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.