No. 12: FOLLOWED BY: THE NEW WHO'S WHO FOR WHO?

There's an overlooked shadow social media network that no one is talking about.

And it's creating new forms of clout and anxiety for the chronically online.

It all starts with the humble "follow" button.

We’ve all touched one.

They’re rendered in kindergarten colors, most white text on blue background.

In fact, this near-universal agreement on color palette may be the only common ground left for conformity in our Techno King commanded 16:9 chamfered rectangles.

Just before that fateful multitouch press whirlpools you into a new stream of content to en-shittify your feed, you must confront the hallowed “Followed By” feature.

The idea is pretty simple — social platforms automatically show you who else from your followers list also follows that same account. And you’re more likely to follow that account if lots of people you know also do. It’s kind of like those things that we used to call mutual friends, but much less annoying.

And yet, this simple concept sets off an array of questions — from the pointless to the profound — that all of us, or at least we — answer mostly subliminally.

Sometimes literally.

If 25+ of my friends already follow @InterGalacticDankMemes420 am I a mere sheep?

Or am I perhaps missing out on rib-tickling, life-altering cultural commentary?

Do I want to be associated with that person, however tenuously, from middle school or college or work who I never really liked but now follow on this platform?

And what if it transpires that we both follow an unsavory account, @PonziSchemeBestPractices?

Or am I going to be revealed as a fraud if my friends find out that I’ve been mining a niche account with very few followers in order to manufacture an important part of my personality? Like, say, my whole worldview?

There’s judgment galore, too.

@LaVieEnParis? Give me a break @JimmyMakesLayups you’re a Caucasian male from the suburbs of Bethesda.

@SambasAndCigs follows @CBGB? It closed in 2006. You were maybe ten.

Finally, there’s the elusive virgin ground "Not followed by anyone you know”.

This is the Rubicon, the Xanadu of clout — potentially.

On the one hand, perhaps you just found something or someone so out there, so damn original, that not even the most plugged-in, downtown-out mutual follower could reach…

A print-only German language Drum & Bass appreciation account?

A Lower East Side creative consultancy that activates brands with nothing but their minds?

On the other hand, maybe you just accidentally tapped on a FreshDirect in-feed display ad while sitting on the ivory throne.

In any case, for the more entrepreneurially inclined, Followed By is the next great platform waiting in the wings.

For the rest of us, it’s another brief, fleeting moment in which we can make ourselves feel better about our own taste, or confirm the lack thereof among our fellow intrepid digital voyagers.

Don't forget to follow us!

No. 11: PITCHED DOWN: THE ART AND AROUSAL OF DOWN TEMPO JAMS

Is a dance floor a dance floor when no one's dancing?

That's irrelevant to most late-night revelers because they've never seen such a sight.

But for the Opening DJ, it can be a nightly occurrence.

For some, it's a nightmare. You get up there. Plug in. Fumble around with the EQs trying to familiarize yourself with a foreign set up before getting something cued in the headphones before starting to timidly play out over the system.

Many suffer from the pre-beer-number-two-jitters at this point — your hands are still a little bit sweaty and every transition feels like jamming a pick axe into a recalcitrant ice sheet.

Yet for all its terror, all its blank canvas of infinite possibility staring you down, the opening few songs of the night are where many among us find solace — a golden opportunity to play some of the slower and some of the weirder stuff.

It's in this liminal zone, when things are just filling up, that the genre-agnostic experimentation can truly happen.

Could you mix Dizzy Gillespie into Can?

How about just letting Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" play out in its entirety on one side?

This is to say nothing of the ongoing contemporary mini-renaissance in slower house/disco jams from the likes of Fernando, 6th Borough Project (great fucking name!), or Mermaid Chunky. And Benji B has a knack for turning a down tempo intro into an entire show, detonating the concept of genres in the process.

There's something about this slower speed that offers a wealth of space — the music feels like it has more time to breathe. There's more room for instrumentation. A synth chord can wobble and sublimate into something else in a little more peace. And there's also more space on the floor itself — it's less taboo to hold a polite conversation with a friend, or comment on a sound you liked. Or subtlety pocket Shazam a track that you'll steal for posterity.

Sadly, contemporary club culture is all about the headliner. The openers are second class citizens, there literally to fill space and time.

Our advice? Go to the show early. Honor the opening-DJ. Aspire to become the opening-DJ.

