Session Six: Postmodernism - Colin Rowe - The Mathematics of the ideal villa and other essays

Rowe compares Palladio's “Villa Foscari” with Le Corbusier’s “Villa Steinhe”.
The essay on ‘Maths’ is rather difficult to get as an ordinary reader. 

Rowe starts to analyze the two buildings, layouts, structural rhythms etc. straight at the beginning without any real introduction, so if you don’t know the two villas you won’t have an understanding of Rowe’s essay. Even if you know the buildings you will be lost and confused, as the author seems to make miscalculations about his target audience.
After a fair bit of research, now I can try to comment on Rowe’s article. This fact already tells me that Rowe is able to derive details from the comparison, that perhaps others would miss, showing a degree of complexity that is translated to his writing style.

Villa Foscari

Palladio's 16th century design of Villa Foscari strongly based on the symmetry, perspective and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

Villa Steinhe

In 1926, the year in which Le Corbusier began to design the Villa Steinhe formulated his famous "5 Points," which became a credo of modern architecture.

These points are in brief:

1) columns supporting concrete slabs
2) roof gardens
3) the open plan
4) ribbon windows
5) the free facade, relieved of structural functions

These two buildings are so different even Rowes declared, that these ‘are superficially so entirely unlike that to bring them together would seem to be facetious’.
I wonder if this article then is Rowes idea of a dry and inappropriate joke.
Rowe set up the basics such as amounts and volumes to be comparable and parallel in the two buildings.

Nevertheless as a reader keep questioning it throughout the essay struggling to get a grip of it.
I'm a visual person, maybe with more graphic explanations would be able to engage with this writing. I don't feel this is about the villas anymore more of a mathematical equation I can't solve.

Session Five: The Tragedy of Development, Faust by Goethe, as retold by Marshall Berman

Faust has an engaging personality, so many today’s film characters are based on him. He is still relevant today. Berman achieved a great fictional analysis that is flowing, rational and comprehensive.

Berman describes how Goethe’s Faust presents a refined story that associated to social and political development of Germany within the historical context of a revolutionary western world. Goethe also provided what would seem to be a prophetic understanding of how the aspiration for development will invariably have consequences and result in human tragedy.

Berman splits the story of Faust into three metamorphoses: The Dreamer, The Lover and The Developer. In each section, both development and tragedy occur to some degree.

The Dreamer sees Faust, an insightful and well-educated man who accomplished what he could but now he feels trapped. He wants to change but he can’t, nothing cheers him up. He is having a mid-life crisis.
He is pulled back from the verge of suicide by the sound of Easter Sunday church bells, which sound he knows so well. The memory of his lower class childhood opened himself up to a whole lost dimension of his being that can renew him. He is ready to start a new life in the world, outside of his study in society where he can grow. But it will take "the powers of the underworld" to make such a synthesis work.

Mephisto provides him with "money as an extension of man, with speed to do great things in the world and also this will generate a sexual aura thus making capitalism a leading force of Faust's development. 

The Lover begins in the Second Metamorphoses. Faust fall in love with Gretchen - with her innocence that draws him to her, representing something him can no longer have. But like in most love stories it ends with tragedy, loss of her life. She is betrayed by Faust.

To me this is where Faust begins to lose his humanity. He realizes to get to where he wants and to achieve his desires, there are going to be destruction and victims and that he cannot afford to 'feel' any remorse in his path - you would think it is the very notion of capitalism but it is also central in socializm as well.

Faust rises up again in The Developer metamorphosis and leaps entirely into the creation of his new development. "Faust's projects will require not only a great deal of capital but control over a vast extent of territory and a large number of people."  His idea of the new modern world would leave no traces of the old world or anythings that comes in his path like the lighthouse and the old couple whom he asked of Mephisto to 'get rid' of.

"He will be a destroyer and creator, the dark and deeply ambiguous figure that our age has come to call "the developer".

Session Three: Neoliberalism - Dave Hickey's Air Guitar vs Mike Davis' Fear And Money In Dubai

Las Vegas vs Dubai, The desert playgrounds.

I haven't been to either of these places and may even seem quite intriguing, even a dream to visit for some — Mike Davis describes Dubai as a travel guide book, however the truth is both destinations are sin cities with a bit of bling bling.
They were both built in large tracts of deserts emerging out of nothing.
Mike, through his writing compares Dubai to America and Las Vegas so it make sense to me to compare the two writers articles.

Dave Hickey’s ‘A Home in the Neon’ is an enjoyable more personal read. A well traveled individual who has lived in many diverse places throughout his life, but eventually has chosen Las Vegas as his ‘home’.

He enjoys the fact that Las Vegas possesses a very strange characteristic for modern America and a lack of a programmed social order. It doesn't matter where you come from, what your qualifications are. It is the cities of opportunities where American —and foreign— Dreams can come true. You just need to gamble and your life might turns around, you start with equal chance at the black jack table.

A city of sin in the more extreme descriptions. But here we have someone describing it as his home.

Dubai is also a Dream —as Mike Davis compares it to Disneyland— "Rubbing your eyes with wonderment", on the other hand in most cases it is not for the everyday Joe. It was created for the 1%. All about labels, Gucci, Cartier, extremes after extremes like snowboarding in the heat. Temptation is everywhere you look. A "Strange Paradise".

It is a paradise for architects and engineers also. It is like a playground. No rules, just dreams and nothing is impossible.

However, this dream comes as a price, other poorer  "lower class" people building these dreams for the rich and famous and they are not recognized.

Las Vegas and Dubai both in sheer scale of spectacle and a profligate consumption of water and power. At the scale of still growing consumption our planet will not survive. Might be good for the local economies, for the Sheikh and other minorities but it is actually causing us and humanity more harm than good. Why don't we want to see this? We like meaningless bling bling and we like to dream.