Author Archives: Kurt

More architecture geekery

As a kid, my favorite toy in the world was Legos, or more properly LEGO.  From my very first space set I got for Christmas in 1980 (the Beta 1 Command Base) I was totally hooked, and LEGO dominated my wish lists for birthday and Christmas for years to follow.  In college, my love for LEGO was reignited when I encountered the limited release Islander sets; as an anthropology major, these fascinated me on a more “professional” level, never mind that they weren’t exactly academic.  Unlike my old Space sets which are all jumbled in a bag back at my parents’ house (my nephews love me for this), I still have my Islander sets in their original boxes.  They go with me whenever I move, making my girlfriend roll her eyes when she sees them.

Cafe Corner

But that’s another matter, back to the issue at hand.  I still like LEGO, and the Star Wars and Indy sets have convinced me to put a few more dollars into LEGO’s pocket.  But for the past few years, I’ve been lusting after a far bigger prize: the fancy town street sets that include the Cafe Corner, Green Grocer, and Market Street.  These things are awesome, and I keep telling myself I need to plunk down the cash (as an architectural historian and LEGO fan) but something keeps holding me back.

Now, however, I have learned of something so cool that it may finally push me into dropping hundreds of dollars into buying architecture LEGOs.  LEGO has teamed up with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to bring scale models of some of his famous buildings to LEGO fans everywhere, and I can’t tell you how awesome this is.  Even if they are smallish (not exactly minifig scale), they are undeniably cool for architecture geeks like me.  No word yet on price or release dates, but I can’t wait.  Falling Water will be mine at last!  Christmas, almost 30 years later, will once again ring with the glory of LEGO!

Architectural Squee!

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a week now, but just haven’t found the time until now.  I came across an absolutely fantastic bit of architectural porn, an architectual firm’s office (what else?) in Spain.  This isn’t just any old office, mind you.   They blended cool retro 1950s style with modern materials, and stuck the result in the middle of a forest.  It doesn’t exactly blend with the surroundings, but it minimizes its impact by sitting partly underground, like a huge pipe sunk halfway in the mud.  The result is reminiscent of some sort of space-age colony bunker sitting on a terraformed planet.  I don’t know if that’s exactly the look they were going for, but that’s what it says to me.

Actually, no.  What it really says to me is AWESOME.  Like, Rhino “let it begin!” awesome.  Click the pic for more images.

Selgas Cano Office

Selgas Cano Office

Nerd is the new jock

It’s no surprise to us, of course, but it seems the mainstream media are finally growing hip to the hipness of nerds and geeks.  CNN has an article up this morning about how nerd cred is now hip, embraced by Hollywood and pop culture.  From Revenge of the Nerds 25 years ago to TV sitcoms that celebrate physics professors, geeks have come a long way.

Why did this happen?  I think Rob Malda, founder of Slashdot, hit the nail on the head when he talked about how some nerds from the 1970s and 1980s got rich.  People like Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak, the nerds who puttered around with computer parts in garages, were suddenly multimillionaires, their products everywhere in business and education.  They became household names, and with such recognition and wealth comes power.  I will leave it to the fan boys to argue whether these two examples have used that power for good or evil, but its presence is undeniable.

So where does that leave us geeks?  Suddenly we’re cool… or not.  Despite the buzz about the new Star Trek film, despite huge crowds for mediocre movies like Xmen Origins: Wolverine, despite A-list stars like Vin Diesel professing love for Dungeons & Dragons, geeks are still looked at as strange by the majority of people.  The same cred that makes us the newest fad also marks us as outsiders: unusual, odd, foreign.  If there’s one thing history has shown Americans distrust, it’s them gol’dang fur’nerz.  Oh sure, this country has a reputation for sheltering immigrants, but it has an equal reputation for marginalizing them.  From Irish Catholics of the late nineteenth century to Hispanics today, those “different from us” are never mainstream.

