Patina and Intimacy
simonsarris.substack.com
simonsarris.substack.com
I think that the "easy to clean" part of the list of descriptors here is among the most important. Among many other things, two of the things that have changed in the last couple of hundred years are:
1. The emergence of a cultural consensus that a full life is about having time to do things other than those necessary to keep living, and to maintain the required tools. Cleaning the kitchen is in the latter category, and so there's a cultural imperative now to reduce the time spent on this task (theoretically to open up time for other things).
2. The move away from a concept of home and family (and the associated economy) that assigns some subset of a household (historically, the non-childhood females) a primary role in cleaning and maintainence, and towards an economy that demands that most adults work outside the home. This also places a premium on kitchen environments that are easier to clean.
Also caused by the lack of "servants".
Just employing a maid service frees up a remarkable amount of time. Having someone full-time dedicated to nothing but cleaning up after you is a big deal.
One of the things that gets lost is that employing someone was much cheaper in the past. There was an article recently talking about how the affluent couldn't afford a car in the early 1900s but could easily afford multiple servants.
Then again, I'm a vegetarian with no kids, so my experience of kitchen cleaning may be a bit different, since I don't do a lot of the more messy and hygiene critical stuff.
Older non-utilitarian design really fits pretty well with very modern lifestyles and technology, because there's not nearly as much pressure on the environment to be functional, when the actual things you're doing are more streamlined.
Maybe there's also something to be said about learning to accept some degree of "uncleanliness" in our kitchen and not only, not everything needs to be tidy/good-looking.
... which I fully endorse.
Cleaning can be a great way to relax your brain. It's menial enough to be effortless with just enough thinking to occupy the fidgety part of your brain so you can think deep in the background. Like a walk in the park. Meditative.
Cleaning in silence is like nails on a chalkboard. Fortunately iPads and streaming video are a thing.
I don't love it any more than anyone else does, but adopting this type of mindset allows me to see the chore as an opportunity for peace and reflection rather than one more distasteful thing to slog through on my way to the grave.
The cabinet doors are covered in frilly, unnecessary detail, bright work handles etc. The "center island" table this is a great idea but it should be an open frame table on casters.
I don't know what you'd properly call this aesthetic, but its there and it has screwed over the design of the space at the cost of much utility.
If you were to use those as your main ingredient and tool storage without clearing it every day it would be a mess both in terms of visual clutter and just flour and shit spilling out everywhere.
Is that more minimal than putting cabinet doors over it? I don't know actually, maybe. Which indicates to me that "minimal" is a subjective judgement based on certain criteria, and there are multiple valid measures of kitchen minimalism.
I grew up in and worked for decades in commercial kitchens and I am often saying this. Commercial kitchens have a different set of constraints than home kitchens, and commercial kitchen design adopted wholesale is not going to be more usable than a well-designed consumer kitchen. It's not more minimal per se either. That open storage demands a closet worth of plastic bins to keep ingredients in, for example.
BTW commercial kitchens pretty much all have terra cotta tiles for some reason. Must just be a good combo of cheap, durable, reasonably non-slip (which coated concrete definitely is not).
¹: Not industrial kitchens that's a different thing.
It’s also worth acknowledging the existence of show kitchens, which really don’t care about utility at all, and considering them separately.
For homes, heated cement slabs are so much better than the regular stuff. Slabs embedded with hot water tubes have a fairly large heat capacity, so it stays warm all day and transfers heat directly into your feet and up through the rest of your body no matter where you're standing. A layer of soft organic material on top of the slab will make it more comfortable to stand on as well, as long as you choose something that's easy to clean.
"somewhere you live" is exactly the point. Our house has been a kennel as much as a house. Few people want that, we're just weird.
I think that's an ungenerous term for what was merely normal for thousands of years into the past.
I'd argue we're still recovering from the brutalist ugliness of 1960s fashion and ideas -- the notion that despite our humble origins, man could transcend nature and do better than it.
The widespread adoption of baby formula over breastfeeding is perhaps the saddest outworking of this notion, but it showed up everywhere else -- in brutalist architecture, cold metal furniture, metal Christmas trees, linoleum floors...
