The Last Blog

It's been almost 8 years since I last attended a theory course and things have changed so much. My initial feeling about critical thinking was that of apprehension due to my anxiety with academic reading. The thought of possibly reading hundreds of pages a week was as daunting as those topics were alien to me. Even the tone in the books felt to be Russian although they were written in English. I was really struggling at the beginning, having to find those texts on the web and read through them during lunch time or late at night after work. However, still carrying these thoughts and anxieties; I begin to engage with and understand the thoughts and ideas from the books and started to enjoy the reading. Most of the texts and discussions concentrate on socialist ideas which have given me insight into these values. Others elaborate on abstract theory in which leads into another world which had no connection to this very fragile and harsh reality of capitalism.

I have really found this module enlightening and thought provoking. The class was full of energy and passion.  It showed me the world we live in, the struggle between individualism and collectivism. It helped me understand the rise and fall of ideas and to see the meaning behind these texts in order to find the truth within. I feel that there will be thousands more texts to be read before I can grasp critical thinking. However, this course has provoked me to read and compare these ideas and theories, to find links between them and to be able to bring in different points on a particular or unfamiliar subject for more meaningful and well informed discussion.

The Fountainhead

It has been a long time since I watched any black and white movie (Metropolis being my last).I watched the Fountainhead and enjoyed it enormously, not only because like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis it has obvious architectural interest, but also because of the basic humanity that shone through Roark. Roark is an individualistic architect who is true to himself and his views without being corrupted by compromise, whilst others around him crumble to the pressure of 'the mob' in reference to the wider public.

This film begins with Roark being expelled from the school because he designed his projects in a way that had never been done before. The plot very soon involves him with a peculiarly philosophical girl, a power-mad newspaper publisher, a vicious critic and a weak, effete old friend. The final act comes when he deliberately blows up with dynamite a housing project, which he has designed but for which his old friend is taking the credit—a deed which he does because he's angry at some changes which are made in his project. And for this he is tried and acquitted on the strength of his own elaborate plea for the rights of the individual. At the end, he is doing fine and has the girl.

Roark, who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision, following his battle to practice what the public sees as modern architecture. He believes this to be superior, despite an establishment centred on tradition-worship.  Throughout the film the architect played by the character of Howard Roark was true to himself and his views without being corrupted by compromise, whilst others around him crumbled to the pressure of 'the mob' in reference to the wider public.
The complex relationships between Roark and the various kinds of individuals who assist or hinder his progress, (or both), allow the film to be at once a romantic drama and a philosophical work. Roark is Rand's embodiment of the human spirit, and his struggle represents the struggle between individualism and collectivism.

So, what has changed since Ayn Rand written The Fountainhead in 1949? Maybe nothing. The school will still question you and criticize you on your raw thinking when designing a project and ask you to design in reference to the built environment. There are times however that an architectural project does not need to confine in a built form but simply in pursuit of a theory. Instead of having the general public’s pressures to conform your design to popular standards, the planning authority centred on tradition-worship insists you to follow suit. Your own boss from your office would ask you to change your design based on economic ground even before the client or their Q.S. have commented. 
Roark and Francon would never survive in 1949, never mind  in 2014 where making compromise is a norm. Control and power is the game we all have to play and the general rule in everyday’s life is to manipulate.  But still, I want to meet Roark on top of the grand staircase like in the movie – This Objectivist mentality in me longing for the freedom advocating "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievements as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." A man with integrity.

The production of Space by Henri Lefebvre

I found 'The production of space' by Henri Lefebvre difficult to follow due to his writing style (where he puts a lot of explanation within brackets to explain further) as well the subject being discussed. I had to go over his paragraphs time after time to get the grip of the concepts brought forward by Lefebvre, and then I began to find his ideas interesting and thought provoking.
Henri Lefebvre was a neo-Marxist and existentialist philosopher, a sociologist of urban and rural life and a theorist of the state, of international flows of capital and of social space. He was a witness to the modernization of everyday life, the industrialization of the economy and suburbanization of cities in France.

Lefebvre talks of social space itself as a national and 'planetary' expression of modes of production. From 'nature' and 'production' to 'works' and 'products'.  It is the relationships between these classifications that Lefebvre is predominantly interested in and how he defined the boundaries for each.  Rather than discussing a particular theory of social space, he examined struggles over the meaning of space and considered how relations across territories were given cultural meaning. He talks of nature as a work and not of a production, as it does not know that it is producing a product, such as fruit.  Lefebvre also talks about social space in relation to the micro scale of a garden to a whole sprawling city, such as Venice, and the complex relationships to the representation of social space, or the meaning of a Chinese characters and the thinking behind these forms and its deep cultural meaning which do not exist independently of its graphic representation.

As I go along his book, I am not saying I find myself agreeing with Lefebvre's concepts of social space but I am fascinated with his concepts of how he defines and blurs the boundaries of many different aspects,  such as where the boundaries of a 'work' and 'product' lie.  I think the following quote does a pretty good job in summing up his concepts:

And do you know what "the world" is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by "nothingness" as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be "empty" here or there, but rather a force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there [...]. Frederick Nietzsche, The Will to Power.

