People really hate Thomas Heatherwick’s new Escher-esque “Vessel,” a climbable sculpture in New York City’s billionaire playground of Hudson Yards, and they’re not afraid to wax poetic about it. It’s a stairway to nowhere; a giant shawarma; a pine cone; a beehive; a trash basket; the rib cage of a monstrous robot.

Its name is fitting, some argue, as it’s little more than an empty monument to the outrageous excess with which it’s surrounded. According to Heatherwick, “Vessel” was always meant to be a placeholder name until the public experiences it and helps give it a new one. But with questions of its ultimate accessibility, usefulness and symbolic meaning to the public driving much of this criticism, perhaps the British designer won’t be pleased with the results.

Never thought I would say this but it probably would have been preferable to build an 80,000 seat football stadium that would be empty 80% of the year than the horrendous offering to the mall gods that #HudsonYards appears to behttps://t.co/ybAfk8z8W2

— Jon Auerbach (@JAAuerbach) April 1, 2019

I went to the new 25 Billion dollar #HudsonYards complex, on the very far West Side of Manhatran yesterday. Essentially it is a suburban mall without parking. Very crowded, but seemingly few shoppers. Wonder what will happen when the novelty wears off.

— Frank Didik (@FrankDidik) April 1, 2019

The Hudson Yards sculpture looks like a plus-sized bedbug. #HudsonYards pic.twitter.com/TmSFtLOZBG

— Nick Kolakowski (@nkolakowski) March 30, 2019

More than 1,000 people crowded around the vase of the imposing structure on March 15th, 2019, as it was commemorated and opened to the public. Comprised of 154 interconnecting flights of stairs, including nearly 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings, “Vessel” gives visitors a view of a long-anticipated $25 billion mixed-use complex full of condos that cost between $4 million and $32 million (or more) as well as super-tall office towers, a luxury shopping zone and high-end restaurants. Opening day was chaotic, with crowds pushing up and down every segment of stairway with their selfie sticks waving in the air, leaving few places to rest momentarily before pushing on.

Best take on Vessel at #HudsonYards from Filip Tejchman from @UWM SARUP: “A building that has no function and yet is also somehow LEED certified” ???????? #ACSA107 pic.twitter.com/OGRa6FqWE3

— Dr. Dora Epstein Jones (@DoraEJones) March 30, 2019

Nothing can prepare you for the capitalist altar, that is #HudsonYards #NYC pic.twitter.com/fI2TntAPua

— Richard Jacob (@IdahoNua) April 1, 2019

Urban nightmare. Dystopia. Contemporary panopticon. Yes definitely hate it. #hudsonyards #gentrification https://t.co/UQHHl66pHT

— Professor Laxmi Ram, AICP (@ProfLaxmi) March 30, 2019

Hudson Yard’s billionaire developers, led by Stephen Ross, have framed the Vessel as a benefit to New Yorkers and tourists alike, calling it a public amenity. “We think of this as a three-dimensional public space, like a park, but taller,” says Heatherwick lead designer Stuart Wood. Ross himself notes that Hudson Yards can’t be a playground for billionaires, as it’s been deemed in public discourse, because it has an H&M and a Shake Shack.

It’s fun to hate from afar, but what do visitors have to say about it? Here’s a report from Andrew Russeth of Art News:

“How is it as an actual aesthetic experience? Very weird, and quite unpleasant, I am happy to report. Looking up from its cramped ground floor, where a panel glows bright blue (a bit like that strange orb President Trump and company touched in Saudi Arabia), you see row after row of the copper-plated steel that lines the staircases, resembling a high-end corporate headquarters or shopping center. It appears to have been specifically designed to induce intense amounts of dread and alienation… for me, it most resembles one of those sets in sci-fi films where members of an alien tribunal gaze down on humans and condemn them to work in salt mines on some distant planet.”

