> After New York replaced the sodium-vapor lights in the city’s 250,000 streetlamps with shiny new LEDs in 2017, the experience of walking through the city at night transformed, almost . . . overnight. Forgiving, romantic, shadowy orange gave way to cold, all-seeing bluish white.
Before the late 1970s, NYC was illuminated at night by pinkish-white incandescent bulbs.
When the yellow monstrosities were rolled out people almost rioted. Their harsh orange glow invaded bedrooms creeping between gaps in curtains and assaulting the eyes, destroyed the soft and warm ambiance that had set the night scene for generations, and muted all colors into a monochromatic hellscape.
After just 30 seconds on TimesMachine I found an article from 1982 about the transition and how some residents were hesitant and one jurisdiction rejected the change out of hand. It took a long time for NYC to gain its orange glow and people didn't like it. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1982/09/12/137...
Lol here's another article from the 40s: "Sodium light is not suitable for city streets, Commissioner Goodman said, because it gives a person a sallow appearance not liked by women."
People of my age view them as a nuisance born out of the austerity of the 1970s, a temporary suboptimal fix that persisted due to inertia. A reminder of the rot and desperation of the that era.
With the orange-ish sodium lights, I could go to sleep with their light still coming through the bedroom window. The amber glow was reminiscent of the glow of fire.
The harsh blue light now tells my brain it's daytime. I had to buy blackout curtains to be able to fall asleep.
It's the same principle as using the amber-hued Night Mode on your phone in the evening.
I never experienced the pinkish-white, but the transition from orange to blue has been horrible for sleep. Nighttime lighting around homes should be amber, not blue. (Contrast with highways where you do want people to stay awake, so blue makes sense.)
An easily-unrealized benefit until people were forced to use them, they didn't ruin our low-light vision, at least not nearly as much as the new ones. You could easily see into unlit areas, or go from an unlit area to a lit one without your vision having to adjust.
Chances are the pre-1980s lamps were mercury-vapour, not incandescent. Incandescent lamps were obsolete for road lighting by the 1950s. Sodium lamps caught on because they were much more efficient than both.
You seem to make no room for the possibility that the people rioting were correct in both cases, that the current lights are worse than the yellow, and the yellow lights are worse than the pinkish.
I stopped reading there. I'll take LEDs over ugly orange any day (or mercury-arc, as well). When my town converted, they picked neutral-white lights for the side streets and ones with a very slight yellow tint for the major streets. Either of these is far better as far as I'm concerned.
Even the old mercury-arc lights weren't that great - either sickly greenish or a color-corrected version that was blue-white. The 175W mercury-arc streetlight on my corner was replace by a 40W LED, with better lighting to boot.
Low-pressure sodium is even worse - an absolute monochromatic yellow. If you forgot where you parked your red car, good luck finding it. Been there, done that.
It's amazing how people get used to stuff. I remember well how awful those sodium lamps were when they were first put in, and how nearly everyone hated them in part because they made everything look ugly.
Now, people get nostalgic for them. People are weird.
> People of my age view them as a nuisance born out of the austerity of the 1970s, a temporary suboptimal fix that persisted due to inertia. A reminder of the rot and desperation of the that era.
> Now this dude is nostalgic for them?
You could just as readily be talking about a cassette tape.
> A reminder of the rot and desperation of the that era.
I think there's a tendency to romanticize this kind of thing, a la an early Tom Waits song. I've lived in Portland for a little under 5 years. I feel like it has been moving in the "ugly" direction the author describes for a while, and it started before I moved here. People that have been here much longer describe how it used to be much more "gritty" and dangerous. They say it with sort of a twinkle in their eye, almost as if they miss it. Part of me would have loved to see how it was, but the other part of me knows what's its like to be in the wrong part of town. At least you have the wherewithal to see why a move to LED lights was probably a smart move. Just because it's new and different doesn't make it bad.
