So to contextualize my question I'd name queer theory, of which I have been thinking about non-stop lately, since I find really problematic the idea of an assimilationist gay identity, which adheres to heterosexual values, that so much have damaged the alterity of gayness, and have helped in advancing its institutionalization.

This has also made me realise that the idea of identity with all is accompanying signifiers, is essential to current channels of desire, and they can potentially be mapped out.

Does-sexual-pleasure have a gender?

Today I am reading on Foucault, power, discipline, security and controlled environments, so can't delve into this further. But I'd like anyone reading this to consider this question thoroughly, since you can think of pleasure as just pure stimulation of tissue and organs, you would be missing the cultural significance of signs involved in say, flirting or intercourse. Which I also think many times are more a mirror of power structures rather than constructs for the exploration of forms of relating.

I am not saying people don't find pleasure in performing these by adopting roles and adopting the signs in relation to these, my point is that these are constructed, assimilated and performed, and hence they have an underlying logic or structure (different to logic since their shape might be beyond any Reason).


xoxo

An Incomplete Dictionary of Modern Words

Learning>Unlearning

Singing>Unsinging

Dancing>Undancing

Thinking>Unthinking

Linking>Delinking

Building>Debuilding

Talking>Untalking

Flying>Unflying

Hearing>Unhearing

Following>Unfollowing

Loving>Unloving

Fenced>Unfence

Doing>Undoing

Abiding>Unabiding

Owning>Unowning

Solidifying>Unsolidifying

Reasoning>Unreasoning

Constructing>Deconstructing

Relying>Unrelying

Art>Unart

Network>Unetwork

Code>Uncode

Encrypt>Uncrypt

Remember>Unremember

Sleep>Unsleep

Aware>Unaware

Call>Uncall

Respect>Disrespect

Serious>Unserious

Monetize>Unmonetize

Argue>Unargue

Abide>Unabide

Mention>Unmention

Help>Unhelp

Police>Unpolice

Survey>Unsurvey

Comic>Uncomic

Film>Unfilm

Return>Unreturn

Family>Unfamily

Build>Destroy

Acknowledge>Ignore

British withdrawal

Although it was passed uncut for UK cinemas in December 1971, British authorities considered the sexual violence in the film to be extreme. In March 1972, during the trial of a fourteen-year-old male accused of the manslaughter of a classmate, the prosecutor referred to A Clockwork Orange, suggesting that the film had a macabre relevance to the case. The film was also linked to the murder of an elderly vagrant by a 16-year-old boy in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, who pleaded guilty after telling police that friends had told him of the film "and the beating up of an old boy like this one." 

Roger Gray QC, for the defence, told the court that "the link between this crime and sensational literature, particularly A Clockwork Orange, is established beyond reasonable doubt". The press also blamed the film for a rape in which the attackers sang "Singin' in the Rain" as "Singin' in the Rape".  Christiane Kubrick, the director's wife, has said that the family received threats and had protesters outside their home. Subsequently, Kubrick asked Warner Brothers to withdraw the film from British distribution. In response to allegations that the film was responsible for copycat violence Kubrick stated: "To try and fasten any responsibility on art as the cause of life seems to me to put the case the wrong way around. Art consists of reshaping life, but it does not create life, nor cause life. Furthermore, to attribute powerful suggestive qualities to a film is at odds with the scientifically accepted view that, even after deep hypnosis in a posthypnotic state, people cannot be made to do things which are at odds with their natures." 

from

Today I was thinking about the idea of the self and that of accountability. Both I find complicated, but for the sake of simplicity I'd say that I frame these front he viewpoint of the practice of architecture and the architect-artist never-ending dualism.

If not wrong I posit dualisms or binary oppositions at the birth of the institution of marriage (Foucault) and the obsession in the West to parcel off genders and biological forms; practices of desire as well as their formal relationships. To counter this I suggest a process of unlearning, disremembering, disassociating, etc. Along with a reformulation of language, haha! Forgetting a dual framework requires also a sexual revolution, or a way to challenge how we relate to each other across all scales of desire (from the intimate to the institutional).

This said, I don't challenge here this dualism of the architect-artist, since we currently do hold a professional or occupational division, which many like to reinforce even thought in practice surely can't be so readily asserted. To this I wanted to add another dimension, that of the social (so much needingly decanted) and it's relationship with personal agency, which is so much glorified in contemporary culture, aka American c(v)ulture.


