I lived in a loft when I was on assignment in Pennsylvania (it was actually an apartment in the converted city hall) and the high ceilings! they're beautiful! And the light!
Privacy was never an issue because I lived by myself but I could totally see that it could be a problem if you were living with someone. It's not like in a normal apartment where someone could watch TV in the living room without bothering someone in the bedroom. There would have been places in the apartment where you could be out of sight of each other, but you'd always be within earshot.
And along with those high ceilings? Really high electric bills.
There are doors on the bathrooms (and to the closet), so you have the essentials. The bare poured concrete does not impress me, however.
Those interior decorating schemes are all very colorless. I can do with no walls, but the concrete and the endless white are so bleak.
Also, I remember corporate apartment hunting for that assignment being really amusing because it was split entirely along gender lines -- the girls all opted for the pretty lofts with washing machines and the guys all opted for ugly little boxes with no laundry facilities but that included some Every Channel Ever Invented With Super! Awesome! Football! cable TV package.
Really high electric bills.
But that's only if you want to pretend that winter does not exist.
4.--I'd line up along those gender lines! God, I'd cheerfully kill off one of my roommates for a washing-machine room.
Dude, I think I'd take the washing machine even over the TV.
Washerdreyer would be so pleased to hear this.
Apartment-sized washing machines and dryers are available, which do not require any special room or plumbing or electricity beyond a standard outlet. They are dinky, sure, and can be a pain in the butt if you don't keep them with some care; but they get your clothes clean without having to go to the laundromat. Though obviously this is not an advantage if you are looking for love in the laundromat.
Wait. How is this post more important than the Texas Meet-up (and discussion of corrective eyewear)?
I suppose if you hae very poor vision the lack of interior walls could be a selling point -- less stuff to bump into.
Ogged, I have to say I'm not altogether surprised. It's of a piece with your Heidegger tendencies. And to think that you could yet live like Wittgenstein.
OK, so the apartments in question are probably a bit on the small side overall, but it's worth noting that they're modelled on Corb's Unité section. The idea is that everyone gets some double height space. Labour costs make ornament and intricacy of all kinds more expensive than previously, but a bit of wasted space and generous glazing is still something that people might realistically have.
Along with the reduction of ornament, the boring parts of the residence (kitchens, bathrooms) are shrunk to a minimum to help pay for one 'big' spatial gesture. It wasn't really a goer in the 1920s but ...
Worth remembering that this was originally a vision for proletarian betterment. Now recycled as aspirational lifestyle.
the boring parts of the residence (kitchens
Does not compute.
12 is from bizarro world. The problem with the space isn't that it's a low-crime neighborhood, but that there are no shapes or doors which demarcate personal areas. I think this is a problem even if one, like Becks, lives alone--the space isn't a personal space. Furthermore, WT, the kitchens aren't boring at all, they're actually the nicest part of the units.
My S.O. at one time lived in an enormous downtonw loft with three architects. Lots of light, lots of room, high ceilings, concrete floors, no internal walls, no privacy. They ended up constructing (or bringing in? I don't remember) four wooden boxes, each about an 8x8x8 cube, mounted on wheels, in which they kept their beds and personals. This was a stupid idea -- it ends up that you pay downtown loft prices (surprisingly, given the lack of amenities, not cheap) to live in a tinytiny box with no windows or ventilation. Also, sex in a wooden box with metal wheels on a concrete floor: prohibitively noisy.
I've never lived in a loft, but if it's just a studio with better windows and higher ceilings as the floorplans seem to suggest, it doesn't seem like it would work with more than one person unless everyone was out all the time having a busy hipster lifestyle.
I can see living alone or as a couple like that--most couples just starting out, you don't *get* privacy, b/c you can't afford it. Or you go downstairs to the coffee shop, or hide behind a book or laptop.
What I don't get about lofts or most newer houses (including the one I live in now) is this open kitchen nonsense. The kitchen is the messiest room in the house; I don't want to look at the goddamn dirty dishes all day. Nor do I want to be a slave to keeping the kitchen clean in order for the house to feel orderly. I hope the inventor of the open kitchen spends an eternity in hell washing dishes by hand.
Go do the dishes, B, and cut your boy's hair!
I kinda get the open kitchen thing. I hate the clausterphobic kitchen feeling.
(And the clausterphobic bathroom feeling. Shower curtains that have cloth outer layers and let in no light? Why not go bathe in a casket, you creature of the night?)
