Why Are Condos Ugly? 

Given the quality of your content I'm always shocked you only have 5k subscribers. Looking forward to being a hipster who was here first when you're at 250k, Paige.

Since my move to Montreal this past month, you are quickly becoming my favourite channel on RU-vid. Thanks so much for uploading

I'm first year is architecture university and I swear that when in finish with it I will build beautiful buildings inspired from the old architecture styles.

I’ve seen some good modern design, but I’m not buying the idea pushed by way to many modern architects that a box is an interesting design choice. I kinda doubt they believe it either. Obviously a plain box is the cheapest way to generate square footage.

Option 1: Make a building match its neighborhood and people won't notice the extra 3 stories on top of it. They'll go on with their lives undisturbed by the sneakily added density to their neighborhood. Option 2: Design a building stands out like a sore thumb. Receive fervent protests from residents. Redesign the project, reduce its size. Repeat 3 times. Then build it 5 years later at half the density originally planned. It's great that we live in a world where option 2 is chosen 95% of the time because of esoteric design preferences and architects wanting to show how "innovative" they are.

In the architecture field we hate those condo towers just as much, the reason why they're so ugly is because their design is heavily driven by economics. Still don't know why this look of aluminum volumes randomly protruding out is so attractive to developers. What we like and hate will shift over time but today there's a genuine concern about the quality of our current building stock and the sort of "legacy" of cheap towers with no cultural sensibilities we're leaving behind for future generations.

You can learn a few things from looking at that Renaissance street scene (7:29): - Uniformity is overrated. We have a mishmash of building materials, heights, stud heights, etc. To modern city planning standards it is a mess. Well, so what. - However one building tends to have one finish. If your zoning code has a rule mandating at least 2 ‘contrasting’ surface materials, get rid of it. It will make many buildings aggressively ugly. - Despite being a very narrow street by modern standards, it does not feel horribly cramped and oppressive. The reason it would feel so today is the constant noise and danger of car traffic, and the space it takes up. Here you see people who can just do their thing. To add to the art analogy, many modern buildings are like just painting the entire canvas beige because fruit bowls are passé. “Ornamentation is a sin”, that sort of thing. Big mistake.

Already waiting for the third video about bricks, happy holidays!

This is a brilliant analysis of something I've observed and intuitively understood but not been able to articulate nearly as well as you just did here. The thing I would say in defense of architects and against developers though, is that if you pander to what joe public wants, you end up with streets that are very boring and "safe" looking. There's no boundary pushing and you end up with buildings that are just a bad parody of styles of the past. We've have no Eiffel Towers or Pompidou centres. Joe public needs architects to save them from themselves, but architects also need joe public to save them from THEMselves too (so we don't end up with street that look like a lab experiment gone bad). They just need to understand each other better. Architects need to find a way to give the public what they actually want (or will want in 25-50 years in the future) when they don't actually realise what they want.

Banger after banger. Great video Paige 👍

I think that what is WAY overlooked in these types of discussions is building width. It is extremely rare for a very wide building of ANY architectural style to contribute to a human-scaled, granular, diverse streetscape. People like detail and variety, and the best way to provide that is by building narrow buildings. Even if the architecture of an individual building is bad, it being narrow reduces the negative aesthetic effect because it "ruins" a smaller percentage of the block and still contributes to the granularity and detail that people like, whereas a wide building just creates a dull, monotonous streetcape that overwhelms the surrounding environment. There HAS TO be a reason that most people have a far more viscerally negative reaction to, say, Soviet "commie-blocks" than to Japanese apartment buildings. They are both built with boring modernist architecture and are both usually mid-rise buildings, but the latter is usually narrow and human-scaled while the former are very wide; so I can't really see any other reason for the huge disparity in their popularity. People also often talk about building height being the primary factor in human-scale design, but that just doesn't stand to reason because nobody is looking up when they're walking down the street to see how tall buildings are; what they do notice (unconsciously) though is how frequently the environment changes in their horizontal field of view, which is primarily influenced by building width. (For further reading, here's a blog post about how building width is most important factor in human-scale design: urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/06/is-building-height-debate-mistaken.html?m=1) ) And for real life evidence of how narrow buildings contribute to diverse, aesthetically-pleasing streetscapes and neighborhoods, look no further than Athens, Istanbul, and Tokyo, which are widely acclaimed as beautiful cities despite almost entirely consisting of modernist architecture. (For further reading on how architectural doesn't dictate the beauty of place, here's a strong towns article: www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/1/19/boring-buildings-great-places )

My favorite kind of Paige video, a Brick video!

