Curbed: The ‘free love’ utopia behind your forks and knives

In the 1940s, it wasn’t sex that sold—it was love. When Oneida, a silverware manufacturer, took out ads, instead of focusing on forks and knives and serving spoons, they showed a passionate embrace between a woman and man returning from war.

“Dare to dream...dare to cut yourself a slice of heaven. Some day you’ll have it...the storybook house, the crackling fire...and on your table your treasured Community,” stated one ad for Oneida’s Community Plate flatware. The “Back Home for Keeps” ads were so popular that they became the subject of a 1945 LIFE magazine article that called them “a new kind of pin-up craze.”

The irony is these ads were selling monogamous, possessive love—the exact opposite of what the founders of Oneida stood for. Long before making flatware, Oneida was a religious commune founded on polyamory.

Oneida was founded in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes, a former theological student who believed that paradise could be found on Earth through nontraditional sexual and familial structures. This included communal child raising; “complex marriage,” a term Noyes invented to describe how all Oneidans were married to one another; and sexual rituals, like male continence. Noyes built an enormous mansion in upstate New York for his “family” and amassed hundreds of followers. For years, the community succeeded. But after Noyes died, the community pivoted—into a thriving business.

In this episode, host Avery Trufelman speaks with Paul Gebhardt, creative director and senior vice president of design at the Oneida Group; Ellen Wayland-Smith, author of Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well-Set Table and descendent of the Oneida Community; and Kate Wayland-Smith, resident of the Oneida Community Mansion House.

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Curbed: Inside the strange—and misunderstood—saga of Biosphere 2

Escape fantasies have long fueled the search for utopia—that irresistible notion of putting everything wrong in the rear view and casting out to a new world of your own making. In the late 1980s, a motley crew of ecologists, engineers, artists, and an eccentric billionaire embarked on an experiment to see if humans were able to colonize space, presuming that the earth would, at some point, become uninhabitable due to environmental collapse, nuclear war, or some other catastrophic event. And thus, Biosphere 2—one of the strangest research experiments of the 20th century—was willed into existence. [...]

Biosphere 2 was influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic architecture, “Synergetics” systems thinking, and “Spaceship Earth” theories. Meanwhile, the writings of historian and urbanist Lewis Mumford informed Biosphere 2’s explorations of the natural world and technology working harmoniously together to support human life.

When the experiment began, it was met with curiosity and fanfare. But after a series of controversies and mishaps—including a near-lethal loss of oxygen and conflict between researchers and their new manager, Steve Bannon—it was dismissed as a failure in mainstream media. “Biosphere or Biostunt?” read the title of a 1993 Time story on the project. It was lampooned in the 1996 Pauly Shore movie Bio-Dome. But did the experiment actually “fail,” or was it just misunderstood and misinterpreted? It depends on who you ask.

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Curbed: France’s solar roadway experiment has failed

In 2016, France announced its bold plan to “pave” 1,000 kilometers (around 620 miles) with photovoltaic panels, which would generate 790kWh per day. When completed, the road was supposed to power up to 5 million homes. But that first 0.6-mile stretch, which engineers had originally estimated would power up to 5,000 homes, hasn’t lived up to expectations.[...]

The report claims that engineers didn’t account for the natural deterioration caused by thunderstorms, leaf mold, and heavy trucks and tractors that would be regularly using the road. At its peak, the road only generated 149,459 kWh in a year, making them far less efficient than regular tilted solar panels.

The outcome, while disappointing, isn’t necessarily surprising. Experts have lobbed skepticism at the glitzy promise of solar roadways since they were first announced. Other experiments in the realm have gone similarly awry. In China, one six-foot panel of a 0.6-mile solar highway was stolen, prompting the government to abandon the project. In Missouri, where the company Solar Roadways was meant to test a small patch of sidewalk at a rest stop along Route 66, negotiations between the Department of Transportation and the company broke down.

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Curbed: Herland: Reimagine Utopia

What have all of the utopias we've covered so far had in common? They were all largely driven by the will and power of a charismatic leader - usually a man, usually white. How do you build a utopia, then, for people in society who really need it? In our season finale, we visit worlds where there are no men. In fiction, and real life.

