picture in the OP didn't make it totally clear, which
| left me wondering too, although I figured that's what they
| meant so it must be that way -- the fact that we have to
| look so carefully to verify it, I guess shows the success
| of the "illusion"!
| cratermoon wrote:
| Also there's only a balcony every other floor, again
| fooling the casual observer into seeing one floor where
| there's two.
| nvr219 wrote:
| Thank you!!
| canadianfella wrote:
| [dead]
| gadders wrote:
| You'd love walking round the South Bank of the Thames or the
| Barbican in London.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The most successful Brutalist designs always seem to be
| softened with trees, curves, and water - which are the
| opposite of bare concrete.
|
| The South Bank Centre is on the Thames and is decorated with
| trees, and the Barbican has a central water feature and
| garden.
|
| They're also fairly opulent on the inside.
|
| https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fti.
| ..
|
| Trellick and Balfron Towers have some trees now, but didn't
| have much greenery when they originally opened.
|
| https://designanthologyuk.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/09/web...
|
| The order/variety observation is absolutely right, and a core
| feature of practical aesthetics across all domains.
| Successful aesthetics are a fine balance between surprise and
| predictability. Even something as basic as proportion is
| based on comprehensible non-random relationships.
|
| The Wundt Curve describes how too much order and too much
| chaos are both unsettling/boring.
|
| https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/files/8060373/COXj_2017_cr.
| ..
| vilhelm_s wrote:
| Similarly, in recent years people have been talking about
| "Tropical Brutalism" (e.g.
| https://www.dezeen.com/2022/11/28/architecture-project-
| talk-... , https://somethingcurated.com/2019/10/24/the-
| evolution-of-tro...), and I think a lot of what is
| appealing about it is the contrast between bare concrete
| and lush greenery.
| twic wrote:
| That combination is also extremely Bond villain, and who
| doesn't dream of being a Bond villain?
| ehnto wrote:
| It's a great point. Singapore and Japanese cities can be
| built quite raw and oppressive because of the wild density,
| but in both nature is snuck into every nook and cranny. In
| Singapore it has been a strong architectural design choice,
| and in Japan it's the cumulative actions of everyone
| putting pot plants all over the place and leaving "weeds"
| and moss to grow through on fences and walls.
| msrenee wrote:
| So I know that pot plants is the term outside of the US
| for potted plants. Pot plant here means marijuana and I'm
| dying at the idea of Japanese apartments being covered,
| inside and out, with various strains of cannabis. I'd
| like to imagine there's dwarf varieties, lovingly shaped
| and maintained in the corners of the living space.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I'm reminded of Habitat 67, which looks like a utopian
| future in most pictures with greenery: https://s3-ca-
| central-1.amazonaws.com/building-ca/wp-content...
|
| And like shipping containers stacked haphazardly in
| pictures taken in the winter: https://upload.wikimedia.org/
| wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Ha...
| pledg wrote:
| As a resident of the Barbican, it is part of our lease that
| we maintain plants on the balcony. This significantly
| softens the exterior and adds variety the linked article
| discusses.
|
| Coincidentally the fountains were fixed yesterday after
| years of being turned off.
| rogy wrote:
| living the dream!
| hasbot wrote:
| Would you share a picture of this brutalist house?
| nemo44x wrote:
| Winston Churchill famously said, "We shape our buildings, and
| afterwards our buildings shape us."
|
| I agree with this and believe we should make beautiful
| structures. I'm not sure much architecture since the 1950s in
| the west really does this. Modernism was the last consistently
| great style imo. Post Modern styles just seem so temporary and
| self indulgent which I suppose reflects our time.
| rasz wrote:
| "The ideologists of socialist realism understood perfectly
| well the role played by architecture in the creation of human
| consciousness; they realised that the right architectural
| 'setting' can influence one's way of life and perception of
| reality."
|
| https://culture.pl/en/article/polands-surprising-
| socialist-r...
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| "On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make
| a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth
| belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it
| then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their
| usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and
| consequently may govern them as they please."
|
| --Thomas Jefferson
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Churchill in that quote was making an argument to rebuild the
| House of Commons exactly as it was before getting destructed,
| rejecting new ideas.
|
| If anything, I think the 50s architecture opened the door to
| new ideas, helped us see what works and what doesn't. Villa
| Savoye is a bit from before the 50s, but it basically feels
| like it could be built today it wouldn't be out of place in
| any bit.
|
| TBH I'm glad the 50s architects opened the future instead of
| clinging to the past.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I see how brutalist architecture may be endearing because it
| looks so dated, like retrofuturistic imagery usually does. But
| take a a moment at imagining a city where most buildings are
| really high slabs of grey concrete darkened by damp and
| pollution and try not to feel depressed. That kind of
| architecture was born from the need to build fast and cheap in
| order to avoid slums. Architects who embraced those projects
| invented it a style and aura.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Any city with a single aesthetic feels oppressive to me.
| Design needs to serve people, not vice versa.
| ec109685 wrote:
| I am surprised brutalist became popular. Concrete ends up
| really weathered over time and to me you end up with drab and
| dingy looking buildings after a while: "oh that building is
| from the 70s".
|
| I guess there were practical reasons in the beginning to not
| focus on adding additional finishes?
