Spare us the cutter!
Jun. 6th, 2006 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHaving spent hours yesterday clicking through rented accommodation on Immobilienscout, I'm left with a depressingly familiar feeling, a feeling I get when confronted with markets of all kinds. I'd sum it up in this peevish complaint:
"Listen, I'm about to spend a large amount of money on something. At least give me some exciting designs, some eccentricity, some choice in exchange for my money! What's with this cookie cutter stuff? This ultra-conformist super-conservatism? Is there only one basic model of anything at any given time?"
Alas, all too often it seems that the answer is "There is only one basic model of anything at any given time." That's why, ultimately, mass production consumer society is a joke and a lie. There actually isn't any choice at all. There's nothing to get excited about spending your money on (should you have any) because nobody dares to stick their neck out. You see fresh ideas at design school degree shows, sure. But by the time they get to market... well, they just don't get to market. The cookie-cutter stamps out the standard shape of apartment, of car, of watch, of trouser, and discards everything else, throwing weird dough back to the bin as offcuts and misshapes.
Basically, what I see in the Berlin housing market is the same apartment, time and again. It's got textured white wallpaper and shiny wooden floors. It's always got the same bathroom, of pristine, clinical white tiles. It has a balcony and is located in a terraced apartment building with no elevator. It's an unfurnished shell, a hollow cookie. If you want to live in an industrial loft or a shop unit, forget it: that's gewerbe, commercial space. If you want to live in a water tower, you're tilting at windmills. You'd think, with the World Cup on and the city full of giant footballs, there'd be an influx of Soccer Ball Homes to rent. No chance, mate. Radical forms, it seems, stay in the realm of advertising, art, sport, industry and science. When it comes to rented accommodation, people want the same old vanilla-flavoured cookie.
Now, at least Berlin has a healthy rented accommodation market. Britain, once a nation of renters, hardly has any left, and what little there is comes gruesomely furnished.
But why is it that the kinds of experimental buildings illustrated in the photos on this page -- buildings by Atelier Tekuto's Yasuhiro Yamashita, taken from his interview with Design Boom by way of Jean Snow -- can only be found in the private sector? To escape from the cookie cutter, it seems, you have to have the money to employ an artisan to make a one-off design. And even then, it helps to be in a country like Japan, where over-tight, vanilla-friendly planning permission restrictions aren't going to force you to "respect the surrounding context" (which is probably deeply banal and old-fashioned anyway).
It's not as if Yamashita is even that radical. His Cell Brick and Crystal Brick houses, for instance, are simply cubes. Yes, they play games with scale, their tiny windows making small structures look huge. Yes, they look more like offices than private living spaces. But surely they're the sort of thing that everybody should have the choice to live in, and that every designer would come up with if they had the slightest spark of playfulness or originality? They're probably not even that expensive to build.
We live in a cookie-cutter world, a world of pathological conformity and a stunning lack of flair. There are some consolations, though. Forgetting its soul-crushingly boring exterior, you can at least decorate the inside of your house with something architecturally interesting (my inflatable dome serves this purpose). Or you can visit as many original public buildings as possible (Berlin has embassies and museums designed by some of the world's most celebrated architects). You can spend time in cars or planes or airports (which at least feel like they were designed sometime in the present), or content yourself with the unbounded (but unapplied) imagination to be found in art galleries. Or you can retreat to the screen of your computer. After all, as I sang once, "a digital city's more easily changed than a city of concrete".
"Listen, I'm about to spend a large amount of money on something. At least give me some exciting designs, some eccentricity, some choice in exchange for my money! What's with this cookie cutter stuff? This ultra-conformist super-conservatism? Is there only one basic model of anything at any given time?"Alas, all too often it seems that the answer is "There is only one basic model of anything at any given time." That's why, ultimately, mass production consumer society is a joke and a lie. There actually isn't any choice at all. There's nothing to get excited about spending your money on (should you have any) because nobody dares to stick their neck out. You see fresh ideas at design school degree shows, sure. But by the time they get to market... well, they just don't get to market. The cookie-cutter stamps out the standard shape of apartment, of car, of watch, of trouser, and discards everything else, throwing weird dough back to the bin as offcuts and misshapes.
