Fuck The Vessel
thebaffler.com
thebaffler.com
> Hudson Yards is a private space masquerading as a public one ... In reality it is an enclave, a high-end corporate park buoyed by six billion dollars in tax breaks—an amount that dwarfs the subsidies offered to Amazon for its scuttled Queens headquarters—and designed as a kind of amenity-stuffed Hotel California that its residents never have to leave ... The only thing that Hudson Yards is missing is its own weather ... what Hudson Yards really feels like is a nice airport terminal, with the High Line as its moving walkway"
one thing I really love about NYC is how easy it is to deflect attention and get what you want
exhibit A: "tech workers" make the same amount in NYC as they do in the Bay Area, they fly completely under the radar and the inequality warriors point fingers at finance instead, serving to highlight the fickle nature of an unorganized protest where the cause/perpetuator of inequality is so easily interchangeable to whoever is the richest. Granted, these cities don't really know much about each other's struggles, so you see a lot of the same arguments rehashed and evolve in different ways ie: Austin recently dealt with a cultural appropriation uproar over a "Bodega", and not cultural appropriation from NYC lol, its just whoever is the loudest.
exhibit B: Walmart is practically banned from NYC in an effort to save/protect local businesses, while every major, minor, and luxury retailer enjoys larger than life flagship versions of their stores positioned in space constrained Manhattan.
exhibit C: The way tax breaks are made relevant news at all. Hudson Yards isn't the only place getting it.
The Amazon deal was all about NYS politics and the changes in leadership in the state legislature.
As someone in both (my day job is keeping OpenStack working at a hedge fund) and who's been in both job markets: this is because finance actually is the richest. There's literally no point in fixing tech worker salaries in NYC if you're not going to fix finance salaries in NYC. Why is it surprising that the target is the richest? Why do you see that as fickle instead of constant and principled? It would be unprincipled and ideological if people complained about tech salaries in NYC simply because tech is widely disliked, even when there's a bigger target to go after.
> Walmart is practically banned from NYC in an effort to save/protect local businesses, while every major, minor, and luxury retailer enjoys larger than life flagship versions of their stores positioned in space constrained Manhattan.
I am confused by the juxtaposition of these two claims. Walmart competes with local businesses. Gucci does not. If you want to protect local businesses, not having a Gucci flagship has a qualitatively different effect from not having Walmart. (A place like Uniqlo does compete with local businesses, but I would certainly not call any of the Uniqlo stores in Manhattan "larger than life" - they're barely big enough for purpose, and they're all much smaller than the Walmart in my parents' suburb.)
Sure, lets go down this rabbit hole separately.
What about the Target locations, the massive multi-story Home Depot on 23rd st taking up half a block, Bed Bath & Beyond, Ikea... I was certainly lost on the actual distinction people were making and that extends to you.
Whatever permitting process was involved flew right past anyone that cares passionately about this topic in support of local.
Target bingo is uncoordinated and dilutive.
> this is because finance actually is the richest
Exactly. This would really be making fun of the bay area's or anywhere else's ease switching the disdain.
It makes it harder to subscribe to one locality's issues masqueraded as the unique behavior of a particular industry.
Is the housing any cheaper? If so I'm moving
Maybe the west side of the Bronx on the express train?
...but this piece doesn't seem to make any coherent argument. Nowhere does she explain why she dislikes it aesthetically.
She simply seems to dislike that it was designed to be Instagrammable (is that so bad for art/sculpture which is inherently visual?), has some bizarre thoughts on climbing staircases (she's against climbing the Eiffel Tower as well, does she hate exercise?) and using elevators, and was unhappy with an attempted policy on photo usage that has now been changed.
Feels like fake outrage to me.
That's because her criticism does not seem to be primarily aesthetic. There's more to architecture than aesthetics.
The comparison to the Eiffel Tower is to say at least that structure has a restaurant and a shop at the top, so there's a reason to go up there.
The author does not seem to have special hate for elevators, only that an elevator for a sixteen-floor staircase that doesn't actually have anything at the top further reinforces the cynicism behind the design, which is in fact the major thrust of the article.
