From Building To Architecture

The Double Life of Utopia

2011-08-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

It is a party of fossil fuel consumption. The victims of this cosmopolitan life seeking emotional shelter, driving in his/her mystified symbol of freedom and esteem leaving the daily jail of modern enslavement.

It is the Utopian vision of the occidental industrialist, mistakenly borrowed by the civilization-hungry oriental as a tool of masking its native humility...generating a kind of life that somehow contradict and betray its former promises.

The ever expanding sprawl have mutated into an irreversible collective fantasy of the masses. That it would be suicidal to try to solve this problem. The duty is to make this problem forever insurmountable by extrapolating on the existing fiasco. Its blatant 2-dimensionality and the brilliant purity of its surface are hypothetically said to be able to ease the thirst for true freedom. Its extreme utility and (therefore) its problems are distorted to become pure a poetry of a better tomorrow.

The conspiracy continues, supplying this double life of utopia with more and more fresh new mystified symbol of cosmopolitan freedom...in the blind love affair between the Slave and the City!

[LIVING]

2011-06-20T00:09:00.001-07:00

Malaysian Institute of Architects Design 2011 2nd Prize
Malaysian Institute of Architects Design 2011 Honourable Mention
ADJapan 2011 Gold Award

Linked Hybrid Housing - Sem 2 2010/11

2011-06-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

Linking Lunacy

2011-01-06T03:15:00.000-08:00

He is, above all, the pride of a matematicalised world. An unity of uniformity that defies speculation, and severe discipline that suggest differentiation. The vernacular house has given way to his new system of value...the value of 2-dimensional totalitarian.

They are the replicants of the One...the One architectural idea. The large amount replicants are the product of one computerized ritual. One single powerful option. The replication is a strong control, preventing any form of suburbanistic architectural Ego. One territory, one generating plan, one ideology, an anarchy of ultimate totalitarian. The architect refuses any form of humour. The mathematicians reject any form of marverickism. Together they form the civil fight of a mute architectural play.

Each of his inhabitat could only perform silent rebel within the confinement of the Great Firewall and the Plot. Since, he cannot grow in any unconventional manner. Neither vertically nor horizontally, neither sectionally nor planimetrically.

The Plot has become a soap opera of hundreds episodes. Continuity of story is blocked by the Ego of the Plot. He prohibit any form of sinfull pornography with the nature. He links independence entities of unlinkable selfishness[s], through the medium of Plot.

He is made up of many oxymoron of extremes. His super-linkability is linking isolation[s]. His centralization of domains promote segregation. His discipline is raising internal violence. His pre-conceived visual promise is promising a spectre social catastrophy.

Year after year the nexus reproduce itself, forming a colossal diaspora of identical Ego[s], and yet, the inhabitants are unconsciously paralysed by the powerful regime of the smart mathematicians...The smart mathematicians are reaching the moon while the inhabitants are suffering the mute porn of indecisible blues. It is an accumulation of all sensible disaster...an accumulation of all possible theatrical climax that never happen...we call him the 'malaysian superlink.'
In a world where the only constant is change, he is the Special One, the only architecture that survive the test of time.

Blade Runner and Our Brave New World

2011-01-04T09:49:00.000-08:00

Blade Runner. Consumerist prison of Los Angeles in the year 2019. City dwellers are occupied with constant psychological detergent of commercial promise and surveillance. Human and non-human replicant are programmed as the spending machines who sustain the dominance of giant corporations, the Masters.

Blade Runner (1982), one of my personal favorite film (a fully non-emotional credit), has always been an useful source of analytical reference, every time doubts loom over my over-extrospective cognitive thirst. The tag 'inspirational' could only deserved by a fantastic film like the one directed by Ridley Scott, for its investigative and precise accounts on human post-industrialist future.

How far could a 80's film provide an insight about a typical capitalist city, 40 year projected ahead? Its vision of a disjunctive passive consumerist society of Los Angeles, has been materialised way ahead. Los Angeles and other para-colonial Asian metro cities have been a major target of human migration, dislocation and marginalization. The fantasy depiction of a near future city was coupled with characteristics of severe decadence, ephemerality and inequality, brought to life by the roles like the human replicants, the rule of imperialistic corporations, and the subsequent dehumanization of the city's inhabitants. All of these pessimistic assumptions, have their highest degree of threat on some post-colonial asian cities, Kuala Lumpur, an easily conquerable colonial urban squalor, could not escape the implied implications of the whole system.Kowloon walled city, HK. Over-population, slum and urban squalor typify the dystopian cyberpunk cities.

Utopian visions, inspiring political slogans, gigantic advertisement screens and other 'feel good' ecstasies, march along the gradual deconstruction of these societies towards a much anticipated 'brave new world', of full-fledged consumerism, pluralism, diaspora and of course, the cunning dystopia.
Architecture and its semiotics lost its pace with the artificial signs that rule the colonial asian cities.

The replicants in Blade Runner, who act as slave of its creator, the Tyrell Corporation to exploit the resources of other planets, could be a silent mockery of the role of us today, living in a distorted vision of the past. How could the 'replicant' of today, escape the unhealthy reality of high-tech and low-life? Plus the fate of being the slave of the system of our own creation? Cultural pluralism, confusion, hybridity, are they celebrated achievements or a dark clandestine tools of our deceptive and feudalistic corporation and ruler? What they clearly bring to this postmodernist pastiche is the paralysed political and cultural sensitivity, of false futuristic noir that benumb its citizen's analytic thinking through endless hyperreal promises.

What if all the reasons of our existence are merely the subject of their strategic manipulation?

Blade Runner and its architecture projected everything communicable of its zeitgeist. From the monolithic headquarters of gigantic corporations, to the chaotic damped streetscape overcrowded with wandering immigrants, neon light billboards and eroticism. Everything from signature corporate glass box to dome-topped mansions of the little napoleons. From jumbled artificial mechanical ducting to the territorial battle of signage. Maybe only a Voight-Kampff machine could distinguish a true modernized first world and an enslaved savage garden of false civility, and thus, are we the replicant of our own system?Profile of a replicant Nexus 6 as examined by blade runner dectective Deckard (reference to Rene 'Descartes' with his theory of human and non-human soul).

Dalínian Legitimacy of Modernization

2010-12-30T23:23:00.000-08:00

Replies to comments on The End Of Architecture History And The Representation of the Void.

Salvador Dali (1904-1989): The Persistence of Memory. A surrealist reexamination of the Eurocentric cosmic order and concept of time.

On western history
The legitimacy of western model of history on our society are proven to be too important, only by looking at how the past eurocentric modernity is embraced throughout this non-western region currently. The disorienting confusion between the original historically-specific eurocentric 'modernity' and the meaning of 'modernization' itself has fueled our adoption of the wrong duo in our eastern soil. If the non-western world's modernization is based on its colonialist, exploitative and mass-industrialist model of 'euromodernity', and is built upon the western model of historical bedrock, then I think we have no other option other than using the western package to analyse and plan for our own future. That is what build our present identity.

The root of this situation lies in the false universalistic assumption that tend to equal eurocentric modernity with modernization. The eurocentric model with its geographically specific history of past innovations like human enslavement, science and mass-industrialization, are a solely an european invention and assertion. This benchmark for human civilization has never been challenged by any of their conceived 'weak' non-western 'sub-human'. But on the other hand, the value of 'modernization' itself lies in every non-western civilization, each is different to another, distinct, unique and non-imitative, has yet to fully developed before we succumb to the european model that itself in the past, has records of devastative manipulation on non-western society. So is there any other historical model that we can use to describe our crooked modernization? - pessimistically other than the western model, No.

Just like how the word 'enlightenment' is perceived, the signifier of the 16-th century renaissance immediately overwhelm and took over any other model of 'enlightenment', for example, of the Buddhist and Taoist tradition, and many other. With this his level of misconception, it does suggest that the need to critically reevaluate and redefine our own edition of modernity is calling.

The mass-information age now has help our effort to question our past blunders. More and more people has enough information to develop the attitude of questioning. Helped by the capitalist mass cultural shuffling, the pluralistic and the chaotic contemporariness of the world culture now has slowly brewing a new wave of fundamentalism who seek to recast the monopoly of the eurocentric modernity. In architecture, the defiant and internal struggle with the universalizing european modernity can be seen in the development of many sub-regionalist architecture that look away and remediate from the already porous european architectural utopianism. Their introverted, meditative and defensive architecture gesture suggest their newly found awareness of their past cultural flop. In philosophy, some postmodern fundamentalism movement like the al-Attas's 'Islamization of knowledge' are good example of this conviction of false cultural selection.

Thus I think, the Malaysian 'centre' could be the culture of the time before these postmodernist chaos and counter-culture struggle begun.

On feudalism
I think indeed, a 'true' democracy has never happened throughout the human civilization. The concept of 'democracy', freedom and right, are merely psychological invention. They are 'named' while any name can be 'named'. Feudalism and inequality are like oxygen, are everywhere, and only the polished names of 'democracy' and 'equality' could temporarily hide what is apparent. The modern psychological manipulation by the ruling class and the vulnerability of the peasant are the backbone of 'democracy' - the new feudalism. The Chinese socialist government is the only one who understand this reality. Their model of a 'harmonious socialist society' and selective modernization took precedence upon the failure of the extensive european model of modernity towards a sustainable cultural ideal.

On the sudden technological flux
Identical to the consequence of globalization plus the concentration of advance technologies and wealth, the sudden flux of technology in architecture in this country will further polarize the big scale architectural consortiums who own the technical knowledge on jointing these industrial parts, and the survival of those individual self-made architects who rely largely on conventional materials. This concentration of wealth, knowledge and power proven to be an undeniable characteristic of a feudalist order.
Salvador Dali - Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943). Perhaps the notion of total redefinition of our own standard of modernization and its effort required, could stem from the idea of Dalinian surrealist reborn of a man out of the eurocentric entrenchment.
Salvador Dali.

New Junk Space or Revolution

2010-12-16T04:54:00.000-08:00

Project 02 - 12/2010

The Information Dumping Site and Zero Waste

2010-12-16T03:38:00.000-08:00

Modern libraries, before the proliferation of mass digital media represent the guardian of information, both old and new, both fictional and scientific. It represent a prison guarded by the academic librarians, public interest in its role are limited to the periodical seek of hungry intellectual and cultural face lift, mostly after a period of fierce barbaric survival quest in the real life. The high door are seldom knocked by the average. For some, the act of reading, is seen as sacred as getting divine enlightenment, in the form of textual codes printed on billions pages of paper. The modern library since then are the warehouse storing those tonnes of paper, inscribing precious information about themselves and the surrounding they are living in.
The analogy. The box of library and the box of the Faraday's Chair by Dunne & Raby. Library as one way data transferring hut.

The traditional library, with its voluminous space, are seen merely as a structural shed, protecting those trillions of data. The space for human activities are voids cut out from this block of data, where data seekers wander around the surfaces of the void. The linear and univalent classification of data often misguide and disappoint passionate data seekers when the mass of data itself could easily overwhelm one's sense of orientation.

The tedious search and the linear presentation of data make the traditional library not more than acting as a decorated shed, often with facade clad with ornamental classical stone, high columns, capitals, wide pediment, and red dressed Queen's guards posted on the two flanks of the monumental doorway. In the east, often in the form of a pretentious buffalo roof, with false concrete rabbets and a bunch of moody pensioner-wannabe civil servant, waiting to annoy anytime you try to cause him leaving his chair. It is certainly not a place for social chemistry nor a shared public realm.

