Millennium People 3.0 (beta)

SPECULAR ARCHITECTURE

August 31st, 2009

The Guggenheim effect – where specular/speculative architecture really began.

Today I am going to build upon the thoughts of Mark C. Taylor – who said that over the last century there has been a general correlation between forms of capitalism and architectural styles: Industrial capitalism had Modern architecture, Consumer capitalism had Postmodern architecture and Financial capitalism has (or had) Specular / Speculative architecture.

He was not the first to divide up capitalism into these three phases. At the end of the last millennium, the ‘Great Man’ of economics J.K Galbraith wrote extensively about the shift that was taking place. In one of his last works, entitled ‘The Economics of Innocent Fraud’, he pointed out how far we had come since the early days, when the economy was driven by actual capitalists – individuals with money who controlled the means of production.

Over time the cost of manufacturing goods fell, and subsequently so too did their value. Maintaining a dominant position in the market by simply controlling the production of something became increasingly difficult (and I am not really even referring to the activities that prompted legislation specifically targeted at breaking monopolies). So the impetus of the leading economies naturally shifted from the people who made the most to the people who sold the most. Above all were valued those individuals who could turn a superfluous luxury into a perceived necessity.

But with the global unification of markets, the digitisation of trading, and the new era of instant communications between financial institutions, it suddenly became possible to speculate in radically new ways. Money was capable of making lots more money, loans backed by securities that themselves were backed by other loans. And the market grew, and everyone won, and (almost) no one thought it would ever end.
And so when Fannie Mae went A-over-T, and kicked off all this business, it came as a bit of a shock.

So I think Taylor is drawing a fair, even predictable, comparison between architectural styles and the economic factors that produced them: the machine and industrial aesthetic of Modernism stemming from the factories and silos; the cultural critiques and pastiche styles of Postmodernism likewise finding their root in an increasingly global society absolutely saturated by the advertisement.

The real goal of this blog is to attempt to capture an epochal philosophy before the relentless wave of progress wipes it from our minds: a time that really began in the late 70′s – before I was even born – and may still not have finished, but whose peak was undeniably between the collapse of the Towers and the collapse of the Sub-Prime.

The reasons for wanting to capture this essence are manifold: architecture is my profession, and it was treated as a bitch: the speculative scapegoat. That smarts. A profession that at the time was becoming increasingly image-based, and therefore itself increasingly speculative, began to be manipulated by the financial world – as an agent of financial speculation. How many luxury apartment blocks did architects really think the world needed? But need didn’t come into it. Architecture had imploded into itself, there was no moral element, simply a quest to find a new look, and a look to sell more than the competition. And this quest essentially produced the same types of stylistic dead ends that were seen at the beginning of the 20th century (art nouveau, Gaudi, Hunterwasser, and so on).

Zaha is a prime example, though she still tends to divide opinions. But I think it is fairly safe to say that her time has come and gone. She is no longer (if she ever was) at the forefront of architectural discussion. It is nonetheless undeniable that she was an architect that rose to prominence not for actually constructing anything, but simply threatening to construct anything. Her powerfully iconic (but ultimately meaningless) forms epitomise this ‘object’ architecture – an architecture unrelated to humanity except by the coincidence that it was us that produced it. Always seen from a bird’s eye view, it is an architecture of visual appeal (specular) and conjectural possibilities (speculative).

For the next month or so Millennium People is going to tackle the meaning of the architectural ‘object’, and its relevance to the future of architecture (the discussion will be mainly prospective rather than retrospective).
In particular the focus will be in the fields associated with the blog: psychogeography, landscape and the city.

Posted in architecture, Digital Revolution, future, object | 11 Comments »

CATMAN LUTHER

August 30th, 2009

A couple of years ago my then 5 year-old cousin Luther drew my portrait. It consisted of a large orange triangle, equilateral, though not square to the page, with a long branch sticking out at a very precise angle (he erased the line several times before its relationship to the triangle satisfied him). I asked him: ‘Luther,’ I said ‘if you had to describe the times we live in, if you had to sum up everything that seems to you particular about this epoch, what would you say?’ He sighed, and climbed down from the chair. When he returned he had in his hands two drawings. ‘This’ he said ‘is a picture of catman… and this,’ he contained his boredom ‘is a picture of a man with the face of a cat.’
‘But Luther’ I said ‘these two drawings are identical.’ He broke into a big laughing grin ‘I know.’

