Same reason I have not written any novels.
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Steve-Jobs-1-Westboro-Baptist-0
He was a billionaire, but he didn't have any furniture, because he was such a perfectionist allowed to eat with his fingers, standing up. Billionaires' mothers can't tell them anything.
Not tending to watch product announcements, I always had a vague feeling that it was actually pronounced to rhyme with "robes," possibly because I learned the proper pronunciation of the biblical Job later in youth than I would have liked. A stray comment on a Wikipedia discussion page says he was actually annoyed by that pronunciation, though.
He actually did have furniture, but not in a way we can understand anymore.
Playboy interviewed him in 1985, and he basically promised them the iPhone about 26 years early, as well as accurately foreshadowing everything about his second dig with Apple. You too can say you read it for the articles! (note that the link goes to a Longform.org re-up of the piece, so nothing could be more SFW)
5. I'm with Minivet on coming late to an understanding of the pronunciation. This was not helped by the fact that pronouncing it in the way he did would suggest to British children that his name was effectively Steve Turds. I am saying nothing.
7: that's a fascinating interview! Amazing that one of the questions is "OK, so how are you going to persuade businesses that they need to buy computers for their employees?" 1985 was a long time ago.
1985 was a long time ago.
Yeah, 26 years. Longer than the period between the world wars. People born in that year are getting PhDs now. It's all history now.
8: You must wince all the time at our economic debates, and for even more reasons than the rest of us.
It's all history now.
It's really amazing. I was a state employee, with an office job, in 1984. The office got a IIe in 1986, I think. The secretary got word processing training, but no one else anything. I'd had a Basic class in college, though, and wrote a program that executed a cute little monochrome Xmas card from all 6 of us, that we sent (on floppies) to the other offices in our department.
I left that job to go to law school in 1988: there were a couple of computers in the library, and the law review had one, but I didn't own one. This wasn't the least bit unusual. In 1991, I got a job at an AmLaw 100 firm, and we had VAX terminals on our desks, but still needed to go to the library to use Lexis or Westlaw. I don't think this was unusual either.
I tell you, we had to walk 9 miles, through blowing snow, with cardboard for shoes, just to find $5. But by god, you could buy something with it!
I think I was the last class at NYT where they bothered showing us how to Shepardize cases in the literal Shepards books. By the time I started practicing, books were mostly for keeping senior partners happy, where they didn't trust computer research.
Ah, mainframes! or, as they prefer to say these days, massive servers with VM architecture and very thin clients.
NYU, not NYT.
And Derrick Bell just died. His Current Constitutional Issues seminar was the best class I took in law school.
12 - Whenever I see something talking about how Windows/the Mac brought computing to the rest of us so that secretaries could use the magical boxes, I wince. Secretaries were the only office workers in the early '80s who knew how to use computers! I remember taking a typing class, and we had those idiotic function-key overlays for WordPerfect (or maybe WordStar) explaining various modal behaviors.
I punched cards around 1970, had hands on a mini in the late 70s, and brought home something that was the size of a suitcase with handle and had a six inch screen and played Zork on it. That was 1981.
Not an Apple kinda guy, MS-DOS, 4dos, Bash and Perl for Dos, then Windows. I am not that geeky, but I just replaced my DVD-drive this weekend and I can't imagine not having some personal control of my hardware and software. Apple as anti-totalitarian is projection and reversal, they are the controlling unfreedom computer company.
Jobs was a fucking neat guy, if not as nice as Wozniak or Gates.
Jobs as Corbusier?
I am sure better minds have put more thought into this.
and brought home something that was the size of a suitcase with handle and had a six inch screen and played Zork on it
With the yellow-on-black screen? The kid across the street has one of those. He was eaten by a grue.
If he was eaten by a grue, all his property legally belongs to the first person who can make it there and get back alive. I hear he had a ruby the size of a plover's egg.
Quite a lot of us used to be eaten by grues at the time. And wumpuses (do I mean wumpi?)
15.2 -- very sad, and a genuinely great guy.
He was -- very warm and approachable.
I played adventure on my dad's home terminal as a little kid in the late seventies. No screen computer games; you type, the computer types. By the mid eighties I had my own DOS machine, and when I started college the same year CC started law school, about half the freshman had computers and most profs refused to accept handwritten papers, many insisting on laser printing (ten cents a page, at the computer centers).
I started college two years before that, and everyone at my school was strongly encouraged (bordering on required) to have a Mac. Conveniently, laser printing at the computer centers was free, and you could send your paper to the printer from your networked dorm room and pick it up on the way to class.
Jobs as Corbusier?
I don't think that comparison holds at all. Jobs produced attractive things that worked as designed and made people's lives better, and his rivals emulated him and produced similarly attractive and useful things. Le Corbusier was a hideous curse on the building trade and his followers were vandals who turned lovely cities into (often literally) uninhabitable wastelands. It wouldn't be so bad if his unspeakably ugly machines for living in had actually worked as machines for living in, but they didn't. Hate.
Apple's original "Think Different" commerical, narrated by Jobs. I guess it never aired. Good commercial.
|| http://www.rferl.org/content/hollywood_stars_help_chechen_leader_celebrate_birthday/24350537.html |>
I started college in 1987 with my trusty IIe. Almost nobody at my weirdo school had a computer.
I started college in 1985. For Christmas, I was given a typewriter that had "word erase." It was awesome! I could erase an entire word with one push of a button.
When I started practicing law, there were lots of files with copy paper in them still.
I started college in 1989 and if I had gone first, there would be a pattern here.
26:The genius of post-modern managed democracy is that the domination is sold as freedom and empowerment, and the people buy it.
Read about Jobs. A manaically disciplined control-freak who designed systems that were not to be messed with thank you very much. Who never wanted any input from users, he would decide what users needed before they knew themselves and he would make the users likeclean, ya know?
This is Mr Freedom?
Windows is all messy and chaotic, and just doesn't have the perfection of Apple. And Gates isn't as pretty as Jobs.
When I started training in commercial IT we had a machine which punched the cards as you typed and spat them out in a pile, but if you were just correcting the odd line it was easier just to use the hand punch.
But I can't sit here reminiscing all night. Got to pack and go to France. G'night.
33: France?!? Are you some kind of academic who has tons of free time?!?!
I'm retired. I have free time out of my ears.
Bad tags cut this from 32.
"Every step of the production process, the distribution process, the interface was determined and decided by the Man. 100 MacIntosh development workers, not 99 or 101. Apple is so clean, ya know?"
Susan Sontag told me Japanese culture, like flower arranging and haiku etc, was fascist (and sexist) to the core. About control. Force. Jobs adored Morita of Sony.
Look, I liked the guy and have no strong beef with Apple. I am just trying to understand our culture, especially the false consciousness of the intellectual elites. David Harvey is helping. Trust me, everything you know is wrong.
IPod and ITunes is a liberation? Not mine.
I started college in 1980. The freshman handbook warned, "The items most likley to be stolen from dormitory rooms are typewriters, turntables, and electronic calculators." One kid, whose father traveled internationally, showed off the most amazingly advanced piece of electronic equipment any of us had ever seen: a Walkman.
||
Electric Eden which on the surface is a history of British folk-rock, is actually more about the English relationship to the countryside and their pagan past. A chapter on The Wicker Man and a chapter on "Reynardine". Discussion of Alan Garner. Ralph Vaughan Williams and Robert Warlock. Serious shit disguised as pop. Way fucking British, but terrific stuff. 60s was theoretically wild.
Semi-ontopic because as an ex-hippie, I am a amazed at how button-down younger generations are while thinking themselves more liberated than their parents.
You can tell all by the hair and neatly-trimmed beards.
|>
Although I've generally liked Apple products since my first Mac (an SE), I was never particularly interested in Jobs until I recently started reading things like that 1985 Playboy interview (which really is incredible) and watching videos of him waxing speculative from decades ago. The degree to which he predicts what's to come is really uncanny and made me want to listen to what he had to say about other things as well.
34, 35: My father refers to his switch from sales to academia as his "retirement." I was going to mention this on the other thread but I had a feeling people wouldn't take it in the lighthearted spirit in which it was intended.
I started college in 1995 with a mac that I never learned how to use so I did everything in computer labs anyway except really math classes required very little from computer labs. The next computer I got I never learned to use, either, and felt terribly guilty about the wasted money, so I didn't have a computer at home from about 2000 to 2005.
"X and 6 other friends posted about Steve Jobs."
...
"See 5 more posts from A, B, C, D and E."
So apparently Facebook thinks "if you've seen one friend post about Steve Jobs, you've seen 'em all." And is anti-serial-comma.
re: 17
It's a myth that you don't have control on Macs. If you are the kind of person who likes (or needs professionally) to do so, you can. I've done a bunch of hardware repair work on Macs, and a fair bit of fairly techy stuff under the hood software-wise. It's true that you don't have a multitude of suppliers supplying OEM hardware, so it's much more monopolistically locked down that way. But if you wanted to, say, replace a DVD drive, or whatever, you could. And, if you want to work in a command prompt, you can. And with a proper shell, too.
43:Then it is a myth embraced by Mac users. "Ease of Use" implies lack of control. I suppose the theory is that not knowing how to, or being able to reach under the hood and tweak the carburation leaves you free to do "what you really want to do." I don't know, I am not a back-to-the-land Whole Earthing butter-churner, but the medium is the message, and how we interface partly determines how we think.
I don't know, Jobs, his charisma, and his cult always intimidated and frightened me, while Gates feels like just folks. Gates more like Wozniak.
while Gates feels like just folks.
It's no coincidence that Bill Gates looks just like a bespectacled Mr. Rogers. You've been had, mcmanus. That was the plan all along. I'm surprised you of all people didn't see through this ruse.
So apparently Facebook thinks "if you've seen one friend post about Steve Jobs, you've seen 'em all." .
Facebook is weirdly right about this one.
re: 44
Well sure. The point isn't that you can't get 'under the hood'. The point is you shouldn't have to. Most people don't have a bloody clue -- PC or Mac -- and 99% of messing about under the hood means 'breaking'. But you _can_ fuck about in there, if you so wish.
The only people who have said anything whatsoever about Steve Jobs in my Facebook thread are people I only know from this website. That makes me happy.
The point is you shouldn't have to.
To me, that is a statement of value, not a fact, like "you shouldn't have to sew your own clothes when it is more convenient to buy them off a rack."
And it is an interesting value.
Sad, since it was only hours ago, but I can't remember who pointed me to the John Scully interview about Jobs. Easy enough to find with Google. Amazing.
re: 49
Oh come on. People don't roll their own operating system in the way that they sew a piece of clothing. People installing Windows are not doing something remotely analogous to sewing their own clothes.
'Interesting value'. Wtf is that supposed to mean? Or never mind. I can guess.
I was born in 1981, and our first computer, circa 1985, was a Mac. Oh, how I loved playing Lode Runner and Pac Man. It does feel weird to realize that Jobs pretty much defined my computing life and now he's dead, but other than suddenly thinking that man, I'm old (I'm not, but decade-marking birthdays do make you feel .... older),* I haven't been sure one way or the other how I should feel. The norm for public figure deaths, I suppose.
*Speaking of, apparently my birthday (which was yesterday) is the most common in the US. This does not fit with my experience, but .... interesting! (The source is a highly dubious survey.)
Shouldn't bob's comparison be between Jobs and, say, Torvalds? Lot's of user options sprayed about don't imply freedom.
while Gates feels like just folks
And George W. Bush is a guy you could have a beer with.
NMM Bert Jansch. Now there's a man to mourn.
I was born in 1981...
I read and thought, "Oh, I am the same age as Parenthetical!" And then I thought again. "No, peep, you were not born in 1981, you graduated from high school in 1981. You are not only old, you are old and senile."
I've never owned an Apple product.
I was born in 1981...
I read and thought, "Oh, I am the same age as Parenthetical!" And then I thought again. "No, peep, you were not born in 1981, you graduated from high school in 1981. You are not only old, you are old and senile."
I've never owned an Apple product.
(fixing 56)
55:Damn. I'll recommend Electric Eden again, which has a lot on Jansch and Pentangle. Doesn't include a flowchart to help remember who slept with whom, though.
apparently my birthday (which was yesterday) is the most common in the US. This does not fit with my experience, but .... interesting!
One could hypothesize a plausible causal mechanism: unprotected sex happens disproportionately on New Year's Eve.
How have you never owned an Apple product? My parents have had half dozen each and they are way older and my mom doesn't actually use a computer.
59: There's a secondary bump two months earlier because of sexy Halloween costumes.
apparently my birthday (which was yesterday) is the most common in the US. This does not fit with my experience, but .... interesting!
One could hypothesize a plausible causal mechanism: unprotected sex happens disproportionately on New Year's Eve.
apparently my birthday (which was yesterday) is the most common in the US. This does not fit with my experience, but .... interesting!
One could hypothesize a plausible causal mechanism: unprotected sex happens disproportionately on New Year's Eve.
I used Apples a lot throughout grade school, but never had one myself - my mom used MS-DOS before Windows came along. Of course I've benefited a lot from people slavishly imitating Apple's innovations (MP3 player, Android phone).
I had lunch with an Ob/gyn friend today. She was mentioning that she just finished delivering the Christmas sex babies, and was starting on the New Year's Eve babies.
oh, and she had two recent women with pregnancies that were not prevented by IUDs.......scary!
59, 62, 63: Knecht has the refractory period of a 19-year-old, laydeez.
60: It was easy. Maybe that's my talent.
My wife does have an i-pod and an i-phone.
But I don't think I've ever used an Apple product. I remember going to the computer at the University of Chicago, thinking maybe I would use their Macs to write papers, but I couldn't figure how to get started.
From the link in 55:
On 1965's It Don't Bother Me, he gazes side-on at the camera, tousled and inscrutable, while on the floor a tall-haired, panda-eyed female friend slouches on an old mattress.
Beverley Kutner soon to be Beverley Martyn
I'm so busy contemplating my stupidity I forgot ...
Happy Birthday, Parenthetical!
Stephen Fry's rather long bit on Jobs:
Only dullards crippled into cretinism by a fear of being thought pretentious could be so dumb as to believe that there is a distinction between design and use, between form and function, between style and substance. If the unprecedented and phenomenal success of Steve Jobs at Apple proves anything it is that those commentators and tech-bloggers and "experts" who sneered at him for producing sleek, shiny, well-designed products or who denigrated the man because he was not an inventor or originator of technology himself missed the point in such a fantastically stupid way that any employer would surely question the purpose of having such people on their payroll, writing for their magazines or indeed making any decisions on which lives, destinies or fortunes depended.
33/34/35 - in fact, I am going to Sheffield this weekend (to see Dominic West and Clarke Peters in Othello - great excitement in the asilon household) and so Chris is leaving the country to avoid us.