The huge amount of data, generated and overlapped over the human history are uncanny. Both wanted and unwanted, both valuable and discardable for the current human progress and civilization, are store in this warehouse. Thus, the library is the dumping site of expired data. A multi-layered bedrock of intellectual junk, slowly dying in its role in our 21th century world of zero-waste cabled information megastore.

The Incomplete Human and His Indubitable Knowledge

2010-10-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

Jacopo Barbari, Portrait of Fra Luca Pacioli. The gesture of Pacioli (pioneer of medievel optics) tells everything include how union of mind and eyes evolved from the medievel perspective.

Reply to comments and questions on From Ocularcentrism To Hyperreality.

The ‘Wright’ Way Or The Dome
Our ‘everyday’ is by no mean a deep one. Sustainability here instantly means the nostalgic ideal of the vernacular past, the future seem to serve nothing. These are ‘closed-door’ talk, sustainability almost sealed with a finite arrow to thermal comfort, sustainability has trimmed its own role of evolutional, cultural and intellectual fronts. When people do not form inspirational borrowing of ideas from other fields of study, architectural theory could only be an ego close-door mind games of architects, endlessly fighting whether a fake Iranian mosque dome will do or a Wrightian horizontal humility is morally right, those are the only thing that Malaysian learn.

I think the resource of publication either theoretical or graphic in Malaysia is plenty. I can find all of the books that you mentioned in any U's library, which I think is very complete, but not for the latest Zumthor's. Just that the study is academically narrowed to few historical like those by Pugin, Raskin, Jencks, Frampton and other local revivalist minded academic papers that seem intended to mould a counter-cultural mindset of people, mostly to attack the ruthless commercial copycat architecture production in the field. Student’s idea about theory has been limited to just those introduced. The sense of exploring a wider field of thinking is then blocked, don't even talk about the loneliness of the book Vers Un Architecture of L.C. on the library shelve. The monthly PAM magazine is a national shame, but a good mirror.

I've never used Amazon because I found out that I can mostly reach any of the latest theoretical writings here. Instant gratification that graphical books offer, like what Basheer is selling now, are too good to miss for most archi-graphic-geeks now, and believe me no one like to dive into the sea of text. Pallasmaa's Existential Space in Cinema is first in my searching list now. I read the interesting intro and wonder how the story continue.

On Orientation
While orientation include the ability to tell the position of a body in relation to any given point, I suggest an experiment, put a blind and a sighted concurrently on a street and see who can tell the direction of their familiar (memorized) home in relative to that give point... Without sight, minimal skill of orientating oneself could only achieved by memory through imparted practice.

On Libeskind, Prix, Gehry
Not sure about Prix, early conceived projects by the other two like the Jewish Museum, Santa Monica Place and Bilbao are great, fully rational exploration on spaces. Later work could only be explained as a total succumbent to the power of the 'architecture as commodity' and the 'Starchitect-maniacism'.

On Dualism
Well, the mind and body has never been in real connection, therefore there isn’t any missing tie between the two. The distinction, as Descartes putted as the Real Distinction, is in operation from the start. Each of them is a ‘Substance’, which can exist independently without the existence of other. Descartes said the extended body is divisible but the mind is indivisible, every thought is clear and distinct, one could never distinguish any part within oneself. It’s singular and complete. While the extended body is an external configuration of separate parts (senses, flesh and the passive muscles maybe). If Descartes argue for the possible independent operation of mind and the physical, what really happens in our biological being is slightly different, mind and body are, by certain extent, joined. The part in the brain that account for this action is what Descartes claim as the Pineal Gland. It operates between light (through eyes) (This answers our question on why the eye is so dictating), mind (soul), and bodily action/reaction. This compartment that link these separate, supposed to be distinct, independent faculties of mind and body could be the answer to the big question (and problem) of occularcentrism that we are struggling with. It is a false linkage or a violation between two things that has different nature. Therefore, the union of these two causes each of these originally singular, pure and complete ‘Substance’ rendered incomplete. The incomplete human being with his dubitable ‘knowledge’ are form by these two incomplete ‘Substances’, masterminded by the ‘third eye’ – the pineal gland.

Sketches. The Pinear Gland by Descartes. Object, light, eyes, the Pinear Gland and reaction is in linear connection.

‘Lastly, as regards the soul and the body together, we have only the notion of their union, on which depends our notion of the soul’s power to move the body, and the body’s power to act on the soul and cause its sensations and passions’ - Descartes

Architecture of instant gratification. A beauty queen does not need you to be inside to truly appreciate it, on any megazines will do.

The Dualism isn’t limited to Plato and Descartes, but in between, Descartes has been highly influenced by the philosopher priest Aquinas, Scotus and others. Even in Eastern thinking, based on what I read in Tao, already has a well developed account on that way before the French.

On Pseudo and Whore
It is interesting that you coin ‘pseudo-intellectual’, I am not sure about the truth, but let’s digest another quote of Descartes, he asked:

What can I know for certain?, I think, I am. I don’t care how much I’m deceived; I must exist before I am deceived…From the very moment that I think: I exist. That I know (and not just believe) for certain. Of myself, I have indubitable knowledge.
Provided the inconsistency of all of our knowledge (whether borrowed or synthesized from others, or it’s merely a deceived notion by the lying eyes), the only tangible, concrete truth in the world is to think: I think, therefore I am…All knowledge, old or new, are build upon bedrock and layers of past depository. The only way to save th nations sorry and painful state of regression is to untiringly borrow, steal and learn from the knowledgeable. Only those who have fully analyze and understand holistically the total environment could salvage the last tear of hope on our painfully regressive architecture.

'It is the question of building which lies at the root of the social unrest today; architecture or revolution.' -Vers une architecture (1923)- L.C.

From Ocularcentrism To Hyperreality

2010-09-21T03:16:00.000-07:00

Reply to Wani's comment and questions on 'Our Narcissistic Eyes and The Architecture of Visual Images'
French rationalist Rene Descartes's theory of vision as the model of knowledge marked the start of ocularcentrism in architecture. His scepticism in the legitimacy of all our acquired knowledge further strenghten the role of senses in that particular task - especially the role of the eyes.

Well, Malaysian academics hold very practisionerally-minded elementary stands on theory. Most of them are market-driven architects cum market-driven-academics, that is why clash of ideologies and subsequent theoretical argument are mostly driven by discourse about primary everyday subjects like sustainability, symbol, cultural-ethnic assertion and other 'first-grade' level theories, serve as counter cultural resisting tool to morally tease their competitors in the industry. This is reasonable because it is a young underdeveloped country, time, money and getting mega contracts are the priorities, no one would care about those structuralistics of phenomena and architecture. Pallasmaa is probably the most 'poetic' critic I've ever read, never had a diehard anthropologist nor a genuine structuralist approach, mere straight-forward.

Well, I think the development of ocularcentrism can be divided in to 3 phases, being the foundation-laying Platonic classical idea - the 'first science' period, next, its proliferation in architecture started by the influence of Renaissance Alberti's writing, lastly the late revival or the total explosion during the post-industrial time. What I meant was the comeback and the more aggressive form of occularcentrism that has marched into a fatal Hyperreality in the post-industrial phase.

It started with Plato's structure of the mind-body binary concept, distinction between the abstract and materiality, first ever. Since then the mind has slowly manipulating the physical body, like a parasite, like an all-seing ruler that commands the body. Its main tool is the eyes. (I am not sure the employment of eye has anything to do with the eyes location relative to the brain). Knowing is directly associated with finding the correct manner of observing. But this has yet to cross the discipline of architecture then, building was still considered a lower form Knowledge, it is material, physical, born out of utility, endeavour of the lower classes.

Alberti and Brunelleschi are those who elevate architecture as a formal Knowledge, that require visual examination, architecture since then is ocularly quantified. The biggest influence probably belonged to Alberti's On Painting and On the Art of Building. With the invention of the Cartesian perspective,(tribute to Descartes) architecture in this visual form serve a strong commanding role, the image suggest a worldly center, viewer stare and examine, signified by a new portray of world view, and seemingly detached from just emotional sensation. The eyes are still the slave of the dictator-like mind. The power of image started.
'On The Art of Building' started the first frameworked theoretical discourse of architecture in history.

The correspondence between the sign of image and its referent still exist in pre-industrial time. Image in architecture in that time was still a part of the representational system, existed only as a hegemony and overpowering the other senses, but has yet to entirely codify reality. The situation change in post-industrial time. The 'simulacrum' as Baudrillard putted, has replaced reality. The contemporary mass media is the cause. It is the simulation without controlled depth or substances. Sign and referent no longer share bonding. In this state of Hyperreality, reality, illusion and appearance could never be identified and distinguished. The seeing eye is ever so passive but became more passive like an America in front of the TV under the state of Hyperreality. The Hyperreality further disorienting the eye towards an all-accepting mechanism of knowing and awareness.
Psychologist Edward Berneys' offspring - the American Ads that manipulate the subconscious desire to penetrate targeted market victim. The 'message' in this image is clear: Heroine like Amelia Earhart smokes. Ladies out there, you should do so too and you can become as independent as the aviation pioneer!

I think this hyperreality has much to do with the history of consumerism in the U.S. The culture of superficiality like watching TV ads was designed by pioneering European psychologists, employed by the US government during the post-war 20-th century, when the capitalist economy truimphed. It was to design a system of superficial adverts images that can submerge and answer deep into our subconscious desire by manipulating the vulnerable human eyes. One of the father of cousumerism I can remember is Edward Bernays.

Well, living in a world of superficiality, of hyperreality, of ocularcentrism, scale does not involve the participation of our already-numb non-visual senses. Living in blindness is interesting, it frees the eyes from succumbing to the disillusioning of the dictating mind and allow other senses to flourish. Joseph Grange I think is never an architecture scholar, the 'structure' of posture, orientation, feel and comprehension as quoted are unresolved and contradicting examples, each has immense inconsistency...Posture as body language, could be considered free from the rules of eye; orientation is largely dependent on the positioning from the eye; comprehension is Knowing, undoubtedly influenced by eye. Except for the structure of posture, I could not see any concrete reasonning that can detach 'founding' a building scale from the absolute tyrany of the eye today.

Of the Iraqian artist, she deserves merit on diminishing the boundaries between the artist herself, the art expression and the viewer (as opposed to user) in the field of visual art. The fundamental outcome of her strategy is to make the viewer living in the world of both herself (her worldview) and the expression of her visual image brought through the tyrant eye. This should be distinguished from being affirmed as architecture because what is intrinsic to architecture is not object-status but a rational cognitive concepts and open-ended explorative process, expressive, but expressiveness that is tightly suggestive of a larger social and biological system. That is why I've always in doubt over female's rationality.

Client who employ starchitect today mostly are from the third world. Neither that they have a set of commanding programmatic brief for their new show nor that they have any formal knowledge on architecture and its history. Architecture here is no more than a brainless tool of propaganda and space-wasting fooliness. Besides, most of those country today already have some budding taste on the capitalist consumer culture - with its 'motto' of 'knowing by seeing, owning by seeing, being by seeing'. Sealing the architecture design contract operate exactly the way like the how American ads flocks people into shops and stores. The most visually appealing and 'satisfying' images of artificial visuals... sales. It is a beauty contest.