In truth, I’m perfectly fine with that.  Geek cred works because most geeks don’t care what popular culture thinks.  We do what we do because we enjoy it, popularity be damned.  When pop culture grows bored with us, when the media have moved on to the Next Big Thing, we’ll still be here, throwing dice and wrestling video game controllers.  And maybe sitting up a little taller.

Architectural Geekery, Part I

Architecture is like beauty; its worth is commonly in the eye of the beholder.  What may be an architectural treasure to one person may be a derelict ruin to another.  Even two architects can disagree on whether or not a particular building or style is appealing.  My advisor in grad school, for example, once half-joked that we needed to demolish everything built in the 1970s before it turned 50 years old and we’d have to work to save it.  Can’t say I disagree with that sentiment… ok, maybe there’s one or two buildings worth saving from the Decade of Disco.  I kid, it’s more like a handful.

Anyway, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a powerful advocacy group dedicated to saving our nation’s built heritage, released their annual list of the top endangered places in the United States.  Looking at the list, all of these places are worthy of saving in my mind for one reason or another, and no doubt they probably will be.  The Trust is pretty powerful, and when they throw their weight behind a property at this magnitude, chances are it will be saved.  In the decade or so they’ve been producing this list, I think only four named properties have met a grisly end.  The rest were either saved or continue to exist at some level of limbo.

You’ll notice several recently historic buildings on this list.  We’re talking things built in the 1950s, mainly, although the 60s are on the edge of that magical 50-year mark (in the United States, federal law defines “historic-age” as 50 years or more).  Many people don’t appreciate 1950s architecture, but I’m not one of them.  I love it, I think it’s swell.  A recent survey report I authored argued that several 1950s Ranch houses were worthy of recognition.  The state reviewer at TxDOT looked at me like I was crazy.  “They’re classic examples!” I tried to argue, but he just shook his head and started rattling off a variety of reasons why they were not special.

Number one, of course, is that Ranch houses are everywhere.  He’s right, of couse, they are everywhere.  You can’t throw a rock in a mid-century neighborhood and not hit one.  Most are rather sub-par specimens of mid-century architecture, too.  Thinking about these particular Ranch houses, I realized he was correct.  They weren’t all that special, so I gave in.  They were not really in danger from the project anyway.

It did get me to thinking, though.  One decade’s crap is a future decade’s treasures.  Early twentieth century homes were destroyed by the hundreds in the 1930s through the 1960s, because they were old and busted, not the new hotness.   Such urban renewal was one reason the preservation laws we have today exist.  Now we look at that lone surviving 100 year old house on a street and try to imagine what the entire neighborhood must have looked like back then, when they were everywhere.  It’s good we have places like the Trust to help promote the worth of more recently historic buildings, but sometimes I wonder if it’s enough.  Will people 50 years from now do the same with a lone Ranch house from a 1950s-era neighborhood once filled with them?

‘Ware the anger of video game widows

Dee made a post about a woman named Jillian R, a “Phoenix Early Childhood Parenting Examiner” (citizen reporter, in other words) who posted what amounted to a rant on video game players and how they ignore families.  My first impression was this is a woman who has dealt with being a “video game widow” in the past, and she has a very large axe to grind because of it.  A video game widow, as the name suggests, is someone who has become ignored by their Significant Other due to the latter always playing video games.  Internet widows are a related flavor.  While Jillian R tries to lend some legitimacy to her post by mentioning “research” that will appear in forthcoming articles, this first post is really nothing but an internet rant.

Her basic argument – that video games take away from family time – has been applied to practically every hobby of the past 50 years.  Golf, cars, crafts – you name it, someone has been a hobby widow of it at some point.  The argument is not without merit, as there are some people who do completely ignore other responsibilities in pursuit of their interests, but it’s not isolated to video games nor is it the inevitable outcome as she tries to argue.  Case in point: I know several families who make playing video games a part of their family life.  They all play together, have fun, and strengthen family bonds.  I also know several people who may not play with their families but are nonetheless in healthy, happy, long-term relationships.  I’m just one person; multiply that by the number of gamers out there, and you can’t claim that video games destroy families.

