In between classes today, I was perusing through this massive book documenting all the Case Study Houses:
I was thinking to myself the whole time: so, if this is how we were envisioned to be living way back in the late 40s why are we living in a day and age that seems the polar opposite?
I've been familiar with the houses since i first became interested in architecture, with Koenig's fantastically cantilevered CSH #22 being the most notable in my memory. I was struck again by just how beautiful all these homes were, so well proportioned and designed exactly to fit their SoCal context. The pictures of the completed homes look like spaces normal human beings would enjoy living in. The interiors didn't strike me as harsh or minimal, but rather as elegant backdrops upon which human activity could take place. The kitchens caught my eye too as they were not massive and brash like many modern kitchens, designed simply to impress or extremely tiny kitchens put there just as an afterthought, but human scaled and functional. The furniture in these homes often looked just as contemporary as the high-end stuff sold today (and in some cases it was the same).
All this led me to wonder, why did we regress so hard as a culture from this? How did we go from a vision of the future that was so bold and awesome to a reality of McMansions, EIFS, and garbage? Did we outdo ourselves in the '60s? Too much change to fast for the normal American to handle? This goes beyond architecture as all the popular Sci-fi of the day was pointing us to a future of moon colonies and flying cars. While I can understand why we don't have the moon colonies and flying cars, I don't understand why we regressed so hard culturally. Why don't American suburbs look like the ones outlined in the CSHs book? Why is everything old new again? How come Herman Miller can't offer me anything more contemporary than something that was designed 50 years ago and why do so many of the most cutting edge designs look like reheated mid-century modern?
I saw Zaha's new couch in a B&B Italia showroom the other day, and it looked exactly like the kind of thing you'd find in a '60s lounge. So much of the CnC milled, computer generated forms emerging from top arch schools these days also look like the same plastic-molded stuff you'd find in George Jetson's apartment, the same stuff that was made without a 3d printer in mid-century workshops. Why is that?
Reading The City in the Image of Man recently, by Soleri, I was struck by just how familiar how many of his points sounded in regards to landscape/eco urbanism and sustainable design. It doesn't take much imagination to link many of his musings to things like the Dongtan eco-city and Masdar. Soleri was also just one tiny part of an entire movement and movement that mirrors our own "Green" movement today. Except they were more extreme back then.
So, any of you old timers care to help enlighten me?
hah hah great point both. Apu I share your disbelief and wonder why soceity has failed to embrace the solutions afforded aside from the pysiogyamy of it - flat roofs etc.
Because people have a hard time identifying the specific thing they dislike (i.e. flat roofs) about a piece in a medium they are unfamiliar with (in this case arcitecture), and even more difficulty recognizing when that specific thing is not essential to the spirit of the piece. So people find it much easier to say, "I just don't like this." than to figure out why, and end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I dunno. It seems to me that a lot of the stuff from the Case Study House era was adopted from a technology and planning standpoint into many average homes.
because not a lot of people want to die somewhere that doesn't remind them of their childhood. the idea of a home is in its permanence, permanence is death.
Steven, I'd be interested to see the project. Personally, I've begun to question the "need" to make single-family residential homes more contemporary or modern as of late. Yes, the McMansions of America are horrible, wasteful, and maybe even deceitful in what they seem to promise their inhabitants, but why must the answer be a flat roof and unconventional materials? This is not to say that they can't be modern, but I think architects might do well to resign the area of single-family homes to perhaps a more vernacular or less experimental approach at least. I think this is an area where materials, construction, spatial relationships, detailing, and economy of means, space and energy might be a better focus... How can we make a home that satisfies the desires of its inhabitants for familiar, comfortable surroundings in a contemporary way that respects the environment around it, and that is finely attuned for the intense, if mundane human activity that takes place within it? I love modern and experimental architecture, but I think in a home, more than any place else, people often want something that is familiar and non-confrontational. I think noctilucent might have been joking a bit, but I think (s)he hits something true there: people want to live in some place nostalgic and permanent. To this end, I think if we accept that most people will not want a Farnsworth house, though I think they could be missing something by rejecting the notion out-of-hand, we are presented with a new and interesting challenge. Working within the vein of the vernacular, if we are willing to do so and if we can educate clients about a contemporary vernacular, there may be no better place to explore such poignant ideas as those of dwelling, permanence, life, routines, familial relations, and the process might yield something that is both modern and familiar in its own right, like that of the work of James Cutler for instance.
but why must the answer be a flat roof and unconventional materials?
I think partly to blame for the general public's negative reception towards "flat roofs" lies in the unconventional materials spectrum. As architects we need to design structures for our clients, and quite frankly, most modern designed homes I've seen weren't things your average handyman could work on with a supply runs to Home Depot.
I don't have the tools or expertise to put a new EPDM roof on my home, but I sure can get out my hammer and put down some new asphalt shingles.
Right or wrong, I think if the DIY centers started stocking more contemporary materials the public acceptance of "modern" design would be bigger.
hey joe sixpack and mrs. hockey mom want and need the housing types that remind them of an america that never existed and flat roofed metal houses that look like they could be the sets on some gay hbo series are not that.
Well here's a small part of the problem, or rather a "big" part.
