[Silence&Motion]

^What a load of bunk.

I would argue most people's idea of good architecture depends on their age, where they grew up, even their cultural background. (Just look at French-Canadian design vs. Ontario design.) Some people love Clewes, while other people are clueless.

Am I wealthy? No. Yet I love Dutch modernism just as much as like 1 St Thomas.

I don't see how this refutes anything I've said. If you think that aesthetic tastes are a product of where people grew up and their cultural background, then we must be in agreement that tastes are determined by social position and not by how "liberated" someone is. According to your logic, if someone grew up in a working class neighbourhood with a working class culture, they would likely develop different aesthetic tastes than someone from an upper class neighbourhood with upper class culture. I agree.

Also, personal examples don't disprove aggregate social observations.

 

[urbandreamer]

^How do you explain working class Montrealers love for good design?

Go to Hochelaga and take a look inside of their townies, they've got style!

Then go to Westmount and look at the tacky over-stuffed junk in many people's homes!

Then there's Ikea...

(It sounds like you believe you are upperclass and the poor beneath you have bad taste. Yet on my extensive tours of Forest Hill homes (open houses, parties etc) I have yet to see good furniture on a consistent basis. Contrast that to poor struggling artists in rental dives downtown with gorgeous mid-century modern vintage furniture....)

 

[grey]

^^^ Agreed. I find many wealthy peoples' taste as dreadful as the porch-couch destitute. Having money doesn't stop people from realizing how hideous their collections of decorative plates and figurines are.

Taste in architecture transcends social status, I think, in part because it's accessible to everyone (you don't need money to experience it).

 

[Silence&Motion]

^How do you explain working class Montrealers love for good design?

Go to Hochelaga and take a look inside of their townies, they've got style!

Then go to Westmount and look at the tacky over-stuffed junk in many people's homes!

Then there's Ikea...

(It sounds like you believe you are upperclass and the poor beneath you have bad taste. Yet on my extensive tours of Forest Hill homes (open houses, parties etc) I have yet to see good furniture on a consistent basis. Contrast that to poor struggling artists in rental dives downtown with gorgeous mid-century modern vintage furniture....)

You have misinterpreted me. I'm not making any value judgements about anyone's tastes. My point is simply that people's aesthetic tastes are shaped in part by their class position. Those with the power to define what is "good taste" are then in a position to discriminate against those who don't share their tastes.

According to this argument, modernism is seen as good taste because people with power say it is (publishers, academics, developers, etc.), not because modernism reflects any kind of universal beauty. So if a working class person is criticized for aspiring to live in a McMansion, he is criticised only because he does not share the aesthetic values of those in more privileged positions. Not because he is any less enlightened about beauty.

I've been using the terms like "upper", "middle", and "lower" class for the sake of simplicity. Things are more complicated than that, particularly when you start comparing economic elites (bankers, business people, engineers), with cultural elites (academics, publishers, architects). I'm not going to go into all of these complicated class distinctions, but if you're interested in the relationship between class and taste, I strongly recommend checking out Pierre Bourdieu's landmark work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. It has set the standard for how social scientists understand how aesthetics work in society.

Anyway, this whole tangent started because I was worried people were going to start accusing Regent Park residents of being culturally backward or tasteless if they didn't appreciate or take pride in the new architecture. I wanted to stress that, since our own aesthetic values are as much a product of class as theirs are, we have no right to expect Regent Park residents to appreciate the architecture, and no right to fault them if they don't.

 

[Silence&Motion]

^^^ Agreed. I find many wealthy peoples' taste as dreadful as the porch-couch destitute. Having money doesn't stop people from realizing how hideous their collections of decorative plates and figurines are.

Taste in architecture transcends social status, I think, in part because it's accessible to everyone (you don't need money to experience it).

I don't want to get too far into this, since it's starting to get off the topic of Regent Park, but anyway...

Wealth and class aren't the same things. If they were, we could say that an auto mechanic and university professor are part of the same class. However, class includes education, social capital, prestige, employment sector, etc, etc. The auto mechanic is working class, the professor is professional class.

In my original post, I was just pointing to one class distinction - the distinction between the residents of Regent Park (a disadvantaged class), and the people who discuss architecture on this message board (a privileged class). I am, of course, making some assumptions about the people on this board: most of us do not live in public housing, most have some post-secondary education, and most probably work or will work in the service sector. Our class position gives us an advantage over the residents of Regent Park to define "good taste". Again, it's not that we have a better eye for architecture or beauty, it's just became we have the power to assert our tastes vis-a-vis the residents or Regent Park.

 

[Archivist]

I think what's more important to note is that the architecture we've seen in Regent park so far does not allow for identification of the residents' socioeconomic status by itself. I mean, the TCHC building could sit in Distillery District and we'd all think it's some sort of middle-class affair.

I vaguely recall that when they first started building social housing - there was a warning not to build them "better" than private housing so as to avoid the ire of the electorate.

I think this is an important part of what is happening at Regent Park - that the buildings are quite indistinguishable from the best that the city has to offer from the same era.