We got our first computer in 1980 or 81 - a Sharp MZ80K - which was about a million years before anyone else I knew. My dad wrote us hundreds of crazy games for it, when he wasn't paying us 1/2 p a line to type in machine code for him. No one had a computer when I went to Oxford in 1989, although the College had a brand new computer room.
Before Bob builds a dog house, he forges a hammer and nails, and before he forges the hammer and nails, he refines the steel, and before he refines the steel, he mines the ore, and before he mines the ore, he makes himself a pick. I don't know with what, though.
But that's how the good people do it. Shows values.
I think it's easy to conflate Apple's design philosophy--about which I think ttaM & Sifu have it right; it's more (though not exclusively) about sensible defaults than about welding the hood shut--with Apple's business and legal strategy, which every since iTunes has been 100% about control and lockdown. We can applaud the former while still being deeply frightened by the latter. I can, anyway.
our first computer, circa 1985, was a Mac. Oh, how I loved playing Lode Runner and Pac Man
I remember playing a ton of Lode Runner, but I can't remember if it was on a Commodore 64 or a PC. Pac Man I associate almost entirely with arcades that I didn't go to very often.
He was eaten by a grue.
I remember borrowing my dad's HP calculator to play Hunt The Wumpus on it.
I remember borrowing my dad's HP calculator to play Hunt The Wumpus on it.
The internet is amazing sometimes. Here is the source and description of Hunt The Wumpus for the HP-41C.
re: 73
Yeah, re: business strategy. I have lots of complaints about Apple [iTunes is something we've discussed in another thread], and I'd agree re: some of their larger scale strategic decisions.
However, the alleged black box nature of their OS isn't one of them. If you want to fire up a bash shell, install xcode, and start compiling software, or tinkering about with the OS, you can. Sensibly, it works perfectly well for those users who don't want to and/or aren't able to.
The game in 76 sounds fucking awesome. How come no one makes games like that anymore?
I wonder, if everyone clicked on "inappropriate grouping" for everything Facebook decided to group if they would stop grouping stories? I'd kind of like "my" front page not to be dominated by yesterday's posts.
"Ease of Use" implies lack of control.
At most, it implies that users voluntarily cede control. Others have pointed out how customizable Macs are. I'd point out that good ol' capitalism allows us to choose an alternative - something that most folks, in fact, did.
One thing that many Jobs eulogies have overlooked: Windows would suck a lot more were it not for Jobs.
I was very handy with MS-DOS back in the day, but let's face it, Windows '95 was the first tolerable Microsoft OS, and that wouldn't have happened without Jobs.
80 is probably overstating things a bit. Windows wouldn't be exactly what it is today without Jobs, but surely, if not for Jobs, someone else would have figured out that there's a market for computers that are at least somewhat intuitive to use. And Windows would no doubt have copied whoever that was.
I absolutely hated the switch from MS-DOS to Windows '95, and delayed it as long as possible. (Sometime after the introduction of Windows '98.) Mostly because I'd preferred DOS to the earlier versions of Windows, which were basically crippled versions of DOS, presented visually.
and that wouldn't have happened without Jobs.
Arguable. Scully in the interview says the Apple stayed too long with RISC architecture as CISC chips were coming up. In the 80s, they needed to offload routines and procedures to ROM in order to get the GUI to work at all.
Point being, when the chips got hotter, Microsoft adjusted to what was possible. But using 4dos, building my own nested menus (arrows and enter key is just too hard for folks? Or punch "Z" to play Zork?) and those systems felt like lightning.
You could fucking write programs for PC's in the 80s that ran, fast, and were fun or productive. And the world wrote them.
Jobs always aimed at an elitist boutique crowd who want to feel superior. IPhone as petty bourgeois status marker. And he got his premium by being different, not better, but convincing his buyers they were better.
Apple:half the speed for twice the price.
I remember doing very well with Windows 3.? and finding Windows 95 to be teh suck.
I kept trying to figure out what sort of elaborately indirect comments people were trying to make here about the "the new riddle of induction" until I realized "grue" might be ambiguous.
GUI's are easier to use as long as what the user wants to do is very limited and simple. Rise above the idiot-proof, and you at the least need nested menus.
In turn, I think GUI's have limited most people's understanding of what they can do on a computer. Jobs did change what people want.
Gates and Open Unix on the other hand, and other open architectures, have a completely different concept of what computers can do. Gates was a programmer. Jobs was a salesman.
The ITune model was the APPLE model from the very beginning. Profoundly limit software possibilities so people are dependent on your hardware.
Jobs from the early 80s looked at the competition and knew he couldn't make machines as big or as powerful as IBM-Dos or the Sun Unix world.
Since he would stay small, he had to come up with a way to get high margins. It was always about boutique sales, of convincing people that only Calvin Klein jeans or Air Jordans will do.
"Open Unix"? Do you actually know anything at all about operating systems, bob?
And Windows would no doubt have copied whoever that was.
There's an economic determinism built into this assumption that I think is mistaken. Technological advances don't have to happen on any particular timetable, or at all - and I'd characterize Jobs' chief accomplishments as design advances, which I'd argue are even more dependent on individual achievement.
Was the mouse pre-destined to happen? I'd say no, but even if I'm wrong about that, it seems likely that it would have happened a lot more slowly without Jobs.
I believe the joke at the time was "Windows '95 = Mac '86," and I think that's about right. And even if we are going to assume that Mac '86 would have happened eventually, it would have taken a lot longer without Jobs.
Gates was a programmer. Jobs was a salesman.
I do think you've captured the core of our disagreement here. Gates was a programmer, Jobs was a designer.
Just imagine what the Mac OS would look like if it had gone down the route UNIX route!
90:Not really.
The top end haute couture designers don't actually add any value, their annual creations aren't better clothes. Design for high margins is where Jobs belongs. Like Calvin Klein. Sales. Bullshit artists.
"Windows '95 = Mac '86,"
Who thinks that design that decreases or inhibits functionality is progress? You are freaking nuts if you think Microsoft machines were ten years behind Apple circa 1990. That is a freaky overestimation of the importance of "waycool"
Microsoft did the work of America, then the world, and still is at an 80% share.
Just asked the Lady about Apples in the business world. She is in financial services Fortune 500.
"They don't exist."
Toys for Yuppies.
91 to 86
What part of Gates's persona as a "programmer" has anything to do with why and how Microsoft became successful?
Why I am being successfully trolled by an expert in Ancient Egyptian history with a resentment towards charismatic cool-kid types?
Do you actually know anything at all about operating systems, bob?
Cough, cough. Qui bono?
90: Gates was a programmer, Jobs was a designer.
No, Gates is a guy who knows some programming, but more importantly, knows how to defraud, crush, humiliate and buy out his competition. Jobs was a guy who knew some design, but more importantly, knew how to combine design and marketing strategies in a way that made the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
They're both guys who knew/know that you don't get very far in business if you take much time to care about the actual lives and happiness of your workers and consumers.
How many parts per million of cadmium are each of us, thanks to their work?
The picture the NYTimes has on this article, at least right now, is hilarious. Perfectly consistent with my impression of Sweden, as formed by Ingmar Bergman films. Swedish poet after hearing he won the Nobel Prize: looks dour, resigned to the bleakness of life.
In grade school, there were Apple II somethings. I had a Tandy. Then I had an IBM PS/2 which was a hand-me down from my Dad's defunct business in highschool. Unfortunately he got the one without Word Perfect installed. The husband of my dormmaster installed Windows 3.0 on that, and I used Microsoft Write for years. (By my Senior year of high school the computer lab was all Macs.) Getting a Gateway with Word on it midway through Freshman year of college was a huge, because I didn't have to number footnotes manually.
I used Windows 3.0 from 1990 to 1993 and 3.11 from 94-97. 3.11 was just fine. Vista seemed to well and truly suck. Windows NT seemed more solid than the consumer thing.
99:It is not cool to make fun of people who have had a stroke.
I googled Transtromer last night and almost added some links here. I liked his poetry, what I read, a lot.
16: Whenever I see something talking about how Windows/the Mac brought computing to the rest of us so that secretaries could use the magical boxes, I wince. Secretaries were the only office workers in the early '80s who knew how to use computers!
Good times. We secretaries (or rather, temp workers, in my case) parlayed that into a living back then. DOS was pretty much decipherable only to the few. I declined to actually get a mouse for a quite a while whenever Windows something launched. As a result of all this, the lay Mac fans I know now, in current times, who declare with stars in their eyes that Macs are just so *easy* to use, you see!!! have me nodding absent-mindedly. Uh-huh. That's nice, dear.
99:It is not cool to make fun of people who have had a stroke.
Oops. I didn't read the article.
92: On the clothing point, it varies a lot.
I used to assume that because some of the fancier stuff was no better, this meant that I could find everything I wanted at the lower prices. But that's not actually true. Better clothing is made from softer, smoother fabric, with less disruptive seams, both of which make it easier to get something that matches your shape without being uncomfortably tight. Levi's was always just a little uncomfortable and rough, but my Diesel and Joe's look like they were made just for me.
Same with shirts - the good cotton almost always fits better.
Might be different for a lot of women's clothing, though. Or the super-trendy items in general.
The fact that mac products generally look so much nicer than there competitors has never really meant much to me. (Because I'm a Philistine.) But the fact that they actually work as they're designed to work (at least generally) matters a lot. That may not be a high standard, but it's one the competition has consistently failed to live up to.
Further from parsimon, GUI interfaces made it plausible & eventually fashionable to get rid of secretaries, travel agents, journal volumes.
106: Cheap pants have a zipper that doesn't go down as far making it harder to be sure you have shaken out all the extra urine.
You kid, but I pee in my suits almost every day.
Have secretaries and office managers and executive assistants been gotten rid of? I didn't realize that; I haven't been in a professional office environment for some time. My sense had been that executives still don't like to do that stuff themselves.
112: Certainly secretaries and office managers are still very common. I don't move in a world where people have executive assistants.
From poets.org
Outskirts
by Tomas Tranströmer
translated by Robert Bly
Men in overalls the same color as earth rise from a ditch.
It's a transitional place, in stalemate, neither country nor city.
Construction cranes on the horizon want to take the big leap,
but the clocks are against it.
Concrete piping scattered around laps at the light with cold tongues.
Auto-body shops occupy old barns.
Stones throw shadows as sharp as objects on the moon surface.
And these sites keep on getting bigger
like the land bought with Judas' silver: "a potter's field for
burying strangers."
This guy got haiku.
Isn't Robert Bly the guy who went all in on a kind of whiny manliness-by-poem that made people long for the patriarchy?
109: I've always thought that men's wish to just shake themselves off, or dry, was kind of silly. Do you really think you're going to shake it all off? Why not use a couple of squares of toilet paper to dry off when finished?
I understand that this is unmanly, especially when standing at a urinal, but it really seems kind of silly; I don't see how you can't expect that you won't be getting pee on your pants, ultimately.
It seems perhaps relevant to a conversation I only half grasped upthread to mention that Bill Gates was a terrible programmer, and Jobs was actually an okay programmer (not at the level of Woz). Mostly Gates stole other people's software and then invented the idea of copyrighting it.
116: I don't see how TP helps with the problem I'm talking about. Or helps at all. When the zipper doesn't go down all the way, your penis goes up and out of your pants leaving a dip in the middle. That dip will drain as soon as you start to make yourself presentable because when you put the end in your pants because it is pointing straight down. If you have nice pants, the zipper goes down farther and this isn't a problem.
Certainly secretaries and office managers are still very common.
In the work environments I'm most familiar with there are far, far fewer secretaries as a percentage of total employees compared to when I started in the workforce. I'd say 1/5 to 1/4, something in that neighborhood.
120: True, but there's not many fewer than when I started in the workforce.
There are 1/5 as many, sorry. The ratio is about 1/60 employees in our area.
118: Ah. Well, what's the weird problem with the design of the cheaper pants, then? Why do they make the zipper go only halfway down? I had no idea of this problem. Are they trying to make people who wear cheaper pants have smelly crotches?!
How much more confusing could I have made 120? None. None more confusing.
115:That's about all I know about Robert Bly too.
But...
in reference to the Susan Sontag description of Zen culture mentioned above, which I am not ready to necessarily agree with, there is possibly room to study whether Imagist, Deep Image, and a lot of classic Japanese poetry, poetry with an emphasis on nouns, concrete images, lacking abstraction, avoiding personal expression, etc is in some subtle ways sexist, macho, an indication of repression, personal or social, and possibly authoritarian.
How much more confusing could Moby have made 118?
126: Yes, now I find myself thinking of the many potential meanings of "penis dip".
Like hummus.
The key, Moby, is to just leave your dick out 'til it air dries.
126: I could have used a euphemism for penis and spelled zipper wrong.
122: I'd say we're maybe 1/20 to 1/30 depending on what you count as my area. Only a couple of people have a secretary, but departments and offices have them.
Bill Gates was a terrible programmer, and Jobs was actually an okay programmer (not at the level of Woz)
I hear things like this all the time, and I have to wonder how people know these things. Is it just a generally known "truth" in the programming community, presumably (one hopes) passed down from people who had occasion to observe the programming skills of both? (Or, all three, I guess.) Or do programmers today go back and study computer codes written decades ago by superstars of the genre, the same way that chess players study old games of the grandmasters, hoping for new insights and inspiration?
116: I don't see how t. tissue helps with the thinger I'm talking about. Or helps. At all. When the nipper doesn't go down all the way, your lizard goes up and out of your pants leaving a hump in the middle. Aforesaid will drain as soon as you start to make yourself fancy because when you put the end in your pants because it is pointing because straight down. If you have because pants, the nipper goes down farther and this isn't a thinger.
131: it's lore, more or less, but the early Microsoft software (the stuff Gates actually wrote) had a reputation for being buggy crap (and was often stolen from other people -- that's not lore as much as well-reported fact). As far as Jobs it's a little hazier, but he was a well-respected member of the homebrew computer club and did shit like building blue boxes and programming an Altair; he might not have been (almost certainly wasn't) a programming genius, but it's not like he didn't know how to code.
Picture a hose with point A as the draining end, point C as the end from which the hose is filled, and point B as the midpoint between A and C. Assume that A is below C but above B. If fluid travels from C to A, upon cessation of fluid flow, there will still be residual amount of fluid gathered around B. Now assume that A is suddenly lowered so that the altitude of A
You aren't really talking about a hose, are you?
Air drying is not going to help with the dribble problem Moby describes. The only thing for it is to become a sitting peeer. Urinater. Y'all had a term for a man who sits to pee, but I've forgotten what it is.
Air drying is not going to help with the dribble problem Moby describes
It will if you jump up and down on your way out of the bathroom.
Every time I explain something, I get "Revise and Resubmit."
I sense that people might not believe me, but all I can say is give it a try.
Tastes great! Less filling! Tastes great! Less filling!
Can we do TGIFridays and Applebees next?
