In case you missed it, here was my take on "Reconsidering PostModernism" on Domusweb.
New post is up, but it is on the D-Crit website...
An excerpt...
The experience of swirling my own frozen yogurt and sprinkling it with toppings was made much richer by the crazed kids, but also by the relentless and shameless blaring of bubblegum techno-pop music, something else I love. This ridiculousness is only possible in the context of an environment like uSwirl, a typical yogurt store. Other similar shops include flavaboom, Yogurt Beach, and 16 Handles.
Flavaboom is exemplary of the new typology. Its walls and floors are starkly white with brightly colored, bulbous furniture that resemble Mochi, the colorful Japanese jelly-like rice paste. The hyper-modern stores, by using bright lights and smooth, clean, plastic-like white materials with colorful accents in soft, plush furniture, simulate the experience of being in a giant bowl of yogurt. Reyner Banham wrote of detached motifs and patterns on ice cream vans which paralleled the sprinkles and stars of the emerging ice cream trends of 70’s London. A similar condition exists in the contemporary Yogurt Vernacular. The pristine yogurt-like ivory glitz serves as a base for the “toppings”, smears of color, usually chairs, benches, tables, and graphics. Why is it that frozen yogurt establishments have spawned a particular form of hi-tech bubblegum modernism, the Mochi-Moderne phase of the Yogurt Vernacular?
Frozen yogurt shops are the most “Modernist” buildings being built in 2011. Self-serve is an update of the Modernist tradition of efficiency, technological innovation, and mechanization.
Also, I'm hosting the spectacular Jimenez Lai for a lecture on Feb 28th in NYC.
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