[HN Gopher] Patina and Intimacy
___________________________________________________________________
Patina and Intimacy
Author : simonsarris
Score : 131 points
Date : 2022-04-09 12:24 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (simonsarris.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (simonsarris.substack.com)
| rgovostes wrote:
| Previously from the same author, a philosophical two-part series
| on building his own home.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881363
| ARCarr wrote:
| After reading the original post I was reminded of the article
| you shared and went to go check if it was the same guy.
|
| Definitely a good read!
| simonsarris wrote:
| I'm in the middle of rewriting these, expanding them, and
| finishing the series now, for the substack.
| maxerickson wrote:
| "Sausage Party", the 2016 movie, imagines supernatural spirits in
| a grocery store.
|
| Aesthetic preferences are not universal, it's interesting how
| much discussion ends up being about how a given set should be
| preferred, rather than simply expressing that they happen to be
| preferred by a given individual.
| derbOac wrote:
| For some reason -- probably human tendency to find points of
| contact -- this reminds me of something we've wrestled with a lot
| the last few years, which is how to decide what to upgrade or
| renovate and what to retain in our home.
|
| Modernism is old enough at this point that you can have a home
| with modernist design and find that some things look aged or
| somewhat dated, and yet be modern contemporary, and unusual. For
| us this has led to a lot of discussions along the lines of "this
| is clearly old, somewhat dated, and showing signs of age, but
| it's functional and is unusual even for its time; do we replace
| it completely, or somehow restore it, or replace it with
| something similar in aesthetic but updated?" Some of the things
| in our home have survived through the period of being dated and
| are now solidly vintage (in a good way), yet modern, and others
| are still in this fuzzy boundary area. Some things we've
| replaced, some things we've restored, but our whole house is like
| this.
|
| The simple answer is that you do what you want, but sometimes
| that's unclear, as your own feelings about things are unclear,
| and sometimes things have unexpected benefits or costs.
|
| Housing and home design, at least in the US, is this one area
| where I think issues of sustainability maintenance, and reuse
| haven't really entered the discussion very well. With homes of a
| certain age, yes, there's plenty of discussion of renovation and
| historical restoration. But it feels like there's a sort of
| denial about modernist homes being as old as they often can be,
| and what it means to be "modern" but old.
| kijin wrote:
| The entire home doesn't need to follow a consistent theme.
| Different parts of a home serve different functions, and are
| often occupied by different members of the family who may have
| wildly different tastes. You can keep the old parts that still
| work while introducing new things. Life is full of fuzzy
| boundaries, and so do our homes. History and idiosyncrasy make
| things interesting. An excessively consistent look, on the
| other hand, feels to me like a carefully arranged snapshot with
| no context and no life.
|
| I for one prefer a soft, cozy, woody and/or steampunk theme for
| the living, dining, and bedrooms; a sterile, industrial, ultra-
| modern theme for the kitchen and bathroom where sanitation
| matters; and a futuristic theme for the home office where all
| my Turing-complete gadgets live. Sadly I can't have all of them
| for the time being, but one day I hope to! :)
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Yes, absolutely!
|
| I prefer something simple, preferably with a good amount of
| built-in cabinetry in the kitchen. My ideal kitchen might
| look like it came out of the 1940s or 50s.
|
| My ideal bedroom is also simple, but functional and relaxing.
| Here is the one place I might have soft white lighting (I
| generally prefer daytime color temperature lighting). Little
| furniture (bed, nightstands, _maybe_ a chair or other little
| place to sit). Soft, light colors. No or minimal wall art,
| and what's there is not overwhelming.
|
| My living room I like to be open and inviting. Here, I'll mix
| it up, with mid century lines and some industrial touches.
| Overhead lighting, for sure. Wall art is interesting and
| engaging. Maybe even a feature wall.
|
| I like my office to be simple again. This is a room to work
| in, so it has my large, solid wooden bookcases, antique
| teacher's desk, metal shelving for miscellaneous storage.
| This room is somehow cozy and space efficient, while also
| being simple and easy to take in.
| fferen wrote:
| I totally disagree. I find more mystery in large, industrial
| spaces than the rustic kitchen in the painting. I can easily
| picture "spirits dancing" in supermarket aisles and warehouses.
