Um, what? That’s not true.
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So, when you buy commission a desk, you choose to have it made so that it serves a practical purpose only, with no thought as to whether it can save your soul?
No wonder “craft” has become so constricted in its meaning-- mass production is so much cheaper.
Hm. This makes me want to look into NYC building codes, but I don’t have the time right now. Something just feels wrong here. Were regulations waived or loopholes exploited?
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On a lighter sidenote - if you already have huge mounds lying around nothing speaks against putting stuff on top of them.
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That must be the most German way of naming a tourist attraction…
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When it was built, being able to look out broadly over ‘God’s Creation’ would have been a wondrous and rare thing.
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Dang, I’d be really sorry if they shut the Vessel down, I really would like to visit. For no other reason that I love to scurry up and down, right and left and all over those kinds of spaces and structures, it must be my inner rat taking over - reason be damned.
As for the nature of the work, many posters here rightly point put that it’s badly placed and surrounded by ugly buildings and dangerous to boot, but if the owners ever decide to get off their butts and install proper protection, it could go on being an attraction, controversial as it is.
Regrettably, such buildings have a tradition for being shall we say unsafe: for years it’s been interdit to climb the Tour Eiffel’s exterior stairs, to my great regret. Here you can see them in all their twisting glory:
on peut toujours caresser un rêve…
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“Fuckin’ Bruges!”
I love that movie!
“yous not goin up there, yous a fuckin elephant”*
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Thank you! I sit corrected.
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Absolutely, it does; since the days that man was still in caves, art has elevated us above lesser evolved animals.
Whether it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’ art is relative to the beholder, but it DOES serve a valid purpose.
Life without higher pursuits like music and art is merely existence.
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Yeah, but you can still write on it. It has a practical purpose. To some that means, that the desk is craft, rather than art.
A meaningful distinction? Depends on the critic. The arts and crafts movement sought to blur the distinction or remove it entirely.
The argument that crafts are feminine, while arts are masculine seems to fall apart quite quickly.
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Yes, it absolutely did, as basically all industrializing cities of the era did. Most regions of the city proper hit their peak population density in exactly that period. The population of the city exploded from about 1.6 million to 2.9 million between 1860 and 1920. Demographics of Paris - Wikipedia The tower avoided some of that critique because the site had previously been cleared for other uses, including an exhibitions, parade grounds, and gardens. Paris had just officially ended the Hausmann period (his plans continued for another few decades), so the disruption of the tower was comparatively small.
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But not kneecaps. That could use a little less art and a little more craft, but that’s architects for you.
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I’m only five foot one, like Uncle Iggy, so my little knees would be quite safe. Maybe Gaudi designed it for another shortarse woman.
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I’d argue they sought to bring it back to what it was before industrialisation, when there was no such distinction being made.
Art being something distinct from craft is a paradigm that has only existed – if one wants to follow the Arts and Crafts understanding, and I’m inclined to do that – for maybe 200 years* out of all of humanity’s existence.
* I’m going for only 200 here because I’d argue that in the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution there was still a lot of individualism in industry (as anyone looking at the Iron Bridge or at the early works of Wedgwood would attest to) and that, conversely, many artists still worked in the artist/craftsman paradigm.
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The Curbed article posted by @jerwin discusses this.
The low railing height also reflects how the city’s building code might fail to regulate novel structures like the Vessel. In Department of Buildings filings, it’s described as an aerial walkway viewing platform. My review didn’t find any other projects described as such in New York City. (Readers, if you know of others, please get in touch). Unlike the observation decks at the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center, the Vessel is freestanding, so it was coded in the same category as amusement park rides, stadiums, and bleachers. But stadiums and amusement parks don’t allow people to free fall from great heights. In the case of the Vessel, the building code did not account for its unobstructed 150-foot-high drop to the ground below.
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