I seem to be spending a lot of time catching you up to speed on what's been going on architecturally in my life. This will probably be the case throughout the month of May (quite a crazy month both architecturally and school-wise).
Here's the next month's schedule
Tomorrow I'm off to Berkeley, CA for a conference entitled The Death and Life of Social Factors. May 3rd is the talk for perspective Archeworks students, which will possibly include yours truly for next year, and their final presentation and review. In addition the weekend of my birthday is the Chicago Architecture Film Festival which will be accompanied by birthday festivities of some sort. Finally, at the end of the month in the same week are the EDRA Conference and Wright Plus, the later of which I will be a volunteer for. In the meantime the final draft of my thesis is due next Friday! What a month!
Also just to let you know I have been using my blog entry entitled Architecture = Art + Building + People for class assignments so it has gone through a number of revisions since I first posted it. I will be posting a final version of that.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Reaction to Architecture = Art + Building + People
Yesterday I received my first fairly strong reaction to Architecture = Art + Building + People on Facebook. A totally unexpected reaction in fact but one that I feel it's important for me to address directly so others don't have the same misunderstanding. As such I have decided to quote the reaction here:
"Nearly every seriously-trained anthropologist looks at "architecture" beyond being merely functional and pretty. Nearly everything I write about of heritage preservation in Cartagena and Luang Prabang involves attending to and working with a particular type of architect. It was actually kinda hurtful to me to read that passage ... It's really hard to find a serious anthropologist who doesn't understand that architecture is more than just ... function and appeal. There's two edited volumes entitled Architectural Anthropology. My best friend from high school is in an MA Program (trained in Architecture) is looking into MA programs that involve social scientific approaches to architecture. If you are going to distinguish yourself an architectural anthropologist people will expect you to have some grounding in the fundamental literature of the field. If you want to call yourself an anthropologist (and after five years of studying and six months of fieldwork, I'm not willing to) people are going to expect you to have a grounding in some of the fundamental texts of both field (anthropology and architecture). If you are not ... then you have to come up with some sort of justification. Until you can actually demonstrate how your work fits in with ... the vast array of architectural anthropology already produced ... your going to have trouble verifying your legitimacy. I'm just trying to help. But of course I'm only coming from one side of the perspective. I would highly suggest you at least read some of those authors ... they all present various anthropological perspectives on architecture, and none of them are exceptionally difficult to grasp. Bachelard's prose, actually, is quite beautiful and I think the most pertinent to your interest. It's like reading theory written in a delightful poem. I returned his book to the library this morning so it's there. (The Poetics of Space). It will be preeminently helpful to your MA Thesis, if not your career goals. At least the ability to drop his name will be."
There are a couple of things that I would like to say to address this reaction. To start at the beginning I in no way wished to criticize anthropologists. I think many of these critiques come from the poorly-written Introduction. Therefore I would like to look at my intro with a more critical eye. As I said in the paper itself "Spatial anthropology has become increasingly popular, but overall anthropologists are not accustomed to dealing with architecture." This particular reaction suggests that I may be incorrect in saying this last part of the sentence. Indeed this individual may be correct, though historically anthropologists have been much more interested in studying kinship patterns and a wide variety of things that don't include architecture. I do not wish to suggest this to be problematic, anthropologists can and should study everything. As just one example, my MA Thesis has turned to embracing business anthropology, a field which I think is extremely helpful and necessary. This is also true for marketing which has embraced anthropology in relation to product development and advertisements along with a wide variety of other types of anthropology which I do not wish to dwell on.
Continuing on with the paper itself this reaction draws on my next sentence which may have been poorly worded: "This disconnect between anthropology and architecture may be primarily due to the fact that up until now architecture only fulfills two roles for the anthropologist, function and art." I think it would be more correct to read: "This disconnect between anthropology and architecture may be primarily due to the fact that up until now architecture only fulfills two roles, function and art." For in reality these are the two roles that architects and architectural theorists have reserved for architecture. This has little if anything to do with anthropologists.
Also I believe this question to be problematic: "Would architecture then become something important to study?" This is not what I really want to say here at all. For I really am not interested in trying to get more people to study architecture. Ultimately that would be great but it is not my specific aim. My specific aim is to get people to help architects in their role of creating architecture. I also wish for architects to understand other fields (including anthropology but also psychology and sociology) and how these other fields affect the day to day work of architects.