I like the open kitchen because I want people to come and hang out with me while I cook.
The point of the open kitchen, I've always thought, is to make it not feel like you're cooking in a dark, secret laboratory. Besides, when most parties end up in the kitchen, an open kitchen can help to correct this or at least make it feel less claustrophobic.
I see places like that and I start to hate you uncluttered, childfree bastards.
As gay people start having families, apo, I'm sure this look will go out of style.
I had one of those apartment-sized washers in several of my single apartments. In my experience the limiting factor was the water—does it get hot enough?—and the drain. And the number of loads you have to do. When I moved to a marginally-safer neighborhood I gave it up. Plus I was so lonely in those days I looked forward to the minimal contact of laundromats, and watching people come by the window.
I really like the open kitchen; people can come watch you cook and chat, if you're having a party and preparing food or drinks, you don't feel isolated, &c.
B just wants to keep moms away from the rest of the family when they do their domestic chores, and spare the men from the mess.
Not that I have, or ever have had, an open kitchen. My apartments have tended towards the old-fashioned, dank, far away from bedrooms, sad little box kitchen model.
I don't mind open kitchens, but I do mind tiny kitchens with minimal counter space. The kitchen in my current apartment falls into both categories.
With a little care in design you can have openness and still be shielded from the dirty dishes when you're sitting at the dinner table. A half-wall or bar behind a kitchen counter is enough to block what's on the counters when you're sitting down but doesn't interfere with talking to the cook. Unfortunately I figured out what we should have done some time long after we replaced the way-too-boxed-off kitchen that was in our house when we bought it with one that's just a bit too open. But I'm a lawyer, not a Design Professional, so I'm amazed that so many new houses screw it up way worse than we did.
28 - which is better than the litter box kitchen model, which is how I first read that.
My galley kitchen has no counter space at all. It's very sad.
Hey, I'm not necessarily trying to persuade you to like it; just trying to give the thing some context.
In this case the kitchen doesn't exist: it's just some fitted furniture along the edge of the living room. Traditionally (and I'm writing this while sitting in the kitchen of an 1895 apartment) the kitchen is (a fairly large) room all of its own. A boring room, from the early modernist perspective.
Furniture will demarcate space quite successfully (in the sense that people will know where to sit, point themselves and generally behave). If it's a matter of visual privacy, the bedroom mezzanine (in this case) provides that. If it's a matter of aural / olfactory privacy: what's there to be embarrassed about? If it's a problem with the whiteness: paint the walls, put up rugs, etc.
14: Working on it, man. Working on it.
But that there are no shapes or doors which demarcate personal areas.
You have doors on your personal areas?
I've only ever lived with eat-in kitchens, a full fledged room unto themselves. I think a galley or even just a small, non-eat-in kitchen would give me claustrophobia - a semi-open kitchen would be a good way to remedy that in a compact space.
(My current apartment could use a little more open space; I want to know what bozo decided that it made sense for thr two common rooms (kitchen and living room) to only connect to each other at their corners, in a 28" wide diagonal opening)
Working on it, man. Working on it.
A word to the wise, might be better to stick with showers for now.
Every time I look at one of these Dwellish modern lofts, I wonder, "Where do people keep their stuff?" You know, the ridiculous quantities of battered paperbacks, the weird craft projects, the collection of slightly chipped yet iconic mid-century ceramics, the wooden duck decoy from the other half's long-ago summer camp....then I remember that the problem of the pomo West is surplus, and that all these people are demonstrating status by having small quantities of really expensive stuff which they replace frequently, rather than collecting (as I middle-classily do) lots of miscellaneous items. This depresses me, no matter which way I look at it--I aspire, yet I don't want to get rid of my stuff; I resent the implied philosophy, yet I'd love a clutter-free minimalist house containing a few expensive oddments only.
I like those spaces. I'd just have to have two of them.
I lived in a loft-like apartment in Chicago my last year there. I say "loft-like" because there were rooms, some real and some created as a by-product of the floor plan. There was a separate bedroom (and a separate bathroom that was, weirdly, not connected directly to the bedroom) and a large space that was effectively divided in two by an extremely narrow hallway-like space (it was maybe five feet long).
