Devil’s Haircut | Hacker News Reader

Devil’s Haircut

nplusonemag.com

26 pointsprismatic15 comments

The article isn't bad but it beats around the bush quite a bit.

The reality is that the architectual establishment is largely responsible for destroying the aesthetic inheritance in the west. Kunstler lays this out for the layman in "Geography of Nowhere".

It was a confluence of events: the architectual establishments hatred of traditionalism and regional forms, combined with the corporate elites love of the inexpensive, anti-skilled labor, massed man internationalist style.

As the article mentions, we will continue to cycle around in various modernisms that reject one another in a simulacrum of progress while, to the layman, offering nothing of aesthetic merit. What will not be considered, until after the revolution, is a return to the forms that created the towns and cities we all love.

Meanwhile, any remaining charming old neighborhoods are bid to the moon, and Christopher Alexander is read mostly by software designers.

> The article isn't bad but it beats around the bush quite a bit.

It doesn't respect its readers? I think that does make it bad?

I'm more bothered that it's ostensibly a review of a visual exhibit without any visuals. Without flying to New York I don't have any idea what this is describing. And of course the Guggenheim's video producers are so full of themselves that you can't really get an honest take on the exhibit from the intro video on their website either.

> I'm more bothered that it's ostensibly a review of a visual exhibit without any visuals.

Writing about architecture is like dancing about cooking.

(paraphrase of a famous quote that I can't place at the moment -- cite, anyone?)

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. ~Frank Zappa

Thanks! That's it.

Also, now is a particularly bad time to go visit museums or other places where people congregate.

This is AI-generated, right?

After I saw this SMBC comic about this subject, I never really kept looking for more critical takes on modern architecture.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-11-16

Frank Lloyd Wright sought to elevate the environment workers or occupants had to spend their time in. He was designing buildings for people, not as snarky societal commentary.

Maybe we should return to that idea that people are valuable and ought to be treated well, and hire architects to design that way.

> The Koolhaasian moment in design began to fade, as one might expect, with the coming of the 2008 global economic crisis; since everything in architecture takes longer than in any other field, the full-on rejection is only getting underway now, but already the accelerationist paradigm has been replaced by another: a meliorist one, eco-conscious and modest, international in outlook but more focused on firms working within their communities, especially those in developing countries.

What is this writing style?

I don't mind it, the use of commas and semicolons to accumulate layers of meaning without resorting to parenthetical interruptions comes across as both deliberative and spontaneous.

It sort of feels like I am reading the author's thoughts as they organically map the domain of their argument, but with all the backtracking pruned out.

But if you want a cute term for this style, how about "run-on sentience?"

I notice that this is very similar to how I write, I like this style, it also reminds me a little bit of stilldrinking.org

I'm not sure what you're pointing out. I like this writing style, and it's perfectly comprehensible to me.

How do you mean exactly? Long, complex sentence? FWIW I don't think this is a particularly good one. But if you like this writing style, Jonathan Franzen does it quite a bit, and really well. Check out The Corrections.

From a snarky perspective, n+1 is a "postmodern" type magazine that caters to theorists, critics; the types who attempt to convey abstract meaning (words are just endless signifiers, after-all!) while sniffing their own farts caused by holding their breath writing long sentences. Mark Grief, one of the founders of n+1 wrote a really horrible collection of essays called "Against Everything" that is moderately popular. It's full of this kind of self-absorbed writing.

Anywho, n+1 seems to have gone a bit more mainstream lately, as witnessed by their modern web design and recent presence on HN.

"Period tariff"

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