Finally I also wish to address a key point brought up in this article. That being the amount of knowledge that I lack. Despite the fact that this may be disputed I do indeed embrace the fact that I am a practicing anthropologist. This is not based on the number of courses I have taken in the department of anthropology. What it is based on is the fact that I embrace anthropology in what I do and how I live my life. I have been using anthropological methods daily for the last 10 years of my life. I have lived in other cultures and "gone native" ending up marrying one of these locals and trying my hardest to change myself to embrace his culture. I have experienced culture shock to the nth degree. I have spent a large amount of time studying cultures and languages. I have written both a BA and an MA that rely on anthropological methods and theories. This does not allow me to say that I am the best anthropologist out there or the ideal model of an anthropologist. I am far from either of these. However I can and do look at the world with an anthropological eye.
As far as being an architect goes, I am anything but. I have taken a few classes in architecture and read a few books but never practiced it nor do I understand much about the process at all. I fully understand this as being problematic and wish to spend as long as it takes now to remedy this. I wish to get my PhD in architectural theory. In order to further this I wish to spend the coming year volunteering and working with architects, as well as taking classes at Archeworks so I can better understand the architectural process. Moreover I wish to go to conferences that embrace architecture in relation to other fields.
Finally it is important for me to note that I have not read very much and will also be spending as much time as possible fixing this issue starting as soon as I graduate from the University of Chicago. Any suggestions that anyone has with this regard are extremely helpful and necessary.
"Nearly every seriously-trained anthropologist looks at "architecture" beyond being merely functional and pretty. Nearly everything I write about of heritage preservation in Cartagena and Luang Prabang involves attending to and working with a particular type of architect. It was actually kinda hurtful to me to read that passage ... It's really hard to find a serious anthropologist who doesn't understand that architecture is more than just ... function and appeal. There's two edited volumes entitled Architectural Anthropology. My best friend from high school is in an MA Program (trained in Architecture) is looking into MA programs that involve social scientific approaches to architecture. If you are going to distinguish yourself an architectural anthropologist people will expect you to have some grounding in the fundamental literature of the field. If you want to call yourself an anthropologist (and after five years of studying and six months of fieldwork, I'm not willing to) people are going to expect you to have a grounding in some of the fundamental texts of both field (anthropology and architecture). If you are not ... then you have to come up with some sort of justification. Until you can actually demonstrate how your work fits in with ... the vast array of architectural anthropology already produced ... your going to have trouble verifying your legitimacy. I'm just trying to help. But of course I'm only coming from one side of the perspective. I would highly suggest you at least read some of those authors ... they all present various anthropological perspectives on architecture, and none of them are exceptionally difficult to grasp. Bachelard's prose, actually, is quite beautiful and I think the most pertinent to your interest. It's like reading theory written in a delightful poem. I returned his book to the library this morning so it's there. (The Poetics of Space). It will be preeminently helpful to your MA Thesis, if not your career goals. At least the ability to drop his name will be."
There are a couple of things that I would like to say to address this reaction. To start at the beginning I in no way wished to criticize anthropologists. I think many of these critiques come from the poorly-written Introduction. Therefore I would like to look at my intro with a more critical eye. As I said in the paper itself "Spatial anthropology has become increasingly popular, but overall anthropologists are not accustomed to dealing with architecture." This particular reaction suggests that I may be incorrect in saying this last part of the sentence. Indeed this individual may be correct, though historically anthropologists have been much more interested in studying kinship patterns and a wide variety of things that don't include architecture. I do not wish to suggest this to be problematic, anthropologists can and should study everything. As just one example, my MA Thesis has turned to embracing business anthropology, a field which I think is extremely helpful and necessary. This is also true for marketing which has embraced anthropology in relation to product development and advertisements along with a wide variety of other types of anthropology which I do not wish to dwell on.
Continuing on with the paper itself this reaction draws on my next sentence which may have been poorly worded: "This disconnect between anthropology and architecture may be primarily due to the fact that up until now architecture only fulfills two roles for the anthropologist, function and art." I think it would be more correct to read: "This disconnect between anthropology and architecture may be primarily due to the fact that up until now architecture only fulfills two roles, function and art." For in reality these are the two roles that architects and architectural theorists have reserved for architecture. This has little if anything to do with anthropologists.