The Artist is always associated with unfettered expression of ideas, reified in object form(s). The Architect is associated classically with its ability to control form, and how it sits together, i.e. Tecton. Contemporarily, in his ability to intercept current flows of global capital, to somehow find for them a form of expression (which usually follow a minimalist mantra), or that of architectural engineering as we currently despise any non-allegoric forms of utility, the utmost expression of a modern morality. The social, thus, becomes another organ in the asocial, apolitical body. As given by nature, he has, ouch! stumbled upon the Social. So mush despise I hold for this word that I capitalise to reinforce its artificial, and surely unnatural, unauthentic authenticity. Here my conception of the social is quite limited, but its shaped around our own experience and forms of relating to others, the forms of our interactions and of our concerns for others. For many this is delimited to the institution of the Family. For others is their friends they see that as their-albeit unconsciously-political formation. Others in addition to these, they have a respect for their country, a unifying geography of desire and ambitions. Their concerns spread upon a hole expanse of territory. To me, the most interesting, defying and involving form of membership to the social is the definition of the human being, and the human rights as defined in Forensis. Although here the courts, hence the state, warrant a form of membership based on the most basic condition, that of the human being. It seems then hopeless to make a separation between the social and the political. Politics then per my definition, is the arrangement of things in space and their forms of relationships, their distances and proximities, their isolations as well as their connections. Since all we experience has an arrangement of many scales, it is intricately politic.

Why I have my doubts about the idea of a political architect? Or a political practice of architecture?

I will answer the first one, first. The architect is mostly a, lest blame them again, a construct of the media, and a whole load of propagandist publications and articles regarding the virtues of the figure of the architect in completing building projects. His agency, quite purposefully, is quite amazingly overstated, when he in reality has no real political power, or wealth (aka.political power). Her is more of a Puppet, for urban regeneration, branding, credibility buying, etc. On this strongly cynical view, there are clients I am sure (I am sure too very few) who commission work to specific people for they have a close sensibility and hope to pursue the Art further (I apologise for writing this). He, the architect, can be political for having made an opinion for himself, for implementing that onto his everyday life and commenting and even shouting about it on the streets. He should not, in my view, speak for others, or assume an unauthorised collective view. The architect is then not responsible for social change, but for generating pointers to a new social landscape. He is a Doctor reconstructing or suturing the body to open up routes for and of the imaginary to suggest new horizons or opportunities to activate future agencies. If this requires punching a hole in the body, he might as well? This nevertheless to me accounts as creative expression, the individual as creator, and hence as artist. His practice under current legislatory practices, amounts to the targeting of structures of power, rather than individuals. If the architect wants to be political he must reengineering the world, his own world, and project it for the public imagination. They have the option to join, they might not want to. Feed-forcing any political project is totalitarianism, not visionary. Here is where I see myself thinking of Democracy as a form of continual struggle (Chantal Mouffe), where there is always an option.

A political practice of architecture is a practice that stems from one's own idea of the world, which might or might not coincide with our current world (2.2). Many would say this is untenable. I am sure it is.
My point here is to say that all this anxiety regarding the social should vanish, and a deconstruction reading of practice should be encouraged, only then we can bring our forms into our own judgement. Having a project can bring other people on board. And the only way to commit, is to have a horizon of hope, as the eyes of others align it might then, and only then, become a political reality.

Reader comment

Good European 21 hours ago

The last time anything of this nature happened it was in reverse and it was in the summer of 1988, after Nigel Lawson announced the end of 'double MIRAS' (mortgage tax relief). What happened back then was hundreds of thousands of sharers piled into the market, which was highly over inflated at the time, to buy before the tax break was no longer available. Cut off point was 31st July 1988. The next thing that happened was the market collapsed (on 1st August 1988) and these people, who subsequently discovered they didn't much care to live with one another anyway, found the reality of their desperation to get onto the property ladder was a total loss of all their savings and negative equity in a property they could not sell. Keys were routinely being posted back through building society and bank letter boxes in the dead of night as the unfortunates slithered off into finical ruin. Utter misery all around. But what could possibly go wrong this time? Unless the market is over valued again…

Last time it was a ploy to prop up what everybody knew was an overcooked market. This looks no different.



from

The political unconscious of architecture : re-opening Jameson's Narrative, edited by Nadir Lahiji. Contents:

Ban-lieues / Bechir Kenzari -- The architecture of money: Jameson, abstraction and form / David Cunningham -- The master's house / Donald Kunze -- The stolen hope: Reading Jameson's critique of Tafuri / Gevork Hartoonian -- Designing a second modernity? / Hal Foster -- May Mo(u)rn: A site-writing / Jane Rendell -- Allegories of late capitalism: Main street and wall street on the map of the global village / Joan Ockman -- Rethinking city planning and Utopianism / Kojin Karatani -- Fredric Jameson and critical architecture / Louis Martin -- Reloading ideology critique of architecture / Nadir Lahiji -- A photography not 'Quite Right': Fredric Jameson's discussion of architectural photography in 'spatial equivalents in the world system' / Robin Wilson -- The architectural parallax / Slavoj Žižek -- Botanizing the Bonaventura: Base and superstructure in Jamesonian architectural theory / Terry Smith -- Jameson, Tafuri, Lefebvre.

Today I wanted to talk about all the things spinning in my head. And believe me; they are quite a lot.

I have been thinking about the ideas of anxiety, work overload, delusion, infusion, success, lament, loneliness, dirt and silence.

I am not addressing all of them here but they have to do with our ideas of virtue; of good or bad, of improvement of goodwill, as well as their Christian counterparts.

I am not an academic nor I want to become one. I feel like many contemporary practices are born from the white male heterosexual milieu, which devours any adjacent culture to subsume it as one of its choices, i.e. Gay Life, Gay Community, the Arts, Black Arts, Disabled, Transgender, Interdisciplinary. It all fits quite too well. This narrative of the modern project of cultural destruction put forward by Baudrillard, is quite appealing if not quite megalomaniac and cinematic.

I have also fallen within the white male expectation, which my family has been happy to remove from me. It's the very discourse of Structuralism which I am by no means trying to replicate here.

Since I believe in human agency -and I am purposefully avoiding any development of ideas of a metadata to human life (like governmental policy) or equivalent frameworks- I am going to tap into this liberal idea of choice, where you get the life you choose to have (hahahaha!) or worse, that you have the life you Deserve (Privilege Horror Movie). Along these lines I have been thinking if I should pursue this idea of getting lucky; taking a shot at the repositioning of myself might I manage to intermingle with contemporary flows of capital and capitalism. And the answer is a definite No. You might argue that then, since I am in London, I should move myself out of the equation; maybe I should.

I have always though of thinking further to pursue the human project of intellectual advancement, but which for me is more about delight, in exploring other peoples ideas and then reformulating my standpoints. Its not complicated, but it does require a lot of resources, including a lot of time. These I have limited, very in fact. The latest is my computer struggling to interact with any other external device, or connecting to Wifi. I feel sorry for Him. He is going to undergo a few repairs, and yeah, it's the source of a lot of my-if any-income.

Going back to the idea of a Liberal Project, I wanted to talk not only about the death of Religion; us replacing a moral schema with a technocratic/functionalist morale. Its the History of white male heterosexuality, coupled with the fallacy of Free Markets, which I struggle to pronounce in my head. In these fake landscape of functionalism-a cheap cover up for money making-we need to talk about Virtue, and how the very idea of the Pursue of Excellence, i.e. Beethoven, Reinhardt, sorry those all I can think of now, is a form of resistance to practices of Capitalism. The snobby or elitist idea of Excellence is now that I have been long fascinated by. I have been long fascinated by objects and forms of expression that carefully craft and design their form. I think of them as acts of Love and Care, for the very experience of their presence is pleasurable; unless you are full of envy or despair-me-. Virtuosity then is the ability to pursue an activity beyond what would be average, and propels it to the realm of the excellence, or better, to the arena of captivating. Captivating then, if you are a true Artist, can be engineered, and if you are a Tycoon, it can be simulated. Both deal with the enervating idea of Authenticity (I have nothing to say here).
Then the reason a Virtuoso might be an opposing form to capital is because of the practices in which the subject its engaged-it always annoys me how academic writing more often than not misses the idea of the subject or the body, as if objects had a life of their own-. Then the person who has an idea or a hope of expressive perfection has to inevitably deal with the sensible (Plato) as well as with the Ideal (i,e, the world of ideas, of the abstract). The hypostatization of these into an object of expression, doesn't aim at changing the world, but at articulating an idea in the World about the World. Its function is not functional, i.e. It doesn't aim at changing the world physically, for any unassuming body can modify the World. Thus the thinking subject is there to question this unassuming body, the reconsider the object-body-mind question, and to project questions into this realm. Is not an attempt at behavioural science, but an attempt to create a pustule in the minds of the present bodies who share the space or the representation of the object (a whole set of new implications). This Virtuosity then, develops in mastering this ability to reify, to manufacture a narrative which we believe, and that questions our current body schema, changing our gaze upon the world. But really, this is not my point here. My point is that Virtue, requires of the Virtuoso the self-discipline, to perform and re-perform, to edit, to cut, to focus. This goes against the neoliberal idea of deregulation of everything. The destruction of every form of stability and the production and reproduction of flows. Defamiliariy, Decontextualisation, Deformation, Decommon-sense, Destruction, etc. A long etcetera. It cannot be negated its politics are complex, and it cannot be negated that its operational subjects are there for the chase, for the money. For these reasons the establishing of Virtue can be counter-productive, since it needs stable ground-not instability-discipline-not flexibility-and continuity-not "opportunity". The Virtuoso then has lost the battle; and if anyone has a claim against contemporary art it should go against the hyper-modernity on steroids we are going towards at this very moment.  Virtuosity can then be seen as a form of Privilege,