| The popularity of Liminal spaces [1] suggests that many people
| agree. Different aesthetics for different times.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/SpaceLiminalBot
| talkingtab wrote:
| There are some places where I have stayed that have a magic to
| them. And yes, I say that even though I am a geek. An old farm
| B&B in Holland, old cabins in California. I have always wondered
| why I feel "different" in those places. This article has the
| answer. Of the two kitchens in the article, which would I want to
| be in? Which would make me feel at "home"? I learned something
| from this, thanks!
| h2odragon wrote:
| The modern kitchen isn't "utilitarian", lots of it could be
| simpler and more functional. Cement slab flooring with epoxy coat
| is what you see in industrial kitchens (and mine!) because its
| tough to mar and easy to clean. This place has some fake wood
| "laminate".
|
| The cabinet doors are covered in frilly, unnecessary detail,
| bright work handles etc. The "center island" table this is a
| great idea but it should be an open frame table on casters.
|
| I don't know what you'd properly call this aesthetic, but its
| there and it has screwed over the design of the space at the cost
| of much utility.
| nerdponx wrote:
| You are describing extreme industrial utility. The blog author
| is describing pastoral whimsy. The modern American kitchen is
| probably about 2/3 of the way towards your version on a 1-d
| spectrum.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > pastoral whimsy
|
| I think that's an ungenerous term for what was merely
| _normal_ for thousands of years into the past.
|
| I'd argue we're still recovering from the brutalist ugliness
| of 1960s fashion and ideas -- the notion that despite our
| humble origins, man could transcend nature and do better than
| it.
|
| The widespread adoption of baby formula over breastfeeding is
| perhaps the saddest outworking of this notion, but it showed
| up everywhere else -- in brutalist architecture, cold metal
| furniture, metal Christmas trees, linoleum floors...
|
| Not that new synthetic materials are _bad_ , but I would have
| hated to live through a time when natural beauty was at such
| a cultural ebb. I think we're still recovering from it, and
| we need more design leaders to help us remember natural
| beauty.
|
| Here are a couple of quotes from William Morris: "everything
| made by man's hands has a form, which must be either
| beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature,
| and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and
| thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent."
|
| He also wrote, "Have nothing in your house you do not know to
| be useful or believe to be beautiful."
| nerdponx wrote:
| You're responding to something that isn't what I said.
|
| Look at the painting and then look at the photo of the
| staged corner in the authors kitchen. The big difference is
| that the painting of the real working kitchen depicted an
| actual working space, it was busy and active and full of
| stuff and kind of chaotic. The upper walls were probably
| greasy from cooking and it probably smelled like food and
| wood smoke.
|
| I more or less agree with the sentiment of the article, by
| the way. The sterile home aesthetic makes absolutely no
| sense to me and it's not something I want or live out in my
| own life.
|
| But the reality is that a cute kitchen display like in the
| photo is neither practical nor sustainable unless you spend
| a lot of your time cleaning. I use cabinets because I
| actually want my counter space and because when I leave
| stuff out on the counter it gets dirty and dusty. Patina
| doesn't bother me, but grime does.
|
| Therefore I called it "pastoral whimsy". People started
| using cabinets because they wanted them and could actually
| afford them, not because they were somehow indoctrinated
| into using them.
| ip26 wrote:
| A kitchen is somewhere you live as well as work. Cement slab
| flooring is pretty uncomfortable to spend two hours working
| barefoot, especially in winter.
|
| It's also worth acknowledging the existence of show kitchens,
| which really don't care about utility at all, and considering
| them separately.
| kijin wrote:
| Nobody in an industrial kitchen is supposed to work barefoot.
| :)
|
| For homes, heated cement slabs are so much better than the
| regular stuff. Slabs embedded with hot water tubes have a
| fairly large heat capacity, so it stays warm all day and
| transfers heat directly into your feet and up through the
| rest of your body no matter where you're standing. A layer of
| soft organic material on top of the slab will make it more
| comfortable to stand on as well, as long as you choose
| something that's easy to clean.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Ours works well 9 months of the year; its does suck in
| winter. in hot summertime barefoots on it works well :)
|
| "somewhere you live" is exactly the point. Our house has been
| a kennel as much as a house. Few people want that, we're just
| weird.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Those open storage tables and shelves that commercial kitchens1
| have are usable there because they have the main dry storage
| outside of the kitchen space. You keep some essentials there
| that are used many times every day, and the rest is moved into
| the kitchen as part of the prep phase and cleared out at the
| end of service. In big kitchens this is enough of a task that
| it's a role on its own: porter.
