The war on patina
Jun. 2nd, 2006 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusYesterday I really fell in love with Berlin again. I saw the Berlin Biennial, an event I thought I'd missed (it's been extended until June 5th). The art was pretty good, but in a sense it was upstaged by the city itself, and by patina. Curators Cattelan, Gioni and Subotnick found all sorts of spaces up and down Mitte's Auguststrasse; a cargo container, a gilded ballroom, several private apartments, some galleries, some post office stables... and a former Jewish School for Girls.
Here the patina was amazing. The art was arranged alongside communist-era didactic displays of notable Jews, peppy 70s and 80s graffiti, peeling paint and uneven plaster work, tiles and a vast range of fake brick, fake wood and floral wallpapers. Oh, and murals featuring Bertolt Brecht.
After seeing the biennial I went flathunting, ending up in Neukoln -- the only area where I could find decor shabby enough to satisfy my craving for patina, which is, finally, character, personality, history, texture. It's a familiar Berlin battle: how can you reach an area before the developers do, and how can you cling to a friendly bit of texture before some anally clean Germans define it as "dirt" and reduce it to a series of utterly bland, clean, neutral surfaces? "Sanierte", they call this in the lingo; re-organized, sanitized. Given Germany's history, the phrase has a sinister ring to it.
Berlin seems riven between the people who want historical monuments like the Volkspalast preserved, patina intact, and those who want them sanitized or razed. In the case of the former socialist "people's palace", the battle has been lost. It strikes me that this is also a battle between people who want expansion and economic development, and people who want characterful decay, decline, and a "slow life" somewhat protected from market forces. In other words, it relates to yesterday's question about demographics and the management of population decline.
In my last days in New York I visited the Parsons design department degree show. There was lots of excellent work, stuff about recycling and community-oriented design (a portable stoop people could sit on, for instance). The worst piece I saw, though, was a Communication Design piece by Hector Diaz called "The Effects of Spatial Design in New York Public High Schools".
"For the past 5 to 10 years," Diaz explained, "there has been a concern for students attending some New York City High Schools due to small graduation classes, low attendance and a lack of educational interest. My thesis conveys how through environmental design, combined with architecture, color and typography, students can unconsciously change the way their education is pursued."
Showing before-and-after pictures of a place very like the Former Jewish Girls' School, Diaz proposed changing a lovely, fusty building predominantly coloured in earth tones into a zingy electric blue-tinted educational freeway service station, complete with coffee franchise-style "motivational" graphics. I found his whole design-for-growth schtick dismal, sad and aesthetically offensive; a war on patina. He'll probably do very well.
Here the patina was amazing. The art was arranged alongside communist-era didactic displays of notable Jews, peppy 70s and 80s graffiti, peeling paint and uneven plaster work, tiles and a vast range of fake brick, fake wood and floral wallpapers. Oh, and murals featuring Bertolt Brecht.
After seeing the biennial I went flathunting, ending up in Neukoln -- the only area where I could find decor shabby enough to satisfy my craving for patina, which is, finally, character, personality, history, texture. It's a familiar Berlin battle: how can you reach an area before the developers do, and how can you cling to a friendly bit of texture before some anally clean Germans define it as "dirt" and reduce it to a series of utterly bland, clean, neutral surfaces? "Sanierte", they call this in the lingo; re-organized, sanitized. Given Germany's history, the phrase has a sinister ring to it.
Berlin seems riven between the people who want historical monuments like the Volkspalast preserved, patina intact, and those who want them sanitized or razed. In the case of the former socialist "people's palace", the battle has been lost. It strikes me that this is also a battle between people who want expansion and economic development, and people who want characterful decay, decline, and a "slow life" somewhat protected from market forces. In other words, it relates to yesterday's question about demographics and the management of population decline.
In my last days in New York I visited the Parsons design department degree show. There was lots of excellent work, stuff about recycling and community-oriented design (a portable stoop people could sit on, for instance). The worst piece I saw, though, was a Communication Design piece by Hector Diaz called "The Effects of Spatial Design in New York Public High Schools".
"For the past 5 to 10 years," Diaz explained, "there has been a concern for students attending some New York City High Schools due to small graduation classes, low attendance and a lack of educational interest. My thesis conveys how through environmental design, combined with architecture, color and typography, students can unconsciously change the way their education is pursued."
Showing before-and-after pictures of a place very like the Former Jewish Girls' School, Diaz proposed changing a lovely, fusty building predominantly coloured in earth tones into a zingy electric blue-tinted educational freeway service station, complete with coffee franchise-style "motivational" graphics. I found his whole design-for-growth schtick dismal, sad and aesthetically offensive; a war on patina. He'll probably do very well.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:12 am (UTC)I think the materials are key here, too, not just there patina (or history shown through aging), but their origin. Up until the mid-twentieth century buildings largely reflected their landscape in the materials from which they rise: brick, brownstone, limestone, sandstone, timber, stucco. They greatly define the character of the city; the feeling of the city. The new cities that rise do so almost entirely out of manufactured materials: glass, steel, cement, etc., and as such completely lose their precious materiality and reflect little more than whatever their perfectly policed facades of glass bounce back.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:25 am (UTC)But I may have brought some of the sense of "sanitiert" into my definition...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:30 am (UTC)Get into too much patina and you end up distressing denim in search of some bogus authenticity nad character.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:44 am (UTC)Another note on the recent boom of modern architecture and high-rise building...I suspect, be it conscious or unconscious, that a good deal of it is in response to seeing the development in East Asian countries (as well as Dubai). America feels the need to be in the lead, as does Europe to a lesser extent; not having the newest, tallest, and flashiest architecture is an admittance of falling behind in the eyes of many, not just in architecture, but all of the things our buildings represent. Of course that starts wading into far deeper conversational waters.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:44 am (UTC)venice, the triumph of patina
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 10:47 am (UTC)MMM
Date: 2006-06-02 11:23 am (UTC)Do you know much about this fellow (http://www.exclaim.ca/index.asp?layid=22&csid=778&csid1=5249)?
