The Last Blog and Final Submission

You are asked to add one more concluding blog to your series of eleven. This last blog is an opportunity for you to sum up what you have learnt, and possibly see the links between the different texts. You are allowed to acknowledge your favourites and those which proved more elusive to comprehension. There is no secret code to break, no magic secret, no mystical link, but it should be obvious to you that certain themes connect the choice of texts; hopefully providing a roadmap for your own critical thinking.
Some of these themes you might like to pursue further in your dissertation, which we shall begin to discuss next semester.

Final Submission: You are asked to print out your twelve blogs as hard copy in reverse order to the way they appear on the screen; starting with your first blog and ending with your summing up just as you would a book. Bind your submission to A4 and submit one copy to the Faculty Office on the 3rd Floor of the Tower Block. Use one of the submission forms provided outside the office, and make sure it's marked clearly for my attention.

Date for Submission: First thing before studio teaching Monday 11th January 2016. The submissions will be collected at 11am.

Session Eleven: The Epic II

You will be relieved that this week you do not have a reading task, you simply have to come along to the session and enjoy (?!) a speedy rendering of Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead as a movie. You should note that the tone here, that of the triumph of the individual, is markedly different to that of Dos Passos. You should also note that the publication of both book and release of the film correspond with the period when McCarthyism was prevalent across the USA; when the 'red menace' had to be stopped in it's tracks.

My own opinions on the Roark phenomenon are articulated in the Reputations feature in the December 2013 edition of Architectural Review. Go to architecturalreview.com and it's an easy search once you sign up (for free).

Session Ten: The Epic

The last two texts are in many ways the opposite of each other, but they share the same epic quality, and the same doorstop level in size. Therefore it is impossible to make a reading of the whole book 'USA' or 'The Fountainhead', but for the latter we can at least watch the film, and to appreciate the former we can select certain sections, since part of it's epic quality is to try and do everything; in turn novel, newsreel, snapshot and biography, in turn both fact and fiction; in short 'the Great American Novel'.

In both cases the intension is to lodge both of these books in your mind for future reference. You never know when you might just need reference to them.

The first section I would like you to read/research/google is the chapter 'The Bitter Drink' (pg 806) a portrait of the thinker Thorstein Veblen, author of 'Theory of the Leisure Class'(1899). 

The second his portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright in the chapter 'Architect' (pg1076).

The third his portrait of Henry Ford in the chapter 'Tin Lizzie' (pg769).

These are all sections of the same, relatively short and concise, 'biographical' type.

Session Nine: Parody

This novel, set in the roaring twenties in Britain, is a parody of England's class ridden society. The architect, Professor Silenus, is (of course) and emigre from Eastern Europe where things are far more progressive. You are asked to read Part Two of the story. Our overall question here is rather the opposite of the questions we might ask of Mcluhan; have things changed at all?

Session Eight: Marshall McLuhan

This week I'm going to try something even more different, but perfectly in tune with the themes discussed in last weeks session on 'Counterculture' (which, as you will recognise, is not quite the same as 'revolution' and certainly miles away from Le Corbusier's remarkable call of the 1920's 'Architecture or Revolution').
So we are going to deflect ourselves for one week only from 'readings' to 'browsings' in the spirit of Marshall McLuhan. You are asked to browse YouTube for material on McLuhan's 'media is the message' (even clips from 'Annie Hall'), Reyner Banham's love of Los Angeles and William Burrough's paranoia. Spend about an hour doing doing this, and select your favourite clip so that when we discuss this arena further in the class, you can contribute by saying 'look at this!' I tried it this morning and it was amazing how much interrelated material came up, from Norman Mailer ranting about Clinton's 'sexgate' to Hunter S Thompson interviewing Keith Richards. I started somewhere, but I ended up somewhere else that was somehow in the same field.

Our aim is to:

a) get some kind of grip on what the hell Marshall McLuhan was talking about
and
b) ask the poignant question 'what if he's right?'

I suspect this is an ever more important task for our age.

Please note: We shall be returning to real books (two novels) for the next sessions. You might like to think of buying them cheap on abe books.com or eBay. They are:

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
USA by John Dos Passos.

