VERITAS with Mel Hostalrich Jay Weidner | Crimes Against Architecture: The Deliberate Destruction of Our Magical Past | Part 1 of 2
Oct 21, 2022
00:00
Imagine a postapocalyptic world. Beside the ruined buildings of our own civilization - St. Peter's Basilica, the Taj Mahal, those really great Art Deco skyscrapers like the Empire State building and even the original Penn station, dwell savages in mud huts. The savages see the buildings every day, but they never compose legends about how they were built by the gods in a lost golden age. No, they say they themselves could totally build things just as good or better. They just choose to build mud huts instead, because they're more stylish.
This is the setup for what is becoming one of the most popular conspiracy theories right now: Tartaria. It is true, believers say we are those savages. We live in the shadow of the Taj Mahal, Art Deco skyscrapers, etc. But our buildings look like squares with not that much attention to detail and our structures could last about 100 years. Or as I've said in the past, those who built the more traditional, classical, and ornate buildings love us; and those who built the new so called modern buildings hate us.
The best source I can find for this is a National Civic Art Society survey, which finds Americans prefer traditional/classical buildings to modern ones by about 70% to 30% (regardless of political affiliation!). In a poll of America's favorite architecture, 76% of buildings selected were traditional/classical (establishment architects said the poll was invalid, because you can't judge buildings by pictures). A study of courthouse architecture determined that "[our] findings agree with consistent findings that architects misjudge public likely public impressions of a design, and that most non-architects dislike "modern" design and have done so for almost a century."
Yet 92% of new federal government buildings are modern. So I think there's a genuine mystery to be explained here: if people prefer traditional architecture by a large margin, how come we've stopped producing it? There are certainly more questions than answers, but once you open your eyes, once you see, you can't unsee. Between fires, floods, pandemics and war, millions have died and most structures were destroyed. Some are still there for you to see and question while you still can. And that, is what we do on Veritas.
This is the setup for what is becoming one of the most popular conspiracy theories right now: Tartaria. It is true, believers say we are those savages. We live in the shadow of the Taj Mahal, Art Deco skyscrapers, etc. But our buildings look like squares with not that much attention to detail and our structures could last about 100 years. Or as I've said in the past, those who built the more traditional, classical, and ornate buildings love us; and those who built the new so called modern buildings hate us.
The best source I can find for this is a National Civic Art Society survey, which finds Americans prefer traditional/classical buildings to modern ones by about 70% to 30% (regardless of political affiliation!). In a poll of America's favorite architecture, 76% of buildings selected were traditional/classical (establishment architects said the poll was invalid, because you can't judge buildings by pictures). A study of courthouse architecture determined that "[our] findings agree with consistent findings that architects misjudge public likely public impressions of a design, and that most non-architects dislike "modern" design and have done so for almost a century."
Yet 92% of new federal government buildings are modern. So I think there's a genuine mystery to be explained here: if people prefer traditional architecture by a large margin, how come we've stopped producing it? There are certainly more questions than answers, but once you open your eyes, once you see, you can't unsee. Between fires, floods, pandemics and war, millions have died and most structures were destroyed. Some are still there for you to see and question while you still can. And that, is what we do on Veritas.