Next stop: [[Stop Number 2767]] ![[442.jpg]] ## Notes This was the first image I made for the project. It was [[Early Photos|early in the series]]. I don’t think it’s a particularly strong image, now that I look at it again with a bit of hindsight. Still, I think it established a basic pattern that I would follow for the rest of the series: 1) It focused on a very neat, “explanatory” manner in its composition. The verticals are quite vertical, the building is pictured at a conventional 45°. The roofline of the building peeks just within the frame. The composition is buttressed on either side by two other buildings. 2) There is a car which moves just barely fast enough to produce a motion blur. [[Blurred cars]] are a repeated motif throughout the series. I think the blurred car is a sort of nod to the human agency within the space of the city. It is a larger-than-human thing which can move like a small building (especially in the case of semis and busses) but is not yet autonomous. They are little blocky components of the landscape scurrying about along the massive amount of space we’ve given over to roads in our cities. 3) The car itself is also a little photographic twist of the wrist. It would not have been too hard to just wait for the thing to pass and find a completely open stretch of road. Not every photo with a similar street-facing composition has a car or two. The buildings themselves are worth discussing- they are a string of apartment complexes built on broad street within the last five years or so. I suppose a mixed use multi unit housing model is better for dense downtown urbanism than endless detached single family housing which must get built further and further away from cities, and thus increase reliance on cars. Yet, these rather ugly postmodernesque buildings have broken out over the city in the past 10 years. If these things can make housing more affordable for everyone, then they may just be the cost of doing business if you want to be a growing rather than an atrophying city. Yet, they just have this looming, depressing ugliness about them that basically attracted my eye, even for something as significant as the first image in what, at the time, would possibly become a long running photographic series. The Dodge Caravan (by the looks of it, my family once had a Dodge Caravan) serves as a useful conceptual contrast to the utilitarian and modern housing units. It is a portent of sorts, just skating by and reminding these very fresh, modern, clean buildings that some day they too will go the way of the aesthetic dinosaur which the Dodge Caravan from the early 2000s has gone. Look, I have a family, there may very well be such a car in my not too distant future. But we do not need to pretend it is elegant or dignified in any way. Just practical for a particular stage of life, just like those apartments. I once got into an argument with a friend about buildings like this. No, more of a polite disagreement. No, more so that I held a slightly different opinion from him and said nothing because it wasn’t worth trying to change someone’s mind over a matter of architectural taste. Basically, he argued that with the vast numbers of architectural styles, historic homes, and the overall built beauty of Richmond city, that we should be able to come up with more elegant apartment complexes than the specimen (of this type, not that exact building) pictured here. I wondered, though, about the longer view of this style. It certainly couldn’t claim to be “distinctly of Richmond”. Perhaps that is an [[Architectural Style]]’s greatest sin- if it is not somehow of the place or the people (even of a single weird person) then it comes from the thoughtless place of expediency and simplicity- what’s the most building we can get for the lowest cost? That’s hardly a “design philosophy” or something which is bound to produce personality- only the shell which allows personality to be projected into it somehow. When I say “long view”, I mean, will this style age into something *like* the respect we have for row housing in the Fan? I’ve been to other historic cities on the east coast- row houses are not exactly a rare specimen only found in one place. Row houses were not built outside of the same constraints and ideas that people, even Americans from just 100 or so years ago, had about efficiency and thrift. If anything I would expect our great great grandfathers to be *more* thrifty with their building materials. It’s also worth considering that row houses either get continually rejuvenated (as in single family homes which are renovated and updated, and thus turned into something like the idea of itself) or they deteriorate and are demolished no matter how “historic” they are. I can think of at least a few examples in Richmond of miserably maintained buildings which people wish to save just because they’re old. In one case, it’s quite a beautiful building, but with severe disrepair and no one seeking to take up the cost for its ownership and restoration, what are you to do? Just let the shell of it rot? So, what I mean to say is that perhaps these buildings, the building pictured, has some future possibility for redemption or appreciation. I don’t have high hopes for their craftsmanship, but perhaps some future generations will find a vision for these buildings which helps them integrate into the landscape, even the “psyche” of a city. Any new construction is a sort of fresh scar, but the scar comes from adding rather than subtracting. I think they’re tremendously ugly, but I don’t condemn them to that fate for all time. Time, though, is a secret sauce which by definition can’t be rushed. I also see (and perhaps expect) the alternative, that they will only ever be seen more so as a nearly communist architecture. Though, whereas communist housing was geared more towards the housing of as many people as possible for the cheapest means possible, this housing is geared towards housing as many as possible with the strictures of supply and demand at play. In other words, it's got to be and look comfortable. People should want to rent it. ## Keywords - [[Ai Edits]] - [[Architecture]] - [[Car]] - [[Construction]] - [[Manhole]] - [[Orange Sign]] - [[Powerlines]]