Not that new synthetic materials are bad, but I would have hated to live through a time when natural beauty was at such a cultural ebb. I think we're still recovering from it, and we need more design leaders to help us remember natural beauty.
Here are a couple of quotes from William Morris: "everything made by man's hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent."
He also wrote, "Have nothing in your house you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
Look at the painting and then look at the photo of the staged corner in the authors kitchen. The big difference is that the painting of the real working kitchen depicted an actual working space, it was busy and active and full of stuff and kind of chaotic. The upper walls were probably greasy from cooking and it probably smelled like food and wood smoke.
I more or less agree with the sentiment of the article, by the way. The sterile home aesthetic makes absolutely no sense to me and it's not something I want or live out in my own life.
But the reality is that a cute kitchen display like in the photo is neither practical nor sustainable unless you spend a lot of your time cleaning. I use cabinets because I actually want my counter space and because when I leave stuff out on the counter it gets dirty and dusty. Patina doesn't bother me, but grime does.
Therefore I called it "pastoral whimsy". People started using cabinets because they wanted them and could actually afford them, not because they were somehow indoctrinated into using them.
All of the "enchantment", the food that spoils, the food that was once actually alive, now lives in a special dark, cool cabinet called the refrigerator.
The modern kitchen is a response to this paradox. If you've ever lived in a house without lots of kitchen storage, the clutter that accumulates in all the nooks and crannies is overwhelming.
Personally this cozy, homely, "clay pot on the floor", pastoralism does nothing for me. I'm a big fan of industrial design and I don't think characterizing it as 'low-maintenance', even though it may be that as well, does it justice.
>"Spatially, the minimalist and glossy-modernist trends have the unfortunate habit of moving toward a void"
What's wrong with voids for example? One of the most interesting design choices that I came across recently were the designs in Denis Villeneuve's Dune that he made for the interiors. Very empty, but also very awe inspiring.
However I don't think the opposite of the "industrial design" that you appreciate is "pastoralism" (the images in the article are, but they're also ugly). The opposite is hard to describe but the French do it well. Hannah Arendt:
> Modern enchantment with "small things," though preached by early twentieth-century poetry in almost all European tongues, has found its classical presentation in the petit bonheur of the French people. Since the decay of their once great and glorious public realm, the French have become masters in the art of being happy among "small things," within the space of their own four walls, between chest and bed, table and chair, dog and cat and flowerpot, extending to these things a care and tenderness which, in a world where rapid industrialization constantly kills off the things of yesterday to produce today's objects, may even appear to be the world's last, purely humane corner.
>Personally this cozy, homely, "clay pot on the floor", pastoralism does nothing for me.
Well, that's a choice. And like any choice, there are tradeoffs, and ways of thinking and cultural consequences that are associated with it (not just regarging messy vs clean-looking kitchens).
>What's wrong with voids for example?
It's sterile and clinical.
I think he's cheating, then, by comparing a real estate listing with his own lived-in home. Modern architecture and design spaces are just as conducive to lived-in-ness, when people actually live in them. You can hang art on the wall and accumulate whatever decorative touches and knick-knacks appeal to you or carry sentimental value.
Wanting the architecture and built interior design of a home to reflect the personal life and "mystery" of its inhabitants is classist as well, because only a limited number of people can afford professional architecture and design services to customize a home to reflect their personality. Most people customize a home themselves, via their own decoration, furniture, books, and other cherished objects.
In fact it seems bizarrely oppressive to assume that the professional designers of a domestic space need to stock a home with life before it is inhabited, as if the people moving in will otherwise suffer a deficiency of it. Whose life do you expect to see in an uninhabited house? What kind of Frankenstein's monster version of life do we expect the expert professionals to synthesize in their modeling programs, to create the illusion of a space being shaped by a living presence that has never been there?
Producing brand-new spaces that have the same aesthetic as lived-in spaces strikes me as something the machines will do after we are gone, manufacturing houses and adding childish crayon scribbles inside because there are no real children left to draw on the walls.