|
| If you were to use those as your main ingredient and tool
| storage without clearing it every day it would be a mess both
| in terms of visual clutter and just flour and shit spilling out
| everywhere.
|
| Is that more minimal than putting cabinet doors over it? I
| don't know actually, maybe. Which indicates to me that
| "minimal" is a subjective judgement based on certain criteria,
| and there are multiple valid measures of kitchen minimalism.
|
| I grew up in and worked for decades in commercial kitchens and
| I am often saying this. Commercial kitchens have a different
| set of constraints than home kitchens, and commercial kitchen
| design adopted wholesale is not going to be more usable than a
| well-designed consumer kitchen. It's not more minimal per se
| either. That open storage demands a closet worth of plastic
| bins to keep ingredients in, for example.
|
| BTW commercial kitchens pretty much all have terra cotta tiles
| for some reason. Must just be a good combo of cheap, durable,
| reasonably non-slip (which coated concrete definitely is not).
|
| 1: Not industrial kitchens that's a different thing.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Not exactly sure why this guy thinks that idolizing old art makes
| him the pinnacle of modern design. Oh, no! No shadows! The (lack
| of) humanity in it!
|
| He's just saying your kitchen should look like a Rembrandt
| painting, as if that aesthetic was truly better. (Hint: it isn't)
| mahogany wrote:
| Just curious -- why be so dismissive and snarky? At the very
| least, it's an interesting discussion to have, and one you
| clearly have an opinion about.
|
| > Hint: it isn't
|
| For what it's worth, I think it is, but it's obviously
| subjective. The modern kitchen aesthetic looks alien, sterile,
| and uninviting in contrast to the Laquy painting, which looks
| lived in and homely. In short, the modern kitchen image makes
| me feel uneasy and the painting makes me feel calm.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > In short, the modern kitchen image makes me feel uneasy and
| the painting makes me feel calm.
|
| Are you saying that because the article suggested it?
| Personally I think the spaciousness of the modern kitchen
| depicted is liberating and freeing. I have a cramped kitchen
| and it sucks.
| mahogany wrote:
| No, I explained why it makes me feel that way but I can
| expand. The modern kitchen image looks sterile, pristine,
| and I feel anxiety at the thought of dirtying it. I also
| think it looks alien and I can't imagine where the
| materials came from to construct it. I feel no connection
| to it as a "human place" and thus wouldn't want to live in
| it.
|
| Additionally, I think size is related to aesthetic but it's
| an independent topic. You can have a small but "modern
| aesthetic" kitchen. I agree, a cramped kitchen sucks!
| ip26 wrote:
| Maybe the _aesthetic_ is nice. But I've done enough cooking
| in the woods, over a fire, or in tiny apartments to know what
| cooking in a spot such as that is actually like.
| mahogany wrote:
| Well the aesthetic is the point of the discussion, no?
|
| And, now that we're talking about personal experience, I've
| spent weeks cooking with just canister stove and a 1 liter
| pot, and yes, I've cooked many meals over a camp fire as
| well, and I stand by my preference.
| davidivadavid wrote:
| Yes, all that stuff kind of reminds me of some old
| LessWrong articles about how you should be careful, when
| thinking of a utopia, of making sure it is not just
| something that _sounds /looks like it would be nice_, but
| that would actually be nice.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| At some point it gets difficult to have this discussion
| without invoking theological framing. Christianity has
| been thinking about Heaven a long time.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Because I find regressive calls for a past aesthetic
| tiresome, predictable, and cliched. We do not live in the
| past, we live in the present. Nostalgia is fun but a highly
| overrated feeling, and the paintings he references are
| idealized depictions of life at that time. Not to mention how
| WASPy and Western-centric it is, I'm sure someone from Asia,
| Africa, or even some latin state, might feel very different.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| A WASPy criticism seems to imply that it's bad to write
| about one's own culture unless one first acknowledge all
| the cultures of the world.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I think you're getting too caught in the specifics. There
| are "modern" kitchens in residential spaces across the
| world, and even if the details in them may vary a bit by
| culture and geography, they all look very different from
| the painting in the article.