Of the Conscious Ethics & The Unconscious Evolution of Architecture

2010-09-08T05:39:00.000-07:00

Reply to Yang Yang. http://www.yangsquare.com/

We are still struggling with the understanding of the 'structure' of architecture. The conscious ethical desire of architecture and the underlying human evolutionary formation of architecture are two distinct topics. One could never juggle across the boundary of each discourse or else it would be a futile discussion.

Two concepts we need to understand. The 'Ethics' of architecture (being what our desire of future architecture tell us to pursuit) is a mental construct/morality that is inconsistent. Simply saying, what kind of architecture is considered morally correct differs over time and the kind of dominating social ideology.

For instance, 21-th century's ethics of architecture (which based upon our self-conscious heroic individuality), if we suggest it in an Ecole des-Beaux-Arts' artelier in the 19-th century, most probably we would be kicked out of the school. The formality and the tradition are the virtual at that time. If the playfulness of the current individual ideas been raised in Mies' IIT studio for instant, we can expect the same consequence. The epoch of the Heroic Modern era was the formality of space and construction. The ethics, being conservative (like the Ecole), or obedient (like a Malaysian architect), or heroic (like the modernist), or visionary (like Boullee), is undergoing an evolutionary change. Now we talk about how architecture should be, what architect should do, the term 'should' signify nothing in singularity. It is merely an objective individual mental obsession. Just like how the Capitalist tell us what brand we should wear, what we should buy, indeed we are just pursuing a more confident 'Me'.

-Charles Jencks, Evolutionary Tree of Architecture, 2000.

Second, no matter how radical our spoken ethics change, no matter it is the Palladian's neoclassicism, or Beaux-Arts' defiant, or a Boullee's happy drawing, or a Bjarke Ingel's boast... an undeniable natural fact is that the habitat of human (being his architecture) is undergoing the Darwinian evolution, side-by-side with humans bio-genetical evolution. We are just a small equation in this great motherly shift. The birdhives are just a species under the evolutionary tree, no matter what is its moral stand.

-Reminder to architecture: The modern man's denial and ethics is fruitless, he is just an inseparable part in the evolution.

'It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.' Clarence Darrow on Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

So, now, we should clarify our position of discourse, whether it is a conscious talk of our new ethics, or we put things in a big zoomed out perspective: the fact that our architecture idea could only contribute to a fraction of an equation in the whole great ecological evolution. These are two different kinds of dialogue.

After the status of different realms are clear, we can proceed. First, lets speak of ethics. I think architecture could never move us. This is because it has never be able to suggest a future to us. Every architectural act is a story-telling of the past, it is the crystallization of our yesterday's epoch, no matter how modern and advance a concept or a technology it possess, a building becomes obsolete of itself right after the second it is built/proposed. Time never wait. It suggest the past second, the past hour, the past day and year, how it moves us? That is the reason every Utopian vision of a better tomorrow could only be found on a paper or across our tongue. It waits for a proper technological reality to construct, but it tend to outdate itself after it is realized, time past, the vision instantly transformed into a retrovision.

It is a reminder that the analogy you use - the Etienne Boullee's cenotaph is a false example. The tomb proposal is never visionary. Your quotes say it all in a reverse mockery. 'While in night, a singular ball of fire illuminates the sphere like a sun in still. The Cenotaph, exemplified the spirit of Age of Enlightenment, “Light represents Newton, lighting the knowledge of Mankind.” – Francisco Martinez.' In the text, it says the platonic sphere symbolised a sun, it symbolised the Age of Enlightenment, light represent Newton, represent Mankind... It is in no way suggesting the future. All it could do is symbolically reinvent the past, glorifying the past, glorifying the dead (Newton), suggesting the platonic aesthetics of the Egyptian past, representing the already happened (Age of Enlightenment started in the Renaissance Italy in the 15-th century). Worse, it has never been built because of the limitation of technology, the fact of its time. It is driven and manipulated by its epoch, so it remains on a paper. It is the ultimate story-teller of the past.

Saying architecture moves us is like saying a reading diary moves us, both contain unresolved duality. It moves us forward emotionally, but retreat us backward by describing the past. They could never suggest a concrete future.

Last, before he suggest anything, error already occur in the structure of his statement. Adelyn Perez says: 'function follows art'. Has art devoid of a function? Art does has a function. It emotionally moves us! It contributes to the social well-being. So what is function follows art means? It is 'function follows the function of art', it means the function of architecture follows its functionality for well-being. If the functionality of architecture fail, it fails itself, Peter Eisenman and his unfunctional bedroom - FAILS!

The Battle for Territory

2010-06-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

Reyner Banham - The Anatomy of a Dwelling: 'With very little exaggeration, the baroque ensemble of domestic gadgetry epitomises the intestinal complexity of gracious living. In other words, this is the junk that keep the pad swinging. The house itself has been omitted from the drawing. But if mechanical services continue to accumulate at this rate it may be possible to omit the house in fact.'

House III - Peter Eisenman. Historically defined architecture as a stand alone autonomous building art. A total rejection of an environmentally-entangled notion of architecture.

Territory here suggest the predominant concepts and true relationships between external environment and the distinct autonomous building. It is the 'physical autonomy' versus the 'environmentally entangled'. Territory as the architectural strategy of one accommodation with or refusal of, an external techno-natural environment. It epitomise a series of shift in an stand-alone building art to a vacuous and statistical 'environmentalist' conception of architecture.

The physical autonomous architecture is work that stands as a distinct counterpoint to what is given in its natural setting, while the environmentally-entangled architecture can be typified by a building that is sublimated into its mechanics that respond dutifully to every single natural factor of its setting. The post-war situation see the fast development of the later made possible for us to discard our floor-wall-roof from our house as the mechanics alone is enough to support living.

A culmination of the blasting engineering gadgetry. Living is possible without architecture!

The human-made mechanics that produce new living environment is eating up and challenging the significance of the autonomous architectural objects of bricks and concrete. Our pursuit of an idealised internal environment and the endless answering to the ever changing external natural condition push engineers further in creating more mechanical gadgets that is crucial for our survival. These gadgets are occupying our space, winning the battle of territory. This is an age of techno nature, architecture has became a product of multiple formulae of statistical calculation, everything interact with everything, the distinction between human and non-human, natural and artificial entities are blurred.

Those gadgets are the virus that mutate the red blood cells of our historically-defined architecture. End of architecture history start with the degenerated importance of our building, giving way to the new army of mechanical environmental gadgets in the battle of territory...

Reyner Banham - Un-house

Lost World of Peach Blossom Spring : The Form of Calligrapher's Escapism

2010-05-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

Architecture Design Studio - Resort for the escapist calligrapher - yr2

The End Of Architecture History And The Representation of the Void

2010-05-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

Mist and Myth; Progress and the Continuity of Story; Metanarrative and the reality of skill, architecture lies in between.

21th century human live in a surfaceless void, hollow and boundless. The end of modern era signify the collapse of the Centre, the Central Image, the great style and the Idea of Progress, of which prompted from the Enlightenment. The collapse of the Center left only a big void, a void where what occur are violence of images, struggle of representation and the fight for meaning.

This is an age of total visibility, of total elimination of secrecy. Our surrounding is bare and clear, where we finally found out that we stand on nothing, everything is a void which we couldn't grasp. This new phenomena is caused by the proliferation of technology, of media, of the free and fast trade of knowledge. Media like Cyberspace has made knowledge no longer privileged, no longer needed to be acquired. It is everywhere on the edge of the finger. Knowledge is dead when it start occupying us, when knowledge is everywhere, its existence cancel itself. When everything considered knowledge, no thing is called a knowledge. Human's learning will no longer be associated with training of minds and the acquiring of knowledge. The transmission and storage of knowledge will no longer relies on the organic brains but on computers. It will be produced and sold, travel faster than the speed of electricity.

Under this new condition, the metanarrative of myths and religion collapsed. The blurry world that we had live for thousands of year clarify itself. The Doctrines have became jokes and drama. We no longer have to legitimize anything, any claim, any myth. Knowledge has made it too clear that we finally recognise that they are mere voids. The metanarrative is dead.

Living under this big void, human now started to suffocate. The bare, hollow void that we live in is too real and clear, story-less. We need the story back, we need the meaning back. We need a hallucinating, blur, pampering life, full of myth and story, where everything represent something because the reality is unforgiving.

Therefore human start to replicate things, copying things, exaggerate things, representing things. They live in a world of abstract mass media, and submit themselves to advertisement and consumerism. The era of mass communications invades human's dark Void, embracing us with cool lunatic light, penetrating our most private recess. Human thus succumb to the fatal abstraction of media, the era of advertisement, of Facebook slavery, of self-representation, they have become the modern slaves of the representation struggle. Individual eager to put in representational self-image to themselves.

The brutally prevailing mass connectivity of information silently diminish culture. Locality and culture is challenged by the power of mass-sharing of information. The diverse plurality of narrative local culture is slowly giving way to the homogeneous converging global culture. Death of unique culture is looming.

Architecture with the phallocentric Center as prerequisite.

Building's art and science are now departed from the scope of architectural expertise. Buildings are crafted not on site but from factory. The over-determinant of industrially-designed-components on building's aesthetics has left architecture profession with the only task of creating Images of form and perspectives. It thus face with the violence of Images.

This violence inside the postmodern void is a technological one, of computerized and synthetic architectural images. It is the end of the imagination of the architectural image itself, the end of the Real, the true Form. The image is violent because what happens in images is the murder of the Real, the image is vanishing point of the Real, the true Form.

'In the field of artificial intelligence, the thought does not even have time to formulate itself. Maybe the computerization of the image is the perfect mode of the image. And just the same : the computerization of thought would be the achievement of thinking. But just because of this, it is at the same time their total denegation. In the very perfection lies the violence of synthetic images and artifical intelligence.' -Jean Baudrillard.

As Plato says 'image is the confluence of the light emanating from the object and of the light emanating from the eye, then we will soon neither have an object nor an eye, and thus no images anymore'. This would be my answer if asked why architecture now is no longer immortal. The interaction and the occurance of architecture would terminate immediately when the building images' connection with the human's sight stopped. The images are work like plastic surgery of all problems, being social or ethical. This is the typical violence of the media, of images, of the spectacular.

Architecture of the architects is replaced by mere building-surface-art of the artis. Objects of manufactured industrial component pretentiously claiming to be the 'architecture of the time'. They are the compensating representation of the unrepresentable Void.

Above is my abstract coding of our postmodern 'Anti-Reality's reality. History ends when everything is a void, there lies no chapter, the story of architecture comes to a stop, nothing is here, we have to create story to our architectural undertaking. Architecture skill and culture like the fate of Knowledge. Technological and industrial means made skill and culture no longer priviledged, materiality, space and technique each is a matter of how well technology and manufactured industrial building components are assembled together. Skill and culture have since cancel themselves, architecture have since march towards a homogeneous global discipline of building-component-assembling activity. Uniqueness now merely rely on how building form represent some past cultural objects. Architecture history in this age is merely the forceful representation of the unrepresentable, of the generic unknown and the Void!

The End Of Architecture History And The Last Tyrant I

2010-03-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

-John Dennison-'The View of Le Corbusier'. The Final Form of architecture is one that use advance technology to achieve abstract representation, different from the utalitarian struggle of the vernacular.

It has been a shifting journey of architecture discovery since the first time I found architecture. From the first self-locating and defining, to now, reasoning its future 'Great End', architecture for me is a directional and finite journey, with now I can see the threshold of its ending, somehow faintly outlined .