Huh, I see the conversation shifted radically since I last refreshed. 142 applies just as well to urination, I guess.
Hah, I totally thought 142 was the ToS being weirdly random and pretending to be apo.
109: I think this is just a more idiomatic version of 145, but there are often a couple of drops clinging to the tip (or maybe just inside the urethra - I haven't done an examination), so it's not all residue you're shaking off, but a decent chunk of it.
Also urinals don't have toilet paper by them.
It's easy enough to solve this problem by just dropping your pants entirely when you step up to the urinal. Or, fuck it, shuck 'em off and burn 'em. What, you square?
138 made me laugh.
Yeah, dropping your pants entirely is the only way. And then jump up and down for a bit.
Y'all had a term for a man who sits to pee, but I've forgotten what it is.
Dammit, I thought we covered this already. The term was "guy who will be dumped by piminnowcheez after first date."
I guess a shorter term would be useful.
People look at you funny when you use the electric hand blowers, but it's really the only way to be sure.
Wait, so what you all are saying is that guys end up dribbling a little in their pants all the time? And that's why they don't bother using toilet paper--because it's pointless?
Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly.
150: That's why those new Dyson dryers are so popular.
The first rule of Urinal Club is: you do not talk about Urinal Club.
The second rule of Urinal Club is: Pay attention to the floor, but not so much that you go straight to the obvious (and OCD-inducing) implications of what you see.
I'm not getting the geometry of 134. "Assume that A is below C but above B"?
And on the other current topic: Certainly secretaries and office managers are still very common. I don't move in a world where people have executive assistants.
My title is officially "executive assistant," which is really a hold-over position because the executive I am assisting is almost 80 and computer illiterate. (He has, however, become convinced that he needs an iPhone--nobody is exactly sure what he thinks he will do with one.) In actuality, that part of my job takes up about 20% of my time, and the rest of it is copywriting, editing, office management, research, proposal writing, and corporate strategy. I need a raise.
I recently read a Dorothy Sayers novel set in an ad company (a field related to my company) in the 1930s. As with many detective novels, the interesting part was the detailed local color. The number of people involved in producing the material was just wonderful to me. A room full of typists! Multiple typesetters! A layout man! All of that stuff has been so streamlined these days that I could imagine Sayers's 100-plus company condensed to a 10-person firm, max.
I'm not sure the productivity gains have been so great for the workers, though.
There are other traditional techniques, but I guess you aren't supposed to have that much fun in the men's room.
158: I think he's putting a kink in the hose.
153.--Nobody answer that.
Okay, my last vestige of penis envy has now been blown away.
Jammies says he's never had a pair of pants where the zipper was too short for him to get his penis aimed down, and exactly how high do you all wear your pants?
I recently read a Dorothy Sayers novel set in an ad company (a field related to my company) in the 1930s.
Murder Must Advertise! My favorite.
Seriously Jackmormon, there's a whole lot of urethra that men have after the urethral sphincter (especially among the commenters here, of course), and toilet paper doesn't touch any of that. So it's either the hand blower or slapping it vigorously against the urinal.
Below the belly button is for wets and unionists.
158: Picture a cosine wave. Point A is cos(0). Point B is cos(π). Point C is cos(2π).
165: good call with the ixnaying on the owbeeflay. Women needn't know that.
I suppose I'm not clear on why Moby doesn't pull the entire trousers down an additional few inches, so that his johnson can rest easy, and then be thwacked free of dribbles like the penises inside fancy-pants high rollers' fancy pants.
163: That we made you ask is kind of great, in a kind of not great way.
171: I do, but when I had nicer pants, I didn't have to. It's a pain to readjust everything.
It doesn't just descend eventually if you're patient?
Is this whole idea that men are speedier in the bathroom than women are a result of men's willingness to dribble in their pants?
I had not been aware of this.
Wait, now you're all slapping your penises vigorously against the urinal?
Oh, I see. You're not. That's a relief. I'd be the last to suggest wearing a pad in your underwear: unmanly, that.
I figure this is why men seem to do a lot more laundry than women.
I'm surprised to learn that getting the dribbles out is akin to whacking a sugar packet against a table, but that's now the image in my head and I won't be convinced otherwise.
175: Pants and the floor of the bathroom.
Slapping it against the floor of the bathroom is considered boastful and unseemly.
In poor taste, I suppose. You know who had good taste? Steve Jobs.
Wait, so what you all are saying is that guys end up dribbling a little in their pants all the time? And that's why they don't bother using toilet paper--because it's pointless?
That is correct, at urinals.
So at home men wait it out patiently?
What you all need is a winding spool, akin to wrapping a tube of toothpaste around a pencil, to help you ease this affliction. Or what about two windshield squeeges bound together? Like a clothes wringer? A solution definitely exists.
Facebook could have told you that, JM.
I'm also still surprised to learn that pulling your pants down a few minutes is considered a major readjustment.
Those rich people. I should write a NYT article about how zipper length is slipping for the most ritzy high end of all pissers.
123: A few hypotheses:
1) Maybe zipper is more labor/time/material intensive per inch than seam is
2) Maybe lengthening the zipper leads to other structural complications elsewhere that are expensive to implement. I know that my fancy pants are generally looser in that area.
If you have really baggy pants, steady nerves, and no shoes, you can just to down the leg to the ground.
Semi-related question for non-boxeronians. Does anyone over the age of twelve use the fly on briefs? They are utterly useless in my experience. Pulling down the waistband can result in the geometry which Moby finds so problematic, but everything else from digging it out to putting it away is worse if you actually use the fly. But I've never compared notes with anyone on it.
Benquo, check David Page Coffin on the topic. Google books gave me some great excerpts.
189: It does seem germane to the point under discussion.
189.--I know that my dad has actually asked my mom to sew up the flap on briefs before, so you're not totally alone.
192: And some (usually the low-cut ones) do not even have one.
Of course nobody uses the fly. That's just an excuse to put an extra layer of absorbent material there.
194: They should put a packet of silica gel in there.
Those packets always say "Do Not Eat," which could be a useful warning.
194.last is awesome. I'm glad you guys are having this discussion amongst yourselves.
And there was no doubt about it!
I think I use the fly occasionally, if I don't feel like undoing my belt, or if the pants are elaborate enough that it's a pain to unfasten them.
I'm glad you guys are having this discussion amongst yourselves.
This could be the discussion that ends the recession!
I pretty much never use the flies. Much easier to just pull down the front and piss away. The dribbling thing mostly happens when you're in a hurry.
In or hurry or drunk. That's most of life.
Well if you do it while it's still in then you have a serious dribbling problem.
Ogged once posted a video that, while not intended for this purpose, could be used as instruction for a penis draining method not yet considered on this thread. I can't find it, as any search terms I can think of return far too many results.
Ogged didn't invent blowjobs, Eggie.
If the video was actually about blowjobs, then I just made the joke explicit. Good work, Heebs.
Is it the hand stretched idea? Because that would be effective and hard to search for.
It was not about BJs. Don't be so self-congratulatory.
205: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7E7P8XaE7k
I suppose this is the jobs thread, after all.
213: We ate squid every Christmas Eve and now the memories of cleaning the squid seem tainted.
"Memories of Cleaning the Squid" should be the title of your memoirs.
Steve jobs work like this, Stephanie jobs work like this.
IT WAS A VIDEO OF MALE STRIPPERS TWIRLING THEIR THINGEES.
If by moustaches you mean lizards, yes.
165: So it's either the hand blower
I was at a downtown Irish bar a few weeks ago with a female friend. We were waiting to go and volunteer at a rich people event. Before we left for that, we hit the restrooms. Apparently, in her restroom, there were some young women who had managed to get their breasts wet somehow, and were using the super-sonic handdriers to attempt to dry them off. Baphomet strike me down if I'm lying.
189: I do. I find underwear that doesn't have a fly annoying.
I used to have a set of boxer-brief underwear - it was a four pack or six pack - that had an intelligently designed fly. Instead of the annoying criss cross, they made it so the fabric overlapped vertically so the opening would line up horizontally and you never had to struggle with it. I've never been able to find anything like that again and I've been looking.
Actually, I think I might have seen that design again once, but the underwear was too expensive.
226: Jockey makes underwear that has that kind of fly. But yeah, it's expensive.
133
... and was often stolen from other people -- that's not lore as much as well-reported fact ...
First I've heard of this. Are you talking about the code Microsoft bought from Seatle Computer Products ?
99: holy shit that is awesome.
Also: woo Tigers!
I've always thought that men's wish to just shake themselves off, or dry, was kind of silly. Do you really think you're going to shake it all off? Why not use a couple of squares of toilet paper to dry off when finished?
Hey, I'm with you, but apparently (RTFA) even sitting down makes you so unmanly as to be undateable. So it's my secret (or not, oops!) shame.
I feel like it was somehow cosmically appropriate that I learned of Jobs' death while I was in Noisebridge, watching the first lecture of the intro MIT compsci class.
201: this could be the thread that ends blowjobs. except for sitzpinklers, who sound hella attractive right now.
No, I've been paying attention to Moby - the moral of the story is don't shag men wearing cheap trousers. So always examine a man's flies very carefully before deciding whether to take things any further.
I think the whole "shaking off" principle is unsound. I'm going for the guy that sits down and uses toilet paper. I've had to pee in Asian squat toilets without TP loads of times and the result is that you have a little bit of piss in your underwear, and ain't no amount of shaking going to change that. I admit the topology is variant, but I think the principle remains.
If you go commando, you can avoid all of that inconvenient urine getting on your underwear.
236.last: Certainly. But du-uh, underwear!
I used a squat toilet (not in Asia) and I just stood beside it and pretended it was a funny urinal. It was hard to miss the feet-stand things.
I'm going for the guy that sits down and uses toilet paper.
The anatomy doesn't change by virtue of sitting down. Toilet paper does nothing for male urination.
I always use the fly. Always. Are you some sort of barbarian?
What men really need are those suction straws like they have at dentists' offices. Except, not at public urinals, because that would be disgusting.
Hmm, what parameters or characteristics would lead some to use the fly and others not to? Must try and think...
If you're trying to imply that your cock can't fit through the fly of your underwear, I don't believe you.
One could contrive to keep the tip elevated, perhaps with the aid of cleverly designed underwear or maintain high blood pressure in the organ itself. Or use a clamp.
Penises are like some code overlay nightmare from the days of 64K physical memory limits.
The anatomy doesn't change by virtue of sitting down.
Doesn't allowing it to dangle promote more complete draining? If I understood 118 and 134 correctly (which is debatable) part of the issue would be solved by that.
Toilet paper does nothing for male urination.
I disagree. There is a wicking or blotting effect.
248: yes, with ease, if we're talking about the physical limits imposed by the comparative sizes of the two. I suppose it's possible you're not very skilled at maneuvering your cock through relatively tight spaces, which is a different sort of problem.
250: OK, so manual dexterity, or lack thereof, is a candidate for one of the characteristics. Too tight pants or underwear might be others. There may be more.
Next time you're at a fast food establishment and you finish your drink, take the straw and lid off and set it on your table like so. Eventually, a drop or two of leftover soda is going to roll out of it, and a plastic straw is far more hydrophobic and open to the air than a male urethra. Dabbing the end of the straw with your napkin isn't going to change this.
I pee in my pants all the time! PEE PEE PEE PEE PEE PEE PEE!
I'm actually not sure how one would even go about not using the fly. Do you pull the briefs (and, presumably, your pants) down entirely? That's a lot of work. Or do you pull the whole crotch off to the side? Because I've certainly tried that, and it's always seemed a lot less comfortable (in exactly the sort of "too restrictive" ways you're suggesting lead you away from the fly). I supposed maybe you could literally hold the underwear off to the side for the duration of the event. But wouldn't you need an extra hand for that? (Or a manservant, I guess, but let's assume for now that's out of our price range.)
But in the narrow confines of the urethra surely capillary action comes into play. I feel that controlled studies are necessary.
249: "Wicking effect?" I don't even want to know.
Do you pull the briefs [...] down entirely?
Just the front. It's far less work (and much, much faster) than fumbling around with a fly. The only real added labor is refastening your belt afterward.
255: Perhaps you underestimate just how much urethra some of us are working with, OoM.
254: Zipper down, and then right thumb hooked over the waistband pulled down the slot in the pants created by opening the fly to a position beneath the bottom side of the penis. With some pants with bad flies need to open the whole belt and waistband.
259: In fact, as I get older I find I am more likely to undo the belt/wasitband entirely.
249
I disagree. There is a wicking or blotting effect
This is correct.
Okay, I just went to the bathroom and tried 257. I don't understand how fastening and unfastending your belt and the buttons on your pants could possibly be either less work or faster than just unzipping your pants. There's definitely a loss of efficiency. OTOH, I'll admit that the urination itself felt uncharacteristically free. Like the difference between a shirt buttoned up with a tie vs. an open collar.
I'll have to drink some more coffee before I can try 259.
You guys are writing about pissing all over Steve Jobs's thread. Disgraceful.
262: I wear buttonfly jeans most days.
I love urple's can-do spirit and willingness to experiment.
265: okay, but don't you have to undo that either way?
Yes, so by the time I've undone them, it's much easier to just flop my junk over the top of the lowered waistband than to try to wrangle it through an underwear panel. Also, as you've noticed, it makes one a much freer peer.
247 does not seem, to me, to have been convincingly addressed. the claim that a single drop of pee is going to come out in your pants 2 minutes later seems a separate one from the original question of whether your johnson was regularly returned to your pants possibly covered in tiny droplets after a desultory shake. if the former is a genuine problem I find it impossibly to believe the american advertising hegemony has failed to produce male pantiliners with the suggestion that they would solve the problems faced by dudes with huge cocks.
regularly returned to your pants possibly covered in tiny droplets after a desultory shake
I don't remember this claim being made, but I may have just skimmed over it.
263: I'm on a call or I'd see which of the two variants I'd do with these pants. I honestly don't know without actually standing in front of the urinal. Hurriedness is a factor as well. The non-belt -loosening method is certainly more prone to the problem of residual liquid being outwardly wicked to the amusement and/or horror of random passer-by.
OK, off the call and science calls.
Perhaps you underestimate just how much urethra some of us are working with, OoM.
Don't make me challenge you to a `pantsdown showdown', Apo. With the firepower we have between us, only the vultures would win.
I'll admit that the urination itself felt uncharacteristically free. Like the difference between a shirt buttoned up with a tie vs. an open collar.
I'm envisioning this developing into something like a wine-review column.
268: ah, that makes sense. I'm not sure I have the luxury of spending quite that much time in the bathroom daily. I'm usually a get-in-and-get-out kind of guy (which is why I always end up with pee running down my pant legs.)
I wore nicer pants today after reading asilon's comment.
failed to produce male pantiliners
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/81/81blaffs.phtml
Apple underwear gives you one way to pee, but it's the right way.
