
How normie minimalism and farmhouse chic took over contemporary design - jim-jim-jim
https://hyperallergic.com/566183/how-normie-minimalism-and-farmhouse-chic-took-over-contemporary-design/
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com2kid
> Their commonality lies in the same impulse for vacuous, petit bourgeois
> taste to launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy.

Oh shove it.

I like minimalism because I grew up in a house with 6 tvs for 4 people, and so
many tupperware containers that it could take a solid 10 minutes (not
exaggerating!) to find a matching container and lid. Finding a lid for a stove
pot was of similar difficulty.

So yeah, I have one set of storage containers from Costco (the same set pretty
much everyone else has) and one set of pots and pans with matching lids, and
little enough stuff that I can mostly _find_ what I want.

Minimalism is nice because it allows people to take control of their stuff,
instead of stuff taking control of them. Minimalism is nice because I can go
buy a _few_ well made pieces of furniture that will last a long time.

And minimalism is nice because it is a _lot_ easier to dust.

Edit: After giving it 5 minutes of thought, it becomes apparent that
minimalism is _extremely_ anti-consumerism.

"Buy less stuff! Buy a few high quality items that last a long time! Don't get
doilies for your couch arms!"

No wonder American furniture retailers took forever to get on board. Heck up
here in the Pacific Northwest it is still hard to find good modern furniture
stores. Back when I graduated college and started outfitting my apartment,
Ikea was pretty much the only show in town.

~~~
mc32
I think there is functional minimalism which basically just want to get out of
your way and provide function but there is also a kind of pretentious one
which provides form over function which is overbearing, in your face
minimalism that is just because it can.

~~~
voisin
Can you provide examples of both for those of us less clear about the
distinction?

~~~
mc32
Examples of the former are the furniture and whatnot you can buy from your
modern furniture store... the latter things you might see at chic museum shops
(these are smaller items) but it can be things like a headrest that looks
nice, but in practice doesn't work. Aesthetically it might look balanced and
have a wow look but don't try sitting in it kind of thing.

~~~
com2kid
Traditional furniture had the same problem but being too ornate instead. How
many fancy hand carved wood chairs with 90 degree straight up backs exist?
Painful to sit in, but they looked wonderful!

It is possible to get unusable either way. :/

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recursivedoubts
Modern designers, architects and critics quite often share a very specific
anxiety with their puritan forebearers: a haunting fear that someone,
somewhere, may be happy.

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Xcelerate
I like giant windows because I prefer seeing nature and sunlight over drab
walls. I also don’t like clutter and a lot of visual commotion. Given those
two parameters, there’s not that much of a variation on this theme to be had.
I’m not trying to jump on some modern, minimalistic trend. I just want the
building I’m in to be physically and visually comfortable.

Also, cliche design trend or not, almost anything is better than the neo-
eclectic style that took over the U.S. in the 90s (e.g., houses like this:
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ca/4e/fa/ca4efad94007d5a5f976...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ca/4e/fa/ca4efad94007d5a5f9764b473a893dfb.gif))

Edit: just noticed that although I am not fond of the article and its writing
style, the author is actually the person who created the McMansion hell blog,
which criticizes the same type of neo-eclectic house style that I also
criticize above. Go figure.

~~~
zdragnar
I live pretty close to an area where loads of farmland is being bought up and
turned into subdivisions, driven largely by national construction companies
buying up hundreds of acres at a time.

The picture you linked to could have been taken in any one of them. It's
pretty depressing, but then again, I live in a cabin in the woods (definitely
not for everyone) so to each their own I suppose.

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mc32
It works because it's clean, not fussy, not overdone. And it's approachable
and retro modern.

It better than 70s overcrowded earthiness (imbued with smoke) and accented
with avocado greens.

I' like to see their take on sunken living rooms though.

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airstrike
> Every interior, from the priciest New York City condo to the humblest
> exurban rancher, exists in a singular spectrum of gray, Marie Kondo-ed to
> perfection, absent of any clutter or unnecessary touches, each accessory and
> wall hanging meticulously selected and expertly placed. From their ceilings
> dangle rusticated light fixtures aglow with Edison bulbs; their kitchens are
> clad in quartz and subway tile; their wall art ranging from huge reproduced
> metal signs to huge reproduced David Hockney prints; their furnishings
> boasting either Pottery Barn white sofas or $11,000 showpieces from Design
> Within Reach, all atop a streaky, faux-distressed oriental rug.

This is so incredibly on point it's actually sad, but on the flip side I'm
happy someone who knows this stuff much better than I do is actually writing
about it