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >I am surprised brutalist became popular
|
| it never was popular, it wasn't an organic movement. It was
| pushed by the Soviets and those sympathetic to them in
| Western governments and academia who used tax payer money to
| construct hideous buildings
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're framing an effort to construct a
| ton of housing as efficiently as possible as some spooky
| Soviet conspiracy. Maybe governments and academia were just
| sympathetic to the idea of using that tax payer money on
| cheaper buildings, would you prefer they pay more to suit
| different aesthetic tastes?
|
| Tangentially, speaking of non-organic movements, the
| history of the CIA funding abstract expressionist art in
| the Cold War to serve as a foil to Soviet realism is
| fascinating. Arguably there are echoes of those influences
| in this conversation.
| pkd wrote:
| I don't think so. Initial Soviet architecture wasn't
| brutalist. Stalinist architecture was in fact very
| classical inspired. You can see that in the seven sisters
| buildings in Moscow. Even the late Soviet era blocks were
| not brutalist. That style came up in the UK and was more
| popular in the Western world than outside of it.
|
| Brutalism like all other styles is a mixture of the
| requirements of the time and a response to the culture at
| the time. The building features the original article is
| railing against is simply poor design. A poorly designed
| classical inspired building will look exactly as bad.
| vidarh wrote:
| Le Corbusier tried pushing his designs on the Soviet Union,
| and Stalin rejected it in favour of a far more ornamental
| style.
|
| The push towards stripping back ornamentation gained
| traction in the west long before the time Khrushchev was
| able to push for this in Soviet construction.
| lmm wrote:
| My pet theory is that it became popular in an era where
| buildings were judged by black-and-white photographs of them.
| In real life bare concrete is drab and grey - but in a black-
| and-white photograph textured concrete is one of the more
| interesting surfaces to look at.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| The whole point of brutalism was that Concrete _doesn 't_
| wear much over time. A high pressure hose will remove
| 'weathering' of concrete buildings very effectively and
| cheaply. I think your problem arises not from concrete but
| from these buildings often being public (including public
| housing) and having shoestring maintenance budgets. You spend
| the same to maintain most other materials and they will have
| fallen down by now, or at least parts of them would.
|
| A good example of one where they did care a lot about the
| finish and its lasting finish is the Barbican in London -
| there's a little about it here [0]
|
| [0] https://www.barbicanliving.co.uk/barbican-
| story/construction...
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I think our tastes just changed.
|
| It's like vinyl floors, it was the rage at some point and
| people really valued them. Or heavily decorated wallpapers.
| So many of that stuff is just considered fugly now.
| brewdad wrote:
| The functionality of vinyl is making a comeback, we just
| make them look like wood now.
| omnimus wrote:
| which is the most terrible, fake and cheap looking way
| how to bring it back
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| My understanding is Brutalism arose when building codes still
| had limits on window size and proportion of glass vs other
| materials on the facades of large buildings. This prevented
| the glass curtain towers that became popular later until
| codes changed.
|
| Brutalism embraced this constraint as well as the most
| expedient materials for building skyscrapers. Intellectually
| and aesthetically I like this choice of honesty in reflecting
| materials personally.
|
| Where Brutalism failed is similar to other grand modernist
| projects: it failed to engage properly at the human scale,
| creating environments that look striking, but that also read
| to most people as cold and alienating. In practical terms
| this sort of grand architecture usually fails to anticipate
| how humans will actually use the spaces, leading to spaces
| that are opposed to humans organic behaviors.
|
| All that said, when Brutalism is tempered with empathy, and
| combined with interior design that both features and softens
| its starkness, I quite like it. The old library in my home
| town was brutalist.
|
| This is the exterior: https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.8b7a56ab55f
| bd5227b8d5c04be176e56...
|
| Unfortunately there's no photos online of the old interior,
| but it did a good job of humanizing the starkness.
|
| On the other hand, the exterior also showed the flaws of
| brutalism, having wide empty featureless grass plains that I
| never once saw anyone use for relaxation, a picnic, etc, in
| two decades of living in that town.
| beardyw wrote:
| It was a design choice to celebrate the material being used -
| concrete. I think only architects ever really loved them.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of brutalist architecture and am not ann
| architect.
|
| I live in a brutalist townhome and it exemplifies the
| things I love about the style, lack of ornamentation,
| function over form, yet scaled and appropriate to its
| location.
|
| The simplicity and usefulness of the house lends it as much
| elegance as it needs.
| [deleted]
| hgsgm wrote:
| It's the _appearance_ of function over form. That 's why
| USSR used it as propaganda. Concrete is terrible surface
| material because it is impossible to maintain and repair.
