I’m unapologetically modernist. To me, history only runs forward, and yesterday is usually an embarrassing old version 1.0. If you saw my questionable fashion choices from years past, you’d hasten to agree.
Given my technobarbarian predilections, this NYT story extolling the virtues of housing Bangalore tech workers in former tobacco warehouses strikes me as nothing more than the romanticization of poverty:
In contrast to these unabashed clones of buildings in Palo Alto or San Jose is a 37-acre campus in the heart of the city whose granite- and terra cotta-adorned buildings are set among decades-old trees and painted in vibrant Indian shades of brick red and deep green. The buildings have names from the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, while the rooms within are named after the ancient books of learning, the Vedas. Every morning the Indian flag is ceremonially hoisted on a central flagpole, an unusual practice for businesses here… most of the streets have been paved with local stone… walls made of hollow terra-cotta blocks, flat stone tables and acoustic-friendly ceilings that are fashioned out of earthen pots. The giant century-old chimney, ancient trees and even an old fire station have been left standing… [Link]
Crappy old clay buildings, unpaved streets, giving buildings names in local languages? In India that’s not called ‘environmentally friendly’ architecture. That’s called all architecture The NYT’s spin feels to me like the wealthy patting the pre-industrial on the head. It’s a yearning you only get after industrializing:
… Galapagos Bar… reminded me a hell of a lot of a cement factory in India, with a dank pool taking up most of the space, stone walls with hand-lit candles mounted in odd places, not the least behind rows of expensive vodkas. The charms of the torture castle, the provincial, it’s the classic example of art defining itself as other. Even when other means pre-industrial… in developing countries this would not have been recognizable as a chi-chi place in the art sense, handmade is the order of the day and not as admired as standardized and mass-produced… [Link]
The renovating architect drew inspiration from The Fountainhead. Ironically, the illustrations on Ayn Rand’s popular edition covers are not about building for human scale at all. They’re soaring neo-Gothic works which draw inspiration from the spires of Soviet universities, albeit stripped of communist symbols. They’re Rockefeller Center. Skyscrapers move books, even when they contradict the book’s aesthetic Continue reading