Ceci n'est pas la réalité

‘I’m sure everyone out there agree

that everything you see ain’t really how it be.’

(There are so many great lines from this song it’s ridiculous)

To understand the facts of quantum physics, as much as is possible anyway, is to fully understand these lines. Put simply we do not fully know what ‘reality’ is. At a quantum level all matter can be said to be either a wave or a particle, or rather both. Obviously nothing can quite be two things at once, which is what the experiments show us, so what these results do prove is that our models are somehow flawed. There are many things, indeed most things at a quantum level, which don’t make sense.  It’s funny that it is actually this complete disillusionment with reality is actually the main source of hope for me. I am an atheist and a misanthrope, I lean towards nihilism but my hope keeps me in the light of existentialism (nihilism is a dark place which should avoided as much as possible).

It is because ‘a man that knows something knows that he knows nothing at all’ that I have hope for the future. We have learned a lot about the world over the past 100 years and the rate of our advancement is ever increasing. Reality at the moment seems pretty grim. The world is full of suffering, but it is hidden from us, we are all deluded as to the nature of reality due to our imperfect brains (this I have learned through readings in psychology, and experienced through my taking of some serious drugs). But I have hope that in the future these problems will be solved.

For now my goal in life is to make the world a better place in order to increase the chances of my hopes eventuating. Part of this, I now know, is to make people see that the world we live in is actually a corrupted paradigm. Rampart materialism has warped how we see the world. Just as we don’t see a jumble of shapes that make the image of a pipe ‘this is not a pipe’, we do not see the world for what it is, with all its beauty and wonders and all its horrors and ugliness. What I want people to understand is how we view the world is always through subjective eyes; ‘this is not reality’. I feel that this concept is often expressed well in music, hip-hop in particular, but it is hard to show in art and design. Surrealism is a style which lends itself well to showing how warped our world views are and I quite like it because of this. I’m not sure how much other people ‘get’ it though. They see crazy images and just think ‘that’s cool, that’s interesting’ and like most art the masses fail to ever grasp the ideas behind the expression. As such most people often fail to take anything meaningful away from it.

(much can be taken away from the ambiguity of surrealism. image source)

Another way of trying to express this idea of the ‘corrupt paradigm’ is to show some of the ugliness in the world within the beauty of it. Like all great design goals this is not simple to do this and is best done subtly. What I dislike about contemporary architecture today is that it rarely meaningfully engages with the ‘ugly’ side of life. Ugliness is something we try to design out of our architecture; we cover it up or hide it away. By doing this we express our culture of ignoring our problems. I’m not sure if showing our failures or oddities in architecture will do anything to improve our ability to face them. But I am sure that by always hiding away our problems with gleaming facades of materialism both our architecture and our society will remain unsustainable.

A bit of surrealism in architecture, I love it. Trust the Spanish, who from Gaudi to Miguel de Cervantes (writer of Don Quixote) have always seemed to understand the irrationalities of our minds better than most.

In this world there are many very rational, functional and beautiful buildings, but as these buildings proudly show off our ideals our society continues to fail to live up to them. These buildings hide the truth that there is much wrong with the world. I don’t like highly rational design because it suggests that we are something we are not; rational. I don’t like highly monumental, formal and streamlined architecture (think Zaha Hadid) because it suggests our world is something it is not; all sorted out and magnificent.

I just wish more people would see something in the way of things.

Just as great architecture is our pride slaughterhouses are our embarrassment

Below is a letter I sent to the Prime Minister in a call to end live animal export from Australia. I doubt if she read it but I believe its a message that should be read by someone so I’ll post it here.

‘Whilst I applaud the government’s decision to finally take some action on this issue I appeal to you that much more has to be done. Attempts to train Indonesian abattoir workers and supply them with better equipment are commendable, but without continual monitoring of what is actually going on inside of the abattoirs the mistreatment and unnecessary suffering of animals will continue. 

The knee-jerk reaction of Government, industry groups and the Australian public in relation to the recent exposure of the live animal export trade to Indonesia brings to mind the words of Sir Paul McCartney ‘If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian’. The issues relating to live animal export have been known for years but as they remained overseas and invisible to all those who didn’t want to know about them, they remained unresolved. The only way Australians can truly know whether or not our animals are saved from the horrible deaths seen in the Animals Australia footage is if there is a complete ban on all animal exports. I would like to think that more regulation would be the answer but as the Animals Australia footage clearly showed the work of LiveCorp, which is directly responsible for stopping these types of atrocities, is clearly failing, sadly despite millions of government funds going to the company each year.