| vidarh wrote:
| The USSR used it as a cheap means of trying to meet a
| massive housing shortage first and foremost.
|
| It abandoned the far more ornamental Stalinist style for
| brutalism as part of Khrushchev's push for that.
|
| Note the far more ostentatious buildings under Stalin
| _and_ Stalin 's rejection of Le Corbusiers extremely
| radical proposals for redevelopment of Moscow in favour
| of far more traditional designs.
|
| To the extent it was later used as propaganda, that was a
| follow on effect once stagnation forced doubling down on
| construction that had initially been intended as
| relatively short term cheap housing.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| No. The concretes function may not be optimal, but it is
| there to hold the building up, to form the walls, to
| provide conduits for people and services, etc.
|
| It is not a facade, it is not cladding, it is the
| functional building its-very-self.
|
| Brutalist buildings celebrate their exoskeletons.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| I wonder if we will feel the same about "minimal" design in
| the future. I really don't see anything beautiful about a
| white box with black windows, yet architects seem obsessed
| with it.
|
| Probably because it's called good design yet it's almost
| the cheapest possible design outwards. Convenient. But I
| think in 30 years we will facepalm at these white boxes we
| call houses.
| ehnto wrote:
| These things often oscillate around certain aspects. We
| bounce between ornate and simple over history for
| example. Minimalism is handy because it's a cheap and
| hard to mess it up. Like pop music.
|
| Look at McMansions, which is a cohort of styles that are
| much easier to get wrong, and there are many objectively
| bad homes. But for minimalism, the worst you can often
| say is it's boring. Correct, but boring.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| It was made to be ugly by people so traumatized by war that
| they no longer believed in beauty.
| parenthesis wrote:
| Stone also gets really grubby over time, but for some reason
| that still looks okay but the concrete doesn't so much.
| 2h wrote:
| FYI dont need to escape, you can use IRI:
|
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Beton_brut
| O__________O wrote:
| Here's site showing closeup of the four pane panel window:
|
| http://www.vegastodayandtomorrow.com/windows.htm
| listenallyall wrote:
| It would appear the linked article plagiarized from this site
| (vegastodayandtomorrow). I mean, the concept of "window
| trick" and every hotel used as an example, is identified
| first right here.
| yencabulator wrote:
| The site linked therein shows this even better. In the third
| photo, compare the building on the foreground vs background.
|
| http://www.vegastodayandtomorrow.com/dunes_bellagio.htm
| paulkrush wrote:
| Wow, that is money pic, showing was looks to be two
| different scale buildings.
| [deleted]
| dmalvarado wrote:
| > In order to make the buildings look smaller, less intimidating
| and messy, architects have come up with a "four or six windows in
| one" solution.
|
| Is there a source for this assumption? "Architects have come up
| with..." makes it sound like there was an explicit discussion
| about how to make the building look smaller. A) Why would a Vegas
| hotel want to look smaller, B) Does it actually look smaller? C)
| Smaller than what? A building with no windows? A building with
| too many windows?
|
| I'm not suggesting Architects are getting too much credit. I'm
| just suggesting, maybe the monster building had a terrible
| architect(s), and the Vegas buildings didn't use terrible
| architects.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Architecture is a discipline and has design patterns that are
| shared in the industry. They are inventing techniques for each
| new building they design.
|
| This particular pattern is known:
| http://www.vegastodayandtomorrow.com/windows.htm
| aflag wrote:
| Brutalism was popular in the 60s. You can see examples around
| the world. It's not really a matter of being a bad or good
| architect. It's more of architectural style preferences.
| ec109685 wrote:
| There's a trope that Vegas doesn't allow its windows to open /
| have balconies because they are afraid of suicides. Is it instead
| in practical to have windows that open when employing the window
| trick?
| personjerry wrote:
| Related to the Hong Kong building:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City
| phantomathkg wrote:
| Disclaimer: I am Hongkonger.
|
| The one mentioned in the blog is this one
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Building
| fullshark wrote:
| Very cool setting for Shenmue 2 and Bloodsport
| adrianh wrote:
| On the other end of the spectrum: here in Amsterdam some of the
| canal houses deliberately use smaller windows for the top floors,
| to give the impression that the homes are taller (and more
| prestigious).
|
| The way it was explained to me is that it's an optical illusion
| when viewing the homes from street level. A 17th century window
| trick. :-)
| dguest wrote:
| Good on the author for acknowledging (twice) that not everyone
| shares their sense of aesthetics.
|
| Personally I think there's a beautiful chaotic honesty in the
| monster building. The Vegas hotels look phony, even more so now
| that I know their trick.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The HK buildings feel dystopian by Western standards because
| they're incredibly crammed. By local standard, they might
| actually be pretty good (looks like each unit gets pretty large
| windows/"indoor balcony" style rooms).
| chitza wrote:
| I live in Romania. 90% of the buildings sport this brutalist
| look, not to mention there are rows after rows having the same
| design. You get bored and depressed very quickly if you live in
| such environment. I'm always amazed at the diversity of the
| facades when I visit other european cities.