Also I believe this question to be problematic: "Would architecture then become something important to study?" This is not what I really want to say here at all. For I really am not interested in trying to get more people to study architecture. Ultimately that would be great but it is not my specific aim. My specific aim is to get people to help architects in their role of creating architecture. I also wish for architects to understand other fields (including anthropology but also psychology and sociology) and how these other fields affect the day to day work of architects.
Finally I also wish to address a key point brought up in this article. That being the amount of knowledge that I lack. Despite the fact that this may be disputed I do indeed embrace the fact that I am a practicing anthropologist. This is not based on the number of courses I have taken in the department of anthropology. What it is based on is the fact that I embrace anthropology in what I do and how I live my life. I have been using anthropological methods daily for the last 10 years of my life. I have lived in other cultures and "gone native" ending up marrying one of these locals and trying my hardest to change myself to embrace his culture. I have experienced culture shock to the nth degree. I have spent a large amount of time studying cultures and languages. I have written both a BA and an MA that rely on anthropological methods and theories. This does not allow me to say that I am the best anthropologist out there or the ideal model of an anthropologist. I am far from either of these. However I can and do look at the world with an anthropological eye.
As far as being an architect goes, I am anything but. I have taken a few classes in architecture and read a few books but never practiced it nor do I understand much about the process at all. I fully understand this as being problematic and wish to spend as long as it takes now to remedy this. I wish to get my PhD in architectural theory. In order to further this I wish to spend the coming year volunteering and working with architects, as well as taking classes at Archeworks so I can better understand the architectural process. Moreover I wish to go to conferences that embrace architecture in relation to other fields.
Finally it is important for me to note that I have not read very much and will also be spending as much time as possible fixing this issue starting as soon as I graduate from the University of Chicago. Any suggestions that anyone has with this regard are extremely helpful and necessary.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Lead up And Spin Off of Bjarke Ingels' TED Talk
Recently I had the wonderful idea to spend my spring break doing as many activities related to architecture as possible. Fortunately this included one of Chicago Architecture Foundation's Wednesday lunch lectures on the Wheeler Kearns Architecture Firm and some of the amazing projects they have been doing recently. At the end of this lecture I had the opportunity to meet a student visiting from somewhere on the west coast. She invited me to the SFI 10+1 Conference which she was planning on going to that same weekend. At first I thought it impossible for me to attend a Conference that was so soon but I contacted Design Corps anyways to ask them if it would be possible. Fortunately I was able to attend the conference. Since then my motivation to be an architectural anthropologist has sky rocketed. During the Conference there was one speech in particular done by Tom Fisher which gave a call specifically to anthropologists to help in the field of architecture.
Since this time I have met a large number of people who work with changing the field of architecture and other fields of design. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I am entering the last month of my masters program at the University of Chicago, I will not have much time to post on this site. Therefore the majority of my posts (like my last post Architecture = Building + Art + People) will be posts of papers I am doing for my class entitled Academic / Professional Writing. I will do my best to post on other topics prior to the first week in June (when I will be graduating). However most of my posts will come after that date.
I would like to spend the rest of this particular post adding to a TED Talk given by Bjarke Ingels which you can find at this site: http://www.ted.com/talks/bjarke_ingels_3_warp_speed_architecture_tales.html . Aside from Ingels' beautiful accent and the fact that his name was brought up at a meeting I had today with an anthropologist working for an architecture firm here in Chicago, there is no particular reason for me to start out discussing this particular TED talk. I will start by describing what I am not interested in doing. I am not interested in critiquing his talk or even discussing the entirety of his talk, only very specific points which he brings up. This is also not a critique of Bjarke Ingels himself. This is the only talk that I have heard him give, so it is very unfair for me to criticize his theories in general. Instead what I am interested in doing is adding to what he has in this particular talk to give another idea altogether.
Many of the projects Ingels presents still hark back to this Miesian idea of being able to create the same building anywhere. Design wise, similarities can be drawn from the library in Coppenhagen that Ingels' designed and DC6 by ICE architects + Trinity and Associates in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam which was featured in today's DesignBoom. Ultimately the idea is similar to taking a tower and twisting it like one would a slinky. Similarities can also be drawn from the balconies of Jeanne Gang's Aqua Tower in Chicago to the "Leonardo di Caprio balconies" which Ingels' discusses. Ingels himself refers to the fact that the outside is a "Scandinavian version of the Spanish steps in Rome." There is a complete lack of localization, as I mentioned in the beginning the same building could be built anywhere.