I liked it! But, as ogged says, not having anything really demarcated can be weird. Part of the problem in my case was that my place was extremely desultorily furnished; if I had thought I'd stay there longer, I would probably have put in more reputable/more furnishings and divided the one large room up a little more in that wise. The open kitchen was nice but there was a corresponding lack of shelf space; that, obviously, will vary each after the floorplan. Pace Taft, the demarcation of rooms/boundaries isn't a privacy issue; it's a matter of having certain spaces for certain things. If you've just got One Big Space, then it's hard to associate particular spaces with particular activities (I read in here, I mess around online in here, I work in here, etc), which can make it hard to pursue any activities at all.
I really liked the high ceilings but I'm glad I never had to change any of the ceiling-mounted lights. In fact there was one part, over the staircase (the majority of my apartment was on the third floor, but there was a second entrance on the second floor), whose lights looked impossible to change without risking life and limb. Oh, and there was virtually no storage space there; that sucked.
In every other respect, though, it kicked the crap out of my current place. Brick walls, hardwood floors, lots of windows, nice* area, gas stove. No, wait: there's a bar in my current apartment; that's pretty sweet.
*actually somewhat crimeful, but in terms of cultural affordances nice
You know, the ridiculous quantities of battered paperbacks, the weird craft projects
You build bookcases and put them up along the walls, duh. Either that or you're screwed.
Tell you what, ogged: I'm thinking of moving up to the city next year, and evidently you're curious about what it's like to live in such a loft. I think they look fine, so howabout you pay my rent to live there and I'll write a full and detailed report for you by August 2008?
I lived in a basement for six years. (With good windows.) The bathtub was right in the bedroom. I loved that.
This depresses me, no matter which way I look at it--I aspire, yet I don't want to get rid of my stuff
Oh for god's sake, decide. And remember: you can always have a mixture of several cheap things and one expensive thing. Nothing says class like that.
36: Early morning cold plunges. Never did me any harm yet.
It was like a loft with super low ceilings. Storage - you can just throw up bookcases in the middle of the room.
I'm not going to finance your homosexual lifestyle, Ben.
There's a large literature about the habitability of Bauhaus-inspired open-plans, some of it comical. Tom Wolfe's book from the eighties is not too bad, particularly about the experience, the conclusions not so much. De-cluttering, elimination, throwing it out—things that come hard to me—are absolutely essential. Like many people, I admire the elegance of the designs while being grateful I don't have to live there.
The issue is more that more-or-less every wall in my multi-room apartment is lined with shelves...if anything I need more walls, a labyrinth of walls, so that I can line those with shelves and creep slowly along them to select things, or maybe lurk in the middle waiting for the unwary. I suppose I could build a pretty good labyrinth in one of those big lofts, though. It could have shelves all the way to the ceiling.
If you've just got One Big Space, then it's hard to associate particular spaces with particular activities (I read in here, I mess around online in here, I work in here, etc), which can make it hard to pursue any activities at all.
Any more neuroses I can help with tonight? Why not just do whatever comes to mind wherever the thought happens upon you? And yes, I mean masturbation.
Actually, I have read that it's a bad idea to put anything work related in a bedroom, and am willing to go along with that. Part of student misery is that your (supposed) workstation is like, just there. Whenever you open your eyes.
if anything I need more walls, a labyrinth of walls, so that I can line those with shelves and creep slowly along them to select things
The top floor of J. Z. Smith's home is, he says, arranged to maximize shelf space—shelves protruding from opposite walls in a labyrinth. (You don't need a labyrinth of walls, just of shelves.) He said that he can never move, because, since he doesn't believe in grad students, he won't be able to get anyone to move his books.
46: why not?
48 - you could put false mirrors at the end of dead-ends, like a fun house. Guests could get trapped there! Your apartment could be the next Hotel California!
Sounds like you should live in the Rage Warehouse.
47: That sounds all right--there wouldn't be a center to the maze, which would be disappointing from the lurking-like-a-giant-swollen-spider standpoint, but as you worked your way towards the back of the room, zig-zagging between the shelves, you would notice that it was quiet (too quiet, of course)...and by then it would be too late. Sort of a switch from horror movie to thriller, as it were.
Er, not 47...50. Maybe I could just get myself some simple books about counting for starters.
It was originally artists who moved into lofts. The advantage was, no matter what size piece they were working on, they could fit it in. They might have to move furniture, but there weren't walls to get in the way. For this (and good light, often), they put up with a lot.
Then rich, young, good-looking people wished to emulate artists: to move into the neighbourhoods they'd pioneered, to live in the same sort of apartments they lived in.