| atomicUpdate wrote:
| > Good on the author for acknowledging (twice) that not
| everyone shares their sense of aesthetics.
|
| I disagree. For example:
|
| > unless you like them, I'm not questioning anyone's personal
| taste
|
| This type of soft-pedaling is too pervasive in people's writing
| nowadays. It diminishes the author's point when they are too
| afraid to commit to their own opinions because they might
| offend someone that disagrees. This constant affirmation of
| "you might disagree, and that's OK," is irritating.
| goguy wrote:
| Totally agree. It's a blog post, obviously it's your personal
| opinion and there's no need to explain nor excuse that.
| trgn wrote:
| It's unnecessary in this article agreed. The author has an
| obvious preference, just own it already.
|
| Being tolerant is a virtue, but practice this by action, in
| life.
|
| When writing a polemic, say what you mean! If anything, amp
| it up a little. Hyperbole and saturation is great when
| discussing matters of taste.
|
| If you're going to critique architecture, you have the best
| examples. Just channel some Loos who ridiculed those in favor
| of ornamentation for being childish uncivilized country
| idiots. Had great effect, we're still living in its detritus.
| So just do the opposite here!
| typedfalse wrote:
| The opposite (that it's not OK to disagree) is one of the
| things that has driven political and social discourse to its
| current hyperbolic and occasionally dangerous character. It's
| the source of much of the so-called "culture war".
|
| So to be clear: I disagree, you are wrong... and to follow
| the mindset underlying your complaint, "fuck you".
| timeon wrote:
| Whit Bellagio there is too much order because of symmetry if you
| compare it with playfulness of Unite d'Habitation.
| docandrew wrote:
| By doing this, they make the casinos seem closer, easier to walk
| to, and more inviting.
| nemo44x wrote:
| The first time I went to Vegas I decided a casino I wanted to
| go to wasn't that far away from where I was. You could see it,
| it looked "just over there".
|
| Turns out I walked over a mile in the desert sun. Taxis and
| that rail after that.
| fosk wrote:
| Tricks me every time. Also the hotel name signage is
| disproportionately huge, which from a distance make it seems
| like the hotel is close enough for a walk, but turns out it
| is not.
| lucideer wrote:
| Given how pedestrian unfriendly the Strip is, it surprises me
| that you even managed this at all.
|
| On the other hand, I was also surprised how much better
| public transit seemed in vegas than in most us cities.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Are you calling it unfriendly because it's set up to make
| jaywalking hard? We got tired of drunk tourists getting
| creamed because they wandered into traffic. And the crowds
| are heavy enough that turning across a pedestrian flow is
| problematic in peak hours. Thus it has been engineered to
| as much as possible separate pedestrians from cars.
| lucideer wrote:
| I'm calling it unfriendly because it's a highway cutting
| through an area fully suited to being entirely
| pedestrianised. You can't even drive to the front of
| casinos (they have car park entrances at the back), yet
| the vast majority of real estate outside them is given up
| to traffic lanes, with precious little left to the people
| wandering around them spending.
|
| There isn't even that much traffic on the strip, the
| road-to-footpath ratio of land allpocation is absurd.
|
| It's unfriendly because you have to walk so damn far to
| get around lanes that have little business existing in
| the first place.
| aflag wrote:
| That makes sense. Lots of tourists there who travelled by
| plane and may not know how to drive or be unwilling to rent
| a car. The casinos would still like these people to drop by
| though
| nasmorn wrote:
| Also people get drunk a lot in Vegas and casinos
| encourage it.
| allenu wrote:
| I had the same experience when I went to Vegas for the first
| time. I wanted to walk from building to building but they all
| felt so much further away than they appeared. It never
| occurred to me it was because of this bit of visual trickery.
| anileated wrote:
| I can see how these tricks could be used to attract a certain
| kind of person (and repeal people like me) but fail to notice
| some inherent appeal in this design. We can all agree that
| monster buildings are suboptimal in general, buildings with
| smaller footprint on the ground tend to feel nicer, but if a
| monster is the only way I know which kind I prefer.
|
| Give me Hong Kong style architecture, with its visible age and
| protruding A/C units, over Las Vegas style any day. The first one
| is functional and alive, the other is shallow, excessive and
| dead.
|
| European brutalist buildings also look attractive to me (alas,
| mostly seen on photos). Beauty comes from function, and brutalism
| gives that function a little bit of form but doesn't let it
| prevail.
|
| FWIW the author mentions that it's the matter of taste. The rest
| of the article just made no sense to me.
| ilamont wrote:
| I lived in Asia in the 1990s and was close friends with several
| local and international architects working on residential
| buildings which often had commercial space on the ground floor.