I have to say, though, as someone who has photographed a huge number of high-rise buildings, that it's very hard to tell from the outside of a 1960's or 1970's building in many parts of the city whether it is a TCHC building or not - they tend to blend in with the condos and rentals that were built at the same time, since there was a predominant style that worked for anything. It's often been a surprise to me when I got home and did research after a biking trip to discover that one was a condo, and one was a TCHC building.

I believe it is often easier to tell with low-rise buildings, but even there, I'm not so certain, as I have focussed a lot less on these. But I will repeat the point that quite a few of today's "projects" were yesterday's award winners.

 

[Urban Shocker]

I find the fickle, consumer-oriented concept of "good taste" quite repellant ... and irrelevant too: what counts is good design, which is part of the creative process that produces things. "Taste" is subjective, determined by conditioning rather than original thought, and has silly moral codes. Beauty - the arrangement of form and line and colour and texture - speaks directly to people, across geographical and cultural constructs and across the ages, and needs no middle men to interpret it: when face-to-face with it you either get it or you don't. "If it doesn't move you there's nothing wrong with you" as artist Richard Gorman says in that concise little video statement about his work, in the AGO's gallery 224.

 

[grey]

Wealth and class aren't the same things. If they were, we could say that an auto mechanic and university professor are part of the same class. However, class includes education, social capital, prestige, employment sector, etc, etc. The auto mechanic is working class, the professor is professional class.

Economic status is a fundamental element of class that you didn't include, so while you're correct in saying that wealth and class aren't the same things, wealth does play a role in determining class.

Our class position gives us an advantage over the residents of Regent Park to define "good taste". Again, it's not that we have a better eye for architecture or beauty, it's just became we have the power to assert our tastes vis-a-vis the residents or Regent Park.

To paraphrase bluntly, poor people don't matter because nobody cares what they think?

Or: the underprivelaged have little or no affect on what people of status define as taste?

 

[Silence&Motion]

I find the fickle, consumer-oriented concept of "good taste" quite repellant ... and irrelevant too: what counts is good design, which is part of the creative process that produces things. "Taste" is subjective, determined by conditioning rather than original thought, and has silly moral codes. Beauty - the arrangement of form and line and colour and texture - speaks directly to people, across geographical and cultural constructs and across the ages, and needs no middle men to interpret it: when face-to-face with it you either get it or you don't. "If it doesn't move you there's nothing wrong with you" as artist Richard Gorman says in that concise little video statement about his work, in the AGO's gallery 224.

I refuse to accept that beauty is a natural property that transcends social divisions. I consider beauty to be completely social. Asking "what is beautiful?" requires us to ask "who considers it to be beautiful?" and "under what conditions have they come to make this judgement?"

I also don't understand how we can talk about beauty without talking about taste. I would define a person's "taste" as the judgements they make between things they consider to be beautiful and things they don't consider to be beautiful. What people see as beautiful has been shown to vary remarkably according to education levels, upbringing, and other forms of social division. If beauty does transcend social division - as you suggest - we would expect that such correlations wouldn't exist. But they do.

 

[grey]

What people see as beautiful has been shown to vary remarkably according to education levels, upbringing, and other forms of social division. If beauty does transcend social division - as you suggest - we would expect that such correlations wouldn't exist. But they do.

This observation makes sense, because people with wealth (as a result of class, education, upbringing, whatever) have the ability to develop and refine their tastes, whereas underprivelaged people lack this ability. Outside of the discussion of taste, this proves that money really does buy happiness. Applied back to the discussion of taste, this observation is far from universal in practice. I think taste is closely tied to artistic ability, which cannot possibly come from socio-economic class.

 

[Silence&Motion]

Economic status is a fundamental element of class that you didn't include, so while you're correct in saying that wealth and class aren't the same things, wealth does play a role in determining class.

I agree completely.

To paraphrase bluntly, poor people don't matter because nobody cares what they think?

Or: the underprivelaged have little or no affect on what people of status define as taste?

Kinda, although I like the second phrasing better. Remember, this is a factual statement, not a value statement. I'm not saying that we shouldn't care what poor people think. I'm saying at on a societal level, the poor are not tastemakers. Why? Because they don't run art galleries, magazines, design schools, architecture firms, etc. etc. These things are run by educated, professional class people. Of course, a handful of poor people rise up to become celebrated artistic geniuses, but their rise is facilitated by approval of non-poor people.

And the take home message is this: These educated professional class people who run art galleries, magazines and design firms start to forget that the only reason they have "good taste" is because they have the power to define what good taste is in the first place. Instead, they start to delude themselves into thinking their good taste comes from the fact that they are more sophisticated, intelligent, and enlightened than everyone else.

I have a very relativistic understanding of beauty that some people might not be comfortable with. I'm basically saying that there's no way of ever knowing what is objectively beautiful, since beauty is always the result of power struggles between different groups of people.

 

[Urban Shocker]

You don't need a degree in African Studies, or to be African, or rich, or poor, or a "good taste" maven, to be moved by the powerful beauty of the sculptures in the AGO's Frum Gallery, or be an architect to delight in the spatial arrangement of the buildings and park at 18 Yorkville, or enjoy the surprisingly intimate space between the two tall towers at Radio City and how those buildings relate to the Ballet school complex. You just need to be open to the world.

