MetaChat - Fake Places.

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16 January 2008

Fake Places. I am fascinated (and more than a little freaked out) by places that are made to look like somewhere else. Example: Dubai is going to build a 700-acre replica of the French city of Lyons. →[More:] A commenter on that blog brings up just a few of the dozens of questions that spring to mind:

What about storefronts with trademarked logos?
How do they know what the interiors of the private buildings look like?
Won't the sewers fail because of the different topography?
Will they keep the traboules that the Lyonnais used to escape the Gestapo?
Will they replicate all the churches, and if so, will they only celebrate Christian services?
Will they keep the graveyards?

I don't know why this kind of thing disturbs me, but on some level, it always does. One thing I absolutely LOATHE about residential architecture in the U.S. these days is how so much of it is built to "look like" something. Fake gables on houses; fake balconies on condo towers. Artificially aged wood. Brick fronts. There's something soul-killing about it.

There's a company that sells pre-designed Irish pubs to other countries. I find visiting an Irish pub in a mall a little depressing, but going to one in China would just be disorienting as hell.

Speaking of China, there's a theme park in Beijing called "The World" (it was the setting for an excellent movie of the same name) that features one-third scale replicas of the New York harbor, the Vatican, Paris, and the Pyramids of Gaza. That's a little less weird to me than places like the "New York, New York" casino in Vegas (that a lot of you bunnies saw in person!) or the guy here in Atlanta who built his house to be a 3/4ths scale replica of the White House. (I love driving past this place when out-of-town friends are with me... the double-take is always great.)

Overall though, I hate the tendency humans have to build places that imitate something else. I don't want for a place to "look like" something- I just want it to BE. Be what it is.

post by: BoringPostcards at: 10:50 | 10 comments

One thing I absolutely LOATHE about residential architecture in the U.S. these days is how so much of it is built to "look like" something.

I hear you. I hate this. The trend here right now is to build homes that look like 18th century French farmhouses. This isn't France, and this isn't the 18th century, so why are we doing this, again?

Give me an authentic 18th century French farmhouse any day, but not one of these silly replicas that cost 200 times as much as the originals did. It's just so silly. You can't make something look 18th century using 21st century materials, so give it up and either design for the era that you live in, or move to France and buy a house that was built 300 years ago.

Trying to replicate something that was made 300 years ago for modern times: bad.

Reinterpreting styles from the past to design something for the era in which you live: good.

Also....why Lyons?? Did I miss that in the article?

posted by iconomy 16 January | 11:44

It reminds me of Sim City and how you could plop monuments into your town wherever you wanted them. Actually, I loved that feature and most of my cities (Hi, my name is MGL and I used to be a Sim City addict) had the Sphinx, the pyramids and the Eiffel Tower at the very least. I love Atlantic City for that too, with the crazy Roman stuff at Caesar's Palace. It's so goofy and tacky that it just cheers me up totally. Never been to Vegas but I bet it's the same. So I like this Lyons project too, because it's just so completely insane. Overkill is good! Much better than some dreary McMansion imitating an 18th century farmhouse - hell, just go all the way and build Versailles in the middle of Georgia, only make it all out of plastic and mirrors. That would rock.

Also, bear in mind that a lot of the 19th century architecture we are now so fond of was actually built to mimic some kind of goofy idea of a neo classical European past. So there's never any purity, just a nice jumble.

posted by mygothlaundry 16 January | 11:53

Trying to replicate something that was made 300 years ago for modern times: bad.

Reinterpreting styles from the past to design something for the era in which you live: good.

Yup, that's it, in a nutshell.

And no, the article doesn't say WHY they want to replicate Lyons in the desert. Something about projects involving huge, huge sums of money- a lot of times there is no "why."

posted by BoringPostcards 16 January | 12:19

I totally hear you, BP. How about all of Las Vegas?!

Check out this monument to hideousness under construction here. The site totally betrays/misrepresents the style of the building, in my opinion. More recent construction progress photos. And one of my comments in the lengthy discussion thread.

posted by chewatadistance 16 January | 13:08

Hm. I should've linked to this instead of the main site, but still. It's all part of the inconsistency in reflecting modern times and lifestyles.

posted by chewatadistance 16 January | 13:12

Annnnd one last comment I made in response to the approvers of the building.

posted by chewatadistance 16 January | 13:16

Well, chewie, I can't really hate on Vegas overall- like MGL says, the hideous tackiness can be fun in it's own right. But things like that development you just linked to- yeah, that's the depressing stuff. Like living on a Hollywood film set.

posted by BoringPostcards 16 January | 13:19

That Bloomsbury stuff reminds me of Celebration, FL. Pseudo old timey small town Americana complete with fake Victoriana. None of which is done to scale or accuracy.

I find the whole thing creepy, to be honest. Stuff like NY NY in Vegas is fine by me, since it's a clear parody, but those recreation towns horrify me.

posted by kellydamnit 16 January | 14:43

It reminds me of Sim City and how you could plop monuments into your town wherever you wanted them. Actually, I loved that feature and most of my cities (Hi, my name is MGL and I used to be a Sim City addict)

As a recovering Civilization addict, I understand the phenomenon and feel your pain. You could do something remarkably similar in Civ, by choosing where you built your Wonders of the World. Many is the time I was amused by having The Great Pyramid, The Great Wall, Sun Tzu's War Academy, Leonardo's Workshop, and the Eiffel Tower, in a place like Babylon. The funny part is, the Hanging gardens usually ended up being in some other city, because you didn't need as many shields to build them and... dear lord, I am such a geek.

posted by King of Prontopia 16 January | 14:58

Hee, K of P, I see your geek and raise you one - my son and some of his friends were playing Age of Empires or something like it when I came home the other day. "What's the Enlightenment?" asked one and I started to launch into this essay length response on the Enlightenment but then I realized it would be mostly futile. "Dude, you get guns now!" I said and he looked back at the screen and was all, like, "Wow! Guns! Excellent!"

posted by mygothlaundry 16 January | 15:48

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