Session One: Paul Mason - PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future

Focus is on Chapter 9 'The Rational Reason to Panic' from Paul Mason's book Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future,

Paul Mason is a big traveler as we find out from the first page of chapter 9. He is a curious person,  asking people with different backgrounds questions about their economy, but instead getting answers about the climate change.He writes about the relationship between the two almost interchangeably, seems to be one of the ways he rationalizes the issues that face us all. You can't talk about money without talking about climate or vice-versa.

P. Mason paints a picture the seemingly eternal conflict between ecologists and economists.

Mason is pulling references from IPCC, IEA to J.Ashton. Shows a well researched individual who concerned with accuracy and facts in order to rationalize his views. He is in a way an explorer or investigator, exploring the relationship between economics and ecology and investigating the impact on local cultures and economies. He writes with purpose and deliberation.
His book reads more like a documentary. He writes this chapter into the book at this stage on purpose, as a way of making us aware of the importance of the underlining issues. It's almost like watching Sir David Attenborough's documentaries about Planet Earth.

Paul Mason talks about the Gobi desert, The Himalayas that walls off the Gobi desert and while he didn't mention this next fact,  The Himalayas captures all the moisture on its slopes and that acts has a natural impact on the delicate climate and is the main cause for the Gobi deserts existence. The Himalayas are still growing and with it, rising temperatures, and the dying grassland that so essential for sheep farmers in Ningxia Province, China won't be able to grow.

P.M. has an opinion - he gives a grim view of the possible future, how industrial society effects the natural ecological and climate balance. 'if climate change is real, capitalism is finished and the economic world of those who hold the power could be destroyed.'

Again and again through the chapter he is reinforcing his experiences around the world with facts and pointing it out if we don't act now -probably we are already too late —you can read between the lines—we are doomed and humanity itself could very well be the architects of our own demise.

Its a vicious circle we live in. What might be good for economy in short term is bad for our climate. We receive wrong market signals, the dropping oil prices instigated by Saudi Arabia, makes us buy more cars and drive more miles.

P.M indicates in between the lines the beginning of the end if (by 2050) we haven't achieved the goals set out in order to keep our climate under control, his message is loud and clear. The market stands in the way of the climate change and the market mechanisms are clearly inadequate and have failed.

The connection Paul sees between WWII and the COP's future meeting - that will be held in December 2015 - Is he indicating this seems like its leading us to another World War?  Certainly feels like it these days.

The idea of a centralized governmental control to meet the critical emissions targets might sound great, quite ideological. But can we really trust the governments to take over and allocate fairly - like in Hungary they did for 40 years, as I felt it on my own skin-doesn't work.

Mason's political background as a former member of the Trotskyist Workers' Power group lights through. Communist ideologies sounds great on paper until you introduce greedy and corrupt people to this equation.

A Demographic Time-bomb - demographic aging is another (new) problem and nobody protest against it even though potentially as a big external shock as climate change.
P.M believes falling birth rates in the rich world and western women independence makes this imbalance irreversible.What a sexist comment. The economy and rising prices that makes us rethink to have kids in the first place.

Paul Mason is trying to look at the bigger picture, he steps back as if admiring a painting in a museum. While looking at different issues, Paul's views which are formed from elegant investigation into problems like impact of migration, ecology, economy, population and state responsibility, simply do not do enough to point out it would take a massive re-education of peoples mentalities and the way we all live our lives in this industrialized society. This is the biggest hurdle and its certainly not achievable in 30 years.

Session Two: Writing from the Last Decade - Diary - Will Self - Battersea Power Station

Brilliantly written by Will Self —about the Battersea Power Station. I truly enjoyed his writing style.
His article reveals that journalism need not be a  pompous and a jargon filled piece to captivate and engage audiences, even if being provocative.

Will Self really plays with the readers mind straight away —at least mine— connecting Battersea to historically infamous people so the readers perhaps associate it with a villainous history by reading Hitler's name. It slightly put me into a negative state of mind towards the power station. Which is indeed a correct proposition due to the fate that Mr. Tincknell has in store for it.

Will Self compares Battersea and London to the Roman Empire, Hitler and his 'Theorie vom Ruinwert'. The idea was pioneered by Albert Speer Hitler's architect, while planning for the 1936 Summer Olympics, although he should had mentioned that Speer was not its original inventor, even if the idea seems to come from him.

In reality it was a much older concept, even becoming a European-wide romantic fascination at one point.[1] Predecessors include a "new ruined castle" built by the Landgraf of Hesse-Kassel in the 18th century, and the designs for the Bank of England built in the 19th century produced by Sir John Soane.[1] When he presented the bank's governors with three oil sketches of the planned building one of them depicted it when it would be new, another when it would be weathered, and a third what its ruins would look like a thousand years onward.[1]

[1]Spotts, Frederic (2003). Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. New York: The Overlook Press. p. 322.

Self has a great way to tell readers Battersea is the capital's last 'fucking huge' ruin.

'ultimately, all that remained to remind men of the great epochs of history was their monumental architecture … What then remained of the emperors of the Roman Empire? What would give evidence of them today, if not their buildings?’

Self made this article personal. He gives a gleam of his day-to-day life. He tells us he has been living close to the Power station and every day he sees the building in a different light. Through his adult life he had seen everything fundamental happening to the power station.

Is Battersea 'iconic' a temple to worship as so many people and Mr. Tincknell believe so? They are going to create a brand out if it for the rich to live in with their winter garden balconies and fake rebuilt chimneys.

Battersea is just a piece of economic hardware which is at the moment is a shell, a monument to the period industrial capitalism.

Will Self confesses that he belongs to the ‘progressive’ left despair of people, who regard the city’s genius as being the sum of its disparate, otiose, non-functioning and outright redundant parts.

