What is the beautiful, the ugly in architecture? Podcast responses

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All this day, and in the various articles of

, we wonder what are, in architecture, the ugly and the beautiful.

What is our view on the aesthetics, beauty or ugliness of buildings?

Does our look change, as under the effects of a fashion?

What to do with an ugly building?

We talk about these questions with Francis Rambert, director of the department of architectural creation at the City of Architecture and Heritage in Paris, and art critic.

To listen to it, it's as easy as clicking in the audio player above.

Aesthetics, one dimension among others in an architectural project

Why aren't architects ideologues of beauty?

“Today, you will be hard pressed to find an architect who will claim this purely aesthetic approach.

Because the fundamental question is the question of use, that people have more comfort, that people feel better where they are ”, answers Francis Rambert in this podcast.

“Architecture is anything but a performance.

It speaks of space, use, urbanity: is the space habitable, is the use pleasant, does it create a bond, of living together? '

These are all questions that go into an architectural project.

Aesthetics is only one of the components [of this project].

"

Architecture and scandal

Regarding the rejection of the public to certain buildings or modern architectural projects, the art critic quotes the poet Charles Baudelaire, according to whom "strangeness is an essential condiment of beauty".

The strangeness of contemporary architecture, which sometimes arouses controversy, "allows us to ask questions that go beyond the question of aesthetics", emphasizes Francis Rambert.

Still on the subject of the scandal, he judges that “it is very healthy when a building is controversial because it will wake up something.

Does this mean that it is beautiful or not beautiful?

The subject, in fact, is: 'does that make sense'?

"

The towers of the 1960s

On the perception of housing bars made in the 1960s, widely considered ugly, the critic recalls that at the time of their construction, these buildings were rented for their modernity, the quality of their spaces, their luminosity.

Francis Rambert is also optimistic about the evolution of the outlook on these buildings which can be transformed.

He takes the example of the Bois-le-Prêtre tower, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, on the edge of the northern ring road, and a tower in the Grand Parc district in Bordeaux.

“[The architects] showed how we could provide more space and comfort, all without increasing the rent.

»And recalls that the beauty of these enormous buildings has completely changed.

Our Archimoche series?

Ugly = banality?

Finally, when asked about a building that he considers particularly ugly, Francis Rambert believes that “ugliness lies in the banality, much more than in a building that would be seen a lot, a public building that will not be forgiven.

"

Francis Rambert finally notes that, for the sake of environmental concerns, and against the waste of resources, a building should not be razed under the pretext that it is ugly.

We can completely transform it, and in particular gives an example of the renovation of the district of the head of the Pont de Sèvres at the entrance to Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine).

Culture

When architecture considers the question of the genre of buildings

Culture

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