Davies in the intestine.

    I would firstly like to conclude by saying that I have enjoyed the array of books and essays we have had to read. They have strengthened some of my own thoughts and views as well as stirred up a few new ones.

How is the modern day architect suppose to act? Is he to be of complete ignorance to existing methods trail blazing his own ideas with complete disregard of even making any money. Or do you copy what everyone else is doing and just exist in the current world. I will compare this to the studio tutor. They are more times than not just a product of current architectural methods. They might be fashionable or just safe methods of completing your course, but none of them original. They expect you to tow the line and do what they say so they can feel high and mighty that they have controlled you and essential earnt them selves another part 1 or part 2. Do you have to hang to their every word? Fuck no. I would say this is complete bullshit and they are nothing but the architectural equivalent of the Wizard of Oz. You follow the yellow brick road all the way to the end of your course doing what they say and then you might pass, if they like it. So you do what they say and it still comes down to an opinion. They can't even guarantee a pass because in the end they are Dorithy walking the yellow brick road to the wizard of the course leader.

     So I would say do what you want to do, but don't be a complete ignorant bastard as you will not get anywhere without compromise. Listening is very important, communication is key, not just in architecture in life. I find that as long as you have fulfilled the goals that you wanted to achieve then you can be successful. Listening to the tutors is important, being controlled by them is not. All that matters is that you fulfill the criteria of the course to get you certificate, not massage egos. So yes trail blaze, but think carefully about impact on the way. Engineer your future rather than throwing line and hoping something catches.

As a matter of the working world how are you to implement this though? This is where you have to be the most intelligent. As the studio tutor has turned into the entire world. The world is now criting you and couldn't give two shits about you because they are managing without you. This is where a bit of respective towing the line is important as you need to establish yourself. Communication, is important. You can get know where without contacts and if people don't know what you're capable of then they will never think of you. How do you get your work shown to the masses. Well as the Zaha article has taught us, the media. The media is your good friend, showing your work to the masses. And what with internet, these days this has never been easier. Zaha's exaggeration of only ever reading magazines seems excessive but highlights the importance of the media to being successful in the architecture game. And game is all it is. Know the rules and you can play. Be intelligent and strategic and you'll do well.

     One thing I have taken from Eagleton and that I have always agreed with is change is good. I think its something I can really relate to as I worked in the same practice after my degree for 3 years before coming back to university. In this world I found architects that had become cad monkeys and people with no qualifications doing better jobs than those who are still paying back their student loans. The first year I was some what oblivious, just a bright eyed student new to the game, though as I got deeper the realities arose. Problems with management, with contractors, with lawyers. A practice that seemed respectably established was really in shatters and nobody wanted to admit it. Change was needed but first you have to admit the problems to then deal with them. This was something they were not willing to do, I could make a fuss but that only ends up making you look bad. So what do you do? Well I took the view to learn what I could. It was mostly what not to do but learning from others mistakes is probably better than fucking things up yourself. I think Eagleton was admitting that today is important but learn for the past as well as the present. Neither is to be ignored. If you ignore the past you are doomed to repeat it and if you aren't watching the present you are doomed not to see your own mistakes until the shit has hit the fan.

Change, I think we do have to change to survive. I am a different person than I was before started back on this course. Definitely for the better. I think the working world tries to force you into things you didn't think you would do but if you don't agree and they aren't willing to change then you have to make the big step and find another place of work. You have worth to another practice, you just have to be brave enough to make the change. Change and adaptation, production even of a new you. Let society aid in this production but never let it force production you know is not what you want to do. This goes back to being yourself.

This small dose of theory has reignited a fire that practice work started to diminish. I am an animal for learning, and when this stopped I think I started to lose myself slightly. I hope there is more theory like this in the future, but also have now found a new drive to search it out for myself. I am now to pave my own yellow brick road, and I decide what is at the end of it.

Terry Eagleton - After Theory

     Eagleton is quick to admit the changes that have taken place in life and in theory. He draws what I would consider a bit of an extreme picture “the politics of masturbation exert far more fascination the the politics of the Middle East” and “middle-class students huddle diligently in libraries, at work on sensationalist subjects like vampirism and eye gouging, cyborgs and porno movies”. Although I think he is trying to emphasise the change that has taken place in the world. We see millions of images everyday and you can now openly explore any image you choose.

     He embraces the changes, “one of the towering achievements of cultural theory has been to establish gender and sexuality as legitimate study as well as political importance”. Theory is changing as a result of freedom of expression. There was a time that a bikini on the beach would have been indecent exposure. “Cultural theory is a at present behaving rather like a celibate middle-aged professor who has stumbled absent minded upon sex and is frequently making up for lost time”. This is down to the fact that sex sells. Women, with slim and curvy bodies and men with toned bodies excite everyone. It gets ur impulses going and we feel good about it. In an age tha ta girl that can barley sing but looks hot can have a number one single there is no other answer. I don't think its that we are “making up for lost time”, I think we know what we like. We probably always have, but now it is freely admitable. Albeit with a barrier of sexual harassment, but you have to stop somewhere.

