On Colin Rowe's 'The mathematics of the ideal vilaa and other essays' and 'La Tourette'

Oh my god I was so much looking forward to this week’s text! Andrea Palladio! One of my favourites! Finally something architecture related! As much as I enjoyed some of the previous text that I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise, I do have to admit that I was happy to see this text on the list. After these exceptionally long texts by Eagleton and Lefebvre, with all these texts about communism and how bad this world is, finally I feel like I am a bit back into my comfort zone with the Rowe text! And it is about one of my favourite Villas from Palladio. ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays’ by Colin Rowe does have a very academic flavour and in some parts it actually feels like reading a bare description of the two villas he is talking about. It is a bit as if you read a book for your research on either of them for your dissertation. But it actually is a comparison between Palladio’s Villa Malcontenta (or at least that is the name it is known by as it is situated in Malcontenta di Mira near Venice, the actual name is ‘Villa Foscari’ named after the building owners Nicolò and Alvise Foscari) and Le Corbusier’s Villa Stein in Garches which at first might sound a bit strange given the fact that Villa Malcontenta was built in the 16^th century whereas Villa Stein in the 1920’s. And I have to admit, I never noticed the similarity between these too before. But I come back to that later. A negative thing that I have to mention about the Rowe text is, that it really doesn’t give you any detailed information about the two buildings except for the mathematical similarities. He kind of throws you straight into the deep end of the pool and starts with his mathematical analysis of the Villas. He talks more about Palladio’s famous ‘Villa Rotonda’ as about the main subjects of his essay. There is only a two-line wannabe introduction and then BAM!!! Spatial ratios!

Palladio was actually one of the first architects that I came across and one which triggered my interest in architecture. I love the ‘Villa Rotonda’ and am quite obsessed with the beauty that lies in geometry myself and am particularly interested in the golden ratio ( as you can all see from my name cassiopeia11235813, these are the first 8 digits of the Fibonacci Sequence, that’s because 8 is my favourite number. Why? Because of its geometry and because it also is the sign of infinity if you tilt it to the side. Yeah go ahead you can now analyse me haha). Unfortunately if you dare to design something that is geometrical today, it is deemed boring and is called a box. With these masters of architecture long gone I do feel reminded of the previous text by Eagleton, all great big thinkers, the geniuses gone and who follows their footsteps? Zaha Hadid? (If you read my earlier blogs you can probably hear my sarcastic snorting now). Talking about time, this actually brings me back to the text and the time it was published in.  It was first published in Architectural Review in 1947 and then republished within the book I have read, which is a series of essays, in 1976.  The 1947 edition as a post-war architectural critique must have, and in fact did have, had people shaking their heads about it. Drawing a parallel between a 16^th century and a modern 1920’s building was not exactly fashionable at that time and  institutions insisted that modern architecture came from a 19^th century engineers’ aesthetic and had no roots linking it to classical architecture ( which of course is complete bollocks). Rowe is trying to draw a comparison between the formal qualities of historicism (Villa Malcontenta) and the modern movement (Villa Stein) by assessing the two villas by the buildings’ plans and elevations. Rowe shows the resemblance in the villas’ compliance to mathematical formulas as well as geometric principles. These two buildings seem to be unlike each other in their forms but  actually do share

                                    “a comparable distribution of lines of support”

which Rowe shows in his analysis of plan diagrams which show that the two buildings share identical spatial ratios on the exterior with the lines of support placed regularly at proportions of 2:1:2:1:2. Both buildings are cubic structures of the same dimensions (8x5,5x5m). The structure of these two however is a bit different, Villa Stein is column-supported and Villa Malcontenta has a bearing wall structure. The facades are completely different with Le Corbusier’s Villa consisting of a series of horizontal strips whereas Palladio’s Villa is horizontally structured and diverted in three parts (base, piano nobile, attic). The roof structures are completely different but both very typical for their time. Villa Stein has a flat roof and Villa Malcontenta a Roman pediment style, pyramidal form. I was very surprised about this similarity and can only imagine what kind of uproar this must have caused in the late 40’s. I very much enjoyed reading about this and instantly tried to find out more about the Villa Stein because I must admit I had only heard the name once but never really looked it up. Villa Malcontenta of course is an entirely different story as I have many books on Palladio’s buildings and this particular one is one of my favourites. This Villa is one of his masterpieces I think, and the interior as well is exceptionally beautiful!!! I looked at some pictures and descriptions of Le Corbusier’s Villa Stein and have to say….it is really ugly hahaha. Oh boy, I don’t know what I expected, I know Corbusier’s style but maybe it was because I have looked back into my Palladio books and had all these beautiful pictures in my head, that looking at this concrete monster, was like a slap in the face. It feels so cold and dead and reminds me of a school or hospital rather than a place to live in. I find it astonishing that a building as big as the Villa Malcontenta has a completely different feel to it. Even the surrounding is not compromised by this big building. It is more like it grows out of the hill it is situated on and although it is a massive structure, for me, kind of blends in with its surrounding. Now the Villa Stein is quite the opposite. It looks like an eerie abandoned parking deck in the woods. It just doesn’t belong there. Which is strange as Rowe also mentions that Le Corbusier

