Within Reason - #136 Why Did The World Get So Ugly? - Alain de Botton

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Get tickets for my UK tour here.Alain de Botton is the creator of The School of Life. A Swiss-born British author and public speaker, his books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasising philosophy's relevance to everyday life.

Hey, I'm going on a tour of the United Kingdom. If you've ever been interested in that big question of God's existence or try to make sense of religion in the 21st century or consciousness or anything philosophical, then join me on stage as I try to work out some of these topics with you. I'll be in conversation with a good friend, but also bring questions because there will be an extensive Q&A and maybe even an opportunity to hear and rate some of your philosophical hot takes. The tour dates are on screen. The link to buy tickets is in the description, and I hope to see you there. Alanda Baton, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. A lot of people think the world is getting uglier, and there's this sort of sentiment that we don't care about beauty anymore, and all you need to do is walk around your local city to notice that in the architecture, in the intricacies of the designs, in art that you see in a gallery walking by, even like the design of cars and street furniture. Beauty just isn't something that we care about anymore.

Do you think that's true? Well, you started by saying there's this sense that, that people think that. I think the striking thing is they don't think that at all. We've become strangely inured to ugliness. So I'd agree with you, yes, the world has become definitively uglier. But I think what's striking is that there is absolutely no sizable public recognition of the fact. When people talk about the environment, what they mean is environmental degradation from chemicals and, you know, ozone depletion and CO2 levels, et cetera,

they do not talk about ugliness. And so there is no large-scale political movement that addresses ugliness. Occasionally someone, you know, sometimes me, sometimes others stick their heads by the parapet. I've written a lot about this. I've gone out and made films about this and posted videos on YouTube about this that have got traction.

And so there's the occasional moan occasionally someone says God is ugly here but the mood is fragile it's very very easy for people to say other people say that's just you you know you don't like the walkie talkie in London you don't like downtown Frankfurt

you don't like you know parts of I don't know LA or something but that's your fault because you're a snob or you're a reactionary or something like this so what's disappeared is any sense of a canon of taste, any sense that there's a process by which a good decision could be reached. And it's in such contrast, for example, to technology. I mean, think of mobile phones. We live in an ecosystem that is so rife with reviewing culture where people will review

a mobile phone and will say, you know, the buttons on the left, it's a little bit tricky, but, you know, that lovely little light that's which, you know, we know how to be aesthetically conscious and how to translate that. But it's in relation to consumer gadgets. You know, when a new building goes up, I'm not seeing reviews that are going, you know, is that doorway on the left and what about the window? And that kind of sensitivity is not there. We are not educated. We don't have a culture of public architectural education. And, you know, what we've got also is a failure of the market. Houses, buildings, streets are not consumer objects. I mean, I mean, we buy them, people occasionally buy them, but there is no connection between

consumer pressure and market results so that there is such demand for housing all across the world that you could put up more or less anything. So long as it doesn't leak and, you know, has mold in it, it will sell. And so we don't know how to do this business of evaluation. I wanted to ask why that's happened. Because, I mean, it seems true. Yeah, you know, like people maybe don't really know anything about architecture. I certainly don't really.

But I feel like I know an ugly building when I see one. Absolutely. And I feel like the way you said that, you know, we've become like enamored with ugliness, there's a sense in which that's true. But I want to say, like, who's we there? Because I imagine, like, some people blame like this sort of artistic, architectural elite who get bored of neoclassicism and go, I've got an idea. Let's build this sort of abstract, sort of cubism-esque building and stick it next to, you know, the, Buckingham Palace or whatever and that it's kind of those people because some people like with art you can't tell someone that something looks bad but it's broadly it has many factors and

you know we can turn this into a seminar get a blackboard out and actually start to list them because we can sit and chat and you know like to educate a gentleman but but really this needs thorough thinking so let's start the bit of whiteboard thinking here um so first of all a disconnect between the consumer and the producer so you know we've got a we've got a we've got a market failure. There is no relationship between the person who needs the object and the person who's producing the object.

There's utter lack of responsiveness. There's a lack of, as a word, democratic accountability. So there is no way in which people can make their feelings felt and there is pain inflicted on someone in relation to that feeling as there is in the voting booth

when it comes to electing politicians. There's no mechanism. There's no democratic mechanism. There's no consumer mechanism and there's no democratic mechanism. And, you know, the only signal that we get of people's tastes are what people do when they travel, when they go on holiday. And no one wants to go to so-called ugly places. So we know where the beautiful places are. We know it's Venice. We know it's not Milton Keynes. Why? Because people don't go there. And when they go to Norwich, where do they go to this part of Norwich or that part of Norwich? When they go to Winchester,

you know, we know, you just have to follow where people are going. But this is not looped back into the construction industry. So these are two massive issues that we could start with. But why and why in a way that seems not to have been true maybe 100 years ago? Good question. So construction was for most of history in the hands of a very narrow elite who thought very long-term and had various constraints that operated in a event. First of all, building materials were very limited.

And there's not that much you can do wrong. with stone and wood and red to be small expanses of glass. Just for all sorts of reasons, those are non-noxious materials. So people were protected from aesthetic danger by aesthetic limitations.

So that was very, very helpful. And then it was in the hands of an aristocracy that tended to think very long term and to think about value very long term because they tended to own the land and were thinking of the next generation and the generation below that. And so that lends a certain sharpness to your thinking,

because you're not just trying to flip a house for tomorrow. You're thinking, okay, how long, you know, this has got to keep going for a long, long time. So longevity was a really important concern. So that kept things safe. And then there was also centralized control over land on the whole. In most places, there was a narrow elite that had control over vast resources and vast tracts of land.

