ARCHI D. TOURS EVISCERATED, PRAISED, AND CONTEXTUALIZED: INSTALLMENT #3 (THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF THINGS)
ORVILLE PECK RECEIVES THE HIGHEST GRADE OF THE SERIES THUS FAR
TODAY: ORVILLE PECK receives the top score so far, thanks to “CIRCUMSTANTIAL DÉCOR”; the pitfall of GROTESQUE OVERCONFIDENCE; misfit objects: THE GOOD AND THE BAD; some FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT philosophy
TODAY’S RANKINGS
9.5/10 Orville Peck, Los Angeles
1/10 Debby Ryan and Josh Dun, Ohio
AND MUCH CONVERSATION ON “NOVELTY”, “THINGS THAT DON’T FIT IN,” and the totality of space. (*In a very digestible way)
FULL RANKINGS THUS FAR:
9.5/10 Orville Peck, Los Angeles
8/10 RuPaul Charles, Los Angeles
7.5/10 Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad, Brooklyn
6/10 Jesse Tyler Ferguson #1, Los Angeles
5/10 Nate Berkus #1, Manhattan
4/10 Sarah Paulson, Malibu
4/10 Nina Garcia, Manhattan
4/10 Carmelo Anthony, Westchester
3.5/10 Ellen Pompeo #1, Los Angeles
3/10 Jesse Tyler Ferguson #2, New York
2.6/10 John Legend and Chrissy Teigen #1, Los Angeles
1/10 Aaron Paul, unspecified Idaho
1/10 Debby Ryan and Josh Dun, Columbus
0.5/10 Patrick Dempsey, Malibu
Some notes before we begin.
The two examples today are flip sides of the same coin, the coin being a kind of ‘theme-driven décor with a certain unrelenting beat’. These can often be highly successful, and even highly dimensional despite the fact they are kind of ‘CONTAINED"‘ ideas. They can also be HELL. We see both in these Architectur*l Dig*st tours.
One (ORVILLE) becomes a lesson for us; the other (DEBBY-JOSH) is a cautionary tale.
FOUNDATIONAL IDEAS FROM FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT:
By way of substantiating ourselves, we turn briefly to the philosophy of ARCHI-FURNITURE VIP Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a vigilante against the ‘closed box’ vibe, laying out a very compelling track record of décor focused on “CONTINUITY” – mainly in an effort to dismantle the boundaries between ARCHITECTURE and STUFF THAT SITS INSIDE ARCHITECTURE. In other words, you can’t just jam whatever stuff you want into a home.
This requires an appreciation for THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF THINGS – and this is where we see the VAST, VAST gulf between Orville and Debby-Josh.
ORVILLE PECK: décor seems to emanate from elements of PERSONALITY, ARCHITECTURE, EXTERIOR CONTEXT (i.e. ENVIRONMENT, i.e. TREES AND STUFF)… i.e. the frame of “HOUSE” is all but eliminated i.e. because those aforementioned aspects all feel as one.
DEBBY RYAN and JOSH DUN: décor is an explosion of 400,000 different “FUN” ideas loosely bound together by the difficult-to-master concept of NOVELTY, blended with intense arrogance i.e. that everything is a TOTALLY-UNIQUE-EXPRESSION™ (T.U.E., or French for “TO KILL”)… i.e. the frame of “HOUSE” does some wildly heavy lifting, trying to contain HAVOC
A NOTE ON SUCCESSFUL NOVELTY:
Novelty is not always bad-tacky, as many assume. Debby-Josh might have found their FUN and T.U.E. in a more thoughtful, liveable way.
Please spend some time experiencing the works of SITE, which was an architectural practice or something like that, and produced some excellent work for BEST (a now-defunct chain of CATALOGUE SHOWROOMS):
N.B. Headers here are FOR SCALE interpretations
SITE #1: THE POST-APOCALYPTIC NATURE TAKEOVER:
SITE #2: CRITIQUE ON “DUPLICITY” AND “FACADE”:
SITE #3: CRUMBLING EMPIRE (*HIGHLY IRONIC!)
AND, A PAUL RUDOLPH MOMENT:
And may we also introduce more novelty in its appropriate form care the PAUL RUDOLPH apartment at 23 BEEKMAN PLACE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, which looked like this:
Nothing novel there; PERHAPS the AMOUNT of lucite almost gets there. But that THEME OF “RADICAL TRANSPARENCY” carried into an instance of true novelty, here:
A fish-tank-of-plexiglass sink. Something almost depraved about it – why is that? (We’re working it out.)
But, for now, ONWARD TO ARCHI D:
ORVILLE PECK, Los Angeles (9.5/10) - FLINSTONE AND FATE
A home truly discussed in FOR SCALEAN terms, described by ORVILLE as “FLINSTONES-ESQUE — BUT WOOD!” (where the Flinstones instead leaned heavily into ‘stone’, Orville and Fred both celebrating the Elementary). Orville has a grasp of the joy and absurdity of décor; the un-seriousness that ironically comes from near-total specificity.
And for a house so committed to his country-boy, homo-rodeo aesthetic, ORVILLE hardly ever references it. Never does he utter “ranch” or “barn” or “rustic” or “gay” or “camp” or anything, instead, the DNA he urges us to recognize is thus: