We all know architecture is a deathly serious business—but sometimes, that severity weighs so heavily that it becomes oppressive, restricting debate to an academic mean and setting a glacial pace of cultural influence. When that happens, the key to liberating architectural discourse might just arrive in a coat made of kittens, painted in Lisa Frank fluorescence.
That’s the strategy proposed by Joanna Grant in her MArch thesis at Princeton, ‘Overly Attached Cute’ (OAC), presented this past spring. The project is a web-based paper doll set of sorts, where classic building types, rendered in colorful cutesie cartoonery, quickly begin to rot, and players must adorn their buildings with all manners of objects to cover up the mess. These include actual architectural accessories, as well as random kitsch. Stuff you might find in a disorganized plastic toy chest. There’s no end to the play, just more stuff to click, drag, and attach to your rapidly decaying building.It’s all about using superficial cuteness to provoke longer-term attachments to architecture, and quicken its cultural influence
In her thesis text, Grant links the utility of cuteness in architecture to the elevated cuteness concept of ‘kawaii’: “Perhaps cuteness can act as a Trojan horse to talk about impolite matters, exactly in the same way that it responds to the strict cultural codes of Asia.” The key “impolite” matter in OAC is formalism, which Grant hopes her thesis can help safeguard by smothering it in HVACs, porthole windows or even a dinosaur. It’s all about using superficial cuteness to provoke longer-term attachments to architecture, and quicken its cultural influence: “The act of covering an image of a building may deface the architect’s intention, but if the affect is associating brutalism with a mental picture of a box full of kittens, the positive association could be heroic.”
In addition to its existence as a browser game, OAC is also Grant’s nonprofit architectural preservation organization, “dedicated to the improvement of underutilized and under adored architecture.” I asked Grant over email about how she developed OAC's structure, and what will become of the project post-thesis.
Why did you want to focus your architecture thesis on cuteness?
Cuteness is an aesthetic category that has not yet been fully explored in architecture, despite its proliferation in so many other aspects of lifestyle. As kitsch and pop have acted as the means through which high art speaks to commercialism, cuteness could be a method through which architecture speaks to a broader audience.if it’s adorable and you love it, you can’t demolish it or throw it away.
Having spent some time in downtown Los Angeles, I have developed a fascination with the ersatz culture of Japanese toys. I like the idea of collecting things that are utterly useless but that you just love. I recently acquired a set of sushi erasers, which are totally Postmodern: a symbol without any connection to function. Or in the words of Michael Meredith, “semiotics without meaning.”
How did you develop the “cuteness ruleset”?
Cuteness has been well studied in the soft sciences, attributing the face and body proportions of babies and young animals to the caretaker affect. Research has proven that our preference for cuteness stems from an evolutionary adaptation of neoteny, or the retention of juvenile characteristics in an adult. Konrad Lorenz’s research documents a correlation between infant facial proportions and the caretaker effect, referred to as the baby schema, which has the evolutionary function of ensuring survival.
The buildings featured in the game reference Michael Graves' Portland Building, Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center, and Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower—why choose these three buildings in particular? What architectural styles in general do you feel are endangered and worthy subjects of preservation?
All of the buildings are either subject to demolition or in the process of demolition or renovation. Demonstrating the potential for cuteness in a broad range of architectural styles was important for the project—one could definitely say that there’s a historical precedence for it’d be cool if Uncle Rem would play it and send me a reaction video and a screen shot of what he made.a kind of cuteness, like in John Hejduk’s projects. My professional opinion is that the Portland Building is already cute, but it’s just funny to add more to it as Postmodernism is already such a strange collection of kitbashed parts. But to take Brutalism and make it cute? Perhaps in the comments section we can find out if it was a successful endeavor.
There’s really a 50 year lifespan for a building. It’s strange our own lifespan is longer than many buildings. That’s where cuteness could be quite useful; if it’s adorable and you love it, you can’t demolish it or throw it away.
Who in particular do you hope plays the game?
Everyone! The intention was to produce familiarity and engender affection with the architectural artifact through the process of play and participation. It’s not limited to an audience of architects. Preston Scott Cohen has already played it, so it’d be cool if Uncle Rem would play it and send me a reaction video and a screen shot of what he made.The objective is to produce participation through the dissemination of images; it’s how we communicate today.
Why choose a Japanese-inspired aesthetic of cuteness in the explanatory video for OAC?
Initially the game itself began as a gameshow, and the video became a means for producing suspension of disbelief in an audience. In the same way that OAC is asking the building subjects to get into character, there was an interest in how gameshows can ask participants to get into character. It was also a way of explaining something that doesn’t necessarily need to be explained; I don’t speak or read Japanese, so I added a false narrative to it. It seemed appropriate because the buildings became the same false narratives and the production of false realities that could be entirely possible or begin to influence the future of the projects that were chosen.