|
| One common complaint was their models and drawings never ended up
| looking like the result because the developer would add features
| (one example: a parking garage which required a large ramp) and
| commercial tenants would add hanging signage. Residents typically
| used balconies for drying laundry, not the flower gardens shown
| in the drawings. Almost everyone used frosted windows, not clear
| windows, because outside views of other buildings or the
| surrounding landscape were not valued - it was all about the
| interior amenities.
| btucker wrote:
| It's a bit like the forced perspective techniques Disney uses to
| accomplish the inverse: make small buildings seem bigger.
|
| Explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqefjmRVLTM
| a4isms wrote:
| _In a lecture about the universal characteristics of classical
| architecture, professor Nathaniel Walker argued that human beings
| crave two things: order and variety. If there 's too much order,
| it's boring and oppressive. If there's too much variety, it's
| chaotic and unpleasant. In his view, classical architecture all
| over the world aims at creating a "delicate balance between order
| and variety."_
|
| Jazz educator Jerry Coker made the same point about music, that
| to be pleasurable it must strike the right balance between
| familiarity and novelty. A metaphor for "familiar" and "novel" in
| music is to imagine that as we listen, we are "playing along in
| our head."
|
| When we are correct about where the music is going next, it feels
| familiar. When we are surprised by it doing something else, we
| find it novel.
|
| Jazz that is too familiar is boring, we never are surprised, it
| never pushes our brain to rewire itself to accept "the new
| familiar." Jazz that is too novel sounds like a chaotic mess: We
| cannot learn to predict it because its novelty is not built on
| top of a base of familiarity we can work with.
|
| The key insight that builds on top of this is that "familiar" and
| "novel" are not absolutes: They vary from person to person based
| on their tastes and experiences. This leads to the notion of
| _progression_.
|
| When you find music that has the right balance for you, after a
| while what used to be novel becomes familiar, and your tastes
| evolve to appreciate music that adds novelty to the music you
| used to find balanced, but now find overly familiar. Your tastes
| are evolving, as most people's tastes do.
|
| It's never quite as cut-and-dry as that, but this notion of "a
| balance between familiar and novel" seems to fit a lot of
| aesthetic tastes, and the notion that to maintain that balance,
| people's tastes evolve over time also seems to fit a lot of
| people's experiences.
|
| The challenge is that as a practitioner, your personal tastes may
| go beyond the tastes of your audience. So either you must bring
| them along to where you are, create for them but not entirely for
| yourself, or find an audience who is in roughly the same place in
| their journey and will delight in the new experiences you
| discover for yourself.
|
| I am personally lazy, so as a blogger I always wrote for myself
| and let the internet sort out who would find my stuff about
| programming too familiar to be interesting, who would find it to
| avant-garde to be interesting, and who found it familiar enough
| to be understandable, yet novel enough to be interesting.
|
| Alas, buildings aren't blog posts or pieces of music. When
| building them, you can't always leave it up to the world to sort
| out who likes them and who doesn't, you usually have a specific
| brief to satisfy a specific audience and society, and you should
| design for where their tastes are.
|
| p.s. And yes, this does apply to software design for those who
| take aesthetic pleasure in the code itself.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I wonder if one reason classical music seems unapproachable is
| it's hard to pick out patterns in a lot of pieces. The one
| classical piece people regularly ask to hear is a 20th century
| arrangement of Canon in D, and it's a single chord progression
| with new embellishments getting added to it. Compare that to
| something like Beethoven's 5th which feels more like a
| meandering story.
| a4isms wrote:
| Classical itself has progressed, because the composers who
| grow up listening to it in any one generation get familiar
| with what has been done so far, and then inject novelty into
| it to satisfy their own tastes.
|
| Repeat every twenty years over centuries, and you find that
| the older pieces are the most approachable for most people,
| while the newer pieces are the least.
|
| But... If you listen to classical music and follow the
| historical progression along, you end up enjoying the newer
| stuff.
|
| Our tastes are elastic. If you don't enjoy Beethoven today,
| you may find that by following the historical progression
| along, you may enjoy it next year.
| [deleted]
| antognini wrote:
| There is a famous article written by the 20th century
| composer Milton Babbitt titled something to the effect of
| "Who cares if you listen?" He was unapologetic about writing
| music that was only comprehensible to other composers. He
| made the argument that we don't expect the layman to
| understand modern mathematics or physics. Why should we
| expect the layman to understand modern music either?
