New Pop PoMo

Nearly two years ago, we created the "blogger's sport" of Building/Song pairings. If you're not familiar with the game, educate yourself with our attempt at an exhaustive list of the game and it's players: (let me know if there are any omissions...)

• January 11, 2009 (M: Nostagiolistically Evocational)
• January 27, 2009 (M: More Buildings/Songs)
• January 29, 2009 (FJ: Separated at birth)
• January 30, 2009 (FJ: Sisters)
• January 30, 2009 (SDMYABT: Pop and Brutalism Special)
• January 31, 2009 (FJ: Pop Life)
• February 1, 2009 (M: Pop and Things Like That --> RB: Blanqueford Regenerated (October 2008)
• February 4, 2009 (I: Embedded Linx)
• February 9, 2009 (LWB: Searching for a Definition of Lo-Fi Architecture)
• August 13, 2010 (FJ: parade)

We're back in the game, this time taking a look at today's pop music scene, selecting a trio of songs which seem to negotiate between past and future realities. They share a common desire to reconstruct the past on their own terms, sparking what could be considered a new youthful (and fashionable) wave of postmodernism. The aesthetics of these songs are captured through experimental variations on the "music video" (e.g. The Black Eyed Peas pioneering of 360 degree 3D film, Lady Gaga reclaiming Hollywood for herself through a cinematic borrowing/stealing, and the music video turned full-length, self-deirected film by Kanye West.

Science fiction could never have predicted a new millenium saturated with groovy 70's fonts, polaroid photo shoots, arcade 8-bit bliss, and late '80's soft rock electrodiscodance combos. Nevertheless, watching these videos, take note of how typical pomo material (e.g. reinterpretation of nostalgia + multiculturalism) is taken to the next level . These weapons-grade pop samples demand an architecture which is firmly rooted in hybrid realities surrounding truthful (or deceitful) narratives of the past (and future).

1.) The Black Eyed Peas - The Time (Dirty Bit) paired with Neo-Rococo furniture from Smansk:

Within today's globalized, network urban world, the music video begins with the futurism of outer space juxtaposed with the sampling of a soft rock song from the late 1980's. The aesthetics of the video flash into a heady blend of google street view, drug-infused pixelization, and avatar hallucinations all packaged with an aged, nostalgia-inducing photo filter (also see The Black Eyed Peas - Light Up The Night for the co-opting of '80s arcade nostalgia with QR Code overlays). It's agenda is to convey happiness through maximum visual stimulation and hypnotic beat. Neo-Rococo, as artistic style closely resembles the 'Peas' attempt at space/time maximalism. Sorry, no building here, but a successful curatorial performance in my opinion.

2.) Lady Gaga - Paparazzi (Nov, 2009) paired with Café Was in Hollywood, CA (2009)

Not much can be said about Lady Gaga that has not already been said in this delightful experiment. She's into challenging gender (and celebrity) identity roles, the aestheticization of tragedy, haute couture, etc. Best put here:

At the start of the video, as Gaga is shown plummeting from the balcony to the ground in slow motion, a synthesizer sonority enters emulating Gaga’s heartbeat; moments later, the listener is inundated with the sound of paparazzi anxiously snapping away at their cameras. The snaps and clicks combined with the pulsating heartbeat create their own distinct rhythmic pattern, and persist until they meld seamlessly into the song’s ostinato bass line – a slightly simpler version of the initial rhythm. Thus, we can say that the beat propelling the entire song grew out of both Gaga's heartbeat and the snapping and clicking of the paparazzi, a resonance that is at once organic and fabricated – an important dichotomy in this video.

Café Was in Hollywood, CA designed in 2009, featured in Dark Nostalgia, addresses Gaga's experimentalism and theatricalism, and is perhaps the first of many Gagaian spaces to emerge. From Café Was' website:

A Unique Hollywood Architectural Experience: Enter a reflective dream world, sensitive and severe, always seductive and never overt, where you are invited to enjoy delicacies while discovering new talent

Cafe Was is a thoughtful amalgam of "recycled" architectural/interior design related ideas. We assembled these ideas in varying stages of deconstruction and whimsy, ultimately creating a theatrical environment in the form of a restaurant/live music venue, where not only the piano player, but the patrons as well, will be compelled to play a role.

With a revolving grand piano at the center of the room, Ivan Kane and RKIT set about to create an opulent, bohemian dream world. The diverse space offers several options where patrons can dine, including multiple levels surrounding the piano. While achieving a collaboration of time in both design and style, including columns at the ground floor turning into Victorian posts at the intimate mezzanine level overlooking the piano below, Café Was also features hidden lounges tucked into nooks and crannies, a mysterious balcony turned into a lavish candle display and Café Was' most unique vantage point to sit and listen from, a grand staircase leading nowhere.

