Design and the Mind

I felt more assured of my sense of class and taste when I read this article. I had resigned to being an old-fashioned bumpkin when, after reviewing modern architecture magazines to keep in touch with modern design trends, I couldn't shake my dislike for these sophisticated styles. I felt that I could never feel at home in such an environment; I had to have a style that was homey, traditional ... even all-out country would be better than the ambience of a large waiting room.

It is not enough for some people to hate modern architecture (like the anachronistic Prince Charles), but some folks have to be evangelical. I thought "Unhappy Hipsters" was briefly humorous in a sophomoric sort of way, but we can do the same with any photographs. I would imagine someone should start a similar site featuring the horrors of living in a Victorian home or maybe how McMansions are an extension of uncompleted materialism. For me, modern is comforting, convenient, and futuristic, but I realize that it is not for everybody. At least, it is for the most part different and original (unlike the cookie-cutter homes of suburbia).

Here's a thought, I wonder if those folks were coached to stand or sit a certain way in each of the photographs?

As an architectural and interior designer, also as a custom builder, I find my clients trying to live with the aesthetics, touted in the more so called “edgy” periodicals, amusing. (Whether it’s appealing visually is another matter.) People like attempting for the cachet of the modern minimalist aura. Few achieve it. When it is said and done the average Joe and Josephine find living in sterile environments unrealistic. The junk, personal artifacts, and the miasma of everyday clutter generally encroach back into life and the domicile. Some nice cat puke stains on that unsealed white travertine or little Jimmy dulling the sheen on your hi-gloss lacquered custom built cabinetry with his Tonka truck… well… that can put some real emotional cracks on your visions for modernistic nirvana.

I do so love chic modern lines, but I mix it with antiques, and warmth. Nothing can get me excited like an ornate room, covered in fantastic opulent moldings and craftsmanship, painted in some nice neutral hue, then spotted with slick modern pieces. Or, the exact opposite, a plain modern cube of a chamber, high ceiling, glass abounds, cold, austere, and BAM, some spectacular period pieces of the Louis era. Now there’s juxtaposition, babies.

Design is subjective, people aspire to all kinds of self representation from their places of residence. In the end as long as long as they’re content who cares, lol.

Photos of showrooms allude to a lifestyle intended to make us drool with desire.

But they're often at odds with reality in the sense that you wouldn't really want your baby crawling over a cold tile floor only to fall off that patio step face first onto a load of gravel. And those bedrooms look like a shop window display. Plus where's the radiator to throw a towel over? :-)

Modern clean lines I think are soothing to many of us - so long as they feel like "home". Warmth brought in through colour, curves, texture, natural materials and defined spaces invites this homely feeling into both modern and traditional buildings.

Perhaps it makes us uncomfortable when we can't easily bring in this combination of reality and warmth in a photo, and we become more ready to assume that the people in it must be unhappily pretentious or simply unimaginative and sterile.

I think Dwell has always favored a rather stark aesthetic, even for modernism. IKEA catalogs, for example, convey a lighter mood. Citibank uses modern design to good effect in its branches. My neighborhood supermarket recently received a makeover in yellow and violet and is now a more upbeat environment. I agree with adding warmth in various ways and have done so in my own 1960s apartment, which is very well laid out but boxy. I subscribed to Dwell for a while but found greater satisfaction in some interior design books.

My basic dissatisfaction with Dwell is that it presents little or nothing that is new in terms of style. This all dates back to the International Style. I have Hitchcock and Johnson's book on the exhibition at MoMA in 1932. Many of the designs presented still have a fresh impact even after the succeeding generations. I studied architecture for a while in the 1970s, and there is not much in Dwell that could not have been designed then. I'm not asking for a return to traditional ornament or for the sculptural profile of a Frank Gehry design. But why should we care about reiterations of basic geometry?

modernism is people centered! if you're in the neighborhood, check it out for yourself at MODERN LOVE, a lecture series at the Virginia Center for Architecture in Richmond, VA.

http://rvds.tumblr.com/

cheers,
roberto

My passion is the relationship between emotions and the built environment which is what is being discussed here. If I can ever finish my book on it I could actually reference it here. But that will have to wait.