Do we want the interior (or the exterior) of our homes to be very awe inspiring? Obviously, there's more than one answer to that question.
Perhaps you wanted an abstract presentation of the point instead?
But among my favorite books from that time is "Handmade Houses: a guide to the woodbutcher's art". You can find many images from the book here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=handmade+houses+a+guide+to+t...
The architecture and design is much, much more aligned to the second two examples from Simon's article: hand-made, unique, touch friendly. One might even subsume all these under the term "funky" (though this word has more than one meaning). When I was 18, these were the sorts of houses I thought I would live in as an adult.
40 years later, the idea of living in any of theses houses fills me with a certain kind of dread, because I now understand how much work it would be to keep them clean and to maintain them. I feel conflicted about this: the aesthetics are far more appealing to than any contemporary "standard" buildings. Nevertheless I do feel very aware that I would likely develop a daily growing resentment towards the way every uneven, non-smooth surface would represent a new obstacle to cleanliness. And these sorts of structures and designs really will just accumulate dirt over time, no matter the efforts put into slowing that down.
This inner conflict raises all kinds of questions within me about the actual value of cleanliness, and about the balance that architecture creates and enforces between certain feelings we might want to have within our homes and the nature of our day to day lives within them.
Having lived in several rural houses, not dissimilar to those, not that much.
Real-estate isn't interested in making things personal, because they are trying to sell something for others to personalize. Go look at real lived in kitchens if you want to make the critique; not real estate ads which are selling a dream.
For what it's worth, I designed my own kitchen (and house for that matter), and me and my wife spend upwards of 2 hours a day in this room because we cook almost every single day, making and baking and preserving a large number of foods from scratch.
I simply think that using the kitchen doesn't just have to be easy, it has to be joyous. If it's one of the rooms we use the most, and entertain guests in too, it should be beautiful as well as useful. I am not against counter space!, but against a material drabness that seems to make spaces less than alive.
As to design, we've gravitated to a relatively spare approach. Though not at all imitating "industrial" space, after all, we actually live in our home. Linoleum flooring, quartz composite countertops, stainless sink/range, laminate cabinets, etc., are "homey" enough but also durable materials.
One thing is crystal clear: in small kitchens storage is a precious resource. Dedicated cooks prefer buying supplies in larger quantities, spices, flours, etc. That means a tightly managed pantry with little empty space. Sometimes having "too many" cabinets can be a good idea.
But understandably tastes and needs vary, so no doubt others would do something entirely different with the space our kitchen occupies. Then again, if I was designing our kitchen from scratch, well, it would be so MUCH better, but WTH, when wouldn't that be the case.
Manufacturers have wised up though. We just got a brand new Samsung with s/s finish, and lo and behold: magnets work.
I don't know if they're using it's-not-really-stainless-steel, or if they are backing with something more ferrous, but either way, fridge magnets are back, baby!
[0] https://www.fastenal.com/content/feds/pdf/Article%20-%20Magn...
Definitely a good read!
I'm a lover of buildings where the wooden ridgelines have sagged a little over time.
I adore the imperfections in Georgian glass. Replacing old glass with float glass jumps out instantly to me.
I suffer some weeds and wildflowers to grow in the cracks in my patio.
It looks comfortable, and humane.
What isn’t mentioned is that the kitchen in the old times was small and isolated from the living and dining rooms where the guests were entertained.
The kitchen was the domain of servants and women, who mere meant to provide the food but not the conversation.
In modern times we have come away from that and our design reflects that. We are much more egalitarian. Kitchens are now incorporated into our entertainment of guests. That large island is now likely to be where food is served buffer style. There is lots of place so that guests and come in and conversation with whomever is cooking the food.
More than anything, the more “modern” style reflects the kitchen becoming a public space whereas before it was a private space.
I prefer the modern public space kitchen.
