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I see this as an extension of globalization — just like there’s a Subway, Costco, Home Depot, etcetera in virtually every town and city across North America (and in slightly varying form, the world), where once individual establishments once flourished there is now sameness.
This could come in the form of legislation that resists the spread of services like Airbnb (as Berlin, Paris, New York and San Francisco are considering)
Airbnb is already toast in Berlin. New laws are already in place.
PS: Berlin has more "aesthetic" in one city block than all of boring Silicon Valley combined…I get the app thing though.
I’m Italian and I moved to France three years ago. Here cities are copy-paste and I found it quite boring. I don’t know if we can say that Italy is "resisting globalization" but for sure it is trying to keep tradition, style and culture.
I wondered if they could have gone farther. Like, this is part of the big pattern of post-ownership in some ways. I don’t ‘own’ those netflix videos, my pictures aren’t printed out, even my car and bike might be shared. This is the same behavior, but also, how much differentiation is possible when we own less and less stuff anyway? These are all Star Trek berths because we all live in the future.
Hotels and McDonald’s and airports already did this on a larger scale, imo, but I think there’s another trend here, too. We have to give up some identity to be a community, and when that community moves online our community identities will not be what they used to be, either. Everyone’s family looks different but everyone’s facebook is 90% the same. The urge towards conformity is also the urge towards democratization. There is a positive side.
Interesting observation, but I think post-ownership is different: underneath, that is about the devaluation of creative work and intellectual property in the digital age. It started with Napster and mp3’s around 1999 in the US, and streaming services like Pandora and Spotify have only made it worse. Music especially is just a disposable commodity to many people now.
I believe he’s touching on something different, which is the larger trend of people constructing their identities based on consumer choices. I would argue that as traditional human identifiers like race, religion, family, and birthplace have less significance in modern countries, people are replacing those aspects of their story with the brands they buy. And in the subset of people with the money to travel via Airbnb, there’s a hunger for "authenticity" and things to tell unique stories about—yet these people, used to the convenience of the web, don’t want to hassle of, say, finding their own lodging in a country where they don’t speak the language. Hence Airspace.
Also, agreed that conformity can promote democratization—yet it’s only among people who can afford it, so I’m unsure about the larger-scale benefits to a community. I would bet that the more popular Airbnb listings in most cities do no belong to poor people.
Well… this is the result of what globalization represents right? My hypothesis is that this is generated by the lie we all tell ourselves "I have to appear that I search for authentic experiences since nowadays everything is mass produced, but what I really want is to feel secure and inside, but far enough from the centre, of my comfort zone". I agree with the restrictions. I used Airbnb in residential areas of small cities and I didn’t feel very welcomed (specially if you don’t speak the local language). At first I thought the were just rude people not wanting to accept globalization, but then I realize the impact this kind of tools have and how they are in their own right to not be OK with massive obnoctious tourist migration.
Great article. Its refreshing reading articles like this.
Wow! Excellent article. This issue of sameness can easily be seen outside of AirB&B. When you look at interior design websites, especially something like Apartment Therapy, which is suppose to feature "real people" small living spaces, that has several home tours a day: The Sameness becomes overwhelming.
However much like fashion, we speak with our homes. They are reflections of us, our status, who we want to be. I want to belong in this AirSpace is what we seem to be saying.
Do you guys have any reading material besides some of the quotes in the article you would recommend. This is a truly fascinating topic.
Good point about Apartment Therapy—I’ve had the same thought whenever I look through Dwell or Architectural Digest: it’s all the same style, over and over again.
Then of course, if you want to go all the way to the source of media studies and technology, there’s no better book than Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan. A long, dense book, but everyone writing about media and technology for the past 50 years owes him a debt. Happy reading!