Because when it's done right, they can keep people about for the whole night.

There's nothing more satisfying than stealing potential listeners from the main event, or hearing those magic few words as you step out of the booth: "you're a hard act to follow".

No.10: CONSPICUOUS CURATION: THE PANOPTICON OF TASTE

Why does everything we know and love have to be shared with the world?

One theory of ours is that contemporary digital life has created a sort of "panopticon of taste", in which we are all fairly willing captives.

At every turn — in a 360 degrees circle, to be true to the metaphor — we're encouraged to constantly share the newest find while others watch and judge, typically from great virtual distance.

We have a view into all of the activities and interests of all of those we "follow", and if internet protocol is correctly adhered to, they also see us.

If the second half of the twentieth century was the era of "conspicuous consumption", we have surely entered a new era, one of "conspicuous curation".

Today, it's less about what you own and more about who you follow, where you go, and what you know.

There are two main reasons for this.

First, Instagram. In many ways IG is the new business card. It's often then first point of contact with someone on a night or day out. But that's just beginning. From there, it's a constant battle to retain the interest

Second, iPhone cameras. Everywhere. Now, it almost feels harder not take a picture of something that you feel the need to curate for your followers.

The most insidious thing about the development of Conspicuous Curation versus Conspicuous Consumption is that it used to be tough to buy taste. Now it's available more and more for free — provided you know the right places to look and who to follow.

To be clear, Postmodern Tectonics is fully engaged in this digital racket, to a degree. It's requisite for any company. Especially one involved in the business of taste. And we thank you for your follow-ship!

But it's our hope that, through what we design and bring into the world and how we even do that, that we're able to minimize the performative nature of modern life and maximize the substance.

That's why our approach to making is an attempt to honor, and perhaps mirror the the earlier days of the internet, where there were at least some barriers to entry...

Curiosity. A little bit of ability. And the drive to make stuff because you wanted to, not because you needed to.

So it's wrong that "Gatekeeping" has become a byword for creative small mindedness, even spitefulness.

But what is to become of a world where good taste is available to all?

How will we discern the trend makers from the trend fakers?

No. 9: RUGS ON WALLS… IT'S A THING AGAIN

This weekend I visited Huntington Library with my parents and it reminded me: back in the day, people would mount intricate rugs (or tapestries) on their dining room walls. But why?

“Warmth,” according to my mom. Perhaps, maybe… before they had HVAC systems.

First of all, never doubt your mom because she’s always right. Second, what really happened to the intricate rugs and why are they still on the floor?

Recently, I noticed that there has been a resurgence of antiquity items found within contemporary architecture, or the interior design of architectural spaces. Maybe it’s just a continuation of the vintage obsession that we all know so well; nevertheless, people are starting to reintroduce tapestries to the wall and I think I’m a fan of it.

Yes, it may provide a little bit of warmth and it may also look stylish, but why does any of this fascinate me?

Well, it doesn’t so much from an interior design perspective, but as an architect, it feels… somewhat permanent again. And that’s refreshing I guess. In the image above they solved an awkward column in the middle of the bedroom by placing an antique tapestry on the wall – an aesthetic similar to something you might find in a Palladian villa. To me, that tapestry above is an architectural tool, not an interior decoration. And that detail-oriented decision is hard to come by nowadays.

I like when an architectural expression is conceived from an interior aesthetic; before there was even an interior to begin with. Sure it’s always fashionable to employ vintage accessories within modern spaces, especially within interior design, but now it has become uniquely architectural again.

How so?

We all like to reference those popular modernists from the early 20th century – the ones that would argue over form versus function and living in a machine. Regardless of their reputation, I admire this group because they focused their intentions on the details that filled their spaces – the materials, the furniture, the feel and all that. Some of their spaces may have felt empty while others ornate, but everything was undoubtedly deliberate and they designed everything down to the very last detail. Here are some snapshots I took from Villa La Roche and Villa Savoye in 2018.

From a brass doorknob to a circular light-switch or a bathtub customized to the shape of your back, we don’t really come across those details anymore… at least not very often.

Some of these decisions may provide style while the others provide utility, but all were deliberately placed there before the building was conceptualized. Sadly, to me, it seems that details have become somewhat of an afterthought in 2024. You might point to several arguments against that statement, but as a collective – especially among those fashionable ‘starchitects’ – that is the truth. 

How come?

