by emsimot on 7/18/21, 10:30 AM with 84 comments
by motohagiography on 7/19/21, 2:06 PM
It's just some funny drawings and internet fanfic twigging our sense of novelty on HN now, but when you see it as representing the desires and longings of young people for wilderness, and also know people who left cities in the last 10y, they were the thin edge of the wedge, where post-pandemic, younger people are leaving cities to get on the real estate ladder, with remote work and amazon-style supply chains, and they are family-inclined. It incorporates passive and renewable energy techs, argritech, biotech, cannabis-driven value added production, organic and small scale food production, brewing and distilling, civic minded prepping, local vs. global, etc.
I'm interested in when solarpunk blips on the radar because to me it is an aesthetic that represents new growth.
by gmueckl on 7/19/21, 1:15 PM
by TacticalCoder on 7/19/21, 2:37 PM
After some research it turns out apparently these two are brothers!
by twoquestions on 7/19/21, 2:27 PM
If we can fix that, we'd be well on our way to realizing better living spaces like the artist (among many others, myself included) dreams of.
by msluyter on 7/19/21, 1:03 PM
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/drawing-pictures-of-cities
by lubujackson on 7/19/21, 3:05 PM
Having visited Barcelona and seeing Gaudi's influence on the architecture there, I understand how a few notable buildings could actually influence the peoples' mindsets.
There has been a ton of advancement in ecological solutions and biomimicry, but tying those changes to design that mirrors nature in an art nouveau way could translate the underlying complexity to something our lizard brains will understand at a glance - it is a powerful abstraction that ties together our innate desire for a safe corner of nature and our social desire for something new and cool.
by q_andrew on 7/19/21, 7:31 PM
The artists appear to be inspired by fad concept renderings for sky-garden towers that were never built:
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/renderings-vs-reality...
by jppope on 7/19/21, 1:01 PM
by okareaman on 7/19/21, 9:00 PM
by ryanjamurphy on 7/19/21, 3:29 PM
by wrinkl3 on 7/19/21, 2:36 PM
Cyberpunk and steampunk both fetishize aesthetics from the past - 80's corporate Japan and the Victorian Britain, respectively, - there's a sort of nostalgic longing that keeps them culturally relevant. Solarpunk tries to fetishize sustainability in a similar way, but I'm not sure if there's enough foundation there to build onto.
by ChrisMarshallNY on 7/19/21, 2:12 PM
by ThinkingGuy on 7/19/21, 1:27 PM
by mym1990 on 7/19/21, 6:34 PM
by chrisweekly on 7/19/21, 6:26 PM
by hiidrew on 7/19/21, 2:57 PM
Recently read this on the topic, the artist in the post is great: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/drawing-pictures-of-cities
by guerrilla on 7/19/21, 4:22 PM
by nynx on 7/19/21, 1:08 PM
by culebron21 on 7/19/21, 5:37 PM
* ideas from new urbanism to greenify the urban core with its dense streets, to make them a nicer place, which is a good idea. * the old modernist ideas of detached houses, now in "ecological" form, which is a total utopia, exactly as it was stated in the Athens Charter.
They also seem to look like Frank Lloyd-Wright's words that "sometime people will live in an entirely rural landscape with houses 100 meters apart from each other and greenery and trees between them" (he hated cities quite a lot) (here's one of his houses, sometimes posted with a motivator text below: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=frank+lloyd+wright+waterfall+house...)
The first part of these, is generally a good thing, but has to be done moderately. I see some images have curves and round forms, which is not a necessity, but rather an attempt to make a nicely looking bird view, which causes various inconveniences -- like park paths that are never walked by, or cut corners.
Curved grass strips are especially a problem: if people walk over them, they have to be protected by fences, or by elevating them -- in this case it 1) will require artificial watering, 2) will produce side pockets, unusable for walking (but hopefully used for benches).
Andres Duany said a lot about this in his lectures, and I can only sum it up as greenery in the city is needed, but has to be done cautiously and reassessed critically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO3CaJtSfjg
The other half of the images are mostly reshaped detached houses or modernist apartment blocks. Same Duany criticizes the detached house concept a lot -- it costs much, it makes people have tons of stuff, drive cars, live in isolated way, unlike the urban dwellers (I followed these ideas when buying apartment, and never regret -- I felt a lot better near a small city center, than before that living on the fringe.)
The modernist concept of apartment blocks and large green spaces between them appeared as an answer to extremely dense cities of 19th century, which were hardly livable without our modern tech (tap water, sewer, central heating, electric light and active ventilation). The most promiment responses were Garden City Movement (basically, make towns not more than 60K ppl, put them at some distance with forests and fields between, and connect with railways), and Athens Charter (build cities of large apartment blocks standing apart from each other, no closed perimeter like in traditional cities, have greenery betwee, and make city blocks large to let cars go without intersections).
The latter was widely implemented in the Socialist block from East Germany to Vladivostok, and failed in many ways.
Jan Gehl saw this development in socio-democratic Denmark and criticized for 1) places devoid of any street retail and other local business, because streets are too wide, which made people commute or drive a car to city center to get services, and 2) de-socialization. In a large apartment block it's hard to meet and get along with neighbors for many purely physical and psychological reasons.
The Human Scale documentary sums up Gehl's points: https://vimeo.com/458139267
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I read their manifesto that appeared earlier, and that's fine.
The problem is with these pictures: to me they seem simply a fashionable landscape design with lots of trees, or detached houses with strange shapes. The former is just arts, and I don't see it reflecting any new thinking. The latter is new attempt at century-old failed ideas.
What would I offer instead? High-speed commute rail in Germany, Netherlands and maybe Scandinavia, made Garden City ideas actually happen. You can work in a large city, but live an a town in 30 km (20 mi), commute in 40 minutes, but near your home you have both, all the great things of a city (cafes, services, meeting friends in the main street) and of countryside (10 minutes to the city edge and hike or bike). Or you can have a business that is entirely in a small town but has easy access to large markets in big cities -- just 1 hour in train.
by gunfighthacksaw on 7/19/21, 12:42 PM