Schwarz
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Dr. Melfi: "What are you afraid's going to happen?"
Tony: "I don't know! But something. I don't know!"
governors islands goings ons
Studio 320 is 320sf with a 16'x26' footprint; two 20' containers are slid past one another by 6 feet. It was built for a client who has a large farm property and uses it as a retreat. The foundation is pre-cast concrete footings, and the studio will have a green fern-based roof. It is designed to be off-grid, using propane and solar panels, and is fully insulated to international code.
My visit to Meier’s 173 – 176 Perry Street revealed just how exposing and unforgiving these glazed facades can be. While highly refined, with elegant shadow boxes and a dynamic play of solid and void between glass and thick whitened concrete floor plates, the Perry Street complex, in its aesthetic purity, suffers when the dwellings are actually occupied. One apartment, with its huge curtains left half open, revealed a mess of the spoils of interior refurbishment and not-so-chic furniture pushed out to the building’s transparent skin. It was as if someone had left his laundry out to dry. Meier has, however, attempted to prevent buyers of condos in his Charles Street complex from being messy: There, buyers are treated to Meier-designed interior finishes and can purchase “total design” services for interior furnishings to match the aesthetic spirit of the exterior.10from the current issue of harvard design magazine
These interiors, on view through the huge glass walls, require a hyper slickness devoid of any domestic clutter to match the minimalist chic of the exteriors. Such a minimalist aesthetic might best be described as ascetic, a word appropriate to the monastic, the poor, and adherents of early Modernist models of machine-like living.11 Yet this asceticism is minimal in material but maximal in the resources it gobbles to create and maintain this model of urban hipness. New minimalism — with its finely detailed, overtly refined, and yet empty spaces — as applied to residential inhabitation, requires that the least possible activity actually takes place within its bounds.12 Life must be pared down to the (highest end) essentials to maintain its spotless chic, its sober lightness. Thus, while most of these luxury buildings advertise endless lists of hotel services to augment the value gained at such high price tags, its users — and architects themselves — may not realize how necessary these services are to live stylishly within these spaces. An array of amenities — from concierges and in-house dining to twenty-four-hour child and pet care (to keep the messy creatures out of sight) to on-site fitness trainers, driving ranges, lap pools, wine cellars, movie theaters, stylists, personal chefs, and, of course maid and maintenance services — become a necessary extension of the activities and spaces of aestheticized living. (For the amazingly extensive list of services, see my endnotes.)
Richard Meier thoughtfully includes wall-long closets, so residents can hide their stuff in a mask of whitewashed poché, and he tucks large storage spaces for each apartment discreetly below grade, so that they can keep the bulk of their clutter out of his sparkling white-and-frosted-glass interiors.13 Like the servants’ quarters lurking at the base of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, the amenities offered to the property residents become essential for the maintenance of an ascetic-chic lifestyle, spatialized in the sense that they contribute to how the dwellings look and function. The “effortless living” that nightclub owner turned hotelier turned real estate developer Ian Schrager promises with his list of amenities included with ownership in his projects with Herzog & de Meuron at Bond Street and John Pawson at Gramercy Park is a result of more than luxuries — these amenities are necessities for maintenance of the image, both literal and metaphorical, that these properties embody.14
One wonders, with this proliferation of Modernist-minimalist residential properties and the growing spate of shelter magazines promoting similar styles of living as well as a mass audience for now household-name architects,15 is Modernism just a new sign of hipness for the ultra rich and those that aspire to join the circle of real estate fashionistas? By branding minimalist-chic living in properties priced far beyond the reach of average homebuyers, are starchitect designers collaborating in the creation of a culture of good taste inseparable from social exclusion?
In 1919, Georg Simmel observed that fashion is, for the middle classes, tied inextricably to a need for belonging and is, for the upper classes, deeply fixed to a desire for distinction.16 Perhaps it is the exclusivity of maintaining truly minimalist conditions in one’s dwelling and the exclusivity that ownership of such rarities as these properties brings that secures the rich in the realm of distinction so desired by all hoarders of cultural capital. The painful question is: Are these social constructs in any way compatible with Modern architecture’s essentially utopian foundations, and are these starchitects — at least those truly capable of imagining new modes of living for all classes — creating and contributing to a lifestyle that they themselves admire?
detroit pictures
via jz
container #6
via jz
sandy hook
cape may
crumbling asbury park
Wildwood houses over 200 motels, built during the Doo-Wop era of the 1950s and 1960s. The motels are unique in appearance with Vegas-like neon signs, odd architecture, and an overall distinctive look which makes Wildwood one of the most interesting districts of its kind in the nation. [4] New construction in the area however has seen the demise of many older motels being demolished so bigger condominiums may take up residence. The Wildwood Doo Woop Preservation League has taken action to help save and restore these historic buildings but construction of far larger hotels may overtake the area in the next few years. A 50's Doo Wop museum has recently been built which contains property from demolished motels like neon signs and furniture. Neo-Doo Wop buildings in the area feature a neon lit Wawa, Subway Sandwich Shop, and a 1950's styled Acme Supermarket.
house by the sea, ocean grove nj