"a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit"
March 8, 2019 7:24 AM Subscribe
Do You Hate Contemporarty Architecture (previously)? Do you cry Death To Minimalism when you see a rehabbed Victorian? You might be seeking The Quality Without A Name, a kind of meta-pattern, elucidated by architect Christopher Alexander and perhaps, most visible, at the Betsy Ross Museum:
Here I will present some of the components of Alexander’s Quality Without a Name (sometimes called by other woo-sounding synonyms like “wholeness”), with reference to new and old art forms. Alexander was obsessed with Turkish carpets (those same carpets that W. Somerset Maugham hints hold the secret of life in Of Human Bondage) and often uses examples from his collection to illustrate the Quality Without a Name. I have much more experience with lace knitting, twitter, and haiku than with rugs, and will use examples from those domains. Finally, I will try to show how Alexander’s theory of beauty and wholeness fit with information theory and the nature of intelligence.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's request -- restless_nomad
In the book How Buildings Learn, author Stewart Brand refers to it as a Fractal Building.
The inventor of fractal geometry, Benoit Mandelbrot, has an explaination for people’s dislike of grossly pure shapes like hte Seagram building in New York. According to James Gleick, “Simple shapes are inhuman. They fail to resonate with the way the nature organizes itself or with the way human perception sees the world... Against the Seagram Building [Mandelbrot] offers the architecture of the Beaux-Arts... An observer seeing the building from any distance finds some detail that draws the eye. The composition changes as one approaches and new elements of the structure come into play.”posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:50 AM on March 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
I’ve come to an arts and crafts argument from behind, skilled decorative work is work that can’t be deumionized or deskilled easily and should be given precedence.
Look I hate it when I agree with Ruskin too but building things both beautiful and to last is a green goal - we don’t have to slavishly imitate the past forms but understanding why they work and what they do as opposed to just slapping on some signifiers is the work we should be doing.
posted by The Whelk at 7:54 AM on March 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
Look I hate it when I agree with Ruskin too but building things both beautiful and to last is a green goal - we don’t have to slavishly imitate the past forms but understanding why they work and what they do as opposed to just slapping on some signifiers is the work we should be doing.
posted by The Whelk at 7:54 AM on March 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
I'm struggling a bit with this now, having moved (for reasons which don't require exploring at this juncture) from a sliver of a 1920s townhouse to a modern white semi-box. I wasn't even terribly fond of the interior ornament in my apartment (let's call it perfunctory) but nothing I seem to do with the new place is satisfying my brain.
At the same time, my work also recently moved from one of the earlier NYC skyscrapers to an International Style building. I don't miss the smotheringly-ornamented coffered ceilings of the lobby one bit (I thought I might, at least a little) and I find the pure infinite lines of the new building rather restful on the eye.
posted by praemunire at 8:06 AM on March 8, 2019
At the same time, my work also recently moved from one of the earlier NYC skyscrapers to an International Style building. I don't miss the smotheringly-ornamented coffered ceilings of the lobby one bit (I thought I might, at least a little) and I find the pure infinite lines of the new building rather restful on the eye.
posted by praemunire at 8:06 AM on March 8, 2019
Alexander was obsessed with Turkish carpets
The Answer's In The Carpet, see reviews [1, 2] for Alexander's 'A foreshadowing of 21st century art – The color and geometry of very early Turkish carpets'. Apparently Alexander's artistic analysis has merit.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:13 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
The Answer's In The Carpet, see reviews [1, 2] for Alexander's 'A foreshadowing of 21st century art – The color and geometry of very early Turkish carpets'. Apparently Alexander's artistic analysis has merit.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:13 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
The before and the after of that poor San Francisco house are equally awful. The only thing I miss on the front are the corbels, but they were obviously fake, or if they weren't then the new owners spent a huge amount of money to rebuild the exterior roof support. So some restorer in the future can spend 5 minutes nailing them back on when its gets a historical renovation.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:16 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:16 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
Caltrans District 7 Headquarters. Photo credit: Morphosis Architects. Oh my fucking god, just look at it. Look at it! Does this make you happy? Does it nourish your spirit?Yup. Absolutely. Once again, it's clear that I actually hate most people. Or, at least, their aesthetic choices. Or at least the aesthetic choices of the ones who become journalists. All the "bad" examples look fantastic.
posted by eotvos at 8:17 AM on March 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
Caltrans District 7 Headquarters.