I am somewhat surprised by your comment, because I do not think the contrasting painting is particularly closed (the ceilings are taller, I thnik), and the kitchen I designed for myself[1] is fairly open, though it is not as spacious or dependent on electric light (it is touched by a wall of southern windows). In some ways I consider the richo kitchen more claustrophic than open, owing to the large amount of upper cabinets. What makes the richo kitchen feel off, in terms of openness, is the hallway effect with the adjacent rooms. But my critique is mostly one of the materials making the space and the utilitarian feel.
[1] A couple images are here: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1450480908822265865
Note there are now two sets of shelves, we have been slowly adding to the kitchen since we built the house.
One of the NY cooking staff recently put out a call for photos of people's pantries. Given that the people replying are likely to be somewhat more into cooking than an average person, I was amazed at the simplicity and "non-professionalism" of all the images I saw. Just simple shelving with somewhat random supplies packed in a not particularly access-efficient way. Quite different from what you'd expect to find behind the cabinet doors of your "richo kitchen".
However, I question your use of the term "utilitarian" when you're describing the "richo kitchen". To me it feels much more decorated than (for example) your own kitchen, which has lots of wonderful small aesthetic details, but the overall vibe of which I would be more likely to call "utilitarian". Your kitchen is there for you and your partner (I assume, from the photo) to prepare food and clean up. The "richo kitchen" is that too, but also a statement about wealth, specifically the wealth to have cabinets enclosing that much stuff.
He's just saying your kitchen should look like a Rembrandt painting, as if that aesthetic was truly better. (Hint: it isn't)
> Hint: it isn't
For what it's worth, I think it is, but it's obviously subjective. The modern kitchen aesthetic looks alien, sterile, and uninviting in contrast to the Laquy painting, which looks lived in and homely. In short, the modern kitchen image makes me feel uneasy and the painting makes me feel calm.
And, now that we're talking about personal experience, I've spent weeks cooking with just canister stove and a 1 liter pot, and yes, I've cooked many meals over a camp fire as well, and I stand by my preference.
Yes, we do live in the present, but there's no inevitability about the present. The fact that during the 20th century we invented a set of new materials and machining techniques does not mean that we have to be using them today - that's a choice we make based on a variety of different factors.
If you look at any magazine/book on contemporary kitchen remodels, you will find some that are closer to the painting than the photograph (and many more that are closer to the photograph). The idea that the aesthetics embodied by the painting are inherently non-modern is, I think, a mistake.
Are you saying that because the article suggested it? Personally I think the spaciousness of the modern kitchen depicted is liberating and freeing. I have a cramped kitchen and it sucks.
Additionally, I think size is related to aesthetic but it's an independent topic. You can have a small but "modern aesthetic" kitchen. I agree, a cramped kitchen sucks!
The author’s kitchen was designed by the author, who knows exactly what he likes, exactly what would make his kitchen reflect his authentic, messy self. The same is true of the pastoral kitchen scene, regardless of what one thinks of it aesthetically—it was designed by and for its own inhabitants and their unique quirks.
The real-estate property was designed without knowing who would inhabit it, or what their tastes and preferences would be. There are thousands of potential owners, and the important thing if you want to sell a property is to alienate as few of them as possible. Thus, homes that are designed without one buyer in mind tend to feature middle-of-the-road aesthetics that as many people as possible will find acceptable, even if none of them feel like it’s their perfect kitchen with all the little touches that make them their own unique selves.
The majority of people can tolerate a clean space, but we are each messy in our own unique way. Someone else’s messiness might be intolerable to me, and mine to them. I’m not sure how to scale the kind of design that feels messy and human, since most people have neither the time to build their own living space from scratch nor the resources to hire someone to create a bespoke space just for them.
Gotta have a lot of storage so that you can reduce the number of times per week you get in your car, drive 3.79 miles to the supermarket, and drive back home.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/august/most-us-hou...
Modernism is old enough at this point that you can have a home with modernist design and find that some things look aged or somewhat dated, and yet be modern contemporary, and unusual. For us this has led to a lot of discussions along the lines of "this is clearly old, somewhat dated, and showing signs of age, but it's functional and is unusual even for its time; do we replace it completely, or somehow restore it, or replace it with something similar in aesthetic but updated?" Some of the things in our home have survived through the period of being dated and are now solidly vintage (in a good way), yet modern, and others are still in this fuzzy boundary area. Some things we've replaced, some things we've restored, but our whole house is like this.
