Comment by JoeJonathan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoeJonathan | Hacker News Reader

Three things:

1. The author's entire brand identity follows this format. ("Hi. I'm Alex Murrell. I'm the Strategy Director at Epoch. And I make the complex clear.")

2. This is not a new observation. Apart from the articles he linked to, this is an old conversation, especially among urbanists. Already in the early twentieth century, Frankfurt School critical theorists were worried about the commodification of cities, with buildings becoming as ephemeral as consumer goods. More recently, Paul Connerton described modern space as "space wiped clean."

3. I know the author works in marketing, but I find the conclusion that "bold brands and courageous companies have the chance to chart a different course. To be different, distinctive and disruptive" shockingly bland.

I know everyone in comments is griping about selection bias. Sure. There are local differences in commercial establishments, and you'd have to be deliberately dense to deny that. But I also think you have to be willfully blind to not see the convergence in international design trends, which are an obvious consequence of globalization. There are some obvious reasons for this, particularly when it comes to architecture. Lots of these firms are multinational, and homogeneity is an artifact of efficiency. This is not necessarily a bad thing: as someone in an HCOL city, I would happily take "bland" buildings if it meant affordable housing.

The author is the strategy director at the same type of shockingly bland company that would have this website: https://www.epochdesign.co.uk/

All of the pages contain a vague paragraph with the invitation to "drop us a line" for actual information.

I don't think a blog post has to have a brand new thesis-- that's setting the bar a little high, but it should at least have some unique insight.

Talking about the convergence of global brands in the digital space and how that affects the physical spaces we occupy would have been really interesting way of framing trends. Especially regarding how a brand can stand out in a homogeneous world that seems to favor the known. But what do I know?

Fair point on a unique insight being sufficient for a blog post. I should also give the author credit for writing clearly and for his photo montages--problems with the approach aside, it's at least superficially effective.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I strongly suspect the design trend will swing toward hoarder chic. Almost 10 years ago now, I drove from Austin to San Antonio to buy an old stereo for $50. The owner's house was fascinating. He had two large rooms full of stereo equipment that he collected but had little interest in selling. Every item had a story: where got it, what a deal it was, what he traded for it. The stories evoked different times and places in his life. There was a whole biography there, in stereo(s).

Unless a café were really driven by the personality of its owner, it would be hard to reproduce that kind of thing in any meaningful way. But I think designers will at least try. We're obsessed with old things as indices of authenticity, and as the aesthetic pendulum swings, interior designers will differentiate themselves by making spaces marked by superfluity. This kind of thing already exists, of course--largely in bars filled with vintage stuff. In homes, something like it gets called "grandmillenial" or "grandma chic." But it'll ultimately be just as vapid as contemporary design language, because it'll be a simulacrum of something more authentic.

My sister-in-law is a successful interior designer, and her house is the epitome of AirSpace. It is as ephemeral as the Airbnb guest, changing every few months in the name of perennial "updates." It is the most heartless home I've ever been in.

Sure, these types of critiques have been around since the Frankfurt School, but I think that just shows how ahead of their time the members of the FS were. Adorno gets criticized for painting with too broad a brush, but I feel like he was just making the right points too soon. For example, his remarks on the film industry make perfect sense in the context of contemporary superhero movie trends, even though they might have been exaggerated at the time. And clearly the message hasn't gotten through.

On your last point, are the hideous 5-over-1s being built in your HCOL city affordable? Because the ones I'm seeing certainly aren't. Ugly, undistinguished, cheaply built, and still expensive!

if those apartments were $1000/mo for the quality of construction, you pay an extra $1500/mo on top for the surplus enjoyment of living the lifestyle which is intrinsically instagrammable.

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