The reason why that's useful aesthetically, it may not be useful politically. The reason why that's very useful is that aesthetics rewards consistency. So if you imagine the whole area that was designed around Regent's Park during the reign of the Prince Regent

in that early 19th century in England, vast tracts of land were brought under one unitary aesthetic vision. But by the time the Victorians come along, the whole thing fractures merchant class getting more powerful, lots of local bases of power that all have competing ideas. And then there's no longer a hierarchy. Even in an average street, it's like what's the dominant building? Not everyone could be shouting at the same time. And what happens is in a

more free market environment is everybody starts shouting at the same time. If you think of the city of London now, every building is screaming. And there's no overall plan. You can't have a plan, the very notion of a plan has to do with a centralized authority. Now, it could be democratic centralized authority. I mean, think of Java Island in Amsterdam, the wonderful Dockland development there. That was put under a unitary authority for a vast tract of land to be developed with one coherent vision. Doesn't mean everything looks the same. It's very varied, but it's got, there's a plan. Or think of the King's Cross development in Coldrop's yard in London. Again, that was a very strong quasi-governmental body.

that was given charge of that and could cohere the efforts of many, many architects. Berlin, large tracts of East Berlin were redeveloped following the fall of the wall, again, put under a very strong unitary government under the mayor of Berlin. So whenever it goes well, it tends to be that there is somebody in charge

and that there are commercial pressures are balanced by other considerations for the community. So in order to regain beauty in our cities, we need a stronger centralisation of power into aesthetically educated individuals. Is that the solution? Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, it's happened at various points

at various moments. You know, if you think of the underground stations that were built in the 1920s and 30s, they were built under a very powerful local government body that had an aesthetic vision and a sense of longevity, you know, that this was going to be a gift to many generations. And indeed, anyone who's been to Arnold's Grove, et cetera,

Well, no, that's absolutely the case. These are beautiful buildings built according to, you know, the materials of the time and the traditions of the time. But they stand alongside buildings of all time as successful bits of architecture. But train stations are a really good litmus test here because they are the definitively functional building. No one lives there. Everyone passes through there. But everybody sort of goes through it at some point, right? And I remember the first time I went to New York City when I was like 18 or something.

19. And I didn't know anything about architecture. I went to Grand Central Station. And I was like, I can't believe this because this is a train station. I don't get it. Whereas now that my sort of sensibilities have changed, I go to, you know, I go to Oxford, for example, and the train station there is like a plastic box. And I say the same thing. I say, but in the other direction, I'm like, I don't get it. This is, this is the train station. And it's, there's no thought put into it. And it's so wonderful when when these large civic buildings get it right. You know, when you go. You know, when you go. And you. to, I mean, look, in London, which probably you and I know best, St. Pancra Station, that was very well redeveloped. King's Cross Station is in good shape at the moment. These are wonderful, wonderful achievements, and they lift the spirit and they make us proud to, you know, pay our taxes and be part of the community, and it's one of the great joys. I mean, it's all very well being selfish and celebrating your own achievements. Wonderful, celebrating communal achievements. If you think of airports, Terminal 5 is a wonderful building. It's signed by Richard Rogers' partnership. very, very intelligent building, very intelligent use of space.

It's an uplifting space, one of the great airports of the world. Oslo Airport, another fantastic airport. You know, there are successful attempts to do this, and we must celebrate them wherever we find it. But, okay, if the real answer to this is that the reason the world used to be more beautiful is because there was a stronger aristocratic class who had more of a sort of concentration of land ownership, Yeah. One solution is, okay, let's bring that back. Most people aren't really like into that.

And you will have twigged that I very carefully, because I knew this line of attack, I know not attacking me, but, but, you know, it is a line of attack out there. This does not depend on fascism. This does not depend on aristocratic elitism. This depends on cooperation and agreement. And it can be under a democratic government. So Java Island was, you know, the Netherlands is one of those democratic nations in the world. They got it together. the King's Cross development was not the result of, you know, Tony Blair overriding power. You know, it was done under the Blair government, but it was done through democratic means. So there's no necessary connection between ugliness and democracy and fascism and beauty. This is a real red herring, which we have to be quite strong with because otherwise what tends to happen is people go, oh, so, you know, you don't like the new skyline of London. Oh, you must be, you must want fascism. No, no, it's absolutely possible to have democracy and beauty.

There's no reason why, I mean, there are some reasons why the relationship's been tricky, but it doesn't mean, you know, it's not a necessary and sufficient course. I do think there should perhaps be a referendum on knocking down the walkie-talkie, but short of that, it is sort of difficult to imagine, I think, for a lot of people. I'm wondering if this is sort of feasible on a city or country-wide scale. Because you read history and you hear about, oh, the man who, like, designed Paris. And it's just such an unthinkable notion because we just don't have that kind of, like, authority. There's nobody in London who can realistically give somebody the authority to just, oh, yeah, just rebuild Camden just from the ground up, you know.

It just doesn't work like that. And so if somebody feels like they're living in an ugly space, there's this sort of lack of hope that anything can be done. You have to rely on individual landowners of that particular house. to all get together, which seems maybe possible, but that may be unfeasible to some people, which is perhaps why it's got this association with. I mean, look, it's, you know, what we're hitting on is the problem of intellectuals, people like you and I, sitting around in all areas, and the limits. So, you know, what can we possibly do?

And we can do what people have always tried to do, which is to change the climate of opinion and when there are opportunities to push for it. And some of what we're doing on a podcast like this and other, you know, other friends we have who do this sort of stuff is try and raise public awareness. So, for example, you know, to start to mention buildings and building quality as an issue that you can discuss, it brings it out of the private realm and you can then, I mean, think of how feminism got going, think of how new ideas of child raising got going, think of how human rights got going. It was always a mixture of a climate of opinion that then meets political moments of opportunity. There's moments and always there. But when they're there, the ground has been prepared. And, you know, arguably, maybe we can say there are a few signs now of that happening.