American scholar Francis Fukuyama in the 90's wrote 'The End Of History', examining the possibility of the great end of political history, being finalized by the last concept of Liberal Democracy. Liberal Democracy is both definitive and directional, a Final Form of human pursuit of political and ideological development, thus the end of history, where history is seen as a compilation of individual events of human fight, of struggles and of the efforts done for improvement to achieve the democratic concept of society like today. Architecture in some extend share the analogy and as the hemogenous counterpart of this idea of 'Great Ending'. Modern architecture as the Final Form, perfect, free from the gravely internal contradiction found in those primitive vernaculars. It is the end chapter of architecture history, where we have to change how we see history, which we previously understood as a coherent and evolutionary process, to which I think is to see it as finite and directional, pointing to the great Perfect Form - The Great End.

Modern time architecture history label past architecture as terms
like 'primitive', 'vernacular' and 'regional' (by Frampton). This is part of the hegemony of the modern technological perfection when the Modern and the past were set in comparison. But why architecture history ends here?
-Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). German 19th century philosopher.

It would be rather a very interesting explanation if we examine it through the philosophical ideas from some greats like Friedrich Hegel and Plato. Past architecture of the primitives, locals and vernacular are those existed with enormous irrationalities and contradictions, plus with internal incapability of fulfilling human's deepest psychological 'longings'. The term 'longings' I better explaining it through the concept derived from both ideas of Plato and Hegel.

While past architecture before the emergence of the Moderns have failed in the task of fulfilling our human's 'longings', the technological oriented Modern architecture, brought about by the march of universal post-industrial capitalism of global market, is seen as the 'Mission Achieved' of our centuries of architectural quest. So now, why the past has failed and the Modern is the Final Form?

-'The Republic'(380 BCE) by Plato. Of early democratic Athens before the birth of Liberal Democracy. Of early classical architecture before the birth of Modern architecture. The two analogies.

Hegel speak through the natural science of human when explaining the events occurred in the political history. The concept is that there are 3 Objectives of every human's life. Every human seek eagerly in their life in the pursuit of these 3 big Objectives, indifference of racial, sexual, ideological and social arbitrary distinction, you and me, everyone is included. Above from our natural needs like food, shelter and physical preservation, plus the second, our efforts and calculation to acquire them, the third Objective of a human's life is the seek for 'RECOGNITION'. In particular, we wants to be recognized as a human being, with worth and dignity, with pride for instance of architecture. This struggle for recognition sipped through every part of human's life, including the seek for architectural pride for a particular group of community. This idea which is derived from Hegel's concept is perpetual with the one founded by Plato. In his world-changing publication - The Republic, he once said that there were 3 main part of every human's soul, first is desire, second is the reasoning (or calculations) to achieve this desire and the third part is called the 'thymos', the recognition of their self worth. Every human's act (even the tiniest act) is linked direct or indirectly to the fulfillment of this RECOGNITION of self worth. The main obstacle in his pursuit of this dignity of architecture that can be part of his longings is unfortunately the our past limited technological knowhow. Those years and centuries of struggles yielded pages and pages of architectural evolution but which not yet found the required 'RECOGNIZED' and 'REPRESENTABLE' quality that human would naturally prey for. Those are the primordial combats and struggle to achieve the third Objective of RECOGNITION. Modern free market and technological advance are the solution to their struggle. For it provide the right and the mean for them to fully express their will to achieve architectural RECOGNITION. The architecture technology now is no longer confined to the use of the noble civilizations, free global market plus consumerism make it everywhere visible and common. The Struggle stopped. RECOGNITION achieved.

Modern architecture supersede local vernacular architecture in our time as a result of the realization that the former (our own culture) provides defective form of recognition. The vernacular architecture that try to recognized the identity demands of its particular ethnic and cultural group are less rational than the universal form of RECOGNITION existed in embracing the technological based Modern architecture. Psycologically, this embrace would automatically set a particular group of human to the global RECOGNITION as an advanced and civilized community. The infinite technological capabilities of Modern architecture make the cultural identity 'forging' never be this easy before, human can now forge out an identity of pride and for manifestation in just seconds. Thus the third OBJECTIVE of a human living a life is finally achieved. Events of struggles and architectural revolution are now ceased to happen in the future resulting in the end of architecture history.
-Malaysian Pavilion of the Shanghai World Expo. The forged identity with the 'right' and 'means' of applying modern architecture technology.

- Plato’s allegory of the cave, The Republic book VII. 'We talk about augmented reality as if there is a stable thing called reality that we can add things to that are not real, but virtual. Obviously reality is a mental construct. When virtuality becomes convincing enough it will not be distinguishable from reality'.

The culture formed by this homogenous global Modern architecture is human that is lacking in thymos. His struggle for RECOGNITION is now solved. What left in his life are the OBJECTIVES of natural desire and the reasoning (calculation) to get it. He is a man without chest, with no extra desire to be greater than other because he has achieve his longing RECOGNITION as an civilized human being, and thus we call him...THE LAST TYRANT!

Our Narcissistic Eyes and The Architecture Of Visual Images

2010-01-23T12:43:00.001-08:00

-Caravaggio, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, 1601. 'Regardless of our prioritisation of the eye, visual observation is often confirmed by our touch...'-Juhani Pallasmaa.

A sprouting and deadly habit of ocularcetrism is approaching, posing greater and greater threat to the survival of architecture. The misleading confusion of an Western classical thought, started from Plato's time, has narcotically spread through the entire world, pushing the art of architecture to its end. It is the over-dominant of the sense of vision over the other four senses of our human body, architecture now are made and appear in front of us as mere visual journey of artificially generated images, short of plasticity, aura and the authority of presence...called it the 'retinal architecture'.

I had once argued with architectural instructors on my building design's visual impact in contrast with the surrounding context, they remained unmoved and defended the importance of visual scale and set a set of rules of how building must look, over-stressing the importance of its visual presence than of its functions. This proves unquestionably even the educational system has fallen into the addiction to the Architecture-Of-The-Eye.

As philosopher Martin Heidegger observed, the modern world has plunged into a highly nihilistic and narcissistic expression of pleasing the dominanting sense of eye. Our narcissistic eye views and demand architecture to be solely as a means of selfish self-expression, detached from its original mental, social and organic connections with real people and real culture. The nihilistic eye see everything as a set of images, disengage and isolate our soul from the real intimacy, materiality and tactile aspect of true architecture. The postmodern world have since becomes a meaningless visual journey of fake images, brought about with the help of technology like CAD and 3D imaging computer software, symbolically reinventing the misleading cultural signifiers, rather than was born as integral part of it. The senses of touch, smell and hearing are now the secondary routes of evaluating everything including architecture.

Juhani Pallasmaa in his writing 'The Eyes of The Skin' states: 'The cancerous spread of superficial architectural imagery today, devoid of tectonic logic and a sense of materiality and empathy, is clearly part of this process.' (the process of the cancer of treating architecture as mere visual images). The hegemony of the eye is deadly, as it increasingly separate the 'self' from the real world, the relationship and distant between people and his habitat now are confined between his eye and artificial graphic, and not the tectile, close and unconscious way we experience architectural space traditionally using the 5 senses. We are now unable to generate architecture that is truly speak for the majority people and needs (the interior world). We are now merely the 'spectators' of architecture, and are not inseparably belonged to it.
-The cancer tumor of the architecture of images and graphics has invaded education institutions.

For me, the death of architecture starts with the detachment of human bodily senses (not only the visual) from the physical materiality of it. This is because the term 'architecture' was a specific term, historically referring to a human culture that is guided by their bodily made craft, driven by the 5 senses, creating poetic beauty out of the chemistry between each of them, the same way a bird shapes its nest by its bodily movements, bees shape their honeycomb by their teamwork, or our indigenous mud architecture shaped by the very organic haptic and muscular craft of the local people...These are architecture.
-Architecture of People, by the People, for the People...Intimate, existential, true, functional, the articulation of 'fit' as the real beauty of architecture. Whatsoever, the connectedness between the human's self and the worldly incarnated environment has ever be so close before the invention of our narcissistic eye and of course the computer imaging.

Since the time of Renaissance Alberti's jugment of architecture as visual perception, proportion and harmony, the sense of eye has suppressed the other senses as the dominant yardstick of testing the good and bad of architecture. This classical thought inherited until our time culminated in Corbusian modernism in which he once wrote: I exist in life only if I can see; One need to see in order to understand; Man looks at the creation of architecture with his eye,...plus his famous etho: 'Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light'. These undeniably set and define and resulted in our time's preoccupation with the 'architecture of the eye'.

Now, they are the architecture of the eye, plan of the eye, elevation of the eye, city planning of the eye (le regard surplombant), they pursuit the 'Hygiene of the Eye', where pleasing the sensory pleasure of the eye has push the importance of our cultural, emotional and utilitarian participation in making architecture, to death. The existential plastic and spatial experience had gave way to the hyperbolic advertising and psycological persuasion of fake but striking visual computerized images. They are the dead instantaneous impact of our narcissistic self-expression, these architecture unable to sustain the test of time.
-'le regard surplombant' or architecture of Seen Above. Its 'spectators' are among people standing in front of the presentation graphics or birds and...flight passengers maybe? but certainly cannot be appreciated by users standing in front of the wall.

Architecture of the Eye alienate people, they are isolated in the selfish distant realm of vision and illusion, lack in tactility, more of a scenography than as the mother of all art and science. Architecture is DEAD!
-The persecution on the murder of architecture must start with the trial of her, as the forerunning advocator of 'visual architecture'. Most of the 21-th century ego-centric and narcissistic styling in architecture are desasterous to the sustainability of human as an organic being. Dictionary define narcissism as 'Excessive love or admiration of oneself' and 'A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem'.

"The taste of the apple...lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate, not in the fruit itself; in a similar way...poetry lies in the meeting of poem and reader, not in the lines of symbols printed on the pages of a book. What is essential is the aesthetic act, the thrill, the almost physical emotion that comes with each reading." -Jorge Luis Borges

"The dancer has his ear in his toes." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Charles Darwin and The Natural Selection of Architecture

2010-01-06T06:34:00.000-08:00

-Limited edition 2 pounds coins commemorate 200th Anniversary of his birth. 200 years since the first human found the great truth of his origin.

In the midst of 19th century England, a young man, both an attentive observer and a naturalist put forth some of the most critically fearsome questions that human have ever asked for themselves since their creation. Under the great whitewash and influence of the Genesis at that time, everyone was treating it as an indisputable history of facts, but one man, he, he read it under a very different kind of microscopic lens and overturned the concept of reading the Genesis as history to reading it as a fairy tale. In the process, he asked:

-Why would there be so many species of animal and plant?
-Why there should be thousands of kind of birds?
-Why would fossils of the depleted animal's body be found under the deep ancient rock where it would take far more than 10000 years for the process, while god said life were created only 4000 years ago B.C.?

All of his answers to these questions have since propelled some fierce interrogation to the ambivalence nature and the idealised specificities of the traditional claim that animal and human are created by god. After his years of discovery and research, including his famous journey to the Islands of Galapagos and the Amazon forest to study the origin of the diversity of species, he concluded his thesis in his publication called 'The Origin Of Species' in 1859, which this book has since render people all around the world both hate him and love him.
-His idea that ignite furious and shame among churches.