My city and apparently numerous cities in my area have passed ordinances that new buildings over a certain size have to have multiple facades to look like multiple buildings butted up to each other. The effect has been this astonishingly hideous theme park esq approximation of small town America that isn’t fooling anyone. It looks more out of place next to the actual turn of the twentieth century buildings than an unambiguously new building would.
We can all see quite clearly this block long apartment building isn’t actually 5 buildings. Yet, now we have to suffer five hideous facades.
That’s funny. I don’t know about any ordinance, but you’re describing my town’s new downtown. [1]
Just around the corner is a 75+ yro brick building (to the right of this street view) [2] with a detailed facade fashioned to have a small personal scale and plays with ornament to align with other older buildings on this street. (And this is some firm’s same solution/plan that you can find in at least one development miles away. [3])
The building to the left of the street view is a monstrosity, and here is another around the corner [4]
I’ve heard many long-time residents complain bitterly about the experience of walking our downtown, so I hope this new building will move the needle in the right direction for folks.
For the speed the new building went up and the challenge to develop in such a central area on a large plot, I think the result is positive (though, I’m sure I could not afford to rent there).
And there is no economic possibility for small developers to actually build multiple buildings organically anymore. This is because of the economics of scale of complying with stringent building code requirements along with endless zoning board approval meetings, environmental reviews, traffic studies, etc etc etc.
Wow, what a misguided and dumb "solution." If they're going to be that controlling, at least they could have enforced a truly helpful set of aesthetic guidelines.
I just wanted to echo the gray frustration here. I went to buy vinyl flooring (I can't afford hardwood) and the sheer amount of inexplicably "grey wood" planks was staggering. Why! Like, it's as if some alien only saw wood in an episode of I Love Lucy and wanted to replicate it.
I firmly dislike cherrywood, anything that is more red than brown is absolute shit to me. My parents loved it, thought it was the pinnacle of wealth.
Now you might be questioning why I dislike cherrywood. The answer doesn't actually matter though, I dislike it. Most importantly, I am not the only one.
I like vinyl, because I spent a few weeks of my life (probably at most a few hours total actual wall clock hours on it) replacing flooring in a couple of rooms through a few houses. The beginning, and the rest of my answer here though, also does not matter. It only matters that I like it and will pay money for it over wood. I am also, not the only one.
Gray is used for many reasons in new builds, its a neutral color, and because many builders build a house/apartment, THEN sell to customers. Very few customers buy a plot of land, contract an architect, make customizations, and then build the building. It comes with the realization that people will substitute out the things they want on their own, not requiring someone else figure out everything they like and being creative all on their behalf for $0.
I blame house flippers honestly. They buy up houses that are in rough shape on the cheap, then renovate strictly to sell, not for personal taste. The incentives at play are to shoot for a very dull, milquetoast instagram-ish aesthetic that anyone can sort of get along with, so you won't lose people for not liking whatever hardwood or paint colors you picked.
When selling our previous property, the seller agent recommended we paint it in "agreeable gray," supposedly the current color that is neutral and will not affect anyone negatively.
Forget flooring, why are carpets and rugs with a grey and washed out faded look so popular? If you want a muted look, just don't buy one! Their whole purpose is to add color and style to a room and yet so much of what's available looks terrible.
After a flood, I bought pine? colored Luxury Vinyl Plank at my wife's insistence. Previously we had dark engineered bamboo which looked good but it constantly scratched (chairs and dogs) which really bothered her and I was always worried about water getting on it. I was against the vinyl just because it was vinyl. I was wrong. This stuff is awesome. Looks great, close to water proof short of a flood and pretty much no scratches in a year plus of being down. It was not that much cheaper though vs engineered wood but a good deal less expensive than hardwood.
That’s surprising. From the interior design content I watch, the white and grey aesthetic is very much considered outdated and a mistake. Warm wood tones are much higher regarded.
My current place have this. I don't care to pay to replace it, but I would much prefer something light wood. Which is somewhat traditional indoors. It would also go with most things.
Maybe not a in a typical house, but I can see a minimalist architecture with white walls, cement pillars, grey wood floors, and a single tree branch sculpture.