 

‘has carefully indicated his relationships by regulating lines, dimensions and figures, and (…) places the ratio of the golden section, A : B = B : (A+B)’.

 As mentioned before, I am very interested in geometry and the golden ratio as well. I don’t know how Le Corbusier managed to design a building with the ultimate formula for beauty and perfection and ends up with such a dreadful building, but that’s just me. As we all know there is no accounting for taste. And this is just not my cup of tea. This now brings me to the second essay in the book that I read. It is Rowe’s text about ‘La Tourette’.

Yay we are given a proper introduction! He really describes the building and the surrounding this time, making it easier for someone who does not know anything about the building or has not been there to picture it. We learn about how it is perceived by Rowe which of course is not very objective but it really helps to understand the structure. ‘La Tourette’ (sorry but I always have to think of the disease…) was built as a self-contained building for silent monks. To accommodate the unique lifestyle of the monks, the monastery consists of a variety of rooms with various specific functions. There are one hundred individual cells, a refectory and a rooftop cloister, a church, a communal library and classrooms. Now, in comparison to the Villa Stein, I have to say, although to me the building is definitely not one of my favourites, it has a certain spirit to it. It does not feel as cold and dead and somewhat misplaced as it and despite being quite large, it does connect to its surrounding, which was chosen by Le Corbusier himself for its slopy bank with its magnificent views. Rowe however describes the facades and plans as disordered ‘But this is to parenthesize. For, though the ability to charge depth with surface, to condense spatial concavities into plane, to drag to its most eloquent pitch the dichotomy between the round and the flat is the absolutely distinguishing mark of Le Corbusier’s later style, the cerebrality which typifies Garches is not prominent at La Tourette. In spite of its dialectic, the Dominican convent is far from an intellectualistic building; but if like Garches, it presents itself as a single block, then, unlike Garches, it is a block which, if examined in terms of plan

'appears at first to contain in the church a major violation of all logical consistency’

   and says that the building shows

‘the divorce of physical reality and optical impression’.

Unfortunately Rowe does not really show the best sides of the building, this might be due to him thinking that

‘The quality of the church (…) is not to be photographed’

but I think that he did actually just miss important bits and pieces such as the view from the balcony that overlooks the whole complex and which was very important in Le Corbusier’s design. What I particularly miss in his text is a (detailed) description of the interior which I actually really like and think is important given the fact that the building is specifically designed with special functions for each room and much of the buildings ‘personality’ is probably only perceivable from the inside. For example the uneven spacing of the vertical concrete strips and the similar uneven spacing of the horizontal bits between them, to me look a little bit like bamboo growing out of the floor which I think becomes very evident in the picture below and really reminds me of the connection between monks and nature. I think Rowe also in a way neglects some of Corbusier’s intentions of the design. Le Corbusier wanted to

‘give the monks what men today need most: silence and peace (…).This Monastery does not show off; it is on the inside that it lives’

but Rowe describes the exterior as an

                                                                  ‘unmade bed’

and hardly ever mentioned anything about the interior although even according to Le Corbusier, this is probably the most important bit of the building. Therefore I think Rowe in a way fails to adequately describe and judge the building as too many things are left unmentioned. One other thing that already kind of annoyed me about the first Rowe text is the fact that he does not translate the quotes of Le Corbusier into English. If he wants to compare two quotations of two architects to make a point…well it would be helpful to understand both of them I have to say. But overall I quite enjoyed these two texts, probably more their subjects rather than the writing style of the author, but still, It was very interesting to lean about the similarities of two buildings that I would have never ever have thought of to have anything in common.

On Henri Lefebvre's 'The production of Space'

I really struggled reading the whole I thing I must say. I only managed to read about 10 pages in one go and then always needed a break so it took me some time to read through the whole text so I hope this all makes sense. In the second chapter of ‘The production of space’ by Henri Lefebvre, he talks about ‘social spaces’ , what they are and how they came into being.