My mother-in-law gives us gifts, which is wonderful and they are all really nice things, nicer than I can afford typically. So for example, she recently gifted us some new towels. These towels are HUGE and thick and luxurious but mostly HUGE. Folded, they are bigger than all the other towels I have; they don't fit on the neat stacks of ten-year-old and perfectly fine towels I have organized in my linen closet - in fact, folded they are wider than the shelves in my linen closet.
I can't get rid of the old towels, because I like them and they're fine. But I need more room in my linen closet. So I guess I better put my modest mid-century home on the market and buy a new McMansion that will have more room for all my inventory. Because that's what important to Americans: inventory.
Not sure I completely buy that because flat roofs are extremely popular with anything that isn't a house.
However, in the context of Noctilucent's arguement, I can see a point. Nostalgia plays a huge role in modern culture, but it didn't use to and I think that is the crux of my question. How did we go from being so forward-thinking to so backward-thinking?
Like i said earlier this goes beyond architecture and permeates almost every single aspect of American life. Many modern car designs are retro throwbacks, and the fashion industry has been stuck somewhere between 1963 and 1987 for a very long time now. Is this because the future as we know it is too horrible to imagine? Have we gone from scenes of cyberpunk dystopia to scenes of complete oblivion? Modern sci-fi can hardly look 10 years down the road, and when it does its usually terrifying. Afraid to imagine anything for fear of armageddon have we retreated to comforting notions of "The Home" with its gabled roof and brick facade?
I saw a documentary on Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation recently.
What struck about the program, and a point made by the filmmaker, was how the people who moved into this project refused to adopt the lifestyle as Corbusier had envisioned it.
Inside, this one apartment with filled with the same antiques and ticky tack one would find in an "old" style french home.
What I think is that basically people like nostagia and the connection to their past. Decoration is a human trait ( see any book on africa ) and the cool minimalism of the case study homes is just not the way people want to live.
Spanish style Antonio Banderas Mansions on the other hand, rule.
Oh and in response to bleiver, one of the things that struck me about the CSH homes in particular is that they weren't dogmatic like Corb's residential designs. Many of the furnishings filling the homes, when they weren't highly contemporary, were actually knick-knacky things the owners put in there and they looked fine set against the backdrop of the house. What I feel set so many of the CSH homes apart from what Corb and Mies were doing in residential design is they didn't force themselves on their owners.
to get at one of the roots of what i read as your question: why is it that we lost the kind of 'optimism' seen by you in the case study homes?
for me, 99% of it has to recognize three conditions: first, even at that time, the kind of homes that the case study homes embody were never, ever close to being in the 'mainstream' of american thought. the ranch home (loosely based on cliff may and somewhat fllw) had captured the imagination more than any other type of the period. the case study homes had some appeal within professional circles but that's it.
second - most people, through no fault of their own, simply want their home to be a refuge at the end of the day. not an avant guarde piece of art, but the archetypal shelter and warm fuzzy place to come home to. this was especially the case as the 50's cold war ratcheted up, as well as the upheaval from the 60's on. so, let's be realistic: most people simply don't see the csh's as that kind of 'warm' place. they like their knick-knacks and other things and they want an environment which supports that (and all this is kind of sidestepping the issue someone raised above, about the relative education level of most people, especially with regards to aesthetic concerns). which leads me to point three...
3 - most modern environments, especially of that period and their representation in the media, sought to completely wipe away all references to the past. the reality, though, is that a whole lot of people have antique furniture (the real stuff), of all kinds of styles, periods, etc. that has either been purchased, willed, etc. and we, as architects, basically ignored that fact, or, really, the simple fact that people might have 'things' which simply didn't 'fit in' with that kind of relentless aesthetic. then, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
i'd say point #2 is a key reason that the aesthetic didn't take hold, but it's also a ton of other factors i don't have time to go into.
yeah, that is a nice project there... it's funny, that's kind of along the lines of what I had in mind about architecture that is more about materials, etc. Even though it might not necessarily be a contemporary vernacular in that project, it definitely seems like humane (or humanistic maybe) modernism.
Nepenthe in Big Sur walks a slightly more cantankerous line between materials and modern architecture. Maybe off topic a bit, but your comment made me think of it.
Apu, you're looking at the wrong catalyst. Case Study Houses were the work of architects and turned on those that already like or know about design. The actual forerunner projects to suburbia were put together by someone named Levitt and he gave his name to the places. People came, liked what they saw, and could afford to buy. McMansion-villes are basically Levittowns on steroids.
levvitt brothers just made suburbia mass-produce-able without turning the homes into shit (really!). suburban homes in the modern sense were around for hundreds of years before that, just without the financial infrastructure that made it possible to have a home on a regular wage.
you know its funny but before the 2nd world war people actually saved for years to buy some land, then lived in the garage or a shed while they saved enough to build the house. In a suburb. this was especially true of the suburbs lived in by African-Americans (yes, African-Americans lived in suburbia 100 years ago), but there case was more special for its extreme, not for its oddity.
that no one wants to live in a CSH does not surprise me. it does make me sad to think that america no longer has the vision thing going on. it is even more sad that the optimism of the 60's, even one tainted by the cold war and fears of nuclear winter, is just gone. we don't believe in the future anymore.
hmm, well, maybe that is not true. I believe in the future. but a big bit of the world doesn't.