People in New York just have to get used to it.
The comparison to the Eiffel Tower is to say at least that structure has a restaurant and a shop at the top, so there's a reason to go up there.
When the Eiffel Tower went up, people were aghast and hated it. They demanded it be torn down at the end of the Expo. But they got used to it.
Same story for the big Ferris wheel in Paris.
Judging by http://mcmansionhell.com/101 she has strong opinions which are not immediately understandable, to me, anyway. (It seems like she would believe most of the parts of Europe I've seen and all those houses in the US that have been lived in and built on for decades to be architectural shitshows. But I can't confirm that.)
With the exception of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe, and a very few others, no architect gets to hear the words "Build what you like."
300k is not an expensive house. It is 6x 50k/year salary, which is the current not really even stretching for mortgage. In NYC 5k square feet house would cost ~4M if it is in Brooklyn or Queens and it would be much worse than McMansion but I'm sure the OP would be thinking it is wonderful because it is located in NYC.
Insofar as these buildings violate principles of architecture, are these architects "lazy" for not pushing back? I don't know.
https://nypost.com/2019/03/23/the-architecture-snobs-got-hud...
And four days after opening is a rather short time to wait before declaring "mission accomplished" on something that is supposed to endure.
The whole experience is just so very clearly synthetic. There's no unifying theme or feel, other than that of "we spent a whole lot of money making this place, it can't fail".
I imagine I'll continue to see lots of marketing about it over the next 10 years, desperately trying to make it a tourist attraction. Maybe they'll succeed.
Developments like Hudson Yards seem to be cargo culturing culture. If we build a public arts space, offices, restaurants, shops, and a playground then surely people will arrive, right?! Feels very weird.
3D walk-in billboards.
My wonderment and praise for the gallery curator shattered by the clerk trying to upsell me on a store credit card or data mining loyalty program.
"Why are you talking?"
Must be the quizzical expression my face makes as I take slightly too long to reply.
For actually purchasing something going into a retail store is basically a game of "how is the sales person going to lie to me today". It should come with a laugh track streamed live on twitch.
I mean, I agree with you a lot, but the Oculus itself is tons of natural light, it's all soaring windows:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZQvDMR-aOZc/maxresdefault.jpg
The above-ground Oculus structure is beautiful and inspiring in a way little architecture in that part of the city is.
This [1] Reddit thread from the other day was interesting reading. Those empty luxury shops are definitely to a large extent ads for high-end companies who just want to have a New York presence. Same thing on 5th avenue and in airports.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskNYC/comments/b2n7y6/people_that_...
Additionally, the Eiffel tower mostly drew criticism during its construction[0], not once it was finished. If the vessel could muster the "it's not finished" defence, then that would probably settle people down. It does look like a cool start on something impressive, but the vacuousness that Wagner objects to shows: the thing looks unfinished, a cool 3d printed prototype you made to look at and then put on a shelf after 10 minutes.
Frankly the pictures form the actual construction were more impressive than the finished things, just because before completion you could always try to imagine it completed as something more.
[0]: https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2015/1120/...
I think the two main motivators of this behavior are 1. jealousy and 2. a way for middle class people to distract themselves from the emptiness of their own lives: "Look at those rich people, their lives are so empty! They are so tasteless and they don't understand what really matters." Little do they know that rich people are distracting themselves from the emptiness of their lives by building this kind of stuff in the first place.
Me personally, I find it hard to criticize people who are building things. I wonder what the thousands of people who built these buildings think of them. I'm all ears if someone wants to make a serious case about what should have been built here instead and who should have paid for it. But this isn't that.
One of her main points is that this discussion should have been had before The Vessel was constructed. The article as a whole is more of a criticism of the whole system that spawned it than of the construction itself.
People don't "find themselves" in a social position. It isn't like they wandered into the wrong part of town. People suffering poverty are angry about wealth because it represents something withheld from them by an opaque and unfair system (how opaque and how unfair is the only thing under debate). Rich people who think poverty is a moral failing are afraid of losing what they have and in need of a feeling of intrinsic superiority because their greatest anxiety is that they don't deserve what they have.
