I'm definitely not buying the idea that asymmetrical houses are "stressful" in any meaningful way. I mean, I guess you could say anything that is interesting and non-bland is stressful, but that is quite a stretch.
But I’d also challenge this notion that buildings built a certain way are conservative in any meaningful sense. And calling them conservative as though that’s an attack on them has a hidden assumption that everything new must be good, which we surely know is not the case. So it’s not really necessary in this context to call the architecture conservative. It wouldn’t be a true description of the architectural style, and it wouldn’t add any interesting perspective to the conversation. Are Boston City Hall and the African American History Museum “liberal” because they are new? And if I commented and said that they were liberal would you seriously not see political undertones?
Anyway, I think if you think about it a bit it makes a lot of sense that we look for symmetry and would find symmetry in our environment more pleasing. Asymmetry could indicate a predator or something not “normal” which must be dealt with.
There is ongoing research, though not much. I’ve enjoyed reading some of Ann Sussman’s work [1] on the topic and I’m sure one can find ways to poke holes in her work. Ultimately I feel like it makes intuitive sense. Hell, why are we intentionally designing houses to be asymmetric and why does that only become prominent now? Relatively speaking.
> I guess you could say anything that is interesting and non-bland is stressful, but that is quite a stretch.
Right which isn’t something I’d say. I also wouldn’t consider American suburban homes or brutalist architecture to be interesting to the eye except in that they are good examples of things you wouldn’t want to do; cheap in the case of American suburbs and psychotic in the case of brutalist.
Not architecture in general, but definitely residential homebuilding.
There are many good reasons for this. Embodied knowledge, building for unknown future buyers, buyer preference for familiarity in expensive products, buyer hesitancy about resale, liability for inappropriate materials choices or poor execution of unfamiliar methods, etc.
The commercial space is a bit more adventurous, certainly in facade but also in design. They have more leeway thanks to sturdier structural components (e.g. steel beams and floor pans) which can support a broader range of layouts, etc.
I disagree with the overly-simplistic theories on symmetry though. Sure, symmetry is pleasing in general to humans, but some of the most attractive and appealing structures are asymmetrical. Your example of "imposing" skyscrapers is unfair. Of course imposing things can be stressful.
You then go on with a lot of exactly what I'm talking about -- viscerally held opinions which are presented as absolutes. Boston City Hall makes you consider suicide? It's not an attractive or organic building, I agree, but that's a bit dramatic, no?
I don't know anyone who loves that building. But I know many people who love other brutalist buildings. I'm a fan of Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander, but I think they both express well-developed opinions and reasonable conclusions, but few absolute truths. Jacobs aspires to a bit more empiricism than Alexander, and I think she fails at that despite being "correct" IMO.
Buildings, cities, and humans are extremely complicated organisms. Some are failures, but describing the reasons is not simple.
PS: My proposal for "the only good thing" was withdrawing from the Universal Postal Union Treaty, which made it more expensive for US businesses to ship products to US customers, than for foreign businesses to do so.
I'll agree on your opinion on brutalist and typical suburban. Yuk to both. I like neighborhoods like many here in San Francisco, where a really modern house can be right next to a Victorian. Very close to me is this street, which is one of my favorites (let's just say I like "funky"): https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7399065,-122.4298453,3a,75y,...
