Come discuss further on my discord discord.gg/ucE5BAsKtn - thanks for corrections on reinforced concrete, is is strong under COMPRESSION not tension. Also I got the pantheon bit slightly mixed up - but allow me

“Very good, my roof is still leaking” such and underrated and savage comment by his mom, basically saying i don’t how fancy your building is if it doesn’t work

This ugly architecture damaged most Greek cities beyond repair after the 50’s. Unfortunately cities like Athens and Thessaloniki suffered the most. This mostly happened when people who owned land sold it in exchange for an apartment in some sort of contractual consideration (antiparochi in Greek) leading to the vast majority of the buildings looking like soviet style monstrosities.

"if you don't know about walls, I am not even sure how you got to this video, seems like there are a lot of things you need to learn in life" 🤣😂

His mum is a savage 😂 “that’s great. My roof is still leaking”

Finally, someone understands my deep hate for le corbusier as a French person.

Im sorry to be that guy but i feel as a civil eng i have too..... concrete acts well in compression not tension, it acts really badly under tension hence why it needs to reinforced, the rebar takes up the tension forces

I mean in all honesty... walk down a street in London with Victorian era buildings and then look at these shapeless ugly towers going up everywhere... turns out aesthetics do matter. The Dutch have recently built an entire city in the old 1800s fort style and would you believe it... despite all the criticism from the so called architecture "experts", turns out people really wanted to move into a place that actually looks and feels nice

Le Corbusier's mom was right about the roof leaking, technically speaking he was a terrible architect even though he loved modern tecnology

my favourite part of Birmingham when I go up there on the train is the old areas made out of bricks and more bricks. The new stuff, in an attempt to appear modern, already looks plastic, artificial and outdated.

Just a little comment to point that concrete needs to be under compression not tension. (<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="385">6:25</a>). Tension is pulling in opposite directions whereas compression is pushing in opposite directions.

"Very good, my roof is still leaking." Has to be the hottest burn delivered in the history of humanity.

This is why Dostoevsky hated the Inteligencia, a man I have shared the same faith with because of ''academics''...'' There are men there with whom no one would consent to live'' and I have committed no crime.

"Very Good, my roof is still leaking." THAT! That's what genius looks like.

I'm a Rollerblader and an Architect so it's been quite interesting over the past few years watching the progression of your videos..

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="180">3:00</a> fun fact about Nietzsche - he was vehemently opposed to fascism. However, he sister (who both manipulated and published a lot of his work, after his death) - was pro-fascist in a big way. This is often why his work is misinterpreted and appropriated by fascists.

Turns out Brits love a bit of Georgian architecture. Only problem is, no one can afford to live in any of it, so we all got stuck in Nelson Mandela House. Nevermind Rodders, this time next year we'll all be millionaires.

I live in poundbury the town you referenced at the end of the video orchestrated and envisioned by King Charles. It’s beautiful & authentic (at least externally) They have done a remarkable job of building it, which is why we moved here. But even after three years of being here I don’t love it and I can’t describe why, it feels like living in a movie set, it doesn’t feel like a real place, it has a Truman show vibe but it’s so subtle it’s hard to pin point. We have friends and neighbours here but it’s always empty, there’s no history, it’s soulless. A truly remarkable architectural experiment, that has the same social anonymity of a brutalist tower block.

Le Corbusier was not French. He was from the French speaking part of Switzerland.

I love that the movement against modernist architecture seems to be growing, traditionally informed cities are starting to spring up again

He designed the most comfortable chair / chaise lounge ever, though, and my back is thankful for that.

Jimmy is the only one holding the secret for tensile concrete

The pantheon isn't the oldest building on earth

The Pantheon? Oldest building on Earth? Whilst showing the Parthenon on screen? The oldest building on earth is Gobekli Tepe (9500BCE). The Pantheon may the oldest building on earth still in use. And it's different from the Parthenon.

to be honest i think one people seem to ignore in the debate about modern architecture when we compare it to the past is the fact we only really preserved the best of what was built, most of us would have been in thrown up shacks or packed town houses

"Better conditions than before and massively improving the lives of many people"? But what you fail to mention that yes living conditions improved for a short while but they'd be a high price to pay because these brutalist high rises in the sky caused the break up of communities that had been there since before the war. The social impact it would have on people's mental health and the isolation felt by many residents is really sad. Concrete is very prone to water damage which would age these these buildings faster. Many of these high rises in London have been knocked down since and replaced with something more gentle with a better urban plan more focused on community.