I'd say then, to conclude, that to design this mode of action is the project of the Virtuoso wannabe, and is in the hope of staying away from the flows of capital that it both aims to and aims not to be part of.








    

"The opposite of gentrification isn't urban decay; it's the democratization of urban space"

From

Why we fail to engage residents? [in urban development]

What does ABC1 mean?

Demographic classifications in the UK and the ABC1 grade an explanation byWebWindows

Demographic classifications in the UK refer to the social grade definitions, which are used to describe, measure and classify people of different social grade and income and earnings levels, for market research, social commentary, lifestyle statistics, and statistical research and analysis.The

National Readership Survey (NRS) is a non-profit but commercial British survey concerned with monitoring, analyzing and providing estimates on the number and nature of people who read Britain’s newspapers and consumer magazines. It is funded by the UK Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA), and Periodical Publishers Association (PPA).

The social grade definitions by the NRS are widely used as a generic reference series for classifying and describing social classes, especially for consumer targeting and consumer market research by the advertising UK media and publishing sectors.

National Readership Survey (NRS) demographic categories

Social Grade	Social Status	Occupation
A	upper middle class	higher managerial, administrative or professional
B	middle class	intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1	lower middle class	supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2	skilled working class	skilled manual workers
D	working class	semi and unskilled manual workers
E	those at lowest level of subsistence	state pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers

ABC1 categories and their spending patterns in the current economic recessionStatistics reveal that the past few years have seen a steady increase in the number of adults who fall in the A, B and C1 socio-economic group. This can be attributed to various factors such as the changes in the economic conditions, rise in educational opportunities and changing employment patterns across the globe. All these factors have resulted in a shift of focus from the traditional ‘blue collar’ jobs to those in the ‘knowledge professions.’

The rise in the ABC1 social grade, and the subsequent increase in spending power, has had a strong impact across industries and markets in the UK. It would be interesting to analyze the change in spending patterns of the ABC1 category in the current economic scenario.

Food markets: Historically, the ABC1 consumers have been ready to pay more for their food as compared to the people in the lower social grade. Figures point to the fact that since 1999, ABC1 consumers have strongly been influencing on many of the trends within the food market. This trend is not just based on higher affluence but also on other factors such as a greater awareness of health issues and ethical concerns relating to food. Also online shopping has been a very strong driving force for increased spending on premium food products. But trends now show that during the present economic crisis, manufacturers and retailers would find it harder to charge a premium on top of the already inflated basic food prices as the ABC1 consumers would not really be willing to pay more.