Oh, I'm aware of the levittowns, and I can definitely see the line connecting them to the McMansion exurbs of today. Yet what I saw in the CSH book was a refinement of the idea. A convergence of modernism and domestic habitability and I seriously do feel many of the CSH designs seemed alot more livable than other modernist homes being designed by Corb, Mies and many of the other big-name European architects at the time.
actually, the biggest point that csh was missing was what levittown had - a larger sense of planning, and honestly, i believe that is why levittown lives on and the csh is becoming more and more a vestige of the past. levittown for better or worse addressed not only the housing needs of a post-war nation, it addressed them within the terms of a larger sense of infrastructure and urbanism. i think it's a good lesson for architecture today. pretty boxes without a larger idea about the world are destined to become historical relics.
correct me if i'm wrong, but my impression is that the mcmansion phenomenon is embroiled in the suburban phenomenon and suburbia is both, the romantic realization of an individual’s belonging to the earth (through the abundance of nature, recreated) and her belonging to a community; which is to say the creation of the suburb is somewhat akin to the recreation of a european village within the milieu of an urban contemporary lifestyle. to achieve this, the architecture must appear to communally comply to a certain understood, even expected, code in order for the dotting mcmansions to form the architectural “unconscious”, staging, of the suburb. so even if one mc mansion might stand out in its opulence and scale, the overall gathering of those houses would generate an overall consistent “reel” coding of suburbia. the mc mansion, for all the expected possible stylistic and spatial variations, is, from the more abstract point view, a basic “irreducible” (to use a word that was flaunted recently on another thread to imply modernism) block around which its mclawn grid unit contribute to the suburban reel.
laru, here, says of the mcmansion : the archetypal shelter and warm fuzzy place to come home to. what s/he does not explain is why this would be seen as being an archetype shelter. modernism, for many suburbites who probably view the suburb as a natural condition of living (domesticity) signifying permanence and the city as an artificial condition of living (labour) signifying temporality, is seen to be emblematic of the city, modernism as a shell for the temporary emotionally-disconnected world of labour.
jadfidler introduces the interesting incorporation of frank lloyd wright as being a national archetype. now that’s interesting because well, he was a modernist in his own idiosyncratic way and there are mc mansions, I believe, that are styled to conform to the wright look/feel. perhaps, the reason for this embracing of his work is because wright, an american (of welsh descent) understood, or felt, or intuited … that a modernism in a europe with its burden of a long history would be misplaced in the u.s. with its burden of a short history and its craving to commit to its earth. his version of modernism is therefore more chthonic and domestic, it signifies rootedness and belonging where, on par, miesian modernism, in the american city, would imply ethereality, disconnection, effacement and non-belonging.
it is the amazing power of the American ingenuity to standardize even dreams.
i didn't agree with most of that last post, noc, because i think it throws too many ideas in a blender and suggests that there are causal connections which, i think, aren't demonstrated.
Nostalgia, an irrational yearning for the return to another time, dominates American architecture today. Preservation of the past continues in the mind, in books, in photographs and films, and in the conservation of past construction but simulating the past is a travesty of the present. This return to a romanticized time avoids the existential burden of time-its angst and its joy.
- Juhani Pallasmaa
the above quote (which i love) demonstrates part of the problem. pallasmaa assumes that people might WANT to experience the existential burden of time. and i think a lot of architects are in the same place: we feel that to be modern is to take our place in a natural timeline of architectural development.
but most of the american non-architects that i encounter don't care in the least about that timeline and look at architecture as a matter of choice with no necessary connection to a time or place. americans have learned very well how to be consumers and how to exercise choice. choice often means choosing with what you want to be associated from all available possibilities, regardless of propriety based on architectural history or region. consumption of architecture based on style can allow those personally-selected associations, more than some conceit that architecture is continuous and that americans should accept the architecture that belongs to their time.
steven ward but most of the american non-architects that i encounter don't care in the least about that timeline
i think they do, everyone does. time is everyone's personal intimate concern.
but the concern might manifest differently. i believe that time is felt differently by different cultures. this is why modernity would harbour different ideas of time depending on the cultures. likewise, historicist architecture. people NOT choosing modern architecture forgo a certain feeling of transient time.
also, i don't think nostalgia is irrational. it is only irrational insofar as pallasmaa's not spending time thinking of how rational and explicable it is in the context of a decentred fundamentally insecure urban life. everything has reasons, its irrational to call any existing phenomenon irrational.
as for idea blending, well i never said my concern here was to serve up smoothies, academic or professional.
this sentence should be suchlike :people NOT choosing modern architecture forgo a certain feeling of transient time that the contemporary might signify to them
I think this is at the fundamental root of the situation. But I don't think pessimism about the future is a uniquely American thing or a recent development. Mankind has spent the majority of its existence living somewhere between being extremely cautiously optimistic and completely scared shitless of the future. The times we've really embraced the future and have been wholeheartedly optimistic about its prospects are relatively sparse and typically limited to specific cultural or societal groups. Ironically, these rare times of optimism seem to be when we're able to make the greatest advancements technologically and culturally.