Ingels goes on to talk about the fact that this is an idea embraced at the core of the architectural process itself. In creating the design for one client one ends up coming up with the idea that fits for a totally different client in a totally different culture. In my personal opinion this should not be the case at all. The design process should be so localized that moving it from 57th Street in Hyde Park to 43rd Street in Bronzeville (two neighborhoods in the confines of Chicago) should make a vast difference as the building is speaking to extremely different audiences. In this way a thought brought up for the design in Hyde Park would seem absurd for a design in Bronzeville and vice versa. This is, however, not what happens in the architectural process.
Throughout the rest of Ingels' talk he discusses some truly amazing architectural feats the firm has created with regard to sustainable design. Which could literally change the landscape of future buildings and cities. He also discusses the People's Building which they created for the Shanghai Expo. This building succeeds in bringing in culture on some very literal levels, with the Chinese character for people and the ideas of the building fitting the cultural ideas of one Chinese man in particular. Unfortunately Ingels' does not discuss how these buildings have impacted the people that live inside them. The closest he gets to these ideas is when he talks about how one particular building has affected the view from his window. Nor has he discussed how the People's Building has affected the Chinese people of Shanghai, whether the building has been accepted and whether the ideas embraced in the building itself are of one individual or many.
Ingels' discusses the fact that Shanghai has developed from a city of bicycles to a city of cars. However he compares this to Coppenhagen which is "expanding the bicycle lanes." There are a couple cultural problems with comparing these two cities like this. First of all I fear this gives people the idea that China itself has moved away from bicycles which, as one can see from Beijing, is far from true. What Ingels' neglected to mention is as Shanghai and other Chinese cities have embraced the car they have done so to the extent that in many places there are too many cars for the roads creating spaces where bicycles are more efficient than cars.
On two totally separate notes, first it is interesting to compare the architectural process as described here by Ingels, with regard to Darwin, to the design process discussed by Liz Sanders in her speech entitled "Exploring Co-creation on a Large Scale: Designing for New Healthcare Environments and Experiences ."
Secondly, although I have yet had time to read it, what Ingles describes with regard to the office being an archive sounds very similar to what Jeanne Gang discusses in her new book Reveal: Studio Gang Architects.
Since this time I have met a large number of people who work with changing the field of architecture and other fields of design. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I am entering the last month of my masters program at the University of Chicago, I will not have much time to post on this site. Therefore the majority of my posts (like my last post Architecture = Building + Art + People) will be posts of papers I am doing for my class entitled Academic / Professional Writing. I will do my best to post on other topics prior to the first week in June (when I will be graduating). However most of my posts will come after that date.
I would like to spend the rest of this particular post adding to a TED Talk given by Bjarke Ingels which you can find at this site: http://www.ted.com/talks/bjarke_ingels_3_warp_speed_architecture_tales.html . Aside from Ingels' beautiful accent and the fact that his name was brought up at a meeting I had today with an anthropologist working for an architecture firm here in Chicago, there is no particular reason for me to start out discussing this particular TED talk. I will start by describing what I am not interested in doing. I am not interested in critiquing his talk or even discussing the entirety of his talk, only very specific points which he brings up. This is also not a critique of Bjarke Ingels himself. This is the only talk that I have heard him give, so it is very unfair for me to criticize his theories in general. Instead what I am interested in doing is adding to what he has in this particular talk to give another idea altogether.
Many of the projects Ingels presents still hark back to this Miesian idea of being able to create the same building anywhere. Design wise, similarities can be drawn from the library in Coppenhagen that Ingels' designed and DC6 by ICE architects + Trinity and Associates in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam which was featured in today's DesignBoom. Ultimately the idea is similar to taking a tower and twisting it like one would a slinky. Similarities can also be drawn from the balconies of Jeanne Gang's Aqua Tower in Chicago to the "Leonardo di Caprio balconies" which Ingels' discusses. Ingels himself refers to the fact that the outside is a "Scandinavian version of the Spanish steps in Rome." There is a complete lack of localization, as I mentioned in the beginning the same building could be built anywhere.
