New York City is moving forward with a proposal that calls for a new high-rise apartment complex to feature separate doors for wealthy tenants and those living in the building’s affordable housing unit.
While wealthy residents will be able to enter the building from its designated front entrance, affordable housing tenants will be required to go in through a back alley.
A mandatory affordable housing plan is not license to segregate lower-income tenants from those who are well-off.
— RT
Maybe the higher-ups will employ the low-income folk as maids and janitors? Built-in servants quarters, subsidized by the city.
19 Comments
Related in the LATimes: How a SCI-Arc design spoof predicted New York's 'poor doors'
Is RT really the kind of source to be bringing up on the news forums of these boards?
Alexander that video by Wes Jones is awesome. That's a really great studio project, making the students think about every aspect of the building from city planning through HVAC and circulation through marketing through super-challenging social issues. Fantastic.
There's really no way to defend this separate entry without sounding like a total jackass, is there? The quote from the Toll brothers executive is horrid.
Except SCI Arc project was not a design spoof at the time designed by a student who wrote me a threatening "hate" letter when I exposed its brutality here in Archinect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ew7pou6v9k
Wes Jones saying now it was a spoof shows how duplicitous he is or can be or misleading the students.
I quote a passionate defence from the project's designer whose name I withhold. Hardly spoofy but a convinced passion and naive support of racism and slavery all there is remain.
"So let's be clear on this. The project's goal is to allow low income persons visiting for a 3 year visa to live in the city instead of having to commute. Not to create a master slave class distinction that isn't already in place. To the contrary, by allowing them to live in the city - and be free to spend their free time in the city as opposed to the outskirts- they can mix OUTSIDE the buildings. Let's deconstruct segregation: is it necessarily bad in some situations? How can we possibly think of breaking the market/rent barriers without maintaining the illusion of invisible separation?"
"So let's be clear on this. The project's goal is to allow low income
persons visiting for a 3 year visa to live in the city instead of having to
commute. Not to create a master slave class distinction that isn't already
in place. To the contrary, by allowing them to live in the city - and be free to spend their free time in the city as opposed to the outskirts- they can mix OUTSIDE the buildings. Let's deconstruct segregation: is it necessarily bad in some situations? How can we possibly think of breaking the market/rent barriers without maintaining the illusion of invisible separation?"
the e - mail goes on..,
"There's nothing to learn from your prejudiced mindset. Read http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3275546#3275546
Furthermore, the project will be exhibited in Venice Biennale where we hope to find a more critical discussion as to how the project actually raised a social issue and solved it twofolds. '
Hardly a spoof!
Related in the LATimes: How a SCI-Arc design spoof predicted New York's 'poor doors'
Fritz Lang featured this in his 1927 film Metropolis.
Is RT really the kind of source to be bringing up on the news forums of these boards?
What's the matter with RT? It often picks up things that are un- or under-reported here, and at least the spin is clear.
Wtf. So basically we are going back to the times where blacks had to use the back door, slave quarters, etc. oh wait now its for all poor people. Ok got it.
I think it was bukowski who said "slavery was never abolished, just expanded to include all the races"
oh wait now its for all poor people.
The O.J Simpson rule: The only color that really matters is green
Really, Orhan? I'm not truly doubting you but the way the narrator says that the residents seeing their servants in the same building would "be......awkward." sounds like it was totally sarcastic. If it wasn't intended to be a spoof then that's really horrifying.
Orhan, if you can't read between the lines - yes, it's satire. Would we put it past developers to try something like that? Clearly not. Is it worth taking serious and considering the implications? Clearly. Have that conversation is part of our role.
*Having
Briefly, I first thought it could have been a spoof too, until I received the email I partially showed here (sorry I c/p 'd the same paragraph twice,) in it, the author states this is a solution and kills not one but two birds in the same time. When I receive emails of this nature, I take them seriously since it's a private response to something I wrote publicly with even there is a comment box. It is like receiving a mail from a stranger in your private place and time instead of during standard work hours.
