Postmodernism deserves a little love too!

I might have to find one of those lamps now. How I'll justify it to my wife I don't know, but I'll have to look.
 
Arenacale said:
I might have to find one of those lamps now. How I'll justify it to my wife I don't know, but I'll have to look.
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They're built like tanks, and other than the halogen bulbs which are wildly energy inefficient, they'll easily last another 30-40 years. I bought mine in 2018 and looking at today's prices, they're holding their value almost exactly (maybe not quite keeping up with inflation?) in which case you could enjoy it for some years and then turn around and sell it for the same price... maybe even make a tiny profit. Think of it as a safe investment vehicle!!

Bon voyage!

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Screw it, here's mine:

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Also Arenacale, I make vaporwave music and if you'd like some retro accompaniment as you make your way through thios thread then may suggest this pairing:
https://soundcloud.com/honoblue%2Fjul-14-1990-prelude
 
I have that same lamp on my nightstand. 35 someodd years old and inherited from my grandfather. Bought a halogen-to-LED replacement bulb for it that (despite the somewhat bulky casing which thankfully fits in the lamp's bulb slot) mimics the old dimmable halogen just fine while giving off a fuckton less heat.

If anyone ever breaks into my apartment while I'm sleeping it'll make a handy weapon in a pinch since it's heavy enough to crack a skull.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
I have that same lamp on my nightstand. 35 someodd years old and inherited from my grandfather. Bought a halogen-to-LED replacement bulb for it that (despite the somewhat bulky casing which thankfully fits in the lamp's bulb slot) mimics the old dimmable halogen just fine while giving off a fuckton less heat.

If anyone ever breaks into my apartment while I'm sleeping it'll make a handy weapon in a pinch since it's heavy enough to crack a skull.
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Many times I've thought if I need a blunt force object to disable an intruder, I'm reaching straight for that lamp!

Also yes, it could heat a small apartment in the wintertime with the wasted energy it gives off.
 
kz1000ps said:
Not pomo per se, but certainly evocative of the recent past

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Biosphere II
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Am I weird that what I immediately think of when looking at those photos (other than Pauly Shore) is the interior of the Crystal Cathedral from those Sunday morning religious shows that I'd stumble on flipping through the channels? The Cathedral predates it by over a decade, and while I know the Biosphere truss-and-glass structure was chosen for functionality, I do think there are some interesting parallels in the "playing God" aspects of the Biosphere to the worship aspects of the Cathedral.

The Cathedral, itself, was Pomo as hel...no, Pomo as heaven:

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(from Wikipedia - By User:Nepenthes - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=195324)

Since then it's been converted to a Catholic church, and much of the grandiosity has been neutered out - still pretty, in that low-key Catholic modernism, but it definitely loses something in covering up the glass.
 
Growing up, my parents had a subscription to Fine Homebuilding magazine. Issues from the late 80s and early 90s had all sorts of PoMo-ish filigrees in the house designs.

Those photos of Cambridgeside, fully populated and active, are a trip. I didn’t realize how fast it collapsed.
 
Michael Graves: love him, hate him, have extremely mixed emotions about him like me.... 40+ years later and his work is still challenging perceptions. There's so much I love about his designs and yet there's also so much that I find freaking gross. Case in point: the Humana Tower in Louisville. The overall massing is pleasing in the classical sense and yet the individual elements look like a toddler's playing blocks thrown together by a six year old who's had a little too much j u i c e.

However, the ground level arcade and loggia are genuinely impressive and the materials next level sumptuous -- I've seen it in person and can't think of another late-20th century building that packs more of a luxurious punch per square inch. I'd go so far as to call it a minor triumph, a delirious delight, a love letter to the human realm. The tower may STILL, 40 years later, challenge and confound the viewer, but that ground level is really truly something special.