It's a direct emotional response, linking the person who created these objects, or arranged them in space, to the public that encounters them. It can be experienced by anyone regardless of race, religion, social status or income level. It doesn't depend on some taste-maker to insinuate themselves as a middle man to explain anything to anyone or create artificial divisions between people.

This goes for any of the arts, where you mainstream what was put into the work. It can also apply to any chance encounter with natural beauty - this morning, as I wanderd through the PATH system of all unlikely places, I was transfixed by the beauty and complexity created by light streaming through an overhead window and casting shadows on a granite stairway. I paused, enjoyed, and - in moving on - I knew that this mysteriously encountered abstract beauty would soon make a transition and disappear completely.

 

[Archivist]

I refuse to accept that beauty is a natural property that transcends social divisions. I consider beauty to be completely social. Asking "what is beautiful?" requires us to ask "who considers it to be beautiful?" and "under what conditions have they come to make this judgement?"

Silence&Motion - you are certainly talking up my alley here. In much the same way that different cultures and different times have had concepts of female beauty, in a pendulum swing between fulsome figures and wafer-thin supermodels, beauty is a concept that is embedded in time and place (and, indeed, in the person). I don't think I would agree that it is completely social, to me it seems to be in that interesting grey area between existing in fact and existing in social construct.

I also don't understand how we can talk about beauty without talking about taste.

Again, I coudln't agree more. This is not to say that all buildings (or all works of literature, or all sculptures) are essentially equal in beauty and it's only taste that defines whether one or the other is preferred by someone - there are works that are generally agreed to be of enduring and higher quality. On the other hand, you could take, for instance, a panel of elites and set them loose on an effort to identify the best works of art in the 19th century, and they certainly wouldn't agree (what a boring world we would live in if they did!). Our response to any work is defined both by qualities that arise from the work itself, and from our own set of experiences, prejudices, and feelings that we bring toward that object. Of course.

 

[Silence&Motion]

You don't need a degree in African Studies, or to be African, or rich, or poor, or a "good taste" maven, to be moved by the powerful beauty of the sculptures in the AGO's Frum Gallery, or be an architect to delight in the spatial arrangement of the buildings and park at 18 Yorkville, or enjoy the surprisingly intimate space between the two tall towers at Radio City and how those buildings relate to the Ballet school complex. You just need to be open to the world.

It's a direct emotional response, linking the person who created these objects, or arranged them in space, to the public that encounters them. It can be experienced by anyone regardless of race, religion, social status or income level. It doesn't depend on some taste-maker to insinuate themselves as a middle man to explain anything to anyone or create artificial divisions between people.

This goes for any of the arts, where you mainstream what was put into the work. It can also apply to any chance encounter with natural beauty - this morning, as I wanderd through the PATH system of all unlikely places, I was transfixed by the beauty and complexity created by light streaming through an overhead window and casting shadows on a granite stairway. I paused, enjoyed, and - in moving on - I knew that this mysteriously encountered abstract beauty would soon make a transition and disappear completely.

Okay, I think I see where we're talking past each other. I agree with you that all human beings have the capacity to experience beauty, and do experiences beauty in their lives. I have doubts that everyone experiences beauty in the way you've described it above, but I still agree with your general point.

But here's the part you've left out. While everyone can experience beauty, not everyone experiences it in the same place or from the same objects. The things that we find beautiful are dependent on our social background. So someone with a formal fine arts education is more likely to experience beauty in the AGO's Frum Gallery than, say, a high school dropout. This difference in the way we understand beauty becomes the basis of discrimination. This is why I take issue with your statement that "the appreciation of beauty is a great social leveller".

Here's how it relates back to Regent Park. The architects over at Diamond and Schmitt may look at their designs for One Cole and think: "What beauty! This will really improve the lives of the residents of Regent Park - being surrounded by such beauty everyday!" However, if it turns out the residents of Regent Park are not moved by One Cole, it's not because they aren't as refined or enlightened as the architects at Diamond and Schmitt. It's because their ideas of beauty are not the same as a bunch of professional architects. In fact, (and I think this is probably the case, though I can't prove it) the residents of Regent Park may not think buildings in general are particularly beautiful to begin with.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Regardless of whether people have been conditioned to see the Venus de Milo's Body Mass Index as in or out of fashion, the beauty of such works has transcended time and can be appreciated by people of all cultures and socio-economic levels. And not all created works fare equally well - the Parthenon is celebrated for its lightness and beauty of proportion, and the heavyset first Temple of Hera at Paestum less so; these differences are the result of properties inherent in the buildings from their creation.

The idea that "Our response to any work is defined both by qualities that arise from the work itself, and from our own set of experiences, prejudices, and feelings that we bring toward that object" deals with the notion that because everyone has opinions there aren't any wrong ones and that everything is a matter of personal taste. But it's the quality inherent in a work that defines it: to again quote artist Gorman, if it doesn't move you, there's nothing wrong with you and he doesn't require anyone to have "good taste" to appreciate his work.