https://twitter.com/carlruiz/status/1109189075846774784

Contest to rename the monstrosity by fake-artist Thomas Hearherwick “The Vessel” in the center of the environmental nullity & rot that is the Dubai on the Hudson #HudsonYards

Rename The Vessel:

1. The Shit-Gibbon
2. Thunderdome.
3. 2060 Underwater Amusement Park.

You??? pic.twitter.com/n6TQojUsLO

— Jerry Saltz (@jerrysaltz) March 17, 2019

I have a feeling we're not in New York anymore – the grotesque #HudsonYards #longreads https://t.co/vugGsMSDMc

— Anarchie ?? (@junkycosmonaut) March 31, 2019

The story of Hudson Yards is one that has played out on a smaller scale time and time again in New York City and virtually every other city in the world: a story of a piece of land that was devalued by the pollution of industry, marked for redevelopment via lucrative tax breaks and then transformed into something the vast majority of local residents can’t use.

Developers and city officials have long seen the “Far West Side,” which used to be little more than an open pit full of trains, as a blank canvas, with Hudson Yards only emerging as the victor after the death of a dream to host the Olympics in this spot. The platform upon which it’s built is certainly a feat of engineering, and advocates note that the project will add 4,000 new apartments, a school, parkland and as many as 55,000 jobs to the city. The completed portion is only the eastern half; the rest will be under construction through 2024.

In editorial after editorial and thousands of tweets, New Yorkers have expressed their dismay at the fact that this gargantuan project feels so alienating, so wasteful, so clearly not for them. Just as with every condo that goes up in a formerly vacant lot or on the site of a demolished house or business, the investment capital required to complete the project was only ever going to be worth spending if the result was inaccessible to the average person. Gentrification has already wiped out much of the culture that gave New York City its identity, and to many people, Hudson Yards feels like insult after injury. It effectively privatizes the last sizable undeveloped chunk of Manhattan as the gulf between the uber-rich and the rest of us grows ever wider.

At The Guardian, Hamilton Nolan writes, “As urban planning visions go, it is a familiar one: an ultracapitalist equivalent of the Forbidden City, a Chichen Itza with a better mall and slightly better-concealed human sacrifice. The development has been dubbed a ‘billionaire’s fantasy city’, but it is something more sinister than that. It is a billionaire’s reality city. The other 8.6 million of us are just character actors in this drama starring the most unbearable people you can imagine.”

Even The New York Times, the city’s befuddled patrician uncle who’s perpetually behind on trends and utterly tone-deaf, called Hudson Yards “Manhattan’s biggest, newest, slickest gated community,” noting that the project is shifting economic development from other neighborhoods to Hudson Yards without creating new net growth. “It is, at heart, a supersized suburban-style office park, with a shopping mall and a quasi-gated condo community targeted at the 0.1 percent.A relic of dated 2000s thinking, nearly devoid of urban design, it declines to blend into the city grid. From a distance the project may remind you of glass shards on top of a wall.”

It’s not lost on observers that the stairs of the Vessel lead nowhere. The work of climbing is supposed to be the reward, since there’s nothing at the top but a view of the Hudson Yards complex, or, if you turn inward, a view of all the other climbers still making their way up. The structure is just tall enough to pressure people who can climb stairs to do so; its lone elevator only stops at certain platforms, giving people with disabilities a limited experience of a limited experience. It’s only open in hours of daylight, and you have to book (free) tickets 14 days in advance to climb. In doing so, you must agree to a lengthy terms of service agreement stipulating that it’s your own fault if you die or get injured, and that any photos or videos you take and post to social media can be used to promote the attraction.

Removed from this context and all of the cultural baggage it carries, would the Vessel itself produce as much outrage? Perhaps not. Imagine it looming at the edge of a nature preserve instead, as an observation point for a place that can be enjoyed by the whole of a city’s population (with an elevator that goes all the way to the top.)