|
| Yes, we do live in the present, but there's no
| inevitability about the present. The fact that during the
| 20th century we invented a set of new materials and
| machining techniques does not mean that we _have_ to be
| using them today - that 's a choice we make based on a
| variety of different factors.
|
| If you look at any magazine/book on contemporary kitchen
| remodels, you will find some that are closer to the
| painting than the photograph (and many more that are closer
| to the photograph). The idea that the aesthetics embodied
| by the painting are inherently non-modern is, I think, a
| mistake.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| This was a lovely piece of observational writing.
|
| I think that the "easy to clean" part of the list of descriptors
| here is among the most important. Among many other things, two of
| the things that have changed in the last couple of hundred years
| are:
|
| 1. The emergence of a cultural consensus that a full life is
| about having time to do things other than those necessary to keep
| living, and to maintain the required tools. Cleaning the kitchen
| is in the latter category, and so there's a cultural imperative
| now to reduce the time spent on this task (theoretically to open
| up time for other things).
|
| 2. The move away from a concept of home and family (and the
| associated economy) that assigns some subset of a household
| (historically, the non-childhood females) a primary role in
| cleaning and maintainence, and towards an economy that demands
| that most adults work outside the home. This also places a
| premium on kitchen environments that are easier to clean.
| ip26 wrote:
| I like your points overall, but I do think there are tasks
| "necessary to keep living" that we _do_ value. However with
| cleaning specifically, there is limited artistry (cooking) or
| personal growth (exercise) to it.
| Swizec wrote:
| > However with cleaning specifically
|
| Cleaning can be a great way to relax your brain. It's menial
| enough to be effortless with just enough thinking to occupy
| the fidgety part of your brain so you can think deep in the
| background. Like a walk in the park. Meditative.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Some people experience this, those who don't have real
| trouble getting to the point. Cleaning is usually quite
| stressful for me unless I am in an unusual mood or I can
| structure it as doing it for someone else, say a plan for a
| friend to visit.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Same with me. Cleaning is stressful and sometimes
| physically painful. (Bad back and RSI) The only time it's
| not is when I'm manic and then it gets really obsessive
| and doesn't stop until I injure myself enough that it's
| too painful to continue.
|
| Cleaning in silence is like nails on a chalkboard.
| Fortunately iPads and streaming video are a thing.
| ehou wrote:
| I like to wash some things (a good knife or an aluminum
| pan) by hand - meditative yes - and let my dishwasher
| handle the rest.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I feel this way too, particularly about cleaning in the
| kitchen.
|
| I don't _love_ it any more than anyone else does, but
| adopting this type of mindset allows me to see the chore as
| an opportunity for peace and reflection rather than one
| more distasteful thing to slog through on my way to the
| grave.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I definitely agree (and try to bring that attitude to my own
| life). However, it is _much_ easier to do this when these
| tasks do not take "too long".
| eternityforest wrote:
| Easy to clean is important, but we don't need to attach form
| and function so tightly in the age of modern tech. We have
| better plastic finishes, and in a fairly utilitarian modern
| lifestyle we just don't make as much mess, our meals are
| simpler.
|
| Then again, I'm a vegetarian with no kids, so my experience of
| kitchen cleaning may be a bit different, since I don't do a lot
| of the more messy and hygiene critical stuff.
|
| Older non-utilitarian design really fits pretty well with very
| modern lifestyles and technology, because there's not nearly as
| much pressure on the environment to be functional, when the
| actual things you're doing are more streamlined.
| paganel wrote:
| > and in a fairly utilitarian modern lifestyle we just don't
| make as much mess, our meals are simpler.
|
| Maybe there's also something to be said about learning to
| accept some degree of "uncleanliness" in our kitchen and not
| only, not everything needs to be tidy/good-looking.
| mathematicaster wrote:
| Eresia pagana!
|
| ... which I fully endorse.
| bsder wrote:
| > I think that the "easy to clean" part of the list of
| descriptors here is among the most important.
|
| Also caused by the lack of "servants".
|
| Just employing a maid service frees up a _remarkable_ amount of
| time. Having someone full-time dedicated to nothing but
| cleaning up after you is a big deal.
|
| One of the things that gets lost is that employing someone was
| _much_ cheaper in the past. There was an article recently
| talking about how the affluent couldn 't afford a car in the
| early 1900s but could easily afford multiple servants.