Posted in family, zeitgeist | Comments Closed

COMPOSITE MEMORIES

August 29th, 2009

The Parthenon.

After seeing Jason Salavon’s ‘Every Playboy Centerfold’ series, in which he overlayed a decade of sexy pin-ups at a time, I was inspired to write my own little photoshop droplet and produce these images – which I will call ‘composite memories‘.

A game of tennis with two close friends. Australia.

The Barbican.

Sparklers and fireworks. Woy Woy.

LCD Soundsystem, Sydney 2007.

Posted in art, Digital Revolution, memory, photography | Comments Closed

UNDER THE ARCHES #1: EUSTON APPROACH

August 27th, 2009

The Arch in the late 50′s.

“The Euston Arch was a powerful symbol of the optimistic spirit of the Victorian railway. Its demolition in the 1960′s confirmed that blandness and lack of imagination had replaced the heroic vision of the past. Since then, the enormous popularity of the restored St. Pancras, soon to be followed by a restored King’s Cross, has shown that celebration of the past and potential for the future are not mutually exclusive. The restoration of the Euston Arch would restore to London’s oldest main line terminus some of the character and dignity of its great neighbours.”

Michael Palin

Last year I was having a beer with a Portuguese architect in Paris and we were talking over why English has become the global lingua franca. ‘It can all be traced back to World War Two’, I told him pompously, ‘a war whose end was largely presided over by Americans.’ He shrugged. As far as he was concerned it really started with the greatest technological invention of the 19th century– one that was pioneered and disseminated by Britain: the railways.

In trying to recapture some of the zeitgeist of that era I could only compare it with what I knew: flight. Surely the pleasure and excitement of flying must have been akin to the experience of travelling by train. Relatively speaking, the people found themselves effortlessly propelled fantastic distances at terrific speeds – and the change in thinking about the landscape and the world (and especially their connection to other people) must have been very similar. Are the railways responsible for raising an awareness of national unity– just as air travel impacted on the development of the global village? Is there a link to be drawn between the railways and the patriotism of the First War?

But then I thought about it further and I realised it wasn’t at all the same. For this one reason: air travel is neither ceremonial nor ceremonious. At no point do we glorify the ritual of flight. It is said that airports are the gateways to the new metropolises. If this is the case they’re pretty dire. One could argue that the mode of transport itself – the aeroplane – is responsible for this, in that it does not lend itself to being close to the centre of a city (sound and pollution). But I’m not convinced. Every aspect of flying is designed to desensitise the traveller. The sterility. The boredom. The waiting. The minuscule window, crap food, reticulated air. In short, an activity cramped and uncouth.

By comparison, the drama and ritual of arrival at London’s first railway terminus seems remarkable. The sheer scale of the arch in comparison with its context, and the obvious reference to the temples of ancient Greece, must have been quite impressive. Initially (see below) the approach was open from various sides – but over time (see video) the densification of the city suggested a frontal approach with the concealment of the building up until the last moment.

For all the grandeur of Foster’s Beijing Airport, it remains without a clear approach. It is all facade, yet there is no front – therefore there can be no ritual of arrival. I am interested less by the treatment of airports as necessary bi-products of the desire to travel, and more as legitimate destinations in themselves (and I do not mean simply as sterile temples to consumption).

While I don’t agree with the date (the 60′s in Britain, for example, produced some of the greatest Utopic projects of the century), I do agree with Palin that “blandness and lack of imagination [have] replaced the heroic vision[s] of the past”. A bold idea can be the starting point of a conversation that leads to social change – while a beige idea begets only itself ad infinitum.

Euston station, probably around 1840.
A video showing the approach to Euston Arch. I managed to track down the author eventually.

