I hate fashion and I hate progress
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My company moved into a new office recently. It looks like they haven't done building it quite yet. All the walls are unplastered, so you see the ugly, irregular, stained concrete everywhere. The ceiling is not covered, so we see all the cables, vents and pipes running up there, and the lamps are just dangling on the cords. Apparently, it's all part of this new "industrial" style, so it's all going to stay like this forever. I guess I should be glad our desks are still veneered.
I hated the previous trend of sterile minimalistic white cuboids, but I'd take it over this bullshit any day.
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@onyx said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@gąska does this style have a name?
I propose "Safety Hazard"
Filed under: 250V never killed anyone
I've often heard the term "Russian designer lamp" used for lightbulbs just dangling from the ceiling XD
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@akko said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
I've often heard the term "Russian designer lamp" used for lightbulbs just dangling from the ceiling XD
And here I thought that's an LED strip shoved into an empty vodka bottle...
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@gąska I think I posted a thread a few years back about a beautiful art deco building in Seattle whose interior was destroyed in that same way. Ugh.
BTW, just as a strange coincidence, this isn't just in fashion, it also happens to be very cheap! Huh, weird that.
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Same here. We too have the "russian designer lamps" and all of the vents and cables visible. The roof itself is covered in some weird sprayed-on foam - we haven't quite figured out what that is. Probably a modern version of asbestos. :-/
But I have to admit that the building is quite nice otherwise.
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@onyx said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@akko said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
I've often heard the term "Russian designer lamp" used for lightbulbs just dangling from the ceiling XD
And here I thought that's an LED strip shoved into an empty vodka bottle...
LEDs? That would be a Russian luxury designer lamp ;)
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@akko said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@onyx said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@akko said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
I've often heard the term "Russian designer lamp" used for lightbulbs just dangling from the ceiling XD
And here I thought that's an LED strip shoved into an empty vodka bottle...
LEDs? That would be a Russian luxury designer lamp ;)
Does the traditional Russian version involve a candle stub?
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@dkf only for ceiling lamps. Wall candle lamps would put carpets on fire.
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@akko said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
LEDs? That would be a Russian luxury designer lamp ;)
Nah, it's the other way around: putting an incandescent lightbulb in means blowing the glass on the spot, which, with all the alcohol in the worker's breath (who do you think emptied that bottle?), makes it a high risk job and you pay extra for that.
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A few weeks ago I had this discussion with a friend that went something like this (hopefully the dictionary helped me translate that correctly):
: Our professor joked today that "only architects like fair faced concrete".
: Yeah, that's not a joke.
What? But fair faced concrete looks so pretty!
: QED. That is ugly as fuck and looks unfinished at best.Up to that point I wasn't even aware that "fair faced concrete" is an intentional thing, and not just "this isn't done yet and we are too cheap to finish it".
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Half the new restaurants in my area are built like that. I despise it because of acoustics. These places are too loud inside, and combine that with my hearing loss and it's impossible for me to carry on a conversation.
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Yeah do whatever the fuck you want with the ceilings and the interior I don't give a fuck until you start fucking up the seating with these aesthetically pleasing chairs that are impossible to sit comfortably on. What the fuck is up with that? When was it okay to replace normal fucking chairs with weird ass stuff that's supposed to be seating? Also what the fuck is up with chairs that are just metal rods bent in weird shapes and nothing more? Motherfuck.
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This is the building.
Fortunately the lobbies are still original. But all the office space has been destroyed by this "make it look like people are working in a parking garage" sensibility.
It was originally built to house Seattle's short-lived stock market, BTW. Which is a bit of interesting history.
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@blakeyrat said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
But all the office space has been destroyed by this "make it look like people are working in a parking garage" sensibility.
All this is cos of those hipster cunts. At some point being weird and extreme started being mistaken for being cool and then the graph went down like the edge of a fucking cliff.
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@stillwater I still think the real reason this style has been almost universally adopted is that it's cheap as fuck.
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@blakeyrat it's only cheap if it saves you work. From your description, it sounds like the Seattle city council went extra mile and spent millions on making it look like they're cheap fucks.
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@blakeyrat I believe one can be cheap and still have a decent decor somehow. This is that cheap and half-assed look that people are going for. All startups are basically HVACs, ubuntu laptops and chairs that require a tutorial before you can use them.
