Want, Need and Conspicuous Consumption

Need? What is need?
For Henry Ford and Frank Lloyd Wright need was desire in disguise. Ford needed to indulge his passion for machinery, to progress, to consume, to go faster. He needed to produce, he needed more money. Frank Lloyd Wright pandered to people's needs - he gave them what they wanted. What the people wanted was style and technology, fabulous houses, shiny beacons of progression and wealth. These sons of pious farmer immigrants who had the 'sweat harder to get closer to God' mantra drummed into their skulls produced as much as they could. They cashed in on the fruits of their labours, just as their forefathers had reaped bountiful crops from the soil. They got filthy rich.

Thornstein Veblen wasn't a labourer, he was a thinker. He sat for most of his life not making money, sat in his dusty libraries, sat bitterly observing the Henry Fords. He sat knowing no true good could come from the relentless pursuit of power and wealth. He realised that yes, indeed, anyone can come from nothing, there is an American Dream. But money doesn't buy happiness. Money can be ugly and evil, it is corrupting, it causes pride and envy. The Fords were taking the trouble to progress, to push other people in the name of development. But ultimately Veblen knew the irony; the Fords would end their days lonely old men on a farmstead just like him, cursing the Frankenstein world they had created.
That was a bitter drink to swallow.

So today we are stuck with the gross accumulation of dollars to manifest power; our Frankenstein, our Machine. Society is sick with overt displays of wealth and with vulgar pretentions. We have rich chavs and Paris 'the American royal' Hilton for chrissake! We don't know what we're doing anymore. Where are we going? What good is it anyway?

I'll be damned if i know! I'm off for a bitter drink of my own....

....a nice long gin and tonic! Ha!

"On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser des oeufs"

^Could you crack this little egg?^

I found reading and trying to understand the story of Goethe's Faust simultaneously easy and mind-blowingly difficult. Now there's a paradox...
Easy in the sense that once I got the gist of the story, the underlying tragic tale, I could start to apply Faustian principles to almost anything - the USA arming the mujaheddin in Afghanistan to defeat the Soviets, the harnessing of the power of the atom and even the use of thalidomide. My head wouldn't stop spinning.
What is difficult, is comprehending the possibilities for this tragedy to repeat itself for all of eternity. As long as humankind push progress and development so the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. How do we, should we, put an end to progress?! Will we all just stop and think: "Right that's enough, let's live like 21st century Amish"? Doubt it.

So, as I'm feeling festive - I think Faust just pissed on my Christmas tree.

I started to think of my own experiences of the tragedy of development, and thought back to a little holiday I had in Laos in 2007...

My country has destroyed almost everything that is old and traditional about it. My country has progressed and I am 100% the product of its capitalist-consumerist ideals. However, the Hmong people of Laos, those whom I went to visit on my holiday, are tribal. They have been since the very beginning of their existence. I immediately wanted to experience their way of life - to love them for their naivety and simplicity, they were my Gretchen. However, just like Gretchen, a restlessness has been awoken in the tribe, they are curious about the outside. Some have started to leave. Some have started to come back and with them they bring the marvels of the modern world - washing powder to be exact.

Oh how the chief loves his washing powder!
His clothes get so pure
Oh how the chief loves his washing powder!
He'll soon be no more

You see, the tribe share one rainwater pond. Everyone and everything in the whole village washes and drinks from this pond. There's no running supply. Every time the chief uses his powder he pollutes the water, slowly poisoning his whole society with fairy colour-care and inadvertently killing innocent little Laos babies.

I wish we had never been to the village. In our desire to experience, to be nostalgic almost, we awoke the beast within. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In the village's desire to please us, in its awakening to 'progress', in its willingness to change it will ultimately consume itself. In our 'love' for the tribe and 1000s like it we have condemned them to a rapid death.

But what's that I hear? A little whisper behind my left ear? Don't worry Kelly, they're not the first and they won't be the last. Muwahahahahaha!

(Title quote from Maximilian Robespierre, 1790)

"The Bible of right-wing losers"

Thoughts on Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead' (1949)

title quote by Lisa Simpson, 2009 (haha!)