Ornamentation and coloration are often maligned in current architecture discourse, while both are tactics used by OAC to endear people to endangered architectures. Do you think OAC’s aesthetic could actually be used against preservation efforts to make the building less appealing?
OAC’s audience is not an audience of architects, it’s a general public that cannot bridge the gap between disciplinary conversation and taste. It’s kitsch. At a certain point the OAC aesthetics should become the background, but produce an engagement with an audience that allows the participants to be cute, to behave in a cute way. The objective is to produce participation through the dissemination of images; it’s how we communicate today.
What will become of OAC now that you’ve presented your thesis?
Thesis projects should be a point of origin for any architect’s body of work, so it never quite occurred to me that OAC would end. The objective was to make something that was real and potentially impactful, not boards that hang in a gallery for one hour during the review. OAC exists and the game exists outside of the world of a thesis review; hopefully it could make an audience aware of these particular buildings that need care, and need an audience that will want to keep them around.
This feature is part of Archinect's special editorial focus on Games for August 2016. Click here for related pieces.
Former Managing Editor and Podcast Co-Producer for Archinect. I write, go to the movies, walk around and listen to the radio. My interests revolve around cognitive urban theory, psycholinguistics and food.Currently freelancing. Be in touch through longhyphen@gmail.com
30 Comments
This is amazing!! I love this project.
Этот проект удивительна ! ФАНТАСТИКА!
Neo-Postmodenrism = Vaporwave...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporwave
Maybe there's an interesting aesthetic idea here buried under the pretentiousness of trying so hard not to be pretentious. Like how internet culture is stuck on regurgitating past trends.
Maybe Uncle Rem will hire me to be his intern! LOL JK. Really, Princeton? So CUTE
But let me know if using superficial cuteness (as defined by J-Pop, which is a hyperdrive version of American consumerism) preserves long term attachments or if it does, like this post, have an amusing short term lifespan.
LiMX,
Sorry, the Uncle Rem comment ... too much. Head exploding.... is there a new wave of cutesy-feminism I'm not aware of? Do we need to go through this Post-Modernism rigmarole again....
I just worry what they are doing there at Princeton... this is your brain on S.M,L,XL, any questions?
nice use of cultural appropriation!
It's strange to think one would spend this much time to talk about superficial cuteness. I hope they learned something useful.
"MArch thesis at Princeton"....sigh
Some of these hostile comments reflect a bias against experimental and speculative architecture. Its a conservative impulse promoted by many vocational/technical-oriented second and third tier Architecture schools across the US.
That's cool, Davvid, those second and third tier tech schools end up filling all of the real positions at arch firms while the Beatriz Colominas end up working on Wall St or worse, Teaching Theory at Princeton. experimental architecture for its own sake is extremist
cutenesss might actuall have more to do with architecture than "deconstruction". there is no reason to take yourself so seriously as Architect, no one else does.
This is wonderful. How is a study of cuteness less worthwhile than the study of proportions which motivated so much of classical architecture? Maybe cuteness is the only acceptable way to be witty with aesthetics in modern vernacular.
The Princeton Cuteness School of Architecture
https://youtu.be/MNxLm_qkWKE
The general public is far more dynamic and willing to embrace unusual aesthetics than most of the architecture and design community. Aesthetic inhibition usually comes either from trained architects, planners, or from untrained architecture/urbanism activists. Words like "cute" or "fun" are common descriptors used by people outside the A&D community.
Nobody is talking about dynamism or aesthetics, just the cult of anti-intellectualism. Words have meaning.
Full Definition of cute
1a : clever or shrewd often in an underhanded mannerb : impertinent, smart-alecky <don't get cute with me>
2: attractive or pretty especially in a childish, youthful, or delicate way
3: obviously straining for effect
The question is why this would be a virtue. There is already too much cleverness substituting for good design out there.... but I doubt think they are really interested in architecture, more the cute.
LiMX,
We can design pluralistic buildings and spaces that are layered and intended to appeal to multiple types of users on multiple levels. There is a conservative element in the A&D community that, when they are evaluating a design, are not capable of seeing rigor and history beyond/within the elements of populist kitsch. This kind of anti-pop rigidity hurts the profession. It drives a wedge between mass culture and architecture culture.
The contradiction of postmodernism is that it talks the talk when it comes to populism and inclusion except when it comes to taste. Architecture is a part of this world too, just as much as Kitsch or the Mall or whatever. Yeah these elitists with their "good architecture" and "values" why can't you just give "the people" what they want! Crap! Who needs good architecture when you have cat videos, amiright. This presupposes an ignorant public... a vicious cycle of bad taste. If you read nothing but Banham and Venturi, you probably get this nihilistic world view. Do we really need more lullabies to the values of the late market economy?
LiMX, You don't need to read Banham or Venturi. Just observe what people outside the architecture/planning community are doing. Stop being so condescending and snarky for a second and just visit a mega church, or a gay bar, or a Walmart, or an amusement park, or a music festival, or a parade, or a mall, or a casino, or a football stadium...