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| alfor wrote:
| They look oppressive because they are. Our perception is right,
| the buildings are wrong.
|
| What they mean is that someone is at the head of a structure that
| house thousand of people, putting the the person living there far
| from any impact on the whole.
|
| The tribe size for humans in around 100 people. Naturally a
| building that house 1000 of people is not human sized in it's
| management or living organisation.
|
| The solution is not to fake the facade to trick our visual
| perception, it's pushing the problem away instead of fixing it.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| I want to live in the building, not look at it and as such I want
| a balcony, a window that opens and an individual A/C unit that
| can deliver a strong blast next to my bed on summer nights. If it
| looks ugly from outside, who cares, make it up with a pretty,
| clean and safe street with shops and restaurants nearby.
| joecasson wrote:
| What you prefer to live in is not the point of the article.
| It's about why some large, many unit buildings appear imposing
| / overwhelming while others less so.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Downtown Pyongyang also looks beautiful, yet I think that
| prioritizing needs of the residents is beautiful in the most
| important way. Taipei street markets are messy. That's the
| best food I ever had.
| exegete wrote:
| That idea works until you have several such buildings near you
| and you get to go out on your balcony and see an ugly building
| everyday.
| captainmuon wrote:
| Interesting, I would say those buildings in HK don't have too
| much order and variety, but too little. There is no order, the
| facade is completely chaotic, but there is also no variety, it is
| all same-same in its brutalist housing style. But I guess that
| amounts to the same.
|
| Regarding the window trick, I think I've seen something similar
| with very old or maybe neoclassical buildings in the US. They had
| a whole fake storey between the first and second to make the
| building look taller - or maybe they merged the first and second
| floor to make it look smaller? I'm not sure and can't find the
| link where I read this, but it is a very similar and really cool
| effect.
| adolph wrote:
| The De Bakey VA Hospital in Houston TX does something similar
| except that the extra floors are windowless.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._DeBakey_Veterans_Af...
| arboles wrote:
| [flagged]
| metisto wrote:
| Am I missing a joke? Or is this a reference to something? Could
| you please explain it in more detail.
| thedougd wrote:
| In poor taste.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I don't see the 'trick'. The buildings still look massive to me.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Dubai is full of absolutely massive residential houses, with
| Princess tower [1] being the tallest residential building in the
| world (well, strictly speaking 432 Park Avenue is taller, but it
| doesn't have all it's stories filled in) but very few buildings
| here uses the window trick (I'd say The Address Beach Resort
| does)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Tower
| a_t48 wrote:
| I can't be the only one who hates 432 Park - not because of the
| windows, but because of the impossible shape. It just looks
| like it shouldn't exist.
| brookst wrote:
| I love it for that reason. Most things look like they exist,
| it's cool to see one that doesn't.
| hammock wrote:
| In a condo building, each unit owns their own windows and is
| responsible for replacement, etc. So grouping windows across
| multiple floors works for hotels and commercial buildings, but it
| does not work for residential condos
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Another Las Vegas Window Trick is to prevent any natural light on
| the casino floors. The gambler has no sense of time of day
| without looking at a clock, but that's not the same as feeling
| "oh, it's almost dawn" by looking at the daylight.
| dghughes wrote:
| Not if you live in a northern climate dawn in the winter is 8am
| at its worst and sunset can be as early as 4pm.
|
| I worked in a small casino and we had a huge front window that
| you could see south eastward. But yes I'm sure some some people
| lose track of time it's human nature.
| achairapart wrote:
| The best "dark pattern" trick from Las Vegas casinos may be to
| start pumping pure oxygen thru A/C around midnight, so guests
| would get some "high" boost, keeping them gambling harder and
| tirelessly all night long.
|
| I read about this many years ago in "Fools Die" by Mario Puzo,
| which of course is fiction, but I think there may be some truth
| in there (One of the characters in the book is mostly based on
| the author himself).
|
| Edit. Found an original quote from the book:
| Gronevelt was dressed to go down to the casino floor. He
| fiddled with the control panel that would flood the casino pits
| with pure oxygen. But it was still too early in the evening. He
| would push the button sometime in the early-morning hours when
| the players were tiring and thinking of going to bed. Then he
| would revive them as if they were puppets. It was only in the
| past year that be had the oxygen controls wired directly to his
| suite.
| Kranar wrote:
| Casinos do not now nor have they ever pumped oxygen into
| their buildings. It's nothing more than a myth.
| hammock wrote:
| This is true, however may be worth noting that I'm sure
| they (along with many large commercial buildings non-
| specific to casinos) control the carbon dioxide levels
| inside, and increase air exchange with the outside when
| necessary.
|
| High carbon dioxide levels do have a lethargic effect
| triceratops wrote:
| > One of the characters in the book is mostly based on the
| author himself
|
| Fun fact: Puzo had a serious gambling problem. He did most of
| his research for _The Godfather_ while gambling in a Las
| Vegas casino (or several?) and interviewing the manager.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Building fires would sure be exciting!
| achairapart wrote:
| Ah! I don't think they need so much oxygen to be a fire
| hazard. People would start acting crazy, at least.
|
| I also wonder if they use to do the same - to some extend -
| in trains and airplanes, I always feel quite relaxed while
| traveling by them.
| jesvs wrote:
| Lost count of mall visits where glass ceilings bask in morning
| light, only to leave hours later to a dark sky. The capitalist
| secret: hiding the day-night transition from customers.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Malls don't have a hotel on top, they can use skylights. In
| most places casinos have something above the gambling areas--
| either hotel or meeting rooms (or, in some cases, meeting
| rooms and then hotel above them.) Unless you have some
| business with the meeting rooms you're likely to not realize
| they are there.
