Architecture or Revolution?

Warning: a crash course on the sorry current state of affairs in architecture. Read on if you know, or want to know who Frank Gehry is, and does he suck or not?

One of my favorite magazines, Esquire, published a thought provoking article in their December 2008 issue entitled, "Burying Frank Gehry" by Mr. Scott Raab, one of my favorite contributors at the publication. The article focused on Joshua Prince-Ramus, the president and principal at Rex, a New York City-based architecture and design firm http://www.rex-ny.com/ and his counter-intuitive approach to architecture, that frankly shouldn't be so revolutionary.

In architecture it is a commonly held, though rarely voiced, thought that in order to be a famous architect one has to be over 50 and male. So as you're on your way out your star is rising.* For example, Frank Gehry will be 80 on February 28th. Santiagio Calatrava is 57, (58 on July 28th), and my personal favorite, Daniel Libeskind is 62 (63 on May 12th) and not just because he won the commission for the memorial for the World Trade Center Towers. But more gushing praise on him in another blog.

An exception to the rule is the exceptional Zaha Hadid, who, though she is 58 (59 on October 31st) is one of the most prolific female architects of our time. This is not to say that female architects do not exist, but none of them have the household name status that Ms. Hadid has earned, if your family is on a working knowledge of contemporary architecture. If not, consider this your new topic to introduce at the dinner table tonight. But be prepared for some blank stares.

* I am also kidding about the on the way out part of course, but by 55 isn't everyone eyeing that door that leads to retirement with just a little bit of longing? I'd hate to wait that long to get my dues.

Another rarely voiced though commonly held belief in the realm of architecture is that architects exist to project their "vision"on the unsuspecting, and probably ignorant world. This is all fine and good. Being an artist as well as a (future) planner I understand the need to express one's self creatively. But being an architect is not like being an artist, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.

An architect is also not a painter. This seems rather obvious. Yes, both possess an inner vision of their final creation. But it's a lot easier to shelve a painting that no one wants to buy versus a building that remains vacant because it just doesn't fit any client's needs and will take up a lot of valuable space.

An architect is also not a graphic designer. A graphic designer is given an idea or concept by a client and then given creative freedom to bring it to life and profit. Obviously, if the client hates what the designer comes up with, it's back to the drawing board or no paycheck. In theory, an architect collaborates with a client to marry a project that suits the client's needs coupled with the architect's personal take on what the building, etc., will look like. However, if the client is unhappy with the architect's drawings, theoretically, an architect will scrap it and start over until they have reached a mutual agreement.

An architect is not a photographer, an architect is not an illustrator, an architect is not a cartoonist, etc., Continuing my list by ticking off all of the other majors at my alma mater would risk turning this blog turning into an unpublished Dr. Seuss rhyme.

However, as the budding architects are sitting at their drafting desks, slaving away, feverishly gluing together bits of Bristol board and toothpicks, they are also having lies cooed in their ears like a faithless lover. "Don't forget that you're number one. ""The client is just ignorant.""Above all else, make sure it's what you want, not what they need."

As much as I am a proponent for artistic integrity and all that stuff, I cannot in good conscience advocate architects, planners, or any designer obstinately sticking to their creative "visions" when someone else is paying you.

Obviously, given the opportunity almost architect would like to be endowed with celebrity-like status and be given free will to design whatever the heck they want client needs be damned. Unfortunately, this is reality and such notions cannot plausibly exist.

This brings me to the article on Mr. Joshua Prince-Ramus. Mr. Prince-Ramus understands that architecture really boils down to no client = no work.

Yes it'd be nice to have clients come cowering and groveling to have one of your inspired visions hosue one of their lowly places of business. But it'd also be nice to build houses made of gingerbread and gumdrops and provide air conditioning to people in Third World countries without any impact on the environment.

Mr. Prince-Ramus is not some dour, unsuccessful architect who wants to spit in everyone else's drink. In fact, he is highly educated and highly successful. His undergrad was from Yale in philosophy and his Master's in Architecture is from Harvard. His firm has worked on the Guggenheim Las Vegas, (Gehry designed the Guggie in Bilbao, Spain) the U of L Business School, and the Seattle Library, among other impressive projects.

