History Main / AsceticAesthetic

* ''VideoGame/Persona5Royal'': Up to defeating [[spoiler:Yaldabaoth]], most of the Palaces aren't subtle in displaying how despicable or malicious its ruler is, with the [[spoiler:headquarters of said Yaldabaoth]] being a literal apocalyptic wasteland overlaid into Shibuya filled with carcasses and skeletons of massive creatures. However, once you reach the Third Scenario, the ''true'' final Palace happens to be a replica of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, its interior being a bright and warmly lit mental health clinic filled with cognitive patients seeking eternal happiness, leading to an enclosed research ward with barely anything but creepy-looking Shadows, and finally leading to a warmly lit conservatory/paradise resembling the GardenOfEden. The problem is that said cognitive patients are brainwashed into shells of their former selves that feel nothing but happiness, enjoying the rest of their lives swirling around the center Tree of Knowledge with creepy smiles plastered on their face. [[spoiler:Unlike most previous targets however,]] the ruler is ultimately [[spoiler:a kind, altruistic and ambitious man having been ascended to being the new God of Control, just heavily misguided in his ideals.]]

* ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon:'' The Aether Foundation's specialty. Each of their bases of operation is decorated the same way. Their headquarters, Aether Paradise, is an entire artificial island made of Ascetic Aesthetic. They're ultimately good people, even if their leader did go a little far.
* ''VideoGame/Persona5Royal'': Up to defeating [[spoiler:Yaldabaoth]], most of the Palaces aren't subtle in displaying how despicable or malicious its ruler is, with the [[spoiler:headquarters of said Yaldabaoth]] being a literal apocalyptic wasteland overlaid into Shibuya filled with carcasses and skeletons of massive creatures. However, once you reach the Third Scenario, the ''true'' final Palace happens to be a replica of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, its interior being a well and warmly lit mental health clinic filled with cognitive patients seeking eternal happiness. Go further upwards into the facility, and you will be greeted by a dark and enclosed research ward with barely anything but sprawling shadows moving in creepy ways and the breakable objects being jars with a creepy tentacle holding a brain instead of usual trinkets. Near the top floor, the "Counseling Room" turns out to contain lots of brainwashing machines that look more like torture devices that enforces happiness onto the cognitive patients that do not seem mentally sound per its owner's perspective. The worst, however, happens to be the topmost area itself, which is a warmly-lit conservatory mixed with the Paradise of the Biblical GardenOfEden. The area itself seems fine, but all that remains of the cognitive patients in the area are those who were fully degraded to the point of just laughing and spending the rest of their days enjoying their lives on the Psientific Model Eden, but the core of the Tree of Wisdom is a pitch-black, tentacle and vine-filled mess.

* The International architectural style and its offshoots, Bauhaus and mid-century modern, codified a lot of this look, and its prevalence in modern buildings in the early-mid 20th century probably helped make it synonymous with "the future" in a lot of period sci-fi. It tended to go a bit easier on the sterile white, though, especially in the furniture that was influenced by it.

* Many of the halls and rooms in ''Webcomic/TowerOfGod'', specifically in Evankell's Hell and other testing areas are big, spacious, blank and white, with little detail. Makes it slightly unnerving, but also easy to draw.

* ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon:'' The Aether Foundation's specialty. Each of their bases of operation is decorated the same way. Their headquarters, Aether Paradise, is an entire artificial island made of Ascetic Aesthetic.

* ''DevilMayCry:'' At the end of the first game, you plunge into the Underworld itself. It has much of the tropes you might expect, such as FireAndBrimstoneHell and EvilIsVisceral, complete with a giant beating heart and the implication the whole place is a living organism. You then pass through the final door to confront [[BigBad Mundus]]. You are greeted with a bright, clean, stark hallway, lined with pillars and looking like a copy of some ancient Greek temple, leading up to a stunningly crafted statue that is, in fact, Mundus. The sheer beauty and deliberate, skilled architecture of the area may surprise players after trudging through blood and lava. But it also hints that this place is more eldritch than what came before.