Session Seven: Counterculture

And now for something completely different. Berman wonders that 'Faustian development', as a driving concept, might have been over by the 1960's. What topples it over? Is it the arrival postmodernism in collusion with consumerism (see previous post) or the rejection of such hierarchical society in itself? Certainly 'counterculture' becomes the word we use to describe the hippies and their antecedents, the beatniks, who challenged so called civilisation on their own terms, equipped with cars that worked, emergent freeways to drive them on, pills to keep them awake, contraceptives to keep them free, money in their pockets and that intense desire to leave the world of Mom and Pop behind.
If you are wondering at the architectural consequences we might discuss, think Woodstock, think Archigram, Reyner Banham, Superstudio and so on, and think of the origins of that 'dematerialisation' of architecture conference we saw Rowe speak at during the last session (hosted by Peter Cook of Archigram).
This powerful poem, Howl (1956) on the subject of freedom, spirituality and madness, is easily downloadable for free. It would be a crime if it wasn't. Those of you who fancy yourselves as 'angel headed hipsters' might learn something here!

Session Six: Postmodernism

In this reading we will discuss the work of historian and postmodern theorist Colin Rowe. We have jumped over the Faustian imperative in Le Corbusier for a moment, and will study, in particular, Rowe's essay 'Mathematics of the Ideal Villa' (1947) and take a glance at his essay on La Tourette.

I wrote about Rowe for Reputations in the Architectural Review in the August edition this year. I suggest you read it; it's easily downloadable on-line, then focus on the 1947 text.

Hint:

It is a good idea not to read too much Rowe in one go and to read it carefully. This will be especially difficult to do in class. I suggest you read MOIV in two parts, and you will become aware of the great fastidiousness of the argument, as well as perhaps thinking it almost too good to be true!

Postscript:

Please note that we are once more concerned with the great 'Corbu', but this time in a very different sense; since all the Faustian energy has been dismissed. Here we are picking over the formal moves, and returning L-C to the academy. 

Do not underestimate the importance of the first quote by Christopher Wren here, regarding 'natural' and 'customary' beauty. Indeed where does this beauty reside, and how has it's conception changed over the years? When Rowe, Palladio or Le Corbusier hark back to the splendour of Roman times, of antiquity, what exactly do they mean; to the republic? or to timeless proportion? In what ways are they nostalgic or sentimental? In what ways 'modern' or 'postmodern'? These are complex questions you might register rather than answer at this stage.

Session Five: The Tragedy of Development

This reading is the three chapters on the story of Faust by Goethe, as retold by Marshall Berman in what has become a standard text on (as it says on the cover) 'the experience of modernity'.
It is a slightly longer reading than previously, and is downloadable via your booklist on moodle. It is important to register the three sections; dreamer, lover and developer which are Berman's interpretation of the great work by Faust which took him pretty much all his life to write, and that encompassed pretty much everything he saw on the horizon whilst he was writing it! There is also an epilogue to those three sections you might want to look at too.

Postscript:

The consequences of 'the experience of modernity' for the architect are hardly better illustrated than in the career of Le Corbusier. His enthusiasm for the possibilities of the new age are evident throughout; but especially manifest in his book The City of Tomorrow when he visits the building of a  great dam high up in the alps. Later we will see that energy and enthusiasm turn to despair as he looks back over all his magnificent plans (especially the plan for Antwerp) in the last page of his Radiant City and sees nothing but failure; failure in others particularly. So when it is remarked that L-C was a 'fascist' or a 'communist' it is perhaps best to note that, indeed, he virtually humiliated himself trying to gain the support of the Vichy government during the German occupation of France, and again, decided to present his 'House of the Soviets' under a death shroud, but these were indicative more of his Faustian psychology; that he would build for anyone.
It is important to note that L-C, in self image, primarily saw himself as an urbanist, as the administrator/developer of a golden new age, and hated everything to do with the academy, or schools rooted in the past, also that his wife Yvonne might be seen to parellel Gretchen; the list of potential 'tragedies' here gets quite long.

