QOTD

"Several studies have shown that poor families tend to have very few assets."

Well, I'm glad we cleared that one up.

The Impossible Weirdness of Being

It’s impossible to legislate weirdness, which is a sad thing for the city’s architectural heritage.
from New York Magazine

Student Works

From the comments in a post on Deezen regarding the posting of a student project.

eeeh..Why are third year students around the world doing the exact same thing? No context, no meaning, no function, scaleless…. it could be anything, it could be a toy or a villa or a museum. No thought of the art. No, it has to be enough now!

There there are many things in the long litany of complaints that I must agree with:

• Student works should be shared and commented on in public forums like this.
• Students should be allowed to experiment.
• It is easy to claim something is derivative because it looks sort of like it falls into one camp or another that critics have typed famous architects into or that architects have claimed as their own. Also note that such claims of derivation seem to be a name dropping game. How many times can we drop the name Zaha Hadid? Perhaps the student was actually inspired by some lesser known work of Jungermann. Or perhaps Hadid is as influenced by her tools as these students are.
• However, the point of such encouragement is to allow for a broader base of critique.

So ...

• Buildings have context. Most student projects that get shown off like this are entirely lacking in context. For instance, in the article linked to above, where in Queens could you even put such a thing, and what sort of dialog would it establish with the surrounding architecture? Would it become nothing but a larger version of the Golden Turd?
• Buildings have function. Judging from the interior shots of this structure, the only function the building serves is to create space. As someone asked already, where would you hang the art?
• Buildings, certainly public buildings, need to relate to people.
• Overlooking these factors is not intellectual experimentation, it is intellectual laziness. On the other hand, learning where your weaknesses are and overcoming them is a critical part of learning.

Education is Dead

At least higher education is.

At least higher education in America is.

Just don't tell the marketing department, they'll see it as some new sort of gimmick.

The names have been changed, well, obliterated, to protect the guilty.

Hi,

I'm the editor for __________'s text, and __________ has been forwarding your emails to me. Thanks for contacting him with your question about references in __________'s book. The answer is that we do not include a bibliography with __________'s text, either in the printed or online versions. We only include citations where necessary, which includes the __________ boxes and other examples. We consciously decided against including citations from research as this is an introductory book for undergraduate, non-majors, and we wanted the material to be as immediate and appealing to them as possible.

One of our other introductory texts, __________, has an extensive bibliography for every chapter. This book is designed for a more advanced student, and we thought it appropriate to include references. We can send you a copy of the latest edition of __________ if you'd like to consider using it.

If I'm missing something or did not answer your question fully, I'd like to continue the conversation. Don't hesitate to contact me directly with any additional questions or concerns.

If you don't understand why I'm appalled, you probably don't want to be anywhere near me right now.

Since they have stopped talking to me, I am not sure if they have gotten sick of me, or just figured out it wasn't a research bibliography I was complaining about the absence of.

Measuring Ourselves

They lost me at “Unless something can be measured, it cannot be improved.”

Good Magazine on Jerry Davidson's quantified self.

Helicopter Parents

A wonderful quote from the New York Times that wonderfully grasps the essence of the confusion between effective parenting and ego gratification.

In this era when children symbolize emotional fulfillment rather than free household labor, we cling to the belief that if we just do everything right — starting with what a woman eats before she’s even pregnant — we can protect them from pain or failure or sadness. We can make them perfect and, in the process, prove ourselves beyond reproach.

The article itself is good for other reasons too.

Principles of the American Cargo Cult

The Principles of the American Cargo Cult via boingboing.

My favorite is:

All interconnection is apparent. Otherwise, complicated explanations would be necessary.

Indigenous Design

# Josh Horowitz 5.9.08 / 9pm
Hi Leb, Diego,
Architecture is dead. A return to indigenous design is needed.

# amp 5.10.08 / 4pm
Josh - interesting proclamation. The only indigenous craft of the American people at this point in history is a tricked out myspace page. Can’t live in it - but it is work of the people, from the people and for the people.

An old quote just found in the comments section in Lebbeus Woods' blog back in May of 2008.

Quote of the Day

Why does academic writing about architecture always have to sound as if it's been translated by a computer from the original Martian?
-- Robert Campbell

From the Boston Globe at boston.com.

Quote of the Day

Those bent on "manufacturing consent" must first de-contextualize reality so the targets of the propaganda are shaken free from any mooring to reality. Then the propaganda invokes fight-or-flight emotions (fear) or triggers the defense of some base values.
-- Zeus Yiamouyiannis

From Of Two Minds by Charles Hugh Smith.

Most of the rest of the article is pretty awesome too. And yet it is just the introduction ...

• Part I: A 70 Trillion Dollar Counterfeiting Ring
• Part II: How the Credit Default Swap Scam Works
• Part III: Credit Default Swaps Create Less-Than-Zero Value
• Part IV: There Is Ultimately No Gaming the System: When the Micro Crash Reflects the Macro Crash

Quotable Quotes

Architecture must not be an object, but merely a device for the framing of life and the environment.

A Conversation with Kengo Kuma from FiveFootWay.

Quote of the Day

The trumpets of leadership are so uncertain, they sound like kazoos.
-- Daniel Gross

From Slate: Fear Factor: How anxiety and terror are making the financial catastrophe worse than it needs to be.

Don't Mess with the Lab Coat

The McCain campaign seems intent on alienating constituencies one by one.

At first it was just the gamers. After all even those 8-some-odd million people who play World of Warcraft all look down on gamers, right? I lost the reference, but read an interesting article today where someone pointed out that the number of World of Warcraft players in the United States outnumbers the number of U.S. farmers, who get much more attention come the political season. On the other hand, a WoW server-farm failure only feels like the end of the world. So clearly not a constituency to worry about.

Now it is the scientists. Hmmm, mebbe an MSNBC blog is too liberal to be a fair source of information, right out there with the Huffington Post. How about Discover Magazine, they're unbiased ... I think. No? How about boingboing? Oh wait, that's British. Doesn't count. Oh, thank the gods, at least the National Review tries to artfully dodge the issue.

Though I think The Perfect Silence wins the best quotable quote award:

I can just about hear all the hushed "oooohhhs" from the science education community, like Dustin Diamond had just slapped Jack Lambert with a white glove. Oh no, he didn't!

Gamers and scientists do share two things in common:

• Information spreads like wild fire within their respective communities.
• They are very opinionated and vocal when it comes to protecting their turf.

You don't win an election by declaring constituencies to be irrelevant. You certainly don't win an election by saying that funding for science and education is not money well spent.

Quotable Quotes

All the ingredients were there, but they didnt look like the advertisement photos and they tasted like greasy sadness.

From blogadilla.com.

Candy Corns

From my friend Moo, on the having of a bad day ...

RIP: 11oz Brach's Candy Corn

Ingredients: Sugar, Corn syrup, love, salt, honey, gelatin, comfort, confectioner's glaze, bliss, dextrose, satiety, artificial flavor, titanium dioxide color, nostalgia, yellow 6, yellow 5, regret, red 2, blue 1, gastralgia.

Mitchell Joachim on Sustainability

Mitchell Joachim on sustainability (from Wired).

"I don't like the term," he says. "It's not evocative enough. You don't want your marriage to be sustainable. You want to be evolving, nurturing, learning."