‘(Social) space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather, it subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity — their (relative) order and/or (relative) disorder’

Lefebvre then takes Venice as an example to describe his idea of products, production, art and works. He starts off with describing the concept of production and says that ‘

There is nothing in history or in society, which does not have to be achieved and produced’

but that nature provides resources and therefore cannot be seen as producing things (I don’t agree with him on this but I come back to that later). Nature creates. It

‘supplies only use value’ as everything ‘either returns to nature or serves as a natural good’.

He then starts talking about the main subject of the chapter, space, and argues that it is an on-going production of spatial relations, it is not static nor a ‘pre-existing’ given. Space to him is the result of something that is produced materially.

 

‘Social space is produced and reproduced in connection with the forces of production (and with the relations of production). And these forces, as they develop, are not taking over a pre-existing, empty or neutral space, or a space determined solely by geography, climate, anthropology, or some other comparable consideration‘.

 He also thinks that there is a connection between capitalism in the modern world and the creation of

                                                                                ’abstract spaces’

which to him triggered social fragmentation and hierarchy as well as a homogenous culture. The spread of capitalism on a global basis to him affects cultures and environments by suppressing the local differences and conforming them to modern examples of how spaces should be like. Lefebvre says that a split between ‘micro’ (architecture) and ‘macro’ (urbanism) should have let to more diversity but that opposite happened instead.

‘repetition has everywhere defeated uniqueness,(…)the artificial and contrived have driven all spontaneity and naturalness from the field‘.

I do agree with him that there is a decline in uniqueness in modern architecture especially in urban spaces. If we look at the famous (and I think successful) examples of public spaces like piazzas and squares, there are only historic places popping into my mind like Piazza Navona in Rome, the Old Town Square in Prague or even our own lovely Trafalgar Square. All the modern (European) examples that I have been to are actually quite horrible and cold, they do not have anything unique about them, they could be pretty much everywhere in Europe. Try placing Piazza Navona somewhere else, yeah right, that doesn’t work. But I don’t think that’s to do with capitalism. It’s to do with globalisation, which of course does have a connection to capitalism as we can now buy pretty much anything from anywhere. But I think that the advanced technology has played the major part in the globalisation. It is now easy to live wherever you want and fly there in a couple of hours. This caused a mixing of cultures, which then caused an adjustment and a conformation of several different cultures. However, I am coming back to Lefebvre and his idea that nature does not produce but creates. As mentioned above, I do not agree with him on this. A flower for example is a product in a way as well. Nature does not just exist. It is produced by many different factors. A flower does not just bloom, it needs sun, water, soil, bees etc, it is produced by these factors, if one of these factors is missing, it would not exist nor bloom. Lefebvre says that we produce things to satisfy a certain need and that nature doesn’t do this as it

‘knows nothing of these creations (…) A rose has no why or wherefore; it blooms because it blooms’

 But that is not true. Everything exists for a reason, nature provides, and I dare to say produces, things that are needed. Everything interacts with each other, that’s the circle of life (great now I have the theme song of ‘The Lion King’ stuck in my head). Nature produces everything repeatedly, over and over again, which is, according to Lefebvre, a product. Venice on the other hand is a work to him. It was created, not produced as it was ‘born of the sea’ and not planned to look like something particular; it grew like this over a long time. However, he then says that it has now pretty much become a sort of art as the people now see it as a

                                                              ‘source of pleasure’

which threatens the city with extinction. This is actually true. The huge amount of people who visit Venice each year have actually caused many problems, such as disturbing the ecosystem of the lagoon and overcrowded spaces that turn Venice into a ‘living museum’.

On Terry Eagleton's After Theory

Pheeeeeew! This was long! I actually didn’t plan to read the whole book due to design work overload but for some reason I couldn’t stop at some point as I thought it was rather interesting and well written (did totally not expect to enjoy reading this!!!). In his book ‘After Theory’ Terry Eagleton says that we are

                                     ‘living in the aftermath of (…) high theory’

and describes his view on the change of cultural and literary theory over the past 50 odd years. The first half of the book, about the beginning of postmodern theory, although linguistically very well written, to me is somewhat unorganised and all over the place. I think he fails to get to the point and just strings together many statements, he stays too general in my opinion. But I do think that he is very ineloquent and there were many sentences I caught myself smiling or even laughing. For example when he was talking about how the study of the ‘everyday’ has changed in universities:

 

 ‘In some traditionalist universities not long ago, you could not research on authors who were still alive. This was a great incentive to slip a knife between their ribs one foggy evening, or a remarkable test of patience if your chosen novelist was in rude health and only thirty-four.’

