Extra Extra won’t focus on memes but try to illustrate problems through them. To that end, the looser conditions of a column allow for visible cracks in my positions. Unanswered questions are welcomed. Criticisms formed on a mimetic hunch can be built up. Nothing here is too polished, neither is it expected to be.
As architecture culture breaks into architecture cultures, let's explore the fissures. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a constituency.
At first glance, the popular Instagram page @pleasehatethesethings is a funny and wondrous place. If you haven’t yet, take some time to join it’s 130k current followers in disgust over a collection of gaudy and misguided interior design decisions. The page brings together architects and designers to collectively bemoan the decorative taste of others. In between some poorly calculated construction work you will discover the endless depths of subjective style; someone, at some point, actually designed and built these things.
When you’re finished with the kitschy kitchens, misguided murals, and unspeakable urinals, take a deep breath and reconsider the following problem: architects have distanced themselves from those outside of design professions and the general public. The attitude the page displays is disparaging and elitist (the same can be said for the darling of publicly digestible architecture criticism, McMansion Hell). Worst of all, it represents the terrible habit of architects and designers to inadvertently belittle the public imagination. Can you think of anything more sinister? As architects we are charged with cultivating the public imagination. And here — in the posts collected by @pleasehatethesethings — is proof of the unbelievable and fantastic capabilities of said imagination. Can we justify trivializing the kind of passion it takes to see these spaces in a positive way? Do dentists improve public health by making fun of people with bad teeth? Of course not; dentists don’t have a sense of humor.
Unsurprisingly, the page — and its snarky attitude — have been praised by Architectural Digest, Apartment Therapy, and Better Homes and Gardens, saying things like “there is so much to love about this feed” and “follow Please Hate These Things on Instagram. Trust us, you won’t regret it.” The blind support on display in those articles is evidence of a dangerous echo — the media simply reporting on a trend without stepping back and thinking about what it represents.
The founder of @pleasehatethesethings, Dina Holland, says that design, specifically the domestic interior, is ultimately subjective and there will always be someone with something negative to say. In addition, the page itself is not meant as criticism. Certainly her aim here is to have a little fun and shed some light on just how bad things can get. I am all for that, and perhaps by collecting these images the page could be considered a visual essay questioning the value of taste itself. In that case, the page would do well to position the criticism onto the designer rather than the homeowner.
View this post on InstagramWho turned my Caboodle into a bathroom?
A post shared by @ pleasehatethesethings on
This is especially intriguing because after a while something strange started to happen to the feed. Take a look at the above post in particular. Despite the intention of the curator expressed within the caption, the comments suggest that the followers are actually enjoying the supposedly ugly aesthetic. The main goal of the page is undermined by Poe’s Law — an internet adage which states that extreme views are impossible on the internet unless explicitly stated. In other words, the snarky captions used by @pleasehatethesethings can just as easily be understood as sarcasm and, in a few instances, it looks like the aesthetic of the post took over the message attempted by the caption itself.
Let’s compare the outcome to a few pages that offer similar content with a different outlook. Pages such as @decorhardcore, @everyverything, @strangedomesticity, and @nonaestheticthings also accumulate imagery of intense decoration, stylistic oddities, overwhelming aesthetics, and kitsch. While doing so they remain relatively close-lipped in judgement, revealing a more ambiguous position. This ambivalence allows the audience the necessary curiosity to question their own aesthetic judgement.
View this post on InstagramSir, please step away from the perler beads set.
A post shared by @ pleasehatethesethings on
I recently conducted an informal poll of a few hundred architects and designers to tell me if beauty is subjective, or if objective beauty exists in a consensus of experts. 56% of responders argue that beauty is completely subjective. While my own poll is not the same group that follows @pleasehatethesethings, we can begin to see an opportunity. If beauty is subjective, architects should check their ego (After all, taste is, for the average designer, just a byproduct of their education and financial upbringing) and help others realize these strange spaces. In doing so, a good architect could turn these poorly executed ideas from a real estate nightmare into a sensational fever dream.
It is always healthy to poke fun at ourselves and uncover absurdities. But comedy and criticism are nearly indistinguishable heading into 2019, and it feels unproductive to deflate the poorly executed creativity of others for a cheap laugh. Instead of seeing style flaws, lets see the public imagination as needing our support and guidance rather than our ridicule.
Ryan Scavnicky is the founder of Extra Office. The practice investigates architecture’s relationship to contemporary culture, aesthetics, and media to seek new agencies for critical practice. He studied at L'Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris and DAAP in Cincinnati for his Masters of ...
13 Comments
Just because somebody loves these atrocious things, doesn't mean that I have to. They're free to like what they want, and I'm free to get a good laugh. And the reverse is true.
The difference is (and this may sound elitist) but I have the education, training, and experience to back me up, which does account for something.