In my opinion, this lack of care is because the detailing of an interior is often left to someone else nowadays – the client, a consultant, or even the contractor. But where’s the architect in all this?

It seems that what was once a bountiful relationship between interior and exterior has evolved into two entirely different professions — two star-crossed lovers if you will. So, why are architects increasingly estranged from the detailing of their own spaces?

Perhaps there just isn't time to get bogged down in all that anymore. Architects are constantly overworked and clientele just want a pretty image to market to the world.  We live in an era of mass globalization that has fostered new priorities in the client, and as a result, the architect has lost sight of the ultimate goal – the warmth. Yes, buildings were once smaller and audiences much closer, but now everything is accessible online and designers are more preoccupied with how their spaces look in a digital format.

Space is defined by shadow and light, yes, but neither of those things provide warmth – the objects that fill the space do. The team over at Food Architects strike the perfect balance between shadow, light and object in their most recent design for an avante-garde loft in SoHo, New York. Their sense of playfulness and attention to detail resonates with us at Postmodern Tectonics, and for that, we applaud them. They even put a rug on a wall. Go check it out.

[1] We like to call that the money shot.

No. 8: JAZZY SUITS: THE PRISTINE TAILORING OF A CHAOTIC SOUND

Fashion and music go hand in hand.

It's a constant dialogue, but it used to be a much louder conversation.

Post-Beatles — because all music history is really just pre and post John, Paul, Ringo, and George — identity and sound co-mingled.

Punks had the hair.

Mods had the bikes.

Hippies had the smell.

Prior to probably the turn of this century, you tended to wear what you listened in in more of a correlated way.

Music doesn't have that sense of identity anymore.

Jazz is almost always on the POMO—TECT ™ office turntable. Typically on the funkier side.

What was so cool about that era was that the music they made didn't dictate a sartorial style.

It was completely revolutionary. Yet their appearances were sharp. Suited. And booted.

They followed rules in what they wore.

They broke rules in what they made.

Just look at Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie and all jazz greats who saw dressing up in perfect tailoring as part of the job — not because they wanted to stand out. But because they perhaps knew the sounds would speak for themselves.

Jazz is a unique form of music because you're never quite sure if it's good.

It has to hit you viscerally.

It can't explain itself.

And you can't explain it.

It works if you feel something.

Because it was always supposed to make you move.

Just try not to fuck up your shoes too much.

No. 7: PROCESS SERVICE MANUAL TEE

One of the main principles that Steve Jobs tried to teach the entire early Apple team was the notion of "imputing".

It basically means sweating all of the details of a product — from design and manufacturing to delivery and unboxing — so that the consumer FEELS the care and attention to detail you've put in. That feeling is normally instinctual, subconscious or unspoken.

It's a fabulous idea. And it's fabulously hard to pull off.

But it was something that we thought a lot about when the three of us were concepting Object #1, The Service Manual Tee.

We of course had control over the actual design, yet we wanted to go a bit further with the packaging and the experience of opening it.

We landed on a few key concepts which you'll hopefully have noticed.

First, we wanted to do away with plastic. It's a pretty shit material in general from an aesthetics standpoint, and it's obviously not great for the environment.

Second, we wanted to nod to our shared passion for collecting records and the way in which we can serve other DJs out there. So we opted for a record sleeve-type orientation and packed the t-shirt inside a spare one so that you can reuse the packaging to take care of that rogue 12-inch everyone has floating around.

Finally, we raided Home Depot (which is an amazing repository of vintage stickers and packaging design) to create our own tags that use a simple safety pin and stamped logo to attach to the t-shirt. So now there's no more accidentally ripping off part of the fabric.

This is all part of our commitment to making practical tools for the people we are eternally inspired by, to outfit them for purpose with our products and celebrate them through our brand. And it's a design concept we're going to continue to build on down the line into our next releases in fashion and beyond.

So watch out for that non-standard packaging!

No. 6 - TECTONICS, TECTONICUS, TEKTON

What are tectonics and why are we interested in them? Many associate the word with the geological plates that shift under our feet. While those are inherently important, we’re not quite interested in tectonic shifts pertaining to the earth’s crust… at least not yet. Rather, we’re interested in the word’s original etymology:

tectonic (adj.) 1650, “of or relating to building or construction,” which can be derived from the ancient Greek term tekton “builder, carpenter, woodworker; master in any art (sculpture, metal-work, writing).” [1]

One can even take its etymology back to the Proto-Indo-European root teks- meaning “to weave,” also “to fabricate,” especially with an ax.