~~~
wmeredith
The only people who think this is true have spent too much time looking at
pictures on the internet. There are plenty of homes in this country that
people are living happily in, unplugged from the 'Gram.

~~~
lallysingh
Depends on the market you're shopping in. Every remodel I see, I swear, has
the same stupid orbital rings or embedded box chandelier. Minimist down to
basic geometry. Sterile, ugly, and gray.

I was thinking of remodeling our kitchen, and the thought of what that would
look like was... light gray.

~~~
airstrike
Literally went to see a friend's new apartment today, still to be furnished.
Just the basics are in, like the wooden kitchen appliances that come with the
unit which they had _painted_ in... you guessed it, light gray

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troughway
While HN might be bullish on the article, I mostly agree with it, especially
the quote given about the artists turning an industrial shop into something
that is livable. It's an aesthetic of the poor in dire need of living and
sleeping quarters, nothing more.

Consider this:

Everywhere you look, the rich don't have some yearning for minimalism. They
have massive, lavish gates, gardens filled with sculptures and fountains, and
if they are really going for it, interior cloisters with basketball courts and
other amenities. High ceilings? Absolutely. Plenty of light? More than the
building codes allow.

That cottage they constructed on their massively acred forest property that's
featured in some minimalist architecture digest magazine? That's for fun. Look
at how much they paid (if they disclose) the architect to just design the
thing. Good luck affording that.

A bittersweet irony of life is minimalists eschewing anything to do with
decorative veneer, while they jetset away to pose next to architecture from
centuries past that screams opulence with the amount of detail and decorative
elements that it has.

Taste cannot be bought, even if it's shaped like a rectangle, made out of
exotic wood, called "minimalist", and priced way out of your budget range to
make you feel like you're somehow buying a one-of-a-kind item that will last
you forever, because hey, you want fewer, but "higher quality" items, right?

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Apocryphon
This reminded me of a great comment on a thread for a similar critique about
this aesthetic, imagining the future after Instagram-friendly minimalism:

> I remain convinced that the next true popular aesthetic will be an offshoot
> of art deco combined with heavy nature related elements.

The next wave of tech is clean tech.

Electric cars and lab cultured meat.

We've entered years of clean designs of pure white backgrounds derived from
Apple and more recently the pastels. There's no chaos with our designs and too
much order.

I think Travis Kalanick was right to enter the real estate/land use industry.
I think Stanford and Harvard buying up real estate in the central valley of
California is the smartest decision.

We're going back to the land, just like the 70's.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19735224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19735224)

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bsder
Exposed beams and infrastructure became fashionable because of _restaurants_.
It was cheaper to put in (no drop ceilings) and had the benefit of being
offensive enough on a noise level to keep people moving out of the restaurant.

The fact that it became adopted everywhere is just painful to me. Note how
everybody starts putting rugs everywhere in order to damp the noise ("They
improve the vibe, man.").

The Japanese seem to do better at this where their "minimalist" is driven by
lack of space rather than misplaced aesthetics.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I have a theory that when you get beyond the front door of most Japanese
houses they are really like this:
[https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/messiest-houses-
in...](https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/messiest-houses-in-japan/)

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taurath
It’s cheap and reminds people of their favorite place, the office.

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root_axis
I like the look. Clean, bright, open, clutter-free and modern. I love the
dangling light fixtures with vaulted ceilings and the look of quartz
countertops and gray on white cabinets. My car is also a shade of metallic
gray, so maybe I just resonate with the style. What a time to be alive.

------
every
Simply Danish Modern redux...

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tonyedgecombe
I wonder how much of this is a reaction to Trump's tastes which are clearly
the polar opposite of minimalism.