4arch "Ironically, these rare times of optimism seem to be when we're able to make the greatest advancements technologically and culturally"
i don't agree. my thoughts are that the most technological advancements we've witnessed are a result of military minded ventures and adversarial competition between nations. peace takes on board the residues and, sure, might turn them into something else, like adding the nitrogen that was destined to be used for bombs during wartime into fertilizer that produces amazing botanical growth but eventually depletes the biological integrity of turf.
we are a rashly violent species, we augment our violence macroscopically over a very short time. nature’s violence is much more microscopic over a much longer span of time. we might very well be destined to kill us off and take the rest of the planet with us. and in the propositional absence of alien consciousness, the universe would disappear as well (after all, if there is no consciousness to appreciate the universe, there is no universe to be appreciated).
i'm not referring to any particular house type (mcmansions are a whole other issue outside of what i'm talking about). rather, i'm talking about the iconography and perception of continuity a more traditional home implies. those two elements, along with nostalgia and a hundred other things, contribute towards why a more overtly modern aesthetic hasn't taken hold (the fact that traditional is a more 'known' quantity within the realm of home financing and is perceived as less risky doesn't help).
two contrasts to make: for larger, multifamily projects, i think we've seen less resistance overall to homes being more modern in an aesthetic context. not sure why, other than there's less of an intimate connection to the isolated object (you can empathize a single family house in a way you just can't with a larger building). also, we're not all that opposed to technology or embracing the future - witness the evolution of cars and the desire from people to have the latest and greatest in them. (sure, some of the styling is retro, but isn't the case study aesthetic pretty much a retro thing now anyways? it isn't as old as some other styles, but it's still more of a historically codified style than not.)
and in the propositional absence of alien consciousness, the universe would disappear as well (after all, if there is no consciousness to appreciate the universe, there is no universe to be appreciated).
nocti, do your verbal gymnastics ever twist you around in such a way that you disappear inside your own void? if there is no consciousness to appreciate the universe, it just means that there is no consciousness to appreciate the universe: the universe will still very much exist (for however many years it has left to exist, possibly forever) regardless of whether humans or venusians or who-the-hell-knows-what are around to appreciate it.
something might exist, but it wouldn't be a 'universe', and it wouldn't really be 'existing' either, 'universe' and 'exist' being anthropomorphic concepts at least in some degree.
3 - most modern environments, especially of that period and their representation in the media, sought to completely wipe away all references to the past. - this is a totally wrong assumption as history and historicism are not the smae thing.
Loos had a premonition on the rise of post-modernism and stated that it wasn't the first nor the last time it was supposed to happen. He layed his claim on the fact that as more and more changes occur we long for what we are familiar with.
That said, what was the point of the CSH? They were meant to be housing experiments (versus solutions) in low cost and efficent design. Alot of it was architecture for architecture sake, the professions' real attempt at design-build (getting our hands dirty at the expense of a wealthy backer/banker). None were mass-produced despite the attraction (nearly 1/2 million visitors before the 7th one was built). Their creation was their undoing, with sponsers more attracted to bill at the gate than loosing that by making them available to every mr & mrs smith. As such the message in the bottle was lost...and when the baby boomers got fat and rich it was totally forgotten.
The love affair with destiny, the future, ambition no longer rests with the Industrial west. You've had your chance. The futurists sell their charms to oil wealthy sultans in the sand, and the red industrial behemoth. They are taking the chances, opening their eyes albeit tainted by our foiled visions and residual backwash.
I own that book, CSH and I love it and every house in it. I've only met a few potential clients that were even aware of it and the CSH program.
I think all my other clients had 'dreams standardized by American ingenuity.' "Let's see, I drive a BMW 7 series, now all I need is that pottery barn furnished McMansion!"
architechnophilia: The futurists sell their charms to oil wealthy sultans in the sand, and the red industrial behemoth. They are taking the chances, opening their eyes albeit tainted by our foiled visions and residual backwash.
but you don't give enough credit to their foiled visions. its as much a part of their history (yes, they also had one prior to 'opening their eyes') and their future.
something might exist, but it wouldn't be a 'universe', and it wouldn't really be 'existing' either, 'universe' and 'exist' being anthropomorphic concepts at least in some degree.
if you don't exist nothing exists and if something does exist it has no meaning. nocti makes perfect sense.
yea, ok, big brains. Please. That stuff is just the heliocentric theory in other guises...or just call it the humancentric theory: things only exist or are there to the extent that humans can "experience them" or apply "meaning" to them. Crap.
Things would have and will have "existed" and the universe would be going through its motions whether or not some super-intelligent monkeys came along or not...so what if our names for these things and our will to have meaning for them would never have happened...so friggin' what? The universe, whatever it might be or mean, doesn't give a flying f at the moon about our being on this planet.
Case Study Houses, or, WTF befell the American Home?
In between classes today, I was perusing through this massive book documenting all the Case Study Houses:
I was thinking to myself the whole time: so, if this is how we were envisioned to be living way back in the late 40s why are we living in a day and age that seems the polar opposite?