It is to our utmost disgrace that we have not yet mastered the art of fabricating with an ax, but it might in fact be a new goal of ours. For the time being, we would like to start simple, with garments... before someone hurts themselves.

In 1986, Robert Maulden wrote, "Tectonics in architecture is defined as the science or art of construction, both in relation to use and artistic design. It refers not just to the 'activity of making the materially requisite; construction that answers certain needs, but rather to the activity that raises this construction to an art form.'" [2]

This particular definition has always resonated with us, for our ultimate goal at Postmodern Tectonics is to consolidate a wide variety of artistic trades and equip those who have similar interests with the gear necessary to take on their various tasks. We all like to DJ, we like to sculpt, and we like to write. We also know that we’re certainly not the best at any of these things but we sure god damn love doing them and would love to fabricate objects that help others do so too.

This is a goal of ours – to explore various tectonics, talk about them, and hopefully share our research with the world.

Enjoy.

No. 5: LOGOMOTIVE

Let me write a little about our logo.

Our main priority in establishing postmodern tectonics was manifesting an all-encompassing exchange of ideas – or as we like to say, a b2b of ideas. Disciplined observation of the world is the source of all creative inspiration, so we try to keep an eye or ear out for goings-on worth going on about. This love for observation and conversation stemmed from sending each other random shit off Instagram and has now somehow evolved into a website. The logo we landed on stemmed from this exact back-and-forth of ideas:

Pete wanted a symbol. I don’t really like symbols – or iconography that is. But we’ve always been curious about tag signs and signatures. It’s interesting to me that everyone has a different signature. It was also interesting that Basquiat got his name around New York by simply tagging “SAMO” on various walls. Word really gets around. Artists often sign their artwork; why don’t architects? Well, I guess some do, but maybe that's just conceited. Or, perhaps most architecture isn’t really worth signing in the first place. Diego Rivera would sign his buildings occasionally. I guess Le Corbusier also tagged some of his projects with that cubist hand emblem. That’s like a graffiti tag of sorts. What did that hand mean again?

The Open Hand motif was a symbol Le Corbusier employed for the design of a monument in Chandigarh, India.

If you’re not familiar with Chandigarh, or not familiar with Le Corbusier, it’s worth a read. In the 1960s, the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier was hired to design the masterplan for the capitol complex of Chandigarh, India – the capital city of the northern Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. This masterplan included the design of a monument in which Le Corbusier first displayed the Open Hand emblem. This Monument may not have been the architect’s first time referencing the open hand, at least according to Jane Drew and Russell Walden. Nevertheless, it was the first time publicized in the world and eventually became part of his lifetime philosophy – “the hand to give and the hand to take,” or an openness to collaboration. Everyone must learn from and give back to the world; that was his ultimate goal.

Written a month before he died, Le Corbusier affirmed the Hand “was open to receive the wealth that the world has created, to distribute it to the people of the world and therefore it ought to be the symbol of our age” (The Open Hand, Russell Walden).

This ideology of course resonates with us and led us down a rabbit hole of internal studies. Can we abstract this cubist concept into one swoop of a pen? Remember those blind contour exercises in art class where you try to draw an object – like your hand – without looking at the pen and without lifting the pen from your page?

Let’s create a logo like that – something that conveys meaning but can be expressed with one swoop of a pen.

Pete: “plus it’s dope that you can make a gang sign out of it!”

No. 4: DESPACIO: WHERE MUSIC + SPATIAL DESIGN COLLIDE

If you haven’t read the Wired article on Despacio, we highly recommend you do so. Honestly, perhaps just close this blog post and go read that.

Or don’t.

In 2013, a group of punk rock audiophiles built the world’s greatest club soundsystem and 10-years later, they’re touring it around the world.

James Murphy, John Klett and the Dewaele brothers are the geniuses we all needed. Their communal love for the analogue is everything we admire at postmodern tectonics, and the four of them manifested this love into one singular moment on the Despacio dancefloor!

Everyone has heard of Grateful Dead’s ‘Wall of Sound,’ but many are still new to Despacio’s checkerboard dancefloor. Both systems utilize McIntosh’s industry respected amplifiers; however, the Wall of Sound only tackled 30,000 watts of power, while Despacio took on 50,000 watts. Perhaps this means nothing to you, but we’re not so much interested in the sound stats either. We’re interested in the aesthetics.