Then real-estate speculators wished to cater to rich, young, good-looking people. They tore down the buildings which had housed the artists' lofts and built new buildings which held many more pseudo-lofts (smaller, more manageable, because there weren't artworks in progress which had to be accommodated) with more modern, cleaner materials, at much higher rents which appealed even more to rich, young, good-looking people.
Then ogged passed by one of these buildings and wondered why.
55: Sounds like someone's still bitter over Wicker Park / Williamsburg / SF equivalent
I'm afraid I have nothing of substance for Ogged on this post. All the lofts I've seen were way lower-class than the ones he's linked to, since they were the original sliced-up-warehouse style that typically come with crappy windows (covered in heavy bars or screens if it's the first or second floor) and dirt-cheap rents. 4000 square feet for a couple grand a month (tops) with 4-5 20-somethings living in 1000 square feet of makeshift bedrooms so the rest can be used as party/studio/whatever space. That's the way a loft should be.
Lots of the young and good-looking live in studios, ferchrissakes, which are shoebox-like; feeling cozy is a matter of mentality, and interior design.
Bitter? Moi?
But JAC (#56) is right. The old lofts were great for parties, too.
When I worked in a warehouse in irvine I often thought it would be cool to live in one, provided the acoustics could be nicened up.
When I was little I wanted to spend the night in the mall.
(No, that's never been a scene in any movie, ever, so please no linky-nonsense.)
I've seen some lofts that worked out pretty well, with the kitchen in an island in the middle of the space and the bedroom on the second level above the kitchen; that breaks up the space sufficiently that you don't get the feeling of living in a giant box. But even in those places, you still have the issue that there's no way to isolate one part of the loft from the others acoustically.
re: 39
Crimeful? crimeful?
That's not a word!
re: 59
And the acoustics would get to me, too (as well as the lack of privacy).
Guys, sorry if I cut up a bit rough earlier (it's been a strange day). I should have recognised that any discussion along these lines is going to have a certain tension: there are six billion people in the world and many are competing to store themselves in style.
Anyway, here's the Unité section I was referring to earlier. The image is a bit on the small side, but I think you can see the idea. It's not just the topmost apartments that are multi-level. Even fifty years on, most developers would consider this extravagant.
Here's William Curtis on Le Corbusier:
... for all its claims at universal relevance, the way of life symbolized by the Citrohan [a house design by Le Corbusier of 1922] was a projection of the rather odd values of a monastic and reclusive artist of the Parisian avant-garde. The Citrohan was a conflation of earlier Le Corbusier concerns: the mass-producible Dom-ino houses; the Mediterranean cubic dwellings with whitewashed surfaces he had seen on his travels; the ocean liners he so admired for their 'tenacity and discipline'. ... Le Corbusier had also been impressed by the studio houses built in Paris in the early part of the century, with their large areas of glazing; and the double-height room with a balcony at the back was inspired by a similar arrangement in a Paris café. This 'normative', vernacular background helps to explain the choice of white, planar surfaces in Le Corbusier's Parisian houses.
So, an uneasy mixture of the rarified and the utopian right from the beginning, then.
If your lexicon or morphological resources are so paucitous, that's not my problem.
I looked at an awful lot of lofts when I was house-hunting, largely because that's what I could afford in the areas I was hoping to live in. The openness looked pretty, but the acoustics were bad, there was no sense of privacy and the gigantic spaces were just scaled too big for me (how would I get curtains hung? lightbulbs changed? would I have to have 10-foot high bookcases and a stepladder to reach half the shelves?). I started gravitating towards the lofts that had some separate rooms alongside the giant cavernous space, but still couldn't really see myself living there long-term.
I eventually caved to the fact that the big ceilings and lack of demarcation among living areas would give me that North by Northwest feeling where I'd end up trying to make it human-scale again by making a warren of bookcases or something, and if I wanted to live with wall-to-wall stuff it'd be cheaper and easier to stay in my 550-sq ft apartment, thank you very much.
So I bought a cute little house with a midcentury suburban floorplan a little outside the area where I'd been looking but still well within the bounds of civilization. And it's cozy. And I like cozy, and if that makes me hopelessly bourgeois then I don't care.
The Citrohan was a conflation of earlier Le Corbusier concerns: the mass-producible Dom-ino houses; the Mediterranean cubic dwellings with whitewashed surfaces he had seen on his travels;
And I think that nails my issues with le Corbusier right there: scale and suitability for the environment. Little two-story sugarcube houses on a small, scorching hot island? Cute, practical. 10-story sugarcube in the middle of a dirty city? Looming and dystopian.