You want to know what is difficult? Trying to pee standing up while your (5'7") daughter grabs your shoulder to pull you out of the bathroom. The little witch gives me no peace.
Turns out I am not completely self-aware at the detailed level.
Belt stayed buckled with these pants. Unzip with right hand, hitch pants slightly up with left while right thumb and index finger hook waistband of briefs and pull down and a bit to the right (pulling the pants fly a bit to the right as they do so). Simultaneously, middle finger of left hand pulls left side of pants fly further open while left index finger and thumb gently cradle and aim penis.
Unfogged: The Internet's #1 Source for Crowd-Sourced Cock Science.
For some reason I just started reading the Steve Jobs thread at CT. Jesus, what's with the vitriol?
I'm electric! Boogie oogie oogie.
283: It is hilariously bad. Who cares about SJ when Gl/e/nn Greenwald and Ch/o/msky and mountains make life worth living!*
*This is barely paraphrased.
I don't think that comparison holds at all. Jobs produced attractive things that worked as designed and made people's lives better, and his rivals emulated him and produced similarly attractive and useful things. Le Corbusier was a hideous curse on the building trade and his followers were vandals who turned lovely cities into (often literally) uninhabitable wastelands. It wouldn't be so bad if his unspeakably ugly machines for living in had actually worked as machines for living in, but they didn't. Hate.
Corbusier built some of the most indisputably beautiful buildings in the world (Ronchamp, Chandigarh, the villas and the Unite d'Habitation), and they are now some of the nicest places to live. If you could afford it, which of course you can't, a Corbusier house would be the most lovely dwelling. And if you think Corbusier's followers turned lovely cities into uninhabitable wastelands, you literally don't have a clue about the state of European cities at the turn of the century, nor do you know that the one city Corbusier can actually be credited with, Chandigarh, is well known as one of the few successful new cities.
Corbusier built some of the most indisputably beautiful buildings in the world
Beauty isn't really indisputable. Ronchamp is hideous. And Chandigarh may well be a well-planned city, I don't know - I'm not saying Corbusier wasn't a good city planner, though it has to be said that the ideas of his followers normally took form as "lots of high-rise blocks of flats surrounded by big open spaces and motorways running right into the centre of town" which is not exactly a concept that is universally praised. But Chandigarh's principal civic buildings look like multi-storey car parks. The Unités inspired brutalist blocks around the world which mostly turned out to be not only ugly but also miserable places to live in.
I went to see a pretty large Corbusier exhibit and came out of thinking that he was basically a loon who built a lot of terrible buildings for no good reason. I do not think this was the intended point of the exhibit.
The only Le Corbusier building that I've been in (playing tourist) is the Carpenter Center at Harvard. Not a grabber like (say) Fallingwater or the Lawn at UVA. But my visit was short, and I always wonder how it would be to work/live in such buildings for a protracted time.
I like that building okay from the outside, at least. Like many architects, it seems like he did better the more constraints he was placed under.
291: Maybe we need the architectural equivalent of Junkyard Wars.
Like many architectsartists, it seems like he did better the more constraints he was placed under.
293: more generally, yes, sure.
If you could afford it, which of course you can't, a Corbusier house would be the most lovely dwelling.
To my almost certain knowledge, Corbu did not design men's underwear.
283: I haven't read the CT thread, but it would take a great deal of vitriol to be worse than this.
Unless you were a man looking for peeing tips, of course.
Can I request that people not google-proof Chomsky's name in the future? I'd be really happy if the founder of modern linguistics and world's greatest radicalizer of teenagers found his way here because he was doing vanity searches on his own name.
296: Yeah, this is a great fucking thread, you fucking ingrate. And don't forget bob expanding his horizons as sysadmin for the common man.
Every building by Corbusier should be blown up, and his name should be stricken from the public record, the way commissars who fell out with Stalin were.
300: So, Walt, who do you hate more, Steve Jobs or Le Corbusier? I can tell you're bring the true hate to this thread, while bob is just being a conscientious troll.
Ralph Rapson's brutalist New-Town-In-Town extravagance, the Riverside Plaza towers, is getting a $93 million dollar refurbishment right now. They put new colored panels up on several of the buildings, and now it is looking quite spiffy.
His Rarig Center on the U of Minn campus is a very pleasant building to be in, I have always thought.
Like so much of modernism in architecture, Corbusier worked great for a couple of showpiece structures, but his influence had a totally disastrous effect -- like, genuinely disastrous, literally setting up spaces that substantially harmed people's lives --when applied broadly and in a world with post WWII limitations on craftsmanship and housing shortages.
296, 299: And don't forget the litotes the architect hate.
303: spaces that substantially harmed people's lives
Yeah, while the Riverside Plaza development has some problems, it's a workers' paradise compared to those tower blocks on the outskirts of Paris and other European cities. Did anyone really believe that would be better for poor people? It seems like it must've mostly been part of a tacit agreement to segregate the poor away from the tourist spots, but who knows? Perhaps some of those planners & architects & politicians actually believed that strategy would be successful and positive for everyone involved. Seems unlikely though.
247: No! Stop advocating for sitzpinkling. I can't have this practice spreading.
I didn't think dribbling was such a common problem except maybe for old guys. My 70-something boss sometimes comes out of the gents' with a big dark spot, which gives me a secret and shameful pleasure, because I hate him. But anyway, both the age and volume suggest a urinary sphincter problem, not errant droplets.
Flies: I always use 'em on boxers, never on briefs. I remember as a little kid being confused as hell at how they were even supposed to work on briefs. They still feel unnecessarily complicated when you've really gotta go.
Speaking of urban planning and poor people, I just attended a talk about Youngstown's housing market and the plan to try to save the city by encouraging people to occupy and maintain machines for living in certain areas while letting the other areas swing in the wind.
encouraging people to occupy and maintain machines for living in certain areas while letting the other areas swing in the wind.
Most confusing Moby comment since 118.
"Do you have a urinary sphincter problem, or ar you just really glad to see me?"
Is it supposed to be "hang in the wind" or "swing in the breeze" or something. Anyway, Youngstown has issues.
Call it "Youngstowne" and it still has issues, but it does look classier by a small margin.
301: Corbusier. I have neutral towards Jobs until about 8 hours into the hagiography. I have a desk job, though, so hatred on the Internet is the only real exercise I get.
I have a desk job, though, so hatred on the Internet is the only real exercise I get.
I judge you're in pretty good shape.
310: But what are the "machines"? Front-end loaders? Giant lathes? James Traficant-style political ones?
247: No! Stop advocating for sitzpinkling. I can't have this practice spreading.
Dude, nobody judges you for having a pee fetish, but don't make it like a thing.
315: Wasn't Corbusier the guy who called houses "machines for living"?
317: Ah, and so he did. I, however, read it more as, "to occupy and maintain machines, for living in certain areas". Hence 308.
Anyway, apparently Youngstown somehow got worse after 2000.
306: I remember as a little kid being confused as hell at how they were even supposed to work on briefs. They still feel unnecessarily complicated when you've really gotta go.
You mean you don't have a prehensile penis that opens the fly on your briefs itself? That must be inconvenient.
prehensile penis
This is a very troubling image.
322: I think all of us penis-havers should be thankful that they're not prehensile and prone to pursuing their own goals. Talk about trouble.
316: is a fetish not already like a thing?
Y'all weren't kidding. That CT Jobs thread is nasty.
This thread is my first exposure to someone with such an intense hatred for Le Corbusier. It's unexpectedly interesting.
This is a very troubling image.
But not the first time it has come up here.
325: Not following an apo bit.ly link from work, but in duck penis news: "Duck Penis Length Depends on Other Guys".
I think 229 is probably right. Maybe I can still buy them online.
326: Oh, sorry. it's just a google search for "prehensile penis" site:unfogged.com.
Yeah, while the Riverside Plaza development has some problems, it's a workers' paradise compared to those tower blocks on the outskirts of Paris and other European cities. Did anyone really believe that would be better for poor people? It seems like it must've mostly been part of a tacit agreement to segregate the poor away from the tourist spots, but who knows? Perhaps some of those planners & architects & politicians actually believed that strategy would be successful and positive for everyone involved. Seems unlikely though.
Argh you know utterly nothing about Paris do you? By the time Corbusier was working, central Paris was already a planned city, with the poor forced out, and major arterial roads forced through the centre.
In general, it is hard to underestimate the truly atrocious state of workers' housing in early twentieth century Europe; there's a reason that housing policy used to be one of the major weapons of the political left.
But Chandigarh's principal civic buildings look like multi-storey car parks
Well, no. What they look like is what they are: large scale structures designed to function cheaply in a hot climate. They're beautiful because there is no pretence or dishonesty in their construction,
central Paris was already a planned city, with the poor forced out, and major arterial roads forced through the centre.
Arterial roads, yes, but poor forced out, no. Plenty of poor people in central Paris up through the 1970s-1980s.
Which is a point way way past modernist tower blocks; the major issue for central Paris is that central Paris is one of the nicest places to live in the world, there's an artificial undersupply of housing caused by Haussmanist regulations, and therefore housing in central Paris is very expensive. Instead, poor people in the suburbs, because that's affordable.
(The were large relocations of working class Parisians during the redevelopments though, many of which were aimed at moving them away from the centres of political power.)
In general, it is hard to underestimate the truly atrocious state of workers' housing in early twentieth century Europe; there's a reason that housing policy used to be one of the major weapons of the political left.
That's probably true, but it's not like the choice was (a) build an incredibly hideous HLM apartment block in Bobigny that will isolate people and make them miserable for generations or (b) do absolutely nothing.
On a semi-related topic, it's interesting that "gentrification" was originally coined in London and describes something that seems to have happened in Europe about 20 years before it came to the US.
Well, yes, but also it is not true that the options were `build a horrible high-rise' or `build a not high-rise'. It is also possible, and in fact reasonably easy, to build high-rises that are very pleasant to live in, with a community spirit and all that. It does however cost more money than throwing up a Ronan Point does.
That is generally the thing about public housing: it was built badly. If instead of building large high rises, the public housing of the 20th century had been mostly tenements or terraces (the mostly likely other outcomes), we would now be discussing the horrible way in which the terrace lifestyle destroyed community etc etc.
Read the sections on housing in the Road to Wigan Pier. The social atomisation and so on of the `estate' was already starting there, even when the estate was totally non-modernist etc etc.
mostly tenements or terraces (the mostly likely other outcomes), we would now be discussing the horrible way in which the terrace lifestyle destroyed community etc etc.
That, I very strongly disagree with.
my first exposure to someone with such an intense hatred for Le Corbusier
Huh, in the circles in which I used to run -- you know, the kool kidz -- he was pretty much universally deprecated and only occasionally granted a bit of begrudging respect.
Really? Because already by the mid-30s, when Orwell was writing about low rise estates, things like that were starting to be seen, and badly looked after tenements and terraces are truly horrible things.
(Corbusier comes and goes; at the moment he is very much coming back I think, after a period of intense (and in my opinion basically stupid) hatred by post-modernists.
Modernism is basically cool at the moment, especially brutalism, and pomo is really not. (Even Jane Jacobs is not as popular as she was, for good reason.)
(Even Jane Jacobs is not as popular as she was, for good reason.)
Tell me more, iconoclast.
You can just compare nearby areas with lots of tenement or terraced housing to areas where projects were actually built -- not a stretch to say that in general the terraced/tenament areas fared better and have fared better to the present day, preserved community better, and were less isolating for poor folks. Slum housing in Watts vs. the Jordan Downs project is an example that comes to mind for me, but every place and city has others. Which isn't to say that it's awesome to be poor in any kind of housing situation, just that the kind of low-income housing promoted by LeC's followers was particularly shitty.
Vaguely relevant: This is a fantastic movie..
(This is at a very high-end theoretical level, and mostly centred around what I would call the Hatherleyite tendency, but.)
I think the main knock on Jacobs is that she has an idealised just-so story, that basically boils down to liking the Village that she grew up with and that when Jacobs' ideas are put into practice they end up with atrocious new urbanist things. (She also massively romanticises the processes that led to that Village.)
But there's also examples where the opposite happened, so it's slightly stupid to blame it universally on high-rises. Further, high-rises can be built to a very high standard, and in fact Corbusier did build them to a high standard, and it is not fair to blame Corbusier on cheap councils cutting corners.
Also: isn't it funny how high rises are ok for rich people but not poor people?
Hmm, I think it's widely recognized that Jacobs romanticizes a mythical past, and I think, though it's not widely recognized, it's equally fair to say that hers is a just-so story, but I reject and denounce the idea of blaming her for new urbanism. That dipshits like Duany and Plater-Zyberk call her an influence -- and even a friend -- doesn't make their work her fault. I just don't think intellectual lineages work that way.
They exploded all of our poor people high rises. Put in a Target.
Yeah, that part isn't really fair. Still, I don't like a lot of people who like Jacobs, which makes me very suspicious of her.
That's some Joni Mitchell shit right there, Moby.
I lived in a middle class high rise and didn't like it much. Plus, on a square foot basis, it was absurdly expensive.
They're beautiful because there is no pretence or dishonesty in their construction
What would it be for there to be dishonesty in their construction?
Still, I don't like a lot of people who like Jacobs, which makes me very suspicious of her.
This is why I don't own any Miley Cyrus records. (No, I kid. I know what you mean. The cult of Jane Jacobs is embarrassing -- all intellectual cults are, really, aren't they? -- even though I think a lot of what she did and said was wonderful.)
Plus, on a square foot basis, it was absurdly expensive.
Even if you considered that upkeep and other costs -- lawn care, a new roof, hvac -- were spread across a cooperative (I'm assuming)?
What are the examples where tower in the park style housing for poor people worked better than terraces? Not a trick question, maybe you have an example in mind but nothings coming to mind at all for me.
Sure, the irony is that high modernism turned out to work well for the homes of very rich people and offices of major corporations,* and not so great for everyone else.
*aesthetically, much of it is to my personal taste, the problem was scale and integration.
347: For reals. It's supposed to be a special type of Target with the actual store above the parking lot. The big selling point was that all the parking was hidden.
yes and of course I don't really dislike Jacobs as such, I just really really hate the things that flow from bad-Jacobs. (This is also part of the reason I like Corbuiser; because anybody who pisses off the people he does must be on to something.)
What would it be for there to be dishonesty in their construction?
Well, if they were really concrete, but clad to look like marble. Or whatever. Everybody knows what truth-to-materials means, right?
Speaking of Corbu, our four-year-old is having a very hard time dealing with the time-turning plot thread in Prisoner of Azkaban. The idea that Buckbeak wasn't really killed is making him a bit nuts. I mean, he's happy that Hagrid's friend was never "slaughtered" ("Was he slaughtered, daddy? Or wasn't he?), but it's still causing him some serious distress to think about parallel but not conjoined* time streams.