This is perhaps one of the most ambivalent piece I have read recently. I say this because Airspace is really a perceived phenomenon due to social media, sites, blogs and other things that hog our attention. This perception is rather an illusion of the meatspace. To further emphasize I think this massive overload of data that skews our view on reality, its easier for our brains to find cognitive shortcuts to label and classify all this data as similar. I see this as a small group of people generating a lot of data and coming to an agreement on what is presentable on a photo. I am not fully sure if that is true in reality completely. I think its in flux that it will change before setting in. The US has been standardizing buildings for many decades. It has been far more boring and similar in the recent past than now. In fact this has sort of given rise to a canvas(due the flattening) on which people are just figuring out ways to express. Apartment therapy is one of them where you see actually maximalism a lot with people putting in a whole bunch of colorful random trinkets in their domiciles. While not perfect, Airspace is less similar than the average hotel. I just looked up dwell and noticed this one the front page https://www.dwell.com/article/creative-revival-of-a-modernist-gem-97415f5e Sure its minimal(or same) but it has allowed a novel expression in combining mid century and japanese styles with creative landscaping.Is there a pool on a hill? The idea of airspace is far from evidence of Silicon Valley spreading its sterile aesthetics all over the world. Every paragraph in this article just repeats this same sentiment of how this style is spreading through many anecdotes. On the other hand I do agree a lot of developing nations copy western aesthetics in many aspects of life which is far more damaging to the identity of each culture in those countries. I come from one and I can tell that is not minimal, standardized, sterile or convenient(can’t even find standard mattress sizes so you can buy sheets that fit). This dichotomy is so apparent at least in my view. In summary, I’d argue that the actual physical space has gotten more diverse than ever and it will only continue to diversify. Perhaps its true that there is a sameness but I feel thats just in one dimension which is enabling more personal expression in other dimensions. Earthships and tiny homes are wild examples how diverse homes are actually becoming.
"It’s hard to identify with something so empty at its core." I think this sentence in and of itself captures both the worst and best part of this phenomenon. It is sad that so many people identify and actively seek such a vacuous experience, but that very emptiness guarantees that it won’t last. The beauty of good aesthetics, especially aesthetics imbued with meaning, is their timelessness. People will get sick of this.
I work at a startup. We don’t give a shit who else has it. If the whole world had it we’d keep it. Its pretty, comfortable, and unoffensive.
It’s like this dude just realized that design has trends, and trends spread. Yeah, the internet has sped that up, and perhaps intensified it, but I don’t see how that’s in any way surprising or out of the ordinary.
Soon some other aesthetic will catch fire. We gonna break that down too?
It IS a bit like every music fan’s complaint that the band ‘sold out’ when that just means it got popular, and then the fan moves on to another less successful band. Sure.
But it’s also the case that people, esp tourists, crave diversity and novelty and at one point we as a culture were paving over it with gleeful abandon, and had to mindfully and purposefully dial it back. That’s what created Central Park, historical sites and bunches of local artists. Why our cities are as livable as they are, why museums exist, why we put pictures in history books. Humans are about more than survival.
And, after all, how would you say ‘inoffensive’ if there was nothing else that could offend?
In a more globalized world, design trends will be more globally widespread. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Throughout history, those who have wished culture would go back to the good ol’ days have aimed for an imagined historical culture. Cultural influence across borders is what made the world’s cultures today. To stop this mixing would be to once again act like Ming China trying to recreate a cultural ideal that may or may not have existed.
I wanna add to that, its only been a short while this has been going on. I think its actually setting a stage for an explosion of different styles by combining eclectic styles from different era and geographies. Eventually I think there will to be a radical rethinking of public and private spaces that are nothing like we’ve ever had so far.
In a way, yes. What makes it interesting, though, is regarding how the gig-economy—a relatively new phenomenon that goes beyond just globalization and which gave us the likes of AirBnB, Uber, etc.—influences design fashionability, the rate at which it spreads, and whom it affects most.
I’d argue that the gig-economy just utilises the latest run-of-the-mill style, not unlike H&M, Uniqlo or Zara. When a new style becomes mainstream, the gig-economy will just utilize that. This is nothing new, and as noted in the article, hotels and stores have been doing this for years.
Comments
Great article!
I see this as an extension of globalization — just like there’s a Subway, Costco, Home Depot, etcetera in virtually every town and city across North America (and in slightly varying form, the world), where once individual establishments once flourished there is now sameness.
By vidiot on 08.03.16 10:48am
Is Foursquare really that popular?
I wish more people knew what I was talking about when referencing it.
By KSulli on 08.03.16 11:08am
Airbnb is already toast in Berlin. New laws are already in place.
PS: Berlin has more "aesthetic" in one city block than all of boring Silicon Valley combined…I get the app thing though.
By shakalakaboom on 08.03.16 11:11am
Or go to any Italian city. Sometimes I feel like we’re resisting globalization, and I’m still wondering it’s good or bad.
By athem on 08.03.16 3:19pm
I’m Italian and I moved to France three years ago. Here cities are copy-paste and I found it quite boring. I don’t know if we can say that Italy is "resisting globalization" but for sure it is trying to keep tradition, style and culture.
By cibernite1989 on 08.04.16 4:03am
Nothing will be better than italian modern design! so interesting and masculine
By cdm89 on 08.05.16 9:55am
European cities in general are very beautiful and have so much more character and charm.
