Perception, Reality, and our lacking Cultural Memory

Bobby Seale and Huey Newton

**Admittedly, this post is not going to be particularly architectural in content.  That being said, it does concern a particularly urban experience.**

If you live in New York, you know the guy I'm talking about.  He's on the subway.  He entered into your car from another car.  He's walking by you on his way to the next car.  He probably didn't shower this morning; his clothes don't really fit him, and they are not very clean.  He doesn't make a lot of eye contact as he passes through the full car.  He's ranting something or another, and he's loud about it.  He's usually louder than you can make your iPod.  Do you ever listen to him?  Do you know what he's saying?

I saw him today on the 1 train, except he was decidedly not that guy.  This guy had something to say, and he said it using the words of the men that came before him.  He, without crediting the original speakers of his words, walked through my subway car loudly mumbling.  Enunciation was not his strong suit, and - it seems - neither was clearly making his point because no one listened.  He was walking through the train, one car at a time, quoting various civil rights leaders.  No one noticed.

Don't get me wrong: Trust me, they noticed him.  They noticed the crazy, dirty guy ranting on the subway.  They probably noticed that most of what he said sounded angry and slightly incendiary.  They noticed him long enough to step aside as he came through.  Their faces betrayed all of what they noticed about this man.  No one noticed he was reciting a long list of quotes that deserve being remembered.  In short, this is because no one remembered.

In the short amount of time he was within my earshot, I heard the words of Al Sharpton, Bill Cosby, Huey Newton, and Malcom X.  I did not hear "I have a dream..." 

My travel companion and I looked around the subway and watched him move through.  We listened to what he had to say and discussed whom he chose to quote.  I looked around to see if anyone else was having our conversation, to see if anyone else listened or noticed.  I took a quick demographic profile of the packed subway: the average age was old enough to remember and yet it seems they have forgotten.  (For the record, I was not alive when most of his quotes were originally spoken.)

Has it been so long?  Has our cultural ADD really gotten so bad that we can't remember society-changing words?  Or is it our cultural perception of that man that has obscured the reality of his purpose?  That he wasn't standing at a podium, dressed in a thousand-dollar suit, does that mean we don't hear allusion and direct reference?  Does that mean his words aren't for us to hear?  Clearly, he chose the wrong audience and the wrong platform.

I don't know, but I'm inclined to say it's both.  I think no one listened because he was that guy we all know on the subway.  But if I could hear, then so could they, and no one remembered.  The take-away?  I, for one, will be paying more attention to that guy.

LM

Conversation: Bjarke Ingels

Zira Island Masterplan in the Caspian Sea by BIGToday PRE had a big breakfast with Bjarke Ingels at La Bottega in the Maritime Hotel. Bjarke, like his architecture, is cool. He fluently mixed humor in with anecdote, charisma with a cappuccino, and a sex column with advice on how to start an architectural practice. This coolness came in handy in 2007 when BIG got small after hitting the financial wall prompting a massive restructuring that trimmed the fat and coincidentally prepared the practice to nimbly weather the current global financial crisis. In fact, BIG has more work than ever before. It seems that BIG is getting bigger (last one, I promise) both because it got leaner and meaner just in time, and because Bjarke can coolly condense architecture into potent, polemical sound-bytes that put him on the global radar just as the Danish economy began slowing down bringing in work from the parts of the world experiencing an economic expansion.  A big thanks (sorry) to Bjarke for his insights and for showing us these.

Spontaneous Architecture

PRE is psyched to announce Spontaneous Architecture 2010, a series of twelve monthly mini-competitions meant to generate participatory and immediate reactions to current events throughout the new year.  The entries will be shown and the competition topic discussed on the last Tuesday of each month at Studio-X (180 Varick Street, Suite 1610) at an event, RAPID RESPONSE: Spontaneous Architecture.

On 1 January 2010, the first brief will be announced at the Spontaneous Architecture site.  Until then, you can access the site to familiarize yourself with the format of the competition and the entries.  In the spirit of the competition, PRE welcomes your feedback and ideas.