Ayn Rand's 1943 book and 1949 screenplay 'The Fountainhead' focuses on the battle between the individualist and the altruist. The story is played out through the character of Howard Roark, an architect who chooses to struggle through a life of uncertainty rather than compromise his personal integrity. Roark abhors the fashion for embellished neo-classic building, believing humankind should push for what he sees as a more truthful, honest modernist architecture.

To very quickly summarise (and miss a lot out) the plot goes something like this...

Roark is expelled from Stanton Institute of Technology for refusing to abide by its old-fashioned rules of architecture. After a long search he gets a job with Cameron - an architect who's work is inspired and original but for which he gets very little professional recognition. (Imagine Cameron tragic, a la van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec or even Professor Silenus. An impoversihed artist holed up in his dingy studio-flat.)
Meanwhile, Roark's old classmate Peter Keating, a mediocre, conformist architect with the ability to kiss-arse, gets a job at the prestigious practice Francon & Heyer. His career soars.
After the death of Cameron, Roark continues the business but struggles to find commissions - his style is radically different from the socially accepted norms. Rather than compromise he decides to close his office and work as a labourer instead.
After a bit of love-interest, Roark finally gets another architecture job, a modernist apartment block. At first the design is well received. However, thanks to the outspoken newspaper columnist Jan Moir... sorry, Elsworth Toohey.... public opinion of Roarke is quickly changed and he is once again ridiculed for his ideas. This time he doesn't quit the profession but chooses to work for a few clients who appreciate his visionary talent.
One day Roark is approached by Peter Keating (who by now has been exposed as a talentless lap-dog) who pleads with him to help him get one last job - Cortlandt. Roark agrees as long as the building is designed entirely on his terms and is done anonymously.
A few months later... Roark's been away on a cruise and returns to find the building he did for Keating has been compromised, it has lost its architectural integrity due to the meddling of the tradition-worshippers. Roark is pissed off and blows it up.
Instead of Roark going to prison for his little tantrum he gives an inspiring speech to the courtroom on the day of his defence. He raves:

"My act of loyalty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by the force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited. To every tortured hour of loneliness, denial, frustration, abuse he was made to spend—and to the battles he won. To every creator whose name is known—and to every creator who lived, struggled and perished unrecognized before he could achieve. To every creator who was destroyed in body or in spirit."

He is subsequently aquitted and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

To the individualist Roark is a hero - he is a supreme being, his selfishness a virtue. Apparently Ayn Rand based the character on Frank Lloyd Wright. He also supposedly represents her idea of the perfect independent-minded man.

He represents my idea of a pig.

Who does he think he is? Has he got a slight touch of the 'God complex' like ol' Corbusier? It's perfectly reasonable to want to be self-reliant, independent and ambitious but like it or not we as architects have a duty to society. We don't always have to do exactly as we're asked, or explain how (Zaha) but we do have to think about others - the way they will experience our work, live in it, use it and pay for it. Don't get me wrong, if I were Roark, I'd be just as angry if my design were bastardised, however, I'd like to think I would never have been foolish enough to get to that point in the first place. He shouldn't have been so arrogant, he should've worked with others, tried to reason with them and got them to realise the truth and beauty in his work. Not just expect everyone to accept it without question.

Architecture is like fiction; the minute the book is written the characters are no longer the property of the author - they belong to, and exist in, the mind of the readers. We should remember not to compromise our talent for the sake of others but neither should we discard the feelings of others for our own selfish indulgences.

Professor Silenus, Corbusier and the architect as God

Professor Silenus, known only for the "rejected design of a chewing-gum factory", declares against man: The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is built to house machines, not men. All ill comes from man. - Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh, 1928

Oh how times have changed! What a difference 80 years makes! No, Mr Silenus, all ill comes from the machine. If you could get in a time capsule and come to 2009 I would show you Big Brother and cctv cameras, global warming, traffic jams, cyber stalking and nuclear war.