I've been familiar with the houses since i first became interested in architecture, with Koenig's fantastically cantilevered CSH #22 being the most notable in my memory. I was struck again by just how beautiful all these homes were, so well proportioned and designed exactly to fit their SoCal context. The pictures of the completed homes look like spaces normal human beings would enjoy living in. The interiors didn't strike me as harsh or minimal, but rather as elegant backdrops upon which human activity could take place. The kitchens caught my eye too as they were not massive and brash like many modern kitchens, designed simply to impress or extremely tiny kitchens put there just as an afterthought, but human scaled and functional. The furniture in these homes often looked just as contemporary as the high-end stuff sold today (and in some cases it was the same).
All this led me to wonder, why did we regress so hard as a culture from this? How did we go from a vision of the future that was so bold and awesome to a reality of McMansions, EIFS, and garbage? Did we outdo ourselves in the '60s? Too much change to fast for the normal American to handle? This goes beyond architecture as all the popular Sci-fi of the day was pointing us to a future of moon colonies and flying cars. While I can understand why we don't have the moon colonies and flying cars, I don't understand why we regressed so hard culturally. Why don't American suburbs look like the ones outlined in the CSHs book? Why is everything old new again? How come Herman Miller can't offer me anything more contemporary than something that was designed 50 years ago and why do so many of the most cutting edge designs look like reheated mid-century modern?
I saw Zaha's new couch in a B&B Italia showroom the other day, and it looked exactly like the kind of thing you'd find in a '60s lounge. So much of the CnC milled, computer generated forms emerging from top arch schools these days also look like the same plastic-molded stuff you'd find in George Jetson's apartment, the same stuff that was made without a 3d printer in mid-century workshops. Why is that?
Reading The City in the Image of Man recently, by Soleri, I was struck by just how familiar how many of his points sounded in regards to landscape/eco urbanism and sustainable design. It doesn't take much imagination to link many of his musings to things like the Dongtan eco-city and Masdar. Soleri was also just one tiny part of an entire movement and movement that mirrors our own "Green" movement today. Except they were more extreme back then.
So, any of you old timers care to help enlighten me?
Basically, it turns out the general public doesn't like flat roofs...
hah hah great point both. Apu I share your disbelief and wonder why soceity has failed to embrace the solutions afforded aside from the pysiogyamy of it - flat roofs etc.
Because people have a hard time identifying the specific thing they dislike (i.e. flat roofs) about a piece in a medium they are unfamiliar with (in this case arcitecture), and even more difficulty recognizing when that specific thing is not essential to the spirit of the piece. So people find it much easier to say, "I just don't like this." than to figure out why, and end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I dunno. It seems to me that a lot of the stuff from the Case Study House era was adopted from a technology and planning standpoint into many average homes.
enlighten yourself whippersnapper...
i gave a public lecture this weekend about one of our projects. among the comments shared with me by attendees afterward:
- stark
- looks like a shed
- the windows are too squared and boring. can it have some arched ones?
- i have some ideas for you that will fix your design
- it looks too new
because not a lot of people want to die somewhere that doesn't remind them of their childhood. the idea of a home is in its permanence, permanence is death.
Steven, I'd be interested to see the project. Personally, I've begun to question the "need" to make single-family residential homes more contemporary or modern as of late. Yes, the McMansions of America are horrible, wasteful, and maybe even deceitful in what they seem to promise their inhabitants, but why must the answer be a flat roof and unconventional materials? This is not to say that they can't be modern, but I think architects might do well to resign the area of single-family homes to perhaps a more vernacular or less experimental approach at least. I think this is an area where materials, construction, spatial relationships, detailing, and economy of means, space and energy might be a better focus... How can we make a home that satisfies the desires of its inhabitants for familiar, comfortable surroundings in a contemporary way that respects the environment around it, and that is finely attuned for the intense, if mundane human activity that takes place within it? I love modern and experimental architecture, but I think in a home, more than any place else, people often want something that is familiar and non-confrontational. I think noctilucent might have been joking a bit, but I think (s)he hits something true there: people want to live in some place nostalgic and permanent. To this end, I think if we accept that most people will not want a Farnsworth house, though I think they could be missing something by rejecting the notion out-of-hand, we are presented with a new and interesting challenge. Working within the vein of the vernacular, if we are willing to do so and if we can educate clients about a contemporary vernacular, there may be no better place to explore such poignant ideas as those of dwelling, permanence, life, routines, familial relations, and the process might yield something that is both modern and familiar in its own right, like that of the work of James Cutler for instance.
I think partly to blame for the general public's negative reception towards "flat roofs" lies in the unconventional materials spectrum. As architects we need to design structures for our clients, and quite frankly, most modern designed homes I've seen weren't things your average handyman could work on with a supply runs to Home Depot.
I don't have the tools or expertise to put a new EPDM roof on my home, but I sure can get out my hammer and put down some new asphalt shingles.
Right or wrong, I think if the DIY centers started stocking more contemporary materials the public acceptance of "modern" design would be bigger.
hey joe sixpack and mrs. hockey mom want and need the housing types that remind them of an america that never existed and flat roofed metal houses that look like they could be the sets on some gay hbo series are not that.
sorry, flm, the project i described wasn't a house, but the comment still seemed to fit. same scale, same issues.
in this case the proposal was for an ancillary building next to a historic chapel. trying to be respectful and obeisant to the chapel.
some early sketches:
Well here's a small part of the problem, or rather a "big" part.