Whilst the footage of conditions in Indonesia was shocking the unfortunate truth is that conditions in many Australian abattoirs are not much better. A lack of monitoring, tough working conditions and poor training lead to similarly macabre mistakes being made on a regular basis at all abattoirs around the world. In England a reasonable solution has been found through the use of CCTV monitoring of abattoirs to ensure better practice. This simple, yet effective, solution was not introduced by the government there, but rather by a group of supermarket chains in the interest of reassuring their customers of reasonable conditions.

Why is it that Governments around the world are so bad at ensuring animal welfare? The live animal industry in Australia worth over $1 billion dollars a year. How can it be that this billion dollar industry is so poorly monitored and regulated that only when a few concerned citizens from Animals Australia report on it are the known issues in the industry responded to?

This Government, just like all previous governments, is letting Australia down on animal welfare issues and millions of Australian animals are suffering needlessly because of it. Cameron Hill and the Directors of LiveCorp, which for over 10 years has supposedly been working to improve industry standards, should be ashamed. The suffering continues as these eight men personally enjoy roughly 10% of LiveCorp’s millions in revenue each year. A lot needs to be done and a lot can be done, both in Indonesia and here in Australia.’

The two main points of the letter are that better monitoring and regulation is needed to end the atrocities that go in everyday in abattoirs around the world and that the companies whose job it is to do that monitoring and regulating, in this case LiveCorp, are failing in their duties.

This letter, and an entire campaign to end live animal export in Australia, all stemmed from a great report by Four Corners aired in May. (Click here for details) Subsequent to this report, and the backlash it created, live export to Indonesia has been temporarily banned.

The problems that plague this world are many and when contemplated fully leave one numb with misanthropic apathy. If one’s goal in life is to make the world a better place then surely the best way to do this is to try to reduce the amount of suffering that goes on here. Depending on how one defines suffering it’s fair to say that animal welfare issues are one of the biggest problems with our world at the moment. We are an inherently irrational species and I can accept this, but to accept this fact at the cost of the lives and wellbeing of millions of creatures is to prove just how selfish and ungrateful we are.

The successfulness of this campaign does make me happy, but still there is much to be done to improve animal welfare, in every country around the world. People continue to ignore the facts of where their food comes from, or goes in this case, until it is vividly and conveniently shoved in their face, as it was in this case. Until we're willing to look at and admit how horrible factory farms and abattoirs are we should not be allowed to eat meat.

How this post relates to architecture is that my interest in architecture stems from my desire to make the world, physically, a better place. The creation and continual use of abattoirs would have to be the most polar opposite of this idea I can think of. To make the world a better place the removal of horrible spaces, such as abattoirs, should be just as important, if not more so, than the creation of great ones. 

Waking life from consumerism

After meaning to for a long time I finally felt in the right sort of hung over mood to watch Waking life.
(stream here)
Whilst this movie touches on some very interesting points I didn't feel it really goes anywhere with any of them. But I guess that is the nature of philosophy really.

Man 3: If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible.

Man 4: On the way to discovering what we love, we will find everything we hate, everything that blocks our path to what we desire.

Man 2: The comfort will never be comfortable for those who seek what is not on the market. A systematic questioning of the idea of happiness.

Man 1: We'll cut the vocal chords of every empowered speaker. We'll yank the social symbols through the looking glass. We'll devalue society's currency. To confront the familiar.

Man 4: Society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence.

Man 3: Where there is fire we will carry gasoline

Man 4: Interrupt the continuum of everyday experience and all the normal expectations that go with it.

Man 2: To live as if something actually depended on one's actions

Man 1: To rupture the spell of the ideology of commodified consumer society, so our repressed desires of more authentic nature can come forward.

Man 3: To demonstrate the contrast between what life presently is and what it could be.

Man 1: To immerse ourselves in the oblivion of actions and know we're making it happen.

