Althouse: "There’d be a cell-like capsule to provide for some basic human needs, from which one could emerge into a big, semipublic space that was open to the sky."

June 11, 2024

"There’d be a cell-like capsule to provide for some basic human needs, from which one could emerge into a big, semipublic space that was open to the sky."

"This was a vision less of a home than of a refuge within a striking concrete art work.... Ye sent... various drawings showing an arrangement of amenities within a small space. One image contained spherical and ovoid objects—'cooker,' 'pump,' 'fridge'—but no mattress. Another included three crates, a 'flat pack shower,' and a 'robot platform.'... There were... desultory exchanges about recycling rainwater and cutting a hole in the floor to make a toilet. Ye remained adamant about disconnecting the house from the grid; he also opposed installing solar panels...."

Writes Ian Parker, in "Kanye West Bought an Architectural Treasure—Then Gave It a Violent Remix/How the hip-hop star’s beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy turned a beach house in Malibu, designed by the Japanese master Tadao Ando, into a ruin" (The New Yorker).

29 comments:

Dave Begley said...: Why does anyone pay attention to this low class, no-talent loser?

The only utility this fool provides is that he is a negative example for the wise.; 6/11/24, 10:47 AM
n.n said...: #Judgment #Labels #Archtecture; 6/11/24, 11:02 AM
Joe Smith said...: Very long yet interesting article.

Ye is a very creative guy and very smart, but it seems clear that his mental issues affected his architectural decisions.

His cancelling for being anti-Semitic was too soon. Now he fits right in with the mainstream left.; 6/11/24, 11:24 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: Just another hit piece on Kayne West. another shot to warn him, "we have not forgotten".

Never forget the ADL and Jewish organizations are so powerful that they ruined West financially. One KW tweet on the internet "Im going Defcon on the Jews"was enough for everyone in Hollywood and the Record industry (incuding his agent) to cancel him.

His shoe contract with Adidas was extremely lucrative for the German Company, so they hestitated to cancel it. But the ADL put pressure on the bankers who finance Adidas and poof, they tore up a contract that was keeping their company afloat. And West lost money.

Now after his apologies and grovels, he's being allowed back. To a certain extent. But here The New Yorker comes out of nowhere and attacks his House and interior design! The ADL never forgets, Kayne. They don't believe in "Forgive and forget". And they don't care that you have "issues". LOL.; 6/11/24, 11:35 AM
rehajm said...: Ye Olde Pillbox…; 6/11/24, 11:43 AM
n.n said...: He didn't go Green with intermittent, unreliable energy. Deplorable.; 6/11/24, 11:43 AM
Temujin said...: Ye, doing to architecture what he did to music.; 6/11/24, 11:46 AM
MadisonMan said...: When you buy a property, it's yours to do with as you wish.
Owning a property next to the ocean is folly anyway.; 6/11/24, 11:50 AM
Aggie said...: Although it hadn't occurred to me before I read it, I was struck by how this story could be construed as almost the exact opposite of a Howard Roark piece.; 6/11/24, 12:02 PM
Joe Smith said...: 'When you buy a property, it's yours to do with as you wish.'

Certainly.

But not too bright to destroy what makes something valuable and take a $10M hit.

If you've got almost $2B then not a big hit, but why burn money?

It would be one thing if you lived in the house and wanted it 'just so.'; 6/11/24, 12:12 PM
JAORE said...: There is a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Alabama. Well worth the tour.

Apparently FLW would occasionally visit, rearrange furniture and lecture the owner on how they must keep his vision intact.

Tough stuff Frank.; 6/11/24, 12:21 PM
loudogblog said...: It will be interesting to see if Code Enforcement gets involved. As a general rule, you're not allowed to occupy a house in California that is not hooked up to the electric grid. (Even if it has its own source of electricity.); 6/11/24, 12:25 PM
loudogblog said...: MadisonMan said...
"When you buy a property, it's yours to do with as you wish."

That's definitely not true in California.; 6/11/24, 12:26 PM
Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...: TL:DR

Wypipo problems.

The larger architectural crime occurred when some short-fingered vulgarian bought Ernie Kovac's house (was it Kennie Rogers?) and ripped out the automobile turntable. A great visual gag destroyed! Resident pulls up to the front of the house, gets out, pushes a button, car turntable revolves, obviating the need to back the car out or do a K-turn.

Tadeo Ando's check clears, he's onto the next project. Only simps in the New Yorker cry about a $57 million dollar desecration.; 6/11/24, 12:34 PM
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walter said...: Poopity Scoop.; 6/11/24, 1:54 PM
Kai Akker said...: I could only get 6 paragraphs into the overly forced tone of the article's set-up. The picture didn't help. Who could possibly care? A row of virtually identical structures crammed in together. Celebrity gossip lovers, maybe?; 6/11/24, 2:19 PM
BarrySanders20 said...: There goes the neighborhood.; 6/11/24, 2:48 PM
Oligonicella said...: JAORE:
Apparently FLW would occasionally visit, rearrange furniture and lecture the owner on how they must keep his vision intact.

