I see you also follow We Want Plates!
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The all-in-one efficiency unit with the range and the sink was a real thing; I once removed one from a house. It was quite a chore.
These photos are pretty horrifying in that special 1970s way, but of course, nothing compared to what some folks were able to come up with without the help of designer.
No. Look at photos from any other decade going back to the 20’s or even beyond. Styles may be different and outdated but nothing like the cringe-worthy intentional ugliness of the 70’s. The 70’s represent 10 years of universal ugliness. EVERYTHING was horrible. The clothes, the architecture, the furniture, carpeting, appliances hair styles, jewelry, cars. The relative beauty of a North American city is directly proportional to how much of it was built during the 70’s.
A man could walk down the street today in a suit made in 1935, 1945, 1955, 1965, 1985 etc and not get a second glance. Try that in a suit made in 1975 and people may literally think you are a clown.
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But in thirty years people will look back and wonder why the hell everything had chevrons and mason jars on it or whatever else Pinterest has wrought.
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The Geffrye Museum in Hoxton has interiors through the ages, including a 1990s loft style apartment. Not as garish as the 1970s, but starting to look odd
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exactly what I was thinking. the layout is really functional, it would be a joy to use. but the color and decor are completely wretched: your kitchen as designed by Mattel’s Strawberry Shortcake division on goofballs.
the first pic has the opposite problem. visually it’s not so bad. although the trimmings are lame and outdated, the colors work together and it’s a cozy look (though underlit for a dining area, so that element of cozy is dumb, too.) but the layout would drive a fung-shui master to insanity. it simply doesn’t function.
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Just recently I saw an article about people in the 60s planning to demolish and replace art nouveau buildings. There were all those comments about how the 60s people ruined everything with their hideous buildings. Nobody seemed to notice that in the 60s those art nouveau buildings were only slightly older than 60s buildings are today.
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I lived through the '70’s. Now I’m having flashbacks.
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You could poke your eye(s) out one one of those finials!
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“Wild patterns”… “Oriental themes”…
Ohgodwhichwayisthetoilet!?!
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I always felt like the seventies were a parasite decade from another history or something. It doesn’t match up stylistically to anything that came before or after. As BdgBill says, any generation previous had its weird things, sure, but even if you don’t like them, there was something charming about them. The seventies, on the other hand, is like that period in the fourteenth century when people wore shoes so extravagantly pointed that their tips had to be tucked into your belt, thus making you walk everywhere like duck with brittle bone disease: utterly inexplicable.
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It’s all about newness. Suddenly you can have explosions of color with modern wallpaper printing, people just went nuts and put it everywhere. Bold designs were part of the individualism that the popular social movements were expressing. A century earlier people were willing to put arsenic (and mercury and let) on their walls for the vibrant greens you could never have before.
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dude. holy cow.
This is the Age of Aquarius. If it moves, offer it a bong toke. If it doesn’t, paint it.
I need to decompress for a while.
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My work is done!
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I once lived in a home built by an architect in the late 60’s early 70’s era. At the time, late 80’s, it had turned into a college rental with all the horrors that ensued, but the basic design of the home was still really fascinating if not very thoughtful re: the New Orleans summer weather. It had a big central room - huge - and then off of that were bedrooms to either side, a kitchen to the back, and I think some kind of entry way in the front area and perhaps a balcony area, too, that we never accessed because college. Anyhow, someone had the actual photos of the thing in its prime with all the Jetson’s style furniture, and it was super gorgeous. The construction though was shit. Everything in that time period was, even this architect’s home. In New Orleans you could be in a house built in the 1900’s and it was still lovely, with lots of thought to how the breeze would flow through on a hot day, even if the floor was all wonky due to settlement, but the stuff built in the late 60’s and 70’s just did not last.
Interestingly, my own house is from 1938, and my next door neighbor’s is post war, like 1945. It is amazing the difference in the construction of our homes, even though there are just a few years difference in the construction periods. Mine has just those to die for heart of pine beams and floors, even though it was originally a beach cottage. Theirs they had to gut the floors after attempting to refinish them, because the quality of them was so poor, and the beams they just painted white - something I would never do to my own beautifully oxidized wood.
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We’re terribly House and Garden at number 7B;
We live in a most amusing mews - ever so very contemporary!
…
We’ve planned an uninhibited interior decor:
Curtains made of straw!
We’ve wallpapered the floor!
We don’t know if we like it,
But at least we can be sure:
There’s no place like home sweet home.
- ‘Design for Living’, Flanders and Swann
(Damn, the link doesn’t work here - start it at around 6:00 for the song in question.)
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Well, maybe. I’m not a fan myself. But styles do get reassessed occasionally. The 1960s “mid century modern” style used to be lumped into the “bad taste” category as well until recently. When my grandparents died in the early 1990s we got rid of their “ugly” 1960s furniture – which probably would have been worth something today as it looked liked something out of Don Draper’s condo.
You take that back! American cars were ugly, but not all cars.
[you’re not wrong about any of the rest of it]
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