its hard to watch that without throwing my computer screen out the window. reminds me of a new urbanism lecture I went to a few years, where architects are somehow responsible for emptiness of the suburbs.
i need a couple of weeks to watch all of the ted talks. just 30 seconds there and i'm wanting to watch john hodgman, stewart brand, reed kroloff, thom mayne....
I liked that lecture...and have watched almost all of the TED talks. The one by Milton Glaser is great. The Frank Gehry ones are terrible. There is tons of great lectures and can really fill your free time for months.
I always like the guy's humor -- Hannibal Lecter School System, that's just plain good stuff. The places he points out as bad definitely do look pretty bad.
For me, however, a lot of his published examples of good spaces are lost on me. Mainly, they always look too crowded for me. Maybe more people like crowded living than I would think.
Could be my boondocks mentality. Two nights ago i met with a house client who decided he was happy with what I was showing him so far and that 3D stuff really was impressive but that before I left what I really needed was to shoot his new 9mm SigSauer and did I have my pistol in the trunk? Well I'm sure this does not sound like most client meetings but I couldn't pass that up and so we blasted a few cans and targets and water jugs and yeah, there is just no place for me in Kunstler's world. And probably vice versa.
steven, dont bother with krollof and mayne,,while im a fan of both, im sure you know whatever it is they will talk about,, id spend time on other things,,,
Whats funny to me is the first slide I think is in the southern suburbs of Chicago - Worth maybe? I recognize that tower. I think theres a white Hen sign in the lower right. If its where Im thinking it is, off the commercial street ( 111th?) Hes showing, are nice mature tree lined streets with a mix of bungalows and ranches, on a grid and fairly densely packed. Hardly the wasteland He's preaching against. I agree with his general premise that the suburbs are somewhat depressing, but not all of them. And if indeed our malls begin to infill and densify wouldn't that just be the natural progression of a country thats still filling itself in? I mean in the wild west towns like Reno had fake storefronts on a single street in the middle of nowhere. But they gradually grew and filled up.
on one hand he said is a disgrace to be a consumer, on the other he want shops shops shops on the streets everywhere...
i have no problem walking along a blank wall street, gives me peace of mind and contemplate about things... besides is more energy efficient in the first place...
That's some awfully rational thinking you're throwing at this topic and its favorite critic. You need to dial back that "context" with all its "nuance" if you're don't want to get booted from Uncle James's good graces.
Kunstler is a gifted author no doubt, and he is quite good with humor. That said, he's no deisgner, planner, etc. He wrote a book about how he hates the suburbs and suddenly he's some kind of expert on the ills of suburban sprawl and as an aside, architecture.
Not that I disgree with everything he says, but c'mon, I'm not sure what the guy hates more, any type of corporate retail or the automobile. His solution to everything is for us to repopulate small towns, i.e. America as a large collection of small 10,000 pop towns. He even dislikes large dense cities like NYC. Well, he can have his opinions about suburbia, but I wouldn't call him a futurist. We may well abandon the strip malls someday, but I doubt we'll all be going back to small towns anytime soon.
I find Kunstler entertaining, but his somewhat utopic vision of the future is somewhat silly and unlikely. And he fails to realize that the problem isn't "modern archtiecture", and that a building can be modern and still have a good relationship to the public realm. He's too tied up in stylistic conerns, and would like us all to ignore the history of the 20th Century and pretend we still make buildings like we did in the 19th Century. His uncritical embrace of New Urbanism hook, line, and sinker should give him away.
oh I don't know. To me, small town neo-traditionalism (with an implicit side of anglo-saxon triumphalismb thrown in for good measure) has nothing to do with good urbanism. Sitte and Cerda gave us the good urbanism part of Kunstler's theories without the baggage a century earlier.
Apr 20, 09 9:42 pm ·
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Greatest Misallocation of Resources in the History of the World
James Howard Kunstler: The Tragedy of Suburbia
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html
I enjoy his books. I'll have to check this out.
he makes some decent points, but his hatred of modern architecture is pretty tiring.