Man 2: There will be an intensity never before known in everyday life to exchange love and hate, life and death, terror and redemption, repulsions and attractions.

Man 3: An affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified, that it amounts to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation.

The underlined quote resounds strongly within me as I feel that this is one of my main goals in life. To help others better know themselves.

It is my belief that as more people reach this goal of self understanding the world’s problems with war, pollution and poverty will be solved.

Whilst many of our faults and irrationalities are innate simply knowing them will help us overcome them and I believe that with the rise of the information age we are now starting to know ourselves like never before.

The problem is that at the same time we are learning more and more we are also seeing what is given to us becoming increasingly processed. Few things in western society are authentic anymore because authentic items are original and as such cannot be tested, they cannot be commodified and they cannot be sold. If something cannot be sold then it is generally seen as having no value in today’s society.

A bit of chilled funk to lighten the mood

I Stumbled upon this song today and am loving it.

It's good music like this that makes me feel that the human race ain't too bad after all.

The youtube comment: "This is what elevator music needs to sound like.." inspires me to want to design an elevator, and indeed a whole building, cool and funky enough to warrant it being played there.

Triple post:The problem with utopia; it still has people...

Perfection seeking Singapore.

After reading Monty Don’s description of Singapore "It is clean, comfortable, law-abiding and a paradigm of the modern, aspirational urban life. But from the moment that we arrived at the station I disliked almost everything about it.” I can relate. Whilst I wouldn't say I 'disliked almost every part of it' I have always felt a strange constrained vibe to Singapore and feel it also applies to my impression of Copenhagen. As much as I enjoyed my stay there, a six month study exchange, I was slightly depressed and disappointed by the city and on a wider sense Danish society. Perhaps not for the same exact reasons, but related none-the-less. The problem I felt with Copenhagen was that despite it being a rather enlightened society with a good social system, public services, a high standard of living and despite most people being quite intelligent and well educated there were still a lot of problems. People were still materialistic, although in a slightly different and more stylish way, people were still greedy, people still got drunk, people were still rude.

It made me realise that you cannot ever overcome all of society’s problems. This is because the problems with society stem from the inherent problems of human nature. It’s not that living in Copenhagen made me give up hope for a utopian society. It’s just that it made me realise how hard it would be to create this, and how far off we are from that today. (written 25/01/11)

Copenhagen Library: rational, smart, cool and stylish, but self-consciously so.

Income gaps (source:Bangkok Post)

After watching ‘The Shock Doctrine’ documentary I began thinking about the widening income gap, power and democracy. For the rich to actually get richer the majority still have to live in at least reasonable conditions. This is because if the majority suffers whilst only the very top live well, even if democracy has failed them, the power of the masses is such that once a tipping point is reached, such has been seen recently in North Africa, the corrupt system will be overthrown. I then did some research into world income gaps and, according to one source at least, found it interesting to see Denmark on top as the country with the lowest gap between richest and poorest. It is not a huge shock after living there and seeing the high level of public services; knowing that these result from the very high level of national income tax. What was surprising, however, was that once again I am presented with proof that Danish society is one of the most developed and enlightened in the world, and I don’t like it. As stated above the problems in Denmark might be very minor when compared to those faced by most other countries in the world, but this doesn’t make the Danish people themselves seem any nicer, happier or less flawed than anyone else.

Copenhagen: where 'fitting in' is part of being cool.

The best way to describe what I see as the problem with Danish culture is that it is very self-conscious. Of course it makes absolute sense that if you have all your basic needs met, and you are happy and intelligent you will put more effort into making sure that your style and your look is more precisely how you would like it to be, but the problem is that when it reaches the levels seen in Denmark, and Sweden and indeed most of Northern Europe, it becomes quite an obsession. A slightly arrogant and narcissistic obsession one might argue. The problem made evident by the self-conscious nature of Danish culture is that humans are incapable of being truly content. We are always wanting to be better, wanting others to be better for us and always looking for more. (written 14/3/11)

Perhaps this is simply my problem. Lisa:"Look I made a graph; I make a lot of graphs."

We are an inherently ambitious species and it is this ambition that has got us to where we are today. There is a downside to this ambition, however, and this is that we are a particularly ungrateful species, we are rarely satisfied with what we have and are almost always greedy for more. (written 25/01/2011)

We enslave ourselves for freedom

Going home early on Saturday night so that I can get up early to work the next day I contemplate the situation.