I can understand Silenus's fascination with the machine, just as I understand Corbusier's. Imagine living in a world that is developing so rapidly you blink and miss a thousand things. Imagine never having seen a car before, a skyscraper or even a fridge. This new modern world would've been earth-shatteringly exciting when you contemplate the possibilities laid out before you and for an architect it would've been so immense I would be surprised if Corbusier didn't wet himself with anticipation.
Is it any wonder a new generation of designers became obsessed with new technology? I, like a lot of my colleagues, probably would've done. Machines were so perfect, so efficient. Wasn't it only logical to begin to look at architecture in this mechanical way too?
So that's what Corb did - the house became a machine for living in. Cities became factories for the machines. Everything would run litter ally like clockwork and everyone would have the most fantastic lives, free from ordinary responsibility and reaching a "maximum individual liberty".
But this is exactly where the dream of buildings and cities as machines stops and becomes a nightmare. This mechanisation of architecture extended to the mechanisation of society, to institutionalisation and depersonalisation. People weren't individual anymore, they were no longer free, they had become trapped in the machine. What if you didn't want to live in a vertical street? What if you couldn't drive a car? Well, then you would damage the machine, you would stop it from working so efficiently. The machine would start to grumble and kick out smoke and make your life Hell, but like an old German banger it would just keep on going, spilling oil everywhere and making a mess.
But this is the beauty of hindsight, Corb wasn't to know what his little science project would do to architecture and planning in the century to follow. All we can do as the next generation is learn from the mistakes of the past, not to get too carried away with new and exciting ideas. We need to remember we are only human, we ourselves are now part of the machine. There can be no detaching of the architect from society, no looking down from a higher place. We cannot pretend we are God and our ideals cannot be projected upon the masses with Utopian results, we cannot make an Eden - trying to fix the machine is enough for one eternity.

Howl, High Rise and Archigram

This week we read Howl by Allen Ginsberg (1955). The poem is split into three parts, the first of which describes scenes and characters from Ginsberg's colourful life "The best minds of my generation". He waxes about psychopathic friends, musicians, painters, drug users, gays and alcoholics. The final part, as Ginsberg describes, is "a litany of affirmation of the Lamb in all its glory". An ode to his close friend Carl, whom he met in a psychiatric hospital; the word lamb evoking images of the innocent , weak and vulnerable. In part two Carl (and his contemporaries) - the lamb - have been preyed on by "the monster of mental consciousness", they have fallen victim to society and are trapped inside a controlling bureaucratic machine. Ginsberg names this machine Moloch, a metaphor for capitalism and industrial civilization. It is also a word heavy with reference; a hallucination describing a San Francisco hotel with a monstrous facade to which Ginsberg's friends have been sacrificed/ the horror as men are devoured by their work in Fritz Laing's Metropolis (1927)/ a Middle-Eastern god to which children must be sacrificed.

In 1923 Corbusier declared "A house is a machine for living in", architecture would be refined, simplified and made efficiently, as if on a factory production line. Technology would be embraced and function would rule over style. By the 1960s a huge percentage of architecture had been built using Corbusier's model, though often without the finesse or the Utopian ideals that Corbusier had originally intended. Tower blocks meant for the war-homeless working classes were instead filled by the bourgeoisie seeking a contemporary, trendy way of living. Around the same time a new architectural collective in London were forming their own manifesto. Archigram took inspiration from science fiction, consumerism and technology. Their hypothetical projects made an almost literal satire of Corbusier's original "machine" by producing works that glamourised a future machine age where people lived in pods and became electric nomads of great moving cities.

In J.G.Ballard's 1975 High Rise, a perfect tower block is built, it is the epitome of efficient and convenient living. It is so perfect in fact that its residents no longer need to leave and to venture to the outside world for their needs. The high rise becomes inverted and a closed society is formed within its walls. The society soon divides into three warring classes, and violence, murder and deception soon follow. Ballard is trying to "offer a vision of how modern life in an urban landscape and the advances of technology could warp the human psyche in hitherto unexplored ways". He is showing us the frightening possibilities of Archigram and Le Corbusier played out to their full potential. He is taking Ginsberg's tragedy to the next level. (See Doctor Who's 'Paradise Towers', 1987, for an eerie but entertaining view of the Ballardian building and society).

