Ya that seems about right. Guess I am finished.
I should probably explain some.
1) I have something called "complete ventral occlusion with aggravation of the thecal sac". Don't know what it means either. But it applies to my S1 and L5 vertebrae. S1 is basically my pelvis. L5 is the next one up.
2) My right leg feels like it is on fire. All the time. Ok, not all the time - sometimes it feels like an explosion went off inside it.
3) Everything is a dare to me because I am emotionally immature.
4) Instead of writing my magnum opus "Everything About Rome: 300 000 BCE to the Present" I scaled my ambition down to a single building. 5000 very well chosen words.
5) I'm high on percocet all the time (see #2).
6) The words aren't that well chosen. But I have succeeded in not using the word "Fucker". As in "Look fucker, just take my fucking word for it - I know a lot about Rome!!!" (see #3)
7) I cannot bend forward; I'm not physically able to and I'm on Doctor's orders not to. Yet I insist on hand drawing everything for the thesis.
8) I'm counting on getting a lot of slack because, well, see #6 and imagine me, high off my ass, in the main lecture theater being told my work just didn't cut it.
To finish abruptly, I am writing the shortest thesis in W'loo history. And I'm going to dare my committee not to accept it.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Who said, "we won't get fooled again?"
Modernism 2k - Sustainability
This school's self-righteous claim to self-criticism is founded on the Cultural History program. The first Cultural History course is dedicated to demonstrating the failure of the Modernist program. It wasn't a complete failure - a lot of good things came from it - but it did fail.
There are theoretic and pragmatic reasons we must consider Modernism a failure. Theoretically, the claim of universal progress is unfounded, unrealistic, and logically nonsensical. Progress toward what? Unless there is a clearly defined goal, or set of goals, progress isn't progress - it's just change. The high Modernists believed in a progress toward a perfection of type; the perfect housing unit, perfect factory, perfect museum, etc. No one really ever disputed this idea; at a certain point people just started laughing at it.
The pragmatic failure of Modernism is far more devastating as a criticism. The logic of Modernism produced the means of destroying ourselves as a species and the proof of our moral capacity to do so - nuclear weapons and Auschwitz respectively.
I think about the projects coming out of an architecture school in the fifties and the dismay anyone not converted to the doctrine of modernism must have felt. I feel the same way about sustainability. Where Modernism wanted more daylight in factories because it the factory nicer for the workers, sustainability justifies it in terms of energy savings and employee sick days. Where Modernism wanted better design for workers housing because it was better, sustainability argues in terms of daylight autonomy. Modernism was as logically incoherent as sustainability but it was nicer - kinder to people. Designs were based on what was best, not most efficient (even when these overlapped).
Sustainability patently available to the same criticisms that killed Modernism. It ought to be, it is the continuation of Modernism. But unlike Modernism, it isn't nice. Modernists wanted to do their thing because it was better than what had come before - sustainability is a desperate attempt to save our asses.
Take the mega-metropolises in the Southern hemisphere - one half of the world's population now lives in cities and it isn't because Kitchener has gone from 300 000 to 30 000 000. It's because of the giants in the South. They didn't get so big because they are swell places to live. People were forced into them on an unprecedented scale because the logic of development derived from the Modernist principle forced them from the land. And the same logic keeps them in abject poverty.
Sustainability is a stop-loss - the system (I know, I hate that word too and will qualify it later) trying to perpetuate itself when its mortality should be obvious to all. Here's what I mean by the system - our way of developing land, planning cities, designing buildings, governing the people in those cities, providing for our protection and our use of materials, and our corporate yet individual sense of how things ought to be done. It long ago became self-evident that no fixes, no tweaking, no alterations were going to make this system into something compatible with our long term survival. We are watering a dead bouquet.
I guess it beats doing nothing. But not by much. My response has been to retreat into the Ivory Tower (now made of Ivoroid) of academia so that I don't have to deal with the problem. This is far from optimal. I just don't know what else to do. I used to believe the way to make the world a better place was by making myself a better person. I still think that's a good start but it is going to take more.
This school's self-righteous claim to self-criticism is founded on the Cultural History program. The first Cultural History course is dedicated to demonstrating the failure of the Modernist program. It wasn't a complete failure - a lot of good things came from it - but it did fail.