US cities are just functional and boring.
By theratchetnclank on 08.07.16 9:19am
Sounds like you’ve been spending too much time staying in Airbnb’s . . .
By IamNateDavis on 08.09.16 1:25pm
This article is one of those phenomena you are not aware it exists, but once you read it, you totally relate and agree of its existence. Great piece.
By rdelfin on 08.03.16 11:28am
I wondered if they could have gone farther. Like, this is part of the big pattern of post-ownership in some ways. I don’t ‘own’ those netflix videos, my pictures aren’t printed out, even my car and bike might be shared. This is the same behavior, but also, how much differentiation is possible when we own less and less stuff anyway? These are all Star Trek berths because we all live in the future.
Hotels and McDonald’s and airports already did this on a larger scale, imo, but I think there’s another trend here, too. We have to give up some identity to be a community, and when that community moves online our community identities will not be what they used to be, either. Everyone’s family looks different but everyone’s facebook is 90% the same. The urge towards conformity is also the urge towards democratization. There is a positive side.
By mjw149 on 08.03.16 2:09pm
Interesting observation, but I think post-ownership is different: underneath, that is about the devaluation of creative work and intellectual property in the digital age. It started with Napster and mp3’s around 1999 in the US, and streaming services like Pandora and Spotify have only made it worse. Music especially is just a disposable commodity to many people now.
I believe he’s touching on something different, which is the larger trend of people constructing their identities based on consumer choices. I would argue that as traditional human identifiers like race, religion, family, and birthplace have less significance in modern countries, people are replacing those aspects of their story with the brands they buy. And in the subset of people with the money to travel via Airbnb, there’s a hunger for "authenticity" and things to tell unique stories about—yet these people, used to the convenience of the web, don’t want to hassle of, say, finding their own lodging in a country where they don’t speak the language. Hence Airspace.
By IamNateDavis on 08.09.16 1:34pm
Also, agreed that conformity can promote democratization—yet it’s only among people who can afford it, so I’m unsure about the larger-scale benefits to a community. I would bet that the more popular Airbnb listings in most cities do no belong to poor people.
By IamNateDavis on 08.09.16 1:39pm
To me it just ordinary Bauhaus style and has nothing to do with Silicon Valley.
ps. But I do agree that internet help spreading it.
By Mr.Mulderfox on 08.03.16 11:31am
Well… this is the result of what globalization represents right? My hypothesis is that this is generated by the lie we all tell ourselves "I have to appear that I search for authentic experiences since nowadays everything is mass produced, but what I really want is to feel secure and inside, but far enough from the centre, of my comfort zone". I agree with the restrictions. I used Airbnb in residential areas of small cities and I didn’t feel very welcomed (specially if you don’t speak the local language). At first I thought the were just rude people not wanting to accept globalization, but then I realize the impact this kind of tools have and how they are in their own right to not be OK with massive obnoctious tourist migration.
Great article. Its refreshing reading articles like this.
By zevo256 on 08.03.16 11:36am
Wow! Excellent article. This issue of sameness can easily be seen outside of AirB&B. When you look at interior design websites, especially something like Apartment Therapy, which is suppose to feature "real people" small living spaces, that has several home tours a day: The Sameness becomes overwhelming.
However much like fashion, we speak with our homes. They are reflections of us, our status, who we want to be. I want to belong in this AirSpace is what we seem to be saying.
Do you guys have any reading material besides some of the quotes in the article you would recommend. This is a truly fascinating topic.
By Jose A on 08.03.16 12:34pm
Good point about Apartment Therapy—I’ve had the same thought whenever I look through Dwell or Architectural Digest: it’s all the same style, over and over again.
Om Malik talked about the increasingly generic digital culture in this post: http://om.co/2014/04/02/social-web-our-increasingly-generic-culture/
This is a tangent, but if you want to think more about how so many startups use "progress" as the only moral justification for how they are changing society, this article gives an astute analysis: http://berkeleyjournal.org/2015/01/morality-and-the-idea-of-progress-in-silicon-valley/
Then of course, if you want to go all the way to the source of media studies and technology, there’s no better book than Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan. A long, dense book, but everyone writing about media and technology for the past 50 years owes him a debt. Happy reading!