Euston Arch during construction in 1837 – notice how closely it resembles the current state of the Propylaea.

Posted in architecture, London, memory, scandal, time/space | Comments Closed

THE PLACE OF THE RUIN

August 26th, 2009

Battersea as it was, and as it could be…

Millennium People projects a garden into the turbine room.

Soane’s Bank of England.

Over the last quarter of a century London’s Battersea Power Station has been the subject of several redevelopment plans, from industrial-themed amusement parks to 200m tall eco-towers. And yet since the first energetic works in the mid-eighties, when the roof and a fair section of wall were torn down, almost no visible advance has been made.

In fact, there is a convincing argument that says the building will likely remain a ruin forever. Developers seem to simply be sitting on the land and, in a series of Ponzi-esque transfers, selling it on after a few years of having done nothing to it. At a certain point you have to ask: why can’t this exchange be somehow perfected and the building left in peace to become a ruin?

Perhaps the real question is: can it be left as a ruin at all? The British architect John Soane imagined his own Bank of England as a ruin even before it had been built, depicting a parasoled public strolling about the broken arches and partial columns as they might the Diocletian baths. Of course the Bank of England was not left to this fate, but ruthlessly demolished in what architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner called “the greatest architectural crime in the City of London of the twentieth century”.

Should it have been left to fall apart? Integrating itself into the urban fabric as a monument to previous eras, slowly transformed into a pleasure garden of dilapidated folies? Could Battersea become a modern-day equivalent: iron colonnades, tidal ponds connected to the Thames, sunken amphitheatres of smashed brick?

Predictably, the only part of Soane’s Bank that survived was its façade. Similarly, given the iconic nature of the Station’s silhouette, any future building on the site would almost certainly be a piece of three-dimensional facadism for the twenty-first century. Flats and boutiques crammed into the husk of a former powerhouse.

The only real value of the architecture is the architecture itself. It is the hard materials and industrial detailing that makes it unique. It is the overwhelming scale of the spaces that makes it impressive. The volumes do not have inherent meaning, which is why retaining their proportions in new buildings is so redundant as a design theory. I find the whole modern practice of retaining previous structure’s footprints as part of a historical argument highly suspicious- it is the qualities of the limits of the spaces, not merely their measurements, which instil a sense of place. Without the original walls the site will inevitably take on an atemporal and homogenous quality. At which point you may as well demolish the thing and have done with it. Which in some ways I almost wish they would do, being preferable to a lobotomy of the building’s industrial aesthetic.

In reality, the city doesn’t really design dilapidation, it just happens. Ruins are the result of negligence, not intent. Could that, or should that, change? Will the architects and landscapers of the future be more like geologists, learning to read every depression and protrusion of these forgotten territories?

When talking about how to combat the uniformity of global architecture in our cities, certainly icons like Battersea Power Station become fantastically important. But can we come to think about their preservation as an engineered ruin? What, if any, is the place of the industrial epoch in the post-industrial city?

Posted in architecture, London, place, time/space | 3 Comments »

TERRAFORMING

August 26th, 2009

Drawing made using Terragen2, here.

Landscape rendering software is becoming increasingly powerful – several images in the Terragen gallery (like the one above) had me really pushing my face up against the screen trying to work out if they were photos or not (what a n00b). While I find renders of huts in the forest all very nice, the real question is: what is this good for? Is it art? Maybe. I don’t know.

Separately, I was cruising through pictures from space and came across an article about how Venus used to be like Earth, with moderate temperatures and, very probably, open bodies of water. Then the greenhouse effect went mad, and turned the atmosphere into a carbon dioxide soup bowl, with sulphuric acid for rain. Venus can be thought of as either Earth’s failed older sister, or possibly Earth’s foreboding doppelganger. If it hadn’t gone so pear-shaped, maybe we’d be digging ancient alien churches out of the Venusian volcanic rubble.

Venus, Earth’s failed sister, via jpl.

