super_productive: 2010.02

Friday, February 19, 2010

hipster architecture

“Culture appears to come from nowhere and to be heading nowhere.”

- Ben Agger, “The Thesis of the Culture Industry”

Hipsters… Hipsters are a subculture of “cool” youth, with a taste for the cultural non-mainstream. ‘Hipsterism’ is the catch-all term used to describe the specifics of its lifestyle and culture, specifically of the hipsters of recent. In short, hipsterism is “fashionable nihilism”. It is culture without meaning or authenticity.

The following is an unofficial, incomplete, and unreliable manifesto for ‘hipster architecture’, if there ever can be such a thing. ‘Hipster architecture’ for the sake of argument becomes a catch-all for contemporary architecture. It is an unapologetic comparison/criticism of contemporary architecture through the lens of hipsterism, and probably guilty of being as unproductive as hipsterism itself. It fails to define specifics and evade further, in-depth explanation. It assumes everything and takes responsibility for nothing. It is already late to the scene. You either get it or you don’t.

if you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck

Hipster architecture, rooted in cynicism and apathy, prefers a relativist, apolitical ground (Zaera-Polo, “Politics of the Envelope”); more specifically, it is an architecture devoid of ideology, that throws a bone to politics through its effects (peripheral: skins, façades; experiential: atmospheres, environments). In reality, hipster architecture is relieving itself of political responsibility, allowing it to do what it pleases for whomever it wants, relative to the client’s own whims (surfing).

fetish, fashion, kitsch, camp

Hipster architecture is not a trend, but trendy. Hipster architecture cannot be nailed down. What is definitive is if the “cool/new thing” in hipster architecture gets too popular, it gets abandoned for the next cool/new thing (Moussavi’s Function of Ornament → Function of Form). Calling it “camp” would be giving it too much credit (Sontag, “Notes on “Camp””).

Not there yet. (Koolhaas’s own take on the Five Points; OMA, Villa Dall'Ava)

Here we go. (FAT, The Villa)

ironic, cynical, sarcastic

It's too easy to jump to conclusions to who’s responsible for hipster architecture (the Dutch, if anyone)…. it’s endemic. Hipster architecture is the inevitable conclusion to the Avant-Garde tradition of imitating imitation (see the lump known as Decon: imitation Constructivism; Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch”). Perfected in its stripping of subversion and originality, hipster architecture shrugs at history and context, too clever and self-aware to its own machination as a culture-industry output. But then again, hipster architecture is not serious, or doesn’t let itself be taken seriously.

trustafarians

Because hipster architecture could be used to describe a lot of architecture, young firms/architects get lumped together into the same group, primarily because many hipster architects start and/or live off their parents' wealth or trust funds. Hipster architecture’s cultural elitism is inherent in its economic/educational elitism. This may be a below-the-belt statement since it’s not specific to hipster architecture, considering when was this ever the exception and not the rule in architecture history?

→ critical?

Hipster architecture is full of uncritical criticality, that is, criticism for criticism’s sake (was Criticality that productive anyway?). But then again, hipster architecture avoids labels and being labeled (Plevin, "Who's a Hipster?") (Alter-Modern? Neo-Modern? Or maybe still Post-Modern? Are we in for a dichotomous loop? Post-Post-Modern architecture? Has novelty itself become bankrupt?).

Aren’t you tired of asking ‘what’s next’ and lamenting our sorry state of affairs? Unlike with Haddow’s Adbusters’ conclusion, hipster architecture doesn’t represent the end of architecture. It will just have to take someone with the historical perspective and distance to make the proper connections and make better sense of our current milieu. I do really think architecture is not trapped in an endless sequence of mindless cultural production and consumption, but I don’t know if right now the current anxiety is just about appropriating and consuming the “next thing” in architecture, or to really get out of this vicious cycle and move on.

references:
Douglas Haddow – “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization”, Adbusters
Christine Haughney – “Parents Pulling the Plugs on Williamsburg Trust-Funders”, NYTimes
Hipster (contemporary subculture), Wikipedia
RE: ‘hipsterism is “fashionable nihilism”’, cited to Zachary Kamel on Wikipedia, but who the hell is that?
Robert Lanham - Look at This Fucking Hipster Basher
[many thanks to Andy and Dave for their input!]