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Fuck The Vessel

thebaffler.com

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Re: Fuck The Vessel

#41

Post by icebraining »

leftyted wrote: post #27

It's not that I think this building (or attraction or whatever) is beautiful and worthwhile. It's just that I don't care that much and I'm a bit skeptical of people who do. I don't think it would matter what kind of sculpture/attraction/landmark/etc was built here -- people would still be criticizing it because there are a lot of people who pour derision onto everything the ultra-rich do. It's like a hobby. I think t…

> I'm all ears if someone wants to make a serious case about what should have been built here instead and who should have paid for it.

One of her main points is that this discussion should have been had before The Vessel was constructed. The article as a whole is more of a criticism of the whole system that spawned it than of the construction itself.

Re: Fuck The Vessel

#42

Post by cortesoft »

scandox wrote: post #30
pesmhey wrote: post #21

Classism works both ways. I can’t fucking stand poor people who have nothing more to hate on rich people about than that they have money. And the converse is true, rich people who think poverty is some moral failing. This article is riddled with, fuck people who have more than me. Ugh, get the fuck over yourself, no matter what social position you may have happened to find yourself in. Not ‘Fuck The Vessel’ just ‘Fuc…

> no matter what social position you may have happened to find yourself in People don't "find themselves" in a social position. It isn't like they wandered into the wrong part of town. People suffering poverty are angry about wealth because it represents something withheld from them by an opaque and unfair system (how opaque and how unfair is the only thing under debate). Rich people who think poverty is a moral fail…

“Find themselves” is intentionally passive, without implying any cause... the alternatives would be “got themselves into” or “were placed by someone else”

The phrase was used to stay out of the debate about the cause, not to imply there was no cause.

Re: Fuck The Vessel

#43

Post by ilovecaching »

whack wrote: post #39

This article is a perfect encapsulation of our current culture of contempt. It is no longer sufficient, or even possible, to just disagree or have different tastes. "I'm personally not a big fan of that building's aesthetics, but maybe there are others who do like it." That would have been a reasonable opinion to hold... instead we have: "Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, one of architecture’s premier grifters... The d…

I think you missed the crux of the argument which is that it’s very proletariat. It does nothing for the community and is designed to benifit the criminally wealthy.

Also it’s ugly af. I hope I never have to work with someone with your tastes if you think that’s what beauty is.

Re: Fuck The Vessel

#44

Post by geofft »

caprese wrote: post #17
walterbell wrote: post #6

From https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/hudson-ya... > Hudson Yards is a private space masquerading as a public one ... In reality it is an enclave, a high-end corporate park buoyed by six billion dollars in tax breaks—an amount that dwarfs the subsidies offered to Amazon for its scuttled Queens headquarters—and designed as a kind of amenity-stuffed Hotel California that its residents never have to le…

> an amount that dwarfs the subsidies offered to Amazon one thing I really love about NYC is how easy it is to deflect attention and get what you want exhibit A: "tech workers" make the same amount in NYC as they do in the Bay Area, they fly completely under the radar and the inequality warriors point fingers at finance instead, serving to highlight the fickle nature of an unorganized protest where the cause/perpetua…

> "tech workers" make the same amount in NYC as they do in the Bay Area, they fly completely under the radar and the inequality warriors point fingers at finance instead

As someone in both (my day job is keeping OpenStack working at a hedge fund) and who's been in both job markets: this is because finance actually is the richest. There's literally no point in fixing tech worker salaries in NYC if you're not going to fix finance salaries in NYC. Why is it surprising that the target is the richest? Why do you see that as fickle instead of constant and principled? It would be unprincipled and ideological if people complained about tech salaries in NYC simply because tech is widely disliked, even when there's a bigger target to go after.

> Walmart is practically banned from NYC in an effort to save/protect local businesses, while every major, minor, and luxury retailer enjoys larger than life flagship versions of their stores positioned in space constrained Manhattan.