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And I snagged this last one off of Graves' website to better show the loggia space

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My wife and I are spending quite a bit of time at Beth Israel's Shapiro Center in advance of our new baby coming in October. Today, for the first time, I actually looked around the lobby, and was blown away. Everyone knows how wild the outside looks, but inside is perfection. I wanted to take a photo, but am nervous about doing that in a hospital, so I did a quick Google and, sure enough AIA had me covered:

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Source: https://aiaguide.stqry.app/en/story/20252

This is the type of space PoMo architects did so well at, especially in the latter stages. It's bright, airy, grandiose, and welcoming, and it perfectly incorporates the historical MassArt building it was grafted onto. I can understand the reluctance to a building like the Humana above, which, while I find it cool, I can certainly see how people would chafe at it being 10 pounds in a 5 pound bag. This, however, is what represents PoMo to me: public spaces on a grand scale that still feel comfortable at the personal level. I think that's why my favorite spaces to use it are hospitals and malls, massive complexes that could easily overwhelm, but because of great design instead welcome you in and make you feel at ease.

The interior designer's page for the building has more great shots - the furnishings and some other elements have changed, but the broad strokes are still there 30 years later, because they work: http://www.sbgarch.com/index.php?c=com&i=scbi
 
Arenacale said:
Am I weird that what I immediately think of when looking at those photos (other than Pauly Shore) is the interior of the Crystal Cathedral from those Sunday morning religious shows that I'd stumble on flipping through the channels? The Cathedral predates it by over a decade, and while I know the Biosphere truss-and-glass structure was chosen for functionality, I do think there are some interesting parallels in the "playing God" aspects of the Biosphere to the worship aspects of the Cathedral.
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When looking at Biosphere II I immediately thought about another Disney contribution -- the original EPCOT pavilions notably Journey Into Imagination, World of Motion, and Living With the Land: https://themouselets.com/history-of-future-world-epcot
 
kz1000ps said:
Not pomo per se, but certainly evocative of the recent past

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Biosphere II
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I'd post the rest of the text but the magazine scan is missing that page(s): https://www.usmodernist.org/AJ/A-1991-05.pdf
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Biosphere II has a Steve Bannon connection that I "can't unsee" - has completely tainted my perception of it.


"Two years earlier, in 1993, he sought management changes as part of a takeover effort.

Bannon advised ousting two managers and resigned as CEO when the parent company, Space Biosphere Ventures, rejected his recommendation. He was rehired in 1994 when his recommendations were adopted. Lawsuits soon followed.

Court records show Biosphere 2 officials filed a federal lawsuit accusing project director Margret Augustine of self-dealing and of funneling $800,000 of project money into her own company. They sought to put the company into receivership and ban Augustine and other managers from the site.

Augustine denied wrongdoing and the next day filed her own lawsuit in Pinal County Superior Court seeking $44.5 million in damages for breach of contract, libel, slander and sexual harassment, among other allegations."
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kz1000ps said:
Some Boston pomo from various Architecture Magazine scans

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That view of CambridgeSide from across the canal is peak. It's a shame they've futzed with it the last few years, it's still mostly there but with the lack of all that lighting, the trees on the roof, and the larger surrounding buildings it simply doesn't present the way it used to. It had a sort of Disney park castle effect, but in a way that wasn't overdone and schlocky.

Arsenal Mall is interesting to me. I can count the number of times I was in there as a kid on my hands, but it was always a fascinating place to be in, it had such an atmosphere, especially at night. That it sort of meandered through buildings rather than having long, endless straight corridors certainly helped to make it more memorable. Although, my memories of it are probably comingled with my more recent experiences at the also-now-demolished Greendale Mall in Worcester, which had a similar PoMo-industrial aesthetic but was a new design rather than a refurb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greendale_Mall
 
Welp, let's do a very shallow deep dive of Arsenal Mall courtesy of shots I saved years ago off of Labelscar, a now-defunct blog dedicated to retail archaeology, aka exploring dead/dying malls and big box stores.

This first handful date to 2001

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And these are from 2007

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I worked here on and off for a couple years Great Recession era, so I remember all this very well, but I can't say I miss it a ton 🙃
 
I went looking for Labelscar earlier since it had good photos of Greendale too, but I didn't realize it had finally disappeared. Maybe the Internet Archive still has it.
 
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