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Curbed: The rise and fall of Laguna Beach, a gay California hotspot

What I didn’t know was that, a decade later, the city that was once known as “San Francisco South” and “the Provincetown of the West” would be no more. From the late 1990s to the 2010s, through a combination of AIDS-related deaths, ’80s-era conservatism, and skyrocketing home prices, the rainbow-hued city lost its gay shine. Today only the Main Street Bar and Cabaret, a festive but small underground bar, remains from among those original venues. [...]

It is, by all appearances, an idyllic California town, the type of place people from elsewhere conjure up when they think “Southern California.” The town also has long been overwhelmingly white—84.2 percent caucasian, according to Statistical Atlas. Diversity and acceptance outside of artistic communities, while hard fought, has never been in Laguna Beach’s DNA. [...]

During the height of its popularity among the LGBTQ crowd, the city elected one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials, Bob Gentry, a former associate dean of students at University of California at Irvine, who served as mayor and councilman from 1982 to 1996. [...]

When the new millennium approached, Laguna Beach’s latest identity began to crystallize in the form of well-to-do, lovelorn teens, as seen in Laguna Beach, an MTV reality series that put the city’s privileged youth front and center. Neither the town’s gay community nor the wide swath of death caused by AIDS two decades prior was ever mentioned. But the message was clear: youthful, healthy, rich, heterosexual, unapologetically white. LC, Lo, Talen. That was the new Laguna Beach.

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Curbed: 15 cities tackling pollution by curbing cars

As a result, cities like London, Paris, and Seoul are doubling down on car-free policies, aiming to decrease pollutants and make people’s daily lives better. Some regulations call for low-emission zones and the banning of diesel vehicles, since diesel cars are one of the worst sources of urban air pollution. In Germany, where diesel technology was developed, the country’s highest administrative court ruled in February 2018 that banning diesel cars in an effort to improve air quality was legal, opening the floodgates for German cities to go car-free. [...]

Amid all of the restrictions are other urban planning goals: Oslo, Norway; Bogotá, Colombia; and Hamburg, Germany are all betting big on bike lanes, converting boulevards into pedestrian plazas and creating bike “superhighways” that cater to people looking to ditch diesels and get on two wheels. If banning vehicles is one part of the puzzle, creating walkable cities and expanding public transit options are the other pieces to master. [...]

Meanwhile, Los Angeles is reconsidering its transportation future, paving the way for how shared, self-driving vehicles could be used in an urban setting. The city is also using its Great Streets Program to reinvigorate thoroughfares with art, pedestrian walkways, and plazas. And San Francisco has plans to ban cars and add bike lanes on Market Street, one of the city’s busiest streets. Elsewhere, rapidly growing cities like Charlotte and Denver are considering long-term plans that would emphasize pedestrians and multi-modal transportation over cars.

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Curbed: Snøhetta-designed tunnel for ships would be first in the world

What could possibly make a country think that spending $272 million to dig a mile-long “boat tunnel” is a good idea? For Norway, that answer is simple: dangerous waters. The Stad peninsula is one of the most dangerous coasts in the country, because it’s at the nexus of the North Sea and Norwegian Sea, and the meeting of these two waters produces consistently stormy seas. The area’s turbulent weather has claimed the lives of at least 33 people over the last seventy years.

Even the vikings apparently knew to avoid the Stad. The first proposal to avoid those treacherous waters by digging a ship tunnel was floated all the way back in 1874. But it isn’t until now that Norway appears to be moving ahead with firm construction plans.

Designed to accommodate massive cargo ships, the tunnel will be nearly 150 feet tall, 118 feet wide, and more than a mile long. Between 70 and 120 ships will be able to pass through each day. But that doesn’t mean there’s no place for beauty in its design.

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Curbed: All the single homeowners

The first movement at play here is minimalism, an obsession that is spider-veining across mainstream consciousness. Tiny houses in particular—which tend to be between 100 and 400 square feet and built on a mobile platform like a trailer bed—have captured the public’s curiosity. There are at least seven reality shows dedicated to tiny houses—buying them, building them, living in them—and they’ve become the darlings of home and design publications. This one alone has published 456 articles on the topic. 

The second movement is singledom. The single population is growing in the United States, and we’re seeing a long-overdue acknowledgement that building a life for one is a valid and worthy desire, rather than a state of incompleteness. Millennials are waiting much longer than their parents to marry—the median age of first marriage is now 27 for women and 29 for men. Some are rejecting the idea of marriage altogether. For single people who can afford it, purchasing homes (of both the tiny and the regular-sized variety) is an increasingly attractive option, but not one without its challenges. [...]