What I saw in this one was a student clearly believed that this (his project) was alright and wasn't so bad at all to live in such a humiliating physical environment. Of course the student also thought my criticism was useless since there was no social, mass psychological or any negative segregational issues in his project.
Even then, as a spoof, it would be pretty bad one because it is very shallow, pointlessly cartoonish offering, illuminating and entertaining what? I am not arguing here whether or not it is a fiction but pointing to conceptual gaps, architects' indifferences (which we see a lot in Israel/Palestine related threads) basically eschewed reasoning this project draw its forms from.
As architects should we have no qualms about "designing" systems, programs and build environments that are required to be segregating, oppressive, punitive and cruel?
^ I’m not going to speak for any specific students opinions or philosophy. Each of the teams had 4-6 kids on there - plenty of opinions and soapboxes. You should know that better than most.
Looking at the 4 projects (remember ‘Cohabitation’ was just 1 of 4 graphic narratives that were presented at the Biennale) collectively, the youth (and narrator, where used - re: ‘qualms’) acted as the foil for the relatively egregious / exploitative ideas embodied by KDG. The tongue-in-cheek phrasing should have been more than enough to reflect the real nature of these admittedly-subjective ‘post-rationalization’ tales of petro-enthused development in the 21st century. Def. not all pretty, but they’re obviously conditions that should be critically evaluated. They’re happening, right or wrong. The stories were simply presented to start discourse.
Take the work as personally as you may, but no one was trying to be misleading or duplicitous. Seems like the nature of the script / presentation didn’t translate for you and you’re missing the forest for the trees.
"remember?".., "you should know that better than the most" .., "critically evaluated".., "missing forest for the trees" a lot of projections and arrogant patronizations here...
I received a letter from a student who had no problem with separate entries, slave like conditions for living in servants' spaces and other oppressive situations and why are you trying to put the onus on me? Instead you should be critical of this video and the authors' complacency with that status.
"So let's be clear on this. The project's goal is to allow low income persons visiting for a 3 year visa to live in the city instead of having to commute. Not to create a master slave class distinction that isn't already in place. To the contrary, by allowing them to live in the city - and be free to spend their free time in the city as opposed to the outskirts- they can mix OUTSIDE the buildings. Let's deconstruct segregation: is it necessarily bad in some situations? How can we possibly think of breaking the market/rent barriers without maintaining the illusion of invisible separation?"
"There's nothing to learn from your prejudiced mindset. Read http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3275546#3275546
Furthermore, the project will be exhibited in Venice Biennale where we hope to find a more critical discussion as to how the project actually raised a social issue and solved it twofolds.
Well, I’d probably say you put the onus on yourself because a) you’re dragging names through the mud, and b) you’re the only one missing the value and point. Do you really not see any advantage in being able to play devil’s advocate, especially as a student? Capability to evaluate design challenges from multiple POVs is a critical skill, and frankly the copy/pasted student note simply reads like he/she believed in that process - not that they actually think class separation makes the world better…
No, I don't see any advantage in segregation of people.
Right here on archinect a few days ago:
Cities thrive most when they are a tangled mess
The city needs places of solace, calm, order and beauty – even prettiness. But prettiness and concealment are anaesthetic. The urban mind needs its regular confrontations with tangle, too, a bracing shock that places the world in perspective and informs us, without either warmth or rancour, that our lives are enmeshed in a vital mechanism. The city is a machine for teaching people to be city-dwellers: one made up of crushing cogs and steel.
Soon we'll all scoff at Manhattan because it's a psuedo-city not a real city after all.
I'm endlessly fascinated by individuals claiming mud-slinging, and dragging names through the mud, when the same individual is anonymous, and the one writing the email fails to acknowledge publicly the real nature of their work. not saying that both are the same person, but maybe i am, or not.
Absolutely not one of the students who participated in the Jones/Kipnis Dubai studio (nor author of any email in question) - sorry.
Sure, thats what an anonymous person would say.
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