One such message I recently received was from an informed reader who is one of the first to really Take on Righetti
So I read your weekend blogs on new construction and renovation. Awful. You mistakenly lump shoddy work in with modern design. They are not one in the same. In fact, modern design preaches efficient uses of space and demands quality, but economical use of work. When done right, modern design is liberating and uplifting to its inhabitants and users. Your cited examples sound nothing like this and do not sound truly modern nor well built. FWIW, I've seen far more examples of shoddy faux-classic construction in recent years than with modern projects. (And no, bowl sinks are more gimmick than modern.)
Zed takes this stuff seriously.
I think there are three issues at play here
- the writer has been known to dance around bars with his pants around his ankles screaming "have you met Mickey Mouse yet?"
-with that said I think I may have overstated new construction as it relates to the entire country and should have kept the discussion centered around the urban setting as I honestly know nothing about a new house built in Arizona or a condo Florida.
One of the issues you see in NYC is that square footage is at a much higher premium than in probably 99% of the rest of the country. See developers in NYC are often dealing with a finite amount of space to build upon while a house built in the suburbs has much more of an opportunity to expand its design whether vertically or by creeping into yard space. Now obviously there will be zoning issues regardless but you will never find a house, townhouse or condo anywhere in the country which doesn't have at least adequate closet space and decent size bedrooms with an average of one bathroom per bedroom. In NYC where the real-estate is sky-high and the amount of space developers can reasonably expect to recuperate in terms of dollars paid is limited so what they are forced to do is put more things into the same footprint in order to get their best return on investment. See a 700 square foot 1 bedroom apartment will sell for less than a 700 square foot two bedroom apartment even if that means both bedrooms are basically walk-in closets. Developers know this and in NYC you will often find apartments with virtually no closet space or completely misshapen or puny living rooms.
- as per the shoddy work, I probably generalized a bit but I have walked into many building recently built (whether they are modern or faux-classic) and find the workmanship despicable. I can't comment for the rest of the country but I have a friend living in a building which was converted into condos a few years ago and the place is falling apart. The contractors took many short cuts and cut-corners and now there is tons of water damage, faulty elevator shafts, major facade work all to be paid for by the condo owners while the developer is well on his way out of town. In addition to this I have seen much more minor issues but when a guy uses a 6" screw to adhere two pieces of 2x2 and you have 2" sticking out of the back, this is sad and unacceptable. Now I don't see this kind of obvious corner cutting in older buildings but maybe I'm not looking hard enough or maybe it says something about the kind of pride people take in their work in 2010 vs 1930 for example.
The other thing is the entire concept of modern, I appreciate buildings that are eco-friendly where the design has a purpose, I don't personally appreciate an apartment with fixtures which make it look like a trendy mid-town hotel. Again personal preference here but I do find that developers who use modern fixtures are also ones who seem to be covering up shoddy work by adding the equivalent of a fresh coat of paint. My feeling here is that if you design modern for curb-appeal you probably aren't concerned about long-term and that in itself might lead to shoddy work.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Read it... I'd love to reply directly to the site, but I can't figure out the comment feature and I don't have the patience to log in. The blogspot sites are horrible about this.
ReplyDelete--Retort to Retort #1: Correct. Unfortunately Mickey Mouse seems to get smaller and smaller every year.
--Retort to Retort #2: Correct. Square Footage in NYC is at a higher premium than anywhere else in the country. But this only extols the virtues of modern design which stresses efficiency and utility in space and design.
--Retort to Retort #3: I think we agree here. Shoddy work in recent construction has more to do with the recent real estate boom where builders/developers could get away with cutting corners than it does with the modern design philosophy. It sounds like most of the new construction in New York was modern or post-modern (post-modern is some wretched stuff... basically disguising itself as modern, but with a lot of extraneous, silly ornamentation). Most of the new construction in suburbia by the nation's big homebuilders in the last decade was more traditional. So, I guess it's a regional thing.
But as to your point about older buildings being constructed better... it's kind of true and kind of false. Ya, the quality of materials and the craftsmanship _might_ have been better 80 years ago and the old buildings you see are testement of this notion. But a lot of the poorly designed and constructed buildings from 80 years ago, however, have long since been demolished for better buildings.
Retort to Retort #4: In your final paragraph, I think you are again confusing modern with post-modern (see comments above). Modern design is about simplicity. Poor construction and defects are MUCH more visible in modern construction than any other style (e.g., blemishes on a large, empty single-color wall show up are very apparent). Post-modern, Victorian, Tuscan (see recent SoCal construction) or any other style which emphasizes ornamentation is now often used to hide defects and cheap work.
I cannot profess to be an architectural expert, but I acknowledge being hypersensitive about this stuff. Once you are exposed to good design, it's impossible to accept bad design. Seeing people long for "traditional" styles is perverse to me... it's like going to Disneyworld and pretending you live in a world that doesn't exist. People should be forward-thinking, or at the very least, live in the present... not long for something that no longer exists (e.g., people buying up Toll Bros.' latest Tuscan villa, French Chateaux, Virginia Colonial, etc. designs). That notion is really bizarre and unhealthy psychologically when you think about it.
Well, it looks like I figured out the comment feature. I still hate that I have to log in. They should allow for anonymous postings. /grumpyoldmanrant/
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