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I prepared to hard disagree with you, but you gave me points to consider. However, I find myself being drawn to post-modernist vintage furniture. Many of the pieces are quite beautiful and functional.

My favourite new channel!

I would love to hear your ideas about architecture and its relationship to the urban environment. Part of design is empathy and understanding the problem/audience. Many post-modernist buildings completely ignore this and are much more concerned with attracting a certain demographic instead of contributing or being for the community that it's forced upon. I think it's a joke how postmodernist designers and architects are "responding" to the culture and environment, but who is it responding to and who is it for? It's more concerned with being "cynical" and avant-garde, than being authentic.

I love your analysis and your willingness to break down why you hate it 😂 I too love modernism, but I don’t really see how a modernist building would fit into its surrounding context any better than postmodern buildings would. And ig I don’t really have a problem mixing art and architecture (we’ve done it throughout history after all). So for me the question would be; ceci n’est pas un lemon squeezer?

A huge congratulations on your new apartment 😊 You are a pleasure to listen to both for your excellent advice & your mild mannered personality!

crushing my juicy salif hopes and dreams

How do we feel about reproduction event posters - I see these a lot, duplicating historic art exhibits. Unsure, on the one hand they're cool and graphic but on the other hand it just feels so fake.

i know barely anything about design, but postmodern design kind of seems like the troll of the design world. i feel like partially its aim is to illicit the kind of feedback in this video. which is admittedly annoying and trollish, but it does kind of make me think of how, if a postmodern piece of design serves its function, then i can't really place any value judgement in not liking it other than just personal preference (the only potential one being that i agree it does tend to be a very "of its time" style that gets renovated and gutted often, which is not good from an ecological perspective)

I agree and disagree to a certain extent. I think the post modern interiors and objects are quite playful and joyful. They can bring fun to a more austere environment! Although the buildings are nonfunctional and a “sore in the eye” for some, I find them very ironic, or, as somebody said in the comments, as a “parody”, “joke”. I love watching your videos btw!

But you do like Pee Wee’s playhouse, right?

I dislike Modernism for the same reasons you dislike Postmodernism. Alot of Modernist tropes exist purely to distinguish itself from vernacular styles (e.g. pared-back façades, flat roofs, exposed structural elements, glass walls). Indeed, pleasure is a function and I don't feel that a chair made of metal tubes is as pleasing to live with as a solid wood claw-foot one. Vernacular and traditional styles also make buildings more intenlligible.

just ranting (i do rly like this home) but im sooo tired of white walls i really don't understand their extreme prevalence in like very designed spaces ... like yes its easier to work around but aren't you guys designers? isn't that your job? to understand that constraint and know how to work around it in a beautiful way/use it to your advantage? lol but i haven't done much designing an actual space outside of my minds eye so idk. but the wall color of course does sooo much for the vibe of the space i don't understand why light tones of pink or green or truly whatever arent more common. is the only off white we can manage to think of beige? like the light bouncing off the walls is sooo crucial it makes a space automatically so much warmer and cozier/moody feeling to have some sort of tone on the walls (and then that tone is reflected on all of the objects). white walls also just screams lack of intentionality to me. like every wall in every home is white because it needs to be as mass appealing as possible for commercial reasons, i/a lot of people stick with white walls because we're renting and don't have a choice in the matter, and the designers still can't move past white walls as an object of sheer necessity? just feels sad and boring and lazy. tbf though i hate a lot of modern design aesthetics because the clean lines/stripped down ornament just reads sooo generic and cheap to me. like ikea furniture but nicer materials. more of a reaction to that rather than something inherently super wrong with white walls but still! there's way too many of them! can we get some vibes :(

You must love Louisiana! I'm sure you've already visited, but for anyone else who recently moved to or is visiting the Copenhagen area, it's a must-visit museum if you enjoy modernist architecture :)

IKEA used to have *beautiful* Persian wool rugs in the ‘90s which ran about $700-$1,200. I wanted one SO bad but couldn’t afford one at the time. 😢

Not all faux-vintage rugs are created equal(ly). I have a pure wool “Persian” rug I bought online from Home Depot about 12-13 years ago that is absolutely beautiful. It’s really colorful and doesn’t have any of that phony-looking fading, distressing, or aging. I love it so much I bought another one that’s in the garage waiting for the first one to wear out. They don’t carry it anymore.

Not all faux-vintage rugs are created equal(ly). I have a pure wool “Persian” rug I bought online from Home Depot about 12-13 years ago that is absolutely beautiful. It’s really colorful and doesn’t have any of that phony-looking fading, distressing, or aging. I love it so much I bought another one that’s in the garage waiting for the first one to wear out. They don’t carry it anymore.

I like busts. I don’t have any, but I wouldn’t be against putting a small bronze bust on a bookshelf. They’ve just been grossly overplayed, to say the least.