     I like Eagleton's talk of the death of the puritan. A person that is strict in moral or religious matters. “Pleasure falls outside the realm of knowledge and thus is dangerously anarchic.. traditionally it is known as moral discourse. But political discourse would do just as well”. I could relate some studio tutors as puritans. In the way that you try to think outside the box, but what ever you do, you have to be a slave to their views of Architecture. Who made them the governors of architecture? University architecture is an expression of thought away from the working world but I have to tow the line of the tutor. We have broken free from the puritan but we will never break free from ignorance.

Henrie Lefebvre - The Production of Space – Social Space

    Production is everything. Everything we do, everything we say. We are products of our parents, society, and even our own minds. “production has a cardinal role: first the idea produces the world; next, nature produces human beings; and the human being in turn, by dint of struggle and labour, produces at once history, knowledge and self consciousness”. I agree but taking this back to the beginning what produced the idea. If you believe in God, who produced him? If you believe in the big bang, what was the precise conditions that produced that? And what about that which produced the big bang?

One could say we did. These are simply man made ideas that have produced the world. Who knows what is true, they are in a sense theories that man made reality because millions of people followed the idea. Global warming could be put in the same respect. Yes polar ice caps are melting but thousands of years ago many deserts had rivers and we aren't trying to get those back. So once again the idea is planted and naturally the human is produced from the idea. Human beings “produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”.

     Production being labour in some respects. “The more restricted the notion becomes the less it connotes creativity, inventiveness or imagination; rather it tends to refer to labour”. As a matter of wealth a human creates the idea. The idea is then organised into production and labour produces it. This is interesting because is production the same as creation? “a product can be reproduced exactly and is in fact the result of repetitive acts and gestures. Nature creates and does not produce”. I would argue that nature is a type of production. Though you could say my mother created me and then produced the man I am today. So maybe creation has to come before production. Perhaps creation is the idea. Then the idea is put into production from that.

Howl and other poems - Allen Gainsberg

     As well as being a rant from the pit of Gainsberg's brain, Howl is also an admission that these problems and people do exist. That not everyone has the 4 bedroom house with white picket fence, if anybody does at all. He incites his own ignorance and prejudice whilst exposing others. He admits the culture of these different people from drugs to sex to deprivation.

     The start of the poem is clearly about drug and mental issues, “minds destroyed” and “angry fix”. Was he talking of the person he dedicated the poem to. Carl Soloman. One thing I have noticed from Gainsberg's poems is that he starts his poems with what's on his mind and then elaborates form there. Its because of this that I feel the start of the poem is about Carl and other friends of his. This is clear further to the end of the poem when he writes “ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time “. The poem shows his frustration of the destruction of his generation that's being suppressed by conforming America and, taking from the title howl, making him and others go crazy. One of the people Gainsberg is talking about could be heard howling at the moon when it is full or at least that's how the “normal” American would think of them. Howl is a view of lives of Gainsberg, his friends and acquaintances. Those that are close to him and those that are in the same dark jazz bars for different reasons. So why were these people the “best minds of my generation”? Well I think it was because they were able to do what they wanted. They could think outside the conformist American box and see an open world that has no boundaries. Something that Gainsberg strived to do, he respected them highly and even looked up to them.

Air Guitar by Dave Hickey - A home in neon

    “Home” Dave Hickey considers Las Vegas this because he feels he can live his life the way he chooses with “a source of comforts and reassurances that are unavailable elsewhere”. I have not been to Vegas but imagine it to be a place of bright lights and showbiz that anyone that has a bit of money and a thirst for the bright lights can enjoy. Cast, colour or creed bare no importance, its there for all to enjoy. So Hickey is saying only there he can get away from the ignorance of the rest of America, even the world, and live an open life. He believes that in Vegas those that wouldn't do well in other parts of America can live a good life and have the 2.5 children. Possibly in American “the land of opportunity”, Hickey has found Vegas to be the only part where this is true.”A town where outsiders can still get works... a town that can settle as the heart destination”. He empahsises this point by talking about a waitress that was transferred out of some hick town to Vegas and was very happy, as she felt she now had a chance to move “up to cocktails, where the tips were better”. Vegas had opened a new door for her as it had done for many other people across America.