I spent an afternoon once in an early 3-story Le Corbusier building on the outskirts of Paris. Everyone informed me that it was a great honor to be in the building, that it was a wonderful, historic, revolutionary building, and that it was no fault of the building or Le Corbusier that the cement was all rotting and the floors were damp. Also, windows big enough only to shoot arrows out of are apparently a marvellous design feature, particularly pared with low stooping ceilings, and so appropriate for gray dingy Paris.
It's very hard to pare anything with high ceilings, at least with any accuracy; you basically have to toss the veg up to the corner and hope for the best.
True: low, irregular ceilings are better for paring with.
Low, irregular ceilings are fine for grating; for paring you really need a skylight.
I had one of these, before the rent went up by 200 and i had to move. WHat i'd kill for though is the opposite: dark, cozy, warm. A ceiling i can touch with my hand w/o jumping, with big dark wook beams. Books stacked floor to ceiling. little round windows with only leaves visible. and impractical walls.
Or even just a real loft: where you have a little storage space with a bean bag chair underneath, and a broad but very vertically cramped lounging/sleeping space above, accessable only via ladder.
Sounds like you want a hobbit hole, yoyo. Or a house designed by Roger Dean.
Oddly, oddly, I was just wondering with a friend about Roger Dean.
Gazing as we were at a Uriah Heep album cover -- hm, Roger Dean, we said: What ever happened to him?
The cozy thing is essential; the airy thing is equally essential. There are ways to achieve both, surely.
I actually lived in a nice loft in the Pacific Hts/Fillmore area for a few years (and am minutes from closing on the sale of it).
Best thing about it was the openness - just fab. Clean and open, though as someone who's a clutter magnet, it was a lot of work just finding places to put stuff.
As for the lack of rooms, this was never an issue until my SO at the time clearly didn't believe me when I said I was an introvert and just wanted to be alone for a couple of hours without her bugging me (I said, 'talking to me,' for the record). She didn't leave me alone so my fondest memory of the place was me hiding in my downstairs bathroom, with a book.
My least favorite memory was her banging on the door a few minutes later: 'What are you DOING in there?!'
We are not dating anymore.
You people are crazy with the kitchen shit. My last place, the kitchen was (I think) 11x13? And after we remodeled it and put counters on three walls, it was perfect: tons of storage, a pantry in the hall, and you could cook in the thing and reach everything you needed just by turning around. No pacing back and forth around the goddamn table every time you realize you forgot something in the fridge. And damn easy to clean.
There was plenty of space for a couple of people to come lean on the counters and chat, or help you chop vegetables: but once it was time to eat, you moved the hell away from the mess into the nice, clean, hospitable dining room.
Btw, Ogged, speaking of hair, you'll be thrilled to know that today I went and checked out the public school's "open classroom" program, which is all about non-violent conflict resolution, mixed-age classrooms, and kids working at their own pace.
squat
You mean to avoid hitting your head on the ceiling?
I think yoyo means that he/she could lift it one in a prescribed manner.
Just lift it one. I'll lift you one, too, if you don't look out.
78: Huzzah!
74: Dig Malcolm Wells' earliest designs for underground/earth-sheltered houses (image coincidentally on a site talking about Dean, whose built work I was unaware of). They were impractical in many ways and never built, but as he has said, they're the most "popular" he's ever done, and they clearly capture something people find very desirable.
Surely the important thing is space you can re-organise yourself? (channelling Stewart Brand here..) So - clear space, services in common runs, modular components...that's all quite loftish.
I formed lasting ideas about buildings whilst working on various ranchers' new homes in Australia, working with windmill bore casings as structural components, corrugated iron, and timber. It was astonishing how easy it was to make something that a) looked cool, b) stayed cool, and c) could be extended or amended with a screwdriver and a saw.
Kitchen optimisation: one of those problems that you can move toward but never reach. On the one hand, the small kitchen where everything is immediately to hand and space is economised - but whoever is in there is cut off from society. On the other hand, the big (or open) kitchen, where everyone in the house can gravitate to the stove as they do naturally, but there's always some bugger standing between you and the eggs. I see no analytical solution to this.
today I went and checked out the public school's "open classroom" program
Yeesh.
i could squat a hobbit hole
Pretty good defecation euphemism.
non-violent conflict resolution
Goodness sakes, B. If you aren't going to cut his hair, you should at least teach him to throw a proper punch.
Pretty good defecation euphemism
Except that "whole" is misspelled.