There are theoretic and pragmatic reasons we must consider Modernism a failure. Theoretically, the claim of universal progress is unfounded, unrealistic, and logically nonsensical. Progress toward what? Unless there is a clearly defined goal, or set of goals, progress isn't progress - it's just change. The high Modernists believed in a progress toward a perfection of type; the perfect housing unit, perfect factory, perfect museum, etc. No one really ever disputed this idea; at a certain point people just started laughing at it.
The pragmatic failure of Modernism is far more devastating as a criticism. The logic of Modernism produced the means of destroying ourselves as a species and the proof of our moral capacity to do so - nuclear weapons and Auschwitz respectively.
I think about the projects coming out of an architecture school in the fifties and the dismay anyone not converted to the doctrine of modernism must have felt. I feel the same way about sustainability. Where Modernism wanted more daylight in factories because it the factory nicer for the workers, sustainability justifies it in terms of energy savings and employee sick days. Where Modernism wanted better design for workers housing because it was better, sustainability argues in terms of daylight autonomy. Modernism was as logically incoherent as sustainability but it was nicer - kinder to people. Designs were based on what was best, not most efficient (even when these overlapped).
Sustainability patently available to the same criticisms that killed Modernism. It ought to be, it is the continuation of Modernism. But unlike Modernism, it isn't nice. Modernists wanted to do their thing because it was better than what had come before - sustainability is a desperate attempt to save our asses.
Take the mega-metropolises in the Southern hemisphere - one half of the world's population now lives in cities and it isn't because Kitchener has gone from 300 000 to 30 000 000. It's because of the giants in the South. They didn't get so big because they are swell places to live. People were forced into them on an unprecedented scale because the logic of development derived from the Modernist principle forced them from the land. And the same logic keeps them in abject poverty.
Sustainability is a stop-loss - the system (I know, I hate that word too and will qualify it later) trying to perpetuate itself when its mortality should be obvious to all. Here's what I mean by the system - our way of developing land, planning cities, designing buildings, governing the people in those cities, providing for our protection and our use of materials, and our corporate yet individual sense of how things ought to be done. It long ago became self-evident that no fixes, no tweaking, no alterations were going to make this system into something compatible with our long term survival. We are watering a dead bouquet.
I guess it beats doing nothing. But not by much. My response has been to retreat into the Ivory Tower (now made of Ivoroid) of academia so that I don't have to deal with the problem. This is far from optimal. I just don't know what else to do. I used to believe the way to make the world a better place was by making myself a better person. I still think that's a good start but it is going to take more.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Why the Picture?
Romulus and Remus counted vultures, not the Eagles of Jupiter. It's a little piece of dramatic foreshadowing. Remus saw 6 (or 8) and then Romulus saw 12 (or 16). Remus said he won since he saw them first, Romulus said he won because he saw twice as many.
Both right, both wrong.
Remus and his followers come down from the Aventine and make their way to the Palatine to dispute the issue. In the resulting melee Remus is killed - "There is a storm of blows, Remus fell".
So the vultures, who appeared on spec, predicted correctly and wound up with a meal.
This is going to end up in my thesis word for word. Thanks Pooya.
Both right, both wrong.
Remus and his followers come down from the Aventine and make their way to the Palatine to dispute the issue. In the resulting melee Remus is killed - "There is a storm of blows, Remus fell".
So the vultures, who appeared on spec, predicted correctly and wound up with a meal.
This is going to end up in my thesis word for word. Thanks Pooya.
Is it me?
If I want to graduate by September (and have the possibility of getting the Visiting Lecturer position in Rome) I have to complete one spread a day for the next thirty days. I guess each spread will take between ten and fifteen hours.
By the logic of this school, I should need no more information than this - my course becomes absolutely clear. I work between twelve and seventeen hours a day for the next thirty days and then I will work without stopping for three or four days to complete formatting, lay out, text, and redlining.
By any other logic deserving the name, the task is impossible. The total hours between me and completion are around 450 - 500. That is a quarter of a working year, not a month. Forty hours times fifty weeks is two thousand hours. Five hundred is one quarter of two thousand.
The advice I get from people within the school is - put in the time and graduate with what you have. This seems morally wrong to me. I have been working on this for the past twenty months; do I really want to do less than I am able just to meet and arbitrary date?
Of course, there is something very significant attached to this otherwise meaningless date. Two things if you count tuition.
Is my task to finish or to finish the best possible product?
Is it better to live a in a self-destructive way for a short period (and hate doing it) or allow myself longer and work in a way I enjoy? If I allow myself this latitude am I ever going to finish?