 

The second half is much more focused and critical but is (for me) a bit annoying at the same time as he excessively criticises America. As much as I am not a big fan of a lot of things American, I did find it a bit over the top to basically blame America for everything evil and bad in the world. He kind of stereotyped America/Americans which contradicts his opinion early on in the book when he is talking about how bad it is that subjects in university have become trivial and that the students of today write about sex topics, pop culture and stereotypes rather than intellectual, traditional topics such as

                                                                 ‘Structuralism and Marxism’

 

which he says are now no longer

 

                                                                  ‘the sexy topics they were’.

 

There are now so many (new) subjects that one can study, that some of them are plain trivial and of lower class. Subjects of today’s essays have gone from

                                           ‘French Philosophy’ to ‘French Kissing’

. We live in a world where sex sells and ‘what is sexy instead is sex’. I very much agree with him on this. I think that today’s society is simply hyper-sexualised and in some aspects dumbed-down by media and sheer sensory overload. He then says that studying pleasure is pointless and rather unfulfilling as it is like

                              ‘analysing champagne rather than drinking the stuff’

It holds no value. Talking about the invention of new (weird) subjects, I must admit I had to think about some of my friends when I read this. Remember the time when you asked around what someone studies in university? The answer was clear and everyone would know what it means, it was: Medicine, Law, Architecture, Literature, English…pretty straight forward to understand, but most of my friends now study things that I can’t even tell you the name of because it’s one of these fancy new things that have one of these sesquipedalian names that sound like you study to be the next president of a country. And the worst thing is, I don’t think my friends know exactly what they are studying as well. They always say it’s hard to explain. Right. One of my friends studies ‘Gender Studies’, when I talked about this with one of my friends from university, he said that it sounds like my friend is studying how to get laid, I laughed really hard and then thought he was actually right. Eagleton says we need to come back to the big questions, we need to address them and seek change, avoiding stasis. He says it is now wonder that there are not many new great thinkers if the things they study now are as trivial as they have become.     

The main focus of his work however lies in the critique of postmodernism although I must say that this point is also one of the main issues (together with his excessive anti-Americanism) or weaknesses of the text as I think that he actually overlooks the presence of postmodernist thinking in his own work.  For example: He argues that postmodernism or postmodernists reject

‘totalities, universal values, grand historical narratives, solid foundations to human existence and the possibility of objective knowledge’

and that that is the reason why they cannot deal with contemporary politics as they believe that there is no such thing as objectivity, human nature and truth.

 

‘No idea is more unpopular with contemporary cultural theory than that of absolute truth’

 

 For Eagleton that means that the postmodernists have misunderstood the meaning of the notions of objectivity, virtue and truth. He says that their denial of

                                                                ‘absolute truth’

is simply due to their false interpretation of it. For Eagleton ‘absolute’ is not an intensifier, it actually just means

 

                                              ‘shouldn’t be done under any circumstances‘

 

 He explains this with the example of Thomas Aquinas: ‘absolutely wrong’ does not necessarily mean

                                                            ‘very, very wrong’

 

 Aquinas thought rather strangely that lying was absolutely wrong, but not killing; but he did not of course believe that lying was always more grievous an offence than killing. Being of reasonable intelligence, he appreciated well enough that lying is sometimes pretty harmless. It was just that for him it was absolutely wrong.’

‘Absolute truth is not truth removed from time and change. Things that are true at one time can cease to be true at another, or new truths can emerge. The claim that some truth is absolute is a claim about what it means to call something true, not a denial that there are different truths at different times. Absolute truth does not mean non-historical truth: it does not mean the kind of truths which drop from the sky, or which are vouchsafed to us by some bogus prophet from Utah. On the contrary, they are truths which are discovered by argument, evidence, experiment, investigation. A lot of what is taken as (absolutely) true at any given time will no doubt turn out to be false. Most apparently watertight scientific hypotheses have turned out to be full of holes. Not everything which is considered to be true is actually true’

 

 His point seems to be clear but then, as I mentioned before, he does also say something that is actually quite a postmodernist thought. He says that there are no

                    ‘first principles, fixed meanings and self-evident truths’

and even compares these terms with totalitarianism. His analysis of this to me is somewhat similar to the views of the postmodernists he is ranting about. He also thinks that these worldviews are due to a need of the people for security.