Session Four: Marxist Thinking

This reading is the chapter 'Social Space' pages 68-80. This material should be downloadable via your booklist on moodle (and as of now, the Paul Mason chapter 'The Rational Reason for Panic' is also available this way).
Before you panic yourselves at the mention of Marxism, just remember that it is just the materialist interrogation of words and their meanings that is the project here, and that interrogation (not a pleasant word but an appropriate one) we begin to read ideologies that lie hidden beneath appearances. Take the word 'home'. The media is rife with the screaming need for 'homes', but as we saw with Dave Hickey (and with Will Self!) the word 'home' has particular connotations. Really what can only be provided is 'houses' or perhaps 'accommodations'. 'Homes' smacks of advertising!
I read this segment each year and whilst it's a bit of a struggle I always get something more out of it. In particular it is the difference between 'work' and 'product' that is talked through here, and this should shine some light on discussions you no doubt find yourself having all the time about the value of technology (or for that matter the value of human labour) which is highly pertinent to architectural production.
If English is your second language, you may find this stuff even more difficult, but feel for the translator who had to convert it from the original French! In your reading, when the going gets tough, I would recommend searching 'short cuts' via the web to get some background on how to situate Lefebvre, and the best background of all, if you are stuck with the idea of Marxism in the first place, is to read Marxism for Beginners, a cheap cartoon book by Ruis which is an invaluable springboard to an investigation such as this one.

Session Three: Neoliberalism

What is neoliberalism? The word isn't even recognised in spellcheck!
This of course might confirm it as part of the conspiracy, to keep you in the dark about what's really going on, or perhaps it's just a silly notion, meaning nothing at all!
These two texts, the chapter 'At Home in the Neon' from Dave Hickey's Air Guitar, and 'Sand Fear and Money in Dubai' by Mike Davis might help us work it out.
Dave Hickey became my critical hero almost just as soon as I first read him, and heard him lecture in Las Vegas and on Las Vegas on the subject of why Santa Fe being more fake than Vegas. He can write like a dream on art, literature, rock n' roll or for that matter your local topless bar.
Mike Davis is a bit more grumpy, he's a Marxist critic who made his name with a book; City of Quartz, that documented amongst other things the declining fortunes of LA's poor, and he's never liked Las Vegas, while Hickey was a long time enthusiast and resident.

When you google these texts you are likely to come across work by people who've done this course before. PLEASE make sure you source the original material and do not rely on students various interpretations, although a glance at them will give you a bit of confidence that you can do at least as well as they did.

Postscript No 1 : Write about the Writer!

Sometimes I'll add a postscript to this guide blog if something comes to mind in our tooing and frowing of e-mail 'conversation'. This advice is simple and predictable, make sure you write about the voice of the author of you text, not just the thing he or she is talking about and your opinion of it. So you should be writing about Will Self's way of talking about BPS, or Jonathan Meades way of talking about Zaha.

To give you an example, on reading Dave Hickey again, I sense a writer 'who rolls along as easily and robustly as a Harley Davidson' (my quote). That isn't a great encapsulation of his style, but if I add 'it's clear from reading Hickey that there is not much point in criticising 'America' in the abstract, because so much of the value of America is as seductive as a the gunning of a Harley or the greatest taste in a hamburger, it is blue collar and under the radar. It's only when those abstract qualities start to infringe on Hickey's basically Taxan outlaw lifestyle (big business comes to mind!) that he gets antsy and moves on'.

In that rather ordinary paragraph I actually say quite a lot; his life, his sense of things, the things he likes and doesn't, all riding on an exemplar (the Harley) we can all understand. Geddit?

Session Two: Writing from the Last Decade

You are asked to read Will Self on Battersea Power Station (2013) and Jonathan Meades on Zaha Hadid (2008). These are well known writers and broadcasters and simply Googling will bring up the texts, although you may have to register (for free) to get the whole text. We shall be looking not just at the content of these two pieces of writing but the tone, one rather resigned to events (Self) and one cleverly bemused (if you can be such a thing).

Introduction/Session 1

We shall begin by discussing Paul Mason's book Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future. I shall concentrate on the chapter 'The Rational Reason to Panic'. On this occasion you are not expected to have read it before the session, but you should be familiar with who Paul Mason is (economics editor of Channel 4) and perhaps looked a bit of his stuff up on YouTube.