[https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/making-america-crass-
aga...](https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/making-america-crass-again)

~~~
CincinnatiMan
Approaching zero. These trends were around before 2016.

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yowlingcat
I feel like this article began with a promising idea with a disappointing
follow through.

> Their commonality lies in the same impulse for vacuous, petit bourgeois
> taste to launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy.
> When thinking of minimalism, one can only wonder what the once-avant-garde
> cadre of artists and musicians would think about this hyper-commodified end
> product of their ethos, practice, and even their living circumstances.

You can't just say the equivalent of "man I can't believe the suburban normies
found out about farmhouse lofts -- look at what they took from us" and have
that be an actual article. That's a concept barely fit for a bored teen
tweeting during an art history class (no offense to them either, they would
obviously be a lot more self aware than this), much less a longwinded magazine
article.

Frankly, those frontier domesticating artists who pioneered the cultural idea
of a loft are far closer to true upper caste brahmins than the
lumpenproletariat vaishyas (which are conflated with the petit bourgeois in a
very subtle yet choppy interpolation) that necessarily only later on adopt a
diluted version. And of course, it is those brahmin who reap the benefits of
clout as their risky phenomenological investment is able to mature to a
culturally valuable product and legacy that consumers cannot proclaim founding
ownership over. One can only wonder what they would have thought -- to be
honest, I can only imagine that they would be very happy and relieved to get a
chance to cash out, because being an artist is an extremely competitive and
generally financially unstable and unpleasant existence that is only truly
available as a vocation to the upper castes. And ironically, I get the sense
that it is the author trying to launder their own personal distastes aesthetic
distaste through a ham fisted attempt to deploy Marxist terminology
("fetishize", "erasing", "bourgeois") at suburban denizens rather than any
real reckoning with the political economy of the commodities that they even
reference.

Surely, America is in many ways a deeply, tragically uncool, suburban place
where many people "just want to grill, for god's sake." But, it is that way
unapologetically -- in some ways, unapologetic in a way that should maybe
never be apologized for. America's suburbs are the promised land where so many
people the world over seek a reality that maybe isn't perfect but an
improvement to their current lot in life. It is a place of sameness, vacuum of
space, and twee; it is a place of rurality and peaceful escape from society.
It is a place where profound works of irony, satire and excess (unintentional
and intentional) originate from; it is this excess which hypothecates
Hollywood's culturally productive and originative influence not just in
America but the world over; horrifying, to be sure, but also beautiful.
Frustrating, at times, and yet sublime. To neither grasp nor express such a
giant, sprawling plurality and how a thing of almost fractal bifurcations of
seeming contradictions doesn't just fall over, is to me proof that perhaps
this piece of writing still needs a good amount more revision, additional
detail, and conceptual depth before it actually makes a statement. It's a
shame because there very likely is a fascinating connection between pop
minimalism and neo-farmhouse aesthetics there to be explored. But frankly, it
would need to be explored by an author with a deft enough understanding of the
people and communities who actually live in the areas they comment on to
actually represent them thoughtfully -- or at least someone who had the desire
to gain such an understanding.

~~~
airstrike
> > Their commonality lies in the same impulse for vacuous, petit bourgeois
> taste to launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy.
> When thinking of minimalism, one can only wonder what the once-avant-garde
> cadre of artists and musicians would think about this hyper-commodified end
> product of their ethos, practice, and even their living circumstances.

> You can't just say the equivalent "man I can't believe the suburban normies
> found out about farmhouse lofts -- look at what they took from us"

I really don't see how you got that from the quote you shared

~~~
yowlingcat
Sure, maybe some more explanation would help. Let's consider what the phrase
"once-avant-garde cadre" is supposed to mean in this context. What is the
valuable part about this "cadre" \-- is it that they were avant-garde and this
is no longer the case? Or is it the functional minimalism that they pioneered?

To phrase it a different way, is a good Apple laptop from the golden era of
Apple laptops (which is good because it is minimal and functional) any less
good once many people start using it and it stops being avant-garde? Or is its
popularity simply a vindication of its successful product design, reflected by
the market? If it's the latter, then I'd be inclined to agree with that
definition of good. But if it's the former, I'd be inclined to question
whether the definition a slick attempt to hide someone's opinions, and maybe
their desire to gatekeep.