| personjerry wrote:
| In a lot of parts of the world, the kitchen in fact looks less
| like the photo and more like the painting
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I read the article as being about the _evolution_ of kitchen
| design (and other spaces) in the world of middle class
| Americans.
|
| 100 or 150 years ago, the kitchen in many parts of the USA
| would have looked more like the painting too.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Strongly disagree with the authors choice of conflating what they
| call high modernism with utilitarianism or lack of interest in
| aesthetics.
|
| Personally this cozy, homely, "clay pot on the floor",
| pastoralism does nothing for me. I'm a big fan of industrial
| design and I don't think characterizing it as 'low-maintenance',
| even though it may be that as well, does it justice.
|
| _> "Spatially, the minimalist and glossy-modernist trends have
| the unfortunate habit of moving toward a void_"
|
| What's wrong with voids for example? One of the most interesting
| design choices that I came across recently were the designs in
| Denis Villeneuve's Dune that he made for the interiors. Very
| empty, but also very awe inspiring.
| coldtea wrote:
| It's not the "lack of interest in aesthetics" the problem in
| high modernism, and the author doesn't say so. It's a lack of
| interest in lived/organic/patina/messy-because-of-life
| aesthetics, and a tendency towards pure/empty/conceptual
| aesthetics.
|
| > _Personally this cozy, homely, "clay pot on the floor",
| pastoralism does nothing for me._
|
| Well, that's a choice. And like any choice, there are
| tradeoffs, and ways of thinking and cultural consequences that
| are associated with it (not just regarging messy vs clean-
| looking kitchens).
|
| > _What 's wrong with voids for example?_
|
| It's sterile and clinical.
| dkarl wrote:
| > It's a lack of interest in lived/organic/patina/messy-
| because-of-life aesthetics, and a tendency towards
| pure/empty/conceptual aesthetics.
|
| I think he's cheating, then, by comparing a real estate
| listing with his own lived-in home. Modern architecture and
| design spaces are just as conducive to lived-in-ness, when
| people actually live in them. You can hang art on the wall
| and accumulate whatever decorative touches and knick-knacks
| appeal to you or carry sentimental value.
|
| Wanting the architecture and built interior design of a home
| to reflect the personal life and "mystery" of its inhabitants
| is classist as well, because only a limited number of people
| can afford professional architecture and design services to
| customize a home to reflect their personality. Most people
| customize a home themselves, via their own decoration,
| furniture, books, and other cherished objects.
|
| In fact it seems bizarrely oppressive to assume that the
| professional designers of a domestic space need to stock a
| home with life before it is inhabited, as if the people
| moving in will otherwise suffer a deficiency of it. Whose
| life do you expect to see in an uninhabited house? What kind
| of Frankenstein's monster version of life do we expect the
| expert professionals to synthesize in their modeling
| programs, to create the illusion of a space being shaped by a
| living presence that has never been there?
|
| Producing brand-new spaces that have the same aesthetic as
| lived-in spaces strikes me as something the machines will do
| after we are gone, manufacturing houses and adding childish
| crayon scribbles inside because there are no real children
| left to draw on the walls.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| It sounds unfair to counter your long post with so little,
| but you're making the assumption anyone buying that house
| will make the kitchen messier. People buy the look and want
| to keep it, you can bet that kitchen will look just the
| same after being lived in.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Not necessarily, e.g. non-synthetic zen sparseness.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| I welcomed and enjoyed the author's deconstruction of the
| painting, but it almost seemed orthogonal to the point they
| were making. A near-complete tangent, heh.
| coldtea wrote:
| I dunno, it sounded very clearly connected with the topic,
| and an illustration of the topic with a concrete example.
|
| Perhaps you wanted an abstract presentation of the point
| instead?
| vinceguidry wrote:
| It was pretty far from concrete. I followed the logic just
| fine when I was reading it myself, but seeing parent's
| reaction made me realize just how abstractly connected to
| the thesis it was.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I think the question is not really about avoiding voids (no pun
| intended), but what role they would/should/could play within
| residential spaces.
|
| Do we want the interior (or the exterior) of our _homes_ to be
| very awe inspiring? Obviously, there 's more than one answer to
| that question.