3.) Kanye West - Runaway (2010) paired with Castle Market, Sheffield, 1967

Rowe's Transparent Modernism full of Victorian furniture, African chants, and hip hop mixology.

The New Postmodernism.

Michael Jackson and the Spectacle.



Notably found within this half-hour self-directed film are African dance rituals paired with 1980s/90s sound mixing technology, and a post-industrial hangar/bunker housing what appears at first glance to be a reinterpretation of the Last Supper (a genre-bursting, symbolically loaded scene highlighted by a 2 minute solo featuring "interpretive ballerina dancing" (within a rusting post-industrial hangar) to a spoken melody broadcast via 80s-era sound distortion technology):

"There is a dinner table scene that jumps from [something] from a Noah Baumbach film — where the camera stays on the scene just long enough to make the viewer feel a little bit uncomfortable — to something out of what could be a Jim Henson creation ... within the same scene too." - Pete Wentz, reporting for MTV News

Ultimately West's film is about "social ostracism and rebirth". As we've mentioned earlier, the architectural equivalent to such themes is undoubtedly brutalism as both idea and aesthetic. So for this pairing, Sheffield's endangered Castle Market (a building I've never visited and only read about) wins. It's association with a movement whose aims are decidedly utopian and whose aesthetics are a radical departure from the heritage industry, make this place as polemic as Kanye himself (Apologies to both purist hip hop enthusiasts and architectural historians alike - two groups who probably rarely associate with one another). On the one hand you have West - and his thirty minute effort to rebel against the culturally constructed symbolism (queue Hennessy Youngman) of our day. On the other hand, Castle Market, whose brutalism (with a touch of mid-90's PoMo leftovers) overlaid on the foundations of Sheffield's authentic/original castle create the 20th century reinterpretation of the 16th century castle: a civic monument via defensive infrastructure.

Ohio Swiss Fest: A Photo Essay

Sugarcreek, Ohio is a tiny town about 2 hours north of Columbus, Ohio. It consists of a spectacular Alpine Village nestled amidst the endlessly rolling hills of Amish country.  But what sets this place apart from other rural towns of Middle America is a bustling cheese industry and an unexpeted dose flaboyantly decorated buildings.  I recently visited this "Little Switzerland of Ohio" and have returned triumphantly with what I hope to be a dazzling photo essay. 

Driving into the town, you know you have arrived by the typical office and residential structures...they are quaint unassuming structures with something a bit more added on for good measure.  A hint of what's to come and you anxiously speed toward Main Street!

An Amish Monument cheerfully basks in the sunlight...the suspense builds....

We have finally arrived! Welcome to Sugarcreek, the Little Switzerland of Ohio!

Main Street is full of buildings like the one pictured above, however none are as large or impressively ornate as the Alpine Hills Museum: a must-see destination inside and out for visitors of all ages. 

Vintage posters, newspaper articles, and children's depictions of Sugarcreek can be found among historical re-creations of Amish interiors and old cheese-making barns.

The interior lobby of the Alpine Hills Museum is a bizarre mash-up of general country nostalgia/folk art, Swiss heritage, and conservative Middle America propaganda. This space is perhaps the epicenter of Sugarcreek's identity: a place where one would expect Google's little red map pin to land while searching for Sugarcreek, Ohio.  Nevertheless, this space projects the dark, unsettling side to Sugarcreek: for this is a non-place, torn between conflicting identities of Swiss heritage and Middle American conservatism.  Celebrate cheese, chocolate, and those omnipresent snowcapped Alps, but don't you dare fly that red and white crossed flag!

Pure spectacle, but unfortunately the world's largest functioning cuckoo clock (debatable) is currently being restored. Thankfully, there's always YouTube.

Architecturally, the most impressive area of Sugarcreek can be found at the intersection of Main St & Factory St. It is here that artist Tom Miller has created fantastic murals on the gabled facades of commercial buildings. The Swiss Alp landscapes are highlighted by moving model trains and alpine skiers.  The concept of motion in architecture is witnessed here at a most miniature scale. A whole building provides the canvas for a motorized small piece of metal.  I call these fantastic pieces of art "active facades" and have uploaded a couple of examples over on YouTube.

As for the actual festival, 8 million pounds of cheese are annually produced in Sugarcreek, which create the (desperate) need for a massive event to sell all of the excess cheese reserves.  Many different awards are given, but to the average cheese eater such as myself, it is all mouthwateringly (?) delicious. This region also produces wine, but I would (politely) defer similar high praise to the California varieties.

