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[personal profile] walkitout
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/sign-of-the-times-when-renovation-means-erasing-the-past/

I ran across this and was a little stunned. It's about home renovations that involve removing, with the goal of lots of white and empty, and a fair amount of glass, too. Much mockery.

I thought about that for a while, and went looking for something I read recently attacking minimalism. I didn't find it, but ran across this instead:

http://www.petershallard.com/why-minimalism-is-toxic-for-you-and-your-business/

"At its dark heart, minimalism is the hobby of disaffected wealthy people, playing at philosophy and hip counter-culture. It’s toxic because it encourages you to only focus on having what you need - which means rejecting any opportunities to help other people with their needs.

Ultimately, minimalism is the selfish squandering of opportunity."

I don't think I have an opinion about either of these authors' opinions (other than that they clearly intend to provoke), beyond noting that a lot of people intend their minimalism to give them the opportunity to be more productive/more generous/able to help more people, so the strongest forms of the second author's thesis are probably not actually correct.

As a design trend, the whole white-on-white thing is kind of pervasive, however, which is usually what happens before a trend heads downmarket and then dies.

Here's what I was looking for:

http://www.heroicdestiny.com/why-i-hate-minimalism/1498

This author notes that you can remain as obsessed with stuff through its absence as by with its presence. This author emphasizes what is "important", what you "love" -- but the comments thread heads straight to what do you "need". I suspect that the important/love lens is better than the "need" lens.
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