| slibhb wrote:
| I agree with you that it's not about utilitarianism or lack of
| interest in aesthetics. Kim Kardashian's home is an extreme
| example (google it) and she was clearly concerned with
| aesthetics when making decisions about how to decorate.
|
| However I don't think the opposite of the "industrial design"
| that you appreciate is "pastoralism" (the images in the article
| are, but they're also ugly). The opposite is hard to describe
| but the French do it well. Hannah Arendt:
|
| > Modern enchantment with "small things," though preached by
| early twentieth-century poetry in almost all European tongues,
| has found its classical presentation in the petit bonheur of
| the French people. Since the decay of their once great and
| glorious public realm, the French have become masters in the
| art of being happy among "small things," within the space of
| their own four walls, between chest and bed, table and chair,
| dog and cat and flowerpot, extending to these things a care and
| tenderness which, in a world where rapid industrialization
| constantly kills off the things of yesterday to produce today's
| objects, may even appear to be the world's last, purely humane
| corner.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Needed to make another comment. When I was growing up I became
| fascinated/obsessed with the counter-culture in the US,
| especially the architectural side of it. I still own copies of
| both of the two "Domebooks", along with Lloyd Kahn's "Shelter",
| Ken Kern's "The Owner Builder and the Code: the politics of
| building your own home" and other classics of that era.
|
| But among my favorite books from that time is "Handmade Houses: a
| guide to the woodbutcher's art". You can find many images from
| the book here:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=handmade+houses+a+guide+to+t...
|
| The architecture and design is much, much more aligned to the
| second two examples from Simon's article: hand-made, unique,
| touch friendly. One might even subsume all these under the term
| "funky" (though this word has more than one meaning). When I was
| 18, these were the sorts of houses I thought I would live in as
| an adult.
|
| 40 years later, the idea of living in any of theses houses fills
| me with a certain kind of dread, because I now understand how
| much work it would be to keep them clean and to maintain them. I
| feel conflicted about this: the aesthetics are far more appealing
| to than any contemporary "standard" buildings. Nevertheless I do
| feel very aware that I would likely develop a daily growing
| resentment towards the way every uneven, non-smooth surface would
| represent a new obstacle to cleanliness. And these sorts of
| structures and designs really will just accumulate dirt over
| time, no matter the efforts put into slowing that down.
|
| This inner conflict raises all kinds of questions within me about
| the actual value of cleanliness, and about the balance that
| architecture creates and enforces between certain feelings we
| might want to have within our homes and the nature of our day to
| day lives within them.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I feel this too.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _40 years later, the idea of living in any of theses houses
| fills me with a certain kind of dread, because I now understand
| how much work it would be to keep them clean and to maintain
| them_
|
| Having lived in several rural houses, not dissimilar to those,
| not that much.
| psd1 wrote:
| I have a taste for "genteel dilapidation".
|
| I'm a lover of buildings where the wooden ridgelines have sagged
| a little over time.
|
| I adore the imperfections in Georgian glass. Replacing old glass
| with float glass jumps out instantly to me.
|
| I suffer some weeds and wildflowers to grow in the cracks in my
| patio.
|
| It looks comfortable, and humane.
| [deleted]
| cracrecry wrote:
| Old kitchen are beautiful to contemplate but also a pain in the
| @ss to clean.
|
| Primum vivere, deinde philosophare.
|
| You can tell the person that spends hours writing something on a
| blog that he should spend those hours every single week cleaning
| the kitchen and the beauty disappears.
|
| I can do things like navigate HN because cleaning my kitchen is
| easy.
|
| A painter was complaining while talking to me about the ugly
| tractors and machines being used in rural areas instead of manual
| scythes and rakes. Again it was obvious he had never actually
| used those as I did when I was younger.
| majormajor wrote:
| I agree, to me this is a whole lot of nostalgia with little of
| substance to say. My bedroom, dining room, and living room are
| all much more intimate than my kitchen. My kitchen, on the
| other hand, is a functional place used in between my time in
| those living spaces. So organizational tools like cabinets and
| clean workspaces and bright lighting are all very useful for
| it. I have the luxury of not having to live out of it, but it's
| still indoors and connected to the living spaces, so a certain
| level of cleanliness is much appreciated too (contrast to a
| garage).
|
| I find any claim that aspects of modern life are somehow making
| us desire practicality in these manners (and that we've lost
| something as a result) deeply suspicious. We developed all
| these things in response to desires and pain points. Often
| _quite literal_ pain points of backbreaking manual domestic
| labor.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| _The first impression to strike me is one of storage. There are
| so many cabinets!_
|
| Gotta have a lot of storage so that you can reduce the number of
| times per week you get in your car, drive 3.79 miles to the
| supermarket, and drive back home.