But he's also a realist who understands that there is a rift between form and function. The famous architect, Louis Sullivan, who brought us the earliest form of the skyscraper and mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, once, "Form follows function."

Prince-Ramus says that, "Starting in the 1920s, the modernist agenda made a schism between form and function. Terrible idea- terrible for architects. [emphasis author's own] They sided with functionalism; they failed. Architects in their infinite wisdom didn't stitch them back together; we went all the way the other way, to formalism. And now we're at the height of a formalist agenda- total failure, terrible idea.
You need to heal two things as an architect. You need to heal form and function. It's a useless, irrelevant distinction. Form performs, function performs- forget about it [emphasis author's own] And you need to heal the whole concept of the design architect" -the sketching artiste- "and the executive architect. It's a totally unproductive distinction. You can't design without knowing schedules and contracts. You can't do schedules and contracts without knowing how to design.
If you can't design a great contract, it doesn't matter how good an idea you have- you won't build it. It's as simple as that. With this other schism, architects started to act more and more like artists- and to treat the business as beneath them. And I find that absolutely absurd. No wonder we're so impotent." -all quotes Joshua Prince-Ramus, from "Burying Frank Gehry" by Scott Raab, Esquire, December 2008, 144.

There is no room for ego in Prince-Ramus's world.

"Author a process; [emphasis author's own] if you author a process, you actually are losing control; you don't know what's gonna evolve. . .We don't care who authors something- if it's the most senior person on our team, a student who just came that morning, or the janitor. We don't care where the idea comes from. The ideas get torn apart, and the more interesting an idea, the more aggressive the tearing apart gets. Authoring a process is much more successful than authoring an object- regardless of the project. If you look at our work, you'll see an underlying current of thought, not an underlying current of architectural solutions." -Prince-Ramus, Esquire, 145.

Therefore, when people look upon one of Gehry's swirling, writhing sculptures of titanium, yes, titanium they want to see fingerprints of his genius. They want to see the vision bursting forth. However, the final vision may not always be what suits the client's needs.

To be fair, one of Gehry's works, the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago on Michigan Avenue is one of the U.S.'s coolest outdoor venues.

The title of this blog comes from Le Corbusier, or Corb if you really want to sound in the know. He was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century.
Corb was and is a visionary. The problem was that a lot of his visions weren't exactly grounded in practicality. He had an unwavering faith in technology, which proved to be more of a deterrent than a benefit.
For example, he designed a city center crammed full of skyscrapers with expressways that zoomed and wrapped themselves around the buildings, providing the sole source of transportation of peoples and goods and eclipsing the need for sidewalks.
It sounds rather Jetsons-like and kinda cool at first glance. The only problem is that if you take away the sidewalks, you also take away the potential for additional revenue to be generated by foot traffic, window shopping, etc., not to mention basic human interaction. The result is a mashup of Blade Runner and the Jetsons.

However, Corb was designing in the time when architects were trying to break free of the stuffy conventions set forth by Victorian architecture. He was a pioneer in the (now love it or hate it) International Style, you know those very era-specific buildings that sprung up in the 1960's and know look kind of weird and "dated" ?

And he said that we needed "architecture or revolution." So, why he may have been slightly left of center for his own ideas his belief still holds true.

In my lame attempt to join the 21st century I've included some pictures I took of some of the structural details from the Pritzker Pavilion, or how does a Gehry stay up. Enjoy!

Confessions of a Peeping Tommie

I have a confession to make. I like looking into other people's windows. Not with my nose pressed up against the glass, watching people conduct their private affairs, ew no.

But I enjoy observing interiors from the polite distance of the sidewalk, or as I drive by. I never linger, only glancing in communal living areas like living rooms or kitchens to see if kids are playing, hunched over their homework, or some one is tidying up for the night. Or perhaps the inhabitants are having family over that they have not seen in a while and the room is filled with laughter over shared memories or people are sitting down to a meal. But I'm always curious to see who lives in the house that I'm passing by and what are they doing at that moment, what part in the human drama is unfolding within those walls.