Wow, that is pretty horrific.
posted by octothorpe at 8:24 AM on March 8, 2019
Wow, that is pretty horrific.
posted by octothorpe at 8:24 AM on March 8, 2019
Caltrans District 7 Headquarters.
The architect really liked Star Wars.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:27 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
The architect really liked Star Wars.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:27 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
The Caltrans District 7 Headquarters is rather meh, but the I like the courtyard at night.
It seems that location scouts for movies and music videos like it too.
posted by Badgermann at 8:56 AM on March 8, 2019
It seems that location scouts for movies and music videos like it too.
posted by Badgermann at 8:56 AM on March 8, 2019
I am normally utterly charmed by Current Affairs and I love, eg, Louis Sullivan, but I cannot agree with this article. I mean, it's wrong for the right reasons, but it's still wrong.
Not that I too don't hate Frank Gehry.
1. It lumps "contemporary" architecture the same way that conservatives do when they talk about how bad "postmodernism" is. 1930s modernism is not brutalism is not 2000s starchitecture - all arise in different setting with different aims and output.
2. They might find certain parts of Owen Hatherley's Militant Modernism of interest on left modernist architecture.
3. The Unite d'Habitation is wonderful, with beautiful, playful and soothing interiors. So are a lot of other 20s/30s modernist buildings.
4. Spomeniks.
5. The first part of my actual argument is personal. I've lived around a number of mid-century and brutalist buildings. My great-aunt lived in a grand mid-century apartment building in Chicago and I spent a lot of time there. For many years I worked in a brutalist complex on a university campus. Those were wonderful places - both incorporated natural materials and colors, interesting textures and grand spaces. They were fun. The brutalist complex in particular was full of little surprises - an unexpected window with a surprising, delightful view, a secret corner to read or study. Both sets of buildings had a lot of opportunities for privacy and human scale within soaring and monumental forms. IMO this is an overlooked feature of mid-century and brutalist design that does not carry over into contemporary/starchitecture buildings - contemporary buildings try to destroy privacy and human scale, and everything is fucking atriums with constant noise and echo. I had ten different hiding-place hang-outs in the brutalist complex - sequestered benches and corners, little window seats, etc - which were intrinsically quiet and private.
6. Buildings which on the surface appear to share some aesthetic concerns are created under very different constraints and different political regimes. L'Unite d'Habitation is a basically utopian building (now inhabited by extremely rich people). Khrushchyovoka were built under extraordinary material and economic limits. Cabrini-Green was built to control and punish the poor. They may all be "contemporary" in the terms set by the article but the experience of actually being inside each one is different. A modernist dorm created to house students cheaply in a remote area will look very different from St. Catherine's at Oxford.
7. Modernist and brutalist buildings are often built with the intent that there will be a lot of greenery/nature/water. The ones that have been gentrified (or just created at full budget and maintained) tend to be lavished with trees, hanging vines, etc. Consider, again St Catherine's. Lots of money, lots of nature.
8. TBH, the whole "architecture should be cozy or look like the cover of a fantasy novel" thing is a little bit conservative and tends to lean on a fantasy about the [European] past. (No one arguing against contemporary architecture ever says "we should take our models from traditional Middle Eastern architectures/various indigenous building styles/Arcosanti/traditional dwellings of the Saharan periphery/etc". It's always something straight out of Ruritania.
9. Also you would think that none of these people have ever lived in pokey old early 20th century apartment buildings. (And perhaps they haven't - I'm not trying to class-bait when I say this, but I get the sense that Nathan Robinson and Brianna Rennix come from relatively well-off backgrounds, and if you've been living in nice old buildings, well, they're nice!) The force behind a lot of the utopian modernism was hatred of precisely those low-ceilinged, stuffy, small, cheaply ornamented buildings and their cold, decaying brick and plaster.
10. On the conservatism front: I do not for a minute think that NR or BR would endorse this view, but an awful lot of the "why can't we have old-style streets and buildings" people tend to be on the "why can't we have nuclear families and one bread-winner" side, and they're interested in "traditional" architecture because that architecture was organized around straight people who married young and had lots of children. I am interested in modernist, brutalist and communist architectures because they endeavor (sometimes stupidly, sometimes just under serious material constraint) to imagine ways of living that are not about getting married, having a baby and working full time.
11. Starchitecture and contemporary campus architecture are different beasts from mere modernism, and while some of the buildings look pretty neat, they're basically organized around tourism, big donors, and city/corporate prestige, rather than around the social theories of modernism and brutalism. So even when they're interesting to look at, they are categorically unsuited to individual experience.
12. I think there's room for buildings that are fantastic, futuristic and appealing to a sense of astonishment/displacement/wonder. Although I tend to think of buildings like the Claire Carney library more than Frank Gehry buildings, I think there's still room for a few of them, for certain limited purposes.
13. As usual, The Real Problem Is Capitalism. People need all kinds of things from their buildings - coziness, private spaces, warmth, cooling, storage, quietness, performance space, big spaces, tall spaces, tiny spaces, etc. But what we get is what gets dished out by corrupt city governments, tax kickbacks and, eg, Amazon.
posted by Frowner at 9:10 AM on March 8, 2019 [27 favorites]
Not that I too don't hate Frank Gehry.
1. It lumps "contemporary" architecture the same way that conservatives do when they talk about how bad "postmodernism" is. 1930s modernism is not brutalism is not 2000s starchitecture - all arise in different setting with different aims and output.
2. They might find certain parts of Owen Hatherley's Militant Modernism of interest on left modernist architecture.
3. The Unite d'Habitation is wonderful, with beautiful, playful and soothing interiors. So are a lot of other 20s/30s modernist buildings.
4. Spomeniks.
5. The first part of my actual argument is personal. I've lived around a number of mid-century and brutalist buildings. My great-aunt lived in a grand mid-century apartment building in Chicago and I spent a lot of time there. For many years I worked in a brutalist complex on a university campus. Those were wonderful places - both incorporated natural materials and colors, interesting textures and grand spaces. They were fun. The brutalist complex in particular was full of little surprises - an unexpected window with a surprising, delightful view, a secret corner to read or study. Both sets of buildings had a lot of opportunities for privacy and human scale within soaring and monumental forms. IMO this is an overlooked feature of mid-century and brutalist design that does not carry over into contemporary/starchitecture buildings - contemporary buildings try to destroy privacy and human scale, and everything is fucking atriums with constant noise and echo. I had ten different hiding-place hang-outs in the brutalist complex - sequestered benches and corners, little window seats, etc - which were intrinsically quiet and private.
6. Buildings which on the surface appear to share some aesthetic concerns are created under very different constraints and different political regimes. L'Unite d'Habitation is a basically utopian building (now inhabited by extremely rich people). Khrushchyovoka were built under extraordinary material and economic limits. Cabrini-Green was built to control and punish the poor. They may all be "contemporary" in the terms set by the article but the experience of actually being inside each one is different. A modernist dorm created to house students cheaply in a remote area will look very different from St. Catherine's at Oxford.
7. Modernist and brutalist buildings are often built with the intent that there will be a lot of greenery/nature/water. The ones that have been gentrified (or just created at full budget and maintained) tend to be lavished with trees, hanging vines, etc. Consider, again St Catherine's. Lots of money, lots of nature.
8. TBH, the whole "architecture should be cozy or look like the cover of a fantasy novel" thing is a little bit conservative and tends to lean on a fantasy about the [European] past. (No one arguing against contemporary architecture ever says "we should take our models from traditional Middle Eastern architectures/various indigenous building styles/Arcosanti/traditional dwellings of the Saharan periphery/etc". It's always something straight out of Ruritania.