Re: MMM
Date: 2006-06-02 11:52 am (UTC)Re: MMM
Date: 2006-06-02 11:54 am (UTC)Re: MMM
Date: 2006-06-02 11:57 am (UTC)Re: MMM
Date: 2006-06-02 12:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 01:51 pm (UTC)somehow i always regret it when they restore an ancient building - the crusts, the peels, the faded patches, the different shades of brown, red and yellow, the fascinating patina created by the passing of time - all of this is lost
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 02:00 pm (UTC)Nice... but you have to be careful with that kind of compliment. You never know, she might have spent a fortune on plastic surgery...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 02:02 pm (UTC)the only trouble may be that these places and architectures are so redolent in themselves that they distract the viewer's attention from the works, or add extra esthetic value to the works they contain - but personally, i don't see anything wrong with this. art is also an event, and as such it is ephemeral and context-bound.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 02:39 pm (UTC)all you could ever hear was: "ouch! ouch! bloody fleas." and he stood there like icarus. the bed feathers glued to his sweaty body.
i shouted:"stop coughing !!!!" the next day i received a complaint from the battersea citizen's advice bureau. case number 154 (no joke). olivetti from hell.
signed by sandra wax. you get a little palace in turkey for about 50 grand brand spanking new. loadsa sunshine. good food. fantastic music.
elegant slumming my arse. not for me anymore.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 02:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 03:43 pm (UTC)Eighteenth-century houses were more advanced in their construction in one sense: the brick and mortar were softer, more porous, and would "breathe", dissipating moisture and mold. People often now unwittingly destroy these buildings when they "repair" the mortar with modern cement, which is notoriously non-porous and relatively impermeable to water. So when the house continues to breathe and settle naturally, the "hard zone" caused by the cement with stay in place, and crack the old english or flemish laid brickwork to pieces.
Organisms need organisms to live in.
Plants. More plants!
Re: MMM
Date: 2006-06-02 03:59 pm (UTC)rroland has a new fave!
Re: MMM
Date: 2006-06-02 04:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 04:28 pm (UTC)The trouble is, what happens when this time of plenty doesn't last?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 04:53 pm (UTC)a) earthquakes are half-expected at any moment.
b) Buddhism stresses the impermanence of all things.
c) The land the structure stands on is always worth much more than the structure itself, which is easily remade according to the new land-owner's specifications.
d) Few planning regulations or conservation orders to speak of.
It's always interesting to me how easily patina can be re-applied, though. For instance, kudzu can achieve pretty much instant patina. I'm just waiting for them to grow kudzu on the facade of Omotesando Hills... (http://imomus.livejournal.com/148183.html)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 05:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 05:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 05:53 pm (UTC)Something's still in my heart for rotting, dying, forgotten cities, having lived in one as a kid - of course, they're in reality pretty tragic.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 06:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 07:20 pm (UTC)Fellini came to Hollywood to work on a picture, sometime in the early 1960s; this was a big deal, the greatest genius of European film deigning to make a Hollywood movie. Anyway, they stuck him in an office: a small, miserable office, white-washed walls, small window, whole deal, to write. He spent a week in this office trying to work on a new screenplay, to no avail. Flabergasted, he quickly realized that he needed some sense of history in his work environment in order to feel comfortable and productive. He went to the producers, and requested an older building: one (in Momuspeak) that would have the proper texture.
They took him to an office in another building on the lot that looked exactly the same. He was shocked and confused. When he showed disdain for the new quarters, the worried producers cried, "But Mr. Fellini, this is the oldest building on the lot! It's fifty years old!" He left and, if I'm getting the chronology right, started working on Juliet of the Spirits.
"Sigh. America. Sigh."
(And with a dramatic flourish the young man hit 'Post Comment.' Fin.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 07:42 pm (UTC)I can't remember who originaly came up with this design, I think Maybeck was in on it. But they're generally called "Stadelhofers". He's the guy at Berkley Pump who figured out the method of pouring the concrete around the glass blocks. They were built around the 30's and they never caught on for residential design. But they built a lot of wharehouses down in my nieghborhood.
Artists like to live in Stadelhofers. They let in a lot of light.
Beautiful things can be done with concrete.
But for patina you can't beat wood.
That renewable resouce we forgot to renew.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 11:10 pm (UTC)what do you think, for instance, of this lucio fontana exhibit in central italy:
http://larameau.livejournal.com/808.html
and here are some pictures of the "sala delle cariatidi" i mentioned before:
http://larameau.livejournal.com/1056.html
p.s. i don't know how to insert images directly into the post, sigh!
Permanent schmermanent; it's washable!
Date: 2007-05-11 03:30 am (UTC)It is explicitly a liability (nevermind risk management) function in any of the Americas or other place with burghs, as you like! There was a phase in the '90s where glass fronts facing a selection of garden elements, with pas-relief panels was taking off, and too reliably some amicus ars (with special relevance lent; later discerned to stem from Hell, not Croesus) would find fault:
-Actual clinical, field OR uses, found wanting
-Bas relief, nonetheless discovered editable to distaste of current reviewers (how now; proven complementarity/reversability?)
-General paranoia about passability of dirt and plant material (soak them in feminism and palmolive and call them out?)
Happy playing-through.