This is such a great video. I definitely remember a new condo tower going up a few years ago in my city and being very pleased that it was being made of brick, and thinking how nice it looks. Especially compared to so much other new construction.

this is a fun one! appreciated the conclusion. Something I'm seeing a lot locally in 'my' downtown (Halifax) are buildings that retain old-looking facades on the first few stories and then have 3-10 floors of glass above that. Anecdotally, responses to that concession are still mixed; it tends to look pretty incongruous. It's nice they're trying, though! It's funny to think we could head into an era of "regressive" architecture if the public controlled the aesthetics of what got built, when some of the most iconic historic architectural styles were themselves aping aspects of past buildings.

Are things different in Canada than the USA on who gets to decide stuff like this? In the US its mostly the owners/developers/city regulations who tell or push architects to make these awful choices. Architects are hired by developers who want something cheap and quick to build that can make them the most money. I only have just started my career in architecture, so I don't know too much, but many architects try telling developers/city councils/permit regulators, that stuff you mentioned but we just basically must do what we are getting paid for. With that said, in architecture school a lot of what you mentioned is true, the fruit bowl example is spot on. "Make something different but with small barely noticeable elements that fit in with the surrounding that only someone trained in architecture would notice". However, in the real world (with few exceptions such as from famous architects/firms) you are mostly just being forced to do what the people who hired you want.

I'd say that architects are rarely vindicated in the long run. The Eiffel Tower is an exception. Most buildings considered modern are just as disliked today as they were 50 years ago. Most people still hate brutalism. The disconnect between what architects like and what the general public likes is a real problem. Their embrace of modernism in the 20th century was an attempt to free themselves of the rigid design philosophy of the past, but they ended up creating new rules that are every bit as rigid as the ones they abandoned. And these rules give us wildly unpopular buildings. Architects and designers have been trying to convince the public that they should prefer their favoured styles and materials for a century, but public preferences haven't budged. What architects fail to understand is that architecture is fundamentally about joe citizen, not design snobs. If most of the buildings produced since the 1950s are disliked by most of the population, there's a problem.

Newer building material are too smooth and featureless, it looks like you are looking at a video game with a outdated graphics engine. Also patternless Glass balconies only look good in sunny beach side places.

I'm an architect and say architects have the worst taste... they claim to be innovative then design the exact same tired random window and color pattern boxes as every other shitty design.

Growing up in Las Vegas, I will always be tormented by horribly textured stucco. PLEASE DO NOT BUY A HOUSE IF THE STUCCO LOOKS CRAP

Even in the suburbs I notice a general trend in building material among apartments probably partially due to not wanting to stand out. Lots of wooden homes around with multistory wooden apartment buildings sprouting up every once in while

A very interesting video on a subject close to my heart. Hope you get more views!

I don’t care about material as long it has a nice street side? Maybe a storefront setup that looks like something out of SMT Nine/4a or Persona 5, with tile and concrete? I’d probably vote against cement and stuff too if that was the extent of information, out of fear it wouldn’t respect architecture as an art

Oh man, havin flashbacks of some of the wild NIMBY comments in the Denver Fugly groups 😂 I mean, folks will seriously put an exact copy of a traditional home built now up onto a gold plated pedestal and worship that little guy. I went to school for architecture and work in the construction project management for a city government so it’s pretty fun to read / listen to so many negative comments occasionally tossed around about projects I’ve been involved in. I do wish for this housing crisis to stop spiraling into oblivion so, I really need to be as open minded as I keep saying others should be… point taken

Meanwhile, in CA, nobody used structural clay bricks after 1906. So any red brick facing screams "fake".