With the moving away from communal living- dwellings built on top of one another, crammed next to one another we have lost that connection with our fellow peoples- a common lament. But now we are shrouded in our individual homes, closed off, curtains drawn.

I guess that's why I like an open window. It says that you inherently trust the world and that you're not ashamed of what goes on inside, for it truly is a glimpse into your literal world.

I also love the lighting in interiors. It's usually warm and soft, often with a yellow tinge- especially in the Midwest. It's like a picture taken by a Kodak Brownie camera came to life.

I have lived in 11 places in 25 years. But one thing that has always remained constant is our (my family's) interior lighting. We don't use fancy pink lightbulbs, which apparently can help set the mood, :-) or anything exotic or unusual. Just basic 60 watt bulbs, then switching to CFL's, both of which impart a cozy glow. It's reassuring that no matter where I go, at the end of the day, I can turn on a light and sit in the reassuring glow of a reading lamp. I even snagged our old living room lamps when my parents decided to redecorate so I could continue to enjoy the effect.

Not really having a true place that I call home I guess I am an amateur sidewalk sociologist- trying to collect data without impacting the subject.

The New York Times put out an interesting article about the increasing trend of the upwardly mobile, who either by choice or their employer's decision, in a trade-off for higher salaries or for corporate reasons better left unexamined often have to move across the country. Whether this will continue in our current economy remains to be seen. The article, "The Five Bedroom, Six-Figure Rootless Life" can be found at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE6D61F39F932A35755C0A9639C8B63 " If you want a glimpse on what my life was like growing up, that was kind of it. Except without the overscheduling and the weird "need" to live in a McMansion.

But my current interests, and economic means, often has me wandering neighborhoods where the people have lived in their homes for at least several years, and don't show any signs of leaving due to promotions or company-initiated transfers. This tends to yield richer interior scenes, though the taste in decorating can be somewhat suspect.

Plus, when I did live in white collar paradise a lot of the people in the McMansions weren't home, or the houses were so big that the occupants were sequestered in some interior room, not ironically, the front rooms, which often boasted impressive plate glass or floor to ceiling windows, etc.,

I have enjoyed living in different parts of the country, but I also wonder what is it like to have a firmly rooted sense of home? Walking past strangers' homes sometimes I catch a glimpse, even a bit of understanding of what it might be like.

Yep, it looks like it'll be a good year for. . .wind farmin?!

In other updates, Good magazine also published an article entitled, "Air Supply: If You Believe the Future of Energy is Offshore Drilling, Think Again" by Brentin Mock.* [issue 14 January/February 2009, page 41]

*not to be confused with Air Supply, the band and their sappy hit, "The Power of Love (You Are My Lady)," which is so cheesy it makes me burst into convulsive giggles every time I am subjected to it. Their other single,"Making Love Out of Nothing At All" provokes the same kind of reaction.

All kidding aside, Mr (?) Mock produced an excellent piece on five states who are utilizing alternate energy sources, specifically wind turbines, to fill their needs. These states included:
Rhode Island, who is using Deepwater Wind,
Delaware, who is in cahoots with Bluewater Wind,
New Jersey, who hired Garden State Offshore Energy and PSEG Renewable Generation,
Oregon and Principle Power are seeking alternate solutions,
and Texas and a Mr. T. Boone Pickens, an environmentally-conscious billionaire.

There was no mention of Verdant Power, who are based out of Virginia and are seeking to tap into the tidal energy in the East River between Queens and Roosevelt Island.

For a refresher on what Verdant Power is up to, see my blog posting on September 5th, 2008 "Change is in the Air- Literally!"

And in the running it's algae in the lead with corn trailing far behind

My latest favorite publication is a magazine called Good [www.good.is] I was introduced to it by my dad over the holiday and I have nothing but, er, good things to say about it. It's not preachy, it's not self-indulgent, and it's not boring- unlike Adbusters, which is good, but a little self-righteous at times and often suffers from a coherent theme other than the fact that apparently Americans and capitalism suck. Good's format, however, is well-thought out and the articles enticing. Highly recommended.

