Japanese Buildings that are Shaped Like the Things They Sell | Spoon & Tamago
Shunkado “Sweets Bank” Headquarters (Hamamatsu)
Shunkado began as a small, Japanese-style confectionery shop in 1887. They’re known for several signature creations including the iconic Unagipie pastry made from eel extract. To mark the 130th anniversary of the company’s founding, Shunkado redesigned their headquarters to resemble oversized tables and chairs. No, they don’t sell furniture but they like to think that their snacks bring families together around the dining table, hence the unique design. The interiors are also decorated with outsized objects that are all associated with tea time and snacking, making visitors feel like Lilliputians.
does anybody else feel like architecture is inherently a bourgeois artform
like every single architecture student ive ever talked to has only ever gone on about the bourgeois aspects of art that i really dont care about, and the truly imaginative stuff is only ever theoretical projects or reserved for the most depraved of big bourgeoisie.
the best stuff is public works stuff but beyond that feels kind of like a fucked up artform limited by the restrictions of class society in a way that most art is to an extent but to a much larger one than any other that requires less capital investment and productive purposes.
socialism is when more people can go to architecture school, not when all the buildings are boring.
There's surely lot of interesting stuff happening in architecture but you'd need to really search for it.
I've never spoken to an architecture student but I assume most of them are fixated on where the money is. And that tends to be generic. I think it's a truism that rich people are far more interested in flaunting their wealth than they are than what their mansions (or McMansions) actually look like. They want them to look expensive.
in my experience its the opposite. architecture students tend to gravitate towards artists who are genuinely very artistic but even their actual work remains reined in by clientelle who mostly just point to the interesting work as ideological backing behind the $ value they are putting behind the commissioned work they are doing. the one exception is when the 1% of architects who get to put into practice their artistic desires get public funding for something like public housing where i see a truly liberating desire in their art.
Look at the Karl Marx Hof and come back
I urge you to take a look at modern North Korean buildings to see what an architect can do even with a budget of three French fries and a penny, as long as their commissioner is letting them go nuts.