Recently, I have been reflecting on a debate that I attended as a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the 1990s. It was about New Urbanism, a human-scaled urban design development approach. The debate was between Rem Koolhaas, one of the world’s most important architectural thinkers, and Andres Duany, who co-founded the New Urbanism Movement and developed a community called Seaside, Florida based on its principles. As a devout modernist who considered Koolhaas’s book, SMLXL, to be my bible, I remember siding with Koolhaas. I thought that New Urbanism was nostalgic, idealistic and not relevant. I dismissed it completely. These days however, I keep pondering the similarities between New Urbanism and The Slow Space Movement.
Seaside, Florida is a private development on the Gulf Coast and is the best-known example of New Urbanism. It is a relatively small community incorporating residential buildings, mixed use buildings and public space. It is known for its pastel-colored houses featuring porches and white picket fences. Rem Koolhaas criticized New Urbanism, and Seaside in particular, as manufactured quaintness. It lacks the grit of a place that develops organically, as well as the diversity and intrigue of a real city.
I see his point, but when compared to most typical suburban developments, especially from the 1980s, with McMansions and no place to walk, New Urbanism developments are actually appealing. For example, in Seaside, everything is walkable and within easy reach. There is more vegetation than lawn and private outdoor space is intimate in size, encouraging residents to utilize communal outdoor spaces. In addition, the community includes a variety of sizes and building types. While they seem to mostly be vernacular in style, they aren’t identical, and in fact many different architects, such as Robert A.M. Stern and Deborah Berke, have designed homes there. Now, I have never been there myself, but from everything I have read and seen through images, it seems like a nice place to live or take a vacation, and slow down. In the 1999 debate, Alex Krieger asked Koolhaas if he had ever been there. His response: “Every year”. Was he joking?
Over the past 20 years, New Urbanism has accomplished more than just create quaint communities. It promotes walkability, green transportation, public spaces, quality architecture and mixed use neighborhoods, all values in line with the Slow Space Movement. These communities have also created change by developing projects that address low income housing, neglected urban spaces and improving suburbs.
The spaces where we live, work and visit have a huge impact on our lives, health and mood. It might be time to take a second look at New Urbanism in the context of The Slow Space Movement.
Many toxic materials lurk in our homes and buildings and they are a danger to our health and the planet. The Slow Space Movement advocates for buildings that are good, clean and fair. This is Part 1 of a two part series on toxic and sustainable building materials.
Mama, what are buildings made of?
What do I want my children to imagine buildings are made of? I want to feed their virtuous imagination with a picture of bucolic forests and simple wood cabins. Photo by Owen Wassell.
If you have kids, you know how this conversation starts. “Mama, what are buildings made of?” The picture I paint is one of bucolic forests, simple wood cabins with stone foundations next to flowing streams. It’s the same kind of imagery I use when they ask where milk or strawberries come from. We want our food and building materials to come from such inherently good places, but the reality is much different. Sadly, most of our building materials come from chemical companies, such as Dow and DuPont.
Most of our building materials come from chemical companies: Westlake Chemicals, the largest PVC plant in the country, located in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Toxic Materials In Buildings
In the 2002 environmental comedy “Blue Vinyl,” Judith Helfand discovers the toxic effects of vinyl after her parents decide to reclad their Long Island home in this harmful yet ubiquitous house-siding material.
Polyvinyl chloride and other chlorinated plastics produce dioxins during their production, burning and disposal. Dioxins are some of the most potent carcinogens known to humankind and also create reproductive, developmental, immune and endocrine disruptions.
To put it in very clear terms, Agent Orange, the chemical warfare agent used by the US in the Vietnam War, is composed of dioxins. Agent Orange was sprayed over large parts of the country, decimating crops and landscape, and maiming or killing four million people.
PVC pipes are standard in residential construction. Photo: Wikimedia
75% of all PVC is used in the construction industry
75% of all PVC used is in the construction industry, and chlorinated plastics can be found in geomembranes, weather stripping, joint filler, water sealers, gaskets, adhesives, wire and cable jacketing, roof membranes and electrical connectors. PVC pipes are standard in residential construction, and few architects, builders or clients are willing to go to bat for an upgrade. Vinyl siding is also standard, and when Aamodt / Plumb was doing public housing work for the Department of Housing and Community Development here in Massachusetts, we were required to use vinyl specifically on all of our projects. Ultimately, we stopped doing that work, and the vinyl was one reason.
Burning vinyl, e.g., in a house fire, releases carcinogenic dioxins. Photo courtesy of East PDX News
Have you ever thought about what happens when a house with vinyl siding burns? I saw a dumpster fire the other day that was melting the vinyl siding right off the building next to it. It was also releasing carcinogenic dioxins into the neighborhood, but you couldn’t see those.
