Archive for the 'Criticism' Category

A week in the life of me

Published
by
Gary
on September 27, 2007
in Criticism and Declaration
. 2 Comments

Apologies for the short entries—these days my brain tends to sit in a semi-molten, slightly fermenting state of daze sprinkled with confusion. You see, as I’ve previously noted, they’re trying to kill us. My schedule looks something like this (assume I roll out of bed at either 10:05 or 11:05 in the morning on weekends, assuming I set the alarm clock for the right time on the right days):

Monday: sit through brilliant Eisenman lecture in near comatose state, catch furtive glances at hot chick in front, be simultaneously amused and irritated (in nearly Schroedinger’s Cat-esque manner) at Eisenman slyly insulting students who ask questions, consume lunch with most-likely-Asian friend, FOUR HOURS of studio (probably a pin-up), resign self to studio desk, ponder studio stuff before getting up to bother people on other side of studio hall, drink from fountain (”fountain break”) approximately one thousand times
Tuesday: sit through brilliant Forster lecture in near comatose state (conserve oxygen by breathing less in crowded, slightly misty room), lunch, last-ditch attempt to finish studio stuff, FOUR HOURS of studio (desk crits?), over-priced dinner, crap out 5-8 hour [Prof.] Blood drawing (wonder how to draw dodecahedron slice; draw yet more dramatically distorted cubes instead; bitch about with studiomates)
Wednesday: oh shit today’s Wednesday I have structures! procrastinate in bed until last minute, then sit bleary-eyed through reasonably passable Structures lecture while enough stomach acid accrues to digest a two-storey Victorian row house, Blood lecture of unbelievably trying/boring length, take notes on drawing spheres in perspective, feet get swollen while standing for far too long watch TAs/profs review drawings, dinner (did have lunch?), stay up til’ 2 am working on studio stuff, watch Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann ’til 4 am, think about answering email but go to sleep instead.
Thursday: what class do I have again tod-oh my god history in five minutes! arrive late to brilliant Forster lecture, meekly sit in side aisle until prof recognizes my presence and convolutingly tells me to sit in an actual chair, try to sit next to ridiculously hot girl with boyfriend in another city (but fail), take notes with a 0.1mm Sakura pen b/c forget normal pen, stomach growls, snag lunch then furtively finish studio stuff in time for FOUR HOURS of studio (pin-up? water torture?), watch as critic talks until four-point-FIVE HOURS of studio have passed, snag dinner, start working on Structures problem set in loose clump of confused people, crack bad jokes in an almost reflective manner.
Sat… I mean, Friday: just in time for Structures lecture with enjoyably absent-minded professor, quietly write down everything written on blackboard while hoping not to be called on, called on to do question and instantly blank out, get merely passable pita sandwich, somehow it’s 5 PM already, get dinner, perhaps go to 6-on-7-on-2 (i.e. weekly drinking party) but probably not because need to spend six hours doing Eisenman readings then four hours doing obscure analytical axon ink-on-mylar drawing while softly sobbing and whimpering
Saturday: Show up at 4 PM to studio with lunch in Gourmet Heaven brown bag, say quick hellos before plugging into computer and charging The Matrix for the next twelve hours
Sunday: Show up at 3 PM with turkey-on-white-with-brie-and-mustard-and-green-apple sandwich in brown bag, ponder meaning of life while in almost completely comatose state, find inevitably Existentialist explanation for endless suffering, drink steaming black coffee, conclude half-Chinese girls are hotter, pull almost-nighter powered by the dwindling light of my very soul itself, play The Avalanches into the ground

Strangely, I’m now the most lucid in the middle of the night. Trained?

On another note, food in New Haven almost uniformly sucks. All the rumors about the burgers and pizza rocking were complete and utter lies possibly fabricated by people tragically born with daytime television for tastebuds and no ability to leave Connecticut’s leafy yet limited environs. And, and, it’s almost all $6-8 a pop. (I’m tempted to ponder what the hell is wrong with the East Coast, but I had awesome Italian in Boston once so I’ll hold my tongue.) There’s good Thai, decent Indian, pretty good ice cream, and that’s it. Oh Berkeley, most wondrous of inbred liberal hippie college towns, I miss you!

Advertising precedes Architecture

Published
by
Gary
on September 5, 2007
in Criticism and Thoughts
. 3 Comments

I’ve been having a hard time sleeping recently. Sadly, this is par for architecture school, and not just because they work us like Trotskyites in Siberia: projects get ya thinkin’, and once you start thinking you’re not sleeping. So, the latest thing is a precedent study (and two 1′:1/16″ models, naturally) for tomorrow. We’re studying display spaces, and I’ve been thinking of the most incredible display space on Earth: the Fifth Avenue Apple Store.

The only thing that store has on display is Apple’s confidence in their own brand. The logo is the singular thing making that building a store. Furthermore, there’s no “bulk” to the store, the size of a building being a traditional indicator that there’s stuff inside it. It’s really is just a brilliantly fancy, unbelievably successful entrance to a 24-hr consumer wonderland. Think about it: where else have you seen anything like it?