Also, tiny houses aren’t a tiny commitment. Zoning rules in many places restrict owners from parking mobiles homes on lots as the only structure. Which can mean moving your tiny house from place to place, or living on someone else’s property. And while they can be cheaper in the long run, as most tiny-house owners aren’t accruing interest on a mortgage, you do need a chunk of money to build or buy in the first place. It’s possible to build for as little as $8,000 (you’ll need some construction experience), but the average tiny house costs around $20,000, and homes from the nation’s leading company in premade options, Tumbleweed, run between $57,000 and $70,000.

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Curbed: The 19 most beautiful libraries in the U.S.

From museums to churches, architecture in U.S. cities ranges from jaw-dropping modernist masterpieces to historic gems hidden on side streets. But an oft-overlooked category of Instagram-worthy architecture is our country’s libraries.

Although the first function of a library is to house books and manuscripts, they also serve as places to study, research, and contemplate. Historic libraries, from New York to California, feature massive reading halls, many with coffered ceilings, chandeliers, and the warm glow of reading lights.

More modern buildings—like the Seattle Central Library or the Billings Public Library—are not only architectural marvels, but also function as community gathering spaces and technology hubs. Today’s libraries don’t just stop at books; new designs include recording studios, computer labs, and even art exhibition spaces.

In honor of their beauty, and to underscore their continued relevance in an increasingly digital world, we’ve rounded up 19 architecturally significant libraries throughout the United States.

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Curbed: Is the world ready for Frank Lloyd Wright’s suburban utopia?

Though Wright remains America’s most famous architect, his Broadacre theories are often relegated to a footnote of his career; indeed, many biographies don’t mention them at all. But what if the Broadacre plan—a sweeping, individualized American “anti-city” that fused Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian ideals into a seamless, Wright-designed, suburban landscape—was, in fact, the architect’s most enduring idea? [...]

Displayed in a huge scale model that was 12 feet square and eight inches high, Wright’s first Broadacre rendering showed what a low-density modern city could look like—if you removed nearly everything from it that was remotely urban. Most of the model was taken up by neatly gridded plots for what Wright would later term “minimum houses.” Areas were set aside for recreation and Wright envisioned a skyscraper or two for recovering city dwellers who couldn’t bear the thought of too much open space. Today, looking down at the Broadacre model from above, it resembles just about any American suburb; at first glance, it doesn’t seem radical at all. [...]

It was apparent from the start that while Wright was using the term “city” to describe Broadacre, he was actually creating, in the words of architecture critic Lewis Mumford, an “anti-city.” To critics like Mumford, a place like Broadacre City would destroy all that was good about urbanity. [...]

Even as suburbs developed following World War II—aided and abetted by the car, just as Wright had hoped—Wright couldn’t get a Broadacre concept off the ground. While many manufacturing jobs left large cities, the urban centers remained. Business districts weren’t replaced with a generation of homesteaders and at-home entrepreneurs. In fact, as people moved farther away from urban centers, Wright’s highways merely became conduits to move them in and out of cities each day—the “vain scramble in and scramble out” that Broadacre was supposed to solve.

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Curbed: Learning to love the ‘Persian Palaces’ of Beverly Hills

Back then, I didn’t like Persian Palaces much. From what I knew, rich Persians built those swanky homes in Beverly Hills, spending a pretty penny—those columns were said to go for four figures a pop in their heyday. Maybe those Persians longed for centuries-old kingdoms, but the Iran my parents were nostalgic for wasn’t the one of the ancient era, but of the recent past, colored by memories of road trips to the Caspian Sea and the comforts of being raised in large families and always having them close, before the Islamic Revolution and an eight-year war with Iraq scattered the living generations of Iranians all over the world.

Now, I wonder if Persian Palaces should have meant a little more to me then, and to Los Angeles, before they went out of vogue. Younger Iranian-Americans don’t care to build Persian Palaces anymore; perhaps, like me, they are just not into the style, or maybe they were browbeaten out of the sentiment, or the style was outlawed in their communities. [...]

The style was treated as an invader and scourge on upscale neighborhoods all over Southern California, even though the local aesthetic has the consistency of quicksand. Beverly Hills is hardly the place for architectural modesty, and yet locals really had something against Persian Palaces. [...]

Controversy hid in every aspect of what Persians love in a home, according to Omrani. Conflicts arose around height, light, spacious entertainment rooms, window sizes, and grand staircases.

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