Curbed’s Alexandra Lange writes, “Rockefeller Center, Battery Park City, the neighborhood that would have been Atlantic Yards—each of these has been and will forever be more boring than the real city. Knowing this, we need to stop letting capital set the urban terms. Cities need to plan their own megaprojects, invest in the transportation network, make those parks, and then let the developers in to fill them out—on the city’s terms. Some of the most transformative urban developments in New York City over the past decade, like Brooklyn Bridge Park, have started with parks.”

Banksy may be the most famous street artist addressing topics like capitalism, war, the refugee crisis and environmental degradation, but he’s far from the only one. These political works by a wide range of international artists call attention to the ravages of the palm oil industry, police brutality, climate change, rapid industrialization and human trafficking with powerful visuals in public places.

Ernest Zacharevic, Isaac Cordal & Strok: Splash and Burn

In western Indonesia, on the island of Sumatra, the palm oil industry is ravaging the forests, cruelly killing and displacing species like the orangutan. The ‘Splash and Burn’ project, curated by Ernest Zacharevic, aims to call attention to these issues through art installations by international creatives. Ernest’s own contribution is a gut-wrenching mural of the forest on fire as an orangutan tries to escape, while Strok’s shows how workers attempt to rescue orangutans clinging to life in mostly-destroyed forests. Isaac Cordal, who’s known for his street installations of miniature figures, shows recovery efforts in action, along with a striking representation of those who get rich on the industry.

Sophia Dawson: Police Brutality

Brooklyn artist Sophia Dawson has painted many hard-hitting murals in her own city, including the two shown here, which say “We Want an Immediate End to Police Brutality and Murder of Black People’ and educate the public on their rights. “I endeavor to create a narrative art that addresses human and political struggle,” says Dawson. “In doing so my aim is to convey the true stories and experiences of oppressed people from political movements in ways that more broadly form, shade and convey the individual and collective injustices they face.”

NeverCrew: Environmental Tragedies

The Swiss street artist duo known as NeverCrew (Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni) created a series of public murals addressing climate change, women asylum seekers and other issues throughout 2016. Of ‘Black Machine,’ the image of the polar bear covered in oil, the artists say “Playing with the line of sight of the forced point of view from the sidewalk and inspiring us to the theater (on whose wall was made the painting,) we decided to work on the idea of representation intended in a broad sense as portrayal, as performance and as a figuration of reality. We used direct references to the theatrical context to define a ‘real’ proportion and a starting point, but we wanted to move the attention on global warming related to human habits. We have then developed these issues trying to evoke the position (and responsibility) of man in a delicate balance, into the ecosystem, and so the choice points of view, of real awareness and the idea of a passive condition in a system.”

Sr. X: Capitalism Critiques

Spanish artist Sr. X completed this rooftop mural on an old billboard platform on London’s Great Eastern Street, with a pointed critique that requires no further explanation.

Pejac: The World Going Down the Drain

The world threatens to melt through a storm drain into the sewer below in this Santander, Spain street piece by Spanish artist Sylvestre Santiago, better known as Pejac.

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Murals With A Message 23 Works Of Statement Making Street Art

Over three hundred bus shelter ads across the UK have been replaced with thought-provoking works criticizing capitalist culture by 40 street artists. The ‘Brandalism‘ posters were installed in high-traffic areas, from the busiest shopping district of London to the Leeds  Half Marathon route and even outside Scotland Yard, right under the noses of the police officers lambasted by several of the designs.

“The large print giveth, the small print taketh away,” reads one, while another parodies Harrod’s department store with “Horrids – trite gewgaws, trinkets & trash, the cluster bombs of consumerism.” “The market is dead, long live the market,” a third repeats.

The campaign is a response to the fact that the UK’s advertising industry pays just under 250 per person each year to reach the ears and eyeballs of the citizens i the hopes of selling things like “adjustable mops and leather sofas.” Plus, the industry relies on manipulation ranging from the subtle to the overt, convincing us that we won’t be happy until we make more money in order to purchase all of this stuff. It’s not about catering to our needs, it’s about creating new desires.