Even as a young teenager, I hated Modern architecture. I needed no one to tell me this. I could see the cheap, shoddy materials and how ugly and dehumanizing these concrete monstrosities were. As an adult, when reading about Western architecture since 1920, l found every book and magazine article praising this trash. Sometime in mid century, the modernists took over architectural schools and companies. Everything was made from concrete, steel, and glass. Everything was blank, oppressive and devoid of human feeling. Everything was depressing. Instead of feeling grand and welcoming, new buildings were cold and hostile. I can still remember the great open space of the new Worcester library covered in buckets because the roof leaked, the new side entry concrete stairs and landing of the Worcester Art Museum crumbling after 20 years, and the flat roof of Warwick Shoppers World in Rhode Island falling in under all that snow. All the old libraries in the county had front steps that were just fine, as were the front steps of the Worcester Art Museum, and as were the roofs of stores built before 1900. I will never understand how people were persuaded by conmen like Le Corbusier who convinced them that homes are machines for living. Who wants to live in a machine? Especially "machines" with wasted space, uncomfortable quarters, leaking roofs, leaking walls, cracking walls, no awnings to protect from the sun, weird and pointless shapes, ad nauseam! Lecorbu built the ugliest and most unholy Catholic churches anywhere. When the bishop of a diocese in southern France saw what was being built he refused to pay for anymore construction. Thank God Lecorbu is gone, but his minions are still legion.

Awesome video!! 🔥Great overview of Le Corbusier. He really did have a massive influence (unfortunately). I wasn't aware he couldn't even design a non-leaking roof for his own mother... we learn new things everyday!

Honorable mention to Erno Goldfinger! Most prominently remembered for designing residential tower blocks, and the man after whom Ian Fleming would name the James Bond villain. When Goldfinger considered taking legal action, Fleming threatened to rename the character 'Goldprick'. Eventually he decided not to sue and Fleming's publishers agreed gave him some free copies of the book note: Comment basically plagiarised from wikipedia. At least I'm not a bot.

Concrete is extremely weak in tension. It is very strong in compression. What the steel.rods do is take the tension loads, leaving the compression loads to the concrete. Also, steel and concrete expand at roughly the same rate when heated. This is why we don't see any aluminum reinforced concrete.

After WW2, they started removing the decorative ornaments on buildings here in Vienna. So they kept the buildings (if they were still inhabitable) but made them bland. There are movements to bring back the decorations to buildings. Another thing is: the corporations planing housing today are doing it for profit, to sell the flats. If you look at the plans, most of them are not made for living. They are impractical shoeboxes and and eyesore from the outside.

As a neuroscientist, I am personally involved in research on these issues, and I want to congratulate you for the video! It's an excellent, balanced overview of the historical context and of the current situation. (Just a note, at 6.12 you say that "the Pantheon is the oldest building on Earth", which is not the case. Also, at that same time, you are showing the Erechteion of Athens)

I worked in the Toronto city hall. It was the most useless building I have ever experienced.

Im glad you're covering this topic. Not enough people are.

Ehh... It seems like he was more of an autocrat than a fascist. These gray commie blocks are mostly popular with authoritarian or socialist leaders. Mussolini and other fascists' often focused on more overly grandiose styles that tried to evoke an ancient legacy or a prosperous future.

Imagine thinking you’re a genius seeing liquid rock & keeping it as boring concrete instead of molding into something nice

Reinforced concrete + Parametric CAD modelling + Unleashed architects = CRAZY BUILDING DESIGN.

Most modern architecture is technical and economic - not aesthetic. It's not about life... it's about profit. Many modern buildings are manufactured, not created.

My city was turned into a soul-crushing dystopia by Daniel Libeskind, when are you making a video on him?

In an episode of the 80s/90s TMNT cartoons when they wanted a character to be watching something boring on TV, it was a history of concrete.