His answers are to suggest that the diversity of species of the animal and plant include the human, is caused by a single natural law that is undergoing endlessly until today since the first microorganism is created on earth. The species diversify themselves, evolving new species through time, using the concept of natural selection, where nature hold the task of selecting the best batch of living creature produced from the previous generations, which possess the highest biological adaptability to cope with the changing environment, to continue to exist on earth. Human are one of those well-evolved new species, with higher and better adaptation to his environment, generated from his previous ancestors, from the primitive organisms to the branches of fishes, reptiles, plants and insects, and after that monkeys, apes, human, peacocks... The branches divide and diverse in the process of forming the 'Tree of Life'. The evolution is still undergoing within the human species to continuously suiting him with his surrounding. This process is neither final nor random, neither well-planned nor divine-guided. It is a common law that had created the diversity of species and the 'Tree Of Life'.
-He wrote 'I Think...' in his notebook of 'Transmutation of Species', suggesting the first Tree Of Life.

His groundbreaking answer has debase the phallocentric and inconsistent ideal of religious claim of our origin. His dislodging answer and proposition to the self-enclosed idioms by the previous imagination and creativity of human towards the story of our origin have solve many puzzles and doubts that were budding, even from under the church's roof at that time. Every life existed on earth is a product of the 'Natural Selection'.

Our specification and self-justification that human is different from nature has proven to be wrong. His formation, his character, even his habitat (we call it his Architecture) are indeed intertwined within the general law of Natural Selection. Nature select the best type of habitat (Architecture) that survive the coping with its environment, from a mass batch of diversity of architecture generated. The evolution of the diversity (theory) of architecture has never ended until now. This process is neither final nor random, neither well-planned nor divine-guided. And the first human to realise it was...
CHARLES R. DARWIN!
(12 Feb 1809 – 19 April 1882)
-The 'Time's Meter' of human's evolution, starting from a tiny worm.

Deconstruction: The 'Differance' of the 'Difference'

2010-01-06T05:48:00.000-08:00

In relation to the Opposition between Good and Evil; Mind and Body; Reality and Appearance; Self and Other; Identity and Difference; Interior and Exterior; Reality and Fantasy; Order and Chaos; Presence and Absence; Black and White...
"DIFFERANCE IS NEITHER PRESENT NOR ABSENT. INSTEAD, IT IS A KIND OF ABSENCE THAT GENERATES THE EFFECT OF PRESENCE. IT IS NEITHER IDENTITY NOR DIFFERENCE. INSTEAD, IT IS A KIND OF DIFFERENTIATION THAT PRODUCES THE EFFECT OF IDENTITY AND OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE IDENTITIES"

...always in remembrance - Jacques Derrida.

Of Nietzsche And The Nihilistic Global Culture

2009-11-26T01:04:00.000-08:00

-Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche. Oil on canvas. Nietzsche standing on a bridge looking over the swirling world. His expression of deep thinking counterpart with the deep blue mountain.

3 weeks of excessive work has worn me out. Turning the pages of some Nietzsche's writings sparked back some quick adrenaline flowing in the vein, fascinated by how this 19th century intellect predicted the emptiness of the modern world.

'The attempt, for example, to use the theater as an institution for the moral education of the people, still taken seriously in Schiller's time, is already reckoned among the incredible antiques of a dated type of education. While the critic got the upper hand in the theater and concert hall, the journalist in the schools, and the press in society, art degenerated into a particularly lowly topic of conversation, and aesthetic criticism was used as a means of uniting a vain, distracted, selfish, and moreover piteously unoriginal sociability' -Friedrich Nietzsche.
-Architecture as mere street art - vain, distracted and unoriginal sociability.

Now and here, in the early years of the new century and in the middle of Asia, a mutation of architecture is undergoing, towards the nihilistic nothingness. The last sentence of that Nietzsche's line perfectly encapsulate the state architecture now. It was once the microcosm of civilization, the mother of all art and sciences, but it is now present in our days as a mere 'street art', short of identity and uniqueness, it is the 'free time toy' of society flush with financial capital, but of relatively scarce human capital. It remind me of a rich barbarian's closet: racks of fashionable designer outfits, could be easily worn onto the cold and naked body, of someone with an empty mind and soul. Architecture has now fail to be the best testament of the art and craft of his creator, it is a buying of the nihilistic dissoluted and shallow trans-global-culture under the patronage of consumer-driven capitalism and free-flowing capital. A paradox, a mutation.

The cause of our architectural emptiness is the sprouting middle class nouveau riche of the commercial amenities - the product of globalization and the favourist tyrant government. Architecture has degenerated from an important human enterprise to something diminutive in cultural significance, a fruitless hobby of our wannabe cultural capital who eagerly seek the touch of 'signature, studio-based star architecture firm' on their corporate edifice.
-The Malaysian government mega project - MATRADE Expo development with its controversially no open tender selection, this time said to be 'inspired by traditional Malaysian rubber seed and it blend with its surrounding natural context', we can see neither of the two claims ironically in this 'boutique architecture'.
-Another designer outfit on a culturally hungry body, another facade play, another alien - the new $628million MATRADE Expo with the government tyrant and 'ALIBABA' patrons looking on. There are already 6 major convention centers in the Klang Valley that are under-utilized including the $600million Putrajaya Convention Center. They are the 'White Elephants' of the privatization of GLC policy under NEP.

By blank-slake approach, designer-type firm are attracted to these developers who are short of interest in environmental and cultural contextuality, a platform which they exploit their creativity freedom in making form which is always nothing more than a naughty play of exterior building skin-deep-elaborate facades made of multiple playful material but yet supported by a modern framework of steel and concrete. Those 'play' they would argue to be traditional motif inspired, a clinical excuse of their exploitation in design freedom.

These designer-type firms is increasing in number, with steady technical expertise, they are in a position ready to generate icons and images to rebrand a new cultural identity of these desperately showy and money-fancy developing countries. This flock of firms opt to bypass opportunities in their own developed country that has strict code enforcement and property rights plus their architectural civilized and highly intellectual community. They stifle in favor of 3rd world's markets that embrace open, quick and trend-setting solutions to their economical boom. Their freedom in design always result in product that has little cultural attachment, a paradox between the regressive local cultural reality and their dramatic modern alien, carrying the tag of global culture of universality and essentialism.
Dubai - the wardrobe of the barbarian's outfits, the dead corpses city of the Gulf. These false landscape that falls onto some culturally unique Asian cities resonate a paradox between the nihilistic global fashion and the cultural void of our 3rd world society.

These 3rd world country nouveau riche who eagerly seek for their architectural tour-de-force have yet to realize the embedded mockery of their cultural and intellectual emptiness. Local society no longer has the authority to shape their own built environment and architecture. This is how I define architecture NOW in 2009...

Of Fascism Behind A Democratic Mask

2009-11-19T23:58:00.000-08:00

-A Venetian mask protect and permit wearer to freely interact with people of all social status in a traditional Carnevale. Malaysia has it worn 52years, still counting.

There are too many ambiguous and lopsided systems exist in this country. Not hard to be identified. Both blaming its cultural and demographically diverse background, and finger-pointing to its geographical default, might sometimes lead to rational explanations on how messy this country is. The democratic propaganda is still loud in the air. But actual actions beneath this propaganda, usually undemocratic, are unintentionally perpetuated and manifested on one aspect that claim to be the most communicative mirror of a nationhood - its architecture.

This is not Mussolini's fascist era, nor the country need giant rostrum to tell the world that we want to revive socialism. But as Sigmund Freud once said, 'real democracy have never existed, there lies a animalistic irrationality and violent in every human', silent practice of fascism behind the protective mask of democracy is both possible and feasible. A recall on the history of Mussolini's regime and its fascist architecture vision struck me in association on what is happening in Malaysia.
-Palazzo Dei Congressi of EUR - the fascist edifice.

I examined the 4 aspects of fascism with its level of real practice by the Malaysian government. There are four main characters of our nation's conduct in close similarity with the one used in pre-WW2 Italy. There is a 'dictator' with centralize authority on all systems, be it our controversially elected P.M., stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism through over-flavouring a certain race and the gradual marginalization of other. All these dictatorial policies are undergoing silently beneath the mask of constant democratic propaganda.

In pre-war Italy, Marcello Piacentini under command of Mussolini almost single-handedly built the idealized New Rome for the tyrant. The whole city was almost completed by the 1942 Rome Exposition before the Axis power were plunged into war. Its fascist architecture share resemblance with the dictated new public architecture of the 21th century Malaysia. Both communicative in its overwhelming statement of totalitarian oppression of other seemingly inferior cultures. Its socialist realism architecture leave nothing abstract, leave no implicit hint, for this sake it resorts to the 'carved image' of classical language. Thus, it reconstructs the semiotic triangle, the firm relation between signifier (architectural element), reference (eclectic classical reference) and signified (the superiority of a certain party).
-False monumentalism and intention for manipulation - a national shame.

The purpose of these kind of building is to certain the 'uncertainty'. Clearly communicated in those building's symmetry, the firm centres and routes, big walls as well as those historically well codified architectural elements (classic and local vernacular), in a reasonable mixture.

Those imaginary 'SELF' of racist and dictatorial ground would not last long. The 'mask' itself would 'unmask' what is behind. The ill-fated are now end up trapped, like in the Piranesi's Carceri d'invenzione - The Imaginary Prisons!
-Geovanni Battista Piranesi - Carceri Plate VII, The Drawbridge, 1750.

3 Musketeers' Pilgrim and The Beginning of An End Of A City-State

2009-11-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

-An implicit clock gears metaphor of the rigidity and robotic nature of Singapore.-APEC as the clock gears repairman

Not a Hajj Pilgrimage though, nor this place inherit masterful pieces of architecture, that worth 3 Malaysian musketeers to set on a highly intrepid trip. Singapore has always been on high and low. This time, the high of the APEC summit and their doomy domestic worries has set a highly intense and contradictory display, suggesting the beginning of an end of their great 30 years of triumph, all found through the eyes of 3 Malaysian architecture musketeers.
-Harbourfront - 10 Nov 2009 - courtesy musketeer R.Y.TAN

The ever so predictable, systematic (or even robotic) tiny island nation, this time poise in front of me with a different messages, that could well suggest deeper truth from the average understandings from the mouth of others.

The 48 hours of hectic voluntary ushering in the Suntec Convention Center couldn't provide the points on our intrepid undertaking, without it impose strong hints for our better interpretation on their work ethics. The typical dictacting, systematic(even robotic) and the unbearably narcissistic nature of the nation's conduct manifested throughout the whole preparation for the summit. As usual, fear drive them forward.