From the Spontaneous Architecture site:

Spontaneous Architecture seeks to provide a platform for architects and designers to engage in a rapid response to current events.  Traditionally, the term "spontaneous" conveys impulsive or unforeseen action that is provocative by implication.  This understanding leads to results which are seldom as interesting as the act itself.  Spontaneous Architecture reimagines spontaneity in the context of architecture's typically slow deliberation, as something more purposed, something with a result that is greater than its impulse.  The goal of spontaneity should be taken as a challenge for designers to trust their educations, their perceptions, and their intuition.  

The Spontaneous Architecture mini-competitions are a series of twelve monthly competitions to last throughout 2010.  The entries are single images, and the entry fee is $5 per entry.

The competitions are intended to provide an immediate outlet for design thinking to engage current events.  Participants are allowed only one image of predetermined dimensions to convey the essence of their entry.  This restriction is meant to facilitate creative responses and enable each design to focus only on the most important issues of their proposals.  Further, in the spirit of inspiring quick-and-dirty spontaneous responses, the format limits enable each entry to privilege visual clarity and conceptual depth over the commercial utility of gloss and style.

The competition winners will be decided by fellow competition entrants (although no entrant may vote for their own proposal).  This collective voting will harness the group's intelligence and interests and hopefully catalyze a discussion within the participating group which will be formally continued in a live event in New York City.  The event will be held in collaboration with Columbia University's Studio-X in downtown Manhattan and will coincide with the announcement of the competition winner(s).

INSECURE ABSTRACTION

Fine Arts and Architecture College of Evora by Ines Lobo Arquitectos ( Photo via Dezeen)

I've had a lot of free time on my hands the past few months. In between freelancing gigs, I have spent a significant amount of time reading design blogs. This has done little for my actual critical understanding of the design is out there, but I have become even more devoted to, and obsessed by, modes of representation used in marketing buildings. Rarely do the methods used convey actual information, spatial imperatives, or clarify the conceptual thrust of the project. In my foray into the digital ad-space of blogs, I noticed a particular trend that baffles and fascinates me: symmetry, obfuscation, and abstraction in photographs of finished buildings. 

The views privileged in these photos are never rendered during design development. At that stage, the digital reality of the project is ostensibly enough of an abstract gesture to give the image an aura of intent, and the views in question are absurd in their murkiness. However, once the project is built, the documentation of its built spaces is re-abstracted in what feels like an insecurity in the quality of construction and the clarity of design. 

The abstraction is reminiscent of a foundational architectural lesson. As a student, one of the very first things you learn is the proper position from which to cut a plan and section. The goal of these drawings it to convey the maximum amount of spatial information and to clarify the boundaries between inside and outside. A student invariably makes the mistake, often in a moment of exhausted weakness, of cutting the section through a space which requires less work to draw or post-produce into a presentation drawing. After all, the plan and section is an abstraction that is never visible in the real building, and its diagrammatic state is its power as a visual aid. A poor section choice results in sections through columns or doors, and confuses the viewer.

When a project is completed, however, and plans and sections are archived material, photographers are brought in to capture the realized power of the work. The business of finding the exact image that both tells and sells the story of the building is very serious. Why then, when presented with a finished product, would the photographer commit an infographical error so blatant that its result is as jarring as a poorly placed section cut? Why would the jarring image so poorly represent the actual space of the project? And why would the designer/architect agree to use the image for their marketing?

A classic example of this folly is the marketing image whose ridiculousness is only matched by its ubiquity. This image is the aggressively oblique view of a building facade reflecting the landscape. This view presumes that scores of visitors will be pressing their cheeks affectionately against (typically glass) walls as if in high-brow-cocktail-party-greeting. It also is odd in that in its essence it only reminds us that glass is reflective. 

Kindergarten Sighartstein by Kadawittfeld Architektur ( Photo via Dezeen)

A variation on the first example is the over-use of symmetry. Images of this type convey compositional bias, which is not only foregrounded but exploited in the most blase way to create the illusion of superficial difference. In the best case, it reveals the spatiality of formal moves made in plan. In this case the image is quite powerful because of its consistency with the plan/section/experiential relationship. The use of symmetry in the image reinforces and triples to surreal power of the formal move.

