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Modern decor may be straining people's brains

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Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#201

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

I don't really know what to take away from this piece. I think I might be misunderstanding something.

On the one hand, "Eyes and brain alike evolved over millennia to process natural scenes, forests, rivers, coastlines, open skies. These environments share a specific mathematical pattern: their visual complexity decreases predictably as you zoom in on finer and finer details" - What, isn't it just the opposite? Coastlines and many plants are famously fractal, and in general, if you zoom into nature you will see a lot of detail, while in artificial objects you will often see a uniform sufrace.

On the other hand, "Repetitive grids, stark contrasts, and uniform surfaces have replaced the organic variation of earlier styles" - Okay, I get that grids are bad, but if the problem is too much detail and visual stimulation, why are uniform sources a problem? Is high complexity good or bad?

The only clear ideas that I take from this is that grids = bad, and flickering LED lightning = bad (and I don't really know how to choose LEDs that don't flicker...).

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#202

Post by gib444 »

> People who are neurodivergent, a broad term covering autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and related conditions, are disproportionately affected

I don't think this is at all a coincidence when it comes to office planning and design. It is purposefully exclusionary

Modern offices are just social/business experiments about what a human will put up with to earn a wage and to optimise for the most desired employees. Most offices I've worked at have a majority of these issues:

- Horrible decor mentioned in the article

- Insufficient peak-time toilet capacity

- Zero accounting for the sun's rays (screen glare, solar gain)

- Poor acoustics

- Horrible overhead lighting

- Broken AC in heat waves, lack of natural air cooling in winter (yay, dried sinuses and gloves in winter!)

- Meeting rooms with insufficient fresh air

- Zero design to reduce spreading of viral diseases

- Constant visual distractions

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#203

Post by gib444 »

olelele wrote: post #155
sirwitti wrote: post #150

One aspect that is often overlooked is a room acoustics - especially reverb time. Have you ever felt cosy in a large church? Or, if you have ever been to a wedding and wondered why everybody started talking louder and louder and it's hard to understand, a room with too large reverb time is a very probable causes. This is very draining mentally. The same goes for living spaces, especially since newer homes tend to use…

So many bars & restaurants don't care enough about this.

Given coffee shops etc hire psychologists to select annoying music to optimise revenue, I wouldn't rule out bad acoustics as a choice (particularly larger chains)

Though with bars and restaurants being brutally hard to survive and turn a decent profit, I would mostly attribute it to just cutting costs

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#204

Post by sandworm101 »

michaelchisari wrote: post #5

If you've ever been in an home owned for generations, filled with books and knickknacks and heirlooms and family photos, despite the clutter it all feels comforting in a way that modern decor doesn't. The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like t…

It is old money v new money. Old money has things. If they want to go skiing, they have a set of skis in the garage and a family cabin near the slopes. If they want to go fishing, they have a boat ready on a trailer. New money isnt about having thing but having power to acquire, to congure up things as needed. New money doesn't own skis. New money rents them. New money doesnt have a boat parked behind thier garage, they have an empty (minimalist) garage and will buy a boat a month before the trip, having it delivered to the lake by someone who owns work gloves. Old money collects a household of things over decades. New money leaves a trail of discarded junk that was used once and disposed of shortly thereafter.

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#205

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #19
michaelchisari wrote: post #5

If you've ever been in an home owned for generations, filled with books and knickknacks and heirlooms and family photos, despite the clutter it all feels comforting in a way that modern decor doesn't. The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like t…

I am skeptical this is the origin of modern decor. The trend away from ornamentation, toward simplicity, flatness, etc in design goes back several generations and transcends interior design. If the thesis was true, we'd expect rich people who will never be compelled to move against their will, or to move into less space, would prefer cluttered homey interiors, and poor people would prefer sparse & modern. In reality,…

If the thesis was true, we'd expect rich people who will never be compelled to move against their will, or to move into less space, would prefer cluttered homey interiors, and poor people would prefer sparse & modern. In reality, the biggest boosters of modern decor are rich people.

Are you sure? Maybe some of them are, but it's also quite typical of rich people to live in a refurbished 19th century home with ornate mouldings, antique furniture, bookshelves, rugs, paintings, and a large amount of carefully curated "clutter". While working-class people almost universally move towards minimalism when they renovate, with the rich it's much more divided.

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#206

Post by elf25 »

tpm wrote: post #134
fcarraldo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich also can afford to keep their minimalist modern spaces clean and clutter-free, through paying staff. These environments tend to look awful when not tended to continuously because a single out-of-place item is so clearly visible. Cluttered old homes with lots of things all over the place make it a bit less jarring when there's a stack of work left out on a table.

> Cluttered old homes with lots of things all over the place make it a bit less jarring when there's a stack of work left out on a table. that's wrong: my minimalist (in looks, not in equipment) all white kitchen looks completely fine even after a dinner party, because even then it doesn't look full, dirty or cluttered. The old one (and it wasn't that old, only there were more and darker colors and lines and objects)…

Rich is a mindset. My kitchen has three spatulas. One i bought when i moved out, mom’s and grandma’s. I don’t NEED three but can’t afford to throw two away. Rich see two extra and toss two because it’s just a damn spatula and they KNOW that if they ever need two, they can afford to run out and buy one. Now expand that thought process to everything you own. Declutter becomes easier.

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#207

Post by david_allison »

austin-cheney wrote: post #197
obscurette wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a discussion regarding this some time ago with my grandchild who has an ADHD diagnosis. She has troubles being in noisy (especially visually) environments, yet she finds my home (relatively large home full of books, music always playing etc) comforting. She explained that all this stuff in my home is interesting for her and speaks with her - "It's you and grandma, it's full of stories". But the very modern and…

The noise on the walls is comforting to people on the autism spectrum, provided it’s bound by inferred structures. You have to also understand that elementary school education is almost universally female, much more so programming is male dominated. Like software, elementary school education is also a pool for adults on the autism spectrum substantially higher than general population average.

> Like software, elementary school education is also a pool for adults on the autism spectrum substantially higher than general population average.

Interesting! Do you have a source for this?

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#208

Post by OhioMan2943 »

gib444 wrote: post #202

> People who are neurodivergent, a broad term covering autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and related conditions, are disproportionately affected I don't think this is at all a coincidence when it comes to office planning and design. It is purposefully exclusionary Modern offices are just social/business experiments about what a human will put up with to earn a wage and to optimise for the most desired employees. Most offices I…

Starting to think I'm the normal one and everyone else is crazy...

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#209

Post by ClumsyPilot »

ericmay wrote: post #57
michaelchisari wrote: post #5

If you've ever been in an home owned for generations, filled with books and knickknacks and heirlooms and family photos, despite the clutter it all feels comforting in a way that modern decor doesn't. The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like t…

> It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Yes, but it's deeper than that. Two broad reasons, though your point here is a good one. 1. We don't, particularly in the west, have the skills, shops/craftsmen, or access to resources to make things like we used to. It's a positive network effect where prices go up, folks don't do the work anymore, and so p…

> We don't, particularly in the west, have the skills, shops/craftsmen, or access to resources

It’s worse than that, most consumers don’t even know what good looks like any more. We are much more restricted and maybe lower variety of experience.

You could serve half the consumers rat meat instead of beef and they wouldn’t know the difference.

> The changes we see in style can be attributed to changes in politics and civilization. Who we are and what we think of ourselves.

There is something to this even if the way this is expressed is clumsy

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