It’s Apple immense brand and product recognition that makes that kind of architecture possible. It’s literally shaped the building: people know that the Apple logo stands for things they want, and so the architecture has been reduced to the bare minimum it needs to function as a store. It’s something that architects don’t usually think about: how recognition of our program affects how we design our buildings. Or if we do think about it, we don’t carry it out to the extent the Apple Store has: a beautiful and complete resolution.

Realizing that, I think it’s interesting the assumptions we make when we design almost anything in architecture school. We get these really very specific briefs: design a delivery center for smart, design a hotel for W Hotels, design a theater for the TriBeCa Film Festival, and we don’t think about how that brand and its cultural currency affect our designs. We completely ignore the elephant in the room. That kind of 20th Century thinking absolutely needs to change: the world’s grown past a single site but our thinking hasn’t.

The smart is stupid: why the smart fortwo will fail in America

Published
by
Gary
on September 2, 2007
in Criticism
. 6 Comments

I’ve been thinking about the smart car a lot recently. (We’ve been assigned a smart “delivery center” to design in studio.) There’s a lot of reasons why the smart is stupid, from its name—”smart” is “Swatch” + “Mercedes-Benz” + “art”, all lower-case for maximum confusion—to its unbelievably dorky design to its steel-death-cell structure. From 2003 to 2006 (the year smart GmbH liquidated and handed operations to M-B), smart GmbH lost DaimlerChrystler over 4 billion euros. Of course, that’s just in Europe. Next year, the smart is coming to America—specifically, the smart fortwo. Ladies and gentlemen, une catastrophe.

smart car speaks

See, although the smart almost makes sense in parts of Europe, it makes no sense at all in America. The smart is a “metropolitan commuter car”—with two seats, nearly no storage space, an anemic engine (50 or 61 hp), and 50 miles to gallon, its design explicitly denies anything a commuter supposedly wouldn’t need. That is, a European commuter, because here people don’t commute on cramped streets within thousand year old cities, they commute on sixteen-lane highways averaging 70 miles per hour. Americans need decent horsepower, more than two airbags, an actual trunk (the smart’s engine sits in back), and for chrissake, crumple zones. It’s not a matter of ego or excess, it’s just the reality of driving and surviving in the land of the free and the home of the superhighway. Meanwhile, the benefits of the smart’s size (tiny turning radius and ease-of-parking) are nice but largely unneeded when driving on roads four lanes across and parking in an actual parking space.

But wait, the smart’s not meant for people who commute suburb-to-city, it’s made for intra-city commuting! Well, fine, except someone living in a city that dense and tightly-trafficked (New York?) could easily partake in mass-transit and not worry about driving in the first place. Some would argue that young adults/DINKs (dual-income, no kids) will be the main customers, but your average hipster is going to want to go to parties, gallery openings, riots, et al, and probably with more than one other person. (On the up side, the trunk holds up to 12 cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon.) And if you’ve got a family, well, forget it, unless your family happens to be exceptionally small, narrow, and well-behaved.

So there’s no market for smart in America—something that should be pretty obvious. The only people who are going to buy this are 1) people who are willing to buy a car just for commuting and carrying small-to-medium-sized objects, and probably buy another car for things like transporting multiple people/being seen in public or 2) people who make very irrational decisions. I think it’s basically #2 where the smart has any hope of salvation: hype up the smart as the 21st century’s answer to the MINI Cooper and the VW Beatle; moreover, hype it up as a European city car—emphasis on the European—and hope to sell it to young urban adults with hangovers and at least $12,000.

As for people who say that the smart is just DaimlerChrysler compensating for its petrol-loving Mercedes-Benz line-up for the sake of the European Union’s voluntary corporate fuel efficiency standards, well, they’ll need to actually sell smarts for that to work.

(I realize the title of this post isn’t very creative, but just. couldn’t. resist.)

Oh Obama, or, don’t fight today’s enemies with yesterday’s government

Published
by
Gary
on August 26, 2007
in Criticism, News and Thoughts
. 1 Comment

On August 1st, Barack Obama stated “I will not hesitate to use military force to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to America.” He added “As President, I would deploy at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan to re-enforce our counter-terrorism operations.” (source)

I’m not buying that. He don’t seem to really understand who wants to vote for him and why: war-weary people who want a fresh face and no bullshit, who want desperately to trust and believe again in American government. I’m not troubled by the media’s accusations that he lacks experience, because—to paraphrase Barack—experience doesn’t necessarily mean good judgment. “We try to remind people, nobody had a longer résumé than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and that hasn’t worked out so well.” (source) I’m troubled because, at least here, Barack has judged so poorly.

The first step must be getting off the wrong battlefield in Iraq, and taking the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (&hellip) If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will. (BBC)

No! Hell no! Say it with me: you can’t “fight” terrorists with a conventional military! This isn’t World War II. You can’t fight terrorists by invading countries; you can’t bomb, blast, or blow-up a completely liquid, ideologically-based enemy. That just makes them stronger while completely pissing off whatever country they happen to be in. Attack the terrorists and the terrorists win.