By IamNateDavis on 08.09.16 1:51pm
This is perhaps one of the most ambivalent piece I have read recently. I say this because Airspace is really a perceived phenomenon due to social media, sites, blogs and other things that hog our attention. This perception is rather an illusion of the meatspace. To further emphasize I think this massive overload of data that skews our view on reality, its easier for our brains to find cognitive shortcuts to label and classify all this data as similar. I see this as a small group of people generating a lot of data and coming to an agreement on what is presentable on a photo. I am not fully sure if that is true in reality completely. I think its in flux that it will change before setting in.
The US has been standardizing buildings for many decades. It has been far more boring and similar in the recent past than now. In fact this has sort of given rise to a canvas(due the flattening) on which people are just figuring out ways to express. Apartment therapy is one of them where you see actually maximalism a lot with people putting in a whole bunch of colorful random trinkets in their domiciles. While not perfect, Airspace is less similar than the average hotel.
I just looked up dwell and noticed this one the front page https://www.dwell.com/article/creative-revival-of-a-modernist-gem-97415f5e
Sure its minimal(or same) but it has allowed a novel expression in combining mid century and japanese styles with creative landscaping.Is there a pool on a hill?
The idea of airspace is far from evidence of Silicon Valley spreading its sterile aesthetics all over the world. Every paragraph in this article just repeats this same sentiment of how this style is spreading through many anecdotes. On the other hand I do agree a lot of developing nations copy western aesthetics in many aspects of life which is far more damaging to the identity of each culture in those countries. I come from one and I can tell that is not minimal, standardized, sterile or convenient(can’t even find standard mattress sizes so you can buy sheets that fit). This dichotomy is so apparent at least in my view.
In summary, I’d argue that the actual physical space has gotten more diverse than ever and it will only continue to diversify. Perhaps its true that there is a sameness but I feel thats just in one dimension which is enabling more personal expression in other dimensions. Earthships and tiny homes are wild examples how diverse homes are actually becoming.
By madhu106 on 08.11.16 11:02pm
"It’s hard to identify with something so empty at its core." I think this sentence in and of itself captures both the worst and best part of this phenomenon. It is sad that so many people identify and actively seek such a vacuous experience, but that very emptiness guarantees that it won’t last. The beauty of good aesthetics, especially aesthetics imbued with meaning, is their timelessness. People will get sick of this.
By davidsdepriest on 08.03.16 1:08pm
I work at a startup. We don’t give a shit who else has it. If the whole world had it we’d keep it. Its pretty, comfortable, and unoffensive.
It’s like this dude just realized that design has trends, and trends spread. Yeah, the internet has sped that up, and perhaps intensified it, but I don’t see how that’s in any way surprising or out of the ordinary.
Soon some other aesthetic will catch fire. We gonna break that down too?
By cobra_juicy on 08.03.16 1:49pm
It IS a bit like every music fan’s complaint that the band ‘sold out’ when that just means it got popular, and then the fan moves on to another less successful band. Sure.
But it’s also the case that people, esp tourists, crave diversity and novelty and at one point we as a culture were paving over it with gleeful abandon, and had to mindfully and purposefully dial it back. That’s what created Central Park, historical sites and bunches of local artists. Why our cities are as livable as they are, why museums exist, why we put pictures in history books. Humans are about more than survival.
And, after all, how would you say ‘inoffensive’ if there was nothing else that could offend?
By mjw149 on 08.03.16 2:12pm
In a more globalized world, design trends will be more globally widespread. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Throughout history, those who have wished culture would go back to the good ol’ days have aimed for an imagined historical culture. Cultural influence across borders is what made the world’s cultures today. To stop this mixing would be to once again act like Ming China trying to recreate a cultural ideal that may or may not have existed.
By Casin on 08.03.16 2:04pm
I wanna add to that, its only been a short while this has been going on. I think its actually setting a stage for an explosion of different styles by combining eclectic styles from different era and geographies. Eventually I think there will to be a radical rethinking of public and private spaces that are nothing like we’ve ever had so far.
By madhu106 on 08.11.16 11:07pm
Is it me or is this article trying to understand the way fashion works?
By Miiita on 08.03.16 2:13pm
In a way, yes. What makes it interesting, though, is regarding how the gig-economy—a relatively new phenomenon that goes beyond just globalization and which gave us the likes of AirBnB, Uber, etc.—influences design fashionability, the rate at which it spreads, and whom it affects most.
By daheim on 08.03.16 7:19pm
I’d argue that the gig-economy just utilises the latest run-of-the-mill style, not unlike H&M, Uniqlo or Zara. When a new style becomes mainstream, the gig-economy will just utilize that. This is nothing new, and as noted in the article, hotels and stores have been doing this for years.
By Miiita on 08.04.16 5:55am