Ingels goes on to talk about the fact that this is an idea embraced at the core of the architectural process itself. In creating the design for one client one ends up coming up with the idea that fits for a totally different client in a totally different culture. In my personal opinion this should not be the case at all. The design process should be so localized that moving it from 57th Street in Hyde Park to 43rd Street in Bronzeville (two neighborhoods in the confines of Chicago) should make a vast difference as the building is speaking to extremely different audiences. In this way a thought brought up for the design in Hyde Park would seem absurd for a design in Bronzeville and vice versa. This is, however, not what happens in the architectural process.
Throughout the rest of Ingels' talk he discusses some truly amazing architectural feats the firm has created with regard to sustainable design. Which could literally change the landscape of future buildings and cities. He also discusses the People's Building which they created for the Shanghai Expo. This building succeeds in bringing in culture on some very literal levels, with the Chinese character for people and the ideas of the building fitting the cultural ideas of one Chinese man in particular. Unfortunately Ingels' does not discuss how these buildings have impacted the people that live inside them. The closest he gets to these ideas is when he talks about how one particular building has affected the view from his window. Nor has he discussed how the People's Building has affected the Chinese people of Shanghai, whether the building has been accepted and whether the ideas embraced in the building itself are of one individual or many.
Ingels' discusses the fact that Shanghai has developed from a city of bicycles to a city of cars. However he compares this to Coppenhagen which is "expanding the bicycle lanes." There are a couple cultural problems with comparing these two cities like this. First of all I fear this gives people the idea that China itself has moved away from bicycles which, as one can see from Beijing, is far from true. What Ingels' neglected to mention is as Shanghai and other Chinese cities have embraced the car they have done so to the extent that in many places there are too many cars for the roads creating spaces where bicycles are more efficient than cars.
On two totally separate notes, first it is interesting to compare the architectural process as described here by Ingels, with regard to Darwin, to the design process discussed by Liz Sanders in her speech entitled "Exploring Co-creation on a Large Scale: Designing for New Healthcare Environments and Experiences ."
Secondly, although I have yet had time to read it, what Ingles describes with regard to the office being an archive sounds very similar to what Jeanne Gang discusses in her new book Reveal: Studio Gang Architects.
Architecture = Building + Art + People
Anthropologists deal with people all the time, along with their culture including languages and even spaces in which people interact. Spatial anthropology has become increasingly popular, but overall anthropologists are not accustomed to dealing with architecture. This disconnect between anthropology and architecture may be primarily due to the fact that up until now architecture only fulfills two roles for the anthropologist, function and art. Architecture fulfills a functional role of providing individuals with shelter and providing spaces for anthropologists to study. Other than this architecture is simply another form of art, it looks pretty. But what if architecture could do more than just look pretty? What if architecture could have a positive or negative impact on the day-to-day lives of common people? Would architecture then become something important to study? Ultimately there have been two major strides away from the human focus in architecture which we can understand better by taking a closer look at the past.
Historically, just like learning to walk, architecture has been something learned by all people. Everyone built their own home, so everyone knew how to build and there was no need for individuals to be paid for this specific task. During the industrial revolution tasks became much more specific and people stopped building their own homes, electing instead to have someone else build these structures for them. These individuals were called architects, or were they? For is this not really just a builder? Builders differ from architects in the fact that architects include art in their construction. This move towards art is one step in the process of architecture moving away from people and thereby anthropology.
The second step away from people comes much more recently, as people have become aware that we are destroying the Earth, and need to do everything possible to save this planet. One major preservation effort is building structures that are better for the environment, and provide healthier work and living conditions. In order to improve these conditions the US Green Building Council has created a relatively new form of building certification called LEED or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Due to the fact that LEED is a nation-wide certification it is impossible to focus on incorporating the needs of localized individuals. Therefore LEED is ultimately not only a step toward the environment but also away from people.
In the end, despite their historical unity, these two steps away from locals have made it impossible for architects and anthropologists to communicate. Unfortunately, the two fields do not communicate and therefore do not exchange ideas. Since anthropologists and architects began their separation anthropologists have learned a lot of methodological techniques that are extremely important for architects. What architects need now is for anthropologists to come back and teach them these techniques, heal the bonds between the two fields.
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