9. Also you would think that none of these people have ever lived in pokey old early 20th century apartment buildings. (And perhaps they haven't - I'm not trying to class-bait when I say this, but I get the sense that Nathan Robinson and Brianna Rennix come from relatively well-off backgrounds, and if you've been living in nice old buildings, well, they're nice!) The force behind a lot of the utopian modernism was hatred of precisely those low-ceilinged, stuffy, small, cheaply ornamented buildings and their cold, decaying brick and plaster.
10. On the conservatism front: I do not for a minute think that NR or BR would endorse this view, but an awful lot of the "why can't we have old-style streets and buildings" people tend to be on the "why can't we have nuclear families and one bread-winner" side, and they're interested in "traditional" architecture because that architecture was organized around straight people who married young and had lots of children. I am interested in modernist, brutalist and communist architectures because they endeavor (sometimes stupidly, sometimes just under serious material constraint) to imagine ways of living that are not about getting married, having a baby and working full time.
11. Starchitecture and contemporary campus architecture are different beasts from mere modernism, and while some of the buildings look pretty neat, they're basically organized around tourism, big donors, and city/corporate prestige, rather than around the social theories of modernism and brutalism. So even when they're interesting to look at, they are categorically unsuited to individual experience.
12. I think there's room for buildings that are fantastic, futuristic and appealing to a sense of astonishment/displacement/wonder. Although I tend to think of buildings like the Claire Carney library more than Frank Gehry buildings, I think there's still room for a few of them, for certain limited purposes.
13. As usual, The Real Problem Is Capitalism. People need all kinds of things from their buildings - coziness, private spaces, warmth, cooling, storage, quietness, performance space, big spaces, tall spaces, tiny spaces, etc. But what we get is what gets dished out by corrupt city governments, tax kickbacks and, eg, Amazon.
posted by Frowner at 9:10 AM on March 8, 2019 [27 favorites]
There's great contemporary architecture, and awful contemporary architecture.
There's great Minimalist/Modernist/Brutalist stuff, and awful Minimalist/Modernist/Brutalist stuff.
Just like there's great rock music, and awful rock music. And great pizza, and awful pizza.
(And not every style is appropriate for every context. I love some Brutalist architecture, but...yeah. I wouldn't want to live in it.)
I think there's a lot of survivorship bias going on here. The old buildings that are still around are the ones which have been most successful and loved. So we're comparing the best of older architectural styles, to all of contemporary styles. That isn't really fair.
I mean, this:
For about 2,000 years, everything human beings built was beautiful, or at least unobjectionable.
...is patently stupid.
I do agree that Gehry, and the whole school of "abstract blobs designed by computer algorithms", need to fuck right off. And, as much as I love minimalism, fuck a bunch of Corporate Modernist glass-rectangle bullshit. No doubt – a lot of contemporary architecture is ugly.
But this writer seems to be picking on specific trends and styles in contemporary architecture – and then trying to argue that this invalidates, like, all architectural thought since 1900.
I don't buy it.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:11 AM on March 8, 2019 [6 favorites]
There's great Minimalist/Modernist/Brutalist stuff, and awful Minimalist/Modernist/Brutalist stuff.
Just like there's great rock music, and awful rock music. And great pizza, and awful pizza.
(And not every style is appropriate for every context. I love some Brutalist architecture, but...yeah. I wouldn't want to live in it.)
I think there's a lot of survivorship bias going on here. The old buildings that are still around are the ones which have been most successful and loved. So we're comparing the best of older architectural styles, to all of contemporary styles. That isn't really fair.
I mean, this:
For about 2,000 years, everything human beings built was beautiful, or at least unobjectionable.
...is patently stupid.
I do agree that Gehry, and the whole school of "abstract blobs designed by computer algorithms", need to fuck right off. And, as much as I love minimalism, fuck a bunch of Corporate Modernist glass-rectangle bullshit. No doubt – a lot of contemporary architecture is ugly.
But this writer seems to be picking on specific trends and styles in contemporary architecture – and then trying to argue that this invalidates, like, all architectural thought since 1900.