‘It is a fear of the unscripted, improvised or indeterminate, as well as a horror of excess and ambiguity‘

But overall I really enjoyed reading this book and like his style of writing, and I did agree with him on many things, some things I did not of course but all in all I was positively surprised and thought it was time well spent.  

On Mike Davis' text ' Sand, Fear, and Money in Dubai'

Dubai…now where do I start? Like mentioned in my previous blog, I am not a fan, at all. Gigantism is the word that pretty much sums it up for me. Having said Las Vegas is probably one of the last honest places on earth, Dubai is exactly the opposite, it is probably one of the least honest places to be. As Hickey said, in Vegas it is all ‘about stakes, not status’, in Dubai it is the other way around. No one cares about the stakes as it is anticipated that everyone has, excuse my French, shit loads of money anyway. It is all about status and social hierarchy. John Doe is not going to play in the same room as Sheik Such-and-such because this would offend him as he is superior to the ordinary people. There are no hidden doors to exclusive rooms in Vegas according to Hickey, well, I suppose in Dubai they are everywhere, just not hidden, but with a big fat sign on them probably saying something like: 'Ordinary, poor people stay out, we do not want you here, you are not worth it. Go do something else, somewhere else; oh and please do not touch the golden door knob it might get dirty'. I mean seriously, you can buy bars of solid gold at the airport. Sure, you totally need to be able to buy one at the airport shopping centre. Who does not know the feeling when stepping out of a plane desperate to buy a gold bar as soon as possible because, apparently, they do not sell them on planes. Davis' description of Dubai being a

 

                                                                 'vast gated community'

is very accurate I think.

I like how Mike Davis describes the possibility to fulfil childhood fantasies by staying at the Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea hotel to feel like Captain Nemo and then presumably takes the mickey out of it (or does he not?) by saying that the structure is situated under water and is protected against

                                         ‘terrorist submarines as well as missiles and aircraft’.

I mean, it most definitely is true and not a joke, it is Dubai afterall, but it just sounds really ridiculous to protect a hotel from hostile submarines. Although, given its war zone adjecent location, Dubai probably does have reason to fear attacks and for being quite paranoid. If you have done something incredibly bad, let’s say…fund terrorists for example, you might have the feeling that you better want to look over your shoulder twice. According to Davis

‘all roads lead to Dubai when it comes to [terrorist] money’ and it is the ‘financial hub for Islamic militant groups’.

Looking at the history of Dubai, which is currently the second largest building site in the world according to Davis’ text, it actually started out as a rather small fishing and pearl diving town before oil was found and it changed dramatically. Davis describes Dubai as an

                                         ‘enchanted forest of six hundred skyscrapers’

with a

                                   ‘new Tower of Babel’ an ‘impossible half-mile high’.

For me this is a kind of ‘Hadidopolis’ (I am referring to my previous blog on the interview of Zaha Hadid by Jonathan Meades) come true, just not designed by Zaha. But it is the same ‘no looking back, do whatever you want as long as it is bigger than everything else or stands out in another way’ kind of architecture. I totally agree with Mike Davis that Dubai consists of

                                    ‘over-the-top. Monumental architecture’

that does have a bitter aftertaste, not only because it can in some way be seen as a

                                                ‘reminiscent of Albert Speer’

and his architecture. Back than it was all about big, bold and eternal buildings as well, trying to showcast nothing else then power. I think the Sheik too thrives after eternal life through these buildings. He wants to be

                                                  ‘number one in the world’.

And as

‘Architectural gigantism has always been a perverse symptom of economies in speculative overdrive’

it is no wonder that Dubai has become a paradise of consumption and is one of the best examples of

                                                            ‘hypercapitalism’.

Davis describes this forest of buildings as an

                                         ‘eerie chimera of all kinds of fantasies’.

He is referring to the replicas of famous buildings like the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids of Giza. They are actually planning a replica of the Taj Mahal…four-times its original size. Yeah, I mean the original one is a bit small afterall…SERIOUSLY????I know Vegas has replicas of the Eiffel Tower etc. too, but they are actually smaller than the original and they were not built to make them better or more famous than the original just by making them insanely huge. I t was just a fun thing to attract people when they are able to go from ‘Paris’ to ‘Venice’ by foot in 20 minutes. All these huge buildings have been built over the last 50+ years, after the first ever concrete building was built in 1956. And just for the record: this happened before this country even abolished slavery (well officially at least), which happened 7 years later. This brings me to the next thing that really winds me up about this place: Human Rights. They are pretty much non-existent. In Dubai

                                       ‘trade unions and most strikes are illegal’

and would be dealt with by riot police.  To me this is really shocking and alarming. According to Davis, the

‘building boom is carried on the shoulders of an army of poorly paid Pakistanis and Indians’.