* Colors other than gray don't look nice in CAD and aren't the default.
* It's super easy to just stack a bunch of rectangles (looking at you, architects...)
* You can chamfer and fillet but that's the end of what most people do. More complex shapes are hard to due due to the clunky spline tools. Hence elaborate ornaments are left out.
Beauty isn’t valued in these areas by those with the resources to choose it.
When the majority of people and businesses live hand to mouth, those that don’t have to constantly maximise exponential returns to their owners. Who has money to burn on “valueless” beauty
Even if the cost of beauty is the same, and there is an actual value, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you are increasing maximum potential value but you are reducing the minimum (you turn off some buyers who don’t like the look). Throw in the concept changing over time (pale green bathrooms used to be a big think in the U.K. in the 80s) and people go for neutral and boring.
Oh man. There is this building in the city where I live. It's SO uncompromisngly gray and ugly that sometimes I think maybe it's actually a parody of this particular style. It kind of looks like a prison from the outside too... but it's actually condos! I hate it so much that I love it. :)
Anyway here's a great photo of it I found on Google:
When we believed that our institutions (religious, governmental, cultural, corporate) took care of us (whether or not they did), we would invest our efforts in return.
The jig is up. Why invest more than “minimum viable caring” at this point?
As an Ontarian who recently took a road trip through Quebec (where a faith in culture still presides), it seemed like there was more “giving a shit” about all institutions and it came through in quality across the board.
Missing context: I believe the building referred to as "The Josh" is the Gluck+ affordable housing development Van Sinderen Plaza. [1]
Compare the colorful panel surfacing to the description "Our new neighbor is a classic 5-over-1: retail on the ground floor, topped with several stories of apartments one wouldn’t want to be able to afford... We spent the summer certain that the caution tape–yellow panels on The Josh’s south side were insulation, to be eventually supplanted by an actual facade. Alas, in its finished form The Josh really is yellow, and also burgundy, gray, and brown."
The coy phrasing about "apartments one wouldn’t want to be able to afford" is a disguised reference to the fact that the apartments are reserved only for low-income residents; the author would not want to live in Brooklyn on the poverty-level income required to be eligible for the housing development.
The pictured sculpture the author dislikes is "Waiting" by the artist KAWS (Brian Donnelly). [2]
There's a lot more variation nowadays imo, and you can find whatever you are looking for, consciously or not.
If you want to find ugly, you can. If you want to find vibrant bright colours, you certainly can, too. At least in the UK, in both London and Manchester, where I have lived, you can find the best and the worst of many kinds of styles. Where I visited in Belfast, also. Also in Indonesia, from Bali to Jakarta, there's so much different kinds of styles you can experience. Sure, the "average vibe" is also kind of persistent, but I think the average vibe has been quite bland in many places for a while.
This includes art, architecture and the vibe as well as interior decor.
Edit: adjusted to distinguish between "general" and "average"
Can’t bring myself to read a screed like this. Every few years there’s been an article making exactly this complaint for hundreds of years. Most things are ugly and/or trash. Always has been, always will be. And the current fashion will eventually change, it always does.
I’ve got a counterpoint: we finally have the time to breathe and actually notice the ugliness. You don’t care about looks in a time of war. You put a lot of effort into “looks” and loving well shortly after a war as a rebound “look now it’s so better” compensation. We’ve instead (mostly) plateaued, which, at a (mostly) global level isn’t necessarily bad.
(Of course, if art is a reflection of present-day it’s not necessarily predicting a stable future in the context of global warming/water wars etc. I wonder if more graffiti will show up on these themes over time.)
There's a stupid article like this every decade where the writer thinks he's being edgy when he's actually just regurgitating the same shit spewed by regular people every 10 years. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but really stupid people who write articles like this think their eyes are the center of the universe.
Part of the article laments how the shape of cars have turned into "cough drops" and "globular tears". Clever but I can also write a edgy article about how idiots in the past designed cars as if they were hideous boxes and the concept of a curve was too advanced for their square minds to comprehend.
