Midcentury modern hospital: House MD

原文链接： http://blog.ounodesign.com/2010/12/11/hospital-furniture-house-md/

My sister, an emergency pediatric doctor, can’t watch House M.D. because she says the medicine is either wrong or stupidly farfetched, and I feel the same way about the decor. What is all that pricey midcentury modern design doing in a hospital? Wouldn’t those little Eileen Gray side tables in the corridor be stolen in about five minutes? I can accept the Eames Lounge as a realistic item for Dr. House’s office, given his infirmity. (Also I like that it’s somewhat hilariously upholstered in yellowy beige wide-wale corduroy. Quite apart from being a genius design move, it also fits his iconoclasm.) But what about the rest? Was there a modernist fire sale in New Jersey? TV shows rarely make sense, but this is unnecessarily distracting. There must be hundreds of Marcel Breuer chairs in this hospital, Corbusier armchairs (not shown here), Eileen Gray side tables, Aeron desk chairs, and I think that’s a Nelson saucer pendant lamp above the work table. And a Noguchi rice-paper standard lamp! Is this some sort of design nerd in-joke? And then they deposit all this nice stuff in the hospital’s godawful brick-red-and-olive colour scheme. See, this is the design equivalent of badly researched medicine. So who decorated House’s office? It can’t have been House; his apartment is all gentlemanlike and upmarket man-cavey, not strictly midcentury modern, plus it’s better than this. Not saying mixes can’t be good, but why inflict framed jazz posters on midcentury modern. Or on anything. It’s just frightening. They need a gay doctor on House’s team toute de suite.

PS On an only tenuously related note, there was an episode in which House was asked by his therapist why he’d pay double its worth to get his furniture out of pawnshop hock. He rolled his eyes and said “I want my stuff because it’s my stuff. Same reason anyone wants their stuff. They like it; that’s why it’s their stuff.”