Now, in my blog about Alain Badiou’s text, I said that I am fine with capitalism as long as it does not get too extreme, and asked the question what too extreme was. Well, Dubai is a pretty good example of the too extreme.

Human Rights Watch accused the Emirates of

                                           ‘building prosperity on ‘forced labour’

in 2003. The workers are being

                                      ‘superexploited’ and are generally ‘invisible’

to the visitors. They are hidden. Just like the gruesome instigators who built up a

                      ‘sinister sex trade’ on ‘kidnapping, slavery and sadistic violence’,

all hidden behind a glamorous façade. There is probably no one buying teddy bears for these hookers.

This brings me back to the comparison of Vegas and Dubai. Remember what I talked about in my blog about Vegas and that Dave Hickey said that nearly everyone wakes up happy in Las Vegas? Well here is what one of the labourers from Dubai told the New York Times:

‘I wish the rich people would realize who is building these towers. I wish they could come and see how sad this life is’.

To me Vegas and Dubai are not the same nor even similar. One is a place where people go to have fun and let themselves go. Everyone is the same and is having a good time. The other place is judging everyone and everything and all the glamour is just the façade for a very ugly truth.

                                                      ‘Speer meets Disney’

is probably the best description I have ever seen about Dubai, well done Mr Davis!



 

 

 

On Dave Hickey's 'A home in the neon'

Vegas baby!!! A loud voice screamed in my head and movie snippets from ‘Hangover‘ in my mind’s eye made me giggle before I even started to read the text as I knew it would be about ‘Sin City’, the ‘entertainment capital of the world’, the ‘capital of second chances’, in one word: Vegas! Now, I might seem overly excited but to be honest before I read the text I thought of Las Vegas as fake, a pool of sins and lost souls and most of all, I thought it was actually just a tiny city with nothing else then casinos and hotels. I did not realise that it is in fact the 31^st-most populous city in the USA. I was not thinking about the people who live there all year, who have a house, two kids, a dog and a white picket fence. I though Las Vegas was one big street with neon signs stuck above each other to each side of it. I must say, I was clearly wrong.
It does not happen very often that a text can change my mind on something by 180 Degrees. But this has happened for some reason. I do not exactly know if it was his style of writing that convinced me or also that I read the text about Dubai (see my next blog), which is said to be the eastern equivalent to Vegas, right after reading this one, and I despise Dubai from the bottom of my heart and therefore funnily enough tried to defend Las Vegas against this juxtaposition.
I love the story-like atmosphere of the Hickey text. One can clearly sense that it is his very personal view on the city. He shares his memories of his childhood when he would go to Las Vegas with his dad and his jazz musician friends, especially Shelton, who was able to get

                                                             ‘steady gigs’

much to the envy of his father. One of the main aspects of Las Vegas according to Dave Hickey is that everybody is the same. You can walk the streets in your

                                                          ‘choice of apparel’

without getting the ‘What-the-hell-are-you-wearing-look. Vegas has a

                                                    ‘flat-line social hierarchy’,

it just does not matter if you are a professor, rock star or Aunt Sue from Minnesota. Everyone is sitting at the same tables, playing the same games, getting the same odds. I would say, Las Vegas is probably one of the last honest places on earth. What you see is what you get. I like that. He also notes that it is one of the few places on earth were the

‘vast majority of the population arises every morning absolutely delighted to have escaped Hometown, America and the necessity of chatting with Mom over the back fence.’

I think he has definitely a point there. Where else does a majority of people wake up each morning, happy to start the new day? Las Vegas seems to be some kind of magical playground for adults. It is like back when we were kids and got to go to one of these huge barn-like places with mountains of toys, games and well, other children. We spent the whole day playing on every playground equipment there was until we found the one that we stuck to and just did not want to leave when it was time to go home. Mum and Dad would sit somewhere else, talking to some other Mums and Dads. We were kind of on our own, and we loved it! Vegas is somewhat alike. Hordes of people inside an artificially lit room with games in it. You would try them all out until you get stuck to one of them and beg your friends for ‘5 more minutes and just one last try’ before they drag you out.