I share the sentiment that this gulf separating architects' opinions and the general population's needs to be bridged asap. I don't think the solution, however, can be found in this insistence that whatever styles that were popular in the pre-modern era are the ones worth reproducing, but that's a larger dissatisfaction of mine in the anti-modernist movement. I don't believe that anti-modernist must necessarily mean traditionalist. I've been working as an architect only for a few years still, but I truly believe we're quickly approaching an inflection point in the method of designing and constructing buildings. Primarily due to the increasingly complex computerization of the process, compounded by breakthroughs in materials that could enable an explosion of "ornamental" elements that would be unheard of only a few decades ago. The kind of ornament that would give Gaudí and the Art Nouveau architects a run for their money. It would be a shame for these exciting new possibilities be lumped together with the drab Modernists and its children, and cast aside in favor of a rushed return to the past.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="387">6:27</a> yeah mate, you got it completely backwards! Concrete is exceptionally strong in compression and remarkably weak in tension and torsion. That's why it has to be reinforced with steel ffs

Adding a very important correction here. Concrete is not strong under tension. Steel is but concrete isn’t useful at all when you try to put it under a load that is pulling it apart. That’s why you have never seen anything constructed with concrete cables but the cables in a suspension bridge however will be steel instead where as the areas that are under compression because they are being pushed together will be constructed in concrete. Reinforced concrete can combine the benefits of both materials in places where you can experience both forces. One simple example is a concrete beam. Where the beam sags under load the top of the beam will be under compression as it is being pushed together, the bottom of the beam will be getting stretched apart as it’s under tension. Reinforced concrete will make the beam extremely strong in both compression and tension. Another example might be a column that is under compression but may also have to resist twisting forces that would introduce tension into the structure.

building new stuff that looks crap is bad, but the tearing down of old beauty to do it is far worse, which is what happens too much here.

Le Corbusier was a Swiss native born in La-Chaux-de-Fonds. Oscar Niemeyer and Santiago Calatrava have been employed by him. Several of his buildings in several countries have been listed as “World Heritage Site”. People say “it’s a comfortable living” in his buildings like in Firminy-Vert/ Firminy / France.

Guy seeking the vindication of traditional architecture: “I’m not fascist, you are”

'very good, my roof is still leaking' ... *chef's kiss*, the perfect critique

As an Architecture student in the 1960's Le Corbusier was a god. I sought out his buildings in France. I still think he was a great designer of space, an artist, but a totalitarian. He had the typical French arrogance and at the time was loved by both intellectual and ruling class. Your lecture is brilliant...well done.

So he's to blame for Plymouth.

Pre fabricated buildings are really a scourge, thank you for covering this

Obscenely well made documentary and an interesting POV. Writing as an architect. I ve read his books and spent a lot of time around his works and ideas, starting with 14 (i am now 34). I am pretty certain he had no political position but humanism. He was never a member of a fascist party and vichy france was less worse than nazi france. This bit was constructed and ignored the situation during the war times. It wasnt a easy time for architects. However, i did found your bits about his personality interesting, since i learned a lot about psychology in the meantime. He most likely was a narcissist, yearning for the approval of his parents, which he apparently never got, which in terms lead him to ever greater grandiosity, following the illusion of finally becoming loved, once that one big piece of work was admired. For me personally, i am stepping away from the hero cult around the founding fathers of modernism. I want my buildings eventually to tell a story again.

I was born and raised in Chandigarh. AMA. I love it, it’s green, clean, organsied and one of the most prosperous and least congested cities in India. Most people I know here don’t like other cities much.

I’m an architect, and the way Le Corbusier is revered in the academy is just INSANE. Granted, he really marked a before and after in architecture and influenced entire generations and even the way we build, design and live today, but I feel he’s exaggeratedly overrated.