The parent poster is specifically referring to a specific type of unfounded animus. Namely: having no argument other than "they have more money than me" to justify said animus.
Here's a way to think about it - what is the corresponding thing for the rich to hate on the poor for? Are the rich jealous of not having money? Are they envious of those who cannot pay more for housing simply because a building of questionable merit faces it (one of the examples given in the article)? How is that founded? The rich can easily get themselves into that position, should they be desirous of it.
There is an arguable parallel in the rich who see the poor as being a moral failure for merely not having money and the poor who see the rich as being a moral failure for merely having money, but a) I think the poor have a better claim to well-foundedness there, even if it is slight, in that the rich quite clearly have the ability to stop having money with a snap of their fingers where the poor do not obviously have the ability to start having money, and b) the article does not seem to say that merely having money is a moral failure - at best it says that misusing money is a moral failure.
Let me make sure I understand, because I fear we may be talking past each other.
Are you suggesting that the simple fact that one has more money than you is sufficient to justify animus?
(I'm happy to discuss the rest of your post once we clear up this particular point; it seems fundamental.)
Not if the difference is trivial, but absolutely when it is as enormous and as unmotivated as it often is. Why would it be strange that obviously unfair inequality would be a source of animus?
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed." — Herman Melville
EDIT: Phrasing.
The difference with wealth is that you can choose to become unwealthy on a moment's notice. So each day you remain wealthy is, itself, a choice. And the process of becoming unwealthy itself has direct benefits for the poor.
A white person cannot choose to become black and thereby remove oppression. A straight person who does not marry does not thereby yield the ability to marry to a gay couple. Even someone assigned male at birth who decides to present as female does not get to transfer her former male privilege to anyone in the process.
But someone who can afford a $10M condo that is as functional as (being generous) a $1M condo could directly transfer that $9M to people who don't have a place to live at all. So their choice not to do that—their choice to merely have money—is a decision we can justly evaluate morally, in a way we cannot evaluate merely having white skin or male presentation morally.
In my religious tradition, in our ritual confession of our faults, we apologize "for what I have done and for what I have failed to do." There is a story of a rich man who dutifully kept the ancient laws but refused to sell his possessions to the poor, and chose his possessions over the way of the religion. To remain rich (at least beyond one's needs and beyond the needs of one's credible plans to help the world) is an active choice, and can be criticized as any other choice.
It is right for oppressed groups to want to not be oppressed, it is not right for them to hate other groups because they are not oppressed.
"I hate you for having ∞x more than me and actively preventing me from having a decent life, just to milk a little bit more from me. I want my stuff"
(I'm not totally sure where my own worldview lies, for what it's worth. Almost certainly the strongest form, and almost certainly not the one you stated. But I think it is defensible that some worldviews believe all of these and they are not the worldviews of people too irrational to be worth understanding.)
This is just a denial of the reality that no one is really given a choice about the circumstances of their lives. That goes for abilities and outcomes. It should be self-evident, that all men are created equal - not in ability or outcome, but in the fact that no one has a choice in the hand they are dealt.
The less-fortunate you are, the more grievances you have - legitimate grievances. My original post wasn't meant to de-legitimize anyone's founded grievances. I'm just starting to see this in these types of discussions, both online and irl, that the more we rail against members of difference classes, the more rigid those class structures become. Of course this is a slippery slope to telling people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. That's not what I mean either.
edit: I got a little (ok, a lot) carried away with the language, and it definitely detracted from my point, and added nothing to the conversation.
Seriously, what does that add here? It was already perfectly unambiguous you find her and her perspective abhorrent. Such hateful vulgarity actually detracts from your argument, IMO; you come across as rageful, not rational.
EDIT: Parent comment was edited to remove the quoted bit, and also significantly for tone, before being flagged to death.
