Phthursday Musings: More Musings About Buildings And Food

Reading has been a little slower the last couple months. But I just finished a book that gives me a little to muse about:

Wikipedia defines architecture as “the art and technique of designing and building” and that’s all well and good. But I think that’s kind of how you define the inner circle of an architecture archery target. As with many other subjects, there are other rings, and maybe those rings intersect with other things (history, sociology, etc.)

And I think that there’s some chunk of some outer ring that is especially compelling to me, and a book like Midwest Architecture Journeys does a fine job of prodding around that chunk. There are some predictable excursions in the book, and then there are not: a gay bathhouse in Cleveland, the New Glarus brewery, grain silos outside Chenoa (!??)

A particularly interesting one to me was by Monica Reida. When I wrote for Gapers Block (RIP) it was primarily about politics and Monica was my editor and she’s since moved to Milwaukee and I hadn’t encountered her or her work in a while. Her subject was libraries, but most especially the public library in a former post office in Waterloo, Iowa. And I think what strikes me most about this is that she says almost nothing about “the art and technique of designing and building” but, often indirectly, everything about the experiential factor of how an important built structure conveys meaning to a person.

I’ve written before about the old Kishwaukee Coin Laundry in Rockford which my grandparents owned. There’s still a Kishwaukee Laundry there, but it’s a different building; the old one was torn down for some sort of public works project around 1991. It was probably built in the late ‘50s - huge windows all around two exterior walls, and what I remember as big pastel-colored enameled panels along some of the walls, with multi-colored multi-seat Eames chairs strategically placed around the edges. Now I happen to remember that some of the seats were not in good shape and there was also weird wood paneling and there were a lot of other strange things going on in there because it was a laundromat. But between the windows and the lighting and the pastel, the whole place was remarkably bright. A laundromat isn’t exactly the kind of place a patron ever wants to go so much as needs to go - it’s doing household chores but having to pile things into the car to do so - but in my mind it was all remarkably inviting given what it was.

You might be able to glean a hint of what I mean from this unfortunately named Architectural Digest article.

We were in Springfield once - me, my cousin, my grandmother - and I think this must have been the same trip and maybe even the same day that my cousin and I stayed through all 15 innings of a Springfield - Peoria minor league game, the last few innings in a drizzle, collecting like 30 souvenir Springfield Cardinals cups - and Grandma actually took us to a laundromat, and chatted with the owner there. I can’t remember today if she somehow knew the owner from some trade association or what. But that laundromat was kind of similar to Kishwaukee, also in a mid-century modern style, and that weird little trip remains in my mind after all these years.

It will probably (rightly) horrify my wife but I could absolutely imagine myself doing a series called Laundromats Across Illinois and looking for places which still have old-school Eames chairs in decent shape and still have Easter egg colored enamel panels on the walls.

Hey Belt Publishing - when the sequel to Midwest Architecture Journeys comes together, I’ll do a piece about laundromats, okay?

So, uh, what was the point of all of this?

Well. I think the point was that the built environment can impact us in a lot of strange ways. Architectural decisions - even if we don’t exactly speak the language - can leave a huge imprint on our thinking. I think, to this day, if I walk into a place which is decorated like an assemblage of Peeps, I feel… clean and static-free.

People might be wondering: What on earth is an Eames chair? Well, what I’m specifically thinking of are these:

The Pinterest page where I found these actually calls them out as “laundromat chairs” which should at least prove to one or two members of my household that I am not simply sitting around making all of this shit up!

I’ve been vegetarian for almost 20 years. Over the last year though, both to try and inspire / bridge a gap with my son’s eating, and also at the long-running suggestion of my dietitian wife, I’ve added fish back into my diet. I’ve not necessarily been great over all this time at getting all the protein I should, and fish will definitely help with that.

The small man and I were at a grocery store two weeks ago or so and wound up coming home with cod. I have never done this before, but I’ve explained to him that cod is good to eat, and I know this because it was apparently the primary component of The Rock’s diet. (Seriously, search for the rock cod and see what fun things turn up.)

For me vegetarianism was never primarily about a revulsion to eating flesh. It was a combination of factors - health, ecology, a conviction that an omnivorous diet was unnecessary - and it’s within those parameters that I resumed eating fish.

I wrote a couple months ago about reading Dan Egan’s The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. This seems like a weird thing for me but… it made me want to take my kid fishing. I got something out of the book about the idea of a more visceral emotional connection to the unbuilt environment, something which I kind of think I’ve long been lacking, and I think he’s lacking it too.

I would be very interested in someone either trying to tell me this musing is completely insane, or someone getting very excited and making specific suggestions about and how and where to go fishing. I’d especially be interested if the same person argued both sides!

A handful of you no doubt picked up on the reference from this week’s subject. This here is from an August 1978 show in New York City:

The whole idea behind More Songs About Buildings and Food, as I understand it, is finding inspiration in the mundane. Or, maybe, the not-so-mundane is how we most properly ought to understand it. Whatever you happen to do or see on a daily basis, why shouldn’t that be fodder for art? Why shouldn’t a library be inspirational not just in the books on the shelves but in the flow of the corridors, in the gravity of the entrance? Why shouldn’t your laundromat chair be bright red and shaped in a manner to, if necessary, hold a gallon of water?

Anyway, dear readers, if all goes well, after this weekend, I’ll take you to the river - the Kishwaukee River. Probably not for fish though…