The Beauty of Seaside revisited.
31/03/08 16:25
We went to a place
called Seaside the other day. It’s a thirty minute
drive from Panama City. Just take the road west
towards Pensacola and be ready to go left when the
road splits. At some point you’ll get to a place
called Alys Beach, just go on through (beware of rich
people in polo shirts crossing), and you’ll get to
Seaside in ten minutes tops. Now the thing about
Seaside is that it’s in every thinkable way unique.
There are very strict rules on what kind of buildings
are built - in fact you’ll need a permit to build,
and the aesthetics are very important when they
consider your application. This creates a township
where no two buildings are alike, but still within
the same conceptual scheme.
It really does
create a very pure and distinct expression for the
entire town, and I really like the fact that the
developer has insisted that no high-risers were to be
built at the beaches (for those who haven’t been to
Panama City Beach, imagine a 20 mile stretch with no
access to the beautiful beaches unless you are
residing in one of the apartment complexes or hotels.
And should you try to walk through a parking lot,
chances are that a local, employed by the owners,
will come running to inform you that you’re
trespassing).
But obviously this purity comes at a steep price. The price starts at roughly on million dollars and ends at the same time that you run out of imagination. A five bedroom condo with 5.5 bathrooms (?!), will set you back roughly four million dollars. So it really isn’t something you buy on a whim. But should you be able to afford it, you’ll have access to the luxuries beaches, cafes, bull-courts, small parks etc. that seem be a must in this place - and although luxurious, a cup of coffee is still 15% cheaper than in Denmark.
But beauty standing alone, almost out of context can seem cruel.
The day before arriving at Seaside, I read an article in the local newspaper that said 50000 people, primarily kids and retirees were about to lose their health insurance. Nobody argued against the numbers, the disagreement regarded what was to be done about it. The US are heading into a recession (or getting some wind in the face/taking a break/at the bottom of a steep hill if you don’t like using the “R”-word), so obviously there aren’t as many funds to spread around at the moment, due to lower tax income. And when there are less funds available, budgets need to be cut, or taxes need to be raised - that’s pretty simple as well. And it was fairly obvious that the raising of taxes really doesn’t comply all that much with the Florida mindset. So it ended with budget cuts. And those budget cuts ended up happening in health care, nothing unusual about that either.
This is where I
start to wonder, and in many ways lose interest in
the beauty of Seaside. It’s uniqueness and
architectural innovations begin to be contrasted to
the world instead of connected to it. It becomes ad
pure place in the crystalized, cold sense of the word
and turns into something that divides, almost
monopolizes beauty instead of sharing it.
The formal beauty - especially in this case - almost becomes vulgar. Instead of being soothing and uniting it becomes the opposite: the expression of a segregation of the people of a nation. Enjoying a glass of red wine in a five million dollar condo, whilst people within forty miles are dying from lack of simple medical treatments isolates a place like Seaside.
Of course I’m very susceptible to contrasts, and coming almost straight from hurricane stricken Atlanta, things will probably hit me a little stronger. But being in the magnificent town square of Seaside, I couldn’t help but wonder: standing outside of Seaside, having just been stripped of basic necessities such as health care, how cold must the beauty of Seaside not seem? It’s 68 degrees, the sun is shining, kids are running around having the time of their lives and still, looking at it in all it’s purity, I felt no warmth.
Works of art are
created in a context. They are the embodiment of
formal beauty but at the same time a part of their
environment. That’s what make them truly special.
Seaside is lacking the latter. It holds the beauty
but withholds it as well, making it unreachable to
some but even worse: a goal to others.
But obviously this purity comes at a steep price. The price starts at roughly on million dollars and ends at the same time that you run out of imagination. A five bedroom condo with 5.5 bathrooms (?!), will set you back roughly four million dollars. So it really isn’t something you buy on a whim. But should you be able to afford it, you’ll have access to the luxuries beaches, cafes, bull-courts, small parks etc. that seem be a must in this place - and although luxurious, a cup of coffee is still 15% cheaper than in Denmark.
But beauty standing alone, almost out of context can seem cruel.
The day before arriving at Seaside, I read an article in the local newspaper that said 50000 people, primarily kids and retirees were about to lose their health insurance. Nobody argued against the numbers, the disagreement regarded what was to be done about it. The US are heading into a recession (or getting some wind in the face/taking a break/at the bottom of a steep hill if you don’t like using the “R”-word), so obviously there aren’t as many funds to spread around at the moment, due to lower tax income. And when there are less funds available, budgets need to be cut, or taxes need to be raised - that’s pretty simple as well. And it was fairly obvious that the raising of taxes really doesn’t comply all that much with the Florida mindset. So it ended with budget cuts. And those budget cuts ended up happening in health care, nothing unusual about that either.
The formal beauty - especially in this case - almost becomes vulgar. Instead of being soothing and uniting it becomes the opposite: the expression of a segregation of the people of a nation. Enjoying a glass of red wine in a five million dollar condo, whilst people within forty miles are dying from lack of simple medical treatments isolates a place like Seaside.
Of course I’m very susceptible to contrasts, and coming almost straight from hurricane stricken Atlanta, things will probably hit me a little stronger. But being in the magnificent town square of Seaside, I couldn’t help but wonder: standing outside of Seaside, having just been stripped of basic necessities such as health care, how cold must the beauty of Seaside not seem? It’s 68 degrees, the sun is shining, kids are running around having the time of their lives and still, looking at it in all it’s purity, I felt no warmth.
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