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@topspin to be fair brutalism is a legitimate architectural style. I don't mind it. Maybe not for the interior (gray walls all day are going to be a nightmare, then again, you can paint over unplastered concrete).
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@gąska Not the City Council. It's a privately owned building. I don't know who owns it, but it's not the government.
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@blakeyrat Also I'm pretty sure someone is spending extra money to remove stuff from what is already a finished building so that the pipes are exposed from the ceiling and paint them in steampunk-y colors. I would not be even the least bit surprised to see something like that happening.
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@hardwaregeek said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@gąska Not the City Council. It's a privately owned building. I don't know who owns it, but it's not the government.
Then it makes even less sense, because you can't write it off as business as usual.
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@stillwater if it weren't so much of a cliché it'd be nice for a club or bar (where the lighting is dim and often coloured anyway). Not for a place where you work.
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@admiral_p said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@stillwater if it weren't so much of a cliché it'd be nice for a club or bar (where the lighting is dim and often coloured anyway). Not for a place where you work.
I'd be okay with it in a club or a bar but they start fucking up the goddamn seating. I've seen places with interiors so beautiful with this style but the seating is just a wooden plank with legs :/
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@stillwater said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@blakeyrat I believe one can be cheap and still have a decent decor somehow.
Quite certainly. Just copy what the Chinese are doing.
We have this el-cheapo Chinese restaurant over here and they cover all their press board furniture with foil coating and paint that make things look like marble and gold. Not exactly my style, either, but at least the opposite of looking intentionally cheap.
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I actually like environments made of white cubes.
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@magus May I interest you in an Aperture Science test chamber?
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@gąska said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
All the walls are unplastered, so you see the ugly, irregular, stained concrete everywhere
If they installed drains on the floor, you could clean the walls with a water hose. Can't do that if they have paint and other crap on 'em!
(might want to turn the electricity off before)
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@stillwater said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
chairs that require a tutorial before you can use them.
My cat has discovered he can pull random levers under my office chair to make me pay attention to him. So the pull-everything-and-hope approach can apparently pay dividends too...except when it's the 'descend' one and squashes him.
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@cursorkeys said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
except when it's the 'descend' one and squashes him.
I guess the cat stopped after the first squashing experience?
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@gąska said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@blakeyrat it's only cheap if it saves you work.
Compared to restoring the 1930s decor, I bet it did.
@gąska said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
From your description, it sounds like the Seattle city council
... huh? What does the Seattle City Council have anything to do with restoring the interior of office buildings?
In your weird-ass country, do city governments own all the office buildings or something? So weird.
@gąska said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
and spent millions on making it look like they're cheap fucks.
I bet they just tore off all the old flooring and cladding and said "ok done. It's 'modern' now."
@admiral_p said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@topspin to be fair brutalism is a legitimate architectural style.
This isn't Brutalism, this is Parking Garage.
@stillwater said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
Also I'm pretty sure someone is spending extra money to remove stuff from what is already a finished building so that the pipes are exposed from the ceiling
Depending on the age of the building, that could have just involved removing acoustic tiles and the metal frames for them. It's quick and cheap.
@stillwater said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
and paint them in steampunk-y colors.
That actually takes a bit of effort, though.
@magus said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
I actually like environments made of white cubes.
Found the Apple employee.
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@stillwater said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@cursorkeys said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
except when it's the 'descend' one and squashes him.
I guess the cat stopped after the first squashing experience?
Nope, he's not the smartest of creatures. He is very cuddly though. He had no whiskers on both sides once from sniffing a candle...twice.
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@anonymous234 said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@gąska said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
All the walls are unplastered, so you see the ugly, irregular, stained concrete everywhere
If they installed drains on the floor, you could clean the walls with a water hose. Can't do that if they have paint and other crap on 'em!
No, they look stained because the concrete isn't perfectly uniform. You can't clean that, you can only cover it.
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@cursorkeys said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@stillwater said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@cursorkeys said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
except when it's the 'descend' one and squashes him.
I guess the cat stopped after the first squashing experience?
Nope, he's not the smartest of creatures. He is very cuddly though. He had no whiskers on both sides once from sniffing a candle...twice.
A multiple times squash victim and burnt whiskers? My heart bleeds :/ I don't know why cats tend to do stupid things like a cat I rescued repeatedly sneaked into the hood of the car and slept on top of the engine for a whole month after getting stuck in it a couple times. SMH.
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@stillwater said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
I don't know why cats tend to do stupid things
They have more in common with humans than you think.