So this gets complicated. Plenty of underprivileged people would kill for the change to have a decent and fair shot at life with a reliable roof over their heads, and certainly I wouldn't begrudge them that. But there are also plenty of people who are stably renting a small apartment or own a small one-family house in the suburbs who would also kill for a McMansion, and I think the unfortunate but fair judgment of those people is that, were they rich, they'd behave in the ways we stereotypically dislike the rich for. The fact that they do not because they cannot is not, I think, itself a reason to avoid making that judgment.
The phrase was used to stay out of the debate about the cause, not to imply there was no cause.
The trophy is a symbol for something more, and so is having hundreds of millions of dollars.
That's not the case here, she is criticizing them for more than just having money.
I'm trying to think of actual instances...
Beggars should be abolished: it is irritating to give to them and it is irritating not to. --Nietzsche.
an old person without money is pathetic --Anon. from "Bookends" album, Simon and Garfunkel.
Maybe you travel in different circles? I sure don't love the poor, but I used to be really poor, so I feel I have the right.
By the way, I also grew up poor - as in, growing up in the US with an outhouse poor. And, now I’m rich. And, yes, I hear that all the time.
Have also seen people who played too many video games and ten years into their adult lives have absolutely nothing to show for it other than some min wage job say 'fuck the rich'. Equally shitty.
In both cases, a healthy does of get-the-fuck-over-yourself is due.
The author is not poor.
"I'm personally not a big fan of that building's aesthetics, but maybe there are others who do like it."
That would have been a reasonable opinion to hold... instead we have: "Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, one of architecture’s premier grifters... The depth of architectural thinking at work here makes a kiddie-pool seem oceanic"
I hope to God I never have to work with someone like the author.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/opinion/sunday/political-...
Also it’s ugly af. I hope I never have to work with someone with your tastes if you think that’s what beauty is.
That said, I dislike the tone of the article.
I think you have your terminology backwards here, I figure you meant bourgeoisie
Meanwhile, other things are inherently subjective, which means that by definition, there is no right or wrong answer. Treating an architect with contempt for purely subjective reasons, is not a mark of a "great writer" in any way.
Yet it is architects that treat everyone else with contempt, ignoring the clear public preference for traditional architecture: https://www.dezeen.com/2009/10/16/people-prefer-traditionall...
Architects don't really have much power in the design of these kind of buildings beyond window dressing.
Edit. Also, refer to the author's blog for what happens when contemporary architects try to do traditional buildings. The fact is, each historical style of building existed in a larger process of building craft and materials and use. Without this process, the architecture becomes mere pastiche, stuck on, and shoehorned in. Frankensteined architecture.
Are they? According to [1,2 (especially last post)] (better sources welcome) traditional style is cheaper, and according to [3], there's bias against traditional architecture.
Besides, it's the "window dressing", that architects supposedly have power over, that's the ugliest part of modern architecture.
Edit: As seen in https://www.city-journal.org/html/can-we-still-build-real-ar..., 'traditional' architecture is rarely more complicated than a simple rectangular cuboid - it's the 'window dressing' that gives it charm.
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-general-cost-difference-be...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/ae2mcs/buildi...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/05/archit...
Yes, they can be.. providing you are comparing apples with apples. According to [0].
But that is not really satisfying without numbers is it?
So lets take the first example linked in your reddit post. The Potsdamer Palace. It is the most interesting example as they went to some effort [1] to reconstruct the facade as closely to the original design as possible, including the brickwork skin and hand finished stonework. Of course internally it is all concrete and steel, but you would never know that from looking at it.
Built for €120m [2], 35,000sqm GFA, 19,000sqm utilities (a wopping 35%) and only 390 offices. About €2500/sqm for the construction price, but at about €200,000 per office. A standard low rise office in germany seems to be close to the €1500/sqm range. But you would expect more like 20-25% utilities floor area and lets say 1 person/10sqm (ie. open plan office seat) for occupation. So for the same size office built with standard construction techniques, this floor area would be about €70m including utilities, but only €15,000 per office. (if you calculate out the €200k /office of the example with the 3500 offices of the standard office, that is a €1,076m price, ie. at least an order of magnitude).
