Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://places.designobserver.com/feature/mies-van-der-rohe-lafayette-park/36048/ en-us Design Observer Group 2012-10-17T15:03:47-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0 A user's expectations will thwart the any intention of design. Regarding transparency and public views: My Mom lives in a rural paradise with the windows covered, in case Bambi might leer. Vancouver B.C. is a glittering display of public exhibitionism, in full detail, and a few miles south in Seattle, the shades are drawn. Structural veils to articulate privacy are overcome like Arte Johnson on Laugh In peeping through a bush. Could we live in the open with some ritualized expectation of civility like the full-monty modesty of a Japanese bath? Once upon a time, in London, a flasher’s expectation was the worst that could happen is a bobby would bean you with a club. Now with the escalation of violent expectation you will be shot. Expectations have changed, the focus has shifted from intimacy with the eternal cat and mouse domestic drama, in imperceptible increments. We are like a frog in a boiling pot, fully accepting of caricatures like Tom and Jerry, degrading into CSI. In the paranoia of American residential architecture fenestration as necessity and connection to others is now more akin to a glory hole.
Lafayette Park is celebrating a fond remembrance of more optimistic times. I for one adhere to the see no evil philosophy of living in public with my pants down.
]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/mies-van-der-rohe-lafayette-park/36048/#comments 2012-10-17T15:03:47-05:00 I wonder if only a certain type of person can live here: a type of extravert--maybe one who is more trusting of others. Are there any nudists at Lafayette Park?
Though I also wonder about the issue of safety. How different the development would have been if it were raised up on columns, or would that destroy the connective tissue? ]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/mies-van-der-rohe-lafayette-park/36048/#comments 2012-10-06T17:25:37-05:00