Here's something I wrote with the book in mind:

Paul Mason’s book, Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, is a good one. It sets out a dramatic need for change and the tangles we need to get out of. The challenges (and they are all linked) are:

1.     Debt

2.     Lack of Profit

3.     Aging population

4.     Disparity of wealth

5.     Climate Change

We could add microtechnologies or biotechnologies (as Slavoj Zizek does in Living in the End of Times) but Mason doesn’t. He has faith in these new technologies as a positive force that will escape by their very nature the forces of monopoly capitalism (Google/Apple etc) that are presently artificially constricting them. In the future, according to Mason, more stuff will be free and more work will be shared, and moreover everybody will get an automatic universal living wage so that they can afford to do this.

If there is a glaring problem for architects in this analysis, it is that Mason doesn’t seem to consider the quality or materiality of things very much. It’s all very well to be able to exchange a recipe for monkfish free on the web, but it’s another thing getting hold of the fish, and to my mind, you can’t eat a recipe. Architects, when thinking about a house, know that it has to be built, their problem is where and for who and of what and by who and for how much (if everything isn’t free). It’s a material not a digital problem. Mason is constructing his thought around a process of ephemeralisation that so far has always worked against the sensibilities of the architect, or for that matter, chef. I should know, I predicted this in my final project for my PGDip Arch in 1987. Funny to think I was right, not so funny to think everything has got far worse since then.

Don Henley of the Eagles was interviewed on Bloomberg last night, and there were many things he said (in a lengthy interview on an essentially financial news channel) that might draw parallels between the condition of music in the digital age to that of architecture.

First he said something unexpected, that the craft that he executes in the studio, the type of equipment he uses and so on, is something entirely lost on the consumer who’s hearing his music through tiny headphones on the bus, no matter how good the headphones.

Second (and this is something we all sense) that while he spends $5m in the studio making a record he will never see a profit from it. He will only see a profit from touring.

Those of us who write academic books will certainly recognise both points, we won’t make any money from it (not even a living) unless we do something else (teach) and the effort that goes in to writing a book is perhaps not appreciated by the reader, who might be distracted at any moment.

A third thing Henley mentioned was that there was a problem with ‘the moment’. When the audience is busy holding up their mobile phones and taking pictures they are (weirdly but precisely) NOT participating in the moment. They have already turned a real event into a pseudo event they can ‘share’- mass pseudo events. ‘Artists’ of a particular generation (the sixties) are very upset about this, while aficionados turn back to vinyl, which in one way is less pure that digital (with louder background noise) but also crucially ‘warmer’.

There is something rather arts and crafts about Henley, and I appreciate it, because William Morris was saying much the same thing in response to the technologies of the first machine age, and he fathered, in the long term, the Bauhaus. The point here is to say that a negative view of technology actually, again in the long term and not as you might expect, fathered something that seemed very positive about the machine age when it passed through the right hands.

When the Soviet Union wanted houses for true communism, many tactics regarding ‘use’ value, either materially (less structure) or socially (no private kitchens) were employed. One of the most interesting to me was the attempt to design the most efficient possible service spaces. The living spaces were considered separate, and these could be straightforwardly assessed in square meterage, but kitchens and bathrooms were a technical and social problem that knarled away at the architects for years. If we accept that getting rid of shit is a constant, which it probably is in an urban environment at least, that the pipework technologies are merely refined, that the flow of shit down a pipe is down to the laws of physics, then it was a case of the shortest pipe runs providing more people with more homes.

It’s important to point out here that if you live in a world where people want to put their toilets wherever they like (as we do) you are likely in for a string of costly failures (leaks). Any kind of cost benefit analysis would hence find our present system horribly flawed (as do most plumbers).

So builders who can’t plumb, artists who can’t paint, authors who can’t write, architects who can't design buildings; this is the discernable world of today, as defined nicely in the Frank Zappa song, Flakes (1979) and all in the name of profits that are slowly but inexorably decreasing as debts quickly and equally inexorably increase. Ask George Osborne why the deficit is actually going up (latest figures as of yesterday) despite austerity.