Worldviews and Beauty

You know the old saying about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, which basically means that what may look good to you may not look so special to me. On a larger scale, there are things that people generally agree upon that contain beauty. This applies to architecture as well.

Credit: Pixabay / Robert Jones

There was a time when people made an effort to design a building that was pleasing to the eye, and people wanted a house "with character". With the advent of modernism came utilitarian approaches to building. Bland houses and apartment complexes that were scarcely above the aesthetic value of things resembling bunkers ensued. Some of the designers were actually opposed to the beauty of what went before.

Modernists tended toward materialism, and intertwined in that were atheism and Darwinism. I think they also sacrificed quality of work. This utilitarian approach is a tenet of evolutionism. While we have ugly buildings and cheapness in construction, there is a bit of a rebellion happening. People want beauty, and the concrete jungles we call cities are having more parks so there is a bit of nature. This is actually good for people. After all, our Creator designed many things to be pleasing to us, his creation. Ever notice that many of the great buildings of the past were made to be beautiful by people with God in their worldviews?

Materialism brought forth modernism, which glorified bland utility. Some want to bring back the Christian virtue of beauty.

Walk through housing tracts and commercial centers built in the first half of the 20th century, and you are likely to get depressed. Plain horizontal lines predominate. Cubical, unimaginative forms with flat roofs and and bare walls devoid of ornamentation draw the eye nowhere. Colorless steel and concrete, far removed from nature, give a feeling of walking in Soviet factory cities. The relationship is as plain as the architecture: materialism brought forth communism as well as modernism. Architects of the period, like German architect Bruno Taut, were on a campaign to destroy beauty:

 To read the rest, click on "Materialism Destroys Beauty".