After theory Terry Eagleton

Chapter 1: Politics of Amnesia

• Age of cultural theory is gone, yet Eagleton thinks that the ideas of past great thinkers are still of immense value
• Although we are going towards a post-modern theoretical era, we cannot ‘forget’ the theories that have been discussed
• We are now living ‘in the aftermath of what one might call high theory’ – moving beyond insights of past thinkers (such as structuralism), moving beyond them and creating new ideas
• New thinking (sexuality, pleasure/fun, contemporary culture, narcissism, etc.)
• New generation forgetting or not realizing the political importance of previous theories (such as post-colonial studies, discourse of gender and sexuality, etc.)
• There are some who believe in ‘historicizing’ and believe that ‘anything that happened before 1980 is ancient history’, that is the amnesia
• The world as we know it is made of recent waves of ‘revolutionary nationalism’, happening since after WWII
• Post-colonial theory shifted focus from class/nation to ethnicity, which is a more cultural than political issue, and this shifted the focus from politics to culture
• Some post-moderns believe that group consensus is dictatorial and solidarity and brainless uniformity
• Feminism has transformed our culture and also the code of morality that exist today
• Rising sense of attacking the ‘normative’, and this postmodern prejudice against the norm and group consensus is “politically catastrophic”
• The traditional working class, which stood for political solidarity, is fading from view
• Postmodernism believes in a social order that is “as diverse and inclusive as possible”

'At Home in the Neon' from the compilation 'Air Guitar'

'At Home in the Neon' from the compilation 'Air Guitar'

Anyone who is all too familiar with packing and unpacking boxes as a result of yet another relocation will be familiar with David Hickey's elusive notion of home as merely being the roof under which one is currently sheltering under. After living in cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Zurich- places well known for arts and culture, Hickey could be forgiven to find Las Vegas, his new residence, rather superficial, carnal and excessive given its notoriety for shopping, fine dining, night life, gambling and casino-hotels with their associated entertainment. Instead, Hickey lives up to his contrarian reputation by finally finding the comfort of home in the city billed as the Entertainment Capital of the World. The root of this newly found solace could be traced back to his childhood memories of the city. Hickey recounts when his dad and he would attend a music show of his dad's friend, Shelton, in Vegas during a time when anyone from outside town can find a job which is self-subsistent and free of societal judgement. With clarity steeped in sarcasm, Hickey explains the cynicism, contempt and condescension in attitude towards Vegas by highlighting the absence of vertical social hierarchy in which people can achieve differentiation in status in their life achievements. Such a lack of social recognition is a direct threat to one of the core tenets of Western Society which we are indoctrinated to believe: social class stratification as a result of meritocracy. In Vegas, money is money. People are indifferent and unconcerned with the means of its acquisition and do not attach any socially honourable value to money other for its quantitative merit. Whilst the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy earn from mere speculation and hedging of risks, in Vegas there are only 2 simple rules: post the odds and treat everyone the same. Just like one feels in his own home, with close friends or with family members,the absence of social differences and of pretension instils a feeling of acceptance, significance and dignity within every visitor. After all, home may not be merely where you hang your hat, but where the heart feels accepted for what it is. 

All that is solid melts into air

What does All that is solid melts into air mean to us? Reading Berman for the first time this week, I was stunned by his opinions and how counterculture they were. So my question is, "All that is solid melts into the air," Marx wrote famously in The Communist Manifesto, was his prophecy as prescient as ever?

One word we can see it this coming from the story of Goesther’s Faust. If a person who will pay the greatest price in order to exchange for his greatest wish to come true, then what can this greatest wish be? For some people that would be to married to their love one, for others may be the procession of wealth or even the outmost power to some group of people. But for Faust legend of Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, he is already a doctor, lawer a highly successful scholar but one dissatisfied with his life who therefore decided to call on the Devil for further knowledge and magic powers with which to indulge all the pleasure and knowledge of the world. For a Christian who sold his soul  to the devil this indeed is the greatest price to pay but for what greatest wish?

The story concerns the fate of Faust in his quest for the true essence of life. Frustrated with learning and the limits to his knowledge, power, and enjoyment of life, he attracts the attention of the Devil (represented by Mephistopheles), who agrees to serve Faust until the moment he attains the zenith of human happiness, such that he cries out to that moment to "stay, thou art so beautiful!" (Faust, I, l.1700) — at which point Mephistopheles may take his soul. Faust is pleased with the deal, as he believes this happy zenith will never come. But he did in the later stage progresses into allegorical poetry. Faust and his Devil pass through and manipulate the world of politics and the world of the classical gods, and meet with Helen of Troy(the personification of beauty). Finally, having succeeded in taming the very forces of war and nature, Faust experiences a singular moment of happiness.

Mephistopheles tries to seize Faust's soul when he dies after this moment of happiness, but is frustrated and enraged when angels intervene due to God's grace. Though this grace is truly 'gratuitous' and does not condone Faust's frequent errors perpetrated with Mephistopheles, the angels state that this grace can only occur because of Faust's unending striving and due to the intercession of the forgiving Gretchen. The final scene has Faust's soul carried to heaven in the presence of God as the "Holy Virgin, Mother, Queen, Goddess...The Eternal Feminine." The Goddess is thus victorious over Mephistopheles, who had insisted at Faust's death that he would be consigned to "The Eternal Empty."