And the final point that Helfand makes in the movie is that you can’t get rid of PVC. The recycling process requires melting, releasing dioxins, and you can’t burn it for the same reason. If you put it in a landfill, it leaches into the groundwater. So, it’s better not to make it in the first place.
This all seems like it should be “Green Building 101.” It seems so obvious. But most people have no idea, or they don’t care. And maybe that is because our language around PVC as a product is pretty weak. In a recently published article by Perkins + Will, who are very strong advocates for clean building materials, they put PVC on their “Precautionary List,” and the Living Building Challenge and Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute “recommend avoiding” PVC. No wonder no one is listening.
No, the government doesn’t have our back
Maybe we assume that government regulations and bodies like EPA regulate dangerous things. But really, they don’t. We live in a free-market world. Many hazardous substances are only regulated after a class-action lawsuit by hundreds or thousands of harmed people eventually makes its way to the Supreme Court. That’s after people (and the planet) are already sick. That’s too late. Think about Erin Brockovich, Three Mile Island, and Flint, Michigan.
We are on the leading edge of these stories and we can affect their outcomes. How do you choose your building materials? Do you get your information from the DuPont rep touting the latest innovation in building technology? Or do you use common sense?
Remember that song “Things that make you go hmmm…”? The contractors applying spray foam insulation in your house are wearing hazmat suits! Photo courtesy of Icynene.
Let’s take spray foam insulation. Everybody loves it because it gives you a great R-value and air sealing at the same time to meet that stretch energy code. And every insulation contractor is doubling down on its marketing materials and making pricing more competitive. But when two guys show up in hazmat suits to spray this two-part chemical concoction doesn’t that make you wonder?
Let’s take spray foam insulation. Everybody loves it because it gives you a great R-value and air sealing at the same time… But when two guys show up in hazmat suits to spray this two-part chemical concoction doesn’t that make you wonder?
Remember that song, “Things That Make You Go Hmmm”? You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that this stuff is toxic. Oh, but the rep says that once it has cured it is completely inert. Really? Let’s jump ahead 30 years and find out if he is right. And they don’t tell you about the 5–10% of cases where it doesn’t cure properly, and it off-gasses FOREVER. Oh, and you can’t get that stuff off. It really sticks.
But lead paint and asbestos were once the “latest and greatest” building products. Photo courtesy of Hormones Matter.
I am no material science expert, I am just sharing what I see. But lead paint and asbestos were once the “latest and greatest” building products too.
Lead paint that has been banned for decades is still causing developmental problems in children from what’s left over on older houses. How do the kids get exposed to the lead? They eat it! Silly kids will eat anything. My friends’ son used to eat gum off the sidewalk. He’s fine though. So when you are walking around on the expo floor, wondering how to tell clean building products from dirty ones without having to read a bunch of Material Safety Data Sheets, just ask yourself, “Would I eat it?” If the answer is no, then just keep on moving.
How do the kids get exposed to the lead? They eat it! Silly kids will eat anything.
And don’t be fooled by yummy flavors. Just because it tastes good does not mean it is good for you.
Let’s use the food analogy for a minute. I remember reading that to eat healthy, your pre-packaged foods should not have more than five ingredients.
This practice is from Michael Pollan’s book “Food Rules,” where he writes, “Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients. The specific number you adopt is arbitrary, but the more ingredients in a packaged food, the more highly processed it probably is.” If there was an ingredients list for our buildings, it would be thousands of pages long. In fact, we already have something like that, and we call it a Spec Book. But it isn’t actually very helpful for knowing what is in the materials. Material Safety Data Sheets and Health Product Declarations help a little, but manufacturers aren’t required to reveal what is in their products. In fact, the ingredients are considered trade secrets.
If there was an ingredients list for our buildings, it would be thousands of pages long
Up until the early 20th century when a man or woman of means needed a new suit or dress they would go to a Tailor or Dressmaker.
They might have had some magazine clippings of what they liked and a vague description of the type of event they would use it for.
The dressmaker would take their measurements and send them on their way.
Later he or she would do some sketches of the design to show to the clients and if they approved she would make the garment.
One hundred years later, fashion has moved on but architecture is still trying to practice in exactly this same way. The Dressmaker is out of business but the Architect still fights for the few small commissions that remain.
The Architect of today practices just like the Dressmaker of 100 years ago.
Ready-to-wear fashion has revolutionized that industry sacrificing quality for quantity. And it has created some significant human and environmental issues in the process. Labor conditions for textile workers, environmental pollution from pesticides used in cotton production and the waste of poor-quality Fast Fashion are but a few examples.
