CONTROL - REM KOOLHAAS' 'WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO URBANISM' AND KWINTER'S 'POLITICS AND PASTORALISM'

Koolhaas discusses the pretext of failure within urbanism, and the scapegoat of urbanism as its reason. Are we loathe to claim the failure as our own, or have we devolved so far into our own minds that we can no longer see past our own apparent mistakes, negating the truth, forgetting the eidos of architectural urbanism. See it as not a failure but as an evolution of man, an evolution of intelligence, of naivety, of history and culture.

Modernism did not make the mistake, but it is our own innate inadequacies that forced the dissolution of control in the city. Forced it to comprehend its own failures, and seemingly accept that we have failed.

Control has always been an invention of mind over matter in any respect. We believe in control and that we are able to control what we design. However we are designed by it. Urbanism, as a totality, a holistic expression of all human interaction with the physical environment is us. We are controlled by its magnetism, its gravitational pull. We are forced to stand rather than float, we create machines of counteraction to create flight, however, we must always return back to earth. The relationship between urbanism and nature exists as a balance, perhaps in favour of either, but it is a balance nonetheless.

We have perhaps forgotten the innate properties of design, the nature of the designer. We create, but what do we create? Control? The idea of a wall, creates the illusion of separation, however we are neither separated nor in control. I may exist in space, but so do you. An absolute expression in space is merely a concentration of particles arranged in a form that prevents sight, sound. But not existence.

The human exists as an entity of space, influential and effectual. We make a choice that then effects the binding of other relationships in space, causality occurs in every instance of architectural discourse, and design.

As designers, our prerogative is not in the invention of control, but in the..... more to follow...

There is a belief amongst architects and urban designers that we have failed already, and that the process of reconfiguring urbanism, or the city, lies in the total dissolution of what exists, and the creating of a new, utopian ideal. A City or form that emerges from the mistakes of previous generations, (never our own). It apparently lies in the depths of architectural knowledge and our pugilistic intellectual abilities. It is the narcissistic ideology of the city. Each to their own belief and their own tendencies, we design a City. The ultimate contradiction. Surely our vast knowledge of ancient and modern human and social history, Hegelian process, Greek dialectics, and modern philosophy dictates to us that it is impossible. It will not work, and cannot work.

Urbanism is born through the field of adversity and the emporium of absolute choice. Every human existing within the space of Urbanism or the City makes a choice based upon a memory or historical fact, a relationship physical or metaphorical, perhaps metaphysical, a force of nature, a force of requirement, politically or economically, an eccentricity, a whim. Any reason for any choice creates causality. Any choice one makes within the dynamics of the urban environment creates an effect. Therefore, by designing the City in its absolution we are creating a concrete absolution, a system unaware of the rebellious triggers and anarchic phisms we have created in its parallel.

The Urban fabric cannot be a designed, Kwinter describes it as a torrential force that cannot be tamed.

more to follow....

REACTION TO LEFEBVRE'S 'CITY TO THE URBAN SOCIETY'

Time is a constant. It cannot be devalued to a point, or moment in time, a critical point. An occurrence of tragedy, infamy, or celebration. The projection of a Critical Point across all objects/subjects, is objectively a material hypothesis, recognizably Marxist in its valuation on production, in terms of its correlative and temporal properties, deduced from the agrarian transition/dissolution to the urban, and discernibly sociological in its approach to identifying the method used to proliferate the urban fabric.

It is a projection of temporality that I believe Lefebvre is predicting, not of moment, where the metaphorical seams are to burst, but a temporal paradigm, a post technological, intimately leisure based apprehension of time and space.

Lefebvre predicts well the rise of the technological revolution and the ideology of the leisure society, however the pseudo-post-technological-leisure revolution is impossible to predict. Perhaps we have already reached the critical point in terms of Manuel Castells Space of Flows, where we are interconnected by flows of energy, data, information, the negation of contact and recently the intermittent transmission of RSS feeds, linking you to every possible interest you might have in the world around you. Or maybe according to Lefebvre himself, reaching a proximity in space and time where the urban fabric no longer extends as an obvious physical place or object, but as the relationship between objects on every scale is changed. In my opinion the way in which we conceive, perceive and receive the physical environment is no longer an entity of interaction, but subtraction. The relationship to all economic, social and cultural tools is changed to a point where its historical meaning or eidos is corrupted perhaps as much by its own creation (the machine that produced it) than of the consumerist demand of the world around it. The deletion of history and culture from our fingertops/laptips, sorry fingertips/laptops.