Remember when Starbucks had leather sofas and club chairs? When they had mood lighting and colorful art on the walls? They looked like hipster coffeehouses in Seattle or someone’s cozy casual clubhouse. Some of them hosted poetry nights every week. What happened to that business model? In the past couple of decades they’ve become cold, dry, and stale. I’ve never liked their burnt overpriced coffee, but at least they had a vibe. ☕️

Did these “undercover Starbucks” have different names? I’ve never heard of that.

Noah, thank you very much for your thoughts about lighting. I'm just in the process of buying an apartment (it's not built yet, but I have the plan) and I think your thoughts are really going to help me avoid some major big falls. So thank you. I think I probably have the chance to put the ceiling. Insert lights along some walls, and I really will consider it even though it feels like taking a chance. Because really, I'm going to be stuck with it. But it looks so good on your video. I'm brand new to this channel so I'm definitely gonna check out your other videos. Thank you.

Hard agree! I feel like I've noticed the pendulum swinging back in this direction (with interiors and objects anyway) and I hate it so much. Would love to see a video comparing these with grand modernist buildings like the Sydney Opera House. Showing that it's possible to make a statement while still maintaining coherence.

As someone that loves modernism, can you do a video on Antoni Gaudi. I am so happy I found your channel.

2:21 Love seeing Fallingwater. It’s one of my favorite homes. I hope to see it in person someday soon. I visited Taliesin last summer and it was marvelous. I highly recommend. Frank Lloyd Wright was a wonderful architect who speaks to my soul.

Postmodern design doesn't feel like an actual attempt to make good design. Instead, it feels like a parody of good design.

DRUGS

the thing with realistic plants are: 99% of the nice looking rooms in pictures or videos with the real plants are just used as decoration for this specific shot. the plant will die in like 95% of the cases they are demonstrated in the interior. for instance the pic you've shown with the big colocasia at 6:11. this plant needs TONS of light and even direct sunlight (no, don't listen to the the plant instructions. I have several alocasias on a south facing window with the sun hammering on them. no burned leafs) also you can see, that she's not in that room before because some of their leaves are towards the walls, what plants aren't doing. they face the sun/brightest spot. yet you can still rotate them, the stem of the colocasia is too short for the amount of light... leave this plant on this spot, you'll have a dead or ugly plant soon in a couple of weeks

This style of his isn’t sustainable it’s ultimately just a trend. That’s what I hate about it. I really hate it tbh. Diplos was 100000x better in my opinion in every way.

damn... i have exactly this rug.... but i also don't have the funds atm for a real persian one for like 3000 bucks

Form over function gives me the ick, but as an uneducated civilian, modern architecture is presented as an arrangement of cold hard boxes with a few pillows here or there with big windows to make it a livable space. Like living in a gallery. I don't think regular humans want that.

I didn't know anything about it and absolutely hate it now, so good job Noah!

This gets personal and I need to pen down my thoughts. Postmodernism always fascinates me given how diverse and different it is manifested across different fields - philosophically it has impacted me a lot since college, yet postmodern art isn’t my cup of tea. Personal taste aside, it seems a bit problematic to reject postmodernism as a whole in architecture and design. I am primarily trained in urban planning and design, and Caroline’s earlier comment about Jane Jacob’s critique on modernism in this realm brings out a very pertinent question on understanding the rise and fall of modernism in architecture before the arrival of postmodernism. A crucial part of modernist design and architecture is this new layer of social responsibility, whereby better design is believed to be able to lead to a better way of life (physically, aesthetically, even morally) and ultimately a better world. Those are progressive and promising at the first glance, but are a bit arrogant and overly ambitious as well. Beyond the usual critique of aesthetic blandness and the lack of personal identity, the fall of modernist design is kind of ironic to me due to its increasing insensitivity towards human and the contextuality into the 70s, and it is frustrating how the essence of human-oriented design is often missing or even executed in the exact opposite ways. This is a core reason why modernism as a movement has begun to be regarded as elitist, exclusive, detached from the working class, and even inhumane, despite its democratic intentions. Some modernist residential projects went really far in dictating interior designs in some housing estates. And in doing so, the actual wellbeing of ordinary residents has often been deprioritised when it comes to maintaining the code in modernist design. After all, Le Corbusier himself theorised (a) house as a living-in machine. There are also varied subpar executions which further undermined modernist architecture with failed building methods and material choices - the justification of ‘affordability’ often ended up in using cheap materials with poor quality, which is especially prevalent among social housing projects. Eventually we have some grand residential projects and alienated housing estates which still impact a lot of cities decades later. And it’s unsurprising that postmodernism emerged under this backdrop of falling modernism, the dogmas associated with it, and the unfulfilled promises of a Utopian vision. Of course I am not shitting on modernism as a whole, nor am I denying the intellectual merits of modernist design - moving to Barbican was my dream when I was living in London and I love and am collecting modernist furniture pieces, but I also believe in examining it holistically and critically. At the end of the day, form follows function is probably one of the most powerful and influential design principles in the 20th century, but neither form nor function should dictate one’s life or way of living.