In the UK, there are figures who've been agitating in this world, in this area for a while. You know, does it work? Maybe, I don't know. Let's stay hopeful. Let's stay hopeful. Well, because there is this association, right? Like if somebody says, well, I think the world is ugly and our buildings, you know, they need more, I don't know the words, you know, cornices or whatever, that typically if you had to take a guess, is that person more to the right or more to the left, I don't know if it's true, but I think people would assume that they're maybe more right leading. We even call, like, a derogatory term for this kind of ugly box-like buildings, these buildings is like left-wing architecture, right?

this is the end result of changing our political course. And it may be that, well, like, it's possible that we could all just get together and change our minds. Yeah, and it's possible we could all get together and look after the poor and end homelessness and never have wars again. But, like, realistically, is it achievable? Look, I think it's another enemy of promise here is definitely the association between aesthetics and the right and the right. And it's fascinating in America that Donald Trump, who's a property developer, you know, by trade, has been championing aesthetics in a way which I think to the left, to architect left friends that I have in America is intriguing but also very, very, very troubling. It's a bit like RFK's move towards

healthy food, which is discomforting bits of the left as well. Because in a way, I'm sort of saying, well, we've cared about this for a long time. Now you've come along and you're doing it from the right. And that's quite strange. So Donald Trump stands there and goes, there's been a lot of ugliness and you want to go, yes, and then you look at his ballroom and you go, but you're about to add to it. So it's very, this is when it gets kind of subtle. But overall, I mean, I'm quite glad that Trump has put this on the agenda because it then enables a debate to get going. He is a man who cares about appearance. He's the first US president who cares, who's cared very actively about the appearance of his nation. He happens to have what I think is sadly dramatically

awful taste. I mean, what he's done to the White House is appalling. However, he's taking an interest, and that is interesting, and that is intriguing and very provocative. I agree. And but that's, in so many words what I'm saying, like the first US president in certainly my living memory, who cares about aesthetics, is like the most sort of archetypaly, like cartoonishly so, so hopefully what we'll get is someone on the left going, well, actually, you know what, I love architecture too, but that will force, you see, it will force a response. Yeah. Because, you know, people like Peter Eisenman, do you know Peter Eisenman?

No. I mean, he is, you know, he's the bett noir of the right. He's a left-wing architect who, you know, is a so-called, creates ugliness. Right. And he was very powerful as a person of ideas, a professor, and created a lot of buildings that the average person would go, that's why I hate modern architecture, right? So the problem is that, you know, you have Trump and Eisenman as a kind of ying and yang of the debate, and that's a very sterile debate. And this is why we always need to bring in David Chipperfield at this point. David Chipperfield, he behind, you know, the museums in Berlin, he behind all sorts of other things.

The reason why David Chippeville is a really important voice in this is that you can't squarely place him in any simplistic, cartoonish, left-right debate. the guy obviously understands classicism, but he's not aping classical forms in, you know, naive ways. He's interested in symmetry, but he's not interested in the worst sorts, etc. He's alive to the modern world, but he remembers the past. So he's kind of a really useful name to bring out. And he's one of the most successful practices. Other practices, he's no longer with us, but Michael Hopkins, who designed Westminster Underground Station in London, Port Cullis House, and many, many other buildings. things. He was very alive to brick and what brick can do. But at the same time, he was working in recognisably modern forms. He was alive to the modern world. Another architect, very important in this tradition. Louis Kahn, great American architect. So, you know, again, works in brick, but also in concrete, etc. So there are names, Chibberfield, Kahn, Michael Hopkins, etc., who these are the people who are, I think, the future of architecture. And we're going to say, well, you know, Kahn. is dead. Hopkins said, yeah, they're dead. But what they've done, what they've proposed

is the way forward, which is an attitude that remembers the past, honors the present, and fuses the two in ways that are symmetrical, harmonious, all the things that have always delighted us about architecture. Look, let's remember why people like architecture. Right. People like, all of us are very frantic inside. I don't know about you. I'm totally frantic inside. We're all going nuts. So the crew, they're on their phones. That guy's crazy. That lady's crazy. It's Everyone's great. We're all very, it's very agitating being human. We're on the verge of dying at any moment. Our status is threatened from left and right. Everything's unsteady. You know, we're made of water. We're largely made of water. And we're made of moods. Every day, moods cycle through us, etc. We need architecture to calm us down. The number one thing that architecture needs to do is to be a point of stable reference so that we get up in the morning and we go, all right. And terrible ideas taken hold. that really what we know I want an architecture to be is fun or dramatic or provocative of shaking up of the bourgeois order. Nonsense. Who's got bourgeoisie's in total chaos? Everything's in chaos. You know, there's agitation everywhere. The reason why we thrill at bilateral symmetry.

Bilateral symmetry, things are the same on left and right. When you walk, go down a street, which you do in Paris all the time. And the stuff that's on the right is repeated on the left. This is brilliant. And the reason is that this is a salve. to an agitated soul. You think, okay, from the beginning of, you know, the Rue Saint-Anorriere to the end or whatever, they've held it together within a pattern. You know, the Rue de Rivoli is the same, you know, at the beginning, is at the end. There's a repetition.

And that's, you know, it's why we thrill in music to a repeated beat, because it anchors us. Of course, we also like in music, and music has so much to teach us about good architecture. We like it when there's a steady beat and then there's a bit of variance, right? So against the backdrop of a steady beat comes a harmony that then varies. And then that's delightful.

It's like in Georgian architecture, same boring repetition, boom, boom, boom. And then a bit of tracery in the ironwork on the balcony or a fanlight window that introduces a new note of play, etc. So these are rules we know about. And in cooking, it's exactly the same thing. You know, you've got your basic salad, but then you've got a few capers in it. and you've got an anchovy in it and a squeeze of lemon and, you know, and then you're getting some some variation. So good taste is the same, that you go from music to food to architecture. And, you know, unfortunately, we've got some very untalented architects who I do think should

suffer a little bit for what they've done to the skyline. Yeah, what they're more or less doing is saying, I've got this cool idea. Why don't we, instead of having a salad with a bit of lemon in it, why don't we just eat a big lemon with like a bit of lettuce on top of it and that's not quite how it works. Wouldn't it be fun to put a bit of leather in a salad and smear it in mayonnaise

and then, you know, add lots of pepper? That would be fun. You think it would be really interesting but can you just save that for home? You know, just like, it's like imagine a carpenter and in fact I once worked because I had an organisation that was building architecture for people and I've worked a lot of architects

and there were these sweet, kind, well-meaning Norwegian architects who were very talented but it came to designing the dining room table and they said we don't want a normal table we want a special table oh right okay what do you want oh we suspended from the ceiling