Does this mean we have already reached a critical point as Lefebvre graphs out the post industrialist timeline? Maybe, However I don’t believe it is possible to project an exact moment where it occurred. We may have reached/lived/passed this critical point, as we no longer conform to an ideology of industry, time has caught up. We no longer conform to the technological industry even though we still buy into it. The consumerist/idealist engrained into our bored and stagnant minds. We HAVE become bored and now expectant. We become frustrated when we cannot access our facebook, or we become furious when we cannot access our bank accounts. Your time being wasted by the little white box in the corner of your living room. Its LED lights flash as though it is telling to wait///then wait...then u disconnect. The ultimate reliance on online. It may now mean you will have to leave your domicile or habitation, and walk...for a while, to another but larger white box in another street. Deduced only by the faint glimmer of a few letters that spell out BANK. Then you realise its Sunday. Time again wasted.. i mean who would have thought, walking through our beautifully stark and pristine neighbourhoods or high street could be such a chore. When will time improve, slow down. When can one step outside into an environment not completely deducible to the sum of all its parts? A mathematical equinox, of silver lined, glass façades and concrete trees arching like red woods over the human tête. more to follow.......

SPLURGE ON DAVID HARVEY'S 'SPACE AS A KEY WORD'

Capitalist thought and process is merely the conjunction of apparent rights and political bureaucracy juxtaposed against the ambition and outcome of economic profit. In its purest form, it is a process, or system of micro processes engaged in detailing the actual event of mercantism, economic growth and ultimately profit.

Inaction or non-adherement to this process creates a default reaction. Exclusion or segregation. Social, economic, and physical.

Social exclusion is the learned limitation of human psyche/ we accept (ironically) that a/the reaction to one losing a job, or being forced – physical exclusion - from their domicile or habitation due to non-adherement to/of the RULES is a social displacement. Please move down the ladder. YOU are no longer equal to US.

Economic exclusion is the default reaction of non-payment, debt accumulation, and credit ADDICTION. We must complete the micro capitalist processes of utility bill payments, minor loan repayments and credit card payments, to even be considered WORTHY of reaching the absurd next stage of further debt accumulation, i.e qualifying for a mortgage, owning several credit cards , and major loans. Again, non-adherement to these processes equals exclusion. Inability to borrow, inability to create accounts with other Lenders, inability to purchase, and of course the possible removal of fixed assets. House, belongings and vehicles.

Physical exclusion can be described as the displacement from habitation, the actual physical displacement of losing your job. Removed from one social/physical setting to placed in another. Jobcentre. This in itself comes with its own SOCIAL stigma, and therefore exclusion.

Culture, tradition, revolution....REVOLUTION.

The act of it is in itself is a social wounding. We are taught to resist(ironically), the urges of the rebel. Engrained into out psyches, a profound melodrama of tiskness to those that grow their hair long, or those that adorn their flesh with rings and ink. But the idea of revolution within society is not born through physical change, but through economic rebellion, or social fragmentation is even still seen as too extreme for social integration.

We must act now to prevent a total social and economic stagnation of consumerist ideology and capitalist processes. The drama of unwinding the process exists in the foetal eccentricities of the activist.

As Harvey dictates in his speech The Urban Roots of the Fiscal Crisis , changing capitalist thought through the mind of the activist is the only way we can even ever consider reforming political and economic thought. REVOLUTION. re·volt

re·volt [ri vṓlt]

v (past and past participle re·volt·ed, present participle re·volt·ing, 3rd person present singular re·volts)

1. vi rebel against state: to try to overthrow an existing government

2. vi defy authority: to resist authority or rules

3. vti feel disgust: to feel disgust or repulsion, or cause somebody to feel disgust or repulsion

n (plural re·volts)

1. uprising against government: an uprising that attempts to overthrow a government

2. defiance of authority: a protest against authority or rules

[Mid-16th century. Via French <>

The concept of revolution in my methodology is not of a physical(yet) act of obscene revulsion, it is however a foetal thought borne in the context of conceptualist thought, and approach to a situation ie. The architecture of survival. Economic, physical, social and cultural.

sur·viv·al

sur·viv·al [sər vv'l]

(plural sur·viv·als)

n

1. staying alive: the fact of remaining alive or in existence, especially after facing life-threatening danger, or of continuing in a present position or office

The doctor said she had a fifty-fifty chance of survival.

fighting for her political survival

2. something from past: a custom, idea, or belief that remains when other similar things have been lost or forgotten

To survive it must change. Capitalist thought must change if it/we is/are to survive. Perhaps no longer as capitalism but as a form borne through teachings of capitalist and communist imperfection, and the amalgamation of these two failed political reforms. Taking what we have learnt from these failed practices, and re-writing the syntax from which the inherent problems are borne.

Firstly we must comprehend that equality across all human life is impossible. more to follow...