Interview with the Unhappy Hipster

Unhappy Hipster

The L.A. Times‘ wonderful architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne profiles the hilarious site Unhappy Hipsters in today’s Critic’s Notebook column. The site’s hook is stealing photos from design mags of people looking absolutely miserable in their soulless modernist homes.

Hawthorne tried to get the site’s anonymous founders to reveal their identities, but pulled this quote instead: “Unhappy Hipsters is a place to finally say what we’ve all been thinking: ‘Oh, miserable modernist — you picked the concrete floors and the gravel yard; at least pretend you like it.’ ”

Hear, hear.

Modernism is the architectural equivalent of reality television — screaming “LOOK AT ME” when there’s really nothing to see. I throw my full support behind anyone fighting the modernist lie. Just because your apartment is surrounded in glass  does not put you closer to some kind of harmonious state with the natural world. It means you’re an exhibitionist with bad taste. Hiroshima was bathed in natural light after the bomb too.