Basically, what I see in the Berlin housing market is the same apartment, time and again. It's got textured white wallpaper and shiny wooden floors. It's always got the same bathroom, of pristine, clinical white tiles. It has a balcony and is located in a terraced apartment building with no elevator. It's an unfurnished shell, a hollow cookie. If you want to live in an industrial loft or a shop unit, forget it: that's gewerbe, commercial space. If you want to live in a water tower, you're tilting at windmills. You'd think, with the World Cup on and the city full of giant footballs, there'd be an influx of Soccer Ball Homes to rent. No chance, mate. Radical forms, it seems, stay in the realm of advertising, art, sport, industry and science. When it comes to rented accommodation, people want the same old vanilla-flavoured cookie.
Now, at least Berlin has a healthy rented accommodation market. Britain, once a nation of renters, hardly has any left, and what little there is comes gruesomely furnished.
But why is it that the kinds of experimental buildings illustrated in the photos on this page -- buildings by Atelier Tekuto's Yasuhiro Yamashita, taken from his interview with Design Boom by way of Jean Snow -- can only be found in the private sector? To escape from the cookie cutter, it seems, you have to have the money to employ an artisan to make a one-off design. And even then, it helps to be in a country like Japan, where over-tight, vanilla-friendly planning permission restrictions aren't going to force you to "respect the surrounding context" (which is probably deeply banal and old-fashioned anyway).
It's not as if Yamashita is even that radical. His Cell Brick and Crystal Brick houses, for instance, are simply cubes. Yes, they play games with scale, their tiny windows making small structures look huge. Yes, they look more like offices than private living spaces. But surely they're the sort of thing that everybody should have the choice to live in, and that every designer would come up with if they had the slightest spark of playfulness or originality? They're probably not even that expensive to build.We live in a cookie-cutter world, a world of pathological conformity and a stunning lack of flair. There are some consolations, though. Forgetting its soul-crushingly boring exterior, you can at least decorate the inside of your house with something architecturally interesting (my inflatable dome serves this purpose). Or you can visit as many original public buildings as possible (Berlin has embassies and museums designed by some of the world's most celebrated architects). You can spend time in cars or planes or airports (which at least feel like they were designed sometime in the present), or content yourself with the unbounded (but unapplied) imagination to be found in art galleries. Or you can retreat to the screen of your computer. After all, as I sang once, "a digital city's more easily changed than a city of concrete".
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 08:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 08:48 am (UTC)here in auckland something like 50 new apartment blocks have gone up in the central city in the last few years. they all look the same uninspired-drab,eg: http://www.kiwiaccommodation.com/listingimages/1971/1.jpg , & i dread to think what they are like inside :(
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 08:58 am (UTC)It's pretty depressing that new or interesting building typologies tend to be created by accident or as an unintended consequence of some practical function. My "shifty dwellings" were all train boxes, temporary structures (speaking of which, how we miss our all-too-temporary Info Box (http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/infobox/index.htm) here in Berlin!), garden sheds, florist's tents, and so on. Sometimes I think I'd be happier in a shanty town.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 09:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 09:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 09:19 am (UTC)all the new apartments here are grey, and all the views are gone. i'd be much happier in berlin, at least there are wooden floors and old-fashioned things like that. one of the worst trends i think is the renovating of kitchens, "updating" the lovely old 19th century ones ...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 09:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 09:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 09:32 am (UTC)I've always found it unfortunate that cities, despite supposedly being on the cutting edge of creativity, or at least architecture, are so far from being conducive to any kind of architectual evolution. The only places it seems there are many possibilities are in rural areas, where its far simpler to afford a plot of land and built whatever you might imagine upon it. There has certainly been a great deal of imaginitive architecture in rural settings--i've always had a soft-spot for geodesic dome houses that seemed to have their hay-day in the '70s--but ultimately rural settings really have no need for creative architecture, at least not compared to the need in cities. The wealth of possibilities in urban architecture is almost overwhelming, especially compared to the piss-poor variety that currently exists.