Don't let the asshole in the door.

Screw him. I've been in four(?) FLW houses and buildings. They're maintenance nightmares and obviously he didn't give shit if they were livable, which is the function of a house.

Your anecdote reminds me of the Danish artist arrested for "touching up" one of his paintings that was hanging in a museum because he felt that, as the artist, he had license forever to do so.

Pompous assholes the both.; 6/11/24, 3:00 PM
NKP said...: Well. It's Malibu.

More a state of mind than an actual beach.

A really fucked-up mind. Expect to be shamed by your server if not ordering vegan.; 6/11/24, 3:23 PM
Old and slow said...: Looks like a pretty special house, but it is still just a house. Ye boght it, ye can do as he pleases with it. I find it difficult to get worked up about this.; 6/11/24, 3:32 PM
Mason G said...: The people who obsess over preserving privately owned "Architectural Treasures" should get together to develop a comprehensive list of them and then, when they come on the market, buy them. With their own money. Problem solved.; 6/11/24, 5:49 PM
Quaestor said...: Why does The New Yorker indulge this talent-deprived egomaniac's every whim? Ye, indeed. How servile. How obesiant. Those oleaginous editorial eunuchs ought to grow a pair and refuse to coddle that notorious man-toddler. Call him Mister West, if you insist on granting unmerited respect, but never "Ye" -- it's stupid and abets further stupidity, such as the degradation of that billionaire's fancy.; 6/11/24, 8:13 PM
wildswan said...: Ye is a genius. He found a house that smashed every design concept and he managed to smash that design concept.; 6/12/24, 6:27 AM
Tina Trent said...: "There’d be a cell-like capsule to provide for some basic human needs, from which one could emerge into a big, semipublic space that was open to the sky."

Just like his new girlfriend.; 6/12/24, 6:35 AM
Humperdink said...: Visited Falling Water, a Frank Lloyd Wright house in southwestern Pa. Built over a stream. How stupid. The stupidity would reveal itself later when the house needed to be shored up due to erosion. Who knew?

The least endearing feature of the house was Wright's propensity to have built-in furniture as part of the design. The furniture was terribly uncomfortable.; 6/12/24, 6:53 AM
wildswan said...: I'm reading a poem called Upon Appleton House. The poet, Andrew Marvell, walks through the house and land owned by General Fairfax of English Civil War fame, and the poem/walk is very interesting and funny but it's a bit hard to see what's going on.

What need of all this marble crust
T’impark the wanton mote of dust,
That thinks by breadth the world t’unite
Though the first builders fail’d in height?

But all things are composed here
Like nature, orderly and near;
In which we the dimensions find
Of that more sober age and mind,
When larger sized men did stoop
To enter at a narrow loop;
As practising, in doors so straight,
To strain themselves through Heaven’s gate.

However, when you get past all the jokes and references you are looking at the description of a well-run estate with a flower garden, a working water meadow system, a coppiced wood with a variety of habitats where nightingales sing and kingfisher's fly, a river with salmon. It's the opposite of the present day where when you get past the words, it's a hot mess.; 6/12/24, 7:07 AM
Tina Trent said...: I.M. Pei designed the dorms for our school, then denounced them and refused to have his name attached to them when the school refused to construct them on a giant platform floating in Sarasota Bay. Why the school agreed to work with him in the first place isn't clear: the dorms were finally built on higher ground. All that concrete sweated the walls a bit, but they did stay pretty cool in Florida weather. I liked them, ponderous and sweaty as they were. I like a bit of Brutalism.

In the early Sixties, several Florida communities dredged narrow building sites out into the Bay, surrounded by water on both sides, to sell homes with boat docks. Apollo Beach, Punta Gorda, Cape Coral. These are the places the NYT now calls harbingers of global warming. That's nonsense. Some of these artificial sites were built on the cheap, and for all of them, seventy years of ordinary erosion and dredging are taking the expected toll. There was a lot of half-assed in-fill and building at or below sea level back then.

And shorelines move.; 6/12/24, 7:26 AM
Tina Trent said...: Wildswan: (no snark intended--I used to teach the Metaphysicals, and I love this poem)

Appleton House is a series of extended conceits expressing Marvell's complex feelings about the Civil Wars, Catholicism, Monarchy, statehood, God, sex, nuns, and Protestant rule.

Maybe that's what's running through Yee's mind too. Anything's possible.; 6/12/24, 7:44 AM