I don't buy it.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:11 AM on March 8, 2019 [6 favorites]
(I'm glad we can all agree that Gehry sucks, though.)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:12 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:12 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
OH MY GOD WHAT DID THEY DO TO THAT POOR HOUSE?? BUTCHERS! ANIMALS!
posted by sexyrobot at 9:17 AM on March 8, 2019
posted by sexyrobot at 9:17 AM on March 8, 2019
Frowner, that's a great comment, and it's much better and more in depth than the very well received comment you made on the exact same article the last time it was posted.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:17 AM on March 8, 2019
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:17 AM on March 8, 2019
Frowner, that's a great comment, and it's much better and more in depth than the very well received comment you made on the exact same article the last time it was posted.
That's why I comment again and again on the same topic...the faint hope that I'll refine my argument.
Or actually, it's because I have the memory of a goldfish and have no idea where I made this well-received comment. Did I say something reasonably clever? Good job me!
posted by Frowner at 9:19 AM on March 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
That's why I comment again and again on the same topic...the faint hope that I'll refine my argument.
Or actually, it's because I have the memory of a goldfish and have no idea where I made this well-received comment. Did I say something reasonably clever? Good job me!
posted by Frowner at 9:19 AM on March 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
I always thought canada had an interesting take on brutalism, they soften it a lot with lighting and curves and , most distinctively, incorporating a lot of nature and natural forms- no one loves a tree-lined hexagon with cascading ivy like a Canadian and it makes it seem less like a built environment and more like a naturally formed canyon or valley we put a Second Cup and LBOQ in.
posted by The Whelk at 9:23 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 9:23 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
I like all of these buildings. please stop being mean to the buildings. they're good buildings, brent. 13/10 would look at again.
but really my absolute favorite architectural/urban planning pattern is the naturally developing one where buildings in radically different styles from different time periods are thrown together higgledy-piggledy. I freaking love for example the block that the New Museum is on. I dig the hell out of the louvre pyramid. I love how in San Francisco a big weird mid-20th-century sci-fi antenna tower looms over neighborhoods full of cool old edwardians. I even like how in London, giant weird glass towers and (to my American eye) impossibly ancient buildings sit right next to each other.
I'm not a huge fan of many brutalist buildings, because I don't like how concrete looks after it's been rained on for decades and because most brutalist buildings I've been in have been kinda awkward from a functionality perspective, but beside that? I like everything, and I like everything the most when there's a bunch of different types of everything side-by-side.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:27 AM on March 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
but really my absolute favorite architectural/urban planning pattern is the naturally developing one where buildings in radically different styles from different time periods are thrown together higgledy-piggledy. I freaking love for example the block that the New Museum is on. I dig the hell out of the louvre pyramid. I love how in San Francisco a big weird mid-20th-century sci-fi antenna tower looms over neighborhoods full of cool old edwardians. I even like how in London, giant weird glass towers and (to my American eye) impossibly ancient buildings sit right next to each other.
I'm not a huge fan of many brutalist buildings, because I don't like how concrete looks after it's been rained on for decades and because most brutalist buildings I've been in have been kinda awkward from a functionality perspective, but beside that? I like everything, and I like everything the most when there's a bunch of different types of everything side-by-side.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:27 AM on March 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
Variety is definitely the thing. It's like the Smithsonian/NGA museums -- there's the beautiful old Castle, the polychrome brick and iron of the Arts and Industry Museum, the Greek and Roman revival style of the NGA West building, the lovely clean angles in rose stone of the East building, the huge clean glass, stone and steel block of Air and Space, just all sorts of interesting buildings of different kinds lining the mall. I wouldn't want them to look all the same, even though I may like individual buildings better or worse.
posted by tavella at 9:45 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by tavella at 9:45 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
No one arguing against contemporary architecture ever says "we should take our models from traditional Middle Eastern architectures/various indigenous building styles/Arcosanti/traditional dwellings of the Saharan periphery/etc
Some people have for quite some time. Some of those people then built traditional-somewhere houses in completely inappropriate ecologies and I got to contemplate the failures of hippie logic as a small child.
posted by clew at 10:16 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
Some people have for quite some time. Some of those people then built traditional-somewhere houses in completely inappropriate ecologies and I got to contemplate the failures of hippie logic as a small child.