Housing: In the times of the housing boom in the UK, it was the ABC1 consumers who drove the buy-to-let market by investing in property as an alternative to pensions or other financial investments. The ‘correction in prices’ in the housing market in 2008 will have deep repercussions for the home-related products market. Studies reveal that although consumers in the A and B groups are unlikely to change their spending habits in the prevalent uncertainties in the market, those falling in the C1 would definitely change theirs to weather the crisis.

from http://www.abc1demographic.co.uk/

From
http://homepage1.nifty.com/iberia/score_gallery.htm

Note to myself:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4762.1997.tb00012.x/abstract



Reconceptualising local community: environment, identity and threat

Pier Vittorio Aureli, Fabrizio Ballabio, Peggy Deamer, Fabrizio Gallanti, Maria S. Giudici, Peer Ilner, Francesco Marullo, Andreas Rumpfhuber

Architecture and Labour

Series: Symposium 
Date: 13/11/2015 
Time: 10:00 
Venue: Lecture Hall

Ok, So you want to know what is a non-Objective

I have been, quite frankly, self-deterred from writing anything on this blog since I "wrote" a post on White Mediocrity, a concept which I believe and like, but that I exposed rather poorly. Hence deterred for really not taking more seriously my writing, since what I enjoy is well-intended and researched academic writing, which tends to be quite rigorous. 

On the other hand I do dislike when rigorousness becomes distracting, taming or plain dry. Save the academic from a calculating mind. I inertia-pray for him.

So this really, what is has to do with is with the setting of objectives, which is no task for the faint.(:I)

If you think about it and you like the concept of leaps provided by intuition, you would definitely not like to work in a regimented, controlled space where clear objectives and procedures ares set. Contrary to that, you might want to call it for now, anarchy, or an absence of order. Where feelings are sovereign. Here it seems inevitable to think of attempting balance, and hence we fall into the ever-so boring idea of binary distribution, the locus of heteronormative foundation and expression. 

So for the sake of not falling into these distributions or lets say, architectures, we Shall think of an objective as a deformation of an equilibrium continuum. This is the prevalence of one of the forces, that of order.

Objectives are funny because they have a white-wall like end. Is the crash perfect scenario, and yet they supposedly lead to fulfillment. I would argue that rather than being helpful to produce some form of intelligence or progress, they generate an scenario of completion. Being such a limited being as I am, I cannot help breaking down things into smaller buts. I have inevitably caught and become part of the contemporary pandemic of parceling. This issuing individualism we so closely hold to our hearts. But lets keep it simple for now, let parcel of a goal, create an objective.

Now that we have a stunningly vague definition of an Objective, we can move on to define it. Lets parcel it off. Under this rigorous theoretical framework we have already assumed a medium. Writing is for now our system for recording expressions of thought, as opposite to other forms like mathematical expressions, painting, music, or any other forms that can showcase forms of development or progression.

What do we do with writing now! We have a theory of the Objective, and a uncritically, yet instinctively adopted medium. Writing as our vehicle with all its virtues and not so virtues, is going to be our place holder for our so aforementioned Objective. For the sake of simplicity I am going to state that in this case the subject matter and the existing literature are going to define this form of proceeding. So from now on I will not be handling my own thinking, but an interation of voices and cacophonies which unravel trough time to your well encapsulated headvoice.

My objective, as described in my previous post is Tone or Toning. The act which I broadly see as the act of sculpting the body. In this sense I am more interested in preparing a plan of action, that becoming the David (Inertia forgoes!). This requires a further taxonomic exercise of the composing parts of the body, and their interactions with matter inserted trough the so called mouth (how gross!). These have effects which medicine as widely studied, and which I am assuming to be right with no critical eye. I am already accepting this idea of a relationship between appearance and nutrition. And yes you go, food trough your mouth is now nutrition, accept it!

 In this relationship I am taking as truths the specific ideas mentioned below without dipping into any sauce with political content as an ingredient (inertia forbid!). Let keep it simple. The objective here is the gain of muscular volume trough the breaking down of type II tissue, which helps people to carry anaerobic exercise out (this is up for revision). At this point we must not forget that this exercise is all up for sculptural value, so the types of fibers or combination of these to train will be selected on their sculptural/form(al) value. 

So the break down this into smaller bits. We need a taxonomy of the muscles in the body. We need to understand how food intake has the ability to affect the performance and development of these fibers, and last but not least, design or sculpt the desired silhouette (the combination of all these muscles) to fit purpose. In conclusion, to design a desired form.

Now we have an objective, which is the acquisition of a socially inflicted body-form.

To conclude, you might want to ask several questions. Why has bodybuilding have to be so complicated? What does bodybuilding have to do with the concept of an Objective? Why does it say Non-Objective in the title? Which are the consequences or better, the catalyzers for a desire in body conditioning? 