He doesnt hate Modern architecture, nowhere does he say that, his criticism is specific to certain things... plus, im pei is not a modernist
its hard to watch that without throwing my computer screen out the window. reminds me of a new urbanism lecture I went to a few years, where architects are somehow responsible for emptiness of the suburbs.
i need a couple of weeks to watch all of the ted talks. just 30 seconds there and i'm wanting to watch john hodgman, stewart brand, reed kroloff, thom mayne....
I liked that lecture...and have watched almost all of the TED talks. The one by Milton Glaser is great. The Frank Gehry ones are terrible. There is tons of great lectures and can really fill your free time for months.
I always like the guy's humor -- Hannibal Lecter School System, that's just plain good stuff. The places he points out as bad definitely do look pretty bad.
For me, however, a lot of his published examples of good spaces are lost on me. Mainly, they always look too crowded for me. Maybe more people like crowded living than I would think.
Could be my boondocks mentality. Two nights ago i met with a house client who decided he was happy with what I was showing him so far and that 3D stuff really was impressive but that before I left what I really needed was to shoot his new 9mm SigSauer and did I have my pistol in the trunk? Well I'm sure this does not sound like most client meetings but I couldn't pass that up and so we blasted a few cans and targets and water jugs and yeah, there is just no place for me in Kunstler's world. And probably vice versa.
steven, dont bother with krollof and mayne,,while im a fan of both, im sure you know whatever it is they will talk about,, id spend time on other things,,,
strictly for fun though, watch the rives videos
that r2d2 & c3po joke was horrible.
the first time I watched it a year or so ago I liked it
now not so much...
i thought ted.com was about NEW ideas....
whatever this guy said had been recyled for decades by postmodernist architects... the minor differences are he being a standup comedian...
total disapointment on ted.com
GREATEST MISLLOCATION OF IDEAS IN TED.COM
haha,, good one aspect,, but, i would argue otherwise, some of the best lectures on ted have a "timeless" quality about them...
now, im not saying this one has,, its simply an entertaining piece
Whats funny to me is the first slide I think is in the southern suburbs of Chicago - Worth maybe? I recognize that tower. I think theres a white Hen sign in the lower right. If its where Im thinking it is, off the commercial street ( 111th?) Hes showing, are nice mature tree lined streets with a mix of bungalows and ranches, on a grid and fairly densely packed. Hardly the wasteland He's preaching against. I agree with his general premise that the suburbs are somewhat depressing, but not all of them. And if indeed our malls begin to infill and densify wouldn't that just be the natural progression of a country thats still filling itself in? I mean in the wild west towns like Reno had fake storefronts on a single street in the middle of nowhere. But they gradually grew and filled up.
on one hand he said is a disgrace to be a consumer, on the other he want shops shops shops on the streets everywhere...
i have no problem walking along a blank wall street, gives me peace of mind and contemplate about things... besides is more energy efficient in the first place...
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Evil!
That's some awfully rational thinking you're throwing at this topic and its favorite critic. You need to dial back that "context" with all its "nuance" if you're don't want to get booted from Uncle James's good graces.
Kunstler is a gifted author no doubt, and he is quite good with humor. That said, he's no deisgner, planner, etc. He wrote a book about how he hates the suburbs and suddenly he's some kind of expert on the ills of suburban sprawl and as an aside, architecture.
Not that I disgree with everything he says, but c'mon, I'm not sure what the guy hates more, any type of corporate retail or the automobile. His solution to everything is for us to repopulate small towns, i.e. America as a large collection of small 10,000 pop towns. He even dislikes large dense cities like NYC. Well, he can have his opinions about suburbia, but I wouldn't call him a futurist. We may well abandon the strip malls someday, but I doubt we'll all be going back to small towns anytime soon.
I find Kunstler entertaining, but his somewhat utopic vision of the future is somewhat silly and unlikely. And he fails to realize that the problem isn't "modern archtiecture", and that a building can be modern and still have a good relationship to the public realm. He's too tied up in stylistic conerns, and would like us all to ignore the history of the 20th Century and pretend we still make buildings like we did in the 19th Century. His uncritical embrace of New Urbanism hook, line, and sinker should give him away.
oh I don't know. To me, small town neo-traditionalism (with an implicit side of anglo-saxon triumphalismb thrown in for good measure) has nothing to do with good urbanism. Sitte and Cerda gave us the good urbanism part of Kunstler's theories without the baggage a century earlier.
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