The rest of her arguments are just plain juvenile.  The money thing?  How much does a family outing to the movies cost these days for a family of four?  Let’s see… assume $9 tix for the parents and $6 for the kids, plus candy and sodas for everyone, you’re looking at $50-$60 for two hours of entertainment, about the price of the average new release video game.  The difference is the game will last you ten hours minimum, and likely more.  Plus, if it’s a game for the family, you can all talk while playing.

How about the “sex appeal” of male gamers?  I don’t know about her, but most people I know don’t pass judgment on the worthiness of a mate based on a single attribute.   The gamers I know run the whole spectrum of individuals – male and female, husky and thin, short and tall, passive and aggressive, liberal and conservative, pale and tanned.  They play sports, shop, pet their cats, feed their kids, and weed their gardens.   Does having a green thumb make you “unsexy”?  To put a personal note on it, my girlfriend does not like video games in general, but that has not impacted our 3.5 year relationship.  She also recognizes it for what it is – a hobby, and something that her own daughters enjoy.  It’s something we even do – gasp! – together, and she and I both enjoy watching her 10 and 7 year old play Guitar Hero; laughing, smiling, and having a good time.

The short of it is that people like Jillian R are the reason this blog exists.  Too many of them have some bizarre, biased view of geeks as pale, fat, mouthbreathing, socially inept soda suckers who spend all their time in their mom’s basement.  While I’m sure there are some who fit this stereotype, the great majority do not.  By painting video gamers with the broad brush of family haters, she does nothing but show the world her own insecurities and past pain with someone who did ignore her.

On definitions.

It’s hard to say whether or not a geek has come out of the basement, as one must define “the basement” before this statement has any purpose or meaning. It seems there are essentially two interpretations:

  1. The basement is literal, as in the cubby hole in which the geek seeks comfort, outfitted with the tools of their particular geeky flavor.
  2. The basement is figurative, an expression encompassing the comfort zone surrounding someone and their geeky hobbies that encompasses not necessarily a place but also the people who serve as companions and/or confidants.

As an architecture and gaming (video, board, and RP) geek, the first interpretation interests me as physical space. Everything from the kitchen table to a home theater falls within this category. Some geeks only engage in their chosen hobby in a particular locale, either out of necessity (a video game console is generally required to play video games) or preference (the kitchen table has the memories of countless campaigns etched into its scarred surface). “Coming out,” in this case, generally means removing oneself from this ensconced location (or a similar venue) and going somewhere where the activity in question may be observed by those who do not participate. Perhaps this means a coffee shop for a pen-and-paper roleplaying group, or a gaming room at a convention (such as what Austin had during SXSW).

Other people will pursue their interests wherever and whenever they can. To them, space matters not, for the pursuit of the activity is tantamount. They still insulate themselves from the outside world, however, through their environs and/or companions. Gaming in the living room or the local hobby store is no different to the guy with his trusty dice bag and clip board of character sheets in his backpack. The second interpretation applies more to this type, as coming out of the basement means removing themselves from the protective bubble shielding them from what they interpret as the “outside.” An example for our dice-toter may be teaching his RPG-neophyte friends how to play D&D at home.

Naturally, these two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and may depend on the hobby in question. As I mentioned earlier, some require special conditions or equipment, or they may require multiple people. Technology has a hand in blurring these lines, however. Thanks to portable game systems like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, a video gaming geek can “come out of the basement” in a park or on public transportation. Laptops, PDFs, and dice rolling programs allow RPG geeks to throw dice almost anywhere. Coming out of the basement, therefore, is getting easier to do. The preponderance of technology in our lives makes the executive sitting on the commuter train, staring and poking away at a little box cradled in his hands barely worth noting. Maybe he’s reviewing today’s meeting schedule on his Blackberry, but perhaps – just maybe – he’s finally tracked down that elusive, rare Pokemon.