Our architectural pilgrimage, unmask some masked reality of their high and low. Their Yeang's National Library, Kurokawa and Tange's office towers downtown plus all the ultra-modern high profile signature architecture are in opposite gesture with the worries posted on newspaper of educational, cultural and mostly, economical concerns. This pilgrimage tell us that the first are served for the survival of their ailing later. The mood under the Convention Center may be the same. Singapore treat APEC as the keystone of their economical arch in the future, with the rising economical powerhouse in the world increasingly impose greater pressure on the tiny island country. As usual, it is unmistakable. The fight for an Utopian free trade zone over AsiaPasific region and Singapore's subsequent survival is the masked reality. Harbourfront's mega casino is in the making, while the last grasp of Confucianist school of thought is in the brink of eternal banishment. The impending gambling culture means laissez faire capitalist economy is in their highest ethos. Singapore have made decision on the cultural-identity crossroad while they compensate their cultural sacrifice by instilling back Chinese oriented teaching in their school curriculum, in which the first is much a heavy bill.
-The other 3 musketeers in the making - Harbourfront Casino

The island is founded with no more than swampy land, before they eventually realized the importance of westernization and capitalism on the survival of their city state. The two subsequently embraced without more consideration, and their citizen are now enslaved to the giant regime of western consumerism, nonreturnable and blindfolded. Squeezing into the rank of Middle Class is in the mind of everyone here, the rank which capitalist crave for, a giant rank consist of high spending power slaves, who wander narcotically in the trap of rivalry, envy and sarcasm circle. The politically and socially inert Singaporean is undoubtedly a sample consequences of the Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays's long forgotten psychoanalytic theory in tamming the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy. Consumerism and the subsequent people's psychological pursuit of imaginery self-portrait (or self-branding) are everywhere, from the self-and-brand-conscious student to the highly narcissist office-woorking class, the two are modern forms of cocaine invasion and political dictatorship. Singaporean in real need of help...
-Yeang's National Library revisited - 11 Nov 2009

The mistake of their urban planning authority 30 years back of allowing the development of many low density housing could be traced everywhere on the island. The initial planned target of maximum 6.5million inhabitant is now on its 4.99 mark. Until it reach the point 6.5, I am wondering in what style, the highly mass transit oriented transportation will collapse. The rising rank of middle class would means more and more automobile on the road which has now reach its ultimate buffer, the incursion of foreign labour then also will force its mass rail transit to its brink. In housing, this means more dominos on more reclaimed land, courtesy of Malaysian soil. These are all closer and closer to the much awaited modern vision of Ville Contemporaine.

This give reasons for them to worry. But those fear would still drive them forward in the beginning of its end...

-Towards an intrepid traveller...- 13 Nov 2009 - train.

Post-Functionalist, Beauty and The Struggle of Representation

2009-11-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

-An oil refinery silo that demonstrate sheer functionalist beauty of assisting nature's tasks.

Modern era represent beauty of functionalist thinking but functionalist thinking couldn't be singly represented by modernism. Functionalist perspective of absolute beauty has deeper root and longer history than what the Utopian and dictating modernist had single-handedly claimed.

One day in Athens, student Aristippus met master Socrates...
Aristippus tried to challenge Socrates' view on the relationship
between 'good', 'beautiful' and 'usefulness'...
Aristippus:"Can you describe what constitute 'good'?"
Socrates: "There could be nothing good in itself but only in relation to something. A thing must be good for something in order to be good."
Aristippus:"How about 'beautiful'?"
Socrates:"A beautiful wrestler is unlike a javelin beautiful for swift and powerful hurling."
Aristippus argued that the two answers given by his master are overlapping and repeatedly the same. Socrates then explain:" Is a dung basket beautiful then? Of course, and a golden shield is ugly, if the first is well made for its special work the later badly!".
But for Aristotle's Functionalist theory, a work of art that is truly 'beautiful', is one that could function to complete mother nature's unfinished design of the world. The higher rank in life scale, from insect to animal to human, the more nature require them to assist her task. Provided the rational faculty of art, man is able to come to nature's aid and the art done by human functions to fulfill her uncomplete task. (example: an oil refinery plant is a beautiful work of human art to solve the incapability of nature to convert oil into power resource) A physician/doctor use the law of nature to do the heal of health of a person, when nature made mistakes and incapable to do so. The skill and machinery of a physician carrying out his job, has help nature to reach the desired result of providing health. This is the true reason and the beauty of human art.

The end of modern era see the lack of rational understanding of the beauty of architectural art. Those classical faith and thinking of functionalist beauty faded and the whole post-modern world plunged into a deep abyss of identity struggle in the search for 'beauty'... called it the Struggle of Representation. One full century of functionalist modern rationality proven to be too cruel to some ill-fated human, who always wish to live in idealised imaginary world (especially those in third world country which literary understanding of the meaning of modernism is lacking), the 'hamster wheel' of Struggle begun. Morality neglected, the responsibility of completing nature's unfinish task pushed aside, the naive, emotional and irrational reviving of the fading identity barricade the human eyes! The Struggle continues...
-The rude and banal etnocentric post-modernist revivalism - a giant Golden Shield?

'Man shouldn't be able to see his own face - there's nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.'

- Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Of Impulse Conversion and a Masterpiece of Spatial Concept

2009-11-04T22:37:00.000-08:00

-The museum of hearing...?

Parallel to what biomorphic architecture has to do with the borrowed idea from human organic inner structures, some component in our body (other than the physics of the skeletal structure), are able to show enormous functional proximity and physical metaphor with how we shape our building art. This time the idea is from our ear cochlea.

To achieve genius architecture spatial quality need no devine transcendental interfered idea, a close look at how our sensory organs work might do you well. The working of Cochlea, an auditory structure in our inner ear, shows close resemblance with how the greatest 20th century architectural space functions to rise human sensation in art appreciation, it is the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York.
-5thAvenue, Upper East Side, New York.

The cochlea is filled with watery liquid that moves in accordance with vibration coming from the middle ear. There are 'Hair cells' inside the spiralling scala vestibuli that set into motion when a low frequency vibration is detected. While the liquid moves along the spiraling 'rotunda', Hair Cells convert vibration into electrical impulses and are sended through neurotransmitter to the brain to produce SENSATION.

-The spiralling rotunda of our cochlea. -Wright's sectional drawing of the Guggenheim Museum.

The Guggenheim Museum simply works the same way as with the Cochlea. The extraordinary experience of walking down the spiralling ramp while enjoying endless piece of artwork on the spiralling wall, could have putted the cliche of 'architecture as boxes' to the test. The spatial concept here intensify the sensory link between the messages of the art on the wall with the human soul.

Here, you walk down the spiralling ramp, your physical present metaphorically works as the 'vibrational input', the museum's volume of space as the 'watery liquid' of cochlea, the artwork on wall as the 'hair cells' on the spiralling scala vertibuli, the messages and the texture of the artwork as the sensory 'impulses',...all in one coincide within a beautiful moment, INTENSIFYING THE SENSATIONAL RETHINK OF THE MEANING OF TRUE GREATNESS!

Of termitidae's Harmony and homo sapiens's Unending Dialectic

2009-11-03T07:41:00.000-08:00

The last century of earth will see human species in sorry state of inculpativation. The intolerable nature of human is critically contradicting the rest of nature, making them the strangest animalia kingdom ever existed on this planet. The paradox of humans nature, which is much represented by some of their works like Energy-Mass-Speed relation, the exploitation of uranium or even their self-admit overly high energy consumption, can be easily seen through and proven by comparing the stark contradiction of humans' and inarguably, termites' architecture.
Ventilation vents in termites mount.

While the dialectic discourse of human on the agenda of finding a fresh new glamour Logos of architecture, the rest of the world (termites a preferable sample) do not seem finding it hard to have a eternal solution of producing a lasting excellent architecture. The theoretical progress of humans architecture, which has yet reach its ultimate harmony, would continue to stumblingly struggles, failing in each attempt to find the ultimate centre. A harmony termites mount would be far adrift the amalgamation of human architecture which is still within great uncertainty.

In the middle of our boast of how complicated our biomatic sustainable architectural terminology is, of how we blend our architecture with nature, nature scoff off a sigh of scorn on our naiveness. A sub-Sarahan African termites mount has all the reasons to proof the incompatibility of human's architecture compared to theirs. With the body size of not more than the size of a quarter of a tiny rice, termites has built comparatively 2743 feet high 'building' while the tallest human made structure now being the Burj al-Arab is only 1922 feet high. Inside the mount, they farm fungus which is their primary food source which must be kept at exactly 87 degrees F, while the temperatures outside fluctuate between 35 at night to 104 degrees F during day. A termites mount achieve this remarkable (LEED Platinum certified maybe..) feat by constantly regulating the opening and closing a series of heating and cooling vents. By using the principal of convection currents, air is sucked in at the lower part of the mound, down into enclosures with muddy walls, and up through a channel to the peak of the termite mound. The industrious termites constantly create new vents and plug up old ones to regulate the temperature. This 'architectural' wonder, existed approximately 251,000,000 years ago since termites evolved. Sadly, we human only learn this from nature in the year 1996 of the 20th century, approximately 250,999,987 year later!

Another page of humans strange architectural evolution.

The Eastgate building in Harare, Zimbabwe, which emulate the bioclimatic features of a termites mount, symbolize not just another page of human contradicting boundless theories in architecture, but also the contradicting humans nature with the other parts of nature. The Eastgate development, owned by corporation Old Main, is itself a mirror of the conflict of human which has until now failed to find the true harmony. Pre-industrial past, tradisional culture was the leading way of thought; industrial age with Modernism as the ultimate episteme; while in post-industrial time see humans' continued struggle for a proper representation, neither Pop, Neo-, Ethnic, Mass, Deconstruct nor parametric could speaks for the majority global dwellers. The establishment of a eternal representation of human architecture stumblingly continue. Old Main, along with the likes of Barclays and others are those who secretly funded the reign of Zimbabwe's president Mugabe, amidst the lasting civil war, hunger and severe corruption the failed nation is facing.
The ventilation holes at Eastgate as direct imitation of the system in termites mount. An architectural mutation it would seems.

A theoretically boundless, strange but avant-garde architecture, ironically found in the trouble-proned continent of Africa, with the most unlikely context of a failed community using it, Eastgate is in stark contradict with the highly organised community system of King-Queen-Worker-and-Soldier living inside a termites mount, those who found the true harmony...While nature cast off a scornful smile on us...the Human.

Coming Soon - Of Rebirth of Logos & The New Definition of Mosque

2009-10-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

From Logocentrism to Derrida's Deconstruction, and The Death of Style

2009-10-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

-The Platonic Nemesis as the advocator of Logos

I found a Deconstructivist book by Derrida called 'Writing and Difference'. In that I found ideas on my long questioning of why Style has dead. Here, I compose all my points why I think so.

Architecture is an endless quest of constant struggle against gravity and the complementing organization of spaces. From the start of architectural history, the struggle begun. It is human's creativity in dealing with that struggle against the gravitational pull and space design that produce architectural style. The greek hexastyle, the parthenon octostyle, the Islamic hypostyle up until the modern domino was a type of creative battle against the nature of gravity in the provision of organised spaces - each one a new creative solution.

From the first birth of architecture when we came out from cave and have our roof, wall and floor in place as our shelter taking form, the chronological progression of style commenced until, (I would personally say)the modern era. The 1960's Structuralist was the cul-de-sac for our much obsessed architecture style. Since then, any new found 'style' or new theory of style or any redefinition of style are seen as futile and underdeveloped. Easily saying, the climax of a great style like the modernist is now hard to emulate. All of these could be traced back to the consequence of work by one man who had play an antagonist role and rebellious enough to scatter the foundation of the whole western philosophy which is much advocated by Plato's Nemesis and the Christian Trinity. His name is Derrida (1930-2004)
-The most influential 21th century philosopher, French Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida's work has great influence in trembling the whole ground of western metaphysics and even has dampened the foundation of western architecture since the time postmodernist architects embraced the linguistic work of Derrida. The whole game is called Deconstruction. The great string of architectural Style progress broken when Deconstructivist theory forerunner architects like Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky and Bernard Tschumi conceived the idea from Derrida. Never since their work, our creative struggle against the law of gravity and the space organisation and hierarchy ended.