Hey Paige. I work in architecture in this city and while this is certainly an interesting video I think you should further investigate the role of the regulatory framework and particularly that of CCUs in the shitty-fication of the built environment. More aesthetic review of new projects has not made contemporary architecture any better - quite the opposite. Also, aside from your own (not quite scientific) survey, there’s plenty of evidence that attempting to placate NIMBYs is a dangerous road to go down. It’s not about cladding materials, it’s about resistance to change. As for density bonusing, we should definitely do it (not necessarily in response to cladding choice though) as it’s such an easy way for the city to get more housing built at 0 cost, but our progressive administration isn’t even considering that because, again, resistance to change. Finally, on a semi-related note, have you read Shane Philips’ book on housing affordability? Cheers!

you put in so much work into this!

Clearly aesthetics has taken a back seat to maximizing density in contemporary architecture. This condition has arisen from economic necessity but hopefully technological innovation in designing economical replicas of natural material can bridge the gap between good looking and utilitarian.

As far as I am concerned. Classic is always good and it does blend in well in Montreal.

It's the homoginization of spaces. It could be any location in the world because it all looks the same. So sad when we see the beauty that used to be put into buildings. It's so awful.....

Me: "I've always said it's smarter to live in the crappy looking building looking at the nice buildings rather than the reverse" Also me: *lives in an old brick mill where nothing quite works, service charge is insane, and brick dust clogs up everything, looking out at a brand new apartment block with dedicated concierge* In my defense they do have a nice fountain.

Great video! I guess I'm in the minority of people who likes the juxtaposition of traditional architecture with more contemporary designs-I think of it as the architectural equivalent of eclectic style in interior design. Although I agree that architects need to carefully consider the materials and colour palettes that they use in their designs. I'll take almost anything over brutalism though, haha.

11:19 Ooh, that one is nice looking. Fabulous videos! Still getting through them all, but I really hope to see even more in the future!

keep up this wonderful content :)

Très bon vidéo !

Should have 10x subs

Hi Paige! I would love it if you did a video on the health care system in Québec. I've lived in a few provinces and have been in QC for about 8 months. Even aside from the pandemic, it's uniquely hard to get access to a family doctor or even a walk-in clinic.

Thanks for the great video! I would posit that the two brick corner apt. buildings didn't stick in the minds of those you asked because they are dull and unmemorable. People might not mind them, but they're likely not excited by them, either.

I think the developer should present a really aesthetically unpopular design at first, and the 'adapt' the building to a more popular design to make NIMBYs feel like they've achieved something without them watering down the density of the proposed development.

Me : Why do I feel like I've seen this video before Also me : Oh yea, I voted for these eons ago.

This is something that traditional architects (opposite from modernist architects) have known all the time; modernists took over the universities and most public projects. Check out INTBAU in Europe or New Urbanism in USA. Congrats

I see this on my college campus (wpi) most of the school is older clay brick with some concrete and it looks nice and there are some more modern buildings/extension with more concrete and vinal but still heavily features brick and they fit in and feel nice then the newest building on campus has a near complete glass facade on the most approached sides and it's ugly and sticks out yet if it was with more glass buildings I would probably think marginally better about it ( it's still space inefficient design)

Glass fucking sucks. Floor to ceiling glass windows absorb and trap so much heat.

Clay brick can be pretty ugly if you use it wrong, see many apartment blocks in Moncton.

Thanks for this

Concrete bricks aren't the problem. The problem is taking textureless flat-faced concrete bricks without any colour variation. Duh, of course it's going to look bland. Same will be true if you use flat faced monocolour clay bricks. When it comes to materialisation the devil really is in the details. Metal, wood, plastic. They can all look fantastic, but it really depends on the (quality of) the application. That is where it often goes wrong. Thew newer condos aren't just eyesores because they're grey. They're even more eyesores because their colour pallette consists of 10 shades of grey and no "real colour".

Is all vinyl siding ugly, or do I only notice the ugly ones? I have vinyl floors that I think look great, but I think they are great because they do a pretty convincing impression of wood.

such a good video

People buy condos for different reasons, most are for investment purposes, whereas they live part time in their holiday retreat and rent them out and hope they go up in price by the time they sell them. Canada's politicians haven't the sense to look at what other countries do and apply the same restrictions when it comes to buying land, houses or properties. Try buying anything in China, Thailand aside from a condo. Housing prices might not be so high if politicians had enough sense to consider what they do or lack the sense to think before they never get around to doing it.