At postmodern tectonics, we share a love for analogue design, and audio equipment is a prime example of the analogue. From Technics turntables to McIntosh amplifiers, why change what isn't broken? Not only do these devices sound good, they look good too and they're durable! The punk rock trio shares this feeling and exemplifies it in their spatial design. We love them for it.

As David Dewaele puts so well,

"The system couldn't just sound good, it had to look good too.

Dewaele points out that something he, his brother and Murphy share is a love for old instruments and records, all highly driven by aesthetics. "If a great piece of machinery looks ugly it will never be in a studio," he says.

 Dewaele talks fondly about the blue light that comes from the McIntosh amps. "The blue light emanating from all the stacks is a really beautiful thing, even when all the lights are turned off.

The amps are a design classic, like an Eames chair or something."

When designing a sound space, its not always just about the acoustics – its about the experience.

If you ever make it to a Despacio party, take a look around – the entire experience is aesthetically designed. From the very floor you stand on to the music you're listening to, you'll love them for it too.

No. 3: THE ARCHITECTURAL COLLAGE

The architectural collage was once an extremely valuable tool... and it's making a resurgence.

The Archigram collective was a rad group of thinkers who took the collage to the next level during the 1960's. In a partial protest against the simplicity of modernism – at the height of modernism – the group took an extremist approach to urban proposals and publicized them via the collage.

Many of these "visions" seemed intentionally impossible – almost reminiscing aspects of a Studio Ghibli world with city's that could walk or a continuous monument stretching through the desert. Now, some of those proposals actually do exist – shoutout NEOM – and it was partially made possible through Archigram's futuristic imagery.

Nowadays, we're seeing that same outlandish aesthetic reintroduced into the design world. Often in school projects or sometimes in an OMA diagram, it feels somewhat familiar and its abstraction often speeds things up for us as designers. There's nothing like getting a point across by spending five-minutes in photoshop, cut n' pasting a few images and saying it’s a stylized render – thanks Archigram.

Anyway, they knew what they were doing and not just in their love for ambiguity. At heart, Archigram was a collective and they loved to collaborate. They didn't build much but they worked with many, published an enormous amount of thought, and influenced some of the best – including the likes of Super Studio, Mies, Zaha, Koolhaas, and the list goes on.

And, I guess that's what it’s all about. If you have an interesting thought and don’t know what to do with it: get it out of your head, off your laptop and into the world. Make a damn collage.

No. 2: THE HYPNOTIC ALBUM ART ICONOGRAPHY OF HIPGNOSIS

It’s funny — maybe sad? — that in our time, it feels like such little importance is given to album art. 

It’s there, sure, but it’s less central. 

Wolfgang Tillmans for Frank Ocean is one of the few in recent memory that has become iconic. But in the streaming first world, ironically, it’s the music that matters. 

Hipgnosis was a duo of true merry pranksters, with little formal training in the graphic arts, who produced some of the most provocative and show-stopping covers of the 60s and 70s. 

Dark Side of the Moon, come on!

They paid incredible attention to detail and analog practices. Literally creating the image in real life, and in-camera for the most part. 

Which is just incredible to conceive in the days before digital layers and vectors 

“Squaring the Circle” is on Netflix now and tells the full, heady story.

No. 1: THE DIY, MISANTHROPIC, TOTALLY INTENTIONAL IDGAF DFA AESTHETIC

You’re probably not in client services if the strapline on your business card reads “fuck off you cunt. go away.”

But that was the raison d’etre for the early DFA ethos — “misanthropists” as they put it — a bootstrapped production duo of James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy who were living and working out of a basement in the West Village, taping pillows to drum kits to generate their characteristic thud-not-clap live-drum sound.

Nominally, they really did not give a fuck what you thought.

But they of course did when it came to the product, the sounds.

The visual accouterments — the five-dollar disco ball crudely Xerox’d directly from the package, the lightening bolt logo that seems stolen from the refuse drawer in a vintage printing press — served only to enhance the “we’re not like the other guys” mentality that set DFA apart.

It’s stupidity-by-design, but it hid (and still hides) the incredible complexity and thought that goes into their unique fusion of dance and punk that moves bodies en masse.

Ultimately it works because it feels like you could do it with your friends in thirty minutes with a six-pack.

More things should feel like that.