Derrida first presented his long developed idea of Deconstruction in the U.S. in his paper called "Structure, Sign and Play, in the Discourse of the Human Sciences". In that he found out that most of Werstern Philosophy (until the modern era) were indeed in a continuous search for the Logos. Those proponents of western philosophical theory are in fact share a negative character of being Logocentric. Logocentrist is those who consider meaning in all things in life could firmly attached to some originary source that is pure, eternal and unchanging (the Logos). Example, the incarnation of Christ in Christianity; the Prophet, the Quran, the God, the Paradise, the ultimate Beauty in Islam. Whenever human talk of beauty, they are in direct reference to the heavenly Beauty with a Capital B; the God with Captial G..etc.. That ultimate totality of those Logos are the base of all theories in Western philosophy, considered the touchstone, the origin that is pure or the source to everything. Any new theory that claims to go beyond and free from the previous thinking is indeed useless or Derrida said 'Waylessness', in Greek called 'Aporia'. All of these new found idea, esthetic, theology even linguistic are to point back to Meaning/the ultimate Truth (with Capital T) or some higher end. The pursuit of style or more commonly like a human who pursuit fashion and knowledge, they are in a journey to reach that Truth and Meaning (the logos). New architectural style have the tendency of being like that. All architects seek that Logos, for its promises to give Meaning and Purpose to all things in world, that act as an universal centre, a transcendental signified that all signifier can refer back to. All new movement and theory are indeed trying to find that Logos where they can ground on, a desire for a higher reality in a world that is rather uncertain and full of death.

In architecture, the Logocentricism is in fact more serious. From the great pyramid until the utopian modernism, all are guided by the ego of Logocentricism, externally and internally. The pyramid is the preparation place before the reincarnation of the Pharaoh, where the secret chamber and the passage were used as accelerator for the soul of Pharaoh to travel to the stars for reincarnation. The Pharaoh and the believed blessing of annual flood from him is the Logos behind the invention of Pyramid. Likewise, the greek Parthenon is a theory that serves the Logos of Goddess Athena. Victorian industrialist architecture with the Logos of new found industrial society and technology. Last, the modernist with the Logos of industrial age, functionalism, rationality and machines. Besides, there lies an internal Logos of ego among modernist who claimed the win of technology against religion, who claim the True Beauty of human rationality, morality and the concept of Zeitgeist. But that marks the end of Logos in architecture when Postmodernism and the Deconstructivist idea of Derrida flourish. The Style ended.
-The Aporia as in Dante's 'The Dark Wood of Error'

Deconstruction of Derrida is a method to break and dismantle all Logos and Logocenticism in the world. The 'deconstruction' means to tear down and deconstruct all the efforts in search for the Logos. It promote a full free play of Meaning, unbound the bounded structure(logos) of all things, synchronic and refuse to be attached in the Aporia of Logos, refuse to be pinned down and refuse to be putted in a 'box'. In architecture the whole progress of style is an useless Aporia that each of them seek a high reality of greater Truth which indeed doesn't exist. It is like the hamster wheel and an act of masturbation. Something proven when effort to ignite a new great style has failed, like the movement of metabolism, post-functionalism, blobitecture, Memphis Group and the recent Parametrism. All of it because the new age of Deconstruction has begun, one that allow no Logo or Style or new Theory that could extent our stupid Aporia.

The deconstructivist work of firm Coop Himmelblau on the Funder Factory Works 3, in St Veit Austria and the design of Parc de la Villette by Tschumi in Paris mark the death of Style, architecture no longer posses the struggle against gravity and space organisation could now be played boundlessly with no reference to the source of history. The order of base-shaft-pediment, column and beam, private and public, solid and void are now in history book! They are rotten Logos of total self-conscious idea and theories! Everything are now in Total Free Play!
-Coop Himmelblau's deconstructivist Funder Factory Works 3 - World's first deconstructivist 'building'.

-Parc de la Villette of Bernard Tschumi with direct consultation from Derrida.

Of Ryōan-ji's 'Zen', Michaelangelo and The Glass of Mies

2009-10-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

A work of perfection requires you to be in constant struggle of infinite desire. Standing outside of the Miesian house, you feel something lures you to go to the inside. From the inside, the framed landscape could go furthur pinpointing you to go side by side with those sugar maple outside. This is an masterpiece of an act of intensifying elements of nature, much celebrated in the 'borrowed landscape' of Japanese Zen Garden while the one found in Ryoan-ji Temple, Kyoto dubbed to be at its pinnacle.

A granite rock would never own such high gratitude and subtlility if not placing it to a well proportioned and organised Zen rock garden. There, while the rock silently resting on pebbles and stones, an intense and alarming wave remind you of the nature of gravity, and the power of Now, where the composition of that granite rock resting on the ground seem inpenetratable by any kind of forces.

The maple landscape must thanks the glass and steel of Mies, which have help to highlight, intensify and celebrate their existence. It is otherwise feasible to say that without the glass box, you who stand there would never see the intense tipping branches of those sugar maple pointing towards you, touching your fingertips, bringing you, the human, back to the very root of nature, bringing you to a higher level of abstraction in understanding our cosmic action.

"The house is no more than a device to see the world, a mechanism of viewing....The glass house doesn't simply expose the exterior world. It actively turns the world into a highly composed display." -Beatriz Colomina

Edith Farnsworth's machine is at the summit of the power of modern architecture. A piece like that require the touch of a man with skills more than an average craftsman. A man who could explore well in the realm of both subjectivity and objectivity and putting the beholder in the constant struggle of beauty.

The pinpointing touch of maple branch, so intense, in close proximity with the hands in Michelangelo Buonarroti's(1475-1564) diegno "The Creation of Adam"!

Wonder

2009-10-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

...wonder is not knowledge,
neither is it ignorance.
It's something which is suspended
between what we believe we can be,
and a tradition we may have forgotten...

- Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

Falling Into The Water - Mere Fairy Tale or An Architecture

2009-09-18T06:03:00.001-07:00

Ivan Bilibin's fairy tale of Vasilissa the Beautiful

Blending a building into nature is rude.

While we all celebrating the genius of this hut design, being a claque of the cheers in front of books and monitors displaying the showy toy of the Kaufmanns', worshipping the great blend of the house and the nature, tell you...you are just in the middle of a fake romance.

This structure has been the teaching model in the world of architecture. Its fame, like the scattering of the fern spores, psychologically prepossessing architecture hero-worshipers in a split of time, aided by boastful American mass and its creator. The cantilevered horizontal planes of the house combine with the vertically flowing water of the stream, with the tone of the stucco blending with the mood of the maples clouding it, with the new tag of 'Organic Architecture', it is hard for you to deny the romantic, heroic and the 'morality' of it. The notion that building must relate to the natural site proved to be a morally indebatable cliche. People, architects, professors starts to be overwhelmed by the highness and the gratitude of being 'responsible' to the site. They talk about morality, humidity, responsibility and all the big words common in a fairy tale. Architecture lecturers said:'' Blend it like Frank!"

Frank Lloyd Wright could never be squeeze into the top 3 modern architect in the world. The reason is that his buildings (which is nature-fancy) are mere romance and have yet reaching the three essentials of being an architecture. Fallingwater, Guggenheim Museum and the Ennie House are in the brink of their collapse.

Complementing the nature is indeed an act contradicting the nature. A human habitat could never be a integral part of nature. Building, is at its own the worst thing a man can do to nature. Because man unlike other animal, we have the authentic characteristic of going against the law of nature. Just like what Charles Jencks once said, human unlike other part of nature, they contradict nature. We invent E=mc2, we explode it, we burn fuels, we kill whales, we light up the forest, we fly with steel machines...The alienating human and his shelter, have they ever pleased nature?... No.

Fallingwater has seem going in touch with every force of nature (visually), except one - GRAVITY (reality). Apart from its leaking roof due to the forced flat horizontal roof (the so-called principal of organic architecture), the two cantilevered terrace which have always been the celebrated feature of this so-called masterpiece, are actually fragile. Engineers have since fighting endlessly to investigate the cause of its 9 inches deflection. The movement under the waterfall rocks, the high humidity of the site, and the irrational cantilever in the microscope of engineering have awaken the dreaming hero-worshiper about what blending with nature really is. We are soon to see the cantilevered house supported by post-tensioning cables - engineers said. The idea of mimicking the naturally cantilevered pine tree, is a romantic undertaking. There, the waterfall is yelling, the air is uttering, deep underneath the house, the foundation is cracking! The building has since interrupt the sheer beauty of an authentic waterfall. It is a FORCED LANDSCAPE! Remember, we are the human!

The beauty of human rationale, the beauty of machine, the glory of the industrial age, sung by the true Modern architecture do not found themselves anywhere in Wright's buildings. They are not modern, moreover, they inherited the ugly mannerism and hypocrisy of the Baroque and Neo-classicm ages. The important first of the principal of firmitas, utilitas and venustas is missing. A building that blend with nature has the ending of falling into the Bear Run Creek! A building blending with nature, complementing nature is a commercial, is a fairy tale, not an architecture! They are FORCED LANDSCAPE and we are the HUMAN!

Vasilissa the Beautiful.?

The Plight of Our Age

2009-09-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

A new age has begun.
An age of boundless boundary;
of sublimed process, success and complacency;
of boundless obsession;
of ruthless ignorance;
of timeless means naught;
of thing comes and goes, of rapid transition,
...in the remembrance of no one, in the mercy of no one!

Autumn maple leaf may fall,
but we couldn't 'see' its fall,
we could merely 'look' at its routined drop...
Its beauty remained timeless, but timelessness seem so far,
our eyes have since barricaded...
by our ruthless ignorance!

What left, is our endless serving to the conditionings,
set by the order of capitalists, reformists, theorists...
Merits in line with how well we goes with those conditionings,
which are mere futile loops of traps,
punishing yet confirming our state of coziness,
within our sublimed complacency.

What left, is the souless skeletons of mass produced 'factory product'...
wandering on the streets of all conditionings.
The murderer of our pride as an unique individual, our wisdom, and our beautiful eyes left intact...
We are serving endlessly, boundlessly, to the flight of their conditionings
...while this is the Plight of Our Age!

"What is education without enlightenment? It's a mere conditioning. And what is mere conditioning but maintaining mass ignorance, the poisonous and poisoning end of what we call civilization? There is nothing more dreadful, more dangerous, nothing to be more feared in this world, than plain or fancy ignorance, We can see this today in the drift toward conformity." - F.L.Wright

Mes Yeux Pointus!

2009-08-31T02:35:00.000-07:00

Je vois...
ce monde

succes avoir besoin coeur intoxicant
Muslim = hypocrisie > peur + non confiant
pur durement travail / fimer + vide

Je suis soigneusement gardé de le monde souffrant. Ils sont faibles et pitty, piégé a l'interieur d'une loi bien planifiee, comme la dependance de la drogue, ne pouvait pas trouver themselve. Dans ce voyage, je vois beaucoup de choses, je travaillerai durement, jusqu'a l'eveille de mon temps, jusqu'a, un jour, chacun me respecte,capitulez-moi. Un remboursement, de la dureté, le fait de démoraliser yeux.

La lutte viennent de commencer! Buddha va faire toujours ici, le fait de m'élever le himalaya!

Je me sens charitable d'eux

Names Can Be Named, But Not The Eternal Name ---SPACE!

2009-06-22T05:27:00.000-07:00

I have always love travel, seeing different cultures of different human, gives me a psychological retreat where I see anything is possible; reflection, rethinking overwhelms. I gained something huge out of my recent trip, a rethink, a redefinition of an issue we human acknowledge so well but failed to understand.