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/august/most-us-hou...
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I have been in both types of homes and vastly prefer the modern
| open kitchen.
|
| What isn't mentioned is that the kitchen in the old times was
| small and isolated from the living and dining rooms where the
| guests were entertained.
|
| The kitchen was the domain of servants and women, who mere meant
| to provide the food but not the conversation.
|
| In modern times we have come away from that and our design
| reflects that. We are much more egalitarian. Kitchens are now
| incorporated into our entertainment of guests. That large island
| is now likely to be where food is served buffer style. There is
| lots of place so that guests and come in and conversation with
| whomever is cooking the food.
|
| More than anything, the more "modern" style reflects the kitchen
| becoming a public space whereas before it was a private space.
|
| I prefer the modern public space kitchen.
| simonsarris wrote:
| Note, there has actually been a jump from hearths (kitchens as
| living rooms, as you will find in almost all dutch art of this
| period) to separated kitchens (more of a Victorian and/or very
| upper class thing), and recently a return to a pseudo-hearth
| "kitchen as gathering space." But it's not precisely new.
|
| I am somewhat surprised by your comment, because I do not think
| the contrasting painting is particularly closed (the ceilings
| are taller, I thnik), and the kitchen I designed for myself[1]
| is fairly open, though it is not as spacious or dependent on
| electric light (it is touched by a wall of southern windows).
| In some ways I consider the richo kitchen more claustrophic
| than open, owing to the large amount of upper cabinets. What
| makes the richo kitchen feel off, in terms of openness, is the
| hallway effect with the adjacent rooms. But my critique is
| mostly one of the materials making the space and the
| utilitarian feel.
|
| [1] A couple images are here:
| https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1450480908822265865
|
| Note there are now two sets of shelves, we have been slowly
| adding to the kitchen since we built the house.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That's a very nice human-scale kitchen you've made there.
|
| One of the NY cooking staff recently put out a call for
| photos of people's pantries. Given that the people replying
| are likely to be somewhat more into cooking than an average
| person, I was amazed at the simplicity and "non-
| professionalism" of all the images I saw. Just simple
| shelving with somewhat random supplies packed in a not
| particularly access-efficient way. Quite different from what
| you'd expect to find behind the cabinet doors of your "richo
| kitchen".
|
| However, I question your use of the term "utilitarian" when
| you're describing the "richo kitchen". To me it feels much
| more decorated than (for example) your own kitchen, which has
| lots of wonderful small aesthetic details, but the overall
| vibe of which I would be more likely to call "utilitarian".
| Your kitchen is there for you and your partner (I assume,
| from the photo) to prepare food and clean up. The "richo
| kitchen" is that too, but also a statement about wealth,
| specifically the wealth to have cabinets enclosing that much
| stuff.
| jmole wrote:
| If you look at what fills cabinets like the ones in your own
| kitchen, it is a collection of objects that never beckon to be
| thrown away. The 5 different BBQ spice mixes that you pick up
| every time you host a BBQ. The Avocado oil you bought but never
| use. The various kitchen gadgets that once seemed like a good
| idea.
|
| All of the "enchantment", the food that spoils, the food that was
| once actually alive, now lives in a special dark, cool cabinet
| called the refrigerator.
|
| The modern kitchen is a response to this paradox. If you've ever
| lived in a house without lots of kitchen storage, the clutter
| that accumulates in all the nooks and crannies is overwhelming.
| shaunxcode wrote:
| The dialectic take being we should not have personal kitchens in
| the first place. We should consider what communal cooking and
| eating spaces will look like.
| nicbou wrote:
| This was attempted in the Soviet Union. I heard about it here:
| https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-book-of-tasty-and...