The simple answer is that you do what you want, but sometimes that's unclear, as your own feelings about things are unclear, and sometimes things have unexpected benefits or costs.
Housing and home design, at least in the US, is this one area where I think issues of sustainability maintenance, and reuse haven't really entered the discussion very well. With homes of a certain age, yes, there's plenty of discussion of renovation and historical restoration. But it feels like there's a sort of denial about modernist homes being as old as they often can be, and what it means to be "modern" but old.
I for one prefer a soft, cozy, woody and/or steampunk theme for the living, dining, and bedrooms; a sterile, industrial, ultra-modern theme for the kitchen and bathroom where sanitation matters; and a futuristic theme for the home office where all my Turing-complete gadgets live. Sadly I can't have all of them for the time being, but one day I hope to! :)
I prefer something simple, preferably with a good amount of built-in cabinetry in the kitchen. My ideal kitchen might look like it came out of the 1940s or 50s.
My ideal bedroom is also simple, but functional and relaxing. Here is the one place I might have soft white lighting (I generally prefer daytime color temperature lighting). Little furniture (bed, nightstands, maybe a chair or other little place to sit). Soft, light colors. No or minimal wall art, and what’s there is not overwhelming.
My living room I like to be open and inviting. Here, I’ll mix it up, with mid century lines and some industrial touches. Overhead lighting, for sure. Wall art is interesting and engaging. Maybe even a feature wall.
I like my office to be simple again. This is a room to work in, so it has my large, solid wooden bookcases, antique teacher’s desk, metal shelving for miscellaneous storage. This room is somehow cozy and space efficient, while also being simple and easy to take in.
'...a spirit influenced by gnosticism (even if it doesn't know it): the body and the material world is bad, the spirit is everything. So the best space, becomes no space: the virtual space of the internet, for example. Meta, indeed.'
Music: I prefer live albums to polished studio perfection. It's not just that "mistakes show they're human" although they do -- it's that they have patina. There's that word, thanks, Simon.
A live album is a recording of human beings doing the best they can do at that moment. It's no coincidence that the Allman Brothers were just a minor band until Live at Fillmore East knocked everyone's socks off.
Architecture: "brutalist" as invoked by TimTheTinker is a good word for steel-and-glass buildings, and that modern kitchen. That real estate photo is brutalist. Any mess you made there would be completely intolerable and impossible to ignore even for 10 minutes; an affront to the very spirit of the place.
On the other hand, the Shaker style of furniture is human but not ornate, and in fact I have a (very) modified Shaker style in my own kitchen cabinets.
100 or 150 years ago, the kitchen in many parts of the USA would have looked more like the painting too.
Primum vivere, deinde philosophare.
You can tell the person that spends hours writing something on a blog that he should spend those hours every single week cleaning the kitchen and the beauty disappears.
I can do things like navigate HN because cleaning my kitchen is easy.
A painter was complaining while talking to me about the ugly tractors and machines being used in rural areas instead of manual scythes and rakes. Again it was obvious he had never actually used those as I did when I was younger.
I find any claim that aspects of modern life are somehow making us desire practicality in these manners (and that we've lost something as a result) deeply suspicious. We developed all these things in response to desires and pain points. Often quite literal pain points of backbreaking manual domestic labor.
Author’s kitchen looks like there is no space to even cut an onion.
The copper pan looks great but how does one cook acidic foods? Acids leach copper into foods. I want a pan that can cook any foods without having to think whether it will give me health problems.
Practicality trumps patina.
Contrasting modern real estate photos with a 250 year old painting is a hard ask. The painting and photos are so vastly different in both time and detail that I don't think the author was able to make their point.
Aesthetic preferences are not universal, it's interesting how much discussion ends up being about how a given set should be preferred, rather than simply expressing that they happen to be preferred by a given individual.