Whatever happened to planters like these two? They may still be in production, but wherever they are still available, and that’s nearly nowhere, they’re civic-sized, weigh 500-1000 pounds, and are out of scale for people’s home gardens. Why? Whither modernism for domestic landscaping? After a golden age of simple, sophisticated design in the 60s and 70s, the commercial design industry is taking us in the direction of cheapness, ornateness, bad nostalgia and the whole philosophy that goes with it. Think this argument is overblown? See what artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer says about design and cities in this great talk here (start at 1:15 if you’re in a hurry). “What civic politicians mean by [civic] regeneration is putting 19th-century lampposts and Starbucks and a nice kind of 19th-century kind of faux originality.” His comments aren’t specifically about commercial design products but they point to a widespread mindset that encourages stuffy Edwardianism all over the place. Luckily someone went against the faux-Olde Worlde trend in Vancouver’s Yaletown, as you can see here, but this type of simplicity is getting rarer and rarer.

I’m writing this in response to my friend Gavin, who took the above photos in Vancouver’s Yaletown and wanted to know where to find objects like these. And he’s not alone. But the answer is that you can’t these things. Last year I looked everywhere for both types of planters above—cement or aggregate concrete planters free of detail, totally plain, no curves, no angles, no tapering, no lip. Impossible. What you get these days is more or less what you see in the photo below. The salesperson at Sanderson Concrete near Vancouver couldn’t understand why I made such a strong distinction between the two, but to me it’s European modernism in a fight with a B-movie version of Sherlock Holmes’ London. The planter above is pure, minimalist and cool; the planter below is stuffier, non-modern, bourgier, not to mention its two finishes are at war with one another. If the planter is cast, why not cast it of all one material? What meaningful relationship do the two tones have to each other? The overly smooth interior is poured into what was a relatively attractive exterior if you can ignore the pointless lip. Nowadays everything has weird curves and tapers and that dreadful, plasticky edge. Each of these formal decisions radically changes the object’s aesthetic and historical associations.

This planter reminds me of a line from the Eels song from the cult Brit TV show The Might Boosh: ”Elements of the past & future, combining to form something not quite as good as either”:

My neighbour, seeking a modern aesthetic but not finding one in concrete, finally ordered the fibrecrete planter from DWR, below. It’s a nearly cuboid, nearly detail-free, faux concrete planter. Too bad about the mild flare, though, and it’s not cheap either. Sadly, when the shipment arrived the colour was the farthest thing from the concrete-colour in the catalogue, and was instead a sort of Edwardian blue. See the photo. The DWR planter may pretend it’s “concrete” in colour but the house’s real concrete steps and foundation are a silent rebuttal. They know what concrete looks like; they are concrete. Even after a year, the blue finish of those planters bothers me.

If someone would please give me a credible political/aesthetic economic explanation of why the industry doesn’t think the market will support pure concrete minimalism I’d appreciate it. Whatever happened to niche markets? Even fairly large niche markets? Maybe don’t answer that.

Given recent world events this may all seem a trivial concern, but it’s just one small example of problems endemic in the whole design/homewares industry and by extension across our entire built environment. It’s an example of the way in which mass production and concentration of ownership married to lowest-common-denominator market research are cheapening design, and filling our surroundings with a sort of crass, faux-historical conservatism that will look even worse in a few years’ time. It’s wasteful, and it’s unfortunate that just when people are willing to buy fewer things but spend a little more on better-designed products, design products are getting much, much worse—they’re too pointlessly detailed, they’ll never be classic, and they won’t be aesthetically long-wearing. There’s nothing wrong with historical styles, if they make sense in context and are done faithfully, but how often is this the case? This is even true with historical modernism – say goodbye to chrome and clean lines, say hello to powder coated chair legs in eccentric shapes; IKEA I’m talking to you. I wish people would insist on better design by refusing to buy this dreck. Tell Sanderson Concrete & friends to go back and make at least a few products the old way. (They’re tired of hearing from me.) If you agree, email them here or badger your local dealer.