My mother-in-law gives us gifts, which is wonderful and they are all really nice things, nicer than I can afford typically. So for example, she recently gifted us some new towels. These towels are HUGE and thick and luxurious but mostly HUGE. Folded, they are bigger than all the other towels I have; they don't fit on the neat stacks of ten-year-old and perfectly fine towels I have organized in my linen closet - in fact, folded they are wider than the shelves in my linen closet.
I can't get rid of the old towels, because I like them and they're fine. But I need more room in my linen closet. So I guess I better put my modest mid-century home on the market and buy a new McMansion that will have more room for all my inventory. Because that's what important to Americans: inventory.
So, the flat roof shares alot of the blame huh?
Not sure I completely buy that because flat roofs are extremely popular with anything that isn't a house.
However, in the context of Noctilucent's arguement, I can see a point. Nostalgia plays a huge role in modern culture, but it didn't use to and I think that is the crux of my question. How did we go from being so forward-thinking to so backward-thinking?
Like i said earlier this goes beyond architecture and permeates almost every single aspect of American life. Many modern car designs are retro throwbacks, and the fashion industry has been stuck somewhere between 1963 and 1987 for a very long time now. Is this because the future as we know it is too horrible to imagine? Have we gone from scenes of cyberpunk dystopia to scenes of complete oblivion? Modern sci-fi can hardly look 10 years down the road, and when it does its usually terrifying. Afraid to imagine anything for fear of armageddon have we retreated to comforting notions of "The Home" with its gabled roof and brick facade?
I saw a documentary on Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation recently.
What struck about the program, and a point made by the filmmaker, was how the people who moved into this project refused to adopt the lifestyle as Corbusier had envisioned it.
Inside, this one apartment with filled with the same antiques and ticky tack one would find in an "old" style french home.
What I think is that basically people like nostagia and the connection to their past. Decoration is a human trait ( see any book on africa ) and the cool minimalism of the case study homes is just not the way people want to live.
Spanish style Antonio Banderas Mansions on the other hand, rule.
Oh, and that's a cool little out-structure Steven.
Oh and in response to bleiver, one of the things that struck me about the CSH homes in particular is that they weren't dogmatic like Corb's residential designs. Many of the furnishings filling the homes, when they weren't highly contemporary, were actually knick-knacky things the owners put in there and they looked fine set against the backdrop of the house. What I feel set so many of the CSH homes apart from what Corb and Mies were doing in residential design is they didn't force themselves on their owners.
i'll go down a different tack here -
to get at one of the roots of what i read as your question: why is it that we lost the kind of 'optimism' seen by you in the case study homes?
for me, 99% of it has to recognize three conditions: first, even at that time, the kind of homes that the case study homes embody were never, ever close to being in the 'mainstream' of american thought. the ranch home (loosely based on cliff may and somewhat fllw) had captured the imagination more than any other type of the period. the case study homes had some appeal within professional circles but that's it.
second - most people, through no fault of their own, simply want their home to be a refuge at the end of the day. not an avant guarde piece of art, but the archetypal shelter and warm fuzzy place to come home to. this was especially the case as the 50's cold war ratcheted up, as well as the upheaval from the 60's on. so, let's be realistic: most people simply don't see the csh's as that kind of 'warm' place. they like their knick-knacks and other things and they want an environment which supports that (and all this is kind of sidestepping the issue someone raised above, about the relative education level of most people, especially with regards to aesthetic concerns). which leads me to point three...
3 - most modern environments, especially of that period and their representation in the media, sought to completely wipe away all references to the past. the reality, though, is that a whole lot of people have antique furniture (the real stuff), of all kinds of styles, periods, etc. that has either been purchased, willed, etc. and we, as architects, basically ignored that fact, or, really, the simple fact that people might have 'things' which simply didn't 'fit in' with that kind of relentless aesthetic. then, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
i'd say point #2 is a key reason that the aesthetic didn't take hold, but it's also a ton of other factors i don't have time to go into.
steven you should have left that window in there that you showed lb and me when we were in line at (gasp!!!) starbucks.
yeah, that is a nice project there... it's funny, that's kind of along the lines of what I had in mind about architecture that is more about materials, etc. Even though it might not necessarily be a contemporary vernacular in that project, it definitely seems like humane (or humanistic maybe) modernism.
Nepenthe in Big Sur walks a slightly more cantankerous line between materials and modern architecture. Maybe off topic a bit, but your comment made me think of it.
sorry, not sure how that happened
ironically (or not), american's favorite architect is frank lloyd wright. hmmm....
