The Architectural Pandemic of the “Stick Frame Over Podium” Building, Common Edge, Duo Dickinson, February 2, 2022

Dickinson writes about the “5-over-1” building type here—those large apartment buildings with a concrete bottom floor, usually retail, and four or five floors of wood-frame construction apartments above. They’re very quick and cheap to construct compared to all-masonry structures (and because they’re less durable, they’re limited to just a few stories by code.)

He writes that the explosion of this now-ubiquitous building type has gone largely unnoticed: “Are architecture publications too good to soil their glossy pages by dealing with the reasons why a single building type is transforming so much of our country’s landscape?”

They do sort of all look the same, but then again, the average classic Main Street buildings in almost any American small town also kind of look the same. It’s difficult to pin down why exactly the 5-over-1 style generates so much dislike. But it’s undeniable that these structures are creatures of regulation and code, in a similar way that SUVs or malt-based faux liquor are. As such they can seem to have a certain odd quality to them. Though, of course, cheap, quick, and serviceable homes are good things. Which leads to the counter-piece below, published in 2019 and re-published in response to this one.

In Praise of 5-Over-1 Buildings, Common Edge, March 1, 2022, Randy Nishimura

Nishimura makes the point I made in the previous blurb—that many well-loved or just sort of average, common buildings are boring and similar. He reminds us that architecture doesn’t have to be complicated or original. And he considers the factors that have gone into the 5-over-1 boom to be important enough to make up for any of its shortcomings.

I’d tend to agree, and it’s probably possible with a little bit of extra effort to make these buildings look like more than they are. (I’m thinking of the triangle-roofed shacks in small towns that had false brick façades!) One important question both pieces raise is that of durability and longevity: how long can these structures actually last, and what happens as they begin to fall apart? I don’t know if we know the answer yet, and it’s probably an important question.

(Bonus: in case you were wondering, the 5 and the 1 in “5-over-1” do not refer to the number of stories or to their uses, per se, but rather to the designation in the building code for combustible and non-combustible material, which are Type 5 and Type 1. So a direct translation from code-speak to English is not “five stories of residential over one story of commercial,” but rather “four or five combustible stories (wood) over one non-combustible story (concrete.)”

What Does the End of Beef Mean for Our Sense of Self?, New York Times, Ligaya Mishan, March 3, 2022

I’m always amused by these sorts of articles. They start off with a point of view that I find remote and somewhat odd, and go on as if everybody starts at that point. Who says there even is an “end of beef,” let alone that it has some philosophical meaning?

“Could this be the beginning of the end of meat — or at least red meat, with its aura of dominion and glory?” Mishan writes. Or, “For some, that whiff of conquest is a maddening perfume and, arguably, what makes beef so difficult to give up.” As someone who’s neither a vegetarian nor a pickup-trucks-and-red-meat right-winger, this kind of language baffles me. It reminds me a bit of the narrative that people like gas stoves because they’ve been convinced by marketing. I, personally, like gas stoves because they work. And I like steak because it’s tasty, not because, as far as I’m aware, it holds any metaphysical meaning.

On the other hand, I’m also baffled by some of the stuff people used to say on these matters, like this bit of racist messaging Mishan digs up: “A 1902 pamphlet in favor of Chinese exclusion put it bluntly: ‘Meat vs. Rice. American Manhood Against Asiatic Coolieism. Which Shall Survive?’”

This stuff is interesting, and I really have no idea to what extent our preferences are influenced by cultural ideas and omnipresent marketing. On the other hand, it’s something of a luxury to be able to problematize ordinary things. And the need for content in the digital media world obviously drives some of this as well.

There’s also this, a critique I’ve seen over the years (including in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, where refers to shrinkwrapped steaks as “supermarket euphemism”): “The meat comes to the table, a pound of flesh, carefully stripped of any sign of what it was before.” I dunno—I kind of like buying precut, prepackaged foods that don’t make me contemplate death as a precondition of having a meal. I think the vast majority of people do, as well.

A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled a New Breed of Superpredator, Corey Doctorow, January 24, 2022

This is outside of the type of stuff I normally write about, and I won’t summarize it too much because it’s a little wonky and arcane. But apparently, copyright trolls—shady lawyers who search for copyright violations at an industrial scale, and then send letters demanding an exorbitant fee or threatening to sue—have figured out how to exploit Creative Commons-licensed material. This is notable, because the whole point of Creative Commons is that it’s a mechanism for sharing content that foreswears copyright. How exactly this works is what the article is all about. It’s a fascinating, alarming read.

Related Reading:

New and Old #22

New and Old #23

Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekend subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive of over 300 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this!

Share