The campaign explains, “The fight against advertising is not a fight against desiring. We should want more from life not less, and we should demand it. The question is more of what? This exhibition is about trying to open up questions about the ills created by advertising, the false needs and destructive desires it attempts to distill in us, and it is about trying to reclaim some of the spaces taken from us.”

Brandalism even has a suggestion for anyone who isn’t a big fan of the work their artists produced: “Swapping them is easier than you’d imagine. All you need are some o the magic cabinet keys and a trusty hi-viz vest to remain hidden in plain sight. So if you don’t like what we’ve put up, check out our guide to opening the cabinets, and replace it with something you prefer. Because after all, they’re your streets.”

Building a brand was Job One back in advertising’s golden age – legions of men in grey flannel suits built careers upon that very rule. In today’s world of information overload and soul-killing McJobs, however, brand saturation is turning marketing mantras on their heads. From debranding to unbranding to back-door product placements, it’s hard to know who’s selling what – which is the whole point.

No Quarter Pounder

(images via: Neil Duckett and InventorSpot)

McDonald’s is one of the world’s most recognized brands, yet this enviable position isn’t completely to the liking of the powers at McD Japan. How else to explain the opening of two Quarter Pounder stores in Tokyo? Decked out in upscale black & red decor and without a clown in sight, customers wondering what the “big secret” was were offered a mere two menu choices: a Quarter Pounder or a Double Quarter Pounder, both with cheese. Even the packaging is as generic as possible.

(image via: Core77)

So, just who’s fooling who here? Who smiles inwardly, McDonald’s execs or Quarter Pounder customers? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

No Brand, No Problem

(image via: PopSop)

Is anti-branding subversive? Yes and yes – product pushers are, in effect, trying to put one over on consumers who, by buying no-brand items, think they’re doing their part in a wider campaign that embraces an anti-corporate methodology. Everybody’s happy and in the end, more product gets sold. Customers may even find themselves attracted to a product that instead of trying to lure them into buying, does just the opposite – like the prototype anti-brand cigarette boxes above, designed by Pentagram as a response to possible plain black-and-white cigarette packs that may soon me mandated by the federal government.

(images via: We Made This and Alistair Hall)

Pentagram’s designs add Goth appeal while (mainly) staying within the proposed guidelines. The set above distills the text and graphic ad copy down to a bare minimum yet even these packs will likely do little to dissuade smokers from lighting up.

P.B.R.: Busch League No Longer

(images via: Mastergrape and Adlicious)

Pabst Blue Ribbon… the King Of Beers, it ain’t. With sales down 90 percent since 1975 it was a dying breed – rumors began to spread that Pabst was about to kick the beer bucket. Brand image? It barely had one as marketing budgets were scraping the bottom of the barrel. In short, Pabst was a sitting duck for unorganized hipster hijackers who saw the brand’s negatives as positives. The underdog low-brow brew took on a new life as “P.B.R.” and sales rose faster than foam on draft poured into a dirty mug. Pabst, the subversive beer with no brand… which is ironic in a way, as Pabst no longer brews its own beer. It’s all sourced from Miller.

No Logo Too Low

(images via: TAGG.org and McSpotlight)

Naomi Klein‘s 2000 best-seller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies was arguably the first stab at distilling the essence of anti-branding and its roots in modern corporate/consumer culture. With sections titled No Space, No Choice, No Jobs and finally No Logo, the book explores themes ranging from the birth of the anti-globalization movement to the phenomenon of McJobs. Klein’s exploration of consumerism’s soft underbelly has been trumpeted by some and trashed by others, the latter most memorably by Warren Ellis who, as Doktor Sleepless, stated “Even No Logo had a fucking logo on it”.