Apu, you're looking at the wrong catalyst. Case Study Houses were the work of architects and turned on those that already like or know about design. The actual forerunner projects to suburbia were put together by someone named Levitt and he gave his name to the places. People came, liked what they saw, and could afford to buy. McMansion-villes are basically Levittowns on steroids.
levvitt brothers just made suburbia mass-produce-able without turning the homes into shit (really!). suburban homes in the modern sense were around for hundreds of years before that, just without the financial infrastructure that made it possible to have a home on a regular wage.
you know its funny but before the 2nd world war people actually saved for years to buy some land, then lived in the garage or a shed while they saved enough to build the house. In a suburb. this was especially true of the suburbs lived in by African-Americans (yes, African-Americans lived in suburbia 100 years ago), but there case was more special for its extreme, not for its oddity.
that no one wants to live in a CSH does not surprise me. it does make me sad to think that america no longer has the vision thing going on. it is even more sad that the optimism of the 60's, even one tainted by the cold war and fears of nuclear winter, is just gone. we don't believe in the future anymore.
hmm, well, maybe that is not true. I believe in the future. but a big bit of the world doesn't.
sad.
.
the future is so last year jump.
Oh, I'm aware of the levittowns, and I can definitely see the line connecting them to the McMansion exurbs of today. Yet what I saw in the CSH book was a refinement of the idea. A convergence of modernism and domestic habitability and I seriously do feel many of the CSH designs seemed alot more livable than other modernist homes being designed by Corb, Mies and many of the other big-name European architects at the time.
actually, the biggest point that csh was missing was what levittown had - a larger sense of planning, and honestly, i believe that is why levittown lives on and the csh is becoming more and more a vestige of the past. levittown for better or worse addressed not only the housing needs of a post-war nation, it addressed them within the terms of a larger sense of infrastructure and urbanism. i think it's a good lesson for architecture today. pretty boxes without a larger idea about the world are destined to become historical relics.
correct me if i'm wrong, but my impression is that the mcmansion phenomenon is embroiled in the suburban phenomenon and suburbia is both, the romantic realization of an individual’s belonging to the earth (through the abundance of nature, recreated) and her belonging to a community; which is to say the creation of the suburb is somewhat akin to the recreation of a european village within the milieu of an urban contemporary lifestyle. to achieve this, the architecture must appear to communally comply to a certain understood, even expected, code in order for the dotting mcmansions to form the architectural “unconscious”, staging, of the suburb. so even if one mc mansion might stand out in its opulence and scale, the overall gathering of those houses would generate an overall consistent “reel” coding of suburbia. the mc mansion, for all the expected possible stylistic and spatial variations, is, from the more abstract point view, a basic “irreducible” (to use a word that was flaunted recently on another thread to imply modernism) block around which its mclawn grid unit contribute to the suburban reel.
laru, here, says of the mcmansion : the archetypal shelter and warm fuzzy place to come home to. what s/he does not explain is why this would be seen as being an archetype shelter. modernism, for many suburbites who probably view the suburb as a natural condition of living (domesticity) signifying permanence and the city as an artificial condition of living (labour) signifying temporality, is seen to be emblematic of the city, modernism as a shell for the temporary emotionally-disconnected world of labour.
jadfidler introduces the interesting incorporation of frank lloyd wright as being a national archetype. now that’s interesting because well, he was a modernist in his own idiosyncratic way and there are mc mansions, I believe, that are styled to conform to the wright look/feel. perhaps, the reason for this embracing of his work is because wright, an american (of welsh descent) understood, or felt, or intuited … that a modernism in a europe with its burden of a long history would be misplaced in the u.s. with its burden of a short history and its craving to commit to its earth. his version of modernism is therefore more chthonic and domestic, it signifies rootedness and belonging where, on par, miesian modernism, in the american city, would imply ethereality, disconnection, effacement and non-belonging.
it is the amazing power of the American ingenuity to standardize even dreams.
i didn't agree with most of that last post, noc, because i think it throws too many ideas in a blender and suggests that there are causal connections which, i think, aren't demonstrated.
but that last sentence is genius.
- Juhani Pallasmaa
the above quote (which i love) demonstrates part of the problem. pallasmaa assumes that people might WANT to experience the existential burden of time. and i think a lot of architects are in the same place: we feel that to be modern is to take our place in a natural timeline of architectural development.
but most of the american non-architects that i encounter don't care in the least about that timeline and look at architecture as a matter of choice with no necessary connection to a time or place. americans have learned very well how to be consumers and how to exercise choice. choice often means choosing with what you want to be associated from all available possibilities, regardless of propriety based on architectural history or region. consumption of architecture based on style can allow those personally-selected associations, more than some conceit that architecture is continuous and that americans should accept the architecture that belongs to their time.
steven ward but most of the american non-architects that i encounter don't care in the least about that timeline
i think they do, everyone does. time is everyone's personal intimate concern.
but the concern might manifest differently. i believe that time is felt differently by different cultures. this is why modernity would harbour different ideas of time depending on the cultures. likewise, historicist architecture. people NOT choosing modern architecture forgo a certain feeling of transient time.
also, i don't think nostalgia is irrational. it is only irrational insofar as pallasmaa's not spending time thinking of how rational and explicable it is in the context of a decentred fundamentally insecure urban life. everything has reasons, its irrational to call any existing phenomenon irrational.
as for idea blending, well i never said my concern here was to serve up smoothies, academic or professional.
this sentence should be suchlike :people NOT choosing modern architecture forgo a certain feeling of transient time that the contemporary might signify to them
I think this is at the fundamental root of the situation. But I don't think pessimism about the future is a uniquely American thing or a recent development. Mankind has spent the majority of its existence living somewhere between being extremely cautiously optimistic and completely scared shitless of the future. The times we've really embraced the future and have been wholeheartedly optimistic about its prospects are relatively sparse and typically limited to specific cultural or societal groups. Ironically, these rare times of optimism seem to be when we're able to make the greatest advancements technologically and culturally.