All good questions I must acknow. But for the sake of simplicity we are eliminating from the equation any economico-socio-political taint in our painting called Perfection, or better, the Pursue of Perfection. Still I hope you not to be such fool to think these can be effectively eliminated, rather what we do is ignore them, since our vehicle in itself is a product of culture. But lets keep this piece of thinking and writing contemporary, let's keep it Formal. 

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

Poetry to my hears

"Graduates will be able to apply their intelligence to the design of a viability formula, a procurement model, a planning policy, a land ownership deed or a collaboration strategy as they are to a building. It is in such areas that creativity, coupled with socially and politically aware thinking, arguably seems most keenly needed".-From the Architects Journal by Daisy Froud, Harriet Harriss

The Artist as Repackager

This is how freelancing looks like to me

Design as process of Hypostatisation/Reification

Not so much because we can think we do. But we do we think, I think. But lameness aside, I have to say that I have been thinking what does creative process mean to me, or better, what it means to design.

Design is a goal specific task, and it is preoccupied with the object at hand. This object, can be improved, and is this process of improvement/experimentation that we call design. It requires research, planning, thinking, and prototyping in different scales and or materials. This path is cyclical and requires also it recording, classification and archival.

The final process is the culmination of a cumulative process of iterations based on the cyclical improvement, and process based decision making. Its about opening path of exploration, and continuous decision making.

This rant is mostly for me, as I have kind of managed found some sort of sense to this, that I have been scratching my head about. It is of a huge difficulty to bring the idea of criticality into this process, since it so object oriented it manages to scape many implicit relationships of being, and the ones that establishes.

I whizwish to think that this process can grow in time, with the idea of control.

Control equals design, and for that matter it marries power so well.

To design the non-designable is a brief in itself, and requires almost inevitably the forgetting of design. It a bit of a too obvious paradox. There is no investigation of the formal, and no formal outcome for that matter.

If you find yourself in this position, you are no designer.

On Emotional Blackmailing/Design as Revision/On the Anxiety of Success/
And the Religious Idea of Complacent Contingent Favouritism

[PORTFOLIO]

If anything having a portfolio, for a designer is a must. Throughout my degree I thought of work as the utmost important part of my creative process.
I have most recently learn and established a practice of labeling and archiving, which helps me in furthering my learning and being able to keep a reference of it. A dead Diary.

[WEB]

I have also created a website, which also holds a database of the books and resources I have looked into and consider of relevance to my work. This website allows me to showcase my work across different platforms and audiences. Its hard work since it need constant updating, but allows me to show my digital work effectively. There are a lot of thing I need to learn about this medium.

[IN CASE]

Casing your work is a big one, and it is true that a portfolio case, in my opinion, should have the corporate-like attitude. Minimal, unnoticed. So generic it goes unnoticed, which in the eyes of a designer is a difficult task. There should be no room for portfolio fetishizing.
Since you case has become the IBM of design, you need to make sure your layout/pages/work is arranged in a similar fashion. Ruthlessly clear and accessible.

[TEXTING]

Adding text to work is something that I have been long against in any kind of work, which is a big mistake. Your portfolio reviewer, aka potential employer, is not going to become a museum goer, standing in front of your pieces to decode them. Hi yes wake up. There needs to be a quick access point. Put your narrative in paper. Label the page, the project name, the medium and the story behind the image. This will suffice.

[SIZE]

Yes Matters. A lot. Print tests are undervalued, as well as it is exhibition time. You need to work hard to get your content right in combination with the form. In an age of mechanical reproduction{dated}Benjamin would suggest, make it big. If you need to move your head to read an image, stop it. Don't do it. Resize.

[SEQUENCE]

Think of the sequence in which your work is going to be presented. You open it, you flip the pages, you close it. You hand in the business card.

[CARD;BUSINESS]

These need to convey the vital info about you. Name. Phone number, email and position.

[GENERIC IS BOOD]

Different people look for different things. I think the winning portfolio is the one that remains generic enough to divert the attention to your work, while generating some sense of personality, aka difference, for you want to consider pieces of framework as pieces of design (They Are, with their Overt Implications). This balance is the Holy Grail or Grails. And it is also the reason or tension where the idea of Complacent Contingent Favouritism lays. It is religious because it leaves its fate to contingency, and the idea that it will line up to your favour. I.e. don't worry it's going to be fine, just keep on working... In my mind this would show an error message, I would strive for perfection, now, unless the show aims as practice as work in process, aka there is no final piece.