The debate about how we can’t make classic beauty anymore will always be around (and it’s not very interesting).
But what strikes me in some “ugly” cities is how accepted it is to let things be objectively ugly, for example in some cities you can see how a building wedged between two beautiful buildings has been torn down but the effort to build a new one seems on hold. As if owning the building/land gave the right to leave a scar for any amount of time. In cities where this doesn’t happen I imagine you simply don’t get a permit to leave an ugly hole. Build it or face a stiff fine, perhaps forcing you to sell to someone who would build. Seems like the only reasonable way of keeping it tidy.
A lot of UK inner city areas look like this for example.
The other day, I saw some workers finishing a series of 8 white shipping-sized containers each with A/C, aligned one next to the other on a plot of urban land.
I decided it had to be the expansion of a public (state) school, because I’ve read on the press about these containers being used in cases of shock-doctrine implementation.
Compared to foreign universities, Public education and public buildings in general used to be ugly, uninspiring, from the cradle (horrible huge hospitals) to the grave (horrible huge condominia-like wall with niches for a coffin).
We are transcending these thresholds to go full ugliness for the poor, in the name of economic efficiency
[+] [-] snakeyjake|2 years ago|reply
Before the late 1970s, NYC was illuminated at night by pinkish-white incandescent bulbs.
When the yellow monstrosities were rolled out people almost rioted. Their harsh orange glow invaded bedrooms creeping between gaps in curtains and assaulting the eyes, destroyed the soft and warm ambiance that had set the night scene for generations, and muted all colors into a monochromatic hellscape.
After just 30 seconds on TimesMachine I found an article from 1982 about the transition and how some residents were hesitant and one jurisdiction rejected the change out of hand. It took a long time for NYC to gain its orange glow and people didn't like it. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1982/09/12/137...
Lol here's another article from the 40s: "Sodium light is not suitable for city streets, Commissioner Goodman said, because it gives a person a sallow appearance not liked by women."
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/05/26/iss...
People of my age view them as a nuisance born out of the austerity of the 1970s, a temporary suboptimal fix that persisted due to inertia. A reminder of the rot and desperation of the that era.
Now this dude is nostalgic for them?
[+] [-] crazygringo|2 years ago|reply
No, they really were better for sleep.
With the orange-ish sodium lights, I could go to sleep with their light still coming through the bedroom window. The amber glow was reminiscent of the glow of fire.
The harsh blue light now tells my brain it's daytime. I had to buy blackout curtains to be able to fall asleep.
It's the same principle as using the amber-hued Night Mode on your phone in the evening.
I never experienced the pinkish-white, but the transition from orange to blue has been horrible for sleep. Nighttime lighting around homes should be amber, not blue. (Contrast with highways where you do want people to stay awake, so blue makes sense.)
[+] [-] dghlsakjg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Izkata|2 years ago|reply
> Now this dude is nostalgic for them?
An easily-unrealized benefit until people were forced to use them, they didn't ruin our low-light vision, at least not nearly as much as the new ones. You could easily see into unlit areas, or go from an unlit area to a lit one without your vision having to adjust.
[+] [-] NoPedantsThanks|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Paianni|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vondur|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renewiltord|2 years ago|reply
That's pretty much it. SF is full of a similar kind.
[+] [-] ironmagma|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flyinghamster|2 years ago|reply
I stopped reading there. I'll take LEDs over ugly orange any day (or mercury-arc, as well). When my town converted, they picked neutral-white lights for the side streets and ones with a very slight yellow tint for the major streets. Either of these is far better as far as I'm concerned.
Even the old mercury-arc lights weren't that great - either sickly greenish or a color-corrected version that was blue-white. The 175W mercury-arc streetlight on my corner was replace by a 40W LED, with better lighting to boot.
Low-pressure sodium is even worse - an absolute monochromatic yellow. If you forgot where you parked your red car, good luck finding it. Been there, done that.
[+] [-] JohnFen|2 years ago|reply
Now, people get nostalgic for them. People are weird.
[+] [-] mp05|2 years ago|reply
> Now this dude is nostalgic for them?