Move-in-ready spec homes constitute more than 98% of new home starts each year, again sacrificing quality for quantity. McMansions are 50% bigger than the average home for the same sized family 50 years earlier. They are built quickly, with poor quality materials that do not hold up and the residential building industry is notorious for wage theft and exploitation of illegal workers.
McMansions are the Fast Fashion of the building industry.
Fast Fashion and Junkspace, the term we use for spec houses, strip malls, etc., have as much in common as the Dressmaker and the Architect, however the Architect is not out of business yet. Hundreds of young architects graduate from school every year and they are passionate, motivated and creative. If only they recognized the precarious state of the profession and banded together to forge a new future that created buildings that were good, clean and fair for all. That is the mission of the Slow Space Movement.
“Junkspace” is a rambling, brilliant lamentation on the death of architecture by one who actively participated in its demise. It was a scathing critique at the time it was first published, but now 16 years later, it can only be seen as a prophecy. A siren call fully actualized.
The essay “Junkspace” by Rem Koolhaas first appeared in The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping (2001). It was reissued along with an introduction and essay entitled “Running Room” by Hal Foster in 2013.
Surprisingly little has been written about “Junkspace” and I believe that is a reflection on the discipline of architecture rather than on the importance of the essay.
Koolhaas was far ahead of his time when he wrote this in 2001. What should have been a wake up call has merely languished. I myself was at the GSD then and had no awareness of what Koolhaas was doing or thinking. Nor can I recognize any shift in OMA’s work that might be attributed to this.
I stumbled upon the essay last year when I was doing my own research. The title alone spoke to me and I found the concept of Junkspace to be the perfect villain and counterpoint for Slow Space. The essay by Koolhaas should be read in it entirety as it can be interpreted in many different ways. Below is a series of excerpts from the text alternated with my own comments.
The End of Architecture
“It was a mistake to invent modern architecture for the 20th century. Architecture disappeared in the 20th century.”
Why? Because we lost our ability to appreciate, experience and therefore design space.
“As if space itself is invisible, all theory for the production of space is based on an obsessive preoccupation with its opposite: substance and objects, i.e., architecture. Architects could never explain space; Junkspace is our punishment for their mystifications.”
It is the resultant of the image-driven obsession with form.
“Junkspace is the body double of space, a territory of impaired vision, limited expectation, reduced earnestness.”
The junk food of architecture, Junkspace is the McMansions, the shopping malls and casinos that are bloated on fillers and chemicals.
“Because it cannot be grasped, Junkspace cannot be remembered. It is flamboyant yet unmemorable.”
Initially exciting but quickly leaves you feeling empty, lost and detached.
“Junkspace is overripe and undernourishing at the same time.”
And will ultimately make you sick.
Starchitecture
“Junkspace is post-existential; it makes you uncertain where you are, obscures where you go, undoes where you were.”
We are distracted from the essential questions of life – who are you? what is the meaning of life? – by busyness, overstimulation, visual and audible noise.
“(Note to architects: you thought that you could ignore Junkspace, visit it surreptitiously, treat it with condescending contempt or enjoy it vicariously… because you could not understand it, you’ve thrown away the keys…. But now your own architecture is infected, has become equally smooth, all-inclusive, continuous, warped, busy, atrium-ridden….) JunkSignature™ is the new architecture: the former megalomania of a profession contracted to manageable size.”
Junkspace is the dominant paradigm and architects, without protest or criticality, have succumbed.
“A shortage of masters has not stopped a proliferation of masterpieces. ‘Masterpiece’ has become a definitive sanction, a semantic space that saves the object from criticism, leaves its qualities unproven, its performance untested, its motives unquestioned. Masterpiece is no longer an inexplicable fluke, a roll of the dice, but a consistent typology: its mission to intimidate, most of its exterior surfaces bent, huge percentages of its square footage dysfunctional, its centrifugal components barely held together by the pull of the atrium.”
The avant-garde and cutting edge have become so commonplace. Every day a new iconic building replaces the last in the world lexicon of #architectureporn. Novelty feeds consumption and wastes our resources.
“Junkspace is a look-no-hands world….”
Stunts. Gimmicks. Turning Tricks.
Neoliberalism, Consumption and Entertainment
“Junkspace happens spontaneously through natural corporate exuberance – the unfettered play of the market – or is generated through the combined actions of temporary ‘czars’ with long records of three-dimensional philanthropy.”
Speculation and development provide the world with what people think they want and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Junkspace is political: it depends on the central removal of the critical faculty in the name of comfort and pleasure.”
Neoliberalism feeds Junkspace’s growth and power as it spreads across the globe.
“The chosen theater of megalomania – the dictatorial – is no longer politics, but entertainment. Through Junkspace, entertainment organizes hermetic regimes of ultimate exclusion and concentration: concentration gambling, concentration golf, concentration convention, concentration movie, concentration culture, concentration holiday.”