One little hint given the lack of space:

1) Modern Architectural style is very heady, very conceptual.
It is often more concerned with expressing an idea that making
people feel good.

2) Traditional architectural principles were restrictive because
they were applied unconsciously and automatically. But by
rejecting them blindly we also lost the design elements that
enabled us to relate emotionally with and feel good about our
surroundings.

I won't go into the specific design details that make this work but the psychology behind this can be illustrated by the following example. Someone may date a guy who is cool, different, original, good looking, forward thinking. Does that mean they should spend the rest of their life with him ? Well if you don't feel right with that person, if you don't get a feeling of well being and after the original "awe" effect has faded, it is debatable.

Yet so much of modern architecture ask us to do just that. Let's get married simply because you look so cool, original and different. Cool and different are fun when you date, once you get married feeling good starts to become pretty important. Yet a building is here to stay, there is no dating period, it becomes married to the community for generations.

So let's design a little more with our hearts which has wisdom our heads cannot access.

This post inspired some lively discussion among some of my friends. Much as I love Unhappy Hipsters, I don't think it's the architecture that is cold in these photos, I think it is the interior design. If you look at the Eames Case House, for example, it's modernist lines have been softened with plants, curves, fabric, texture, books, tschotske, etc. It's inviting and liveable. Dwell, as one friend pointed it, "is about lifetsyle and $120 can openers, not architecture."

This post inspired some lively discussion for me and my friends....

Much as I love Unhappy Hipsters, I don't think it's the architecture that is cold in these photos, I think it is the interior design. If you look at the Eames Case House, for example, it's modernist lines have been softened with plants, curves, fabric, texture, books, tschotske, etc. It's inviting and liveable. Dwell, as one friend pointed it, "is about lifestyle and $120 can openers, not architecture." Any one of these homes could be lovely and human with the less severe interiors.

This post inspired some lively discussion for me and my friends....

Much as I love Unhappy Hipsters, I don't think it's the architecture that is cold in these photos, I think it is the interior design. If you look at the Eames Case House, for example, it's modernist lines have been softened with plants, curves, fabric, texture, books, tschotske, etc. It's inviting and liveable. Dwell, as one friend pointed it, "is about lifestyle and $120 can openers, not architecture." All these homes could be lovely and human with less severe interiors.

I LOVE unhappy hipsters. and I read dwell. and I live in a modern home that is FLOODED with natural light and lots of wood and an active family.

it is all just a matter of taste. for those who don't read dwell, but do view unhappy hipsters... the context of the photo used alone and with those witty captions clearly changes the intent of the image, the space, the intent of the architect etc. it has prompted me to take up a new photography project. I will recreate familiar scenes from fairy tales or biblical, but include a caption that contrasts with the original allegory.

we've been featured in a few publications and home tours, I'd be thrilled to be seen on unhappy hipsters, but I'm not sure I can express as much melancholy as those professional models

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/family-friendly-austin-modhouse-107276

I agree with the poster above who suggested the lack of interior design is obviously what makes these spaces seem so cold and stark.

Although UH is pretty funny, I think the gaudy, overly pretentious mcmansions of suburbia could provide equally worthy images for lampoon.

Interesting article. I used to wonder, when I saw interiors that were extremely stark, minimal, even clinical. My theory was that perhaps the owner had grown up in crowded, cluttered spaces, or suffocating emotional entanglements with family as children. Just my notion at the time, probably inaccurate. But there indeed was a psychic component. "No baggage". Space and order, control. Some unhappiness was my impression, certainly.

Thanks for the great comments, all! I'm really enjoying this discussion and there are many issues being raised that give me food for thought.