|
| There are also some casinos where there are restaurants above
| the gambling areas.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| But they don't have to be built that way. It's a choice
| that shows natural light is not a priority.
| brewdad wrote:
| Of course not. Being able to fit 3000 rooms above the
| casino is the priority.
| donatj wrote:
| I have always heard this, but I suspect it's less of an
| intentional trick and more just a happy accident of how large
| Vegas gambling floors are. Even if the buildings were wrapped
| in floor to ceiling windows natural light would only penetrate
| the first couple rows of slots.
|
| The Mirage in particular actually has a pretty large skylight
| towards the front of the gambling floor.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's a lot of psychological stuff going on with the casino
| floors but I'm not sure how you'd design a massive ground
| floor room in a way that there would be a lot of natural
| light. And it would actually be user-hostile (and, yes,
| doubtless business hostile) to spread the casino across a lot
| of floors.
| toast0 wrote:
| I've seen (but not entered) casinos in office towers. I
| imagine you have the sea of slot machines on the first
| floor or two, and then table games and high roller rooms on
| the upper floors.
|
| For a las vegas style ginormous casino and hotel, many of
| them have the casino footprint much larger than the hotel
| footprint. You could have big diffused skylights over much
| of the gaming area, if you wanted. Of course, you'd
| augement that with lots of artificial lighting, so it would
| save energy, but not change the experience of roughly
| constant lighting 24/7
| loopdoend wrote:
| Skylights
| ghaff wrote:
| I thought about that after I wrote the comment although a
| lot of the time there's convention center and other
| expansive spaces above the casino.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Works for the floor that is under the roof.
| hammock wrote:
| Internal courtyards is how you add light and air
| circulation to a large floor plan, typically
| rambambram wrote:
| I worked at a casino (albeit different country) and I was
| always told this is on purpose. My casino also didn't have
| windows, and there were no clocks. And the very busy patterns
| on the carpet are made like that so visitors don't look down
| and keep staring at their slot machines.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The lack of clocks is deliberate, I think the natural light
| is simply a case of it not being practical to allow it.
| Furthermore, the space around the gambling areas is used
| for various business purposes, both to get gamblers to see
| the businesses and to get people to walk past the machines
| to go to the businesses. To put in windows would be to give
| up prime areas.
| smallstepforman wrote:
| Some gaming jurisdictions mandate that slot machines must
| display the time in a font at least 7mm tall.
| meeks wrote:
| Wedbush Center in LA is another classic example of this trick.
| <https://www.wedbushcenterla.com/>
| userabchn wrote:
| The opposite is done in other buildings, such as MIT's Simmons
| Hall, where the building can look bigger than it actually is
| because each room has multiple windows:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simmons_Hall,_MIT,_C...
| hanspeter wrote:
| A similar effect is seen with this office building in
| Copenhagen. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier47
| rmetzler wrote:
| The German Democratic Republik (East Germany) had the problem of
| needing housing for many thousand people in the 1970s. It was not
| possible to build enough flats. The only way they could scale up
| their efforts was through standardisation. Berlin Marzahn and
| other areas were villages back than. The Marzahn Village for
| example still exists today.
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohnungsbauprogramm_(DDR)
|
| People wanted individualisation, but the housing was needed. So
| they put color in their balconies, which made them look like
| color patches. And there existed big murals on the ends of some
| houses.
|
| After reunification, a lot of these buildings were modernised and
| made look the same again. Only the color scheme between houses
| was different. Existing murals were often painted over. People
| then realised, it does look nicer to have coloured walls and they
| start to let artists paint the ends again.
|
| Here is an example by the East German artist Mad C
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Berlin_Mural_Fest_2019_M...
|
| Here is a video of Team Mad Flava, painting a large mural in
| Greifswald.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q0vMB5k71c
| nottorp wrote:
| > People then realised, it does look nicer to have coloured
| walls and they start to let artists paint the ends again.
|
| I really don't understand how people can enjoy the "us
| homeowner association" uniformity. It's boring. Let everyone
| personalize their home.
| sssilver wrote:
| A similar trick that car designers use to make a car appear
| smaller are large headlights in relation to the rest of the car.
|
| Mini does this very effectively.
| Maursault wrote:
| Muse Hall[0] at Radford University in Radford VA also uses a
| window trick, except to make the building look much taller than
| it is. When standing close to it, the facade is reasonably
| effective.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/radfordu/status/1364225065974333446
| twic wrote:
| Looks to me like it should have pigeons living in it:
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pigeons-tower
| sollewitt wrote:
| This can also be understood via Gestalt principle of visual
| processing - we visually group things that are proximal, we like
| to perceive continuity, we see parallel things as being related
| etc: https://www.superside.com/blog/gestalt-principles-of-design
|
| Visual designers are architects are trained in these aspects of
| human perception.