There were all sorts of spectacles to witness including a "cheese chase" (5K run), grown men wearing traditional Swiss folk gear, an Alphorn concert, a Steintossen competition, and a curiously American-themed parade complete with an impressive car show of hot rods and post-war gas-guzzling muscle cars.   

The winning float in the parade was provided by McDonald's. Who knew Ronald McDonald was so crafty!? A late afternoon visit to McDonald's revealed that Sugarcreek's Swiss Miss Main Street spirit had begun to penetrate the global superpower's cookie cutter red and yellow boxes. A surprising end to an equally surprising (but unfortunately brief) visit to Little Switzerland.

The Downfall of Nick Wynn

"The Day After Eternity," by Lawrence Chandler, is a 1950's novelette published in Fantastic, an aptly named bi-monthly journal featuring a blend of fantasy and science-fiction stories. We join our good friends Diana, Joe, and Nick amidst their journey to a mysterious planet in search of an even more mysterious enemy...

"We armed ourselves with two ice guns and stepped into the air-lock. Sixty seconds later, the shell port opened and the ladder slid to the ground. I walked down ... The air was good, the sun was warm, and there was a cool pleasant breeze. The flora was strange, however; yellow, fat-bladed grass, thick and luxuriant and soft ... 'Looks like Kentucky with the yellow jaundice,' Nick said ...

Then, out on that yellow prairie, it came into being; the thing we both saw at the same instant. A city, bright and sparkling in the sun. It could have been Detroit, or New York, or Atlanta, with their overslung highways and streets, their flying terraces, their tall, slim buildings. But there on the broad avenue a couple hundred yards from us, was something that didn't belong in any city I'd ever seen; an old automobile right out of a museum, with big spoked wheels, brass radiator fittings and an open tonneau.

... There were two people in the car, a man and a woman ...

My mind was spinning. I felt dizzy, as though some great force was pulling at me, trying to force me down. I was filled with a sense of great, unseen power around me.

Nick's reaction was different. He smiled at the strange couple, waved back at the woman, and began running toward the car. I yelled, 'Nick! Nick! Come back here! It's an order! Come back!'

But he didn't seem to hear me. The car was moving slowly away, now, and Nick began to run. He called, 'Wait! Wait!' and the man at the wheel turned and looked back and stopped the car. The woman made a beckoning motion and Nick increased his speed.

I shook off my dizziness and started after him, but at that moment, Diana's voice came through the amplifier in the nose of the rocket. 'Joe! For God's sake, stay where you are! Don't follow him! Come back to the ship!'

At that moment Nick Wynn reached the side of the ancient automobile. The woman held out her hand. Joe took it and put his foot on the big, ugly running board of the car. Then there was a quick, bright explosion that knocked me to the ground. It thundered and reverberated through the air, faded into echoes, and was gone.

I struggled to me feet and looked around like a punch-drunk fighter hunting for his opponent. But there was nothing. No city. No automobile. Only the torn, yellow meadow and Nick Wynn - or the remnants of him that were left.

He had been blown to pieces."

Die Schwyzer Hut

Welcome to Sugarcreek: the Little Switzerland of Ohio!  I discovered this gem of a town purely by accident while browsing through vintage postcard stands at a local antique mall.  Needless to say, a roadtrip is already being planned...

Die Schwyzer Hut!!! "The Swiss Hat Restaurant, Popular Sugarcreek eating place. Sugarcreek is the home of the Ohio Swiss Festival, held the fourth Friday and Saturday after Labor Day each year. It is also the center of the Swiss Cheese industry in Ohio, with 21 factories making 8,000,000 pounds of Swiss Cheese Annually."

Aside from the World's Greatest Decorated Shed (pictured above), Sugarcreek, Ohio is also where you can find the Reeves Banking and Trust Company Building.  Aesthetically, I admit this is quite radical and challenging to take in: an optimistic blend of mid-century modernism, Swiss traditionalism, and Bob Ross. 

As mentioned earlier, plans are in store for a visit during the much anticipated Ohio Swiss Festival in early October. More images to come then...

Society as Spectacle

American Highway Roadmaps from the 60s are perhaps the single greatest cultural artifact from the modernist era.  The purpose of these maps were to encourage multi-day auto trips to discover the vast corners of the country.  They embrace the spirit of modernism by celebrating the triumph of man over nature: the progress of a nation through innovative use of technology.  Seen from the perspective of the ongoing BP oil spill, a technological blooper in the grandest sense, these postcards and maps present an image of society as spectacle: a no longer accurate view of technology as savior. 