Brilliant page like the cheese cutter wishing you are speedy recovery marty nz

To be honest all those modern buildings are not so bad.. actually some of them are really good looking

Nice video.

Particle board and vinyl plastic brick exteriors for everyone ! It is cheap,.... I mean modern. You have no choice, just take it.

Build more housing...

This is what I've been saying for months!!!

I'm probably the only one that like the architect's buildings

Le joe moyen a une appréciation pour l’architecture éclatée, en autant que celle-ci soit bien intégrée dans son environnement. On veut pas qu’une multitude d’architectes réfléchissent en silo à leur plus beau dessin de condo sur fond blanc mais plutôt que ceux-ci travaillent en écho à dessiner des quartiers créatifs. Les buildings AutoCAD imbibés des magasines d’architecture cheap, franchement ça ne donne pas beaucoup plus dans la profondeur que les envies d’un Joe Moyen. Et au delà de l’influence des contraintes des outils d’architecture, on est pris dans les constructions laides depuis plus longtemps que ma génération existe, alors clairement, on est dépassé le stade de la controverse éphémère. L’architecture actuelle du quotidien est plate à mourrir. La preuve c’est qu’elle est aussi très facile à répliquer. On sent qu’on veut non seulement économiser dans les matériaux, mais aussi dans la conception.

God, our host is cute and handsome

I’ve seen lots of soviet-era housing and many stuff you’re showing it’s like almost identical to it just with different wrap. Nothing interesting, just a box, if we developed so much that we can build boxes from 1920 Germany we’re fucked. People don’t like new, because it 99.9% of the times just garbage. There will be support if it was smth refreshing, yeah nimby hardly ever disappear but it will gain support. When the 100 year old factory look like a palace compared to modern housing - smth isn’t right

I'm fine with the occasional weird bold building, but we need a dozen traditionally pretty buildings for each bold one.

Loved the video! Only thing I would say is not every architect is good/talented, as harsh as it is. 😬 Considering all the new builds, there is to me a clear difference between them; on one hand you have the big and cheap developments that are modern but without any attention to architectural interest (aka all of Griffintown), it feels like they were just developped for the sake of selling them units and making $$$. On the other hand, you have new builds or renovation/extension, that truly are made out of love for architecture and design. I know any aesthetic thing is subjective, but to a trained eye it is way easier to see what will age well and is truly of interest VS what is made cheaply in all senses of the term and has little "design value".

Joe Citizens are just a mild version of Nimbys!

Could we do what you suggest? Yes. But I don't think that makes sense, you want a city to evolve. And within a pretty short while the city will just be a its own architectural laboratory and people will come to like that. Its long term the better outcome.

FUCKING YES THIS IS EVERYTHING I WANTED TO SAY

Here s an example from another industry that is much less sociopathic in its way of making creative choices (maybe by necessity, but still). The film industry. You can't really say film is not art, but most films created by private industry are targeted toward what people actually want to see. They figure that out by asking people and by observing what people like. It's not rocket science. You yourself asked people what they like through a survey, and yet you're still defending architects doing things :Joe public" does NOT want. How is that not arrogant bullying?

It's infuriating how architects who prefer the architecture that 90% of the population doesn't, looks down on us like we just "don't get it." Like we don't know what is pleasant to look at. Like we don't understand building materials and costs. Or availability of labor and workmanship. It's them trying to force cheaper, visually less beautiful materials on us and act like we don't know what's going on.