I've had a couple of requests for a citation for the Neuropsychologia piece I referenced. My apologies for not listing it with the original post. For anyone who would like more info, here you go:

Bar, Moshe and Maital Neta. Visual elements of subjective preference modulate amygdala activation. Neuropsychologia 45 (2007) 2191-2200.

Link:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T0D-4N7S5BD-2...

Perhaps viewpoints like this will lead to more empirical exploration that will give tools to designers to create more humanistic spaces for living, working, healing, and playing.

It's good to know that in the future, happiness will be mandatory, imposed on us by our environment. Since no negative vibes can be expressed, dissent can be suppressed.

Much of the influence on the early Modernist designers stemmed from the East. The aesthetics of Japan, in particular, celebrated a more simple, stripped down living environment that allowed the material of the building to be expressed. It was anti-materialist in the best, buddhist sense. Many early Modernists were socialists who, therefor, identified philosophically with the eastern sense of place, not just aesthetically. So I'm interested in understanding how this 'discovery' in psychology handles responses to modern design by Japanese, Chinese or other Asians.

Good architecture need not duplicate meaningless ornament of the past, but excites the senses through the use of material and connection to the natural world; it responds to how a particular person lives their unique life. Whether the column is ionic or doric, fluted or rough hune, it matters not.....but the wood species, the stain or paint, that DOES matter.

Finally, architecture must be experienced. Photographs limit one's understanding of how the four dimensional space (yes, I include time in this line of thinking) works. The folks at U.H. are preying upon one's naive prejudice which even I find humorous. But it's a fleeting comedy. You can tell the same joke only so many times.

How can you be offering "serious" psychological analysis of the impact of modern architecture based on a light hearted parody of Dwell photos? We live in a gorgeous home full of natural light and natural materials on a beautiful spot of the earth in rural Iowa. We are happier in our space than we were capable of imagining before our design process began. Our guests are thrilled by our space, and the limitations of a magazine article inevitably minimize the impact of the real life aesthetic experience of our home. We, too, got a chuckle out of the stoic seriousness of a posed photo. We are also so ecstatic to live in a space crafted to reflect, enhance, and accommodate our lives that we probably don't travel as much as we should! Close your browser and experience some of these places in person before writing about them.

Great article Ingrid.
My own interest in this subject stems from two comments by the Professor of modern European thought John Gray. Firstly that a settled existence is only possible in a historic town and second that modern commerce is driven by the perpetual search for novelty.
Both troubling thoughts for an architect like myself. There is in design schools what J K Galbraith would have called a conventional wisdom. This is an attitude to architectural design still broadly based on Bauhaus principles and the notion that there is a progressive evolutionary continuam. This involves a cultural imperative to be seen to be contemporary.
What is interesting to me is how this approach has come to dominate why is there a seemingly insatiable appetite for newness, for design to be 'cutting edge' .

I have not yet formed a view on why this is the case. Perhaps it is the long shadow of Darwinism that has led us to the thought that the new is necessary evidence of continuing evolution or maybe the arts feel the need to compete or match the real progress of science with apparent innovation.

My own view is that architecture and art are different sorts of things and that jt is a category error to try and reflect other forms of progress. That architecture can have a profound effect on the emotions has been known for millennia and perhaps reached a peak with the soaring high gothic of the cathedrals of the European middle ages.

Early twentieth century architectural polemic cemented an unhappy relationship between machines and architecture. The dynamism of new forms of transport was contrasted with a perceived staisis in architectural expression.
This appeal for contemporary relevance persists as does the suspicion of ornament and certain forms of comfort. There is a mistaken correlation between consistency of form and cosistancy in thought.

What about sustainability in the Modern World? All the points are great, the thoughts and comments too. I can't articulate this too much right now, but some of these concrete cubes are the spaces that is given and the design and functionality comes together as needed per the personality that occupies the space and maybe it starts as minimalism, but in ten years will these places look the same? That is my question..

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