* I'm sure I've got this wrong.
351: Rent on maybe 600 square feet was more than my house payment.
Christ, now he's insisting that I explain "dimensions" to him. Fuck you, Ms. Rowling, and your magical world, too.
352: basically it's somewhere in Hatherley's work, and I can't remember the details. I think it is in his writings on Southampton, but it might be elsewhere. I just remember vividly the forcefulness of the observation that a good high rise can work. Park Hill, for instance, was reasonably successful, and so on.
356: yeah, but what about location and quality of trim? I mean, did you have granite in the high-rent shoebox?
352: It's not really an answer to your question at all, but I grew up in a towers-in-a-park middle-class that worked nicely. They're renting it as luxury housing now because of the location, but when they put it up after WW II the idea was that it would be subsidized for the lower/middle-middle class. And it worked fairly nicely.
So, not low income housing, but also not for 'very rich people'.
I think I'm tired -- that's about as incoherent and repetitive as I've ever managed in three sentences.
359: No granite but the exterior was the great ornate stone facade of the kind the modernists reacted against. You were downtown and that was the attraction. That said, my current neighborhood is much nicer in general.
Also, 14 foot ceilings in the main room, which was really nice.
360: I didn't know you grew up there (I know, I know: rtfa. Whatever.). I have a good friend who lives there now. She's a math professor at FIT, which is sort of a weird gig in some ways, I guess, but she absolutely loves it.
my current neighborhood is much nicer in general
Racist.
Read the sections on housing in the Road to Wigan Pier.
By gum, I think I will.
336: the moments in my life when I was one of, or even had contact with, the kool kidz, have been few and brief. But admittedly cherished.
360: No kidding! I walk past there every day. I have always wondered what it's like now, and what it was like then.
It was pleasant -- little, dull, boxy apartments, but solidly built and clean. And the park surrounding was good -- playgrounds, and lots of big trees by the time I was a kid.
And of course real Jane Jacobs approved streets only a block or so away. It would have sucked without that.
I dunno if Stuy Town really counts as "high-rise," though; isn't it more, well, "middle-rise"? I lived there my first year as a grad student--the buildings are 12 stories, no?
More to the point--and this is where I'm probably just parroting half-digested Jane Jacobin platitudes--I feel like Stuy Town / PCV only works because it's surrounded by so much ground-level retail and mixed-use stuff; IIRC, only the outermost buildings within ST have non-residential stuff, and not even those on the FDR-facing side. A Manhattan that was nothing but Midtown offices and Stuy Town residences would be kind of nightmarish.
Again, I'm pretty ignorant here. I read Ja/mes Sco/tt's Seeing Like a State 10 years ago, which had a bit on high-modernist city planning, and which made the Corbusier-influenced Brasilia out to be a pretty icky place.
And of course real Jane Jacobs approved streets only a block or so away. It would have sucked without that.
I think this is the key. High-rises per se are basically fine, if they're well managed (low-income family high-rises raise signifcant problems that seem to have been hand-waved away in the name of "but why should rich people have all the views" above, but okay). But unless you're talking about Soleri-style arcologies with tons of built in retail and so on , the idea of having them stand amidst broad swathes of unwalkable greenery is anti-humanist and vaguely insane. Which is not to say it couldn't look pretty cool, or that it didn't seem like a good idea for relatively valid reasons (cars are awesome!) at the time.
That said, this? Is the work of an egotistical madman. As an example of that, it's pretty wonderful, but I regard it as spectacularly lucky it never got built.
Yeah, I was going to say that Stuyvesant Town was unusually integrated into a non tower in the park neighborhood, in addition to being always middle class. But it did have an appeal.
OTOH, I find Culture orbitals / GSVs to be very appealing; and Orbitals, at least, seem to often go for the whole "tower in a park" idea. But I think there it's more like "vertical city in a forest"; and anyway, advanced personal transit technology fundamentally changes what counts as "human scale".
I hope I'm the only person who has been in Brasilia and can therefore make up stories about it.
372.last: At least he didn't try to make the island square.
Dear Diary,
Today I learned that Steve Jobs apparently had many interesting associations for some people.
376: A gentleman does not tell that kind of tale.
That said, this? Is the work of an egotistical madman. As an example of that, it's pretty wonderful, but I regard it as spectacularly lucky it never got built.
Yes, whereas the Paris that we got was a Paris designed so you could fire canon along the streets at any pro-democracy protesters. Isn't that great?
It is also true that the tower in a park model is bizarre if taken to the point of not having shops, but then the idea is that the tower has shops in it.
Isn't that great?
In the event, yes.
380: Surely there are no crowd-control measures that might be effected contre the populations of high-rise apartment buildings.
I didn't know you grew up there (I know, I know: rtfa. Whatever.).
I didn't know that either! Whenever I walk by there I always start humming "Don't Worry About the Government," which was used in the musical Boozy when the family moves to Peter Cooper Village.
but then the idea is that the tower has shops in it.
Can that really work? I mean, you can have some shops in your tower, but not many. And then to access shops that aren't in your home tower, you have to go to some other tower for them? It's going to be very different from shops at streetlevel.
I mean, a convenience store in the building and then drive to a mall for real shopping is a workable model, but not an ideal one.
Honestly I prefer cities that skipped the massive redevelopment of Haussmann's Paris -- I personally love a hodgepodge of eras and styles and ideas all crammed densely into a semi-medieval street grid -- but at least that redevelopment was not predicated on the ability of any citizen to travel from place to place at 50+ miles per hour; it preserved walkability nearly accidentally, but it preserved walkability.
No, I mean that I actually probably do think that the construction of present day Paris destroyed a lot of very valuable and important middle ages and later building, and I kinda wish that Haussmann hadn't done so. Somehow though the world does not ring to cries of `down with the boulevards! back to the organic and spontaneous warrens of old Paris! Away with the parks! Back to the rookeries!'
384.1: it strikes me as based on a bafflingly inaccurate model of how commercial development happens. To be fair, a lot of new urbanism seems similarly confused.
386: Is "rookery" an actual urban-planning term? I've seen it only in Regency and Victorian-set novels involving low life.
Somehow though the world does not ring to cries of `down with the boulevards! back to the organic and spontaneous warrens of old Paris! Away with the parks! Back to the rookeries!'
Sure, and I think to some degree wonder if this reflects confusion on the part of people who love Paris about what it actually is that they love. Six-story 19th century residential/commercial buildings in wealthy european capitals were built to a standard (and with a level of decorative attention) that has probably not often been matched. Berlin had a very similar trajectory to Paris (as far as when, and how, it was rebuilt) until it got flattened and rebuilt more cheaply, and nobody goes on and on about the graceful streets of Berlin (I mean, I think it's awesome, but it's not a thing like Paris is).
So, what's the hugely evil thing about new urbanism? Just that it gets oversold as the greatest thing ever, when all actually existing new urbanist development is unpleasantly twee and wildly expensive? Or is there something about it that makes it worse than other development aimed at rich people?
Can that really work? I mean, you can have some shops in your tower, but not many. And then to access shops that aren't in your home tower, you have to go to some other tower for them? It's going to be very different from shops at streetlevel.
You have shops on the ground floor, generally, and the idea is that because the towers are actually quite dense, despite appearance, they are tied into a well organised public transport system.
I think to some degree wonder if
Good job, Sifu.
390: I had wondered that too. I mean, Seaside Florida is horrible, but that's Florida for you. It's nicer than the average subdivision down there, probably.
390: in part, it's the claim that it isn't aimed at rich people. But then there's also the (even more horribly overblown and craven than usual) utopian claims about its promise, which, given that it's actually an utterly commercial and crassly consumerist vision of development, is pretty misplaced and sort of maddening. And finally, most of the major new urbanist practitioners/architects/developers (they're like all-in-one printers that way, and just as shitty) are complete assholes.
In fairness, most developers are assholes. But they don't typically try -- I mean really try -- to pretend that they're actually activists set on saving the world.
Mainly it is bad because it ends up in Pundbury. Which is enough to damn most movements to hell.
Honestly I prefer cities that skipped the massive redevelopment of Haussmann's Paris -- I personally love a hodgepodge of eras and styles and ideas all crammed densely into a semi-medieval street grid -- but at least that redevelopment was not predicated on the ability of any citizen to travel from place to place at 50+ miles per hour; it preserved walkability nearly accidentally, but it preserved walkability.
You know, modern Paris is pretty much predicated on the ability of a citizen to travel at 50+ miles an hour (the Metro moves quite fast really) and there's nothing wrong with that!
I mean, Seaside Florida is horrible, but that's Florida for you.
Because of the ban on dwarf-tossing.
Berlin had a very similar trajectory to Paris
There was never the same graceful streets idea about Berlin, though, not to mention Prussia's military associations. Housing also developed in quite different ways, with the tenements surrounding series of courtyards so lots of street life going on in semi-interior spaces (a style that you otherwise find only in Vienna and Wrocław).
Can that really work? I mean, you can have some shops in your tower, but not many. And then to access shops that aren't in your home tower, you have to go to some other tower for them? It's going to be very different from shops at streetlevel.
It worked in THX 1138.
I think I might just have witnessed the best pick-up line ever:
M, approaching W: "you know, I used to be a marksman in the armed forces."
W, with genuine interest: "oh, really? So was my father."
M, disdainfully: "I've killed many more men than your father."
Somebody redact 400. And when'd you find the time to fly halfway around the world, urple?
400 meant 399 where 400 said 400 but 400 in 400 is now funnier than 399 in 400, although 399 would have been funnier in 400 when 400 was composed, so okay.
Modernism is basically cool at the moment, especially brutalism,
This makes me sad. I don't know much about architecture, but I know I hate brutalism.
Baltimore would be a far more attractive city were it not chock-full of ugly-ass brutalist buildings.
402: you should check out the Denver Art Museum. Not the new wing, designed by Daniel Libeskind, but the original building (or here) designed by Gio Ponti.
I dig brutalism. I even like Boston City Hall, which is not a terribly common opinion among people from here. The plaza is kind of terrible, and it's too bad about the west end, but it's a cool building.
B-more has the Mechanic Theater, which misguided historic preservationists refused to allow to be torn down. So now they are going to keep the ugly theater, and append a residential high-rise to the top of it. They've decided to double-down on the beige cement.
Impressive. ugliest building in the world:
406: I like all those buildings. Damn!
Disagreeing with the Daily Mail is always an forever a badge of honour.
I don't care for the Pompidou, but I like all the rest.
Which they've been doing a better job of in recent years; it's often filled with special events, and they have shit like food trucks and farmer's markets occupying it somewhat regularly. Still gets pretty lonely and howlingly windswept in mid winter.
The Beehive is actually an amazingly awesome building. Basil Spence/Ministry of Works collaboration? That defies pretty much every convention about government buildings? Shouldn't exist.
No love for the Pompidou? Philistines, the lot of you.
Is the difference between Modernism and Brutalism--aside from the latter being purely pejorative--basically glass/steel versus concrete?
414: no. And "brutalism" isn't pejorative.
The brutalist style works wonderfully with the natural surroundings at my alma mater, I always thought.
Brutalism is a kind of Modernism, or maybe a kind of modernism. (Many modernisms don't use glass or steel.)
410: That's kind of the problem with Brutalism, though; it's really well suited to the kind of building you're going to put on a giant plaza (after all, it's not like you're going to build a *small* Brutalist building), and that leads to bad associations. And if there's nothing else in the area to provide some contrast or draw your attention elsewhere, it gets kinda stale.
418: I don't disagree; hence my comment in 416. If the surroundings are striking enough, it works well. If those surroundings are also not inhuman and awful, bonus.
Brutalism, for those thtat can't be bothered with Wikipedia on this (and more to the point, who don't trust Wikipedia!) derives from beton brut, or the french for raw concrete. It's a concept based around truth to materials and honesty of process.
If people don't trust wikipedia when it says the things that you just said, why would they trust you when you say those things?
418: after all, it's not like you're going to build a *small* Brutalist building
Actually, several of the buildings at Arcosanti are pretty much small, brutalist buildings. But then, many think Soleri mad.
It's a concept based around truth to materials and honesty of process.
As opposed to bourgeois ideological constructs like "nice to live in".
More than once, I've heard Wikipedia comment on women's shoes.
"nice to live in"
This thread is suddenly awash in unexamined privilege.
This thread is suddenly awash in unexamined privilege.
Look, it's an improvement over urine.
If people don't trust wikipedia when it says the things that you just said, why would they trust you when you say those things?
Well, because I wouldn't trust Wikipedia on architecture, mostly because there's a whole bunch of cranks out there who are really obsessed with how awful modernism is etc etc, and also because I still remember the wikipedia page which used to claim the Doric style was derived from mushrooms.
Also, in fact it is not true that you don't get small Brutalist buildings. I am currently sitting in a small Brutalist building.
(And, er, you know that many of those Brutalist buildings are actually really really nice housing these days?)
I would totally have taken over my friends' apt in Riverside Plaza if I had not had 8 months left on my lease at that point. It was a hell of a nice apartment. Lack of elevators was a problem though.
I feel like I should read this thread and participate in the conversation, but it's late and I'm hungry and Jewish. Maybe tomorrow.
I also hate Haussmann. That's the thing about hatred -- you can always make more.
Truth in materials strikes me as a truly terrible idea. Concrete clad in marble versus plain concrete seems like an easy choice.
Well, there's an economic argument as well, if you're wanting one. Less expensive finishing > more budget available for generating space. Relevantly, Corbusian housing projects almost always included double height living spaces. Suggest that in seriousness to a contemporary developer and they'll give you a look that suggests they're thinking of having your legs broken.
CT has a rotten comments community these days.
Really? The idea of cladding concrete in marble is reasonably disgusting, by any objective standard.
In fact, so disgusting that it drives me, despite myself, to defend objective standards in aesthetics.
In fact, so disgusting that it drives me, despite myself, to defend objective standards in aesthetics.
Despite yourself? You were talking about things being "indisputably beautiful" back in 286. Then you go on to give a definition: "They're beautiful because there is no pretence or dishonesty in their construction." These seem to be strong principles for you.
A bit more boring stuff on materials and finishing in architecture. It seems to me that elaborate finishing treatments go together, historically, with low wages / long working hours. This is another branch of the argument that says you should prefer the specification of unfinished / 'self-finished' materials: it means more pie / leisure for construction labour. OK, some people enjoy doing fancy plastering etc. but even an enjoyable job isn't leisure, and most agree that leisure is good.
There's a recent restaurant interior in Moscow which was carved from solid wood and then sanded. Sort of like caves of wood. Rise of the oligarchs for you.
but it's late and I'm hungry and Jewish.
What do you do if you're young and white and Jewish?
Then again, the whole of the exterior of London's Barbican was bush hammered, which must have been a horrible job. Paul Rudolph can be blamed for that one, perhaps, since I think the Yale building he did was similarly treated and it was very influential. The National Theatre in London shows a better approach: the concrete texture there comes only from the shuttering. Better yet: steel framing. Less labour than concrete and can be recycled.