on wires we suspend the table and it's going to move quite a lot oh yes we move a little bit but not to worry and they made a mock-up at this thing and obviously there's a reason why most tables across millennia have had legs because if you hang things from a ceiling it does you know you're going to get a hammock

but you know it's architects get bored they go to architecture school for seven years everybody's building a table with legs why don't we why don't we make it with a string from the ceiling you know you just want to go well sorry guys you know try and find your kicks elsewhere don't don't play this out on us well the the issue with architecture is it's sometimes said that it's like one of the only forms of art that people are forced to participate in you know I have no right to say to you know like there's a painting on the wall over there And if you said, you know, I'm not a big fan of that, I might think you're wrong, but there's nothing I can do about that. But if I put that in your bedroom where you had to see it every single day, I think even if you were perfectly irrational in not liking what it looked like, you sort of have a right to say, I don't want to look at that every day.

And I don't think there's, I was going to say there's not a single person, but there's always somebody, but nobody is enjoying. Now, there are some interesting experiments. You know, I was hanging out with a group of people at Harvard who were trying to build technology. that would give an instant picture of the amount of aesthetic delight and reassurance that a person was going through as they walked through different environments and throwing up really interesting data. So it's like, as you walk down this street, what's your level? As you walk down that street, what's your level? And the data looked amazing, you know, and really quite convincing. And the first time you got a sense of, again, that democratic feedback, it's like you can put 100 people down the street and you walk them down this street. And when a hundred people look at left and right and they will have a certain feeling which you can measure, that's intriguing.

That's the beginning of something. Because rather than going, oh, lots of tourists went down that street or I like it, do you like it? And having a debate like that, start to go, okay, well, you know, because the modern age loves data. And, you know, you can't really get arguments across to people nowadays unless you come at them with data. It's unfortunate because a lot of good things, you know, you can't get the right data. to back your case, it's possible that as technology improves, we will be starting to get that richer data because the good news on this, the really, really good news is that there is underlying agreement and there are underlying standards of beauty. And if we can just remove all

the blocks, we'll get there. So that's one reason to be optimistic. Yeah. The blocks are surface, the blocks are to do with lack of accountability at key stages in the process. If you can find a way through those, the news is really good. You know, what you said about things being symmetrical, but with a bit of variance. You know, perfect but not too perfect. It reminds me, we were talking about my friend Sheen Quirk, who's also been on the show, and he just did this extraordinary video. I figure what it's called, you know, why is the world so ugly now or something like that?

And I was telling you that it's got four million views or something just out of the blue, first video on YouTube, because people do care about this stuff. And one of the things that he said in a different context is that he thinks a lot of our architectural principles can kind of come from nature. It's the things that we enjoy in nature, or the things that we are sort of naturally prone to. If you're sat in a forest, there's going to be variants. If you look at a leaf, it's going to be roughly symmetrical, but it's not going to be perfectly symmetrical.

And if it were, be a little bit eerie, you know. And his whole thing is we shouldn't make. buildings that look like leaves. But we should take the principles that make leaves beautiful and apply them to buildings too. And it's things like symmetry. It's things like detail. If you zoom in, there's always sort of more to uncover. And he's described sort of some of the buildings in London. They sort of look like they're like not finished. Like they're sort of, they've done the base. It's like, great. When's the painter showing up? When's the carpenter showing up? And the carpenter is just not coming

which is a shame and it is lovely to discuss details and why they work you know you can look at a facade and think okay why is this one

bit boring and the other one's quite nice and it will tend to be things like well how big are the windows and do the windows vary as you look up

and you know it's an ancient principle of architecture that as you look up the windows should get smaller but why is that well because it literally mirrors the sense that as you're looking further away, the thing is smaller, something is

small. And so it kind of, it gives you, it does what the eye will do anyway, which is to reduce the size of things that are further away. But it's in, it's cooperating with that. It's, and that, I think, helps. Also, there's a, just in terms of our intuitive understanding of weight, we kind of know that the lower stories, if they're expansive, um, They're carrying the whole weight of the building. So if they're able to have a soaring height, it makes us feel confident about the overall structure because it's like, you know, imagine a building where the first floor, the ground floor is very low, this is a crouch, and then it gets larger and larger as you go up.

You think, I'm getting an eerie feeling about this building. Something's not quite right. And that's because the massing is likely to be wrong. I mean, the engine has already done the calculations wrong because it shouldn't be that way. If the building is strong and worthy, you should be able to space up a large span on the lower floors because the whole thing's been, the weight has been correctly calculated. So there are kind of our bodies and our minds, you know, we know when children are playing on the sofa with cushions and when they're sort of doing handstands, et cetera, they're learning about architecture. Architecture is wired into our bodies. Yeah.

We kind of, we know about this stuff without even knowing that we know. And that's the beautiful thing about it. I mean, yeah. At Fandual Casino, you get even more ways to play. Dive into new and exciting games. And all of your favorite casino classics, like slots, table games, and arcade games. Get more on Fandual Casino. Download the app today.

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Or get $2,000 cash purchase bonus on remaining 2025 models. Visit your local Nissan dealer today or nisone.ca for more details. Least term for 48 months with 1,249 down conditions apply. I think it's contextually relevant as well like you're talking about these principles and I was thinking well there are some buildings that don't do that

that I like like the Empire State building that's pretty utilitarian all the way up but it's in New York and I have sometimes thought I'm sure the pyramas of Giza are very beautiful I've never seen them I'm sure they're wonderful but if you were to pick one up and like place it in the city of London

we would probably decry it as an example of these horrible sort of modern architectural trends of brutalism and sort of abstract architectural sort of uninventiveness. So I think it sort of depends. Yes. And that's one of the fascinating things about architecture that we, on the whole, we like local architecture. You know, we don't like local phones or local bicycles.