Ever noticed that most buildings seen as haunted have beautiful architecture

I should point out that most of the essential features of Georgian architecture (and most historic styles) were not originally intended to be decorative; they were the most expedient way to make a brick building support its own weight without wasting precious lumber. The horizontal arches over the doors and windows supported the bricks above with little or no wood reinforcement. Even the ubiquitous 6 panel door was a way to make a door that was strong enough and didn't swell itself shut, using less wood than it would take to make a solid slab door. Sure, some of the shapes were embellished for ornamental effects, but few ornamental features were just stuck on. In the 20th century, modernists developed a quasi-religious stance against ANY ornamentation, even that carved into elements that were essential, so what we got were a lot of sticks and flat panels with perfectly rectangular profiles fitted together as cheaply as possible. No wonder people got tired of it. In recent years, instead of correcting that misguided thinking, modernists have added stupid embellishments like odd angles, randomly spaced "IBM card" window openings and non-vertical walls (so much for "form follows function"). What we really need is a modern architecture based on modern building methods that doesn't bar carved or extruded embellishment of the shapes of the essential elements to make them look less rectangular and boring. Some of this sort of thing happened naturally in mid-20th century buildings as builders used moldings and hardware designed around older styles, presumably because it was cheap and available. But the international-style tyrants pushed most of that out and even insisted on flattening things like metal frames that had been fluted because the apparently ornate shapes optimized the use of metal. Some of my favorite 20th Century modern buildings benefited from accidental factors that the zealots of modernism would rather have exorcized .

If you want more buildings, you need to massively loosen regulation. Start with the 1947 Town & Planning Act.

Just what I needed for my thesis, thank you for your content

A really great video, just 2 things you mentioned that I would correct: 1. Concrete can support compression easily, and with rebarb it can better support tension. 2. Decorations and traditional architecture isn't necessarily more expensive for developers. This is a common distractions used by Modernists. There have been plenty of architects showing that it's not necessarily true. The Aesthetic City channel provides great info on this as well.

Just giving a shout-out for using a This Country clip. Christ that show is hilarious, and at least outside of the UK criminally unknown despite still being so recognisable.

For some reason this reminded me a lot of Hitler's youth, except this Charles guy got accepted into architecture ranks and instead of becoming a dictator he created the world's most ugliest buildings. So in another reality we got an architect of war and a guy who redefined painting and made it really ugly.

I wonder - does 'brutalism' count as modernist architecture (what is shown here is practical rather than brutalist). Some brutalist buildings are absolutely awesome, although far from pretty.

i saw that this was posted a few hours ago and i waited, waited so i can sit down and really enjoy it. and i enjoyed the anticipation of getting to watch it later. i dont have that with many crators, this is def in my top tier of channels.

Ornament is way more interesting than many architects think. A lot of ornament is in fact abstract art. Some of it is minimalist sculpture. But as entertainment it is also great. Ornament can tell stories, teach us about nature, can be energetic or static, it is an incredibly rich, complex language and still one that can be understood almost immediately by most people. This also means that the ornament of the past is not inaccessible to us to learn from. It draws us in, like a good novel or film, and then reveals more of its possibilities. Any architect can plunder the vaults with forgotten forms and use them or be inspired by them. Unfortunately, going half way between modernism and ornament usually gives bad results. This is because modernism is founded on a rejection of the richness and complexity of ornament. The inner resistance of architects makes them use irony, superficial references, or chaotic patterns, in order to use ornament while repressing its seductive, overwhelming power. Only when architects completely give in to their repressed desire for ornament can they learn to speak its language fluently.

If anything this video makes Le Corbusier sound like a proto Technocrat. Obsessed with cost cutting ad efficiency.

Pantheon, Parthenon, tension, compression… all the same, right?

The city where I work has these beautiful 1900s office buildings, apartments and hotels, yet I work in this horrible 1960s concrete block with an even more hideous multistory car park next to it (12 floors!). Each day I walk down the street admiring the old buldings - which are ornate in a non flashy way. When I get to where I work my heart sinks. It’s soulless. The building won several architecture awards and it’s definitely not the worst modern building in the city, but it’s not interesting to see or to work in. These original modern architects and the communist/socialist and fascist regimes that approved of their principles somehow totally ignored that ordinary people are inspired by beauty and variety. Sure, people want houses they can afford, but no one has respect for a concrete block.