4arch "Ironically, these rare times of optimism seem to be when we're able to make the greatest advancements technologically and culturally"
i don't agree. my thoughts are that the most technological advancements we've witnessed are a result of military minded ventures and adversarial competition between nations. peace takes on board the residues and, sure, might turn them into something else, like adding the nitrogen that was destined to be used for bombs during wartime into fertilizer that produces amazing botanical growth but eventually depletes the biological integrity of turf.
we are a rashly violent species, we augment our violence macroscopically over a very short time. nature’s violence is much more microscopic over a much longer span of time. we might very well be destined to kill us off and take the rest of the planet with us. and in the propositional absence of alien consciousness, the universe would disappear as well (after all, if there is no consciousness to appreciate the universe, there is no universe to be appreciated).
Agreed this line is genius...
"it is the amazing power of the American ingenuity to standardize even dreams. "
the future is just a bad experience that hasn't happened yet.
noctilucent -
i'm not referring to any particular house type (mcmansions are a whole other issue outside of what i'm talking about). rather, i'm talking about the iconography and perception of continuity a more traditional home implies. those two elements, along with nostalgia and a hundred other things, contribute towards why a more overtly modern aesthetic hasn't taken hold (the fact that traditional is a more 'known' quantity within the realm of home financing and is perceived as less risky doesn't help).
two contrasts to make: for larger, multifamily projects, i think we've seen less resistance overall to homes being more modern in an aesthetic context. not sure why, other than there's less of an intimate connection to the isolated object (you can empathize a single family house in a way you just can't with a larger building). also, we're not all that opposed to technology or embracing the future - witness the evolution of cars and the desire from people to have the latest and greatest in them. (sure, some of the styling is retro, but isn't the case study aesthetic pretty much a retro thing now anyways? it isn't as old as some other styles, but it's still more of a historically codified style than not.)
nocti, do your verbal gymnastics ever twist you around in such a way that you disappear inside your own void? if there is no consciousness to appreciate the universe, it just means that there is no consciousness to appreciate the universe: the universe will still very much exist (for however many years it has left to exist, possibly forever) regardless of whether humans or venusians or who-the-hell-knows-what are around to appreciate it.
something might exist, but it wouldn't be a 'universe', and it wouldn't really be 'existing' either, 'universe' and 'exist' being anthropomorphic concepts at least in some degree.
if you don't exist nothing exists and if something does exist it has no meaning. nocti makes perfect sense.
3 - most modern environments, especially of that period and their representation in the media, sought to completely wipe away all references to the past. - this is a totally wrong assumption as history and historicism are not the smae thing.
Loos had a premonition on the rise of post-modernism and stated that it wasn't the first nor the last time it was supposed to happen. He layed his claim on the fact that as more and more changes occur we long for what we are familiar with.
That said, what was the point of the CSH? They were meant to be housing experiments (versus solutions) in low cost and efficent design. Alot of it was architecture for architecture sake, the professions' real attempt at design-build (getting our hands dirty at the expense of a wealthy backer/banker). None were mass-produced despite the attraction (nearly 1/2 million visitors before the 7th one was built). Their creation was their undoing, with sponsers more attracted to bill at the gate than loosing that by making them available to every mr & mrs smith. As such the message in the bottle was lost...and when the baby boomers got fat and rich it was totally forgotten.
The love affair with destiny, the future, ambition no longer rests with the Industrial west. You've had your chance. The futurists sell their charms to oil wealthy sultans in the sand, and the red industrial behemoth. They are taking the chances, opening their eyes albeit tainted by our foiled visions and residual backwash.
okay big brains, can we dumb this down a little?
I own that book, CSH and I love it and every house in it. I've only met a few potential clients that were even aware of it and the CSH program.
I think all my other clients had 'dreams standardized by American ingenuity.' "Let's see, I drive a BMW 7 series, now all I need is that pottery barn furnished McMansion!"
architechnophilia: The futurists sell their charms to oil wealthy sultans in the sand, and the red industrial behemoth. They are taking the chances, opening their eyes albeit tainted by our foiled visions and residual backwash.
but you don't give enough credit to their foiled visions. its as much a part of their history (yes, they also had one prior to 'opening their eyes') and their future.
Has anyone read Colomina's Domesticity and War?
noc that is true and consciously done
if you don't exist nothing exists and if something does exist it has no meaning. nocti makes perfect sense.
yea, ok, big brains. Please. That stuff is just the heliocentric theory in other guises...or just call it the humancentric theory: things only exist or are there to the extent that humans can "experience them" or apply "meaning" to them. Crap.
Things would have and will have "existed" and the universe would be going through its motions whether or not some super-intelligent monkeys came along or not...so what if our names for these things and our will to have meaning for them would never have happened...so friggin' what? The universe, whatever it might be or mean, doesn't give a flying f at the moon about our being on this planet.
oh, yea, the case study houses...
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