In the 60s, there was a think tank in America which predicted people in the future would have lots more of free time to enjoy their life as most of their work will be done by robots and Artificial intelligence due to the development of advanced technology. But in fact, people living in todays’ world are working harder, longer and living in a much faster pace. It is widely acknowledged that our conceptions and experiences of space have changed considerably in recent times. They have been transformed by the development of new or more sophisticated technologies, such as the Internet, the jet plane, and the mobile phone, which bring things and people that were once distant closer, while simultaneously rendering others further away. An electronic version of an academic journal article available on the Internet and accessible on one's computer screen is far closer than the hard copy resting on the shelves of the university library, even though the source of the former might be many thousands of miles away.

A whole host of phenomena, ranging from the weakening and absorbency of territorial boundaries of countries, the actual and potential "globalization of contingency" in the form of global pandemics and the spectre of environmental catastrophe, to the backlash of increasing territorialization as new forms of imperialism, international isolationism, political fundamentalism, ethnonationalist particularism, or projects for a "Fortress Europe"--seek to reverse these trends, point to the increasing salience of changing conceptions of space and time in our globalizing world.

The Global economy system is by its nature is constantly expanding and therefore needs to constantly revolutionize itself in order to create new markets, leaving nothing solid or permanent in its wake, both destroying and conjuring into existence everything from cities to human populations along the way. They were also speaking of the way that capitalism reduces everything to the shadowy abstraction known as money. Both of these processes have accelerated and transformed themselves in the twentieth century. New technologies have greatly expanded the human capacity for both creation and destruction, and the universality of money as a standard of value above all others has been supplemented by the (much discussed) process through which everything, if it is to be felt to exist at all.

Faust paid a great price to pursuit the true value and meaning of life. And we are paying a great price for what? Is it to co-exist in this system? To stay in a terrain and struggle for control?

The whole discussion questions Global economy system and power in this era, the manner of how we merge our life with technology and that we need to understand that we must take responsibility for our choice and actions.

Faust was persistence in pursuit of the true essence of life and he was given salvation. So, we must question where our true value of life lies. As the final stage of Faust story will tell us as he descends into his inner mind, he is blinded by the witch, Care, who then tells him he has always been blind. He was blinded by his ambition and failed to see what he was really doing to the world.

Revisit Colin Rowe at La Tourette

There is kind of a novelty attached reading Rowe's essay on La Tourette describe the architecture in a form of critique that emerges out of a close examination of the building itself, and providing at once an experiential analysis and also a way of viewing the object that situates the reader spatially and visually. And yet Rowe can talk about the building in such abstract intellectually  as well as highly particularized statement.

When you talk about Le Corbusier’s La Tourette, you must examine his ideas on architecture to see that the genius of the form meets the theoretical standard (The Modulor measurements). In Rowe’s article, Nor the Five points of architecture or even six in this case was mentioned. How about the modulor merged with the musical compositions which dictated the language of the pans de verre ondulatoires, the pinwheel fenestrations and other proportions of the monastery.

La Tourette is not just the beauty of pure forms or the genius of Le Corbusier’s geo metric rule. The building encompasses the underlying forms of prismatic solids that fascinate us. There is also his profound understanding of the monastic lifestyle of ‘ indissoluble binomial of individual-collective’ through a series of dualities, his own dialectic; individual – collective; light – dark; secular – religious; licid – obsure; incremental – continuous. These dualities combined with his understanding of monks daily life style generate a series of forms in an almost harsh contrast to one another that expressed his notion of pure and beautiful geometries.

In his conclusion, Rowe wrote ‘To a block one attributes a structural continuity, Iinking textural consistency of space and a homogeneity of spatial grain or layering. While recognizing it to be a hollow and to be empty, one still conceives its emptiness as, in some way, the metaphor for a block of stone or a block of wood. It is exploitable only on the condition of collaborating with the nature which it has been assumed to possess. Or so it might have been thought. But at La Tourette, these precepts which one may often believe Le Corbusier himself to have taught and which one has sometimes felt to be a norm of procedure, are conspicuously breached, and breached with a sophistication so covert that only retrospectively does one become conscious of this means by which he has been able to charge depth with surface, to condense spatial concavities into plane and to drag to its most eloquent pitch the dichotomy between the rotund and the flat. By violating a unity at conception, by jamming two discrete elements within the same block, Le Corbusier has been able to instigate both tension and compression, sensations of both openness and density and he has guaranteed a stimulus so acute that the visitor is not aware of the abnormality of his experience.’

To me, Colin Rowe’s critique on La Tourette is more about his experiential perspective of a casual journey, he moved easily among all these areas sustained by an extraordinary faculty of visual memory that allowed the recall of any space, plan, facade, or image he had ever encountered. He uses these to influence us with his series of abstract intellectual images. By visualising his images is like being in a story, by being in a story, we become part of that emulsion reality, of time and space. As in a love affair, as in an accident.