I want to be an architect and have wanted to be one for years, but watching these videos made me understand why I dislike modern buildings. Watching several of these videos has inspired me to want to revolutionise architecture to what it used to be. Make buildings that inspire, make people feel safe and happy, buildings create beautiful societies and pride in their local area. Buildings that are truely sustainable and beautiful. Thanm you for this video

Man, he should have stuck to traditional buildings. I don't care what anyone says about his buildings, they are genuinely depressing and ugly. Why would anyone want this cheap crap in their city? I can see the buildings being cheaper to produce or something, but I don't think we should care about cost as much as we do. For example, look at American schools built past 1970/1980, they look like old, sad military buildings. There is no reason for anyone to like this style, let alone put it into place. It sucks and ruins all cities. There's a reason the majority of people (aka the ones with actual good taste) like traditional city centers and not concrete shitboxes.

Another banger as usual

"So that buildings can be more than just a machine for living" Exactly how we need to think. Great and well informed video!

You’re best video yet. I live in Las Vegas so you could imagine how I feel! PS congratulations on your wedding. The pictures were epic.

Jimmy the best on the platform

(Just started seeing the video) There's also Oscar Niemeyer who turned Brasilia into a dystopian nightmare. He really did create some beautiful buildings, but the design is totalitarian in its very core: A city of huge boulevards that's inherently *non*-walkable because of the distances, with no adequate public transportation, only really navigable by car ... in the capital of a country with (then) a majority who couldn't even dream of owning one. The ministries are like huge Lego blocks placed on monstrouls lawns - meaning, if 100 people gather protesting in front of one they'll look like nothing; if a thousand does, still nothing; if a HUNDRED thousand does, it will still look like nothing, the politicians and civil servants can just look out the windows at see that it's nothing. (Sigh.)

"You can even see it in the Pantheon, the oldest building on earth." Probably just missaid but a shit here we go again

Domino house 😂 that's like calling your kid Remus Lupin in a world where werewolves are a thing

I took an architecture course when I was in high school and while it was super complex and you needed to be very detail oriented, it was also super cool. I even got to design a theoretical museum

As an architect in the socialist Bauhaus approved International Style, Le Corbusier was hardly a fascist. Mussolini and Hitler favoured neo- grecian/ roman, see Speers blueprints for Germania. Fascists prefer grandeur to utilitarian

I've visited a couple of Le Corbusiers buildings, and to be fair they were rather lovely and well designed. The concrete exteriors actually look pretty great in Marseille, where I visted Le Corbusier's unite d'habitation, the bright sun making them look warm and bringing out the texture of the concrete. Concrete doesn't look so great in Bradford though! ( where I come from!) A lot of the problem with bad modern architecture is trying to make it too cheap, and then not maintaining it properly. The Barbican is a great example of fantastic modern architecture that still looks great while making full use of the properties of reinforced concrete to allow for large spans and light airy interiors uncluttered by supporting walls. The trouble is the Barbican wasn't cheap to build or maintain, but I would argue it's worth the money to build decent housing. It effects your daily life and is a relatively small amount of money extra to build good housing rather than the terrible crap that's being erected in the UK now. Most of the cost of a house is in the land cost and planning to allow a house to be built. We really need to drastically raise our standards, as good housing is a boon for everyone living there in both cofort and money (we could insulate our buildings so much better in the UK, it isn't rocket surgery). Go to somewhere like Germany and look at the quality of their windows, it really is shocking what builders get away with in the UK. (actually it's not the builders, it's the developers and architects who are at fault, the builder is just building what they've been instructed to build)

I‘m not really a fan of this whole “we need to go back to building beautiful buildings“ movement but you do make a compelling argument! What fascinates me about Bauhaus architecture is how it often looks so sensible at the drawing board. The people who actually lived in those buildings however always changed the design as far as possible, making it their own. Some aspects even turned out being wholly unsuitable and in fact driven by ideology rather that science. Le Corbusier never having received formal training probably speaks for itself here. Still wouldn‘t want to go back to a pseudo-victorian style of architecture because as a society we have indeed moved on.

The "Habitation Unit" that Le Corbusier made is considered the first building on the "brutalist" architecture style, which I personally love. Now, the style evolved more from it and buildings instead explored bold and interesting geometry as ornament, with monumental spaces becoming it's staple. I can understand that some people hate it, but for me ornamented buildings tire me after some time due sense overload, and a "machine to live" feels more comforting and calm. For my fellow music nerds, it's like the difference between a "wall of sound" song produced by Phil Spector against something out of the "music for airports" albums from Brian Eno.