Don't worry, there's plenty of support for these things and kitsch culture.
Architecture, on the other hand, is endangered if not dead altogether.
Architecture is losing cultural ground because its stale, slow, and detached from the culture at large. Its drifting away from the public that its supposed to serve. In the comment sections of this site, architects are regularly complaining about the influence of branding and the Media on Architecture. That kind of resistance to fundamental aspects of contemporary society will eventually lead to declining relevance.
"Exactly what cultural ground is architecture losing?"
Does the public look to architects for an indication of what the future of cities will be? Does the public look to architects to innovate domestic or workspaces? I find that the people who speak directly to the public about these matters are usually tech and media entrepreneurs, TV personalities, or a hand full of gadfly writers. Also, companies that want to sell products or real estate to the public, like computer, furniture or car companies, put a lot of effort in trying to "educate" the consumer. The architect has lost the role of leader and teacher in the community on matters related to space, lifestyle, urban culture etc.
"Is this project really an example of architecture gaining cultural ground?"
Yes, in a small way. By considering a new strategy for preserving buildings and disrupting existing stigmas around certain styles.
clearly cuteness is debatable.
Perhaps my frustration is that there's an interesting concept undercut by bad thinking and word choices. Simple substitution of "Joy" for Cute, and maybe get rid of all of the typical "modernism is so boring" let me add ornament cliches.
Expanding interactive media in new ways beyond twitter to aid preservation is good, but the vaporwave cute thesis undercuts any supposed message. Like making a porno with a "message" ...
"but the vaporwave cute thesis undercuts any supposed message."
How so? Is it just that you don't like the aesthetic and so you automatically decide that it lacks rigor?
I love this idea - as an idea. I don't know that it's an effective tool for preservation, but that's not what's compelling about it to me. It's an intellectual exercise that stands on its own.
It's also not a proposal for a physical architecture artifact. Those that are all wrought up above about post-modernism and cuteness in design, etc, are projecting a design proposal onto this non-design-proposal project. This seems like a critical project to me, closer to commentary and activism than design. And that's fine.
Some of the things I like about it are its parallels with similar critical exercises that I've loved in the past:
- Teaching design strategies of the Renaissance through an assignment to re-design an existing building with a Renaissance facade.
- A project to imagine (/design) a contemporary project as its future ruin, an exercise inspired by Kahn's romanticization of his own projects as future ruins.
- Lars Lerup's "Planned Assaults", a series of fantasy projects infusing generic typological forms with imagined narratives; the first architecture book I read (1986-ish?) that helped me understand what architecture as a fully imaginative proposition could be.
Grant's project is in the tradition of this kind of exercise.
I don't know that I like the aesthetic, but that's hardly relevant. Maybe it can make me more comfortable with what happens to my own projects after they're complete. (Frilly valances, brown sugar candles, etc.)
I also don't know what the physical implications are beyond the confines of this game. What would the realization of this layering of cute mean? Is it meant to be translated IRL? I don't know. As davvid suggests above, this is a speculation that will be present only in the digital world. It is on those terms that it should be understood. At least until the time that Grant makes a proposal that is more explicitly a design for construction in the physical world. I expect that might look very different.
[Have to note: I taught Grant in an architecture studio way back when she was in high school. I'm excited to see that she's doing good things and engaging in work that can trigger this much discussion!]
Hi Steven! Thanks for your words here, so cool of you to add a comment. Hope you're well! ;)
It is not my intention to dismiss the idea of cuteness. What I dismissed is the relevance of my opinion about cuteness. It's certainly integral to the project and the project remains effective whether or not I like it.
i think one indirect importance of this is in considering how a stylized abstraction of a building can make it more understandable, or at least more memorable. in this case, that abstraction is 'candy cute', but it could just as easily be 'gotham' or 'simcity pixelated' or 'manga style'. it's something that's lost in contemporary practice, where the ideal rendering is always assumed to be the realistic one. see the controversy over the banal renderings of the lacma for that. a single still image can't adequetely express the special qualities of a building which is nevertheless obviously and probably excessively distinctive.
reality is actually often boring, or at best full of distracting complexity. my personal experience has been that the best architectural experiences are of buildings that already stuck in my mind as an image. think of the hand renderings of the guggenheim or corbs lithe sketches of his famous works - they project a mood and an image which actually heighten the experience of the envisioned architecture. one reason architects enjoy sketching is maybe to make these little mental images for themselves - to cutify buildings in some way.
steven ward, your comment on ruins reminds me of a tangent: archdaily had a wonderful series of photos on the dismantling of rudophs orange county building. the building actually became more beautiful and dignified without its skin, just a strange concrete frame. its something badly needed is a fair consideration of how buildings can die with dignity, since sometimes even pretty good ones are too difficult to save. preservation is kind of a cruel trap for most buildings which never really exist to their full potential. its easier to like the broken or disappeared ones, where you can imagine the good qualities it never quite managed to have.
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