Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
Yes, it's called blank slate theory. In the 1950s they literally believed that you could take any baby and raise it to be a high-level mathematician or a homicidal maniac just by changing the inputs. It's why when they botched circumcisions and cut off a baby boy's penis they just thought they could raise them as girls. It's why autism was considered to be caused by mothers being cold and distant towards their infants. The list goes on and on.
This affected architecture and urban planning in a number of ways. One is that as I mentioned aesthetics were considered totally subjective, meaning they could design anything and just tell people it was beautiful. Another was the idea that social pathologies were shaped by the built environment, so if you knocked down "tenement housing" and put the former residents into clean modern towers, this would result in a dramatic lowering of crime and reduction in negative social outcomes.
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You can definitely notice the "celebration of ugliness" in arts and architecture. Happy to see that a lot of newer buildings are going back to more ornamental styling.
I really do like some of the newer Towers in NYC they seem to have a Gothic vibe to them