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >These pictures are from a real estate listing, but I trust you
| know what otherwise fills the counters of a kitchen today.
|
| Contrasting modern real estate photos with a 250 year old
| painting is a hard ask. The painting and photos are so vastly
| different in both time and detail that I don't think the author
| was able to make their point.
| gbjw wrote:
| Couldn't agree more with this assessment. I'd also like to repost
| the top comment on Medium since it might be particularly germane
| to the HN community:
|
| '...a spirit influenced by gnosticism (even if it doesn't know
| it): the body and the material world is bad, the spirit is
| everything. So the best space, becomes no space: the virtual
| space of the internet, for example. Meta, indeed.'
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Thank you for copying this here. Once you start to become aware
| of it, the anti-human spirit of Gnosticism can be seen in many
| places.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| So, I happen to be planning a kitchen remodel right now, and I
| happened to have up a picture of my kitchen while reading and
| comparing. And while I can agree with the aesthetic argument the
| author is going for, I think that it misses something too:
| primarily, what kitchens are for, which is cooking food, and
| sometimes the eating of it. In my kitchen, if I have to chop
| something, I have to shove something aside. Sometimes I use my
| stove top as counter space. What would I give for some of that
| void the author critiques, just so I could chop the onions, or
| turn around and not knock something off the counter, or trip over
| the can. And trust me, "easy to clean" is no bad thing. I'm sure
| some might think that the aesthetic joys of cleaning food from
| between cracks and beneath appliances gives the richness to life
| that the rich cheat themselves out of somehow, but no. Its an
| awful soul sucking waste of the one life you've got to live.
|
| Real-estate isn't interested in making things personal, because
| they are trying to sell something for others to personalize. Go
| look at real lived in kitchens if you want to make the critique;
| not real estate ads which are selling a dream.
| simonsarris wrote:
| (I'm the author)
|
| For what it's worth, I designed my own kitchen (and house for
| that matter), and me and my wife spend upwards of 2 hours a day
| in this room because we cook almost every single day, making
| and baking and preserving a large number of foods from scratch.
|
| I simply think that using the kitchen doesn't just have to be
| easy, it has to be joyous. If it's one of the rooms we use the
| most, and entertain guests in too, it should be beautiful as
| well as useful. I am not against counter space!, but against a
| material drabness that seems to make spaces less than alive.
| jrapdx3 wrote:
| I get what you're saying. For a bunch of reasons my wife and
| I also spend a lot of time preparing meals. Real-estate folks
| describe ours as a "galley kitchen", not well-endowed with
| counter/work space. Having dinner guests is a real challenge.
| It resolves to KISS principles, but with some planning it's
| amazing what can be accomplished.
|
| As to design, we've gravitated to a relatively spare
| approach. Though not at all imitating "industrial" space,
| after all, we actually live in our home. Linoleum flooring,
| quartz composite countertops, stainless sink/range, laminate
| cabinets, etc., are "homey" enough but also durable
| materials.
|
| One thing is crystal clear: in small kitchens storage is a
| precious resource. Dedicated cooks prefer buying supplies in
| larger quantities, spices, flours, etc. That means a tightly
| managed pantry with little empty space. Sometimes having "too
| many" cabinets can be a good idea.
|
| But understandably tastes and needs vary, so no doubt others
| would do something entirely different with the space our
| kitchen occupies. Then again, if I was designing our kitchen
| from scratch, well, it would be so MUCH better, but WTH, when
| _wouldn 't_ that be the case.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Fair enough. Thank you for your courteous response.
| mavhc wrote:
| All the kitchens I see have a fridge covered in magnets from
| holidays, photos of children, and children's paintings. Items
| on every surface, signs of life. Except when they're emptied
| to take photos for selling the house.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I haven't seen magnets on a fridge door in years. Decades
| even.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I find that quite surprising.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| As stainless steel finishes became popular, magnets
| didn't work anymore.
|
| Manufacturers have wised up though. We just got a brand
| new Samsung with s/s finish, and lo and behold: magnets
| work.
|
| I don't know if they're using it's-not-really-stainless-
| steel, or if they are backing with something more
| ferrous, but either way, fridge magnets are back, baby!
| jrapdx3 wrote:
| Many different alloys are classified as "stainless
| steel", and some are magnetic. [0] The ss sink in my
| kitchen is not magnetic, but the our ss range IS
| magnetic. Just as you report, new ss refrigerators are
| likely to be made amenable to surface magnets.
|
| [0] https://www.fastenal.com/content/feds/pdf/Article%20-
| %20Magn...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-09 23:01 UTC)