You could just as readily be talking about a cassette tape.
[+] [-] codelikeawolf|2 years ago|reply
I think there's a tendency to romanticize this kind of thing, a la an early Tom Waits song. I've lived in Portland for a little under 5 years. I feel like it has been moving in the "ugly" direction the author describes for a while, and it started before I moved here. People that have been here much longer describe how it used to be much more "gritty" and dangerous. They say it with sort of a twinkle in their eye, almost as if they miss it. Part of me would have loved to see how it was, but the other part of me knows what's its like to be in the wrong part of town. At least you have the wherewithal to see why a move to LED lights was probably a smart move. Just because it's new and different doesn't make it bad.
[+] [-] donatj|2 years ago|reply
We can all see quite clearly this block long apartment building isn’t actually 5 buildings. Yet, now we have to suffer five hideous facades.
[+] [-] xtiansimon|2 years ago|reply
Just around the corner is a 75+ yro brick building (to the right of this street view) [2] with a detailed facade fashioned to have a small personal scale and plays with ornament to align with other older buildings on this street. (And this is some firm’s same solution/plan that you can find in at least one development miles away. [3])
The building to the left of the street view is a monstrosity, and here is another around the corner [4]
I’ve heard many long-time residents complain bitterly about the experience of walking our downtown, so I hope this new building will move the needle in the right direction for folks.
For the speed the new building went up and the challenge to develop in such a central area on a large plot, I think the result is positive (though, I’m sure I could not afford to rent there).
[1]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/XKzYWUhiV5WTUBXv7?g_st=ic
[2]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/fGY9DYCvH6xZdNbz5?g_st=ic
[3]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/pgBMZ3wLUr3yCGvL8?g_st=ic
[4]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yj1Mk9pAE9BFMrNm6?g_st=ic
[+] [-] dzdt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zip1234|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajkjk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoPedantsThanks|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jszymborski|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] latency-guy2|2 years ago|reply
Now you might be questioning why I dislike cherrywood. The answer doesn't actually matter though, I dislike it. Most importantly, I am not the only one.
I like vinyl, because I spent a few weeks of my life (probably at most a few hours total actual wall clock hours on it) replacing flooring in a couple of rooms through a few houses. The beginning, and the rest of my answer here though, also does not matter. It only matters that I like it and will pay money for it over wood. I am also, not the only one.
Gray is used for many reasons in new builds, its a neutral color, and because many builders build a house/apartment, THEN sell to customers. Very few customers buy a plot of land, contract an architect, make customizations, and then build the building. It comes with the realization that people will substitute out the things they want on their own, not requiring someone else figure out everything they like and being creative all on their behalf for $0.
[+] [-] ToucanLoucan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juggertao|2 years ago|reply
So this excludes all colors for everything. Black, white, gray everything.
[+] [-] yostrovs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morkalork|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] account-5|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoPedantsThanks|2 years ago|reply
Now we mock everything grey as "Millennial grey."
[+] [-] wonderwonder|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gigachad|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] firstplacelast|2 years ago|reply
It costs money and time. I work with people in shirts that are only befitting for elementary school kids.
You can have the niceties, just have to pay for them.
But I think this is about where the market is going. People (with the money for homes) don’t care, so that’s how they’re catered to.
[+] [-] petepete|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] proc0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mglz|2 years ago|reply
* Colors other than gray don't look nice in CAD and aren't the default.
* It's super easy to just stack a bunch of rectangles (looking at you, architects...)
* You can chamfer and fillet but that's the end of what most people do. More complex shapes are hard to due due to the clunky spline tools. Hence elaborate ornaments are left out.
[+] [-] cs702|2 years ago|reply
Apple devices and stores look clean and elegant to me.
Tesla vehicles feel and look simple and beautiful to me.
If given a choice, I'd rather live in new buildings with bright, light-filled interiors than in old buildings with darker, mustier interiors.