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@stillwater said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
pipes are exposed from the ceiling and paint them in steampunk-y colors
Prediction: the highly-paid consultant picked a paint that "looks synergistic and Zen", based solely on the color.
The lowest-bidder contractor was in full IDGAF and slapped it on.
They probably picked a paint that will not interact well with metal and/or the heat of the hot-water pipes. Over time it'll start to give off toxic fumes. It'll also start to crack and peel, and since the ceiling is exposed, will rain down tiny flecks of toxic paint over the entire office-- into people's lunches, drinks, yawning mouths, etc.
No one will ever be held accountable for the spike in cancer rates 20 years down the road. But who gives a fuck, those workers have already served their usefulness to The Company and can be discarded. They've probably even done something horrifically greedy like RETIRING.
Added bonus: it'll count as an existing condition, so those retirees get to spend their life savings (from working for that company) on medical bills (caused by that company).
But at least the office looks "hip".
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@stillwater Cats being stupid also makes them adorable. Maybe it's an evolutionary thing to appeal to humans!
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@blakeyrat said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
as a strange coincidence, this isn't just in fashion, it also happens to be very cheap!
It should be cheap, but I bet a lot of the places that look like that have spent a lot of money on interior designers exactly to get things to look like hardly any money was spent on the interior.
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@stillwater said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
Yeah do whatever the fuck you want with the ceilings and the interior I don't give a fuck
I don't mind the visuals so much but the acoustical properties are important, too. A room that's all hard surfaces and therefore echoes everything is a nightmare.
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@gąska said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@hardwaregeek said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@gąska Not the City Council. It's a privately owned building. I don't know who owns it, but it's not the government.
Then it makes even less sense, because you can't write it off as business as usual.
But you need to refresh the interior every so often or no one will want to lease it from you. So opting for low cost makes some sense there if lessees are willing to put up with it.
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@boomzilla that's my classroom in a nutshell. It sucks.
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@blakeyrat said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@gąska said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@blakeyrat it's only cheap if it saves you work.
Compared to restoring the 1930s decor, I bet it did.
This. Sadly.
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@hardwaregeek and what would happen if they simply didn't do anything at all?
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@gurth said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
have spent a lot of money on interior designers exactly to get things to look like hardly any money was spent on the interior.
Ah, the ripped jeans look.
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@gąska I don't know the condition prior to the "renovation," and other than @blakeyrat's description, I don't know it's current condition, either. I expect that after 70 or 80-ish years, it was getting a bit shabby.
IIRC, there was some seismic retrofit work done on the exterior, so there was probably some in the interior, too. If so, it probably required stripping all the decorative everything to access the structure. Having done that, it's sure a heck of a lot cheaper to slap some paint on the structure, install modern, energy-efficient office lighting fixtures, and throw down some generic, neutral, industrial carpet than to refurbish and reinstall the wood paneling (that was probably there, at least in common areas that should impress visitors), replace the decorative carpet, upgrade the old lighting fixtures (that were probably brass and needed to be polished every once in a while), etc.
It totally makes sense from the building owner's point of view. But from an architectural viewpoint, especially for someone who loves that particular style, it's a tragedy to destroy the character of the building.
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@hardwaregeek that was my guess too. But it would be interesting to hear the real story, without "probably".
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@admiral_p said in I hate fashion and I hate progress:
@topspin to be fair brutalism is a legitimate architectural style. I don't mind it. Maybe not for the interior (gray walls all day are going to be a nightmare, then again, you can paint over unplastered concrete).
No it's not. Brutalism is stupid. People have to work every day in brutalist buildings. It's an excuse to cut corners.
I don't want to be 'challenged artistically' by my buildings. If you want to make ugly things because they make a statement be an evangelical and have 30 kids.
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@aygeeplus Brutalism is kidding itself calling itself brutalism. Where are the immense crushing presses? Where are the spinning blades? Where, when you come down to it, is the serious chance of death or bodily harm unless you like walking close to walls?
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@gribnit Today I learned brutalism is a thing, and it's called that from the French béton brut (raw concrete).
It's also immensely fucking ugly, but we've already stated that.
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@topspin That's indeed the movement. It's nice for, for instance, a prison, or perhaps an occupying military fortification. But, when you get down to it, the theory of the movement is based on shocking the viewer, unless they really want a building to look like it's going to get in a fight soon. The direct approach being generally better, spinning blades.