The reason I can't validate a form of practice that encourages work in progress is because inevitably progress leads to imperfection and experimentation, going against the tenets of finished or polished work. It is mainly a shift in sensibility-not in working/presentation practices-that validates this kind of attitude (like the magazine).

[GAD AND EMOTIONAL BLACKMAILING]

This is an easy one. Not really. Sorry, Not Sorry(Miranda Sings), is a kind of difficult attitude that is also difficult to detect, when people use their and your emotions to their advantage. Most complicated bit of this is that sometimes these attitudes are unconscious, we engage in them without necessarily knowing. If you are working towards your portfolio and a friend of yours uses their emotions to get you out of the house against your will-aka you were working towards a deadline-, this constitutes a form of you-yourself going against your will. This is a bad example, but it has to do with the idea that someone might get upset if you don't do something they wanted you to do, or they use your guilt to your advantage. In other words, they use your sensibility, and mindworkings to their advantage, as if a kind of Google Friends Product (to be patented to be sure).

*At the end of the day work needs to be there progressing. The finished is a delusion, and if you fail     to find compatible sensibility, it might be the time to start your own form of practice.

  

Today I am writing about all the stuff that I think I have done wrong in the past and that I need to learn from:

(1)Skewed Prioritizing/Maxi-Stessfulness
PROBLEM This one has to do with the fact that I don't allow my fellow comrades, aka at work, or friends, to know in advance about my plans, availability and future moves.
ACTIONPLAN This has to do with planning ahead. Practically this means that I have to set milestones in my calendar and add to them a cautionary deadline for cancellation or rescheduling so I don't affect other peoples work.

(2)Anxious Buying
PROBLEM I find myself home alone and instead of finding an activity to do I distract myself by buying stuff on the internet which is one-click away.
ACTIONPLAN I think this is a difficult one. This means I have to occupy myself with something that I enjoy doing. Something that I can relate to. I need to stay away from my computer, and think about why I am worried or anxious and try to do something to amend these feelings.

(3)Anxious Eating
PROBLEM Instead of focusing on what is producing me anxiety and focus on solving this issue, I eat to forget about the issue and redirect my feelings into food.
ACTIONPLAN Similarly to the previous entry, this has to do with coping well with stress and anxiety. I think this means I need to get away from what makes me eat, and do/think about something different. Drinking a glass of water also helps to realise whether you are genuinely hungry, or just anxious.

(4)Mistaking Anxiety with Hunger
PROBLEM Sometimes I get home, or during the day, and I feel like my stomach is making noises, I feel tired and I feel like what my body needs is to eat to feel better.
ACTIONPLAN Similarly to the previous entry, this has to do with coping well with stress and anxiety. I think this means I need to get away from what makes me eat, and do/think about something different. Drinking a glass of water also helps to realise whether you are genuinely hungry, or just anxious.

(5)Mistaking Sleepiness with Hunger
PROBLEM Sometimes I get home terribly tired, and I seat on the dinning table to continue working after work. To do this I eat thinking that I am tired because I haven't eaten enough during the day(which is also probably true)
ACTIONPLAN Drinking a glass of water also helps to realise whether you are genuinely hungry, or just anxious. To discern sleepiness with hunger I can watch a film if its early, or just go to sleep. This should solve the issue.

(6)Watching Porn to dissipate Anxiety
PROBLEM This also happens when I have no free time, and I seat in my room to contemplate things that many times I find completely gruesome, disproportionate of aberrant. I am not against pron in principle, but now that I have a loved one I realise what I look for in those moments is some empathy, affection and love. I see my boyfriend everywhere. He is not in the Porn.
ACTIONPLAN This is fairly simple. It has to do with staying away from the computer to stop myself doing things that I don't want to do. This involves doing other things, like watering the plants.

(7)Hypercreativity
PROBLEM This is when I initiate too many projects to have a feeling of progress, or professional fulfillment. Sometimes I get involved in too many things and I forget to enjoy what I am doing. Instead of enjoying what I do and prioritise what is important for me.
ACTIONPLAN This is a relatively simple one. To stop this I need to make sure I prioritise what is most pressing. I can do this by setting deadlines to projects, and avoiding clashes. If this happens I need to make sure I edit out things that I can commit to. Doing too many things, and being inconsistent, or not finishing them can affect the quality of my work.