Keir, you find bare concrete so aesthetic that you are prepared to defend this as an objective aesthetic principle?
This is exactly what was wrong with the modernist movement in architecture. There's nothing wrong with experimenting with new styles of buildings, but the fact that the people who use a building hate it doesn't matter, because of "objectivity", because top-down experts claim to know better.
Near Philly there's a college campus that has a bunch of old dorms in Collegiate Gothic style, and a newer dorm that is pure Brutalist. The students all hate the brutalist dorm, and fight to live in the Gothic dorms. But they're objectively wrong, of course.
Despite yourself? You were talking about things being "indisputably beautiful" back in 286. Then you go on to give a definition: "They're beautiful because there is no pretence or dishonesty in their construction." These seem to be strong principles for you.
Yes, but I am in two minds on this stuff. I don't really think that there is such a thing as indisputable beauty but at the same time I know that if you think Ronchamp is ugly then you are wrong wrong wrong.
(And, er, I am very very doubtful of stories about preferring Gothic Revival architecture to Brutalism, because fifty years ago, Gothic Revival was utterly despised. This stuff is very very dependent on fashion.)
Keir, you find bare concrete so aesthetic that you are prepared to defend this as an objective aesthetic principle?
Well, I find the idea of hiding a material disgusting. There's something obscene about being ashamed of the thing that you rely on to keep your house standing. Yes this is very moralistic language.
Bare concrete is particularly ugly after decades of exposure to dust and soot.
It's also true that often the working class residents of a lot of Brutalist social housing were very happy with them when they were new. The issues came later, when they were poorly maintained, and jobs were scarce. When transport infrastructure, or other essentials were allowed to decay.
I live in a 60s [or early 70s], 'tower-in-park',* and it's great. The building is really well designed, the flats are large, sound-proofing is decent, the grounds surrounding it well-kept by gardeners, and so on. It's great because it's properly maintained and looked after. Not because it harks back to the past.**
My grandparents, on the other hand, lived in the Red Road flats. Not so nice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Road_(flats)
* it's only 9 floors
** not that there's anything wrong with old buildings either. I've lived in, and really like, tenements, too.
440: I'm sold. I'm pulling down the drywall now. Bare 2x4s and fiber glass insulation for me. Next, the oak on the floor goes so we can see the natural beauty of the subfloor.
I was wondering how something like the modernist landmark Seagram Building fits in. Good because of the exposed beams making the structure of the building transparent, or bad because they're a nonstructural decorative layer:
The Seagram Building, like virtually all large buildings of the time, was built of a steel frame, from which non-structural glass walls were hung. Mies would have preferred the steel frame to be visible to all; however, American building codes required that all structural steel be covered in a fireproof material, usually concrete, because improperly protected steel columns or beams may soften and fail in confined fires.[3] Concrete hid the structure of the building -- something Mies wanted to avoid at all costs -- so Mies used non-structural bronze-toned I-beams to suggest structure instead.
Decoration is obviously a sin, so yes. But Mies is doing something different from Brutalism. He's also talking about an aethetic retinal thing about the grid and structure and repetition and all that, and so there's a different kind of aesthetic issue. But yes, if I was a diehard Brutalist I would have a lot of problems with the Seagram, and even as not-one, I do think there are a lot of moral issues with Mies' choices.
443 But obviously the subfloor or the fibreglass insulation is not as functional as the drywall or the oak floor; that's a red herring there.
The oak floor is much more expensive than other equally functional options. The dry wall was a red herring.
You almost never get to see exposed steel structure in a building with one or more upper storeys owing to requirements for fire protection. And steel rusts, so even if you don't need fire protection, you need corrosion protection: if a material has a protective coating, are you 'seeing' that material?
But: take the bricks out of the Taj Mahal and it'll cease to be the Taj Mahal. Take the inlaid marble off and it won't. If you agree with that statement, you're elevating form above colour or texture in deciding what's essential to the Taj Mahal. I suspect aesthetic scruples about buildings come down to that sort of consideration.
If you are going to say you can have something expensive so long as you fudge the design so that you can say you did it for a functional reason even though there are cheaper ways to get the same functionality except those are ugly, then I am going to suggest you work as a tax accountant and stay clear of architecture.
Decoration is obviously a sin, so yes.
Here, you just sound crazy. Decoration at all? If you paint things for weather protection, can you choose colors?
And actually I'll go out on a bit of a bit of a limb here and say that almost everyone now agrees that form is essential to architecture while cladding and surface detail isn't. The Parthenon isn't painted any more; Egyptian pyramids have lost their facing stones. No one is demanding that these things are put back. Go to St Paul's in London and compare the half of the nave vaulting that's been clad in figurative mosaic with the half that hasn't. It's half and half because the mosaic project was halted: they changed their minds about it. I think most people who criticise exposed concrete in architecture just don't like the appearance of concrete; it's not that they want the cake icing of marble or whatever. There are some people who say that they do - they want icing, specifically - but they're the sophisticates who've been reading Venturi.
Florence's cathedral: drum of the dome not clad except for one small part. Raw brick preferred; at least, preferred to the aggravation of deciding on a decorative scheme. Similarly with the facade of San Lorenzo.
I am unsophisticated in these matters, and not claiming to have good taste or anything, but I do, actually, like decoration. There's ugly, unpleasant decoration, and attractive decoration, but if I'm going to look at something, I'd prefer it have some kind of details on it.
The whole modernist pure functionality look can be lovely if the proportions were designed by a genius and the maintenance is flawless, but once you get a pedestrian, ordinary building with some grime on it, modernism often depresses me.
But is ugly decoration better than none?
Sometimes. If the options are ugly decoration, or ugly lack of decoration, I'd usually rather have the details to look at. Obviously, you can swing this either way with specifics: would I rather look at a parking garage or a building lovingly decorated with trompe l'oeil dismembered donkeys? The parking garage.
But for ordinary levels of ugly -- say, fussy late-19thC brickwork -- that beats most non-genius-level brutalism for me.
The line about decoration being a sin comes from Gehry, and is obviously a perversion of Loos' `ornament is crime'. It's not really true that decoration is a sin. But generally, things that don't need to be there shouldn't. Definitely things that pretend to be other things, or to do to things they don't, shouldn't exist. (With certain exceptions.)
The oak floor is much more expensive than other equally functional options. The dry wall was a red herring.
But from a truth-to-materials standpoint, the cost doesn't matter. The honesty does. It is often cheaper to make something out of one crappy material and then cover it another crappy material that looks shiny than to make it well. But I think it is not nice to make things badly.
I am not advocating an extreme functionalism; if you want to actually build a building out of marble then you are crazy and it will probably be really ugly and bad because marble is generally used for crazy bad things these days, but neither concrete nor marble are really better or worse. (Marble clad in concrete would be just as awful.) The reason marble cladding is awful is not that it is expensive, it is that it is dishonest.
(Brutalism is actually quite a detailed, busy form of modernism, and not that streamlined.)
Charlie, it's hard to know if you're defending Keir's admitted moralizing, which I think is what others (and now I) are objecting to. The idea that form is truly essential -- who would argue with this? -- or, if you don't mind a different way of putting it, absolutely necessary, needn't mean that finish is an affront to all that is good and right. And insofar as followers of modernists, or the modernists themselves, believe the latter, and believe further that only by stripping structures to their barest functional bits can the world be made better, they're every bit as much cult members as the people who tote around copies of Death and Life of Great American Cities while chanting "eyes on the street" as though such talismans will cure all of a city's ills. Fundamentalists are boring and, to best of my knowledge, usually proven wrong in the end.
This still seems screwy to me. What if you have a functional reason to cover the concrete, like the fact that it develops those streaks of grime when you leave it out in the rain in a city. So you need to cover it with something. Painting it probably isn't dishonest. Cladding it with something easier to clean?
And 'pretending to be something else' seems like a really hard line to draw if you're going to allow decoration as not a moral issue.
Also, I think Keir is being intentionally provocative -- aka, "trolling" -- while I don't know if you are, Charlie. Not that you have to tell me, as I understand that transparency isn't really a virtue among trolls (not that I'm saying that you're definitely a troll always or even in this case).
I don't think finish is an affront; in fact one of the things that I like most about brutalism and the best modernism is the painstaking and brilliant attention to finish. (Many brutalist buildings have the most lovely surfaces when you actually get up close and see the marks left by the forms that made the concrete. Often you can still see the grain of the timber.)
I think lying finishes are a horrible thing though, and generally yes I would strip away lying things. But many non-necessary things aren't lies, and so don't have the same problem.
What if you have a functional reason to cover the concrete, like the fact that it develops those streaks of grime when you leave it out in the rain in a city
But that's not a functional reason. That's an aesthetic reason. So that's the first problem.
The main reason people clad things is to make a building look like it was made out of something it wasn't. That is wrong.
like the fact that it develops those streaks of grime when you leave it out in the rain in a city
You would deny a pure, honest building the truth of its interactions with its environment? Next you're going to say you should pull it weeds in the vast, empty concrete plazas, or that you should replace the plate glass windows when they're broken by birds braining themselves.
The only truly honest building is an unadorned concrete box, built miles from civilization, and left in dialogue with its environment. That no building actually fits this category is a sign that we live in a terrible, fallen world of falsity and artifice. It's truly shameful.
But many non-necessary things aren't lies, and so don't have the same problem.
I don't think I have any way to tell the difference between what's a lie and what's merely unnecessary, which leaves me stymied. If you wanted to talk about that, I'd probably be interested.
Triple-post, triple-post!
(Painting in fact very definitely isn't out of line if you go by Corbusier, who I am pretty sure had the buildings at Chandigarh painted. (Not entirely sure, can't remember if he'd left the project by the time they were painted/the photos I saw from not long after completion had them painted/I read the book a long time ago.))
Well. The idea is that a thing is what it is, right? So if I make a model plane, and it doesn't fly --- isn't meant to fly even --- then hanging it by fishing-line is a bad thing to do, because I am trying to fool the viewer. But just wrapping the plane in fishing line wouldn't be a bad thing, because there's no attempt to lie.
Or imagine a Gothic revival cathedral that was actually held up by a steel frame. The arches and buttresses would be lying, because they are suggesting that the building is actually standing because of them, but the stained glass would be decoration and not lying.
insofar as followers of modernists, or the modernists themselves, believe the latter, and believe further that only by stripping structures to their barest functional bits can the world be made better
They don't believe this, as far as I can tell. What they might believe is both:
(a) that you get better bang for buck by putting money and effort into spatial effects rather than into decoration, and;
(b) that a building is improved when its structure can be understood by looking at it, and is at its best only when no spatial or decorative effect prejudices structural legibility.
If that defines modernism, then gothic cathedrals are modern, or at least close to being modern. That's OK by me.
Yes! Gothic cathedrals are actually one of the most acceptable-to-a-modernist things in the world, because holy fuck look at the engineering! But Gothic Revival isn't, because it is weird. Instead, the great engineering of the Victorian era is stuff like railway stations and viaducts and the Eiffel Tower.
(The Eiffel is a good thing to think about. Is it modern? It is after all entirely decorative, even though it has no real decoration on it to speak of.)
And actually modernism is a really complicated thing, and yeah, what I know directly and vividly as modernism is a rather austere Cantabrian formalism, out of the post-war UK by way of serious looking Mitteleuropans. There are other modernisms, and many of them are very contradictory and interesting and amazing.
And Ronchamp is decorated. The Unité in Marseilles has relief sculpture. Le Corbusier was a painter. In no way does modernism or its brutalist derivative exclude decoration. Brutalist concrete often does have a decorative finish. What's being rejected in those styles is the idea that some materials are humble and must be disguised; this clears the way to arguing that there are better ways to spend the money.
469: And now we're not disagreeing about anything, except the style of decoration we like. If allowing the grain of the wood used to build the concrete forms to remain apparent on a concrete surface is a deliberate esthetic effect rather than a morally mandated direct expression of the process used to create the structure, I can look at it and decide that I don't think it's particularly attractive without there being a moral weight on that judgment. Or, depending on the building, I might think it is attractive. But it's not better or worse than, say, ornamental terracotta tiling (also made from the humblest of materials).
Perhaps should have said 'the idea that some materials and components are humble and must be diguised'. I'm thinking of the Smithsons and their school project with the pipes and water tanks etc. OK, it is a bit hair shirt.
There are other modernisms
And it's surprisingly easy to forget about them, even if you're open to them, perhaps because you need to travel a lot to see them, and so the debate often seems to come down to the offensiveness of some dull box near the anti-modernist's house. Sorry if that sounds pompous or snarky, but here in the UK the leading anti-modernist is Prince Charles, and he is not broad minded, and frankly the whole business rubs us up all wrong.
he debate often seems to come down to the offensiveness of some dull box near the anti-modernist's house
Here, I'm lumping you together with Keir, and you're not making precisely the same arguments he is. But the 'honesty' argument sounds like a claim that disliking any particular dull box, so long as it exposes its structure adequately, is both morally and 'objectively' wrong, and preferring something with a bit of visual interest to it makes one a bad person.
I like lots of modernist buildings. But if you're going to pare down anything to the very simplest expression of its structure, it had better be beautifully proportioned and maintained or I'm not going to want to look at it.
in fact one of the things that I like most about brutalism and the best modernism is the painstaking and brilliant attention to finish.
They're trying hard to make things look like shit?
but here in the UK the leading anti-modernist is Prince Charles, and he is not broad minded, and frankly the whole business rubs us up all wrong.
I don't even have an monarchy.
471.2: this thread has been remarkably (completely?) free of people complaining about modernist buildings per se. There has been a lot of complaint about modernist urban planning, but an impressively uniform level of appreciation for modern architecture in at least some of its forms. If you're arguing with Prince Charles, I'm pretty sure you're arguing with somebody outside of this thread.
If you're arguing with Prince Charles, I'm pretty sure you're arguing with somebody outside of this thread.
Shhh. Don't break the off-blog communication rule.
Anyway, I detest bare concrete. It's fine covering the ground out of door and in basements, but only because nobody can afford anything else.
I will again argue that bare concrete in places that aren't grey and rainy can really be wonderful.
re: 475
The popular press, here (and I think probably where you are to) tends to be strongly against modernism in architecture. There's a widely held perception that most Brutalist buildings were functionally and aesthetically disastrous and 'ruined our cities' and that social-housing reform in the 20th century was also a disaster. That's not necessarily what people on this thread are arguing (except Moby), but it's the near universal 'middle-brow'* view.
* my elitism, let me brandish it!
But it's not better or worse than, say, ornamental terracotta tiling
Arguably it's better, as per my 466, if the tiling diverts significant budget or obscures the main tectonic.
477 to 450: it's OK to not like exposed concrete.