Ok, so we are not talking about a typical office building here. It is also very significant that the examples chosen were all institutional, rather than commercial ie.the symbol was more important than the return. The point is that the original construction techniques required significant additional human labour, additional area for structure, but also light, servicing, and ventilation, and additional costly materials. All with a reduced usable internal floor area.
But sure, just stick something on the façade and call it a day right? But, if you already have a working façade system which gives you more saleable floor area, as a developer, you would sack the architect that proposes something else. So yeah, we have some power over the façade, but not that much.
So I guess the resistance to 'traditional' is mostly in the ''s. But also in that contemporary architects often care about process and user experience over formal traditions.
The other funny thing about this argument, is that the very same objections were held towards modern architecture in the time of the original construction of the Potsdamer. It was broadly in the style of the late Roccoco (in particular, a Prussian variant), which the Neo-classicists thought was ugly and modern. The Neo-classicists looked back, copying the original renaissance classicists of course, who were copying the styles of the ancient Romans, who had migrated a good deal from the ancient Egyptians via the Greeks. Taste is an old argument.
[0] me, working in the industry for 20yrs.
[1] https://www.landtag.brandenburg.de/en/parliament_building/84...
[2] https://www.landtag.brandenburg.de/media_fast/5701/Schriften...
Though I have to say, it would be refreshing to hear architects defend their work with "Yes it's ugly but it's cheap" instead of whatever claims of artistic vision we currently get.
> which the Neo-classicists thought was ugly and modern
According to polls, pretty much everyone dislikes modern architecture, not just members of traditionalist architectural schools.
Well, yes. Light, servicing, ventilation. A modern floor plate is up to 40m usable depth. A historic floor plate 8-10m usable depth, and only half of that with a window.
>Neo-classicists
Read some history from wikipedia..
>The term "Neoclassical" was not invented until the mid-19th century, and at the time the style was described by such terms as "the true style", "reformed" and "revival"; what was regarded as being revived varying considerably.
The point was, this is just about people, as they always did, preferring the historicity, the status, the symbols of earlier times (and lets be honest, wealth). It has always been the same argument. Which traditional style are you going to pick? the cave or the tree house?
Sorry, you'll have to explain more. Why is a historic floor plate smaller? And why does a window on the facade make it smaller still? How does the facade affect the floor plate?
Like all things, Architecture is a rabbit hole. Every decision has a knock on effect.
The floor plate depth is directly related to the amount of light and heat required. The ceiling heights need to be taller to allow ventilation (not feeling too stuffy). The windows need to be taller to let enough light and heat in, the taller the windows the more structure required between them to function (without steel of course). The unobstructed open area of the floor plate is limited to around 6m because you are using timber or stone arches to support the upper floor or roof.
And sure, you can paste on a façade and use modern structure and servicing to get you halfway there, but then all of a sudden, the proportions of you Neoclassical, revivalist building are all out of whack. The inside of your building (arguably the part that matters to the inhabitants) still looks like a modern office, with a paper thin layer of stone stuck to the front obscuring your view. That, to be honest, is how we got McMansions.
Yes, as I suggested before, lettable floor area is king. That is why commercial buildings are made from glass. There are other major differences, and also minor differences with large knock on effects. And no, not every traditional style building is an order of magnitude more expensive than every other style building. And yes, you can fake the stylistic appliqué. And yes, architects have thrashed that dead horse to death time and again over the last 600 years or so.
The truth of it is that architecture is beholden to the same arcane and Byzantine cost structures that effect any other large scale, one off projects. Like those that make software engineering expensive (when programming is so cheap!). Or why don't they just make good movies these days?. The forces acting on architecture are strongly market driven, and if the forces pushed toward traditional methods, then those buildings would be built.
They are not. And, I think architecture would be much easier to understand (and even be effected positively) if people, such as yourself could enumerate their actual requirements of buildings, internally, externally, publicly, privately, phenomenologically, metaphysically, and give some thought to the prioritisation of such requirements, and the deceptive complexity of satisfying them.
