Bringing back beauty in architecture

March 2024

This website is dedicated to the revival of traditional architecture. More and more people are longing for beautiful buildings in cities. Modernism and post-modernism left us often with concrete buildings lacking any ornamentation, giving them a cold and unattractive appearance. The designs of most new buildings from the 20th and 21th century seem to focus merely on functionality, cheapness, experimentallity to show whats technically possible, or even the intention to shock the spectator. Whether it would make people happy did not matter anymore, so it seems. Hence city centers were becoming depressing, leaving people with a feeling of alienation. Many think that this should change. Now.

Why did we abandon the concept of beauty? Different causes are mentioned in debates about this. The upcoming socialism is one of them. The abandoning of God and religion another. But also WWI is often regarded as a major turning point. This devasting world event seemed to have given a final blow to our sense of beauty. After humanity was confronted with so much ugliness in the hearts of people, the need to express beauty seemed to have vanished completely. On top of that old social layers in society with different classes were abolished and architecture whith rich ornamention referring to that 'old world' had become undesirable. Some really beautiful architecture of the last decades in 19th century was even demolished because people thought it had no worth anymore. A new better world trying to forget the disasters of the past would be represented from now on by buildings that showed 'honest simplicity'. Maybe understandable, but all ornamentation went down the drain, and functionality became the main asset for new buildings.

Decay of joy

With the thourough simplification of buildings something was put away that at first nobody was aware of. Lately however people are realising what happines and joy the sight of beautiful architecture can bring. Of course there were museums where you could admire beautiful objects. But to wander through a world with elegant architecture is something totally different. A pleasant surrounding where you at feel home, at ease and happy. Of course there are old city centers that have retained much of their historic buildings, but so much have vanished over de years. It must return.

Aim

This site shows designs of houses in the past (mostly 19th century) to form an inspiration for present architects. Some of the designs were realised, some demolished. Some were never built at all. They should have a new chance.

This website was last updated on March 12th 2025 - © Pagemark