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We carved this. Proved it could be done.
And I’m going to keep posting it until someone commissions a new building that’s as grand.
And I’m going to keep posting it until someone commissions a new building that’s as grand.
Micah Springut
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Founder, @Monumental_Labs. Building the infrastructure for the aesthetic renaissance of cities. Sculpture + architecture + urban design.
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My work as an old rich person will be paying for buildings to bring back their cornices
In like 30 mins you can watch me and Dustin Yellin yuck it up about art and automation and probably roast normie art opinion in the process. every.to/thesis-2027/sc…
every.to The Art of the Machine — Micah Springut and Dustin Yellin at Thesis 2027 When a machine can carve marble and a model can make a film, what’s left for the artist to do? Artist Dustin Yellin and Micah Springut of Monumental Labs talk about where human craft still matters,... They’re melting down on Facebook over this because they think AI designed a scantily-clad Pericles with a nip slip. It’s literally just a replica of Pericles in the Tuileries (modeled by hand in Zbrush).
Pericles on robotView quoted post on X
The answer is obvious. It’s been 85 years since we’ve built a great neighborhood or city or admirable estate.
Fix the failures of the physical world. Commission great works. Build grand buildings. Rebuild architecture education and the craft ecosystem that were decimated by cynical economics-driven favor for minimalism.
Fund libraries, concert halls, museums, squares, and monuments. Make money on it if you wish with housing and retail and office that gets a return with better decoration and design.
Someone’s work here can endure for ages. You don’t even have to care about your name living forever if you simply care enough about future generations and the world they’ll inherit.
If that’s not enough, dear patrons, the parties you’ll join of the cultural elite will be way cooler than the tech parties.
Fix the failures of the physical world. Commission great works. Build grand buildings. Rebuild architecture education and the craft ecosystem that were decimated by cynical economics-driven favor for minimalism.
Fund libraries, concert halls, museums, squares, and monuments. Make money on it if you wish with housing and retail and office that gets a return with better decoration and design.
Someone’s work here can endure for ages. You don’t even have to care about your name living forever if you simply care enough about future generations and the world they’ll inherit.
If that’s not enough, dear patrons, the parties you’ll join of the cultural elite will be way cooler than the tech parties.
A funny thing about the deluge of wealth about to hit SF is that SF tech has always been about arcane status and legibility games much more so than money, and as we're about to mint a whole generation of UHNWs: there's nothing to buy.View quoted post on X
The nicest houses in SF top out at $30M. We do not have Malibu-style $100M+ mansion compounds, and we don't have NYC-style $20M+ ultra-luxury apartments. There are a few penthouses at the Avery and a few other buildings and that's it. A handful of $50M+ estates available in the South Bay, but there's nothing these people hate more than commuting to where the cool events are. Megayachts would be out of gauche and out-of-place in the Bay. To a large extent, the real estate that you would associate with the kind of wealth about to befall Anthropic employee #100 simply does not exist and will take years to build as a physical matter and much more than that as a regulatory matter.
The consequence of this is that the arcane status and legibility games will come to matter much more than ever before -- if there's so much wealth that you can't really differentiate yourself on wealth, then everything ends up coming down to social proof games. Ah you have money? But does so-and-so follow you on Substack? And when you speak at Manifest, do people nod and say "wow what's your Twitter" or do they silently turn to get another Spindrift?