'ruined our cities''
Double-ironic that in much of the UK what they 'ruined' were vast swathes of rubble and bomb damage.
The building my lab is in was designed by one of the most widely, generally loathed modern architects, but I actually kinda dig it. On the other hand, since I work in it, I don't usually have to look at it.
479: well, again, those seem to me more like complaints about modern urban planning; I said that I liked Boston City Hall, but I kinda hate the damn giant, windswept plaza around it and I am fairly bummed on an ongoing basis about the amazing neighborhood full of brownstones that they bulldozed in order to built said giant, windswept plaza. So in many ways I would largely agree with the popular press on that account, but insofar as it's possible to dissociate the actual buildings from their site plans (not an easy task, I realize), I like the buildings quite a bit.
I'm probably totally middle-brow, but Boston City Hall, replacing the probably-too-small historic building is godawful. It did make its immediate environs somewhat safer, but it really is miserable and brutalist.
Also hideous is the Eric Lindemann Mental Health facility nearby. I think one might call the outside brutalist, (don't knwo enough to say), but the inside is the most unfunctional thing ever. I am told that there are stairs which go nowhere and that the architect wanted to recreate the tortured disorganization of the psychotic indivividuals served. Annyway, it's not soothing at all and is enough to make anyone feel perturbed and disorganized.
483 posted before 482. I think that building looks like Buck Rogers space ship upside down. Inside it is grim and depressing, and I would hate to work there.
One interesting thing I heard, which doesn't get mentioned often. One of my bosses at work used to working in construction (before he went to art school). Mainly as an electrical contractor doing wiring, phone cabling, and so on. We've discussed 20th century architecture a few times, and one thing he's brought up more than once, is how nice a lot of these buildings are to work on/in from the perspective of someone doing labour on/in the fabric of them. That the functional infrastructure -- ducting, electrical, crawl-spaces, access shafts, whatever -- in the better 'modernist' buildings make them work in a way that the older buildings, and some newer buildings in late 20th century corporate asshole style, do not.
That's not necessarily what people on this thread are arguing (except Moby), but it's the near universal 'middle-brow'* view.
I have no idea about urban planning, but I have very middle-brow aesthetics and I've learned to embrace this. My house is full of off-white walls and oak floors. If I had more money, I'd to get a giant brick Victorian thing and park a boat in the backyard.
One thing I like about some of Oxford is the ways in which 16th century buildings and mid-20th century concrete buildings can be made to work really well side by side. In much of the city it doesn't, at all, but some of the colleges did it in ways that consistently cheers me.
483
... I am told that there are stairs which go nowhere and that the architect wanted to recreate the tortured disorganization of the psychotic indivividuals served. ...
This is hilarious if true but I have my doubts.
I have worked in a building with half-floors and stairs that go nowhere. But that was because they needed to find a way to squeeze many millions of books into a very small space. I find it hard to believe that anyone would design one that way before the fact.
The Reg hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet, has it? I like the look a lot, and think it fits well in its surroundings. So, yay Brutalism. Much better than the pastel monstrosities nearby.
This is hilarious if true but I have my doubts.
I had a similar reaction to hearing that somebody named Thaddeus McCotter was running for president.
491: There is also a pretty good Wikipedia list. Per 490, find your college library on it.
490: The Mansueto looks pretty cool.
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I am going to New York next weekend and was hoping to stop in at the Met. I thought it was donations only, but it's $25. I don't have the free reciprocal agreement on my MFA membership, but I wonder if I can get a discount. Ugh.
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496: Wrong. That's the "recommended" price. You can, if you wish, refuse to pay it.
494: All the Pitt building on there are ones that I don't really like, but the law school isn't that bad.
I was about to say 497. I've done it before, and they will most likely give you grief about it, but they won't keep you from getting in.
496, 497: Obligatory piece from the Onion.
find your college library on it
Wash U's library used to be this big concrete thing (dunno if it would actually have been brutalist, unlike Mudd Hall) (which was demolished in the late 90s -- I can't even find a photo on the web), but then they clad the whole thing in wood and glass several years ago. It's actually pretty nice looking.
465
Well. The idea is that a thing is what it is, right? So if I make a model plane, and it doesn't fly --- isn't meant to fly even --- then hanging it by fishing-line is a bad thing to do, because I am trying to fool the viewer. But just wrapping the plane in fishing line wouldn't be a bad thing, because there's no attempt to lie.
This makes no sense to me, hanging it by fishing line is a better way of displaying it than wrapping it in fishing line.
As for honesty in general I don't see what is wrong with finding cheap ways of making things look good. Do you have a problem with cubic zirconia? If so why exactly?
495: Yes! I had my doubts when I first heard about it, but it looks good.
Now they're tearing down my childhood the Enrico Fermi Institute's current buildings. Probably will be a big improvement, but my feelings are mixed.
re: 491
Heh. Interesting how many of them -- particularly the semi-derelict or badly maintained ones -- seem to be Glasgow. Looking through there it's screamingly obvious that the architectural style that signifies 'home' to me, much more than the large Georgian buildings, or brownstone type Victorian tenements, that characterise much of most Scottish cities, is this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41695432@N04/6017741869/in/set-72157627252905617
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41695432@N04/6018288738/in/set-72157627252905617
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41695432@N04/5032531869/in/set-72157625052208570
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41695432@N04/5033167820/in/set-72157625052208570
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41695432@N04/5032555347/in/set-72157625052208570
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41695432@N04/5032558849/in/set-72157625052208570
[The last few because that's actually where half my family live]
The Met recommends $25? Christ. I think I'm going to let my membership lapse now that I'm a few more hours away, but I'll probably end up going at least a couple times in the next year. $25/visit sounds steep.
494: This photo sums up my college experience better than anything else I've ever seen. Christ, I'm getting depressed again just looking at it.
491: That pool is using a very loose definition of Brutalist. I found a brick building from 1880 in there!
They don't actually give you grief about it. It's not like the person taking tickets gets a commission, so they don't give a shit about what you're paying. Probably if you *ask* them they might be required to give you a bit of a hard time, but just pay them a smaller amount.
(Note that you can also choose to pay less at the Met's other branches, like the Cloisters, and at the natural history museum. I'm a member at AMNH and I think that museums deserve money, but if you can't afford it, if you go often, or if you're showing up an hour before closing, you shouldn't feel bad about paying less. After all, presumably the reason they don't charge admission is that someone who donated stuff to found it wanted the museum to be free for everyone.)
re: 507
Yeah, and the guy with the pool of Scottish photos clearly intends the term pejoratively to mean any run-down concrete looking building.
I was going to go down to the Occupy thing this morning, but since bob said I can't go, I'll just stay home and wait to be led to the guillotine.
Nobody is going to say that the Merc is beautiful, but it's kind of cool that just after they had excavated the foundations, word went around that the Neemeepoo (aka Nez Perce) were coming over from Idaho, Army in hot pursuit, so they piled a bunch of dirt to make a fortification.
Of course, if you want to go to a special exhibit they can make you pay for that and make you pay the full price.
I will again argue that bare concrete in places that aren't grey and rainy can really be wonderful.
Actually I think it can be lovely in places that are grey and rainy, too. Lush greenery and good proportions (both of the concrete thing itself and its relation to other nearby things) are both key.
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ZOMG. I just discovered that I'm one G+ degree of separation from Jac/queline P/asey.
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Looking at the Brutalist pool on Flickr there are a lot of lovely buildings which look in great condition, and which are northern European. So rainy and wet. They are, however, in the Netherlands, and Germany, rather than in poor bits of the UK.
They don't actually give you grief about it.
Not true, IME.
We have moved on, but this art would have been good to point out about 300 comments ago. And in terms of aesthetics, it is still better than 80% of the modernist buildings.
Well, if they were really concrete, but clad to look like marble. Or whatever. Everybody knows what truth-to-materials means, right?
Well, I don't really see what's dishonest about that. Or how it's untrue to concrete to style it in a way that doesn't scream "I am made of concrete! I am a beautifulhonest building!", or even to put something else on the outside of the concrete.
I know what it means to say that paintings should emphasize their flatness, but I also think it's pretty stupid to think that, or to think that it's dishonest to do otherwise.
Well, I find the idea of hiding a material disgusting.
This is why, rather than concealing them in cement, I made my house entirely out of just pebbles.
But obviously the subfloor or the fibreglass insulation is not as functional as the drywall or the oak floor
The 2x4s should be added to the first list. And it's not at all obvious to me that the insulation is less functional than the drywall. It's certainly not obvious that the 2x4s are less functional than the drywall.
The modern stick-build wall is a system in some sense. The 2x4s and the drywall and the insulation (and the exterior cladding, whatever that is) are all critical components of a whole that would be non-functional without all parts. I suppose you could drop the insulation if you really wanted but the drywall is crucial for fireproofing.
I'm just going to continue replying to Keir's comments even though this thread seems to have been abandoned.
But generally, things that don't need to be there shouldn't.
This has to be allied to a general argument that ornament doesn't need to be there for it to do any work. That, it seems to me, will be difficult to establish, because in fact, most ornaments have a function, they just don't have the function of helping the building (say) remain standing.
Consider these awesome steampunk goggles. I actually think that straps and buttons and gewgaws on clothes that don't actually do anything are pretty stupid and annoying, and I'd rather have a jacket with no buttons at the end of the sleeve, or one with buttons that actually can be used, than one with purely decorative buttons, and all the gears and shit on depicted steampunk enthusiast's goggles and boots strike me as aesthetically offensive. (I don't think that your claims about "dishonesty" ultimately come down to anything more than moralized aesthetic offense.) But, contrary to the assumption implicit in Brunel's demand, they do do something. They look (in the eyes of the steampunk enthusiast) totally sweet, and that's not nothing. I think it would even be hard to maintain that the gears are functioning not as gears but rather as gear-looking things, because it might be important that they really are real gears, even if they aren't serving a function typically served by gears. (The ultimate evolved form of this thought is to actually manufacture some typically gear-like use for the gears, of course.)
Haven't read the whole thread or followed all the links, but I just wanted to make sure we had the Whitney Museum on the record here. No thread on ugly architecture would be complete without it.
This is a new level.
Probably not legitimate, however.
re: 524
Heh, I quite like it.
It's only $15, so cheaper than the Met.
I presume Keir is in bed at this point.
re: 528
It's about coffee and newspaper time there.
526: Seriously? It reminds me of the sculptures in Beetlejuice.
(I was going to make that observation in the original comment, but it seemed so obvious that I had to Google it to make sure that isn't something everyone says.)
re:530
Yeah. I mean I wouldn't seek it out just to see it as a piece of architecture, but it's perfectly OK to my eyes.
Something I have done often (seeking out buildings). Spent ages wandering round Vysehrad in Prague once looking for the Cubist apartment buildings. Which (apart from the Neklanova 30 flats) are a disappointment.
http://www.thefancy.com/things/259914671/Czech-Cubism-%7C-House-in-Neklanova-%28Prague%29-1913-1914.-Architect-Josef-Chochol
http://www.essential-architecture.com/IMAGES2/style1.jpg
I was going to write a comment like 450 as a joke, but I see reality has beaten me to it. The problem with the painted Parthenon is that the ancient Greeks apparently had shitty taste in color. If we could see the Pyramids with their original limestone exteriors, we might think they look even more awesome.
Pointless ornament often improves a building. The Gothic revival Neues Rathaus would not be improved by removing all of the pointless extra touches.
The interior of the Abbey of St. Gall would not be improved if we could see the bare interior, as opposed to current interior.
523: If the "gears" engaged -- say, when the hipster tool wearer opened the temples in order to put them on -- one another, cog and tooth, and turned, would they be gears, even if they were, in the end, only moved, and not moving?
The problem with the painted Parthenon is that the ancient Greeks apparently had shitty taste in color.
Racist.
I just wanted to make sure we had the Whitney Museum on the record here. No thread on ugly architecture would be complete without it.
Now you're just fucking with us, right?
535:
Interviewer: Eric, what is your favorite color?
Cartman: Definitely Caucasian.
The Neues Rathaus makes no sense to me at all. Europe has plenty of original buildings of that vintage. The Grand Place/Grote Markt in Brussels, for example.*
* not that that is entirely original either, for that matter
would they be gears, even if they were, in the end, only moved, and not moving?
If they engaged, at least one of them would ipso facto be moving at least one other, even if (being, after all, a gear) that moving gear were also a moved, but not self-moved, gear.
I don't buy Kier's defense of (the possibility of) oak floors, incidentally; insofar as uglier and cheaper alternatives exist, what justification is there for using the more expensive oak? You can't cite "honesty to the material", since that's a consideration that's only relevant once you've settled on a material, and doesn't motivate the choice of one particular material over another; you could be equally honest to a much less pleasing (one might say less decorative or ornamental, even) material. Oak, we might be moved to observe, is not necessary, and we might also think that it's ornamental not only with regard to its appearance in itself but also insofar as it's unnecessary yet expensive. (The price is the ornament. And isn't having such a floor dishonest insofar as it presents itself as just a floor, when really a floor is never just a floor, as long as another floor could have been there?) A floor needs to be there, but this kind of floor doesn't, so why this kind?
539.1: Hence "they," not "each of them." A lone gear is but a "gear."
Re BG's concerns about the Met: Just hand hand them whatever you want, and say 'one adult'. They'll hand you the metal thingy and receipt without any grief. I've never paid even close to recommended there in my life, and I've been well over a hundred times. The only evil looks I remember seeing were for my ex, who would reach into her pocket and hand the first coin she grabbed. They didn't appreciate the one penny ticket donations.
s/Kier/Kier/
540: so is your assumption that a gear is only a gear in the context of a mechanism in which the whole gear-y assembly moves something which is not a gear?
Kier in s/Kier/Kier should be Kier, no?
460: (Many brutalist buildings have the most lovely surfaces when you actually get up close and see the marks left by the forms that made the concrete. Often you can still see the grain of the timber.)
This is my favorite, favorite, favorite part of Brutalist arch. in general and Rarig Center in particular. Thinking about how some trees grew in the forest, and then got turned into plywood, and then randomly chosen to make forms, and so their grain patterns are now preserved in the walls of a building that has nothing to do with plywood. (Except for the Luon they build the sets with, I guess).
462: You would deny a pure, honest building the truth of its interactions with its environment?
One of the buildings on the MCTC campus is not Brutalist, but more that late-1970s response to brutalism where they started using a lot of steel painted in primary colors. It does have this section of facade, facing Hennepin Ave., which hangs down past the point it needs to, but stops short of the sidewalk by 10 or 12 feet. Apparently, it was only realized after the whole thing was completed that this hanging facade thingy was dangerously underbuilt. So for 20 years, there was a bunch of very beat-up scaffolding arranged under it, so that pieces would not fall off and hit pedestrians on their noggins. Finally, some time in the 1990s, they found some money to rebuild it in a structurally sound manner, and after that the scaffolding was taken down. But there were still huge stains where the rust had bled out of the scaffolding and onto the concrete of the sidewalk, as a testament to the original folly. I always thought that was pretty neat.
