by Witold | May 19, 2018 | Housing, Modern life
Ian Bogost’s excellent Atlantic article on the fashionable open plan, which integrates the kitchen into the main living spaces of the house, points out the drawbacks of this arrangement: leaving a messy kitchen open to full view, which can be awkward when...
by Witold | May 14, 2018 | Architecture, Modern life
Why do we renovate, restore, or otherwise preserve old buildings after they have become functionally obsolete? One reason is practical—the building is in good enough shape to be still useful, even in an altered state, or for a different purpose than originally...
by Witold | Feb 10, 2018 | Modern life
The New Yorker waxes emotional—and rather sappy—about the Philadelphia Eagles parade. The article doesn’t describe the suburban Golden Horde that descended on the center of the city. Hardly two to three million as was cheerfully forecast, but still a very large crowd....
by Witold | Jan 20, 2018 | Architecture, Modern life
“I cannot think of anything more ludicrous than the idea that modernism somehow got off the track and was a monstrous mistake that should simply be canceled out,” wrote Ada Louis Huxtable in The Unreal America. “Revolutions in life and technology can never be...
by Witold | Nov 16, 2017 | Design, Modern life
We recently replaced a kitchen faucet. The product is a typical example of globalization. The ceramic cartridge—the soul of a faucet—is made in Hungary, the aerator comes from Italy, and the rest of the faucet was manufactured and assembled in China. The company that...
by Witold | Oct 16, 2017 | Architecture, Modern life
I recently received an unusual request from the architectural writer Fred Bernstein. “Since Trump was elected, as a subtle political statement, I have been posting profiles on Facebook of immigrants who have made a contribution to the built environment.” His request...