The majority of my spending would probably relate to going out and enjoying myself. If I didn’t go out then I wouldn’t need to go to work. 

So we bind ourselves to our employment for money.

And how do we spend our money? On enjoying ourselves and expressing our freedom.

The only way to have freedom in a capitalist society is to enslave yourself to your employer.

Herein lies the irony. We enslave ourselves for freedom.

A great image by Pawla Kuczynskiego

21st century architecture; why art thou so oblique?

Why are oblique forms so common in contemporary architecture?

Oblique forms dominate contemporary architecture of the 21^st century just as basic geometry dominated design in the 80s. Slanted walls, shard-like windows and oblique facades can be found on buildings around the world in numbers never before seen. But why is this the current trend?

The Klein Bottle House, by McBride Charles Ryan

Is the oblique simply a manifestation of new drawing techniques? Is the ease in drawing oblique lines and forms on computer programs responsible for their presence in our cities? Are the rotate, taper, bend and skew tools really responsible for such a global trend? This may be part of it but I don’t think this is the main reason.

The Hedley Bull Centre, by Lyons

I believe the current trend is dictated mainly by a lack of understanding in design theory by most young designers today. It’s not that they don’t have anything to say I believe it’s that they are not inspired enough to see that they CAN say something about the world through their designs. Their understanding of design theory is shallow and thus so are their designs. What I believe is missing in design education today is design philosophy. The understanding that design can make a difference and the knowledge of how this can be done.

Oblique architecture to me represents the meek, wanky superficiality of society today. It represents a desire to stand out, to be seen and be stylish, but no desire to actually say something or have an opinion about the world. For too many people I think this is what life has become, it’s all business, all a show, nothing deep, nothing meaningful.  

By why oblique?

I believe the current trend of the oblique stems from the popularity of deconstructivism in the 90s. Looking back, rather simplistically at late 20^th Century design trends it can be said that after modernism had come in and banished all ornament Post-modernism then tried to bring it back. Post-modernism, whilst being quite an interesting style, lost favour as a style and a theory as it failed to really understand WHAT it was trying to say with ornament (in my opinion). Predominately ornament was used by the post-modernists in an ironic way. Irony being used here, as it normally is, to criticise something without actually putting forth a constructive alternative. As the post-modernist began to waiver in the early 90s the deconstructivists started to gain increasing attention. It is from deconstructivism, the works of Lieberskin, Hadid, Koolhaas and the like, that I believe that the current architectural style has developed.

The MAXXI National Museum, by Zaha Hadid

This ‘Oblique style’ can be seen as a stripped back version of deconstructivism. A minimalised deconstructivism if you will. Overall I do understand and see the usefulness of deconstructivism as a style and theory. At its strongest, when it makes us question the meanings we automatically give things, it can be very powerful, but at it’s weakest it’s just doing things differently simply to be different. It’s unfortunate that I think it is the latter where the current ‘oblique style’ has its roots and it is this lack of reason and lack of expression that I object to.

Nothing is safe from the cult of the Oblique.

The next trend? Well looking back at the design trends of the 20^th century it can be seen that major trends tend to play off and rebel from what was before. People inherently find interest in what is new and exotic. If something opposes the status quo it is cool until it itself becomes the status quo. What I think, and hope, is that we’ll get bored of all this bland and meaningless play of obscure geometry and once again will want to see formal and materialistic complexity in our buildings. Perhaps, rather than hiding behind ironic criticism of the past or bland attempts to look sleek and sustainable, designers will start to actually have an agenda again and will be willing to boldly express this agenda through their designs. I also think that, as life becomes increasingly technologically orientated, the rough, textured and the imperfect will come to be more meaningful within our designs. I don’t believe that strict order will come back in just yet, but I think meaning has been overlooked for too long. Of course it is always hard to express ideas and an agenda in architecture since, unlike most other art forms, architecture must first and foremost be functional and meet the client’s requirements. But that doesn’t mean that architects are excused from even trying to express something through their designs. In short architects of today need to grow some gonads and actually say something with their designs.  They need to really look at what their role is in our society and work at making the world a better place, not just a better looking one.