I also agree with Hickey that Vegas is probably the only place where a group of grown, heterosexual men would have some kind of a sleep over party by sharing a room, no one feels weird about this ( it is like in football when it is totally acceptable for a guy to slap another guys butt...it is like in games everything is allowed). Everyone is just there to have a good time, to let yourself go, be a grown up child for a couple of nights before real life grabs you with its cold fingers and drags you back to your 9 to 5 desk job.

Now, apparently there are only two rules in Vegas:

                             ´1) Post the odds, and 2) Treat everybody the same’.

As Hickey describes in his text especially Easterners have a problem with this as they are just not used to the absent of a hierarchy. What brings me back to Dubai but I will elaborate on that more in my next blog. Just so much: Hickey says they are desperately searching for the

                                                               ‘secret Vegas’,

the exclusive Vegas, the hidden door that would get them to the room where only their kind would play. But this does not exist according to Hickey.

                                            ‘Vegas is about stakes, not status’.

But this apparently

                                               ‘offends their sense of order’.

Well, it certainly does not offend mine, and I think it is great.
Oh and I LOVED the story about the teddy bear; it actually made me laugh so much. The legendary Herr Teddy being bought by some lad for a hooker who would then bring it back the next morning for cash and then the next night this ‘game’ would repeat (I just feel for the poor teddy who never finds a nice place to live).  Well there you go, ‘Sin City’ can still live up to its name. I bet the groups of men do not only come here for the gambling. But then, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas (except for STDs guys, that’s following you home, just saying)…

On the text 'The First Great Female Architect' by Jonathan Meades (on Zaha Hadid)

'You know, it's those buildings that always look like a UFO has landed in the neighbourhood.' This is how I describe Zaha Hadids' work to my non architecture friends whenever there is a moment that I  talk about buildings, architecture and other interesting things that go on in my life. As you can probably sense from that statement, I am not a big fan of Zahas' work. Although I must admit that I admire her and think she deserves to be, and is, a famous architect, not a 'starchitect' (what a horrible word indeed), but I will come back to that later. First of all, I don't actually know what to make of the Meades's text. On one hand I find it quite amusing in what way he is articulating his views on Zaha, on the other hand I find it somewhat strange that he attacks her by saying that she cannot express herself and then writes a text himself in which he uses phrases like 'verruca-like jargon'. For me the text was very hard to read and I caught myself reading every other paragraph twice and then realised I did not memorise what I just read. I think he tries too hard to sound eloquent which makes it annoying. I also think that he very clearly had prejudice against her from the beginning, he had a preconceived opinion and in fact tells us very little about her views on things, either because she really did not say anything and was failing to express her thoughts or because he did not want to understand her and just took those sentences and gestures of Zaha that suited his arguments. I'd say it was probably the latter. In that sense it is not written particularly well but I do agree with a lot of things he says (this is, if I understood him right).
My impression on Zahas' buildings associates well with Meades' description of the factory-like atmosphere in her office. I read somewhere that no one actually speaks to each other and I can only assume how it must be to work for her in this cold Zaha world. Just like her buildings do not communicate with their surrounding in the sense that they are often completely misplaced. I think of them as cold and despressing objects to work/live in. He mentioned that Zaha has

                                             ' style all right, but not a style' .

Now having said that I do not particularly like Zahas' work , I still disagree with Meades on this point. Although her buildings are all different in a way, her style is distinctive to me. It always looks futuristic and sort of left in the sun for too long, hence the structure melted. Zahas' buildings lack corners in general, everything is rounded,everything! (I mean seriously, is she affraid of the devil or something? Because as we all know since Goethes' 'Faust' the devil can only enter through corners...)
In the text Meades asks the question why Zaha still does not have any buildings in London although her office is situated there. I think it has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman but because she does not care the slightest about history and context. And this is just simply impossible in a city like London (fortunately!!!). How can someone just be so ignorant? She clearly has an attitude there. I absolutely loved how Meades talks about her view on this and how he describes

                                        'Hadidopolis' (I love this, ha! Genius!)

and how a whole city with her buidlings would be less disturbing than a single one in an

'already established environment where the clash of idioms is potentially deafening'. 

I agree with that, although I think it would be a very unaccommodating,cold,weird place to live in. He then says that

'no matter what she says, each of her buildings is sensitive to ist context. Being sensitive does not mean being passive. It is not a question of taking a cue from the immediate surroundings, but of making an appropriate intervention that changes those surroundings, which creates a new place and better space.'