I could provide more examples of things I don't think are ugly. The main point is this:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
[+] [-] midasuni|2 years ago|reply
When the majority of people and businesses live hand to mouth, those that don’t have to constantly maximise exponential returns to their owners. Who has money to burn on “valueless” beauty
Even if the cost of beauty is the same, and there is an actual value, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you are increasing maximum potential value but you are reducing the minimum (you turn off some buyers who don’t like the look). Throw in the concept changing over time (pale green bathrooms used to be a big think in the U.K. in the 80s) and people go for neutral and boring.
[+] [-] apantel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sph|2 years ago|reply
They lied on the publication date.
[+] [-] mewpmewp2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jeema101|2 years ago|reply
Anyway here's a great photo of it I found on Google:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipMKvYH4OHFU5o4gZlSZ...
[+] [-] z5h|2 years ago|reply
As an Ontarian who recently took a road trip through Quebec (where a faith in culture still presides), it seemed like there was more “giving a shit” about all institutions and it came through in quality across the board.
[+] [-] dzdt|2 years ago|reply
Compare the colorful panel surfacing to the description "Our new neighbor is a classic 5-over-1: retail on the ground floor, topped with several stories of apartments one wouldn’t want to be able to afford... We spent the summer certain that the caution tape–yellow panels on The Josh’s south side were insulation, to be eventually supplanted by an actual facade. Alas, in its finished form The Josh really is yellow, and also burgundy, gray, and brown."
The coy phrasing about "apartments one wouldn’t want to be able to afford" is a disguised reference to the fact that the apartments are reserved only for low-income residents; the author would not want to live in Brooklyn on the poverty-level income required to be eligible for the housing development.
The pictured sculpture the author dislikes is "Waiting" by the artist KAWS (Brian Donnelly). [2]
[1] https://gluckplus.com/project/van-sinderen-plaza-affordable-... [2] https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/kaws-waiting-brook...
[+] [-] firtoz|2 years ago|reply
If you want to find ugly, you can. If you want to find vibrant bright colours, you certainly can, too. At least in the UK, in both London and Manchester, where I have lived, you can find the best and the worst of many kinds of styles. Where I visited in Belfast, also. Also in Indonesia, from Bali to Jakarta, there's so much different kinds of styles you can experience. Sure, the "average vibe" is also kind of persistent, but I think the average vibe has been quite bland in many places for a while.
This includes art, architecture and the vibe as well as interior decor.
Edit: adjusted to distinguish between "general" and "average"
[+] [-] skywhopper|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] user_7832|2 years ago|reply
(Of course, if art is a reflection of present-day it’s not necessarily predicting a stable future in the context of global warming/water wars etc. I wonder if more graffiti will show up on these themes over time.)
[+] [-] corethree|2 years ago|reply
Take a look at this from over a decade ago: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5gynqq/what-v11n11
Part of the article laments how the shape of cars have turned into "cough drops" and "globular tears". Clever but I can also write a edgy article about how idiots in the past designed cars as if they were hideous boxes and the concept of a curve was too advanced for their square minds to comprehend.
[+] [-] lindig|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrelaszlo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|2 years ago|reply
But what strikes me in some “ugly” cities is how accepted it is to let things be objectively ugly, for example in some cities you can see how a building wedged between two beautiful buildings has been torn down but the effort to build a new one seems on hold. As if owning the building/land gave the right to leave a scar for any amount of time. In cities where this doesn’t happen I imagine you simply don’t get a permit to leave an ugly hole. Build it or face a stiff fine, perhaps forcing you to sell to someone who would build. Seems like the only reasonable way of keeping it tidy. A lot of UK inner city areas look like this for example.
[+] [-] Erratic6576|2 years ago|reply
I decided it had to be the expansion of a public (state) school, because I’ve read on the press about these containers being used in cases of shock-doctrine implementation.
Compared to foreign universities, Public education and public buildings in general used to be ugly, uninspiring, from the cradle (horrible huge hospitals) to the grave (horrible huge condominia-like wall with niches for a coffin).
We are transcending these thresholds to go full ugliness for the poor, in the name of economic efficiency