But why not this kind of floor? And oak is a nice material, but that isn't ornament, because it is intrinsic to the thing itself.
I meant to close that bold tag earlier. Oh well.
I have always paid the full tariff at the Met. (I should really just join.) I even paid for a (well-paid but miserly) friend so she wouldn't embarrass me by giving them a dime. Primarily because I am an insufferable prig, but also because you know, come on, you can't crowbar a Jackson out of your wallet for a little Vermeer, followed by Arms & Armour?
542.2: No, I think that was my original question, for some value of "something that is not a gear."
Kier in s/Kier/Kier should be Kier, no?
Just so.
because it is intrinsic to the thing itself.
I'm not certain why that makes it not ornamental. (I am now wondering what the modernist line is regarding gold jewelry. What about a diamond ring? I mean, this seems like an ornament.) The natural qualities of the oak floor aren't ornamenting the floor, but why aren't they ornamenting the house?
(For that matter, why isn't it "dishonest to the material" to saw planks? That's not how it comes out of the ground, you know.)
But why not this kind of floor?
Why not ornament?
re: 549
I don't think Keir's line is the 'modernist' line in anything. That's his personal aesthetic take on architecture. Plenty of modernist jewellery, after all.
Why isn't it dishonest to the material to saw it? Because that is what we do to oak logs. I am hardly going to defend truth-to-materials to that extreme.
(Art galleries have a tendency to be a certain kind of bad building because they really are just large windowless boxes. It can be hard to make that interesting.)
This is why, rather than concealing them in cement, I made my house entirely out of just pebbles.
Well, this is one reason for exposing aggregate after all. And exposed aggregate, and the treatment of the exposed aggregate, is one of the ways to texture and vary surface without really ornamenting it.
Because that is what we do to oak logs.
Why can't "covering it with something less shitty" be what we do to concrete?
I'm painting a bathroom today. I was just of dishonest with the spackle in that I sanded it and am now about to paint it.
Does an unused fly in underwear constitute excessive ornament?
The closet door closest to the toilet really needs paint. Or washed.
Because concrete isn't shitty.
Covering it with something different, then.
These might be the stairs that go nowhere that they're talking about at the Lindemann.
Here's a link to an article on it called the Architecture of Madness. Here are a couple of choice quotes.
On the irony of naming it after Lindemann:
Erich Lindemann, for whom the center was named, was a respected Boston psychiatrist and a professor at Harvard in the 1960s. There is considerable irony in his being honored with this dedication. Among his then-recent works was a well-publicized study that recorded the deleterious side effects of urban renewal, focusing on the experiences of residents in the West End. He would later help lead a movement that brought psychiatrists, designers, and urbanists together to study the influence of man-made environments on mental health. The building that still bears his name would go on to be a notorious example of architecture's power to confuse, agitate, and sometimes fatally overwhelm.
And apparently the stairway to nowhere is for real:
Reveling in his newfound expressive freedom, and armed with his theory of psychology, Rudolph chose to sacrifice the function of the Lindemann Center to further an emotive agenda. The essential aim was to express the program of the building, while creating within an environment "suitable" for the mentally ill. Thus, the spaces inside reflect Rudolph's romanticized view of mental illness: eerie, twisting stairways, one of which leads nowhere like an oubliette in a Medieval keep; amorphous passages that never reveal their ends; a chapel that creates a stirring, dismal ambiance through spatial theatrics. On the exterior this atmosphere is communicated through an unwitting architecture parlante--not a symbolic program but a concoction of private motifs--intended to perpetuate the mood at a subconscious level. In short, Rudolph made the building "insane" in order to express the insanity within.
WARNING: Forgot to mention that the linked article on the architecture of madness is to a pdf.
556: And since the underwear manufacturer has no control over that, the sinners are those who buy them but don't use them. Guilty as charged.
re: 559
Wow. That's pretty amazing.
I've worked and spent time in mental hospitals,* and both the hospitals I'm familiar with were a combination of Victorian asylum buildings and 1950s and 60s prefabs. Those were eerie enough without someone deliberating introducing eeriness via the architecture.
http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/showthread.php?t=4599
* not as a patient.
I think this is the article BG meant to link. The whole thing is kind of unbelievable.
562: That's one stylin' asylum!
But seriously, I'm vague about some of the boundaries, but those buildings certainly seem to be Italianate, with a big dollop of Indian design thrown in. I wonder if the architect had spent time in British India?
One of the weirdest things, for me, with the derelict buildings, is how time has stopped, such that the oldest observable parts look much much more archaic than they would if you happened to be in a building of the same vintage that had remained continuously occupied.
OCCUPY EVERYWHERE!!!
re: 564
I don't know re Italianate or Indian. I can't say I see that, that much. They are, largely I think, mid to late 19th century buildings, so it wouldn't be entirely beyond the bounds of possibility that the architect had spent time in British India, but I expect it's just shared architects and engineers.
The odd thing is that the building labelled as 'the separate building' in the pictures is (the last one), I think, the former nurses home, and I spent a lot of time there. There's an attic level missing, which had dormer type windows, and a high peaked slate roof. We used to have parties in the attic as that floor was unoccupied, and I remember drunkenly climbing the peaked roof.
What's particularly disturbing is how derelict those buildings look. When I last spent much time there (early to mid 90s) that was still a functioning hospital, and there were modern buildings nearby, and lots of mature trees and mown grass. They look like they've been abandoned for decades, when it's barely 10 years.
I don't have to work there, but I kinda like that building BG's talking about. It is featured somewhat prominently in The Departed.
565
What's particularly disturbing is how derelict those buildings look. When I last spent much time there (early to mid 90s) that was still a functioning hospital, and there were modern buildings nearby, and lots of mature trees and mown grass. They look like they've been abandoned for decades, when it's barely 10 years.
This struck me also. My first thought was vandalism but actually a lot of it sort of looks like water damage. Could be both I suppose.
Re 567
I think, googling, that it was partly demolished. But yeah. It is central Scotland. So it's wet. As in pacific NW wet or wetter. But those roofs wouldn't have caved in themselves.
562: There was a photo book of a bunch of old abandoned state hospitals which discussed their style.
The Lindemann has administrative offices for the department of mental health, a transitional shelter for DMH clients, a gym and the Freedom Trail clinic for patients with schizophrenia. It's not really an inpatient hospital/asylum. I think that there's a residence for people with sex offender status who are also mentally ill and need a highly-structured environment.
Blume: If I were a fee paying student at Wash U I'd really start to question why I was colluding in my own gulling by funding a themed campus. It's exactly the sort of place that'll motivate a revolt against ornament in architecture: when you see fake four-centred arches hanging off parking structures in an effort to make it all look like Oxford you really do have to believe that 'dishonest' is the right word. It's campus design as retail: it's staged. I remember the Olin Library as an exception. It wasn't improved by adding an octagon (not there during my exchange year, I'm fairly sure): have they done even more to the building since that? Please don't tell me it's been Tudorised. I can't find any very recent pictures.
The building that still bears his name would go on to be a notorious example of architecture's power to confuse, agitate, and sometimes fatally overwhelm.
Fatally overwhelm? Someone was overwhelmed to death by a cantilevered stair with exposed aggregate, and such?
U Chicago was really funny with the phony Gothic. There was a little vaulted telephone booth that amused me for months when I first noticed it.
571: If you read the article, a mental patient killed himself in the chapel. Blaming it on the architecture is probably a bit of an overstatement.
If you read the article, a mental patient killed himself in the chapel.
The world's most dangerous biscuit conditional.
There was a photo book of a bunch of old abandoned state hospitals which discussed their style.
My former boss collects postcards of them. They're not that hard to find.
Also, 574 took a second to sink it but was great.
501: if it would actually have been brutalist, unlike Mudd Hall
I arrived on campus just after construction had begun on Mudd and most of the visible controversy was about its impact on a valued space rather than the look itself. There was some sentiment of "how dreadfully ugly", but I chalked that up to the ever-present undercurrent of cultural dinosaurism at the place (probably true of all colleges). In the end it added just one more element in the hodge-podge of the place which I somewhat like, although I think only Cass Gilbert comes out totally unscathed.
Hm. I don't find myself a big fan of the Whitney, which I'd never particularly looked at before (link in 524). Not enough windows, too boxy, claustrophobic. At least put in some plants or something, for oxygen and relief.
What does it mean for a building to be "claustrophobic" as viewed from the outside? Inside the Whitney, there's plenty of open space. It doesn't strike me as beautiful from the outside, but few art museums do.
Not enough windows, too boxy
It's a museum!
From the outside? My first thought was: it's going to be claustrophobic (not enough windows) on the inside.
But you know, maybe not. Then I look at the subsequent photos at the site linked in 524, and I think: yeah, second photo, with the circular lights overhead in what looks like a cafeteria: ceiling too low. Looks/feels like an underground warren, though for all I know it's on the 5th floor.
Subsequent photos from a second level looking down on a lower level though large panes of glass: eh, too square, not enough natural light, no air, basically pretty harsh. So, claustrophobic.
Does that make sense? I make no broader claims; this is a personal preference. It's walled off from the world, or external environment. That's not to my taste. I understand that there are good reasons an art museum needs environmental controls, but "let's build an essentially solid sealed-in square box and call it attractive" doesn't seem to work for me in any way I might call appealing.
Solid sealed-in square box is basically 'a building'. Particularly in the context of museums and libraries. Things like the National Gallery in London:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/National_Gallery_head-on_shot.jpg
are still sealed-in square boxes. With their sealed-in-boxiness somewhat disguised by whacking great pillars and some fake windows.
Yeah, I think any art museum is claustrophobic by your standards, parsimon. Not having windows is kind of essential.
Then art museums are lucky that Steve Jobs did what he did.
This museum does a reasonably good job of disguising that it is mostly a windowless box (from some angles), but it also doesn't have to support a terribly large collection.
Yeah, if I look at this from the perspective of what a building needs to be to fulfill its function, there are some that do need to be vaults, in effect. I'm not sure they have to or should look like vaults; but I understand the reasoning. I can't go so far as to say that they're attractive, that's all, except to the extent that we're limiting our aesthetic standards of what counts as attractive to account for, in this case, vault-like function.
So: for a sealed-in box vault, it's not horrible.
You realize I'm teasing very slightly? My first reaction to the Whitney qua building was: yuck. Throw in its necessary function and its setting, squashed in among other buildings like that, right up next to the sidewalk in an already crowded architectural environment, and I'm not sure what else you could do.
Every time I refresh this thread, I see 6:
He actually did have furniture, but not in a way we can understand anymore.
We actually do have buildings, but not in a way we can understandably like anymore. For me. In my opinion.
Heh.
6 was truly brilliant, but apparently not in a way we can understand anymore.
I don't think anyone explciitly acknowledged Gonerill's brilliance in the original thread that 6 alludes to, so it's only fitting that this thread has remained silent about 6.
I still laugh quietly to myself every time I see a squirrel. Given that I live in NYC, this takes up most of my time, and people are starting to worry.
You know what the Whitney really needs? More waterslides. The current ones can't keep up with demand.
6 alludes to something? It does sound vaguely familiar now that you mention it, but I can't say I'm coming up with anything.
Not in a way we can understand anymore.
Yep. Meanwhile, I'm unhappy about public and political response to OWS. What about drastic income inequality do people not want to acknowledge and consider a very serious problem?
This thread is getting too long.
485: I am pleased to learn that, and consider it a decisive argument for such architecture. That sort of "gods are everywhere" attitude is a pleasingly egalitarian alternnative to making the "servants' entrance" shoddy and unpleasant.
Denys Lasdun, the guy who practically invented brutalism, said that its principles were "a-formalism, truth to structure, and materials as found". That is, there's no a priori solution and all projects are site- and task-specific (this is where he disagrees with classic modernism), buildings should look like their structure demands, and material should be left to look and behave like it's meant to.
This is amazingly similar to the new urbanists, vernacular, traditionalist etc., who all believe something very similar with perhaps the exception that they tend to like decoration. Rather than "materials as found" they talk about the grain of the stone and traditional skills and whatnot, which amounts to the same thing. They like being hacky and quirky and site specific, which is maxim 1 above. They do like putting little hats on windows and the like, but that's surely getting into narcissism of small differences territory.
I mean, architects like the Smithsons weren't trying to force people into a new mould - they were explicitly trying to build something that fit the sites and communities it served. That's where the street-in-the-sky concept came from. It's the classical modernists who wanted a block of flats in Rio to look just like one in Paris and its perfect, mechanical, functional design to mould the people who lived in it. Interestingly, they seem to have worn better.
For anecdata's sake, my East End relatives who moved out to the new towns in the 1940s absolutely loved it and wouldn't have gone back if you put a gun to their heads. Seriously. So much so I suspect Michael Young of making much of his fieldwork up. Also, the guy (my commie sailor grandad) whose house did come with a little pseudo-victorian parlour front room, well, as soon as he could right-to-buy it he took an iron bar to the non-loadbearing wall and turned it into something much more like a Parker-Morris flat. So did all his neighbours. And so do all my neighbours in north London, oddly enough.
Coming from Yorkshire, I don't really associate poverty with towers - low-rise pit villages and Bradford inner suburbs (in fact, what Americans would call streetcar suburbs because the city had streetcars when they were built) were as full of despair and chaos as anywhere more corbusian. Possibly more so - if you were in a tower in Leeds you weren't in some godforsaken pit village with no pit and you'd navigated the council housing system, ie. you weren't an illiterate Pakistani housewife with a paraffin stove. (There were some nasty fires in 80s Bradford, not just the one at the football ground, although our village cop was deployed to that one and told us all about it, so school fire drills got a lot faster...)
Rather than "materials as found" they talk about the grain of the stone and traditional skills and whatnot, which amounts to the same thing
Balls it does. Gobs of traditional skills involve transforming the materials as found. Traditional skill? Traditional skill.
The last link in 599 is lovely. [remarks on the viability of any argument from truth to materials or materials as found deleted, since I haven't read the the thread nearly enough]
And do we hire people with the traditional skills any more? Not much. The way modernism plays out explains that the only things that really matter are the parts architects do; the decades of skilled work that used to go to people without college degrees have vanished.
We could mechanize the exhausting parts of skilled physical labor, and pay the thinky parts better.
One of the odd things about the current rule that if you are For line and massing and big-scale design you are Against ornament is that ornament is often used to draw the eye to the other stuff. Doesn't have to be, but there's nothing ruling it out. Is it OK that classical Greek columns swell? They didn't have to.
You know what the Whitney really needs? More waterslides. The current ones can't keep up with demand.
I'M VERY BUSY, OKAY?
