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.

The first chapter of 'After Theory' by Terry Eagleton

New generations, my generation, "can remember little of world-shaking political importance".

Agreed. As long as we're talking in terms of Western culture. You see I for one believe that, unfortunately, it's war that invites progress. It's war that encourages new thinking. It's war that forces one to change their entire perspective on life. Of course I know that my country, along with the US and half of Europe's military are out in the Middle East now, but when do I, along with millions of others, ever have to deal with that? Yes, London was bombed and there was 9/11 but unless you were one of those directly affected life just carried on.

How can my generation truly care about socialism, labour and famine when these issues barely cross our radar in comfortable day-to-day lives? I bet most school children wouldn't even know where the Sudan is.

And hence the students of today writing a "thesis on the comparative flavour of malt whiskies". Why not? Political issues just aren't important to us anymore, so why write about them? What difference will it make?

Until something truly catastrophic happens to us we'll carry on, plodding along in our own little sex obsessed bubbles.

On Mike Davies' "Fear and Money in Dubai"

I've never been to Dubai and until just over a week ago it was somewhere I really wanted to go. When I began reading Mike Davies' article I was enraptured; imagining I was flying over the city just as he was describing, peering through the plane's window to gasp and gawp at 'the world' and 'the palm'. As he went on I thought this is even better than I'd imagined (or seen on tv). I wanted to book a holiday immediately, to splurge, to spend one night in the Burj with a butler, to shop 'til I drop. This is what it would be all about - unashamed, uncontrollable indulgence.
I wouldn't mind the 'room full of [fake] smiling faces', so what? People could grin at me if I was paying through the nose for a week. They can carry my bags too while they're at it.

I'd feel excited by the glass and steel jungle I'd travel through on the way to the waterpark. I'd feel like I was somewhere sexy, cool, funky. Like a celebrity.

After a week none of this would matter anymore because I would be home and back to work and all that's left of the shiny heat of Arabia would be some photos on facebook and a tan. It would've been a halucination, a mirage, a 'trip'.

That's all Dubai could have ever been to me - something quick, shallow, fun while it lasted. A harmless one night stand of a holiday.

Then I kept reading.

The daydream was shattered. Dubai became a poison apple, it wasn't what it was 10 minutes earlier. All the promise of a good ride was tainted by the knowledge that slaves built the fairground. How could i possibly enjoy myself now? Now I know a fraction of the suffering of the people wearing the smiles.

However, just like the experience I imagine I will forget after a holiday in the city, I wonder how long it will take me to forget Davies' article. How long it will take me to forget the suffering of Dubai's victims, like everytime I turn the famine in Africa off the news or walk past a homeless person?

Probably, like most of Dubai's followers, not long. Then I can get back to my heat magazine and think about booking flights.

Thoughts on Jonathan Meades 'Zaha Hadid: the first great female architect'

have no idea how this is going to turn out. I'm not going to respond to anything specific, just give my thoughts as they flow through my fingers into the keyboard. Maybe I'll cover one point, maybe all 10. Here goes....

I can see Zaha's problem with historicism. I don't think the attitudes of Krier and his ilk are easy for her to comprehend; she is totally and only expressive, bold, emotional. To look back is to restrict her creative 'soul'.
However, Zaha talks of doing a city "without looking backwards" and try as she might I don't believe this would ever truly be possible. There is no darkness without light, there is no forwards without backwards.
In addition, Meades describes each of her buildings as being "sensitive to its context". I can totally believe this, even if "it's not a question of taking a cue from her immediate surroundings". It's more abstract than that.
It's this abstraction that she is reluctant to talk about, a stubbornness that leads to her apparent lack of architectural eloquence. As Paul mentioned in class, she's being very clever. I bet she could explain every nook and cranny of her buildings and why a surface bends this way or that, but she is being secretive, she doesn't want us to know her methods. I would go so far as to say she likes, even loves playing the architectural enigma.

I do like her though.