I mean, somebody said, you know, this is an Austrian bicycle. You think, well, I don't really, I mean, I just want it, I just want a nice bicycle, et cetera. But we like, you know, the spirit of the place in some ways to be reflected. And that's why many architects have traditionally spoken about. you know, when you pick up the soil in an area, what colors the soil? And can that be reflected in the color of the buildings? And you get that in many traditional Italian hilltop villages, but also if you go to

Edinburgh, you know, it's a certain kind of grey, and that grey is of the stone and the soil. And so it's pleasing when something responds to the locality. It's pleasing to know that there's a difference between place A and place B, that there's something that's, you know... honoring the distinctive features of a place. If you're by water, is there something that's honoring the fact that you're by water, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, many, many settlements that are by water are very colorful. It's quite intriguing. Yeah. Because the sea is very monotonous, very, very monotonous. And so I think there's an impulse when you're, when you've got a

huge expanse of utter sort of totally coherent visual surface to vary things enormously. So there's a kind of, often what we're searching for in architecture is balance. When the landscape is pulling one way, we want to pull it another. You know, if you go to Switzerland, what's wonderful when you're in a very rugged, extremely raw sort of place where, you know, the human body feels quite fragile and at risk is that the buildings are really pulling you towards safety and solidity? And there's an extra sense of reassurance from the fact the door is. heavy and shuts with everything. But if you're in the Caribbean, you know, remember that architect Oliver Messel who did these houses where there are no windows and everything's open and the structure

is very, very light. That's, again, you know, working with the climate to, you know, to provide a coherent response to a place. That's what you want from architects. Yeah, I think there's one a principle of aesthetic influence and influence on a person's mood and their interpretation of the vibe of an overall place that's also become far too universalized which is often just completely ignored in conversations like these

this is a bit of a sort of elephant in the room because it is literally invisible talking about music I have a whole thing about this this is like the other day we went for dinner the other day And we sat down and ordered a Diet Coke and I insisted, I made us get up, pay the bill for the Coke and go somewhere else because of the music that they were playing. I'm not like a snob or anything.

It depends who you ask, I suppose. But if I'm in a, if I'm in like a nice French restaurant and you sort of put some effort in and you've dressed up and you're coming out, maybe you're on a date or something. And you think about the amount of effort that goes in to designing this restaurant, how long they've spent. on the wallpaper, the different colors and the different light, the furniture agonizing. And then finally when it was complete, they're like, you know what this needs? Some do a leaper. Exactly. Yeah, that's what we'll really sort of complete this.

That to me is probably, it's when you said earlier about all these buildings sort of shouting and competing for space. That's literally happening all the time. But at least when I go past the BT Tower, I am afforded the small mercy of being able to look the other way. Yeah. Is everywhere. Here's a tip.

Here's a tip that I've learned because I, like you, have done this, and you can't, generally, if you say in restaurants, could you turn down the music, they'll say no. You know, the manager likes it, et cetera. People like it, et cetera. So the thing to do for any of yours is to say that you have got a medical complaint, that you've got a disability and that, you know, you may, you know, you may go fragile, you may have a psychotic episode because of the music. And it could actually be true. I mean, you know, it's fascinating, you know, in the UK, if you order any dish, they'll go. have you got any allergies? And we understand allergies. We understand that you can be allergic to something. But the music is not one of them. And why not stretch our definition? But you know, one thing I want to talk about is here we are in this environment. And it's got a very particular decor. Look at this armchair, like the carpet, the fireplace, etc. And one of the really interesting question is why do people have the taste they do? Because there are real differences of taste. Somebody will think that this living room, its library, is really nice looking. And others won't and a really interesting question to ask yourself is why why why why do some people

think this is home this is good and others go oh so example i don't like this decor at all i hope you don't mind someone's being fired i know no no no it's it's it's him that's getting it okay i don't know in the carpet you know it's the fireplace etc now i you see i have a friend who loves this kind of decor yeah and and he and i often talk about it and our differences so he grew up in very unsteady circumstances, in Glasgow, which is a very brutal town when he was growing up in the 70s, and he was growing up in a brutalized sort of space. He loves a touch of old-fashioned, English, aristocratic charm. He just absolutely goes for it. I think, so he's quite scared of a simple Danish chair or a, you know, unadorned thing, because that's a little close to the, the kind of austerity and bleakness of the sort of Glasgow modernism that he grew up with and

suffered under. For me, I've got a completely different upbringing. I grew up in Switzerland, which is the home of kind of tasteful modernism and good quality modernism. I grew up in a concrete apartment building that was amazing. And I loved it. I love it's, the walls were bare concrete, but beautiful bare-faced concrete. In, you know, in the seven, And windows that were large and simple and there was no decoration. And the furniture was, in a way, utilitarian, but good utilitarian. And then when I was a boy, I came to the UK and went to boarding school, was sent to a boarding school that looked half like this and half like a military barrack. But the headmaster's study would have looked like this.

And I thought, I hate this place. There's no love here. There's no kindness here. There's no generosity. I'm terrified at this environment. When I look at a chair like this, I'm immediately thinking people who are not very nice. I'm thinking of Brexit. I think I might not like the person who likes this chair.

And so the reason I mentioned in going to this autobiography, which you haven't asked about, is just that it's a way of understanding taste and the way that it has real roots in people's past. This isn't an argument for saying, well, all, everything goes, in that case, let's just have chaos. But it's a way of just trying to understand. A really good question to say to somebody is, what are you afraid of? What's missing from your life? and trying to understand people's aesthetics through an idea of compensation

that what we love in art is very often a mirror of what we're lacking or not having sufficient doses of inside our lives. So, you know, somebody who wants a lot of dark colors, rich colors, a lot of drama going on, their greatest fear might be deadness, stillness, disappearing into a void. Somebody who is craving symmetry,

order, simplicity, a reduction of stimuli. It's probably going nuts from anxiety and, you know, over stimulation. So we need different things. And that's why we thrill sometimes to different things. I don't think this means that anything goes. I don't think that at all. But I think it helps to explain why, even when choosing a holiday destination, some people will go, that's in America. That's my thing. And others will go Helsinki. That's my thing. You know, it's just, it's what's missing in you? And what are you in danger of suffocating from? What are you in danger of an excess of? It's a wonderful German theorist called Wilhelm Vorringer, who in the early 20th century tried to build a theory of taste, and he precisely built it on this notion of compensation.