This all set me thinking about an amazing trilogy I read when I was a kid, ‘Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars‘ by Kim Stanley Robinson (here’s a good interview with the man over at Bldg Blog). He invented the concept of ‘terraforming’ – the human transformation of an entire planet’s climate. He chose a rather predictable, and none too easy, subject: Mars. Low-oxygen modified plants, space reflectors to increase the amount of sunlight, nuclear melting of the permafrost and poles, all ultimately lead to a breathable atmosphere, vegetation, purple seas and complex weather patterns.

But why is it we are all so obsessed with getting further away from the sun? Terraforming Mars means starting from scratch, while Venus doesn’t seem so different from our own planet –the act would give us two habitable planets in the solar system, quite close to each other. So why aren’t we going there?

Left: Artist’s conception of the surface of Venus (1968) via cosmographica; Right: A possible rendered vision for a terraformed Venus, via Fractal Landscapes.

What would a Venusian architecture be like? How do you respond to the history of a planet that has never supported life? I can only imagine flimsy constructions posed delicately on the highly volcanic surface, analogous to the early mining works of Australia (although the Europeans may have felt they were on Venus, they were in fact far from alone on that continent). But it may be very different – a massive and colourful vernacular that references the harsh sun and stunning landscapes (sounds more like Australia every minute).

We are only four months away from creating an artificial species, reports the Times. We are finally becoming God (it seems like we’ve been just playing around for ages) and actually inventing lifeforms. Now, couple that with Venus. Imagine a team of designers creating specific species to slowly turn the planet into a New Earth. Flora and fauna that once made will evolve and come to form a new planetary ecosystem quite unknown to us, and unique in the universe. Further, imagine bathing in an alien ocean or walking through a sulphur sink forest and knowing that every species is the work of Humanity.

Ego trip.

Posted in architecture, art, future, time/space | 3 Comments »

FISTFUL OF LINKS

August 25th, 2009

For a profound look at our impact on the landscape, you can’t go past the photography of Edward Burtynsky.

Tomorrow will be a punchy piece on Venus (yeah, more space, sorry, but the passion is perennial so it’s bound to fade soon). In the meantime, a soft roll of links into the gym mat that is our lives: some news.

Kunstler goes on a tirade against the high-line, Myoung Ho Lee questions the boundaries of nature, and it turns out our prehistoric ancestors were just as un-environmentally-minded as we are. The New Museum lost the plot and went ///mad, while Teno Sehgal rolled around on the floor. Art? (It seems very easy, but then as morenewmath points out, “Modern Art = I could do that + yeah, but you didn’t”) An Australian man is super-glued to a toilet seat as a practical joke, and mining of the Canadian oil-sands continues full speed.

“We put it in a black plastic bag”, Irishman Fitzharris explained, when asked by incredulous archaeologists how he managed to retrieve a 3,000 year-old barrel of butter from a bog. Los Angeles is planning to re-create a section of the Berlin Wall to celebrate the 20th anniversary (also in California, a teetering bunker, a bit like my own). Meanwhile, Texas is going to Agent Orange up to 130 miles of dense foliage along the Mexican border. Archi-ninja asks ‘who is the most over-rated architect?‘: Zaha finally builds something. 10 things you’ll never hear an architect say.

Dope smokers being robbed of sexual highs, and Athens is burning (I was there only recently). Obama tells Nasa to find their moon money somewhere else. Madrid men are illuminating the city with their urine. Re-burbia results in (phh). London’s first green wall dies, those of Quai Branly are still in fine form (gees that Patrick Blanc is a weird guy). Alan Bean paints the moon. The heavily addictive word game- wordpop.

Lightning has been caught doing something rare, going up into the sky, while the mushroom cloud remains firmly buried underground. Nokia avoids playing catchup to Apple by not releasing an iphone rival, and a new engine has been invented powered by ice and aluminium. Michael Wolf, the link you love and then forget about, and then love again. Curbed investigate an apparent property fraud by a resident of Nouvel’s Soho building (here he is having his head lactated on by an air hostess). The Conservative alternative to Youtube. Finally, KFC releases burger made with two pieces of chicken in place of buns, and Prince Charles’ buildings are falling apart.

