proposed entry framework

a ten step guide to design a resilient city.

forward: the prostitute idea, the most resilient identity is one that adapts itself to the greater environment without meaningless resistance, it goes up and down with the cycles. For each of the ten steps we propose some theories that can link back to the idea of prostitution, and give one example to elaborate it.

step 1:

step 2:

step 3:

step 4: ownership.

the idea of instantaneous and momentary ownership. fundamental difference between a public good, which for anyone to share, like clean air, and a rented good, which is private for a certain amount of time. For a citizen of each City (city of melbourne, city of heidelberg, etc.) a library will have a dual function as a .....

step 5:

step 6:

step 7:

step 8:

step 9:

step 10:

Capitalism, Consumerism, Desire, Impermanence

"Now our relationship with possessions seems so much emptier. The allure of a product is created and sold on a basis of a look that does not survive physical contact. The bloom of attraction wilts so rapidly that passion is spent almost as soon as the the sale is consummated.

Desire fades long before an object grows old." The Language of Things (p18), Deyan Sudjic.

This notion that we're exploring: of short attention spans, desire, throwaway consumerism and culture is what we can relate to for the brief of Resilient City and the idea of sustainability.

Deyan Sudjic notes in his writing that consumerism is capitalisms's way of sustaining itself.

So what if we were to design for this generation of impermanent desire? Rather than dictating for the culture to re-evolve itself past its ways of over-consuming and being environmentally aware, maybe it is a possibility for us designers to outwit capitalism and design to cater for that.

Take the idea of renting for example. A good amount of us young adults pay between AUD 700-1500 a month alone for a shell to store our possessions and wares. On average, we are likely to spend anywhere between just four to ten hours daily at the rented apartment to shower and sleep (and the very most have breakfast). Why do we fork out that much money for a shell that houses our possessions moreso than us? That's one.

This is two. A friend recently purchased a brand spanking new single speed bike just at the start of the year. A friend of hers joined in the biking craze and bought his visually captivating single speed bike just a fortnight ago. It i this new purchase along with the aesthetic of the bicycle as a product that has her wanting a new bicycle to replace her three month old one.

I love chicken

Wallstreet (oh gosh, what have i just written)

On Capitalism and Desire.

The fundamental basis of Capitalism is perhaps not, as Wikipedia would suggest, private ownership. Possession of slaves, precious metal, or land alone does not guarantee Capitalism, nor does the ever more pretentious slogan Laissez Faire, which in my view conveniently replaced reason with the superficial phenomenon of some political idealism. In the various forms that Capitalism has taken over the centuries, the system empirically simply did not promise any fairer resource distribution than, say, Slavery. Here we offer an overly simplistic view of the system as such: i) that capitalism exists as a deep structure, which on the formal level can manifest through any ideology without contradictions, e.g. capitalism can exist within a Communist political system ii) that capitalism works on the basic assumption that 1 + 1 > 2.

View i) is rather simple: One can be a law enforcer and an anarchist at the same time without being Schizophrenic, the former an apparent, social role and the latter a deep, personal role. Whether or not this individual is PERCEIVED as an integral whole, is totally another problem.

View ii) is something that we can learn a lot from. Capitalism came into existence because, and only because, two people working together produces more than them working individually combined. Such works may take the form in labour, capital, knowledge or any other sources of production, so today to sooth out such discrepancies we use money to unify most cooperations. Note that, however, this view does not say anything about how the products will be distributed at the end, and importantly, this view is an "assumption", meaning that a lot of the times people working together does not generate greater results but they continue on the cooperative contract, sometimes due to the lack of alternatives, sometimes commitments, sometimes negligence to such inefficiency, under the same assumption; this still actively contributes to the formation of the Capitalist system.

An inevitable result of this second view is that Capitalism cannot be anything but expansionary. Since if one stops adding the 1 + 1 + 1 +... together, it is not simply keeping the system stationary, but negating the system all together. Think about the financial crisis, last year, when banks stopped lending money to companies and to each other, nobody considered this a healthy stop, a rest, but a crisis, because when the addition stops, (ownership is still ownership, laissez faire is still laissez faire) the system ceased to work, and hence governments must intervene. Now a simple English word for this forever expansionary tendency is "Greed", or more accurately, "Desire", an expectation of outcome as a result of greed.

t.b.c.

Chinatown

For a legitimate urban conversation to take place, a pre-requisite is ownership. It is possibly true for most things that involve economics or politics: if one does not have a share of the pie, it doesn't matter what you say. Things like anti-war petitions are a good example of false ownership, which believe that just because one has a vote for the election of the prime minister, the same authority can extend towards its decision making, slightly misinterpreting the context of democracy.

An interesting phenomenon along similar lines in Melbourne is that, again and again, grand big gestures of urbanism would be taken, which will be proven to be huge mistakes, which will then take the academics and related professionals, decades and thousands of essays and studies to discuss and fix: south bank, docklands, that new tram interchange in front of uni. It's rather sad, and hopeless, really.