Given that I am here so that I can continue on the cursus honorum towards a professorship, does everything else become secondary to whatever advances me on that path?
Is it me or is this becoming much more complicated than it ought?
I try to live by simple precepts - don't cross picket lines, don't touch women who are already with someone, don't fuck with a streak, do what's in front of me to do, eat when I am hungry sleep when I am tired. And so on. The great secret of most things is while they are all enormously complicated, what we ought do about them is very simple. In most cases we ought do nothing. In this school I have never found the advice "get some sleep and eat more" to be inappropriate. I find it very perplexing to be in a situation that perplexes me.
By the logic of this school, I should need no more information than this - my course becomes absolutely clear. I work between twelve and seventeen hours a day for the next thirty days and then I will work without stopping for three or four days to complete formatting, lay out, text, and redlining.
By any other logic deserving the name, the task is impossible. The total hours between me and completion are around 450 - 500. That is a quarter of a working year, not a month. Forty hours times fifty weeks is two thousand hours. Five hundred is one quarter of two thousand.
The advice I get from people within the school is - put in the time and graduate with what you have. This seems morally wrong to me. I have been working on this for the past twenty months; do I really want to do less than I am able just to meet and arbitrary date?
Of course, there is something very significant attached to this otherwise meaningless date. Two things if you count tuition.
Is my task to finish or to finish the best possible product?
Is it better to live a in a self-destructive way for a short period (and hate doing it) or allow myself longer and work in a way I enjoy? If I allow myself this latitude am I ever going to finish?
Given that I am here so that I can continue on the cursus honorum towards a professorship, does everything else become secondary to whatever advances me on that path?
Is it me or is this becoming much more complicated than it ought?
I try to live by simple precepts - don't cross picket lines, don't touch women who are already with someone, don't fuck with a streak, do what's in front of me to do, eat when I am hungry sleep when I am tired. And so on. The great secret of most things is while they are all enormously complicated, what we ought do about them is very simple. In most cases we ought do nothing. In this school I have never found the advice "get some sleep and eat more" to be inappropriate. I find it very perplexing to be in a situation that perplexes me.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Roman and Us
I've been trying to define when we stopped being renaissance and became "modern". To illustrate the continuation of acquisitiveness, Imperial pride and gluttony I made a Triumphal Arch for George Bush. It's based on the Arch of Septimius Severus (who also conquered Parthia).
I think it might be too subtle. And, in homage to Rob Krier, here is a drawing of the Arch of Constantine.
I think it might be too subtle. And, in homage to Rob Krier, here is a drawing of the Arch of Constantine.
More Spreads
This is the Republican Forum after Augustus finished the basilicas begun by Julius. The reason for the drawing is to highlight the relationship between the Curia (on the left, beside the plan lines) and the Julian Forum.
This is looking the other way. The buildings in the front are the Curia Julia and the chalicidium. The drawing shows how the center of Republic government was reduced to the lobby of Gaius Julius's monument to himself. The temple in the Forum is Venus Genetrix (Venus, Ancestor of the Julians).
This is looking the other way. The buildings in the front are the Curia Julia and the chalicidium. The drawing shows how the center of Republic government was reduced to the lobby of Gaius Julius's monument to himself. The temple in the Forum is Venus Genetrix (Venus, Ancestor of the Julians).
Spread
The format for my thesis has been finalized as one spread per idea - that's all I get. The editing is going to be pretty fierce.
I've been concentrating on creating images that will explain some of the arguments and that's taking most of my time. But I will put a few of them up now.
These two are about the way Sulla (first Roman General to attack Rome) used the idea of the crowd to forward his political program.
The images are approximately the same scale. And the constructions are huge - the top podium on the bottom image is more than five times the area of the floor of the coliseum. They were built in small towns (Praeneste and Tivoli) that could never fill them - people were meant to imagine the crowd. This imagining created greater effect than an actual crowd would, since you wouldn't be swamped in an ocean of people.
I've been concentrating on creating images that will explain some of the arguments and that's taking most of my time. But I will put a few of them up now.
These two are about the way Sulla (first Roman General to attack Rome) used the idea of the crowd to forward his political program.
The images are approximately the same scale. And the constructions are huge - the top podium on the bottom image is more than five times the area of the floor of the coliseum. They were built in small towns (Praeneste and Tivoli) that could never fill them - people were meant to imagine the crowd. This imagining created greater effect than an actual crowd would, since you wouldn't be swamped in an ocean of people.
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