     I welcome the statement “Vegas presents a flat line hierarchy”. “Membership in the university club will not get you comped at Caesars”. I have always found social hierarchy to be bullshit. It is kept alive by the grouping of people that believe they have status. This status is just sugar coated ignorance that they have built collectively. Though when out out of this comfort zone they feel threatened as their tweed jackets have no importance in the newly shaping modern world. Vegas possibly being advanced in this way does threaten them as their ignorant minds cannot accept that they are not an elite anymore. This is comparable to the modern architecture student and the old architect. The modern day architecture student has grown up in the open world of computers, T.V. and internet, whilst the old architect has grown up in the world of drawing boards and calligraphy. Although the latter is still important the modern day student can do both and more whilst the old architect chooses to ignore anything new.

     In the next 10 – 20 years some people will struggle for work as they find themselves under skilled and overpaid. The world is changing massively, as it is I'm writing a 4000 word essay as a blog for the internet. Culture is changing, and whilst some people would not agree with it or hide I welcome it. There is an opening in this new world that is there for the taking, you just have to make the effort to take it.

Mike Davis - Sand Fear and money in Dubai

     Mike Davis starts by introducing Dubai as a complete paradise, “you are glued to your window. The scene below is astonishing” ,”you gasp at the even more improbable vision ahead” and “rubbing you eyes with wonderment”. He describes it in such detail you almost feel that you're there and with statements like that you want to be. At first you wonder what is so evil about this place. Paradise maybe but evil? Well greed is an evil and it seems Dubai is fueled by it. “$5,000 per night room” that's basically my uni fees for the year, blown in a night. Where does it stop when the stakes are so high?

     “Mulitbillionaire Sheik Mo” says “I want to be number one”. Number one at what? Spending the most money? Building the biggest... everything? Does that make you number one? Is is this just a case of small dick syndrome? Its never going to hide his small cock. I think we are getting our first glimpse of evil here. A place for money hungry oil barrens to whom money is toilet paper. But when money is no issue what else can you do? Once you've bought a football club, got a fleet of 50 cars and got houses in every major city around the world, where do you go from there? Well you might as well build an entire city. Why not if you have a near in-exhaustive income? Though I don't think Dubai will ever be classes as a number one city, only a cesspool for the rich and famous.

     I do though enjoy that Dubai pushes the boundaries for Architectural wonderment. “Dubai may be considered the emerging prototype for the 21^st century”. Prototype is a very good word here. It's a model for future cities. Tried and tested methods. Some may work well and be implemented across the world, whilst others will fail and be cast into the desert sands. I wonder how long this will last though. When the rest of the world has learnt from Dubai what will happen then?

The Communist Hypothesis - This crisis is the spectalce: What is the real? - Alain Badiou

      Spectacle indeed! To choose one word to sum up the economic climate this would be it. Everybody was looking, waiting, hoping for it not to happen but it was always going to happen - I mean it had to happen. If the property market grew exponentially by the time i wanted to buy a property it probably wouldn't be able to happen.
      Badiou describes the entire performance as if it were an action film, like Independence Day. You see the spaceships coming, blocking out the sky, everybody watches, some people know what's going to happen. They have the inside knowledge and are holed up in some underground bunker. But for the rest of us? Nope, we are obliterated by the plasma ray and what little is left of the survivors have to pick up the pieces. If you were a major character in the film you survived without a scratch but us extras (if alive) are missing family members, limbs and of course our homes.
      Badiou says "I trust them,  I have every confidence in the firefighters", but do we have a choice? You or I have never and will never decide the fate of a bank. Who does? What does? The banks, to me, are the aliens. "Unreal economy" What would happen if the alien computer that controlled all the spaceships was destroyed? Would this be our Independence Day? Maybe then we'll see a "real economy".
      "Irresponsible", "irrational" and most importantly here "predatory". Preying on the human beings basic need to have his or her nest. Paid for by a mortgage that can't be afforded, for a house that 30 years ago wasn't worth half of that mortgage value.
      "A system that hands the organisation of our collective life over to the lowest instincts, to greed, rivalry and unconscious egotism". Pretty much, the government knew of the alien attack, did nothing to stop it. And then when it happened, somehow pulled billions of pounds out to help the economy. Why was this money not already in the economy? If there were enough houses at a reasonable price to buy there wouldn't have been a ridiculous growth in housing prices and there wouldn't be a mortgage problem. Why didn't they spend this money doing that years ago? There's never any prevention with the government. Just action after the crisis has happened and ignore it until it becomes a real problem.
      Badiou says "all this came about because tens of millions of people are in such low incomes that they cannot afford anywhere to live. This is the real essence of the financial crisis is a housing crisis". He then goes on to say "the only desirable outcome of all this is the hope that the real will still be what it was before the crisis". God (if there is one) no. Back to what? Over priced homes I can't afford? Just so you can live in or near the city. If this is the real then I don't want to be part of it. But in some ways it is too late for me. I'm already stuck in London, with debt I can't repay anytime soon. Or is this playing into the hands of the bank and the government, so I just get my comfortable desk job? Screw that I'm going to fly my spaceship into the mothership and send them a big fuck you. For "the real" is what you make it.