If there is one thing that really kills me, though, it's rooftops; oh what I wouldn't give to happen upon a city of rooftops overgrown with great green gardens! Imagine how they could evolve over time, eventually completely overgrowing and overtaking the entire built up landscape; that would be my kind of city!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 09:52 am (UTC)What really burns me with this gentrification thing is what they do to the existing houses. A couple may have bought a Berkeley Bungalow in the 40' or 50's and now the thing is worth a fortune and they're cashing in and moving out. Then a contractor comes in to begin remudeling. The worst case scenario is they jack the house up to add another story and chop it up into four units in the cheapest ugliest way.
They must use a manual that explains how to remove all existing charm.
All they really need to do is fix the bug damage, tune up the cabinet doors, paint, refinish the floors, and probably re-plumb and re-wire, and they could walk away proud.
I'n not a historical preservation nut. I just hate to see a house be butchered.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 09:54 am (UTC)http://www.irvineranch.com/index.asp?ffs=0
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 10:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 10:08 am (UTC)Apparently they're going cheap on eBay (http://www.blavish.com/chill-out-inflatable-room/) now!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 10:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 11:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 11:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 11:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 12:26 pm (UTC)Although I may have found something, yesterday.
I just had no idea how uniform all these buildings were, until I decided to actually go out and look for what I really wanted.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 01:23 pm (UTC)http://homepage.eircom.net/~globaltrots/images/Gili/Gili Meno Accomodation.jpg
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 01:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 01:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 02:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 02:42 pm (UTC)http://www.hoelterhof.name/node/196
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 02:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 02:54 pm (UTC)Build something beautiful increases the costs by at least 200% and if you're operating on a margin, that's simply not a possibility.
Personally, I built out several lofts years ago (for living), and there was a huge discrepancy between what I wanted to do with the space and what I could afford to do with the space. We made our loft look good, but in the sense of Nest Magazine with the way we personalized the space, not in a Domus way where the space itself was personalized.
Beautiful buildings are always coming from the rich, but NYC hasn't seen any beautiful buildings in almost 100 years. We have a couple of minor beauties, but for the most part, we are architecture deprived. Before you say that's endemic of the U.S., I'd suggest that it's endemic of the money class in NYC and is bad tidings for things-to-come (since progressive architecture is usually the province of societies with power to display).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 03:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 04:05 pm (UTC)paraSITE
Date: 2006-06-06 04:17 pm (UTC)these were featured recently in Transmediale, but you might need to go via the slums to convince Rakowitz to give you one...
"the appropriation of the exterior ventilation systems on existing architecture ..."
http://www.michaelrakowitz.com/ - go to PROJECTS then paraSITE
all internet women are yours
Date: 2006-06-06 04:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 05:44 pm (UTC)Stutchbury and Pape's Cardboard House (http://www.housesofthefuture.com.au/hof_houses04.html) shows how you can get around that by making a house design as easy to assemble as an Ikea flatpack. I know how strong cardboard is; when I lived in Paris all my furniture, including my bookshelves, were made of folded card, self-assemble.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 06:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 06:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-06 07:01 pm (UTC)Blank Slates
Date: 2006-06-06 07:52 pm (UTC)I live on a block filled with dilapidated Victorians in West Oakland Calif.
The Victorians are indeed a bit cookie-cutter in architecture, but it's amazing what an inspired resident can do with curtains and lighting to make the exterior of their home distinctive and beautiful.
The house across the street from me glows orange and red at night, and each window holds a different colored light (wish I had a photo to post!)
We are limited by architecture but we can still make the exterior of our homes visually pleasing and distinctive for ourselves and others.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-07 02:24 am (UTC)Re: Blank Slates
Date: 2006-06-07 03:00 am (UTC)Grew up near this erstwhile hotel and speakeasy (It's an old refrain, but it still stands):
Real Tokyo Estate
Date: 2006-06-07 03:42 am (UTC)May you find a home,
D
N55
Date: 2006-06-07 04:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-07 06:48 am (UTC)I don't like this article and am offended by the implication that the free market doesn't engender free choice. Goddamn it, Momus, it's un-American, which I hate. Tell me this isn't a beautiful sight, you Eurotrash hipster, you!
Re: N55
Date: 2006-06-07 07:17 am (UTC)