It is now 2009, technology has come a thousand times further than it was in Ginsberg's or Ballard's time. How much longer before we all start falling victim to the machine, both physically and metaphorically. Has it already started? We have been warned...

歌舞伎町-眠らない街 I've never been to Vegas but I have been to Tokyo!

Whilst reading Tom Wolfe's "Las Vegas" I couldn't get over the similarities between the author's interpretation of the city and my own experiences of Kabukicho, Tokyo.

I'm lucky enough to have spent six months living and working in Japan and suffice to say it left a lasting impression on me. Wolfe's text re-ignited my senses and brought back to the surface the intense feelings experienced the first few times I walked through the Japanese streets.

Literally meaning 'theatre district', Kabukicho emerged in the late 40s following a boom in post-war rebuilding. Chinese businesses were quick to buy and develop the land, with one of the first buildings being a cabaret. Now it is an entertainments centre home to hundreds of hostess bars, arcades, nightclubs and shops and is often called "sleepless town".

Kabukicho is an assault on the senses. The narrow streets are closely packed, buildings nine or ten stories high are literally draped and hanging with lights. There's neon, flashing, pulsating, flickering. Signs beckoning you to sing some karaoke, eat some yakitori, see a show. Advertisements for 'soap' entice the old business men through shimmery curtains and down into the belly of the streets to gawp at the furry-genitals of Korean working girls. Outside the love hotels bubbling fluorescent fish tanks mesmerise office girls, whilst their baby-faced lovers check out a glowing photograph of the pay-by-the-hour suites within. Then there's the noise - a constant din of shouts from bars, giggles of micro-skirted girls and excited shrieks from the arcades; where teenage boys spend all their pocket money reaching number one on the 'dance dance revolution' leader board. Cigarette smoke drifts from the pachinko parlours creating a blue haze filled with the shrill ringing of the gambling machines and the incessant tinker of metal beads falling into the winners' troughs. In the back-rooms of these mirrored parlours the Yakuza and Triads count their yen and down sinister labyrinth alleys hunched-up men sip sake in silence like a scene out of Blade Runner.

Kabukicho gets under the skin, I can't help but love it - probably as much as Paul loves Vegas.

The Production of Space: my comment on the writings of Henri Lefebvre

To begin with, I need to understand where the Hell the author is coming from. This text is possibly one of the hardest pieces of writing I've come accross.

So, according to Lefebvre:

All things can either be described as work or product:

"... a work has something irreplaceable and unique about it, a product can be reproduced exactly, and is in fact the result of repetitive acts and gestures."

This would imply that a work is more valuable than a product.

Lefebvre states that all societies are based on production and all aspects of society (products) - law, politics, art, etc - are directly related to the collective consciousness of the people and type of society they live in. So, according to this thinking, our architecture is derived from our capitalist society. Our spaces are social products.
Lefebvre believes that the bourgoisie dominate and exploit the lower classes - extracting unpaid labour from their toil. Thus increasing (and profiting from) the perceived value of a product (space) relating to its actual cost and blurring the lines between product and work, repetitiveness and uniqueness.

I'm gonna stop here as I need to think some more!...

Update: 17/12/09

After weeks of thinking about the above and the whole work versus product theory, I have struck upon a thought...

People ought to think about why they are in uni. What do they want to gain from the experience? Do they want the product (degree, part 2 etc) or do they want the work (the process of learning)? Of course most people want both, but in my opinion the work part of the deal is the most important. Thinking about this idea has actually made the effort of writing these blogs easier. I could just write any old crap for 200 words. I could just read someone else's opinion and mash it up to make it sound like my own. But no, I will read the texts each week and I will think. Think long and painfully hard. I will read about the author and the context the pieces were written in and I will learn. It won't matter if my marks are rubbish because I will have progressed in one way or another. That's why I am here. I will not be lazy, I will not be satisfied by the churning out of drawings that mean nothing, even if they took me a whole week. I will not be a CAD monkey. I will not be a photocopier. I will get a job and be paid for my brain and for my true value.