The King of Junkspace controls all of these kingdoms – casinos, golf courses, hotels and resorts – and has used entertainment as a means of wielding political force. In 2017, Koolhaas’s architectural lamentation has become a prophecy of the rise of Donald Trump.
In 1999 Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien wrote an article entitled “On Slowness” referring to the slow speed of hand drafting, the slow careful thought process of designing and the slow perception and experience of space. They quote Milan Kundera’s novel Slowness and the powerful relationship between time and memory.
“There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: A man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time. In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”
They describe how as their work has evolved its essence become more difficult to capture in photographs. The spaces need to be experienced, quietly, slowly, particularly as the buildings relate to the landscape. It is difficult for them to describe their work as well. “So there is no quick take on our work; no singular powerful image that is able to sum it all up.” Perhaps this makes the work more difficult to appreciate in the sound-bite and media driven world we live in.
There is no singular powerful image able to sum it all up.
In 2001 Williams Tsien inaugurated their biggest work to date, the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. Opening to critical acclaim and numerous awards the exquisitely detailed building embodied all of the aspects of slowness that they wrote about. Michael Kimmelman wrote in a New York Times piece “Those bespoke, domestic-size spaces, like the building’s sober hammered bronze facade, share something with the handicraft of the folk art museum’s collection; the building has a rootedness, a materiality, an outsize claim to significance.” The hammered bronze facade even included a panel inscribed with the names of all the workers who helped to build the museum showing their respect to the craftsmen who gave the building their love.
The Folk Art Museum was located on a small site surrounded on three sides by the Museum of Modern Art. Kimmelman writes “It stands proudly on the street, the unfashionable antithesis of generic, open-ended modernism, the opposite of what Diller Scofidio now envisions in its place, with its paradigm of indefinite and perishable culture.” He is referring to the fact that in 2014 the MOMA swallowed up the Folk Art Museum and demolished it to make room for its own never-ending expansion. After only 13 years the building was consumed by fast growth and a gem of Slow Space was lost.
Update: I just learned that so many architects and others were upset by this and the hashtag #folkMOMA was created in protest of the demolition of the Folk Art Museum and the MOMA in general (also Diller, Scofidio & Renfro).
With every new innovation architecture is creating its own obsolescence. The race for taller, greener, more cutting edge building narrows the window of time each preceding iteration can be marveled. If every few years there is a new city chasing the Bilbao effect won’t there be a point of diminishing returns? Will tourists race to one city only to find they then have to turn around to get to another?
If it is the newness that is so exciting what happens when these iconoclastic buildings become old? Do they retain any value? Or do they quickly become passé?
This is not just the case for “it” buildings. In many parts of the US people don’t want to buy a “used,” I mean old, house. It’s like a car. There is always a newer model. So instead of maintaining, renovating and adapting their homes to their changing life circumstances, they trade up. Vast tracks of spec homes will be abandoned after they are no longer new. Instead of increasing in value these homes are losing value. As they should be actually. They are usually built of such poor quality that they are not meant to last more than 30 or 40 years. Then what happens? Are they demolished? That costs money too. Not to mention the waste. THE WASTE. That is the real issue.
We see it in fashion. The world is covered in our discarded garments. There are not enough needy people in the world to give them too, and most are of such poor quality that many don’t even want those hand-me-downs (Samson). Then there are the waste byproducts of clothing production as well as the enormous water use.
Starchitecture has been terrible for architecture and the built environment.
Every building is an ICON, so then none of them are. The explosion of architecture blogs and publications has been feeding the frenzy of consumption, with every day a new batch of exciting buildings being published online. Design is tailored to the image it will produce, the “money shot.” Because perhaps that is all that really matters in the end? Very few people will actually experience the building and very few people will care after the initial glow has worn off. The media cycle will have moved on to something else. The trend will pass and when the newness has worn off it will likely be replaced with something else.
Design and construction is moving faster and faster to keep pace with technology. But Starchitect Rem Koolhaas still laments its slowness (Koolhaas). But it is speed that is the problem. Architecture can and should not be fast and should not compete with technology. Architecture has a 3,000 year history. It is the (second) oldest profession. The Great Pyramid at Giza took 20 years to build by 100,000 workers. Chartres Cathedral was built over a period of 30 years. Both of these structures have survived more than 1,000 years and are celebrated as world treasures. That’s not likely to be the case for anything built today.
Slow Space is Slow Food for the built environment.
It is a philosophy, a movement and a way of life that promotes meaning and connection in our world. This blog is a resource and a community for everyone who believes in the power of the built environment to shape our lives.
My name is Mette and I am an architect, writer, design activist and mom living with a slow disease. Please join me here to build a movement.