| Miserlou57 wrote:
| I think a really good example of this is the Abraj Al Bait in
| Saudi Arabia. The complex is absolutely massive, but the large
| windows on many of the peripheral buildings are deceiving. The
| entire thing is 2-4x bigger than it appears. It's bonkers.
| htag wrote:
| I think the author missing the biggest reason for these styling
| differences. This is their function. A long term dwelling serves
| a different function than a hotel. All of the residential
| buildings have more personalization on the outside of the
| building than hotels allow. I'd also like to add that the shown
| residential homes show much more wear and age than the hotels do,
| making it hard to do a side by side comparison.
|
| I'm always driven towards residential areas where the personality
| and style of the owner comes out in the property. In the US many
| suburban HOAs, apartment management and condo boards will put
| arbitrary limits on the appearance of the outside of the home. I
| can't stand the single family neighborhoods where all the homes
| were build at the same time, with the same builders, in the same
| style. In my neighborhood lots are of varying sizes, homes are
| built in a ~fifteen year span with different styles, and there is
| no hoa.
|
| Condo buildings can generate the same level of sameness if
| several of them are built in the same neighborhood around the
| same time, with similar style, and enforce strict limitations on
| outside visual appearance. We see this a lot in the US when an
| area is "upzonned" and developers flock to build "luxury"
| apartments and condos. I prefer buildings where residents put
| furniture on balconies, hang decorations from their window, grow
| plants outside, and have blinds open displaying rooms styled
| differently than their neighbors. I prefer living in urban
| neighborhoods where the buildings are of varying ages and show
| different architectural styles.
|
| Hotels can do enforce a very high level of uniformity.
| Additionally the amenities, furnishing, styling, and art are very
| much at the whim of current styles. This increases the "order"
| and decreases the "chaos". The order comes from function, and I
| wouldn't want to live in a hotel like environment.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I think the author missing the biggest reason for these
| styling differences. This is their function. A long term
| dwelling serves a different function than a hotel. All of the
| residential buildings have more personalization on the outside
| of the building than hotels allow. I'd also like to add that
| the shown residential homes show much more wear and age than
| the hotels do, making it hard to do a side by side comparison.
|
| Yeah I'm surprised nobody else mentioned this. The residential
| buildings have window AC units and people hanging laundry on
| their balconies to dry, two things you'll never see at modern
| hotels (the ones pictured don't even have balconies).
|
| There's no apples to apples comparison happening here.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Love those archtectural tricks!
|
| One I enjoy to look at here in Paris is this building:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/VrMNy4RkZPyFE1SC8?g_st=ic It looks like
| it is tilted, but it really has a square shape, just the vertical
| beige columns on each floor are placed slightly off from the
| other floor, and that makes the effect
| twic wrote:
| There's a building in London that i find genuinely unsettling
| to look at - it looks like perspective has got messed up
| somehow:
|
| https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5264997,-0.0879055,3a,75y,...
|
| https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/M_by_Montcalm
|
| It's basically opposite an eye hospital, so it's probably given
| some people nasty post-operative surprises.
| coding123 wrote:
| You can't really compare hotels that are serviced to make the
| inside identical, and therefore the outside looks as if the
| building went up. The Chinese apartments are not hotels so each
| owner is changing things so the outside looks different in each
| night time lit window
| bee_rider wrote:
| I dunno, the more chaotic buildings really emphasize that there's
| a person living in each one. That can be neat to think about.
| Somebody's whole home life lives in each of those tiny windows.
|
| It is interesting that people tend to take photos of the Las
| Vegas hotels that emphasize the visual effect that makes them
| look smaller, while they tend to shoot these apartment towers in
| a way that makes them look looming and overwhelming. It is just a
| matter of framing though, the apartments are shot from much
| closer up.
|
| And there's also the aspect of the building maintenance. I
| suspect the hotels just bring in more money per day and get more
| aesthetic touch ups on the outside. Apartment and condo building
| sometimes look a little grimy just because they don't get painted
| every year or whatever.
| hliyan wrote:
| It seems human beings have certain levels of texture detail that
| we find aesthetic. Any more or less, and we find it unappealing.
| I first realised this when I noticed that fictional spacecraft
| look appealing when they have a certain amount of exterior detail
| or "knurling". I also find trees with smaller leaves (e.g. Banyan
| trees) more calming to look at than those with large leaves. I
| suspect both phenomena are related.
| hug wrote:
| The word for one of those small surface details is a "greeble",
| and the process of adding that visual interest is known as
| greebling.
| lioeters wrote:
| > The term "greeblies" was first used by effects artists at
| Industrial Light & Magic in the 1970s to refer to small
| details added to models. According to model designer and
| fabricator Adam Savage, George Lucas, Industrial Light &
| Magic's founder, coined the term "Greeble".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeble
| mach1ne wrote:
| Probably related to the more general notion of boring stuff and
| too dense stuff. It is as if brains optimize towards a certain
| percentage of surprise in their stimuli.
| [deleted]
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