He loves the so called retro living 'urbanist nostalgie de la bouse' and scrape the river mud off his boots with his iconic boot scraper that he picked up from an architectural salvage store.

Self wants to believe in Mr. Tincknell that this time he can pull it off —like so many others failed— to save the power station.

He sees the future, what this redevelopment could mean for his home, to the area of Battersea and the people who have lived there for decades. 'London, if Tincknell and his kind are anything to go by, will become a safer, cleaner and fundamentally duller city.'

On the other hand Will is so bothered about people who is strongly against Battersea Power Station being turned into shiny, happy flats for shiny rich people.
The class-cleansing of central London continues.

Battersea Power Station with its history of service to everyone indiscriminately, now it will only serve the rich and powerful few, perhaps a final undignified yet sarcastic and ironic fate to befall such a hideous monstrosity.

Session Two: Writing from the Last Decade - Jonathan Meades - An Article on Zaha Hadid

THE FIRST GREAT FEMALE ARCHITECT by Jonathan Meades - Intelligent Life 2008

Admittedly, I had to read the article a few times—with my dictionary in hand, it has far too many jargon words for a foreign student—and every time there were different feelings or thoughts about the article. The article reads like a mandatory 3000 word essay and is quite an heavy read and clearly the interviewer seems to be more interested in what he has to say rather than to focus on the interviewee. A read that left much to be desired, to be sure.

Jonathan starts his article with some basic observations on Zaha's office and the people who work there.

The location remains the same, only the building's signage has been upgraded. This 'factory for art' remains and is even bigger than ever, with nearly double the employee count today at 350.

At first I found Meade's article to be somewhat disrespectful towards Zaha, like he wanted to provoke some sort reaction. I felt maybe this was another gender attack...

Reading for the second time and putting my professional hat on, I realized, actually he is telling us about the facts of today's architecture and being critical about Zaha's work and not talking about her personality or whatever it felt like when I read this the first time around,

I think Jonathan in his article is looking for answers. Who is Zaha Hadid? She is known and publicized as an "Icon", but little else is known about the person behind the image, which may very well be an intentional move to project a specific image.

"The first architect to be so blessed since Mies(van der Rohe)". Surely this is not true. How about Alvar Aalto or Gaudi? Their architecture seems to be more relevant to Zaha's work rather than what is suggested by Meades article.

Where do her inspirations come from, what is her process? Those are what one should be asking.

"I rather suspect that Zaha has an ancient fear: that to discover how her processes work would be to jeopardise them."

Zaha is mysterious; she doesn't want to share her private life, or work/creative processes. I suspect there is no great mystery but rather some simple and poignant facts that when revealed, the allure to the architect maybe lost.  
However, she shared one thing her dream to design an entire city.  "A city. A city! Without looking backwards".  She contradicts herself several times throughout.
Her distaste for anti-modernist escapism architecture is total, doesn't like retro-developments and Disney's celebration. She still dreams about creating Hadidopolis.

However, she is not the first architect who dreams big - maybe even not the first female to do so. 
Certainly is the only internationally known and clearly sought after, as Zaha's company growth indicates.
Le Corbusier in 1920's wanted to demolish downtown Paris to pull up his monster towers. 
Architect's purpose is to call attention to the different roles architecture can play, and the potential of cities to function differently. 

"Despite its practitioners' fastidious, perhaps delusional protests that it is a creative and scientific endeavour, architecture is a very big business, one that is involved in the creation and sale of one-off objects: it is a trade dealing mostly in the bespoke."

Seven years ago Jonathan Meades said about Zaha "The world is waking up to her". I think he was right. The world is recognizing her work, even thought she still gets criticised and maybe not every project has been such a great success.


Zaha will next year become the first woman to win the Royal Gold Medal in her own right in the 167-year history of the prize.
Unfortunately what should have been her moment of thunder, was instead yet again cut short as the story hit the headlines shortly after the announcement was made - being cut off during a live radio interview over allegations regarding deaths on her Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar. 
Design critic Stephen Bayley later described her as aggressive, intractable and bitter. Would Bayley see the same way if Foster or Koolhaas did the same?

While the gender aspect is still a wall that must come down, there are many issues that stifle the growth and recognition of Architects throughout the world.
In some ways I would have liked to have read about how politics have impacted the progress of Zaha's recognition as an Architect. However it does mention architecture as a big business and in my opinion aiming at the top 1% something somewhat of a problem for the future of architects and architecture, while perpetuating this absurdly archaic legacy that has remained largely unchanged for thousands of years.

Welcome Dear Reader!

 

Teacher hard at work

I'm starting my first sentence as a new blogger. smiley face hashtag hooray.

 

It is going to be a learning curve, but what isn't?

After 2 years on break from formal education, I'm back at the London South Bank University, a bit nervous but looking forward to the challenge.

It feels good to be back and to be able to catch up with some old friends, it has been such a long time since I last saw them.

This is Monday morning the 5th October at 9am about to have a History & Theory lecture, I'm sitting in a small room with so many others. Everyone looks tired, with coffee in their hands looking forward to our first lecture.

I look around in the tiny lecture room we are sitting in, not the most inviting place to learn about critical reading and thinking and not very inspiring architecturally speaking, but in some weird way its made me put my critical hat on, hashtag lucky-coincidences?

The tables and chairs are positioned in circle and all our attention is focused on one person - the teacher some of us already had the pleasure be taught by before at undergraduate level - Paul Davies a man full of passion for Architecture and after you get to know him a little bit you want to be at these lectures.

In this blog I'll be posting my observations on different articles and books that are required reading and trying to be critical about it. Hopefully at the end of all this I'll get one step closer to my dissertation.