Cheap stick framing has led to a proliferation of blocky, forgettable mid-rises—and more than a few construction fires. — Bloomberg Businessweek
"These buildings are in almost every U.S. city. They range from three to seven stories tall and can stretch for blocks. They’re usually full of rental apartments, but they can also house college dorms, condominiums, hotels, or assisted-living facilities. Close to city centers, they tend toward a blocky, often colorful modernism; out in the suburbs, their architecture is more likely to feature peaked roofs and historical motifs. Their outer walls are covered with fiber cement, metal, stucco, or bricks."
Not to forget, these apartment buildings also have commercial centers that are the same everywhere. Everyone in this country knows what a Best Buy store looks like and which shelf has what they need. You can go miles and miles and chances are you'll be traveling in the same built environment.
36 Comments
That's a useful, quick overview. Many variables are unexplored, but it gets at the big picture.
I agree with you citizen. Yes, of course, the variables, layers of pastiche of avant garde-ness, mostly wry entertainment.
I've heard this in real, "we've got to jazz this elevation up" also an insult to jazz music.
I think it's not 'stuck frame' alone, and -I think you can work with wood framing- but also, investment type, targeted consumer demographics, marketing, new and detached urbanisms, SketchUp.., all partially responsible. More or less, this is our business model.
On a more positive note...by the looks of it there will be plenty to do for future architects, no way these will have to be preserved.
Let's not forget that the reason developers want to 'Jazz things up' is that apartment buildings used to be much much much more boring and alike in the post war years. One could do an elegant pre-war apartment building, but you'd have to train architects in the art of composition, not in the crap shoot of 'is this form eye catching'... and then convince the person paying for it that you're a genius.
So that's what we get when you deny the training required to compose intelligently, ie: thinking about buildability, functionality, and decoratively. But we'll continue to sing past the graveyard as the obvious stares us in the face cause it's not cool. Here's an example from my neighborhood that was the default position of so many buildings, and forget LA.
If we're really going to have an honest discussion about this issue, we need to acknowledge the architect's role in this situation, aside from all the good and valid points made in the article.
no balconies. this wouldn't rent. does this have natural or mechanical ventilation?
Balconies certainly help. No idea about ventilation but assume mechanical, or else no rent at all. Function before beauty.
Here's an apartment building in Paris, no historical stuff but kicks ass.
don't think this is a 4 over 2 from 510.2
Or what about Siza's Bonjour Tristesse?
https://www.archdaily.com/5193...
Or Hans Kollhoff' Piraeus buidling:
http://kollhoff.de/en/PROJECTS...
curt, you've hit the saddest nail on the head
I modified it here. Point is we can do a lot better, historicist or moderne.
No historical detail per se, but very responsive to the context nonetheless. It can be done.
Cf. Soviet housing:
Via "Farewell Khrushchyovki? Putin Backs Fresh Push To Raze Ramshackle Soviet-Era Housing"
"For millions of Soviet citizens in the decades after World War II, they were home: the prefabricated apartment buildings known as khrushchyovki, after the Soviet leader who pushed their construction, Nikita Khrushchev.
"But they were also the subject of derision: cheaply built, cookie-cutter housing blocks with paper-thin walls, low ceilings, and a five-story design that allowed authorities to eschew elevators and still remain in compliance with housing codes."
Behind the decades of heated debate between capitalism and communism, there are marked similarities at the top, the concentration of power and economic abstractions, and the bottom, the results we live in.
Related:
"Distressed America is Wall Street’s hottest new investment vehicle.
"Hedge funds, investment banks and money managers are trying to raise tens of billions of dollars this year for so-called opportunity funds, a creation of President Trump’s 2017 tax package meant to steer money to poor areas by offering potentially large tax breaks.
"Little noticed at first, the provision has unleashed a flurry of investment activity by wealthy families, some of Wall Street’s biggest investors and other investors who want to put money into projects ostensibly meant to help struggling Americans. The ranks of those starting such funds include Anthony Scaramucci, the New York hedge fund executive who served briefly as Mr. Trump’s communications director."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...
And a lot of this investment will go into real estate.
Anyone who thinks raising taxes on the wealthy will crimp the economy isn't aware of how high taxes where during the gogo 50's and 60's when so much of our infrastructure and public schools where built. Smart public spending begets private enterprise.
Keep an eye on this. If the investment houses and hedge funds get involved, we could have another 2008 mess. The Obama restrictions have been lifted, right?
Thayer, that was pre globalization and pre internet. Companies are no longer bound by geographic locale. When tax burden surpasses the burden of relocating, the companies will follow path of least resistance. The burden of relocating has dramatically dropped and therefore the threshold for taxation has too. See Amazon telling NY to go fuck itself....
In other words RACE TO THE BOTTOM! GO!!
jla-x, globalism started in full with the English and Dutch mercantile empires of the 1600's. Maybe it's time to dust off TDR's monopoly busting bat. I've got no issue with the free markets what so ever, they are essential to personal freedom.But even Adam Smith knew there's no freedom if the biggest and baddest smashes everybody else. As for Amazon, sometimes it's worth putting up a little resistance if they are planning to make local retailers obsolete. Better yet, go to Detroit, a place where those jobs would do a lot more good.
What globalization means now, as it did in 2008, is that there is an enormous pool of money investors worldwide are itching to invest, and they will be attracted to the risky, volatile, in fact dubious, investment schemes that did us in back then. Again, I think the restraints have been lifted. Someone correct me. Look at what happened in Florida and California. If it catches on, there could similar massive construction in whatever areas are deemed poor. Heaven knows how it will be designed.
i just put money into a crowdsourced REIT of some sort that invests in these properties.
Blame sketch-up.
Very true.
"The problem with minimalism is that it doesn't leave much to work with."
-Witold Rybczynski
For a second there I thought, why are you quoting the guy from Coop Himmelb(l)au...
Ha!
The real minimalism is on the part of the developers. Minimized construction costs, minimized architectural fees, and minimized creativity in the design concepts.
Another Paris scene. Adolf Loos must be spinning in his grave.
Beautiful!
And that's from a crusty form code followed by builders.
Haussmann in da house!
https://www.area-arch.it/en/ho...
Another article with similar issues.
http://commonedge.org/when-bui...
Parisian glass and steel, and the windows are operable!
This was a good explanation of a general building trend — but it is lacking as a critique. Google any city + architect + multifam housing and you can see much better examples that are economic and well-detailed but not cheap.
What I don’t like is the general “oh, look at 1930s housing” which was mass produced and is now well-regarded. But that was the peak of Design culture in America, which has now receded into pockets of architecture culture. A lot of these houses are just dense versions of McMansions — McUrbanism that is like a quick meal by a highway, but doesn’t meet long term health requirements of the city. That many people see them as ugly is a sign of something deeper and shouldn’t be ignored. Beauty is usually just a signifier of social and economic issues.
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