(8)Creative Detouring
PROBLEM This is a tricky one. This has to do with the moments when I am working on something specific that I have to do, but I start to delve deeper and deeper into the specificities of that subject/object that I am dealing with, forgetting about that I had to immediately do. I am aware of this, and it delays other people, and I forget about the main objectives of work, which induces stress into my work routine.
ACTIONPLAN This also has to do with refocusing, and making sure I prioritise the task that is at hand. If the brief says find a new door design, I should keep the focus perimeters close to the subject, rather than trying to decipher the whole history of the door. This can be tackled by setting timescales for research, development and completion, which need to be updated accordingly in a timetable.

(9)Non-editing of meetings
PROBLEM Trying to please everyone single person I know the same day, at the same time.
ACTIONPLAN This one also has to do with editing out. I need to make sure I note down my commitments and inform people in advantage with clashes. If any of this occurs I need to prioritise one of the meetings to make sure I can attend with proper preparation and material. This also has to do with proper scheduling.

The idea of insidiousness is well spread. But Today I don't want to generate some sort of criticism, nor I wan't to build upon some sort of semantic background. Today is simple. Is about frustration, labour, time, and our expectations. About the everyday, the what we perceive as solid but is truly contentious. It is also about immediacy, and having a sense of urgency, which for some reason I am starting to recover. That is that.

Life as consumerism is not the fact, or situation in which you find-yourself-consuming. That is just a plain transaction-with all its subtleties. Instead consumerism is the sense that progress, and worse, change lies in a place which is external. And I can give you examples: if I want to succeed I need-buy-an education, if I buy this type of shoes I will rune faster, and so on and so forth. Breaking out of this illusion is reject the consumerist attitude to life, and to build a less delusional experience of life for yourself.

I am not here to tell you what to do.

I have just recently read about the difference between Criticism and Critique, which I find very enlightening. I also enjoy how sophisticated Yahoo answers can get sometimes. Critique then is always constructive in its perspective, and this is something I am interested in. Constructive criticism, which as per the above it wouldn't be correct.

To think that you are within a system that has ruled out possibilities is a state of despair. And I think we are better off thinking about the relationship between a new ideology, as horrendous as that might sound (I need to find a better word here), and a for of being-in-the-world.

I have been working long hours recently and I have just realised that time is as fragile as our futile selves. I also think that we should somehow capture all the splendour, with no delay, to build toward the dreamed. This means breaking with convention. Breaking with fear. Breaking with the fear of being rejected, or ostracised, which I had both at high school and University. Is not until now that I can see a clearer picture of myself, and I am happy to embrace.

Embrace requires setting a new bunch of parameters, and working for other for example, just doesn't work for me. I am somehow emancipating today. I have also realised that studying for/with other doesn't cut it for me either. I am somehow a misfit in contemporary cultural expectation, as to what is perceived to be the correct way, or the way forward. Does this mean I am a freak?

Academic Halperin suggests that to get over stigma you have to embrace it, and possibly subvert it. Now I like all of his suggestions, and all of his-most of the time-wording. I would like to embrace what Ranciere has to say on Art and Politics; for they become political as much as they set new their own types of spaces of production. This means that the product is not so much at the centre of meaning, but its very infrastructure. Aiming at setting these is a political project in itself, as it is to refocus the Camera, to give it a new focus. Sometimes this action relies on No. What a liberating Word!

It is at this point clear that the world is run by filthy men. Like you know, those who abide to the canon. If social conventions are so infectious they can be so good! For where there is a pattern, there is a underlying logic, thus-I would say-a dehumanising phenomenon.

Today I am changing shoes, and I will be delivering a set of noes around the world, to take advantage, to refresh these ideas that have been in my mind for a long time. This time I am taking ownership which for know has somehow, as much as my assimilated learning can allow me, my agency. Agency towards the fulfilment of desire, and of intuition. Today I am re-engineering my gaze, my sense of taste, of cultural production, my manners, and more broadly my ways. As much as some colloquialism can grasp all my wishes to transmit some sense of meaning, rather that five volumes of theory, something must be wrong in our sense of appreciation. I the human project (haha) has been a collective trail towards dehumanization; I unsubscribe; for as Weizman would put it, I belong the club of humans, and for now I have a granted membership. Somehow I am willing to become more human; to realise that which hope has given me. I am in a project of Unlearning.

The word of the century.