Right. And he argued that the very rich styles of the Islamic world was an attempt to counterbalance desert life, that the richness of, let's say, an Arabian rug, was a response to the was wastes of Arabia. You know, it's a playful, interesting, intriguing kind of thing. So, like, if you want to know what an age feels like it's missing, look at what its taste is. So, you know, for example, we live in a highly regulated bureaucratic society. An artist like Damien Hurst goes really well with, goes done really well with bankers.

So, you know, the financial elite. Yeah. Really thrill to Damien Hurst. Why? What's the relationship? Well, imagine if your life is operating in a certain kind of emotional pitch, emotional register. Along comes a bad boy who breaking the rules and is creating a certain kind of drama, etc. You're so far from that. You've got so little of that in your life. You grab onto it with two hands and you might love it with a certain intensity of somebody who's leading maybe a quieter, more emotionally balanced life might not feel need of. So always ask oneself, you know, No, why are you craving this thing rather than another thing? Favorite artist of mine is Agnes Martin, an American minimalist artist, a very full of mental illness, unfortunately, in a very, very difficult life. Her work is just a repetition of certain minimal form. For me, beautiful.

And she was obviously compensating for the fragmentation of her own mind by creating these very beautiful geometric shapes. I'm not on a good day as far down the road of mental unwellness as she is, touched wood. But I understand that slope and I thrill to it because it's, you know, it's art for the fragile mind. And so as I say, making the same point, it's good to ask yourself always what's missing in your life. Where are you mentally to try and understand taste? These things are very connected. Yeah. It's a little bit like what we seek in like romantic partners.

I mean, it's a similar kind of thing. Like the sort of steady, you know, respectable man who falls for the bad girl or vice versa. The bad, oh, I know he's no good for me, but, you know, there's something attractive about it because it kind of balances out what might be a quite strict, regimented existence. There's something sort of exciting about it, but also something comforting about that. But it seems like definitely not universal, at least. I mean, I'm thinking, I mean, when you talk about the fragmented mind and what it produces, You know, like my mind goes to like Goya and sort of painting this horrifying image of probably Saturn devouring a slightly older version of the child to this sort of toddler figure like biting its head off. And that is this sort of frantic, sort of horrifying image that is representative of what is probably quite a frantic mind.

I mean, he painted it on his dining room wall and it wasn't supposed to be seen by anybody, right? Whereas, and I could sort of psychoanalyze him, I could say, and that's because. Because, you know, he was feeling so, so crazy and fragmented. Whereas if he had sort of drawn a beautiful, picturesque landscape, I could say, well, it's because he had this sort of fragmented and terrifying and anxious inner world that he wanted to compensate by sort of surrounding himself by this landscape painting. Look, I mean, I think you raised a really good point. I, you know, we could, we could get stuck in this in a good way. You see, I think the most powerful artists of, let's say, serenity and simple beauty are those where one feels that there's a pull in the other direction. So if you think of

Philhelm Hammershoi, fantastic Danish painter who paints these very still interiors and very still landscapes, the reason why it's not just boring is you feel, as a viewer, the opposite of what he's showing you. He's showing you stillness,

but you know, you just sense it that there's something else. Think of Van Gogh's flowers, his irises. The reason why those flowers are so extraordinary is that you know that this is coming from, this is not just a pretty flower. Yes.

This is coming from a man who knows hell. And it's because he knows hell that those flowers are so moving and so powerful. So I would say that even if it looks like it's just a pretty scene, if it's impacting you, it's likely that the artist had his foot or her foot in the other camp as well. Yes. And that goes both ways because you can also have your interpretation of a painting changed by your knowledge of the author. So, John, is it Jean Berger or Berger?

Berger? Berger famously writes ways of seeing. And I talk about this particular example all the time because it's, I think it's like the thing that single-handedly got me interested in talking about any of this, which is when he shows this image of Van Gogh's, sort of crows and a wheat field. He doesn't tell you who it's by, I mean, you can see it's probably a Van Gogh, whatever. And he says, you know, just look at this and see what you think about it, and then turn the page. and you turn the page and it's the same image

except now it's got this caption this is the last image Van Gogh painted before he killed himself which it may not actually offend but it doesn't matter because instantly you're like oh was this was this him trying to sort of imply that he was seeking this freedom represented by the birds whereas before genuinely I look at it and I go like

it's another I'm not a big fan of Van Gogh I'm like you know it's cool it's great it's like it's neat like I like some of it but there's so much of it as well that when I see for another Van Gogh. I'm like, sometimes, I'm like, cool. But with something like that, I'm like, yeah, you know, whatever. But that sort of caption has changed it. Yeah. Look, I mean, it's, you know, it's an almost comedic side of us human beings that we are very susceptible to, as it were, frames being put on things and suggestions of where value lies and of what things mean.

Yeah. I mean, we know there's experiments with wine. You tell somebody some really expensive, wine people go, that's a lovely wine. You tell them it costs nothing. Think of a fried egg and caviar. If you gave a child, you know, a fried egg and caviar, and you said, what's nicer? You know, the child might probably would go, the fried egg. You know, take an adult and you say, this is an amazing thing, caviar. It costs thousands of pounds per millimeter, et cetera, and this is a fried egg and it costs absolutely nothing. And I think we're always having to rediscover our own genuine feelings and maybe in some areas

frighteningly there isn't such a thing as a totally authentic feeling we waver and we're comedic on a good day we call us sweet and otherwise we're gullible and miserable do you think there's such a thing as fake art and I mean something quite specific here like have you seen I haven't

there's a movie called F for fake I can't remember who directed it some famous director I've forgotten who it is but basically it's about a real-life person that's fictionalised who made a living

forging paintings by famous painters and he was sort of a master a painter and he could make it look like a perfect Monet or whatever and of course

you can sort of imagine purchasing this painting and going like I'm a private collector that will go wonderfully in my living room and then finding out 10 years later

