Totem Magazine

We would rather play than watch TV.

MY MOTHER, THE CAR
Imagine how ridiculous the interior of your house or apartment would look if it were designed to accommodate not you on foot, but people on bicycles. And yet suburban exteriors are designed for automobiles, not pedestrians.
   Sidewalks were decorative borders rather than viable footpaths, and they lacked the urban row of parallel-parked cars that served as a barrier between the pedestrian and the NASCAR traffic in the cities. The corner radii of intersections was stretched from an urban four feet to a suburban twenty, so that drivers could navigate them with a single finger on the wheel, minus the inconvenience of having to lean on the brakes. Crosswalks moved further apart to accommodate the new dimensions. All of these visual cues clued the pedestrian in to the fact that, if they were to come 'round here, they'd better be wrapped in a car.
   Interestingly enough, this pro-auto, anti-human environment would eventually contribute to the success of the designs of one man, a Mr. Earl S. Tupper. But more on that later.

THE AMERICAN SUBURB AESTHETIC
With suburbs, we created a place where the houses had windows, but the one real window into the outside world was located in the "living" room -on the front of the television. In the bizarre and staid feng shui of the suburban living room, the TV would occupy a position of premier geomantic beneficence, topped in tchotchkes and flanked by a couch exactly one vacuum-cleaner-width away from the coffee table. Underfoot, a carpet whose awful plushness suggested it came off the back of a Maurice Sendak character.
   In an environment like this, did people care about the design of the TV? The cladding of the object seemed to be of far inferior importance to the images that would spring from its warped looking-glass. Sort of like paying attention to a stripper's clothes -that nurse's outfit wouldn't matter worth a damn once the music started.
   To the side of the living rooms were big, roomy Formica kitchens in which to see whose potato salad really was the best. The 'fridge, of proportions close to vehicles that Japanese at the time were using to drive their families around in. And the food came from stocked supermarkets that hunter-gatherer societies might feel queasy looking at. Hard to believe a mere 200 years earlier we were running around with sticks, chasing our dinner; here it was all laid out for us, wrapped in glass cases.


		STEPFORD LIVES(continued)
We would rather play than watch TV. MY MOTHER, THE CAR Imagine how ridiculous the interior of your house or apartment would look if it were designed to accommodate not you on foot, but people on bicycles. And yet suburban exteriors are designed for automobiles, not pedestrians. Sidewalks were decorative borders rather than viable footpaths, and they lacked the urban row of parallel-parked cars that served as a barrier between the pedestrian and the NASCAR traffic in the cities. The corner radii of intersections was stretched from an urban four feet to a suburban twenty, so that drivers could navigate them with a single finger on the wheel, minus the inconvenience of having to lean on the brakes. Crosswalks moved further apart to accommodate the new dimensions. All of these visual cues clued the pedestrian in to the fact that, if they were to come 'round here, they'd better be wrapped in a car. Interestingly enough, this pro-auto, anti-human environment would eventually contribute to the success of the designs of one man, a Mr. Earl S. Tupper. But more on that later. THE AMERICAN SUBURB AESTHETIC With suburbs, we created a place where the houses had windows, but the one real window into the outside world was located in the "living" room -on the front of the television. In the bizarre and staid feng shui of the suburban living room, the TV would occupy a position of premier geomantic beneficence, topped in tchotchkes and flanked by a couch exactly one vacuum-cleaner-width away from the coffee table. Underfoot, a carpet whose awful plushness suggested it came off the back of a Maurice Sendak character. In an environment like this, did people care about the design of the TV? The cladding of the object seemed to be of far inferior importance to the images that would spring from its warped looking-glass. Sort of like paying attention to a stripper's clothes -that nurse's outfit wouldn't matter worth a damn once the music started. To the side of the living rooms were big, roomy Formica kitchens in which to see whose potato salad really was the best. The 'fridge, of proportions close to vehicles that Japanese at the time were using to drive their families around in. And the food came from stocked supermarkets that hunter-gatherer societies might feel queasy looking at. Hard to believe a mere 200 years earlier we were running around with sticks, chasing our dinner; here it was all laid out for us, wrapped in glass cases.		We lived in our house for a year without any living room furniture. We wanted to furnish the room with things we loved, not early attic or leftovers. Now we have everything but the pictures and the lamps. Above and below the living rooms were attics and garages filled with disposable cultural artifacts that, once paid for at the register, helped cement the buyer's identity. "We live in a throw-away economy," noted Reyner Banham, the editor of Architectural Review, in the '60s. That being the case, he posited that it was "clearly absurd to demand that objects designed for a short useful life should exhibit qualities signifying eternal validity." If anyone took this credo to heart, it was suburban Americans, who voted at the register. In that pre-Crate & Barrel, pre-Pottery Barn, pre-Ikea time, we loaded the station wagon up with hideous colonial architecture-style lamps and plastic-wrapped couches that, today, you wouldn't buy for fifty dollars if there was a hundred tucked in the cushions. Who has worse taste than the nouveaux riche? Postwar prosperity spurred an attitude of disposability that enabled us to make these choices, but even worse, America had little to refer to in the way of design history. For example, Vikings were once cleaving people in half with battleaxes, leading them to eventually develop better handles, sharper edges, a more ergonomic heft. Considerations on this level would later trickle down into the finer points of Scandinavian furniture design. We Americans had nothing of the sort, indeed no history at all, and this would extract a terrible aesthetic toll. (Of course the original Americans, the Native Americans, had a rich history of improving upon their artifacts, but unfortunately our less enlightened ancestors wiped most of them out.) WHERE THE HELL WAS THE DESIGN? >>

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