New subscriber

That example of "deconstructivist balcony patterning" is absolutely awesome looking. I'm NOT an architect, but I guess my tastes are just completely different to that of the average person. I really love modernist glass buildings, actually really like exposed concrete and/or concrete bricks, and actively like many buildings that standout from the rest of the neighborhood - AS LONG AS THE BUILDING ISN'T OVERTLY UGLY/GAUDY. I love beautiful traditionally designed buildings like those of the Beaux Arts period, Neoclassical and various forms of "Revival architecture" (as in Greek Revival, etc.), but good design is good design. If a modern building is well-designed, it should be worthy of being constructed - and there is nothing wrong with neighborhoods that consist of architecture from differing periods and styles. Is Paris beautiful BECAUSE of its uniformity? Yes, but another city that millions and millions of people think is beautiful is San Francisco, and SF has everything from Victorian-era rowhouses painted teal and pink colors to San Francisco City Hall (an example of the Beaux Arts style) to Art Deco skyscrapers to Brutalist public buildings to hypermodernist glass towers and everything in between. SF is beautiful in part BECAUSE of its architectural diversity and the quality of the buildings within each of those styles. Like most people, I'm not typically a huge fan of Brutalism, but the Washington DC Metro is famous for its Brutalist stations, which due to good design including effective use of light and space, many people (including myself) think that Washington DC has some of the most beautiful metro stations in the world. Like anything, there is good architecture and bad architecture within a given architectural style, and a building's context matters. For all the beauty of the stereotypical Parisian building, if it were placed in the most glass-building-covered areas of Vancouver, BC, it would look out of place and arguably just gaudy. Good architects understand context, thus even the most Second Empire-style-devoted, Opera Garnier-obsessed architect in the world would be unlikely to design and construct such a building in the context of a hypermodernist glass-covered neighborhood of high-rise buildings. Sometimes it isn't worth listening to what Joe Citizen says about architecture, because if every architect only designed what was acceptable to the average uninformed person from the Roman Empire onward, architecture would never have progressed and all major buildings in Western Europe and their colonies for the past 2000 years would look roughly like the Colosseum, Pantheon, and Roman villas for the rich - and nearly all the buildings once considered very modern but now beloved - like the Chrysler Building in NYC would have had no chance to exist.

The thing with Modern architecture is it can go out of style & horrible age, become an eyesore for decades. People like things that look the same. Look at Paris all the same style.

That’s not how proper architect would approach the project. He would do analysis of the site and it’s context. And findings from these analysis will help him to make decisions on the materials. Things like geography, topography, climate, history, possibly archaeology, ecology, environmental awareness or biodiversity research, should affect material choices along with project brief. You supposed study the area first, see what materials historically were used in the area. Most likely it was materials that were produced in the area. Materials of cladding should be true to structural materials, it shouldn’t be fake brick. Brick apart from its aesthetics is pretty useless material nowadays, it’s not structural material, the water can penetrate it, it doesn’t help to insulate the building and it adds pretty thick layer to the wall without giving anything back except it looks pretty. I mean adding extra layer of insulation instead would improve a lot its overall performance. Condos are ugly because of bad architects and clueless greedy developers. Any material would shine in the hands of good architects.

Ok I just realized you pretty much agree with me. Sorry for ranting

What people are actually mad about are modernist buildings placed in traditional cities. I personally dont mind modernist architecture and quite love Tokyo and New York. As long as modernist architecture is built in only modernist cities im okay with it. Traditional cities should remain to their own style. They should never be mixed with modernism.

So we should train architects less, so they don't get pretentious.

Where's my Shou Sugi Ban siding fam at.

I don't care what new housing is made out of along as its fine grained.

Maybe its because I live in Asia but give me 30 stories plus with glass and metal balconies.

I guess i'm unique in that i generally don't like clay brick buildings. They look so dated and run down to my eye. I pretty much always liked your 'ugly' buildings.

Lmao my favorite is the stuff the condos are made out of ;)

im commenting because I don't want to like the video and ruin the 669 likes

am i the only one who likes the typical condo colors over bricks and shit lmao

Am I the only one who finds clay brick boring / kinda ugly? When it started becoming trendy to hate on modern architecture I was frequently confused by these horribly ugly new buildings people kept talking about. To this day I still don't understand why people find modern architecture so offensive.

Oh boy, you also pout typical modernist architect justification. All the examples of buildings that were once controversial are pre WW2 There are NO examples of modernist buildings that were hated at the time but loved now. NOT ONE.

Do you need to swear/use the f-word while talking about aesthetic?

Again, architecture is something people are FORCED to live with in cities. It's not like art or music, where you can choose what you consume. Also, your and their condescension toward the general public is disgusting. You serve US, not your own pacifistic disorder. I have advanced degrees in architecture and I agree with what the public says.

I think maybe you leaned too hard into caving to people who don’t like change. The world changes regardless of if they want it to or not; in the end the best they can hope for is delay.

I dont really like canadian crudeness