No Hijack Too High

(images via: LangLang, Kinokuniya and AUCTION/Korea)

Following up on No Logo several years later in 2005 was Brand Hijack: Marketing Without Marketing by Alex Wipperfürth. Brand Hijack cleaves more closely to the traditional business guru tome while proposing a most un-traditional strategy for marketers: “Let go of the fallacy that your brand belongs to you. It belongs to the market.” At the same time, Wipperfürth addresses control issues that give corporate execs and product planners night chills by reminding us all that, as he puts it, “consumers fine-tune products, not create them.”

The Bucks Stops Here

(images via: JoshC and BeerBeer)

Looking for a cuppa java but put off by those cookie cutter coffee kiosks foisting faux ambiance at a premium price? You betcha! Turning up your nose at yet another Starbucks, you decide to try the neighborly named 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. Sorry, you’ve been fooled again. Meet the new haus, same as the old haus… with one noteworthy exception: 15th Avenue stores will sell beer and wine along with selected Starbucks coffees and teas.

“No Brand, Good Product”

(images via: Ecolect and 7inch)

McDonald’s and Starbucks have dallied with unbranding but everyone gets the joke – and many are not amused. Perhaps the purest way to go no logo is to start off that way, and let the products speak for themselves without crafting a brand image. It works; Muji has established itself as a good quality, great value retailer without the use of overt branding. If you’re wondering what “Muji” means, it’s short for Mujirushi Ryohin which translates to “no brand, good product.”

(image via: Useful and Agreeable)

True, Muji’s products share a certain basic, simplistic style that extends from the smallest kitchen utensils to actual houses and cars, but everything is subsumed in a common, form-follows-function design ethos. Muji has expanded from its Japanese base by opening stores in Europe and the USA, proving an appealing concept knows no boundaries.

Blackspot, The Anti-Brand Brand

(image via: The Discerning Brute)

The Classic Blackspot Sneaker and v2.0: The Unswoosher shoes make a statement with sole. Conceived by anti-branding bible Adbusters, Blackspot is a brand that seeks to beat corporate bully-boy Nike at their own game; by playing fair. No outsourcing, no sweatshop labor, no environmentally unfriendly manufacturing is what Blackspot preaches and practices.

(images via: Bizzia and CultCase)

Sez Adbusters, “the Blackspot, from it’s red toe-tip and hand-drawn anti-logo to its renegade billboards and TV ads, is designed to do only one thing: kick megacorporate ass. We’re going to cut into Nike’s market share, unswoosh that tired old swoosh and give birth to a new kind of cool in the sneaker industry.”

Unbranding For Dummies

(image via: Keri Smith)

Well, that’s a little harsh – how about Unbranding @ Home, though the “For Dummies” was in reference to anyone being able to unbrand on their own no matter how brand-washed they might be. Keri Smith is a champion of DIY unbranding and she takes the concept to where we live. Why be blasted by Kelloggs hype every morning when one of Smith’s home-made cereal box skins can educate, illuminate and uplift your life just as your day is beginning? Even a pack of gum can serve an alternate purpose… as a subway map.

The Unbranded Home

(images via: Trendhunter and Apartment Therapy)

Modern society offers few refuges from the constant drone of branded advertising – even our homes aren’t safe… or are they? One way to rid personal living space of brand clutter is to use generic home products displayed in plain containers with de-branded labels, and at least one company, DeBranded Home Labels, offers an easy way to do just that. Sure it’s a pain to transfer liquid soap and so on from branded to non-branded bottles; the solution is to buy bulk generics and fill up the smaller containers as needed. Bonus: DeBranded Home Labels don’t even have “Debranded Home Labels” logos on their stickers.

Though recession economics have forced many to cut back on big buck brands in favor of generic, unbranded alternatives, the power of The Brand was arguably into a slump of its own. Is society wising up to Madison Avenue manipulation or are we just making better individual lifestyle choices? You decide.