While reading through Good's 14th issue (January/February 2009) I came across an interesting article by a Mr. Bryan Walsh entitled, "2009 List: Cleaning House," which noted as #7-

"End of Ethanol
Corn ethanol always had more to do with politics than the environment, and the sudden crash in corn prices and bad press for biofuels could finally wipe out ethanol. Thankfully, another fuel is ready to take its place: algae. The upshot? It doesn't compete with food for fuel, and can be raised just about anywhere." (Walsh, 59)

-including the pool I swam in as a child with my best friend as we were adamant to go swimming. And a few weird green floaty fuzzy things in her pool were not going to deter us. And yes, it probably was as gross as it sounds. Ah the folly of youth!

So hurray new advances on the energy frontier! It's sorry to see corn go, but you win some, you lose some.

Also, algae as an energy form may sound familiar to my loyal readers, or at least those with photographic memories. Remember my blog about algae? If so, don't feel bad. I had to search my own blog to find the posting in which I had originally mentioned it. For the inquisitive it was on November 8th, 2008 "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here"-

For more information on algae as a potential energy source and as cooking oil see Scientific American Earth 3.0's article, "Dark Horse: Oil from Algae" by David Biello http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=biofuel-of-the-future

I am also a proud subscriber of Scientific American, but I have yet to receive my first issue. Oh well, still waiting on GQ too. . .

A shout out to my peeps, or it's all in how you look at it

Having departed from the world of academia I know that if one is willing to dig deep enough one can find enough evidence to support any theory, no matter how crackpot it may be. I also know that if one does not do enough research on a subject one can walk away with too little information and come to an under-informed conclusion thinking it is grounded in fact.

The reason I bring this up is because one of my favorite planning magazines, Next American City [www.amerciancity.org] published an article in their 20th issue entitled, "Beijing's Olympic Problem: Too Much Seoul" written by a Mr. Josh Leon (pages 15-16), which included a misleading title. The article focused on the fact that in China's zeal to add all the bells and whistles to their hosting of the Olympic games they also undertook one of the biggest slum clearances since the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Unfortunately, or is it fortunately?, Mr. Leon only wrote two sentences on Seoul's slum clearing,
"A notorious slum clearance took place in Seoul, Korea, in advance of the 1988 summer games. To accommodate the flood of international visitors, 720,000 people were relocated, one of the largest urban dislocations up to that time." (Leon, 16)
The rest of the article centered on China and other places that are or have displaced its low-income residents for various reasons.

I take issue with Mr. Leon's title because some people who may read this article may not undertake additional research to see what else Seoul has done since displacing over 700,000 of its residents in a misguided urban housekeeping effort.

[disclaimer: I am adopted from South Korea, as is my brother, so this isn't based entirely on objective journalism. But I don't automatically identify myself as Korean-American or even Asian. Some days I'm surprised to see almond-shaped eyes staring back at me.]

I admit that the title Mr. Leon concoted is amusing with its pun on the word "soul", but it is also distressing, because in the 14th issue January/February 2009 of Good magazine [http://www.good.is/] there were two separate articles which mentioned environmental advances in Seoul. In "Mayoral Fixation" by Benjamin Jervey it was cited that Seoul's mayor, Oh Se-Hoon "wants to turn his city into the world's first truly environmentally megacity. He also tirelessly vouches for- and drinks only- local tap water, urging residents to do the same." (Jervey, 21)

The article "Here to There" by Laura Kiniry cited the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project, which "through an ambitious two-year plan completed in 2005, the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project replaced the city's most heavily trafficked roadway- the remains of which were later recycled- with a five-mile-long, 1,000 acre park that attracts both wildlife and people." (Kiniry, 70)

So in the end things balance out. I'm not condoning slum clearances in any way, but I also don't think that a city should be permanently marked for its past mistakes. Here's to balanced journalism!

