How to Write History, T-Style
Have you noticed how things are small now? The journalists over at T, the New York Times' glossy style magazine, definitely have, and when they did, they wanted to know why. Really: everything is so small! Even houses are small — have you noticed how every house these days is a pod house? It is. Same with hotel rooms and MP3 players: all pods. The T people were stumped, so in preparation for today's special travel issue, they cracked the book of history and came up with some sentences. Their findings are presented in a slideshow. As they put it in the intro text, "A new wave of budget accommodations are landing everywhere. How did it happen? Here, one plausible story."
That story—itself very small; you might even say slight—after the jump.
The tale begins in 1967 Montreal, when the architect Moshe Safdie builds a super-brutal apartment complex called Habitat 67 and promptly "unleashes a passion for modular living."
The next big push for small comes in 1968—or was it 2001!?—when Stanley Kubrick puts three of the astronauts from Space Odyssey, a fictional film, into literally itty bitty "hibernation capsules." T reasons: "If they can do it for months, a night or two can't be that bad."
Scroll up five years, to when the economist E. F. Schumacher drops Small is Beautiful.
The T people don't tell us what the book's about or what it says—guys, it's on Wikipedia; there are even some quotes you could have pulled—but they do happily proclaim that it "[inspired] a movement."
Moving on: In 1977 we get the first-ever pod hotel in Osaka. In 1991, New York sees the opening of the Schumacher hotel, which, with its "very, very boutique rooms," "proves that swank wins over square footage." Then, the late 90s happen, and "Globalization, sustainability and design converge as architects start a fad for shipping containers repurposed as housing."
This happened. It is impossible to prove that this didn't sort of happen. Also: didn't pogs come out around this time? They are little but luxurious. Same with pugs:
Next up in the history, T lists JetBlue, where the planes are small but nice. Then iPods! Also small but nice; also pods. As the T people put it, "Enough said."
Apparently not, though, as there are still two slides left. The first is about Target getting in on the high fashion game; the last is a conclusion that reaffirms the premise: "Small is groovy. Cheap is cheerful. Pod hotels take over the world."
Hi readers! Can you think of other small things? —LEON