Bearing the expectation on architectural discovery, my empty mind during this trip were suddenly hit by an questioning of something core to architecture---SPACE. I finally have the time to compile all those sudden influx of ideas on 'SPACE', here in the form of a blog entry.

Whence does space originated?
Can space exist independent of man?
(if no one witnessed the life of an orchid in an empty valley, did the orchid actually bloom and wither?)
Is space a necessary extension of man's consciousness? ( I think, therefore space exist?)... Then,

The book of Lao Zi and Bible, two great oriental and occidental classics, both declared that nothingness existed prior to our appearance.
Lao Zi said:" As the origin of heaven and earth, it is nameless; as the Mother of all things, it is nameable."
名可名，非常名。無名天地之始；有名萬物之母。
The Bible stated:" In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Earth was formless and empty; darkness prevailed while the spirit of God hovered over the waters."

Lao zi clearly said that heaven and earth existed for a long time in a nameless state, but man gave a name to everything, thus established a relative significance of his own existence. Since man was not able to name what he could not see or sense, the incorporeal which received no name was assumed not to exist. Our notion of space is therefore totally dependent on our limited ability to comprehend it, as if its existence is only an extension of human consciousness.

LAo zi continued to speak of the "way"(道):" So, as ever hidden, we should look at its inner essence; as always manifest, we should look as its outer aspects." Simply speaking, we should try to learn the essence of the "way" from what is not apparent, and its operation from what is obvious.

OK, now finished taking clue and quotes from the old man, back my questioning of SPACE...
Are we then really able to grasp the existence of space?
What is the true relationship between space and man? Is it clear and definite, or confused and uncertain?
Does space require form to exist, as light needs shadow to be perceived?
It is extremely interesting that the Bible describes the earth in the time before man as being formless and empty: a space not only without man but also without form and empty, what is then?
The Bible continues:" And then the Lord God said, 'let there be light', and there was light." This is rather intriguing: why should there be light? Is it a preparation for the advent of man, so man will be able to see? Heaven and Earth have existed in darkness, what is light for? Is it an attempt to bear witness for man's perception?

The 'light' mentioned here is perhaps similar to what Lao Zi described as a "name". Light allows man to have perception by its illumination, while man gives a name to everything, suggesting that a world without light or name nevertheless exists.

Look at it but you cannot see it, its name is FORMLESS
Listen to it but you cannot hear it, its name is SOUNDLESS
Grasp it but you cannot get it, its name is INCORPOREAL
These three attributes are unfathomable; therefore they fuse into one. Its upper side is not bright: It's under side not dim.
Continually the Unnameable moves on, until it returns beyond the realm of things.
We call it the formless Form, the imagineless IMAGE.
We call it the indefinable and unimaginable.
Confront it and you do not see its face! Follow it and you do not see its back!

What a perfect description of the essence of space! Not only does it insinuate that space cannot be completely understood via our sensory organs, it also vividly portrays the elusive, formless, posture-less, neither bright nor dim qualities of space, and in a friendly manner further postulates the convoluted, both distant and close relationship between space and man.

The Conventional Wisdom - argumentum ad populum

2009-06-15T03:47:00.000-07:00

The title of this post might be puzzling, but you have to accept that architecture student questions everything. This time the simple theory is more ecumenical, is of the question what shape our Conventional Wisdom?

This wisdom, scientifically named 'argumentum ad populum' (Latin) in logic, is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or all people believe it; it alleges, "If many believe so, it is so."

For example, morale, culture, way of life, world view, tradition, taboo, what your mother told you to follow when you are small, education, constitutional and inconstitutional law....etc

There are thousands of examples/things in life that can prove that human have overdependent on this simple wisdom. Do you ever question yourself of why war or any verbal dispute can ever happened in life? Of course many will eventually blame that it is just a crash of different agenda and courses, the good person/party will always win/be the correct one. Someone inside the dispute who act/think out of this Conventional Wisdom would always be considered the wrong one by the majority. The Concentional Wisdom overwhelme those 'Unconcentional' one, which proposed by someone who are being able to jump out of the concrete barrier of the CW. This nature has yet to be questioned by human and it is this nature that has manipulate human from the very start of human history. Believe it or not, the catastrophe of human species, brought about by the damage of our earth environment in near centuries, is believed to be caused by our own 'CW'!

CW widespread from the first page of human history, because human born without an ultimate guidebook which state what things in life is right and what is wrong. Then religion born out of human's unconcious faith and fear. Then, human-made 'guide', ex: Bible or Quran, emerged out of nothing. People then treat religion and its guide as the undisputable truth, as an comfort zone of priceless psycological support. But no one ever question why religion could not give answer to eveything, they could just provide guide to life and only be able to promote a WAY OF LIFE. This guidance, if under logic scrutiny, are all born out of our human's own CW. So, simply, RELIGION = NORMAL HUMAN CONVENTIONAL WISDOM. The only different between the two is just that the former one being tagged 'SACRED', seemingly conveyed by that very special SOMEONE. Human who challenge the CW in life would be told to refer to that SACRED GUIDE, constitutional law also based on the senses of that guide, really, human never have greater autonomy to challenge truth since that CW is born. which I think is merely looping in the same circle, futile. If religion really provide the truth, human race will not heading towards extinction in the future caused by their own over-developement; life of human would not be treated unequally; Holocaust may be prevented; discrimination worldwide would no longer exist...etc, because the GUIDES are said to be bringing us to a better tomorrow. But we keep on refer, refer, and refer back to our CW(religious guide), after all no way finding the solution to human's problems.

Meanwhile, a battle could not be happenning without the present of some human that understand that we need to climb beyond the blurring wall of CW. They challenge the conventional 'truth', break rules, rethink orders, question those indisputable, make change and IMPROVE. We can name some examples of individuals who did that. Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, once imprisoned, house arrested and sentence to death ( "abjure, curse and detest") by the catholic church owing to his opinion that deny earth as the centre of universe. A genius nearly being killed by the self-acclaimed CW of that religious doctrine (GUIDE). The 'sacred doctrine' is merely a CREATION of human creativity and not the truth. This simple example has since disturbing human indulgence in overdependent of our own CW. But since, also human failed to accept those who opposed the CW.

Apart from Galilei, many other individuals or parties who see beyond the paradigm of CW and tough enough not to sway away from by the lying 'truth', have contribute trimendously to the improvement of human life. Amongst, Renaissance forefathers, industrial revolutionists, French revolutionists, architecture modenists, and many more. After all, they do not saw the truth, but assertive enough to have faith in their own new 'truth'. Change happenned. The world could see a further horizon, a greater enlightenment.

Play'in it Cool - Coldplay

2009-06-14T06:59:00.000-07:00

I was once doubtful of the influence of the classical entity to our present world. Classical era very much means the civilizations of the Greeks and Romans for me at first. In architecture, classical architecture once only a single chapter of the past. But after few encounters on how modern humans have empowered from the classical influence, I started to base everything in life with the basic senses of the classics. I have since started to understand why there exist modern edition of Classical music, writing, architecture and art. I have since discovered that many influential and great work in the modern time have the base in the classical entity.

Le Corbusier spent formative years travelling in the Classical ruins in Greek and Italy before he eventually found his enlightenment in architecture, Modern architecture then born. Mies van der Rohe and Luis Kahn also had experienced that power of Classics before they 'found' themselves. Their greatest work always dubbed to have sort of reference and tie to the Classical world, of great monumentality and dignity, although they are being tagged Modern. Eventually their work last for eternity. Many other Pritzker prize winning architects or famous masters also share this precedence.

Coldplay, my sole favourite music band since years ago, also has the Classical bloodline, found in their ever creative and great music. The head vocalist Chris Martin studied at University College London, Ramsay Hall where he read Ancient World Studies and graduated with First Class honours in Greek and Latin. People can easily found how those classical influences on the band shapes their music. From their first work Parachute, to A Rush of Blood To The Head, to X&Y and the recent Viva la Vida, they all show endless creativity of genius quality. Every single song in those albums is distinctively great and timeless. These music videos below are among the greatest ever made, music videos that dare to declare themselves as A WORK OF ART.

The Resurrection of KOMTAR

2009-06-05T08:42:00.000-07:00

KOMTAR (Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak), once the tallest building in Asia, has now amidst her "take 2".

A building once caught my very intuitive attention, like a giant Buddha statue, inspiring, providing timeless grasp of identity for Penang people, has now reincarnated after a 10 million ringgit rejuvenation by the Penang state government.

After all, I have no faith in any 'take 2'. The notion of reinventing the glorious past in present state is an exercise of self-contradictory and complacentment. Architecture must include the concept of the spirit of time, although the geographical and the physical dimension of KOMTAR are still remained, very much in the heart of its local dwellers. One of my two favourite high rise in Penang, the other is the MBF HQ Tower by the mighty Ken Yeang, KOMTAR has a place in my accumulative memory of architecture since the old days. The picture of KOMTAR in memory is a dim yet crowded mall, plus a cloud-scraping modern stacko with its distinctive satellite dishes on the top floors. KOMTAR is very much a landmark of Georgetown or even of the greater Penang State. Even the rapid growing skyscraper condos, churning out in recent years, may not have that solemn and gratitude KOMTAR has since accomplished and deserves. Not even any of KL's can match. Its geodesic dome, spanning the space for exhibition and sports reminds us of the great Buckminster Fuller. The concrete tower , the plaza, the 4-storey podium and the dome, combined to be one of the great Modern Architecture newborn in Asia then in the 80's. Not just a pinnacle of Modern Architecture in Malaysia, it is like the 'triumphal arch' of Penangites' long hard fight toward better life. It witness the golden economical prosperity of Penang during her heyday until Penang faced relentless discrimination from the central government, part of the gradual planned policy to exclude Penang from the mainstream nation's development. Penang's Free-port status were raid, the entrepot trade declined. Late 90's, early 21th century, see the once economical hub of Georgetown stumbled into a 'haunted' giant mansion, heartbreaking, an eyeshore, a mirror of Penang's economical state of that time, helped by its communicative architecture.

The 10 million bid now includes renovation of the main shopping podium and the construction of a public space (leisure walk) flanked by street side cafes under high steel roof. The plan also include a new shopping mall 1st Avenue on the parking lot next to KOMTAR. Sincerely, I am disappointed by the plan, it is too modest, uninteresting and it is NOT DISTINCTIVE. This is because every new born comes with a BANG, not a lame repetition of something which had been done before or in any other place. Besides, we can't see the Penang spirit. A 'lifestyle leisure walk' means we are nurturing the lazy culture of the west, simply a direct contradict of the culture of Penangites. There can not be any lifestyle leisure concept in urban design in Penang or even in Malaysia. It is a fatal architecture moulding of self-complacency and self-consciousness. Western cafe lifestyle will always be a cannabis for the orthodox diligent of Penang Chinese. The widespread of these 'lifestyle' cafe concept for me, is just another capitalist colonization that has the effect of nullification of our long-erected culture. Someone who has the common senses of Penangites would know it is not the Penang way of progress.

That is why it is always worrying about what kind of new community that the new KOMTAR will bring. Another humiliating Bukit Bintang or Central Market? A new urban weekend gather place of illegal immigrants? A popular truant destination for the lads? We will hope Penang have the ability to withstand this disasterous culture persist in place like Kuala Lumpur or Singapore.

The Pearl of the Orient...your future laid in the past...!

ARCHITECTURE DESIGN II SEMESTER 2 YEAR 1 The Malacca Clog Gallery (Manual Rendering)

2009-04-23T06:15:00.000-07:00