A Crash Course in Poli-Sci and Oil, or Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

I confess to having a very limited interest in global politics and have usually relied on Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart for most of my news updates. Granted, neither one of them are terribly academic in nature. But when it comes to bad news I'll take mine with a little snark instead of the regular news, which makes me want to hide under my bed and never face the real world again.

Like many people if you want to get me interested in a subject that usually doesn't impact my daily living, get someone famous to shine a spotlight on it and then my interest may be sparked. Therefore, in my random thoughts I was thinking of Forest Whitaker, the critically acclaimed actor of many roles from the Crying Game to the Last King of Scotland. And while thinking of the Last King of Scotland I had been thinking of despots and dictators and how on earth do some of these guys get away with their iron fist-like rulings with nary a trace of a velvet glove? I suppose nukes and big scary guys with Uzis help one stay on top.

In my limited way I know that part of the problem we have with our oil crisis is because several of the countries that are plentiful in oil and also are our suppliers are not exactly run by Mr. Rogers.

These countries, also, ironically, also can have incredibly poor/unempowered populations despite rulers who sit on pillows made of virgin unicorns or whatever is outrageous these days at Dictator Decor. But why do the people let this happen?! I pondered this without a great desire to research it.

Luckily, Friedman, the astute foreign news correspondent supplied me with an answer as I was finishing the World is Flat. Now I don't have to get a degree in poli-sci just to get an answer to one question. I hope you find this interesting, if not vaguely troubling, too.

Again: all words are from Friedman, from his 2005 edition of the World is Flat.

"the Curse of Oil"
"Nothing has contributed more to retarding the emergence of a democratic context in places like Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran that the curse of oil.
As long as monarchs and dictators who run these oil states can get rich by drilling their natural resources- as opposed to drilling the natural talents and energy of their people- they can stay in office forever.
They can use oil money to monopolize all the instruments of power- army, policy, and intelligence- and never have to introduce real transparency or power sharing.
All they have to do is capture and hold the oil tap. They never have to tax their people, so the relationship between ruler and ruled is highly distorted.
Without taxation, there is no representation. The rulers don't really have to pay attention to the people or explain how they are spending their money- because they have not raised that money through taxes.
That is why countries focused on tapping their oil wells always have weak or nonexistent institutions. Countries focused on tapping their people have to focus on developing real institutions, property rights, rule of law, independent courts, modern education, foreign trade, foreign investment, freedom of thought, and scientific enquiry to get the most out of their men and women." (460-461)

No cuts, no takebacks!

It's no secret that the U.S. is losing footing as the world's super power and there are many other countries that have lived in our shadow that are eager to gain a bigger slice of the prosperity pie.

While this is hardly good news for us, it does have numerous implications. One of them is that this presumably everyone wants the same technology goodies and gadgets that we enjoy. Who wouldn't want an ipod? Or even a microwave! A car, indoor plumbing, etc., In turn, this means higher energy consumption, and potential energy shortages, crises and even war over energy.

This is another topic that I have previously commented on. But again I found an interesting tidbit on potential preventative conflict-resolution from the most unlikely of sources- Dell Computers.

The theory is proposed by Thomas Friedman, in his work the World is Flat, but it based on the Dell model of business. Friedman calls it "the Dell Theory."

"The Dell Theory stipulates: no two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain. Because people embedded in major global supply chains don't want to fight old-time wars anymore {Friedman would know- he is a foreign news correspondent} They want to make just-in-time deliveries of goods and services- and enjoy the rising standards of living that come with that. . . (421) It is one thing to lose your McDonald's [in a developing nation]. It is quite another to fight a war that costs you your place in a twenty-first century supply chain that may not come back around for a long time." (425) (all quotes taken from the 2005 edition of the World is Flat by Thomas Friedman)

Just like when we were children with a very defined inherent sense of fairness and justice, we wouldn't allow somebody to cut in front of us in the lunch line or take back the toy they had just offered to us it seems equally unlikely that the rest of the world will be sympathetic to an upstart nation who thinks that the only way to get ahead is to throw a tantrum or discharge a nuke at its nearest offending neighbor.

This may not prove to be infallibly true, but just like children, nobody wants to play with the selfish brat.