Le Corbusier was a fucking monster in pretty much every way imaginable. The damage he and his legacy have done to our world and our psychological well-being is difficult to overstate.

Yours is definitely one of the best KZfaq channels by a long way. There's a lot of addictive mindless crap on YT and I watch too much of it 😢 but your videos are a very different experience. Thanks Jimmy the Giant.

there is nothing more beautiful to me than a building perfectly engineered FOR its purpose. so brutalist architecture is perfection. it always has baffled me that people assume that because THEY like gaudy decorations its not something to be ashamed of.

i like how jimmy's videos still see the world through a parkour lens, i'm sure he wouldn't care as much about brutalist architecture if it weren't for barbicain and thamesmead's influence on parkour.

> Erechtheion, Greece pictured when talking about the Pantheon, Rome... >Concrete: Compression good, Tension bad, an arch is in compression, the rebar is there to handle the Tension... Concrete got worse with Eugène Freyssinet's invention of pre-stressed concrete...thinner concrete that can go bang! Inspiration: Metropolis (1927) > Slums to highrise...what were the Garden Cities for? And places like New Addington? > No toffs in WWI? Who do you think the Trinity College Tiddlywinkers were? I guess that means all Knights were working class...

He gave india India one of their best city chandigarh! ❤

Le corbusier a Fascist? What is this, opposite land? The man was as left as it gets.

Cool video excluding the “concrete good in tension” faux pas but they have manufactured this idea that people who dislike copy and paste ornamentation dislike decoration as a whole. Most just want the decoration to be considered and designed as part of the building.

This is really great man. The pacing and the editing is so good. Like top fucking tier perfect KZfaq video moment.

"All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten" - that's quite accurate if you consider traditional folktales for kids. The Emperor's New Clothes tried to "vaccinate" us against people like that: "If you don't like my work you're stupid" shouldn't be effective on adults. We should retorn periodically to kindergarten.

Not sure about constructing new faux Edwardian buildings. It just feels a bit like China's themed European towns but maybe that won't matter if people love these places. It would be interesting to explore new possible alternatives that people could still enjoy being in.

Well done Jimmy. I've been thinking a lot about this as well. I've picked up the reproductions of the big books on ornamentation form the 19th Century by Racinet and Owen Jones (not the recent political figure). Interestingly because of the whole modernists dilemma there aren't updated versions. I believe I'm the guy who first put Adolf Loos and Ornament and crime in your ears. There is a lot to explore in the Italian Futurist manifestos as well. I've been following some of these other channels that seem to be popping up critiquing Modernist and Postmodern architecture. And I've been following with interest your detective story from the councils to the Brutalist buildings and the anonymous shite that we are being asked to live in. I live in Tbilisi Georgia. The old Soviet architecture seems better than the soulless post independence blocks that keep getting put up. I have an idea, I'll send you an email to reinforce it. But what would say to a kind of online symposium inviting several of the people from various channels that have been doing this. You have the biggest channel. So hosting it on yours might be a good option. Anyway I'm putting this in your ears now. I'll come back soon with an actual proposal. I think this movement is growing. We need our ornamentation and texture back. Thanks for the good work you've been doing.

You can tell you put a lot of effort into this great video . Thanks !

Thank you, I learnt so much !

I despise brutlaist architecture edit: wow this video's title has changed so many times

Brasilia his greatest disaster. Also those post war council estates were absolute social disasters, that improved the lives of nobody. Thankfully most of them have been pulled down.

You see, you can not expect art and affordable homes to go together.

I love how trying to make housing affordable and available to everyone ended up making housing ugly as sin, creatively bankrupt and somehow also so much more expensive even if 2 people per household work fulltime theyll never be able to afford one. Or if they do theyll pay it off for 70years. And its just ugly ontop so the construction company can have 1% higher margins. Amazing.

No no no no no the steel is in tension which exerts compression on the concrete. The concrete is in compression.

i love modern art and classical music and scupltures, but even i don't want my town or city to look brutalist