Now, I do not agree with Meades on this last bit. I honestly do not see how the majority of her buildings create either new places nor better spaces.
I think the main thing about Zaha, the thing that makes her famous, is that she wants to show off at all cost. No one would notice her work if it was not this displaced in its environment. But sometimes this is just what gets you famous in the end: just scream the loudest so everyone notices you.
As I said in the beginning, I do think she deserves to be famous and to some extend I do admire her because I really give her credit for standing by her design when others changed theirs according to a specific style that was popular during the time (like Leon Krier who Meades mentions in his text), and for being an inspiration for all female architects out there. Meades is right, there are not that many female architects around, particularly famous ones. But she does have a name and I have seen some of her work in an exhibition from when she was still a student at the AA and I must admit, being a student myself, it looks increadible. As much as I do not like her style, she does have one and as we all know: There is no accounting for taste.

 

On Alain Badiou's 'This crisis is the spectacle:Where is the real?'

Crisis, crisis, the crisis is everywhere!!! Not a single day without hearing this word, it seems not even hiding in a cave in a forgotten forest would free you from getting it rubbed in. You cannot flee from it, you cannot hide and you got to have an opinion on it-and it better be a clever one even if you don't have a clue about what's going on. To be honest, just like Alain Badiou also mentioned in his text,I don't have a clue and I tried to pretend I do, trust me, but I don't. All I know is, banks go bust because they don't seem to know how to do their bloody job but don't get punished, instead managers get bonuses. I actually looked up the definition of it in the dictonary because I always thought you get these when you have done well, silly me, but it turned out I wasn't actually stupid as the definition of bonus (payment) is as follows:

' sum of money added to a person’s wages as a reward for good performance'

Right. Well done you banker. Have you lost a Billion Pounds? Never mind, there you go, have your bonus payment of 250,000 and go on a nice holiday to recover from all the stress.
Badiou talks about this as well and I totally agree with him that it is absurd that governments all over the world save the banks with amounts of money we cannot even picture in our heads whereas the general public has to not only endure this but also pay for it with higher taxes. But as soon as the subject of education and building or improving schools and universities comes up, the government says 'Sorry folks, we'd love to but there is just no money for it.'
I like how Badiou is describing everything like a scene from a disaster movie and how he is talking about how very low loans have become a sort of 'designer drug'. Overall I like his style of writing and do agree with a lot of things he says, although I do not share his love of the Marxist way of life. I do agree with him that capitalism can, and in fact does, trigger greed but I also think that it is the motor of our economy. Much like an old car, the motor inside might constantly make problems but without it the car would not be able to run at all. I do not think the basic principle of capitalism is such a bad thing at all. For example: Mr X comes up with an idea and starts to produce it on a small scale. He pays, let's say, 20 Pounds for all the parts and for whatever equpiment he needs to produce it. He then sells it for 25 Pounds and 'Ta-da!' he made 5 Pounds profit. For me that is totally acceptable as long as it does not get too extreme. But that's the crux. At what point does it get too extreme? Who determines what too extreme is? For me it becomes a problem when something it is getting mass produced in some far away country to keep production costs at a minimum and the John Doe who has set up his small buisiness has so much success with his idea that he hires managers and CEOs. Or in other words: When the person who has once started to produce whatever his idea was, is no longer managing, controling and working for his own firm anymore. When there are managers who do everything for him and the owner as a private person is no longer taking a personal risk. This actually brings me back to the bankers and the crisis and how Bardiou says that capitalism is

'devastating in its becoming' and 'irrational in its essence'. 

Fair enough. But is capitalism to blame for this crisis? In fact, are bankers even capitalists? Now this might seem strange but if you look up the basic meaning of capitalism and what a capitalist is, you will find that it is someone who is the owner of the means of production, in other words, someone who has machines. These machines are powered by the workers who are employed by the owner of the machines and who produce an added value. The owner, or capitalist, is responsible for his employees and machines and is taking risks with his personal assets. If something goes wrong he would lose everything, so he is carrying the responsibility and risk. Moreover the workers would not have any work without his ideas and machines. I think it would be fair enough to say that it is fine that he gets the profit. Furthermore he would probably invest part of this profit in his buisiness to enhance it. Let's now take a look at the finance world: the bankers, the banks etc., can we still say that they are responsible for themselves? Are they taking a personal risk while speculating with crazy amounts of money? I dare to say: No, they do not! If a bank goes bust not an individual person is liable, not an individual person is taking the risk, it is always a bunch of them. None of them is liable with their personal assets. That is the difference.
So I do agree with Badiou that banks should be nationalised or at least be controlled in some way, but I do not think that abandoning capitalism would help.