Horizontal House by Eastern Design Office ( Photo via Dezeen)

In the worst case, you are stuck looking smack at a party wall between a two ambiguous spaces; spaces that could be beautiful, could be well detailed, and might have been interesting had the camera moved 4 feet to the right or left. This dialectic juxtaposition is a weak form of representation and is a trope that both trivializes the art of photography and weakens the power of architectonic space. Space is reduced to an either/or proposition and the possibility of its comprehension is further diluted by the choice to show views that few would intentionally seek out, or want to.

Andon by Grasses and OUVI ( Photo via Dezeen)

It may be unfair to criticize these images alone, as they stand in spreads that usually do justice to documenting their projects. I just can't help but wonder if the inclusion of these images is meant to mystify, add some sort of confusing gravitas, or if they simply exemplify the navel-gazing that we as architects are all so prone to. I chose Dezeen as my sample set as they have remarkable scope of coverage and are well-read and respected. That being said, in 2009 alone, there have been nearly 120 such images. What gives? 

on Crisis and Hardship

Times are tough, and work is scarce. Ben Bernanke has said the worst is over. He has said it's getting better. Architecture has not felt this yet.

In times of economic crisis, architecture bleeds into the other design professions. Architects migrate to graphic design, product design, installation design, and the film industry. We apply a certain fraction of our skill set to the production of what is often not architectural space.

In times of economic crisis, capital-A Architecture thrives. Architects teach and write. Schools are bombarded with applications as architects flee a deflated job market. We say, we believe, that a dearth of projects translates into an abundance of thought and intellectual progress in the field. We have written, here in this blog, that times of economic crisis allow for the visionary.

In times of economic crisis, architects are willing and able to discuss the crisis, to analyze it, to look for its causes, patterns, and solutions.  We observe, unpack, and engage the crisis. We talk and write incessantly, unrelentingly, about the crisis because it's a present and inescapable context. Consider, for maybe just the length of this blog post, that we are obsessed with a discussion on this crisis because it is the closest we can come in our oh-so-polite society to a discussion of what is really going on in our heads and lives.

"Crisis" is polite in that it generalizes. We are all, collectively, subject to the crisis. It is impersonal. This economic crisis, an architectural crisis, has had ramifications that affect us all. We speak of "crisis," and we speak of those forces that have struck our profession, industry, and discipline. We speak of "crisis," and we speak of the widespread fallout of economic implosion, debris falling beyond our individual selves, beyond architecture. I posit that much (though not all) of our conversation on "crisis" has been in avoidance of the much more personal, much more difficult, and much more human discussion on "hardship."

"Hardship" is less polite because it is more difficult to generalize. Hardships are borne by individuals; they are personal. Polite society does not know how to deal with discussions on hardship, save for those of the generalized masses, the others. We have suffered and are suffering an architectural crisis, but we have failed to talk about architectural hardship. What has this crisis done to architects who do not leave the profession?

In a conversation last summer, Zachary Colbert said, "Joblessness is the new black." Among the 80-something members of our graduating class at Columbia's GSAPP last May, perhaps a fistful have full-time jobs in architecture. Most that do are working for peanuts. I'm going to say something that everyone is too polite, too embarrassed, too ashamed, too guilty, but really too polite, to say:

Young architects are broke.

In times of economic hardship, many not-so-young architects are also broke. Architects are struggling. Young architects feel completely set-up by their education: trained and cultivated and promised and denied. The world is in crisis, and their hardship is so great, the opportunities so few, that most cannot contribute to the way out.

In times of economic hardship, more than a few have shared prioritizing rent over food. Young architects are prioritizing finding any job over architecture. Looking for a job is a full-time job, leaving precious little time and energy for that intellectual architecture that seemingly thrives during crisis. Hardship is prohibitive to that level of creation, innovation, and vision.

In times of economic hardship, we owe it to ourselves and to each other to talk about the hardship that comes with the crisis. This crisis is due in part to the false value of architecture. Our collective hardship is due in part to the lacking value of the architect. This will not change until it is acknowledged.

LM

PS -- It is rare that we call for comments on this blog. I think now is an appropriate time for that. Please, anonymously if you'd like, share your experiences through this crisis and read through the experiences of others.