Maggie's Farm

How about posting some pictures of modern public school architecure? My kids went to elementary school in a beautiful building from the turn of the century with (GASP) windows that could open for fresh air, and where the lights didn't have to go on except on stormy days, where A/C was only recently deemed "necessary" by wussy parents with more money than sense. They now attend a high school monstrosity built the same era as New City Hall where most of the classrooms are windowless.

How about machines for working? How many of us work in buildings where most of the people are chained in windowless cubicles with Vogon supervisors (loved Sippican's reference to AHHGTTG), with canned air and windows (only in managers' offices) that cannot be opened.

It is not simply government bureaucrats or hapless residents seeking permits whose spirits suffer from vile architecture. Try most office workers, most public school students, and most apartment dwellers....

Not to rant, or anything...

Remember that fun picture in the blog awhile back of Habu or somebody's shack?

Since I can't afford to build a McMansion or visit the Parthenon, no substitute for visiting my grandmother's New England farmhouse. Now there's architecture to mobilize the spirit: can't be kept warm in winter without lots of healthy exercise splitting wood, drafty (so no indoor air pollution), an unheated back kitchen so no need for a fridge in winter, cozy small rooms that make conversation possible and that would spew out a large screen TV, the only insulation in the walls 50,000 books on every topic, and a barn for square dances and the rest of the books and grandchildren's weddings. The floors creak and the stairs squeak so everybody knows when an errant teenager is trying to sneak home too late. Plenty of private corners to read a book or hide a diary in peace, to think, and escape the sight of relatives. Hell would be living in a trailer in arm's reach of them all, after all. But no soundproofing worth a damn and the architecture makes it hard to get depressed and write teen angst poetry and plot evil things on the internet without an entire WASP tribe realizing and intervening. No outside experts paid a fortune for their half-assed prescriptions, either. Great Uncle John takes errant kid out for a Serious Talk in the orchard, perhaps accompanies them to the Marines recruiter. Home architecture that promotes intimacy, and annoys the hell out of obnoxious teenagers up to no good, but that promotes family ties. Kids want to visit but wouldn't think of moving back in, so are forced to get real jobs and get independent. Truly the hub of a family.

American public architecture is woefully deficient...perhaps a good thing? Contra Gramsci, my loyalties belong to God, family, country....I don't want to pay for gargantuan buildings for myself, my government or ogle some insider trader's palace on the TV (which in my house is covered in dust, has a pile of books obscuring the screen, and is off except in times of national emergency). A simple New England country church of no grandeur, a farmhouse built by a family and their kids, a flag are enough for me...I love to visit the great architecture of the rest of the world, but America Public mostly does malls and concrete hideously, perhaps because we leave those to the greedy and the commercial. What is best about us, and our country, can't be built. Maybe a sculpture (soldiers and a flag) can capture it?

My architecturial historian gramps would be rolling in his grave , and parents likewise "we showed you the architectural wonders of the world and you turned out a provincial barbarian!" so enough. Time to pick apples and make applesauce and pie from suburban trees with branches bent from the weight of fruit and raccoons stealing said fruit...