If I could make this into a generalisation.. a product is its specification. If you just want a cheaper building (or car, website, or apple) you will get something that resembles that.
Having contempt for buildings has kind of become her entire public persona. I don't think I envy that life.
Nobody does architectural criticism anymore. In the industry it is all breathless, feint praise. Like the Hollywood cliché.
I for one, enjoy hearing someone's critical thinking about the architecture underneath the skin of a building. As in, the systems and processes that structure space and movement and interaction and emotion and society. What is the fucking point of architecture if all it does is pretty.
The article contains none of that. As another commenter perfectly described: this piece doesn't seem to make any coherent argument. Nowhere does she explain why she dislikes it aesthetically.
Talking about architectural aesthetics is like discussing the success of Amazon or Google by way of the colour palette of their website.
The articles argument is about the underlying processes which spawned and support the building. It is one valid criticism.
The fact that comments here are pearl clutching over "tone" or "author's apparent empty life" is kind of amusing to watch. Partly because HN commenters and hackers would presumably agree with the article's criticism of something like IP-selfie ownership for the sole purpose of advertising and inflating value of nearby condos. But I think most folks here are triggered by the whiff of marxist tone.
Hudson yards is a project by real estate developers targeting other speculators, so it's not as bad as say gentrifying incumbent locals, or it's not necessarily about the opportunity cost of having a green park there instead.
It's just a fish-bowl example of how capital can work in its own world and feel so out of touch with the rest of the city. If you've ever walked around new CBD's in China in the 00's, you'd often find similar high rises flanked with empty luxury stores and it was just really obvious what the point of it was. Only there, there's no false pretense of high art or design, just money.
Operation Latte Thunder, go.
and trash a franchise coffee bar."
Let's hope they put a starbucks in the thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Stairs_(Sleator_novel...
In my experience of walking around cities I visit, you find this kind of thing just as soon as you stop(!) following your tourist map and/or blog post listing "20 best things to see in Florence/London/Paris/Berlin/$wherever".
"Weird" things are - and have always been - there just waiting to be found. We really don't need Heatherwick to build them.
Hong Kong has much nicer public spaces. This means the public go to these public spaces and people socialize. That's not possible in NYC. Because the city public shared space is a piece of junk. People avoid it and segregate in select clubs/bars/restaurant. That means they don't go alone but with friends. So NYC is very circle based.
As the city public services gets shittier, the city becomes more like Paris and so are the people: Rude. The massive inflow of tourists doesn't help either. The article is just symptom: It just shows how frustrated Yankees are.
The city needs more spaces like the Hudson Yards. Spaces that integrate with the subway. Enable easy transfer, offer nice sitting areas, and let people socialize.
or maybe it's just some staircases
http://gothamist.com/2019/03/21/vessel_name.php
http://gothamist.com/tags/vessel
also somewhat relevant:
http://gothamist.com/2019/03/22/native_new_yorkers_complain....
It's about as helpful an ideology as white supremacy, just with different variables: instead of wanting to destroy other people along racial boundaries, the class supremacist wants to destroy people who aren't members of the sanctioned economic class.
Fuck class supremacy. Let's collectively ignore this kind of hateful screed so we can focus on reducing suffering for all, not just for members of some arbitrary group.
It feels tribal. This thing is associated with a group I hate, so it's ugly, shallow, stupid, pointless, corrupt, and in every way unclean.
Yeesh.
Or, the author could do something about it other than whine. Make an ADA case regarding the limited floors accessible by elevators for instance - that's a freebie.
The author has still to come to terms with the meaninglessness, contrivance and absurdity of her own life and of everything around her, and has been pushed by a meaningless, contrived and absurd building to write a similarly meaningless and contrived article. Oblivious to this, she is pushes herself even further into the void of meaninglessness, contrivance and absurdity. The capitalist pigs score yet another goal against Kate, her thoughts enslaved within the confines of The Vessel.
Calling it a giant waste paper basket is wonderfully apt.