Posted in architecture, links, Nouvel | 1 Comment »

A FUN PALACE FOR THE PEOPLE

August 24th, 2009

Cedric Prices’ 1961 project Fun Palace, at Mill Meads.

The site today, photo by Lara Almarcegui

The Fun Palace was to be a great open framework of steel lattice girders and towers, surmounted by a traveller crane… halls and galleries, snack bars and entertainment areas, linked by walkways, can be built and changed at will. People of all ages and interests will find space to enjoy their leisure, to relax or be active, at any time, day or night.’

12 Empty Spaces Await the London Olympics
Lara Almarcegui

Cedric Price envisaged a completely flexible program for the complex, “hanging rooms for dancing, music, and drama; mobile floors, walls, ceilings, and walkways; and advanced temperature systems that could disperse and control fog, warm air, and moisture were all intended to promote active ‘fun.’” The revolutionary project was never built, though Rogers and Piano cite it as a major inspiration for their Centre Pompidou in Paris (certainly the similarities are striking). The site, which is in an ex-industrial backwater of the Lea Valley (East London), is today still empty. The only thing of note in the region is that the 2001 Big Brother studio is across the canal. The Canadian Centre for Architecture says:

On the one hand, Fun Palace was inspired by the egalitarian philosophy of 18th century English pleasure grounds, such as Vauxhall and Ranelagh, with their sprawling spaces for strolling, amusement, and gossip. On the other hand, Price’s unrealised project was up-to-the-minute, interpreting current Cybernetic theories, avant-garde theatrical principles, cutting edge technology, and a free-spirited, Monty Pythonesque sense of fun. The ultimate goal was a building capable of change in response to the wishes of users.

And I think this is really the crux of the issue: “egalitarian philosophy” meets “cutting edge technology”. Modernism was founded on theories of social reform – a conscious rejection of the past. But by the end of the Second War it had deteriorated into an exercise in technological feats. Hoards of monolithic tower blocks were constructed because they could be, not because they should have been – that is, while they may have solved the immediate social and technological problems of the day, they avoided any long-term questions of social morality.

Moreover, the vast difference in amenity between new towns and old suburbs only heightened the age-old divisions of class and social status. Price is quoted as saying “technology is the answer, but what was the question?” – up until the Fun Palace the question had never been asked, technology was its own daisy chain of questions and answers. The separation of ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’ entertainment continues today (there are no video arcades in our opera houses).

What Price proposed was an architecture not just capable of bringing Brave New World-esque pleasures to the popular classes, but the creation of a space that permitted for an equality of entertainment expression. By mixing avant-garde theatre with dodgems, or virtual reality simulators with book-readings, the possibilities for exchange would have become much more powerful. The exclusive world of intellectual art forms opened to the public.

Conceptual sketch, interesting for me because the most important (and flexible) part of the building is left blank. For some reason it reminded me of this article: “If you want to change society, don’t build anything!”

Posted in architecture, art, fun, future, London | 2 Comments »

SHARKS IN SPACE

August 23rd, 2009

via Discovery.

In tracking shark movements, scientists have observed large congregations of sharks during specific lunar cycles, as well as intensified feeding habits.

In some areas, they’ve also examined shark attack statistics and found that, understandably, attacks on humans increase in frequency during the lunar phases that intensify feeding behavior, as well as when tides bring them in closer contact with humans.

Sharks are great. They are sleek, strong, silent and remorseless – not to mention deadly (they will leave you with some badass scars). And now Discovery adds to our databank of shark knowledge the fact that sharks are affected by the moon, just as we all are (to varying degrees) – and that certain periods of the lunar cycle create werewolf-like shark feeding orgies. Neat.

Segway. Why did no one ever ask the only woman to land on the moon if anything weird happened to her menstrual cycle? If and when we get back to that heavenly body (the moon, not the astronaut) what will the effects on our physical rhythms be, from a lunar standpoint? Will future generations of Selenites (after the moon goddess) refer to crazy people as terratics?