Re: the comment about surgeons, you're of course exactly wrong: 1) it's important that cosmetic surgeons understand what people are looking for aesthetically, and how to achieve that, and 2) non-cosmetic surgeons aren't looked to as arbiters of taste, whereas architects have a recognized and important role in improving the beauty of the built form.
God forbid we uncross our arms, change out of our black shirts, and have a laugh. Good grief.
I read this article and it made me think. But I'm not sure yet what I think, so I'll re-read it tonight after a glass of wine and think some more.
Update: I had no wine in the house when I got home last night. I retired to my bed in despair.
Maybe there was too much wine involved when I wrote it! :)
Everything is just as good as every other thing. Film at eleven.
I don't see where I made the point that all taste is subjective therefore everything is good. Some architects believe taste is all subjective, and that lot doesn't include me. However, if some believe that then we should definitely not be snobby about it. I am trying to point to some current attitudes in media specifically because they belittle the public imagination. I think that is very not good.
I know plenty of architects without a sense of humor.
But I think what's more useful (and perhaps less of a Pandora's Box as the subjective/objective beauty question) is to narrow in on what kind of criticism you're talking about. I believe there's a fundamental difference between design critique, critiquing taste, and cultural criticism at large. Talking about the latter, I've always been intrigued by Pierre Macherey's definition as the "positive knowledge of limits, the study of the conditions and possibilities of an activity." Here criticism acts more as an explanation rather than judgement.
I agree that making fun of people's teeth is unproductive, but maybe like dentists, we architects should also understand the limits of the product under consideration within certain realms. The teeth of a 60 y.o. smoker are quite different from that of a teenager--maybe equally bad. For instance, McMansions symbolize a lot more than just kitsch and taste, and so a critique of the McMansion tradition cannot rely solely on the instagrammed image.
We definitely need a wider vocabulary and new methods for critiquing emerging cultural products. I think what this touches on perfectly is the failure of current attitudes to reflect on internet-enabled imagery, most notably illustrated by the knee-jerk response to judge upper-middle-class domesticity in terms of a canon of appropriate vs inappropriate collage methods (read: postmodernism).
Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production (London: Routledge, 1978).
Thanks for the comments, Galo! I agree with you about the fundamental difference in critique and their aims. What we can do is flip Macherey's third definition onto the limits and conditions of critique itself and its limits through (in this case Instagram) medium. This gets us to a second level of difference between productive critique and pandering populist humor. I hope what I do on my page feels more like that, whereas one could place @pleasehatethesethings as a taste critique which is unproductive (yet funny and enjoyable) on the internet. Looks like I have some reading to do. Thank you!
this sir is mildly genius and good to see there is a discourse on Archinect... on towards LOG: you trying to get in or something? that whole Meme with water in a pipe gushing out, etc.. I send them some monies, maybe I hook you up?
...and I remember at the NYC AIA Center 15 year thingy (December 3, 2018 I think) Mark Foster Gage noting something like - architecture is not instagram, yada yada...and Cameron Wu was like - maybe like Rafael Monoe says 'someone outside of architecture should talk about architecture', to which the man who filled a plastic cup of ice with Tito's Vodka full said yes ( I read he was a movie producer or something).
/\ this is serious discourse [yours] (you know Corb worked at a watch maker or something like Einstein and that shit was trending back then, now I hear it's social media is the shit...)
to your point: I let my fresh graduates crew pick and design fresh trending academia trained stuff when I know my client will just revert back to some populist vernacular aesthetic. I do this because I really don't care (to be frank, I know where the design is heading). The reaction is always disgust and disappointment. I've been doing architecture for a while, 100+ jobs a year, and as our most cultured producing client once said "in Minnesota we have a saying - opinions are like assholes, everyone has one." and I followed with my Missouri/Kansas understanding "Yes, most of them stink."
In no uncertain terms (this could be fiction), he (client) was reffering to the millenial crowd as the :"creatives" who are "cool" but don't "actually make any money"...it's the old fogeys who are behind the scenes who do...
Scav - are trends important to critique?
JP thanks for all of your thoughtful input! Good question. I think trends suggest a certain underlying attitude that people express through style. Take the rise of popular drugs and their correlation with overarching political goals of the time (weed - dropping out and not participating in Vietnam, cocaine - accelerate capitalism and anything is possible, etc). It is important to recognize trends as a real part of a critique.
can critique happen in instagram? or does critique need more time to reflect in architecture? you've kind of answered this already, but wondering if critiquing trending instagram critiquing is a thing yet? (meta-instagram-critique per say)
Trends don’t mesh well with brick and mortar. Either create ephemeral architecture that does, or long lasting architecture that connects to timeless and universal truths.
Fuck! I’m breaking my new years resolution about avoiding soft language...replace ephemeral with disposable...
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