 

This playful 1962 South Dakota highway map packs a punch.  Imagine the shocking surprise I received after opening up the map to read this text on the inside cover:

"The Missouri is being gentled. A whole generation of human intelligence, muscle and desire, armies of brute machines, and billions of wealth are transmuting the wild proud river into a vast chain of blue water lakes that stretch across South Dakota. Four gigantic dams - dams so big they beggar the imagination and confound the camera's ability to capture their hugeness - are harnessing the Missouri ... there is a sense of involvement in America, in knowing and understanding a strong free nation whose direction is west and which creates its own future."

The "World's Largest Interchange" in Ohio gives South Dakota a run for it's money.  A family somewhere between these two places must have had a difficult time deciding whether to head east or west.  

 

Concurrently, in 1963, we see an aerial view of the Iowa landscape: a lone highway slices through the agricultural heartland of the country.    

 

Unfortunately, not all attractions seem worthy of visiting to me, but for some reason still warranted a postcard.  Take, for instance, the "Sweeden House Smorgasbord" pictured above...

 

...or the Anderson Clock Exhibit: "An entire room is devoted to this display owned by Mr. H. E. Anderson. We like to refer to it as horology's finest hour. Some are more than 250 years old. All are in excellent condition."

It seems fitting here to conclude a post about artifacts from the American Roadside with Guy Debord, and his 1967 Society of the Spectacle: "In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."

*for more of this, see Postcards From the Future

**I've stolen the same link to Debord's text which was was included in a456's post just two days ago. I'm secretly proud of this, but somehow think that it is a new experimental contemporary/subversive form of plagiarism that should be brought to your attention.

Diner Nostalgia

Continuing our review of a mid-January drive across America, we present this Route 66 roadside gem spotted in Springfield, Missouri. "Steak n' Shake: It's a Meal."

A remnant of early fast food culture, the slogan "we protect your health" reveals the degree to which restaurant cleanliness was once a significant concern to Americans.  We should probably all care a little more about our health these days, but honestly, who can turn down triple steakbugers, wisconsin buttery steakburgers (butter + hamburger), cheesy bacon french fries, and double chocolate fudge milk shakes?

Aside from the preserved signage, we especially enjoyed the classic awnings, taking note that the alignment of the red and white stripes strictly matches the notched cutout patterning.

Technology is Scary

Brain Tumor Locator, circa 1964

Mockitecture's Grand Promotional Event!!!

I was browsing around an abandoned building and discovered a post modernism gem: 

a 1994 Michael Graves calendar!!! 


The first 12 people to comment on this blog post will receive an authentic, full color page of the historic calendar along with a special gift from N O R T O N. Just one way we would like to thank all of you in the eWorld for reading and sharing your opinions about the wonderful world of mockitecture.

If you would like to receive via post mail a 10" x 14" tribute to Michael Graves, along with a gift from the Mockitecture WebLog Team, comment on this post with an email address where N O R T O N can contact you. This is a limited edition, free offer from us to you...the first 12 responders will recieve this genuine piece of history!!!

A few images to wet your whistle:

Thought of the Week by N O R T O N

Dubai will become to the world what Detroit has become to America.

Residential Stronghold

Edith Macefield wouldn't sell her Seattle home, so the developers worked around it.
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Pop and Things Like That

After reading this post from Owen, of South East London, connecting post-punk with brutalism, and this post, by Charles, more Building-Songs are in order.

If architecture is a part of the contextual condition which leads to pop, and therefore helps to dictate the course of music written in such a context...

The broken glass, boarded up windows, and dark alleys along with authoritarian housing projects like Cabrini Green definitely portray the underpinnings (anger and poverty) of the early 90's gangsta rap movement.

Maybe a little dark, but I thought it was a pretty good Building-Place/Song. Perhaps architecture has always been ahead of its time, and therefore has failed to meet the goals of its intended users because the social conditions change so quickly. By the time conditions are right for Modernist social housing, the buildings are already outdated? This is a huge success of PostModernism. Going back to the Charles Moore/Soul Train pairing, perhaps Moore and Venturi were on to something. When architecture looked to pop, it "slowed down" and became humanist again. The incorporation of playfulness and pleasure relates well to Pop.

On a lighter note, this is the elementary school that I attended. Parkside Elementary, Columbus, IN. Look at the beautiful grass, the trees, and the curvy entrance. A suburban dream. Nintendo music, while imported from Japan, is a kind of audible PCP, made to entrance children into their dreamy suburban existence. Even the MIDI structuring of the music suggests the modernist rigidity seen in Parkside's bay system.

Or maybe that concept would be more fitting if you knew that there was a brutalist elementary school that was our rival. Southside Elementary, 1969 by Eliot Noyes.

I am not saying that Nintendo music was explicitly made in a conspiracy from the Japanese ministry of education and Nintendo, but the cultural constructs, which govern and tie together architecture, pop, music, government, etc. infuence music and architecture, and are also influenced by each.