Reasons Why I Like This Video

Mediocrity is an interesting concept but I will try to expose my definition for it.

Mediocrity, as per the dictionary goes, is the act of being Mediocre. This is not very enlightening, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as "the quality of something that is not very good ". Yuck, what an ambiguous definition. 

Mediocrity, rather, I would say, is the position given to an individual due to his privilege. But to be mediocre this individual would have to underperfom. This is, the other individuals hoping to cover this position/task would be able to verifiably demonstrate they could outperform the mediocre individual. 

This video is good as it exposes this phenomenon from a racial point of view, and one that is systemic in the music industry for various reasons. This whitewashing is widespread in our culture. 

Nevertheless mediocrity can be seen and felt in many places, and is not solely tied to matters of privilege, class or race. 

I have yet to find a book, or study that deals with it, but surely you have come across these situations where you think; I could be definitely be doing this better than this person. Have you?

Data haven , like a corporate haven or tax haven, is a refuge for uninterrupted or unregulated data.

Big Bang (financial markets)

Spatial Statistical Models 

This is an abstract field of mapping that can be shockingly complex, and of a wide coverage.
Spatial mapping is something that I think architects should be good at, and they should receive training on how to collect data, analyse it and present it.

This example of Universal Assembly Unit Studio is outstanding in its simple way of conveying complex relationships between cost, labor and natural resources

Yes, and in a way this is the question I was trying to pose before in my short text. As Aristide Antonas poses succinctly and much more briefly than me

In a sense, a crucial question in Athens today is if we can imitate the success of antiparoche to bring us toward the formation of a common sphere to come. The absence of of any subject operating in the name of the commons may be the primary reason for the decline of the Student Hostel...

Later on he also states

What protocols could occupy such a space to host a new urban life today?

From SQM The Quantified Home

So if anyone thinks of the neoliberal/capitalist agenda of accumulation; or potential return; it is not surprising that this model benefits modes of behaviour that are detached from communal practices, specially in densely urban environments, where social proximity and geographic proximity are not necessarily related.

If for now we are to assume that our cultural context, in the UK, promotes behaviours of individuality; i.e. narcissism, personal/professional success, private ownership, personal/material comfort, future security, return on investment, etc. We need then to look into how this forms of mediation between individuals, or groups of interest can be mediated. Since our social script favours forms of personal empowerment that we shouldn't criticise right away, we should find ways of favouring systems that allow for these communities to find common interests, for when they intersect they become common.

A question you might find problematic then is that, if the source or desires of individuals are essentially self-centred, there is no way of generation projects that have an outlook to the benefit of whole communities. This is problematic, since professional formations with complex social networks already exist but they have a private character, and therefore have a set script of action that is quite limited, i.e. their own bottom line.

Returning our gaze onto the realm of the social, we would think of the state as the main provider or mediator in these circumstances. For so, reimagining the social in a context of neolibrealism means that this ways of creating and producing might have to come from a combination of private and public relationships. However we shouldn't fool ourselves to think that the market requires no State, since this would be purely a deceptive. It just requires to generate a financial logic to its operation, whether it is towards it subversion or strength remains unseen.

So for architects to apply this logic, it means that they need to take the position of the developer, and channel resources into projects that might suits the development of the profession, of the concepts related to it. The last realm one would like to find oneself in this situation would be, with any doubt, in that of the post-critical.

But then we encounter another problem, which is then the architect as a developer. How can the architect come by with a brief that suits it socio-economic context? Interestingly but not surprisingly enough a different question would be, How does the architect come by a project that suits the current market? These are different questions, but to my opinion, they provide a wrong idea of what the architect does or could do, and also place the idea of the brief in the wrong hands.

The development of a brief in architectural education, if say your students aren't Italian, means that your pupils will be highly depoliticised; meaning, they will not have a political consciousness in the widest of the senses. But what are politics if not an accumulation of individualities in advantaged and disadvantaged positions of power and decision making. For this reason politics remains unseen if the development of the self-directed brief is directed towards ideas of transparency, anxiety, or other ways of canalising projects so they become purely formal abstractions of emotions. These exercises which are valuable but not necessarily in our project of developing this consciousness, requires us to step back and take a detour on the social aspects of architecture. One that verses on this very same processes where manier individuals are concerned, engage or even, more often than not entangled.

So another problem arises in this scenario, because then architecture doesn't only account or become out of a process of personal catharsis or artistic exploration (sorry this is so obvious that I ashamed to write) but really a process of conglomeration, where the political, the personal and the contingent meet. Also clarify that I wouldn't really make a distinction between the political and the social, since they really do cross-feed, and inform each other in different ways. In this way the architect becomes more of a mediator of interests, agendas and agencies. He becomes almost a social condenser, whose vapours hopefully allows for the critical (re)consideration of the built environment. But again not one that stems from personal experience, but one that comes for the layering of the structures embedded into our everyday lives.

These interweaving of attitudes, expectation and ambitions should let the architect become an intermediator in the overly interested realm of the built, to let alternative voices have their word. Reconsidering the clientèle of architecture requires not only different ways of building, layouts, and concepts. But the reimagining of the relationships between planning, regulations, laws, as well as construction methods and contracts.

Erik Friberger

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Hi I just have found this amazing book that I can't stop reading though;
Alison and Peter Smithson, House of The Future

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The showcase consisted of a large glass box like a shop window offering thirty-six standard items of co-operative production and co-operative trade. The collection of co-op products symbolizes a production that has grown out of the alienation of the capitalist market economy and ownership, demonstrating how co-operation can disenthral man from capital. Products are arranged in a clear spatial composition and clearly recall the form of repetition of industrial mass production, for they are stacked and arranged as if at the end of production assembly lines. No product is individually displayed; rather each is presented as part of a group with no centre while nonetheless remaining individually recognizable. People entering the pavilion could admire the vitrine at any time of the day. At night, however, at the other end of the exhibition space the curtain rose on co-op theatre.-TheCityasaProject.org

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If anyone was to take development models seriously;
which I think is the future of Arch

“I think what’s important is that we need many different kinds of models,” says LaFond - See more at: http://www.exberliner.com/features/people/sexy-cheap-and-available/#sthash.tCMrujfs.dpuf