I loved this video (and all your videos I've seen.) But I really don't think that MCM design is all about form following function. For example, the beautiful chairs and furniture by Charles and Ray seem to have been designed for extremely short people, all of whom are able to do a sit up and get up off the ground with no hands or help at all. In contrast, my 90s wood/gray upholstery dining chairs (Finn by Lignet Roset) and 80s black lacquer/black leather occasional chairs (Calligaris) are comfortable, fit the human body, and are standard 18" floor to seat height. I love to look at modern furniture in vintage stores or DWR, but actually sitting in that furniture is another thing. I wish Herman Miller or DWR would start making enlarged replicas of MCM furniture. Anyway, sorry for this contrarian post, because the video was about architecture and you were spot on.

I’m not going to lie ✋🏽🤚🏽, I like the steps that goes nowhere. I want to read there. I understand the point though.

You never miss!!!

I love postmodernism in small doses. The ornamental nature makes for beautiful small pieces of furniture or decorative objects, e.g., lamps. Rarely have I seen the form of a postmodern lamp stand in the way of its actual function. But I can agree that its implementation into architecture can miss the mark often times. All this to say, I hope that you can find a middle ground and not hate all postmodern design.

Noah: "Bla bla bla... VERNACULAR design languages, does that make sense?" Me: (googles)

What are some good modern window dressings options? I feel like everything is either to office like (blinds) or too grandma like (curtains). Or is it just the materials? Pls help

Your videos arey intellectual feast. I absolutely love how you talk about architecture and design. Can you recommend any books or other content creators that expand these topics? Noah in some universe if you were a lecturer, I’d be your most eager architecture student.

As a product designer I 100% agree with you. As you said, I can appreciate a postmodern piece as an art piece. But I will never take it serious as a designed object. It's nice to have a youtube channel with someone who has actually studied design. Keep doing what you do Noah! It's brilliant.

You have no idea how hard I’ve been binge watching your content 😂😭 I just got my dream home & almost turned it into the sad beige aesthetic interior with that EXACT flooring until you made me realise how horrible “faux” materials look compared to honest ones. I wish you could help me design my house because I have the ideas but not sure how to put it together 🤦🏽‍♀️

Hey! I've watched most if not all of your videos at this point. The visual references really help in understanding the ideas, but it would be great if you could include names/references wherever you have them. For instance, this video contains an image of a gorgeous couch, but I have no way of finding out what it is and if it is attainable at all!

Post modern is when your friend takes your sketchup account and starts playing around lmao

Hot take here, but I find my Juicy Salif totally functional and anyone that can’t manage it probably shouldn’t be using any juicer without supervision. It’s no more or less messy than just about any other handheld juicer, and I think all of the horror stories of it spraying lemon juice everywhere are coming from people that have never used it. The part about juice running down the legs is pretty absurd and just straight up wrong, juice would have to straight up defy physics, and travel up the legs, remember that gravity is a thing, and then travel back down the legs after it has already reached the peak. Maybe a few drops occasionally shoot out, but really I think it’s time to chalk this up to incompetence. I’m not a Phillipe Stark drone or anything here, but I put off buying this really cool piece for so long because I heard so many bad things about it, only to realize once I took the plunge that it’s not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Rant over thanks for reading #defendthesalif

I think post-modernism is really good at proposing the question: 'why not?' although you might not agree with some aesthetic choices, I wouldn't personally sum it up as a movement completely overthrowing functionality. To me it reflects back at modernism; not everything in our life is purely functional, and even then like you said yourself: 'the abstract idea of a function can be so flexible', why then would you not be able to consider 'starting a conversation' as a function? I think it confronts us with the insight that what we think a chair for example should look like, is just a learned assumption. As long as you can sit comfortably on it, perhaps what it looks like should not be set in stone.

Noah I love your content! I would love some book recommendations from you (or even ppl watching as well), I'm really interesting in interior design but I don't know where to start

Quite a few years ago Philippe Stark came out with faucet line with Grohe, industry insiders lovingly nicknamed this line "erectile dysfunction", def another conversation piece 🙈😂 10+ years ago Stark designed a tile line for italian manufacturer Sant-Agostino and it is one of plainest and dumbest things i've ever seen ( i worked as a buyer for a company in Russia at that time) so I never understood the hype around his work 🥴

while i agree with some of the points you make, sorry but ricardo bofill will always be one of my favorite architects haha

I learn so much 🙌🏼🙏🏼

any idea floor power outlet positioning?

Form Follows Emotion