We’re looking at a fundamental paradigm shift in how our enemies attack and how they’re to be fought. In the short term, we must address our methods of engagement: America now is like Britain in the Revolutionary War, lining up in bright red suits and firing in orderly succession, all the meanwhile being massacred by colonial rebels hiding in the brush and sharpshooting from behind trees. Our tactics are outdated, geared for assaulting proper armies with proper bases and proper governments behind them. We need to understand that, as far as fighting terrorism is concerned, force is obsolete: fighting terrorism involves small elite squads backed up by incredible support teams and impeccable, exhaustive military intelligence. In short, the near opposite of today’s immense, lumbering, largely useless military-industrial complex.

In the long term, we need to understand that the 21st century isn’t the 20th century: foreign and military policy needs to be more nuanced, more sensitive, and more holistic. The only way to really, truly stop terrorism to any degree is to understand why people become terrorists and why they hate America and the West so very damn much. We need to admit that yes, they have several excellent reasons to be extremely pissed and we need address those. The time for doing as we please is over, because they now know how to fight back.

And it’s clear that this is exactly what Barack doesn’t completely realize, let alone something as simple as we don’t want another Iraq, ever. Yes, there are those in America who think guns-blazing dick-wagging military might is still the answer, but they aren’t Barack’s supporters and they never will be; meanwhile, he’s losing those who believed he would think twice (or at least once) before rolling out the military machine.

On the upside, I still largely believe Barack’s a smart guy with great potential, someone caught playing a political game he’s obviously not the best at. His conditions for giving Pakistan more aid and, ah, not invading are that Pakistan acts to close terrorist training camps, evict foreign fighters, and prevent the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area. That suggests that’s only reaching for the “blow up now” button on the second or third round instead of the first, and that perhaps he was going in the right direction before violently pulling the policy wagon back around.

But those of us who are pro-Barack, we need to realize that we like Barack largely because he’s so damn likeable, and that we’re largely betting based more on his personality than his actions and words. Personality worked for JFK, but do we really want it to work for Barack?

Continue reading ‘Oh Obama, or, don’t fight today’s enemies with yesterday’s government’

The Audacity of Authenticity

Published
by
Gary
on July 24, 2007
in Criticism, News and Thoughts
. 2 Comments

Why do I want to vote for Barack Obama?

At last night’s CNN/YouTube Democratic Presidential Debate, a person asked “would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?”

Hillary’s response sounds “tough” but it’s ultimately noncommittal and paranoid.

Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don’t want to make a situation even worse. (…) We’re not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.

What’s she really saying? A meeting with the President (versus a “vigorous diplomatic effort”—read: Condoleeza Rice et al) signals that America is committed and serious about coming to a solution. But Hillary’s more concerned about her visit being spun as some sort of weakness; that is, she’ll forgo the real possibility of peace and mutual benefit just to deny “bad people” a chance at some ultimately harmless propaganda. She won’t meet with leaders until she knows the “way forward,” but how can she know the way forward if she doesn’t meet with leaders?

Clearly, Hillary means post-9/11 America as usual. Her experience is in the politics of fear, paranoia, knee-jerk nationalism, and zero-sum negotiation. To vote for Hillary is to say that the vocabulary of “reason” is coercion and force, that prosperity must be taken and that security comes from denial. Her logic says that we either own an enemy beforehand, meet it on the battlefield, or don’t meet at all.

By comparison, Barack is clear, rational, and refreshingly straightforward.

I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them—which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration—is ridiculous.

Barack means hope that America can un-fuck itself and the world it’s created. He’s for those who are tired of fear and paranoia, for those who remember when common sense was common. To vote for Barack is to say that the vocabulary of reason is reason, that prosperity for one arises from prosperity for all, that security comes when we no longer have enemies. For those who say that Barack doesn’t have experience, I say he’s gained a fuckload of experience: something called history:

Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward. And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them. We’ve been talking about Iraq—one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they’re going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses. They have been acting irresponsibly up until this point. But if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight, in terms of stabilizing the region.

YES. FINALLY. Here, Mr. Obama demonstrates several important things that Mr. Bush never got through his thick cowboy skull: 1) other countries have motivations for what they do, 2) intelligent decisions come from understanding those motivations, 3) enlightened diplomacy comes from explaining how our and their interests aren’t mutually exclusive. More specifically, he understands that 1) every nation wants a little glory/influence, 2) Iran and Syria have a serious stake in Iraq, 3) they have much more local influence than we do, and we’d be smart to use that to our advantage, 4) working with them will give us the scraps of credibility we will need to get anything done in the Middle East, which we can then parlay into serious legitimacy.

Barack understands what Hillary won’t, and that’s what makes him exciting. Hillary’s experienced in getting elected, Barack’s experienced in being a human.