Now imagine if Kim Dovey, Darko, Justina, Miles Lewis and Jianfei each owns part of Docklands. There is no guarantee that something magnificent to will come up as a result, but at least there will be relevant discussions before any dramatic action is taken. The reality, however, is that they don't have a share and hence it is only natural for the developers to maximize their own interests: if you need to finance a few billion dollars to do a project, I don't think social and cultural responsibilities would be top of your list to consider?

But now think about an alternative, what if a block of land is owned by multiple owners, each owner's character and education background carefully selected, and the building provides minimum interference so that each owner can have maximum authority on the area that he or she owns, would this work? In fact this model has been in use for over a century, the building form is high-rise, owners' profile is indirectly controlled by rent and purchase price, the building style that allows maximum freedom is, obviously, modernism. It works, it really works, only to the extend of the perimeter of the collective ownership, but nothing to the most immediate urban context. That's why modernism is accused of being irresponsible. But inside the building, let's be honest, the worst of Foster's high rise office buildings is more user friendly than any of Venturi's houses.

t.b.c.

In the mood of Love,

Or how architecture is nothing less than prostitution.

It is not difficult to realize that senses, perceptions and social practises all inevitably have two sets of qualitie: One that is universal, essentially a permanent search for the pleasant, the out-of-ordinary, and the satisfying experiences; and the other that is bound by history, collective memories that cumulated to a social or cultural context, which creates particularity. Whereas some physical or ideological “concrete” structure may be accepted as positively existent across the globe, manifested through form, materiality, or a new school of thinking, the responses it triggers can potentially vary subtantially, and in the extreme case, nothing.

It is proposed that, hence, there are no importance to “geometries”: there is no ”sex” in a prostitute; the sex took place, which was then partially preserved in the memory of the “man”, and partially passed onto a collective ritual that accumulated into “prostitution”: the role of the prostitute, funnily, is minimum. Designers should by now realize that, geometries, however aggressive, are by themselves helpless and meaningless, and can only provoke as much excitement as the society indulges: architecture accidentally becomes the object of fantasy by its inevitable erection in the centre of attention, becoming the scapegoat of unsatisfied mass energies. Period.

It shall be clarifed that “geometries” do affect the experiential and the practicial, but these are only derivative qualities that again and again dominated the centre of discussion; what distinguishes “architecture” from “geometry”, “prostitution” from “sex” is hence, existentially, a recognition of “roles”, not of “what it does”, but of “from what role to do it” and “how to play to role”.

02

Provocativeness is momentarily, it strikes the mind, shocks, confuses and deserts.
Provocativeness may deduct. (or can it trigger ? )

Serenity ( can one forever remain in state of ectasy? )

If one attains serenity there is no return, it is purely an irreversible phase change.

Provocativeness is praised & promoted. Serenity is considered banal. While in reality we have not achieved the true serenity, as serenity is an irreversible phase change. We are set in auto-pilot mode and rejecting an experience which we claim we have acquainted.


I came across this awhile ago as I was researching in film making

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_%281973_novel%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._Ballard

- Shima 20100411

01

2010 humans have an attention span of a goldfish, we have been subconciously been driven towards our phantasitical way of thinking. A 50 inch TV screen introduces one to a new bigger entertainment world but it is only a matter of short amount of time that the size reduces to unsatisfactory luxuary which will lead one to further Bigness.
The current attention span requires the new building to be a pavilion. Topic of sustainability should be taken forward in line with re-useability not permanence.

Provocativeness is more accessible than serenity(Ectasy?). ( Prostitution is more accessible than sex? Geometry is more accessible than architecture?)

Is the new geometry subconciously encouraging us to be postitutues?
Architects have encourged the phantasitical mind in public rather than a directed mind.
Can we argue architects are the reason behind human failure.
Can we argue that humans are a product of their architecture or they should be.

-Shima 20100411

In the mood of Love,

Or how architecture is nothing less than prostitution.

It is not difficult to realize that senses, perceptions and social practises all inevitably have two sets of qualitie: One that is universal, essentially a permanent search for the pleasant, the out-of-ordinary, and the satisfying experiences; and the other that is bound by history, collective memories that cumulated to a social or cultural context, which creates particularity. Whereas some physical or ideological “concrete” structure may be accepted as positively existent across the globe, manifested through form, materiality, or a new school of thinking, the responses it triggers can potentially vary subtantially, and in the extreme case, nothing.

It is proposed that, hence, there are no importance to “geometries”: there is no ”sex” in a prostitute; the sex took place, which was then partially preserved in the memory of the “man”, and partially passed onto a collective ritual that accumulated into “prostitution”: the role of the prostitute, funnily, is minimum. Designers should by now realize that, geometries, however aggressive, are by themselves helpless and meaningless, and can only provoke as much excitement as the society indulges: architecture accidentally becomes the object of fantasy by its inevitable erection in the centre of attention, becoming the scapegoat of unsatisfied mass energies. Period.

It shall be clarifed that “geometries” do affect the experiential and the practicial, but these are only derivative qualities that again and again dominated the centre of discussion; what distinguishes “architecture” from “geometry”, “prostitution” from “sex” is hence, existentially, a recognition of “roles”, not of “what it does”, but of “from what role to do it” and “how to play to role”.

- Max 20100408