* The [=SubUrbs=] in Creator/JohnRingo's Aldenatta-verse start out this way, but very quickly become UsedFuture.
* Discussed in Tom Wolfe's ''From Bauhaus to Our House'' (see Real Life examples). Wolfe is not fond of it.

* ''Literature/CaptivePrince'': The nation of Akielos tends towards stark minimalism, in contrast with the intricate ornamentation used in its rival country Vere. When Veretian castles are remodeled in the Akielon style, it just looks bleak, but properly designed Akielon cities are beautiful in a way that even touches a Veretian prince.

* Apple Corporation started using this as its main design aesthetic from the late 1990s and onward.

* Abbeys and monasteries tend to represent the UrExample of this trope

* [[ReligionOfEvil TITAN's Army]]in ''Webcomic/AvasDemon'' seems to have this overall, with their main color scheme [[BrightIsNotGood employing various shades of blue and white]].

* ''Franchise/MassEffect''.

*** Zig-zagged with the new ''Normandy'': apparently the intent of the brightly lit steel-and-white colour scheme of the [=SR2=] was to invoke a cold, [[PlayingWithSyringes sterile, medical atmosphere]] compared to the old ''Normandy''. Unfortunately a lot of players had found the [=SR1=] to be under-lit and eye-straining, and actually preferred Cerberus' choice of décor. Then in VideoGame/MassEffect3 the Normandy 2 is in the middle of a retrofit when Earth comes under attack leaving exposed wires, tools and incomplete sections of the ship exposed to the crew to give the sensation that even with everything that happened in the previous games we just weren't ready.

* The Citadel in ''Franchise/MassEffect''.
** [[VideoGame/MassEffect2 ME2]] worked a lot to subvert this trope. The Wards (parts of the Citadel where normal people live) are much more crowded and dirty than the pristine Embassy section. Omega takes it UpToEleven, practically passing for a Film/BladeRunner set, all to make the sequel DarkerAndEdgier.
*** Zig-zagged with the new ''Normandy'': apparently the intent of the brightly lit steel-and-white colour scheme of the [=SR2=] was to invoke a cold [[PlayingWithSyringes sterile, medical atmosphere]] compared to the old ''Normandy''. Unfortunately a lot of players had found the [=SR1=] to be under-lit and eye-straining, and actually preferred Cerberus' choice of décor. Then in VideoGame/MassEffect3 the Normandy 2 is in the middle of a retrofit when Earth comes under attack leaving exposed wires, tools and incomplete sections of the ship exposed to the crew to give the sensation that even with everything that happened in the previous games we just weren't ready.

** The hospital ship ''Tsuranga'' in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E5TheTsurangaConundrum The Tsuranga Conundrum", which has the justification of being a sterile environment not intended for long-term human occupation.

** The hospital ship ''Tsuranga'' in "The Tsuranga Conundrum", which has the justification of being a sterile environment not intended for long-term human occupation.

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** Interestingly, the ''Nostromo'' still shows signs of this trope in its living areas and especially the sickbay, which are all decorated in various shades of white and cream. But the effect is downplayed heavily by the set dressing; pictures from skin-mags cut out and stuck on the walls of people's bunks, tacky knick-knacks like that nodding-bird thing that were probably bought specifically to add a bit of colour, and the general clutter that accumulates when a place is lived in by anyone who's not a NeatFreak.

* Subverted in ''Film/{{Alien}}''. The ''Nostromo'''s galley, messroom and bunks clearly started out as a CassetteFuturism version of this look when the ship was new, with lots of minimalist furniture and everything being painted white or beige. But after a few years of living and working in there the crew have added a few personal touches like sticking some pin-ups to the wall of their bunk or decorating the table in the centre of the room with a cheap nodding woodpecker desk toy, and magazines, discarded coffee cups and other detritus have started to accumulate. Averted totally in the cargo holds and engineering spaces, which are UsedFuture all the way.