that the painting you hadn't adored so much was not really painted by Monnet Yeah. Does it like become less beautiful? No, I mean here I feel quite strongly. I think we've become obsessed by the idea for essentially for financial reasons that the original work of art is important. We don't think about this in other areas. We don't think about it in terms of, you know, tables. A table is a good table, you know, whether it's the first table that looked like that or the 100 millionth table. We don't care about provenance. We don't care about this in terms of

books. I mean, very few people want the first edition. But most people are like, it's going to be good if it's just printed. I don't care that it was the first or the hundredth or whatever. It's just the same thing. Well, they say they care about a different thing, don't they? The person who wants the first print and the person who wants to read the book. Yes, exactly. And so I think that in art, what I would love, and it really is to do with the financial system, is that we accept reproductions and the role of reproduction. I mean, this is where people thought that we were headed in the 19th century. People thought we were headed towards an era where art could be reproduced on a mass scale and that everybody could have wonderful works of art on their

walls. And in fact, what happened is the opposite. It's become rarer and rar. And people are obsessed by provenance. And it's got to be, you know, absolutely by, you know, hockney or by, you know, Picasso, etc. Rather than it's just a reproduction. And so the poster has a very, very low status. The reproduction is seen as ridiculous. To my mind, museum gift shops should be selling the entire corpus of what they've got on the wall in high-quality reproductions and that those things should be seen as no less valid than anything else. I mean, of course, it's good to have the first one, but like we have the first copy of

Ulysses or whatever, let's keep it in a library and keep it. But the rest of us, let's, you know, what are we doing? neglecting the talent of certain people and simply reducing it to a postcard Yeah, I think that photography has in many ways kind of at least changed and maybe sort of ruined our interaction with art And I don't mean because photos compete with art

I mean photographs of art pieces Because like, you know, I could put a picture of the Mona Lisa on screen right now Which maybe maybe I had a civil do If he's feeling inclined And I can say look, you're looking at the Mona Lisa Yeah. And you could say, no, I'm not, I'm looking at a reproduction of the Mona Lisa that's being, I'm looking at it through a screen. It's like, well, I've been to the Louvre and I was looking at it through a screen as well, like three inches of bulletproof, you know, perspex or whatever. And most people who are there are actually looking at it through freshest moments, taking a photo of it. So they're looking at it through more screens than a viewer is now. But really the answer is that we should be, we can create copies of the Mona Lisa that are absolutely excellent. Right. And why wouldn't we value them? Why wouldn't we? create, you know, and these are seen as kitsch, and on the whole, we don't have access to them.

I mean, you know, there's a painter I really like called Casper David Friedrich, wonderful artist. And I thought, God, I love a Casper David Friedrich in my house. I looked up online. And, you know, they start at, I think, you know, 700 million. And so, oh, slightly outside the budget. And then, but you know, you can buy a poster. I don't really want to buy a poster. Can't I just get someone to, you know.

To paint it. And, you know, there are people in China who will do it for you. But it's slightly sort of black market and there's, you know, the whole thing's slightly dodgy. It's not, you know, it's a little tricky. But why not? Why not honor the talent of fantastic artists? And look, you know, we started about talking about architecture. Why don't we repeat patterns of architecture?

This is what, in the great days of architecture, people just did the same thing again and again. And no one thought that was a problem. Yeah. No one even knew who was the first person who did that style. It just worked and you just did it again. again and again. And nowadays, it's like, no, it's a singular building. I mean, I pass buildings in London now. There are a lot of buildings going up in East London, for example. Honest, simple, beautiful bits of apartment buildings, civic buildings, churches, etc. And I think, wow, it's kind of nice, you know, unshoey, et cetera. And I think, why don't we just roll that out?

If the whole of London were just made out of that, that would look great. People go, oh no, no, no, no, that's a one-off. It's got to be a one-off. You think, why? a one-off, the Georgians, just repeated it again and again. If something works, I mean, imagine making a mobile phone, thinking, no, it's just a one-off, sorry, you know, it's going to cost 100 million pounds because it's a one-off mobile phone. The whole point of mass manufacture is you reproduce quality, and we've forgotten about that in relation to art and architect. Yeah, and I think if we, if you were forced to design a building that you knew was going to be replicated, you'd probably put a bit more thought into universalising principles

of beauty. I think that's fair enough. But then, when I think about this concept of fake art because I'm fully with you on that right like if it looks like a painting it's a painting I mean it's like it's almost as if you can imagine the opposite as well like there's that painting on the wall over there still it's just like a portrait of someone

if I just told you like oh we've just discovered that like you know Rembrandt painted that is it like now it's more beautiful does it like soup to the room better does it make you feel a different way it's because we're obsessed with celebrity well it's financial it's a financial

financial thing. Yeah. It's impressive. We understand finances and, you know, it's good, but it's just been overlaid. Financial speculation has been overlaid onto the art world. There's always been a relationship between money. It's like the one place it doesn't belong. Well, it's particularly unfortunate because it gets in the way. Yeah. It means that really lovely things don't get the reach that they should do.

Yeah. They're still throttle. I mean, the very fact that, you know, photography, which was again supposed to be the medium that would would open things up, what happened to photography, special editions, numbered edition. So, you know, Candida Hoffa will make a wonderful thing. Oh, but there's only 20 of them in the world. Why 20? Why can't she just press print 100 million times? I mean, you know, she'll make less money and, you know, poor Candida Hoffa, but it'd be great for everybody else. Why can't she, you know, why can't we press print and find other ways of compensating artists? Why did they, why does photography have to fall in with a pre-modern system of distribution? Why can't we reward artists in other ways other than by throttling their production? Probably because scarcity,

breeds value, even if it shouldn't. Absolutely. But let's try and create value in other ways. Let's try and reward these photographers in other ways other than by saying the only way you can make a living is by making five editions of these and not six or a hundred thousand. It's the same thing with furniture, you know, like if

I genuinely, like I can tell the difference between like an IKEA MDF table and like an oak, you know, coffee table or something good. Like there's a table in front of us and it looks real, it looks nice, but genuinely that could cost like 50 quid or it could cost one and a half million. And I just wouldn't know. And I also genuinely don't care in a way that I kind of do with art in a way that I'm not.