posted by clew at 10:16 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
they're interested in "traditional" architecture because that architecture was organized around straight people who married young and had lots of children
I don't know if this is really accurate, though, at least not in the broader implications I think you're gesturing towards. Most pre-1950s U.S. architecture, especially urban architecture, was not built around isolated nuclear family units living with as big a buffer between themselves and their community as possible. You may have had a lot of kids, but your kids were on the street, you knew your neighbor the elderly widow, in general you made a lot of use of public space because your private space was more constrained. Even wealthy families would have had to accommodate housing servants and various kinds of people in and out of the home whose business would be conducted in other places today. For better and worse, of course. But people who secretly yearn for stereotypical 50s social structures are not necessarily well-served by pre-war architecture.
posted by praemunire at 10:45 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't know if this is really accurate, though, at least not in the broader implications I think you're gesturing towards. Most pre-1950s U.S. architecture, especially urban architecture, was not built around isolated nuclear family units living with as big a buffer between themselves and their community as possible. You may have had a lot of kids, but your kids were on the street, you knew your neighbor the elderly widow, in general you made a lot of use of public space because your private space was more constrained. Even wealthy families would have had to accommodate housing servants and various kinds of people in and out of the home whose business would be conducted in other places today. For better and worse, of course. But people who secretly yearn for stereotypical 50s social structures are not necessarily well-served by pre-war architecture.
posted by praemunire at 10:45 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
Let me rephrase that: Their interest in "traditional" architecture is about a fantasy of the nuclear family which they associate with the "traditional". But in any case, it's always about straight, blood families, the production of children and household labor being done by women, even if it's about an extended family. "Traditional" is usually an imaginary combination of mid-19th-century and 1950s architecture.
In the US and the UK at least, if you think about company towns and farm laborers between say 1850 and 1950, , though, I think you're still thinking about people who live in single-family homes where most of the work is done by women and the home is organized around labor and child-production. Children might go out to labor, elderly parents might be cared for at home (if they lived long enough) but everything I've read about those communities suggests that they were very tightly organized around work and childbearing. I've definitely read descriptions of life in a London slum in which women basically went out as little as possible - men went to work and the pub, children ran as many errands as possible and the women stayed in the house.
"New Urbanists" assume that we'll all be out being wholesome on the street, yes, and that we'll know our neighbors, but the underpinnings are still the family, the breadwinner, lots of domestic labor performed mainly by women, baby production, etc.
posted by Frowner at 11:03 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
In the US and the UK at least, if you think about company towns and farm laborers between say 1850 and 1950, , though, I think you're still thinking about people who live in single-family homes where most of the work is done by women and the home is organized around labor and child-production. Children might go out to labor, elderly parents might be cared for at home (if they lived long enough) but everything I've read about those communities suggests that they were very tightly organized around work and childbearing. I've definitely read descriptions of life in a London slum in which women basically went out as little as possible - men went to work and the pub, children ran as many errands as possible and the women stayed in the house.
"New Urbanists" assume that we'll all be out being wholesome on the street, yes, and that we'll know our neighbors, but the underpinnings are still the family, the breadwinner, lots of domestic labor performed mainly by women, baby production, etc.
posted by Frowner at 11:03 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
There's definitely a turn towards ornamentation over minimalism lately. I personally prefer Art Nouveau over Midcentury Modern or Nordic design. This really seems like a function of the times though. Like it or not, we are in a new Gilded Age and design choices can feel like a blow against austerity. I think we'll see a lot of rich textures and jewel tones for a while. Rose gold has definitely established itself as a motif.
Edit: too many commas
posted by domo at 11:07 AM on March 8, 2019
Edit: too many commas
posted by domo at 11:07 AM on March 8, 2019
Upon reflection, anti-minimalism is also a push back against automation. Even as these objects are mass-produced; designs with embroidery, lace, curves and embellishments feel hand-made. They don't look like they were flat packed by machine and shipped from halfway across the world.
posted by domo at 11:37 AM on March 8, 2019
posted by domo at 11:37 AM on March 8, 2019
And thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
posted by symbioid at 11:39 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by symbioid at 11:39 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
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posted by SansPoint at 7:35 AM on March 8, 2019 [5 favorites]