Humans cannot live comfortably, at least for the moment, without the environment of Earth. So assumedly, at some point, we will create an open body of water on the moon. What will happen to the creatures we bring there when the Sea of Crises is a sea of crisis? How will the sharks navigate, and know when its time for the feeding frenzy?

Another question to chock up on the moon board of “gee, I don’t know Jack”s.

An amazing chart from the Google Moon service, where you can walk in 3d over the surface, see Apollo pictures and even rare archival footage. That’s great!

Posted in moon, sharks, sunday | Comments Closed

THAMES WADING

August 22nd, 2009

Will, the powerstation in the background, and the Thames beach…

Word on the street is that there are between 80 and 100 bodies a year that float down the Thames. That’s a gruesome statistic of 1 and little bit more than a half of a human per week. Apparently the majority are suicides. Or accidents, drunk people descend to the shore, get stuck in the mud and pass out. The tide – all 6 metres of it – then comes back in. Luckily, most cadavers get stuck in the U-bend before the Isle of Dogs, ending up at Limehouse – which is a favourite fishing spot for the River Po-Po.

If I had known this when my uncle proposed that we walk along the shoreline of the Thames, I might have refused, as it was I hesitated. Were there not diseases in the river? Couldn’t I get tetanus, or tuberculosis, or typhoid (like all those kids back in the 70′s, when the Battersea Park shore was a swimming beach)?

No, he explained, it was perfectly safe – the Spring Low Tide would make it possible to walk, well, he didn’t know how far, but a fine distance. In truth I needed little convincing, and his ‘you’ll really be the best man for the walk’ speech sealed the deal. Off we set.

You can re-live the whole adventure via my Facebook album, which I have made public (yeah, I feel we’re at the Facebook level in our relationship), so I’m not going to try to recount everything now. Suffice to say, I don’t know where my uncle got the idea of Spring Low Tide from, but the tide was not low. I have heard several claims about the actual date for the lowest tide of the year, ranging from about the 5th to the 12th of March. I have no idea which claim is correct, but I can tell you that at the 7th of July, our expedition could not be considered even an outlier of the group of possibilities. At one point, as we were negotiating around submerged industrial equipment in fecal-like mud, I sunk up to my groin. At Westminster, in view of Big Ben, the walk became something more of a swim.

But I am not one to complain, and in any case, I thoroughly enjoyed it all. In total we walked about 3 miles, and I would say about 10% of that time was spent in the water. But who can say they have waded in the Thames? As Will pointed out, this was the type of activity one is likely to do only once.

As I stepped off the greasy steps at Chelsea Bridge and onto the soft shingle of the shore I had a bizarre sense of having stepped under the city. When you are at eye-height with the river, on equal terms as it were, walking along a beach like almost any other (assuming all the others you know are scattered with the lost ephemera of 12 million people), and you see the bottom of walls and structures built directly onto the ancient rock of the Thames valley you get a very weird sense of being in a wild landscape. Suddenly the models in the Museum of London depicting Iron Age marsh people trekking over paths of compressed brambles seem very real.

At Vauxhall we passed by the oldest known bridge over the river, and looking carefully at the geography, I came to see why it was such an advantageous position, just as the water slows around the bend and the shores come a little closer together. They were no fools, our ancestors, they knew how to read the territory. I began to see the land like it was empty of human development. I began to already forget that the city existed – it was something that had retreated out of sight and thought, concealed behind cliffs crafted of crumbling Victorian brick.

And then under all this came a feeling of… not fear, but worry. I was reassessing my relationship to the river, but how did the river feel about me? Was this land hostile or merely ambivalent? I thought of Roman legionaries, spotting out the best place to build their new fort. Somehow the gap of two millennia had been closed, contracted just like that, and I was seeing London with new and very different eyes.

The old coal cranes used to provide the source of power for Battersea Power Station, which is going through yet another phase of design development. I heard yesterday that back in the day the piping hot water used as coolant in the plant was then fed under the Thames to heat the radiators of Dolphin Square, one of the most amazing estates I have ever seen.

Posted in London, memory, place, Thames, time/space | Comments Closed