PS To all those who are asking – that’s a wasabi plant in my garden, in the foreground of the photo above. Below are some great custom-cast planters by Vancouver’s Considered Design.

Via Williamson.

“We live today in a world of ever more stuff – what sometimes seems a deluge of goods and shopping. We tend to assume that this has two results: that we are more superficial, and that we are more materialistic, our relationships to things coming at the expense of our relationships to people. We make such assumptions, we speak in cliches, but we have rarely trid to put these assumptions to the test. By the time you finish this book you will discover that, in many ways, the opposite is true; that possessions often remain profound and usually the closer our relationships are with objects, the closer our relationships with people.”

Quote above is from The Comfort of Things by Daniel Miller, a UK anthropologist. Thanks to my friend Keith and his “Domestic Spaces” reading group for telling me about this book. I’m not convinced it’s not a tiny bit overoptimistic, but it’s entertaining and provocative. Its finding that belongings and decor both reflect and enhance social relationships is a relief from a perhaps puritan, protestant view that decor and acquisitiveness are an alienated substitute for those very relationships. Find the book here.

PS This doesn’t mean we should all go out and consume a lot of crap! For a more theoretical critique of why we collect, see Susan Stewart’s book On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection.

Photos here are from Flickr; click on them for more information. Exception is Glenn and Gina O’Brien in the swinging chair, by Todd Selby.

“… [Our subjects] put up ornaments; they laid down carpets. They selected furnishing and got dressed that morning. Some things may be gifts or objects retained from the past, but they have decided to live with them, to place them in lines or higgledy-piggledy; they made the room minimalist or crammed to the gills. These things are not a random collection. They have been gradually accumulated as an expression of that person or household.”

Canadian House and Home recently asked photographer Todd Selby about the aesthetic of his photography and blog:

Q: What’s with all the crazy collections and homes with a borderline messy aesthetic?

A: My look is very of the culture. It’s a backlash to that super modern, dot-com, end of the ’90s era. It’s messy, human and organic. People tell me, “Your website makes me feel okay with collecting weird things, being messy, having weird shoes.” I never thought it would have any impact, but if it does, that’s amazing.

Photo above of Gerald de Cock, hairstylist, in his Chelsea Hotel apartment in New York. By Todd Selby. See also minimalism vs. maximalism: “minimum is maximum in drag.”

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The blog YOU HAVE BEEN HERE SOMETIME does, as its title suggests, provoke an uncanny sensation. It’s halfway between a feeling of deja vu and a renewed sense of the mysterious life of objects. No snapshots of the blog shown here could reproduce the feeling you get from the way David John, its creator, exhibits photographs and information; you just have to go there for yourself. YHBHS’s collection of dopplegangers and triples is probably the main engine of the uncanny effect. How does he find art and design objects that echo each other in this way? Once combined, the pieces become animate by virtue of what seems to be a conversation with each other. I also appreciate the way he combines design with art—mostly midcentury, 60s and later sculpture. And with lamps, because on his blog everything is illuminated. Then there’s the sheer quantity of white space, something the internet seldom allows us to experience and which on YHBHS produces a kind of suspenseful, magical atmosphere well as a distinct sensation of falling slowly down the page. The simplicity of the whole is deceptive, and the geometry is mesmerizing. Sometimes when I can’t stabilize my mood or things are just too busy, I go to you have been here sometime and I feel better. David has remarked on the importance of art in a community, and he’s right. The blog proves that creativity can produce a different kind of space. YHBHS is from L.A.

The Russian Hall, formerly the Russian People’s Home, consistently produces typography so clear, so straightforward, so capitalized it’s almost a design manifesto in itself. That’s what happens when you try to produce design degree zero: the more you eschew style, the cooler your no-style becomes and finally you’re just rad whether you like or not.