* The TARDIS interior from ''Series/DoctorWho'', especially in its [[http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/830/464/1600/Hartnell%20console.jpg original 1960s incarnation]]. Attempts by some designers to update the look of the TARDIS to make it look consciously futuristic (most infamously [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0d/TARDIS_console_1983.jpg in the 1980s]]) look, by today's standard, more dated. From 1996 onwards, the TARDIS set design has moved away from asceticism to embrace [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/gallery/tvmovie/images/1024/dw50.html steampunk]] and [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/medialibrary/s1/images/1024/s1_01_wal_17.jpg?size=1024&promo=/doctorwho/medialibrary/s1/images/main-promo/s1_01_wal_17.jpg&purpose=Computer%20wallpaper&summary=At%20the%20controls%20of%20his%20TARDIS.&info=&tag_file_id=s1_01_wal_17 clapped-out organo-gothic]].
** Also presented in many of the Dalek designs, in particular during the serial which introduced them.
** And the Kindness Centers in "The Girl Who Waited" from the modern series.
* In ''Series/{{OrphanBlack}}, any scene where [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Rachel Duncan]] is in is likely to be in a room like this, particularly in the earlier three seasons, in which the Dyad Institute featured more prominently. This is even reflected in Rachel's style, almost always wearing some form of white, and mostly dressed in minimalistic outfits.
** [[MotherlyScientist Susan Duncan's]] hideout is a variant, where the designs are mostly minimalistic but the walls are a faded brown as opposed to white. As with Rachel, the clothes she and her companion Ira wear reflect this, being pristine white.
** P.T. Westmorland's mansion at Camp Revival averts the trope, being quite old-fashioned in a way that recalls the late nineteenth century and the early Edwardian Era. [[spoiler: This is done entirely on purpose to help sell the ruse that it is actually P.T. Westmorland who lives there, and not a fraud named John]].
* [[MegaCorp Massive Dynamic]] from ''Series/{{Fringe}}'' is in love with this style, combined with SinisterGeometry.
* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' in the inside of the Scarran ship are unusually white and clean, compared to the outside of the ship which has SpikesOfVillainy.
* Justified in ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'', in the apartment of a man who's been coping poorly with EideticMemory. Overwhelmed by the sheer mass of past images in his head, he'd simplified his living quarters as much as possible, with white furnishings and minimal necessities in all-white rooms, so seeing them wouldn't add still ''more'' imagery to his accumulated memories.
* In ''Series/{{Helix}}'', parts of ResearchInc Arctic Biosystems are sleek, modernist and spare to the point of creepiness, which makes it a perfect backdrop for an outbreak of TheVirus. Some promos {{Exaggerate|d Trope}} the contrast, showing BadBlackBarf dripping on stark white modernist furniture and walls.
%%* Series/{{Space 1999}}: Moonbase Alpha has this in spades
* This was [[InvokedTrope invoked]] in the Series/{{Community}} episode "App Development and Condiments" as part of "futurization" of the campus. The episode itself was an homage to films such as Film/LogansRun and Film/{{Zardoz}} and presented a "dystopian" society (though being "Community" the society was confined to the college, in the present day and was all just the result of them using an app to rate each other).
* The time travel chamber in ''Series/GuestFromTheFuture'' is a white room with a control stand in the center, and the Time Institute is made of polished metal panels.

* ''Film/{{Anon}}'': The movie's urban environments have a very grey, sterile feeling to them, with everything depicted right down to the smallest object as being in near-perfect order and synchronicity. Of course, this is to aubtly make the film's dystopian, no-privacy-allowed society even creepier.

%%* Dulock in ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}''.

* ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe'' shows Gru as a down-to-earth, but homey in a kind of way villain, whereas Vector is shown as being a villain that looks like he purchased all his furniture from Steve Jobs. He also plays a UsefulNotes/NintendoWii, which features the same aesthetic.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout'':

-->-- Antoine de Saint Exupéry