I am confused by the juxtaposition of these two claims. Walmart competes with local businesses. Gucci does not. If you want to protect local businesses, not having a Gucci flagship has a qualitatively different effect from not having Walmart. (A place like Uniqlo does compete with local businesses, but I would certainly not call any of the Uniqlo stores in Manhattan "larger than life" - they're barely big enough for purpose, and they're all much smaller than the Walmart in my parents' suburb.)

Re: Fuck The Vessel

#46

Post by icebraining »

whack wrote: post #39

This article is a perfect encapsulation of our current culture of contempt. It is no longer sufficient, or even possible, to just disagree or have different tastes. "I'm personally not a big fan of that building's aesthetics, but maybe there are others who do like it." That would have been a reasonable opinion to hold... instead we have: "Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, one of architecture’s premier grifters... The d…

> I hope to God I never have to work with someone like the author.

Hi, Pot (calling the kettle black).

Re: Fuck The Vessel

#47

Post by jhbadger »

ilovecaching wrote: post #43
whack wrote: post #39

This article is a perfect encapsulation of our current culture of contempt. It is no longer sufficient, or even possible, to just disagree or have different tastes. "I'm personally not a big fan of that building's aesthetics, but maybe there are others who do like it." That would have been a reasonable opinion to hold... instead we have: "Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, one of architecture’s premier grifters... The d…

I think you missed the crux of the argument which is that it’s very proletariat. It does nothing for the community and is designed to benifit the criminally wealthy. Also it’s ugly af. I hope I never have to work with someone with your tastes if you think that’s what beauty is.

To be fair, I'd say that that is is better than any of the 1960s-1990s "Brutalist" style stuff that reminds me of Communist-style nonsense. That being said, given that that the average inhabitant isn't working class but a professional, why? Aren't there better alternatives at your price level?

Re: Fuck The Vessel

#48

Post by viivaux »

0db532a0 wrote: post #9

TLDR: The author has still to come to terms with the meaninglessness, contrivance and absurdity of her own life and of everything around her, and has been pushed by a meaningless, contrived and absurd building to write a similarly meaningless and contrived article. Oblivious to this, she is pushes herself even further into the void of meaninglessness, contrivance and absurdity. The capitalist pigs score yet another g…

See that would all make sense if there weren't an alternative - non classist, non ugly, aesthetic and thoughtful artchitecture out there as an alternative; one explicitly referred to itfa.

But you and pesmhey feel the need to ignore that part so you can shove your inane babble into the authors mouth to criticise. Could you not?

Re: Fuck The Vessel

#49

Post by geofft »

presscast wrote: post #40
geofft wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is relevant to the parent post because there's legitimate reason for the poor to have animus against the rich, and not vice versa. The parent post is attempting to treat "poor" and "rich" as something like rival sports teams that are on equal footing, because that's required to criticize the poor mad at the rich in the same way you'd criticize the rich mad at the poor.

>It is relevant to the parent post because there's legitimate reason for the poor to have animus against the rich, and not vice versa The parent poster is specifically referring to a specific type of unfounded animus. Namely: having no argument other than "they have more money than me" to justify said animus.

The parent poster wrote "poor people who have nothing more to hate on rich people about than that they have money", which sounds like well-founded animus to me.

Here's a way to think about it - what is the corresponding thing for the rich to hate on the poor for? Are the rich jealous of not having money? Are they envious of those who cannot pay more for housing simply because a building of questionable merit faces it (one of the examples given in the article)? How is that founded? The rich can easily get themselves into that position, should they be desirous of it.

There is an arguable parallel in the rich who see the poor as being a moral failure for merely not having money and the poor who see the rich as being a moral failure for merely having money, but a) I think the poor have a better claim to well-foundedness there, even if it is slight, in that the rich quite clearly have the ability to stop having money with a snap of their fingers where the poor do not obviously have the ability to start having money, and b) the article does not seem to say that merely having money is a moral failure - at best it says that misusing money is a moral failure.

Re: Fuck The Vessel

#50

Post by voldacar »

>It is a Vessel for the depths of architectural cynicism, of form without ideology and without substance: an architectural practice that puts the commodifiable image above all else, including the social good, aesthetic expression, and meaningful public space

or maybe it's just some staircases

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