I wonder if it's because there's this fear of tackiness. Like, for example, not a trick question. Do you like the Eiffel Tower? Do you think it's pretty? Yeah. There's also an Eiffel Tower in Nevada in the United States of America, right, on the Las Vegas Strip. If I asked you if that, I don't know if you've seen her, I don't know if you've been there, if you've seen that, like, do you think that's pretty? Because in a way, it really is just kind of the same building, slightly smaller, reproduced.

And yet we kind of want to say it's tacky. I don't like it. It's kind of ugly, even though it literally speaking, it's the same thing. Caesar's Palace is also in a way, Vegas should be the most beautiful place on earth because it follows all of the principles. Yeah, well, look, I get your point, but I think we can hold steady, because I agree, the sort of terrifying moment, we think, oh, God, Vegas, you know. First of all, if you actually look at the way in which things are assembled in Vegas, they're assembled really badly. They don't actually look very good. You got up to it, and it's just, because it was very cheaply built, right, you know, so there's that. There's also the idea of unity and mixture. Part of the problem with Las Vegas is it doesn't really know what it is, and therefore, it's. It's a mix of everything. Now, there is actually a certain that is a beauty in Las Vegas. Oh, yeah.

So, you know, the artist at Robert Venturi famously made a case for Las Vegas as having its hodgepodge. You know, it's like a sort of mood when you think the buffet is okay. Let's just go with a buffet. Let's celebrate multiplicity. Also, it's surrounded by desert, which helps that still, that's stilling environment. It's like here is a little moment, a human orgy in the midst of deadness, you know, nature. is not yielding anything. There's not a single plant around. But we're celebrating light and, you know, so, you know, one can have time for Las Vegas. We're even have time

for the Eiffel Tower, but I think you appreciate the Eiffel Tower in Vakes in a different way. It's sort of like, look at this lustful greed that has produced, that's sucked in from all corners of the world, something that is, you know, look, it's like every now and then, you know, there's a space for a garish building, a garish piece of clothing, an outrageous spirit, et cetera, even a piece of food, etc.

There is, we need that sometimes. We need that within a context. So, yeah, Las Vegas has its charms. Definitely has its charms. You know, like the Eiffel Tower works, I think. And there were a lot of protests when they, because you can imagine being in Paris at the time and they want to stick this like largest building

since like Lincoln Cathedral in the middle of Paris and it seems like but it works because it sort of stands on its own but a moment ago we were talking about like you know if it works

why don't we just repeat it over and over again so why don't we sort of have 15 different Eiffel towers all sort of plotted across the city that would be that would be horrifying and yet you know the what's the skyscraper just across from the Eiffel Tower

like the only one in the middle of Paris Montparnasse that's a similar thing it's this singular experiment, it's tool building, and yet that one I think is disgusting and horrible and ugly. So again, people panic

at this point and go, oh god, so we're never going to be able to make progress of the art, you know, people lose their nerve. They're like, hang on, I like the Eiffel Tower, I hate the Toramapanaas. Originally people hated Eiffel Tower, now we like it. Tompom Panas, they originally hated it, so maybe now it's good, and people panic.

That's not panic. There are really good ways in which you can see. The reason why the Tuomopanus is ugly and will always be ugly and will never be loved follows very identifiable aesthetic principles its shape is very

unpleasing, it doesn't taper whenever something's tall it should be tapering there's a reason why we like rockets we like that the top of a very tall building is smaller because it's aerodynamic as it were so even if the building isn't going to take off anywhere we like the suggestion of velocity

upper building Thomas doesn't do it. Its material is a very unyielding gray concrete formed unilaterally right across the whole thing. It's got no proper approach. I mean, you know, we can go on for many hours. There's solid reasons why this tower is a horror. And we mustn't lose our nerve. You know, I was about to say, but I raise you the sort of first version of the World Trade Center in New York.

this sort of... The replacement word or the actual... The original one. The first, the two, where people, you know, people used to say, oh, they're the boxes that the Empire State Building and the Chrysler building came in. You know, they thought they were disgusting and horrible, but I think they're beautiful. But I was about to say that, and when I thought then about taking one of them and sort of plopping it in the middle of Paris, suddenly I'm not so keen.

And I think, I guess whenever someone says something, not just you in this conversation, but on this show, in that seat. My favorite thing is to just try to come up with a counter example of what they're saying. And I think I can, but only if I'm insensitive to context. And architecture is all about context. That's stuff about the soil. That's right. The sort of soul of the place.

Look, we know it. I mean, something could be a beautiful song, but doesn't mean you need to hear it everywhere at all times. You know, sometimes you can say, that's a fantastic song, but it's coming at the wrong moment. Just as an ingredient in cooking, you could go, you know, I really love butter, but It doesn't really work with this thing. So we need to match ingredients. And there's no, you know, many, many ingredients work, but they have their time and place. Yeah.

I'm the most, I mean, I think going into a restaurant and hearing, I like doolipa, you know. That's right. But hearing it there is about as jarring as going into like a nightclub because you want to sort of get down some electro. Exactly. And they're playing back or someone giggling at a funeral or whatever. I mean, it's just, you know, we exist in. context. And so something that works really well in one area and something that is really good in one area might not be good in another. We understand this instinctively, as you say, with music, with laughter, with social codes. And it's no different with architectural codes. There's a time and a place. I think that's true and probably universally true and almost obviously true. But I think that what is it they say? You know, the smartest people just remind you of obvious things that you have forgotten. How do you say that? I think that's true. I agree. And, you know, we do, talking of snobbery, we do tend to have a view that intelligent things have to come in pretty incomprehensible packages. And, you know, there's a role for something that sounds very simple. And again, link it back to architecture. Some of the most beautiful buildings, it looks like they're just simple and obvious. There's been a lot of thought to create that apparent simplicity and obviousness.

Yeah. Well, I'll end up Don. Thank you for your time. It's been fun. Thank you.