MR ARCHITECT

Gustav Terragni, Danteum, 1938


I am listening to a radio commercial about beautiful homes and rolling pastures, the homes designed by architect john shurre. Now there is something disdainful about architects being in commercials, and the word architect spoken by non-architects. I ponder on my feeling of disdain and I've come to think that outside the architecture world, the word architect is equivalent to the word decorator, one who panders to the needs of client and developer. Who in the world would think architects are intellectuals/avant gardes/social reformers? No one, except architects themselves.

There is something distasteful - and sad - about that.

Pessimist me.

THEO JANSEN

Theo Jansen lectured in TU Delft last Thursday. Just a brief introduction for those who do not know him, he is a kinetic sculpture artist who builds wind powered walking "creatures" from wire ducts. He is a true-blue showman whose stage presence has already been tirelessly rehearsed- jokes from a Dutchman which are actually funny!

One cannot help but marvel at the extent the movement of these creatures makes one think of real animals. When the wind blows at the animals, it starts off a series of movements within the creature's complex joints that gives the illusion of walking. And it is this act of walking (which Jansen explains as an evolution of the wheel), stopping, and reacting to water, which makes these creatures so compellingly alive.

16 years of perfecting this art. I wonder if my short-lived interests will cut short my quest for excellence...back to the drawing board...

Lucid Dreaming Redux... Parallel Universes, Parallel Projects?

While I was reading up on Philip K Dick (on Wikipedia, I must admit), and on recollecting some of the themes of films that have been adapted from his work, it occurred to me that a recurring theme in his work are that of parallel universes and simulacra. These tend to become plot vehicles and/or set pieces for the antihero characters in his novels... say, the possibility of viewing "parallel scenario of the future" which allows prospective criminals to be apprehended before the crime is actually committed, in "Minority Report"; or multiple identities, and therefore multiple trajectories of life, courtesy of a mind-altering drug, in "A Scanner Darkly".

(On the same page, for a truly trippy experience, rent "Altered States" which starred a younger and more follicled Ed Harris.)

I couldn't help but notice that Sern Hong's "Pirated City" thesis project bore themes that reverberated with the above. The constant link-up of his projects between Los Angeles and Singapore - and even the mechanics of the execution of the projects (Jawn's and Sern Hong's collaborative "Verticity" being one of them) - is somewhat akin to drawing a line in an attempt to connect those parallel simulacra (in this case, the time-space trajectory in LA and that in Singapore, or visions of which). I might be pushing it here - and it's likely that Sern Hong drew from similar sources - but what we might be looking at is a treasure-trove of material that can be drawn from, and which are still being drawn from, three decades after Dick's seminal work. (No pun or innuendo intended at all.)

Pirated City

Bleak cities in various stages of dystopia, which in this day and age could just well be defined as those which pride digital media exchange over the power of physical architecture, as backdrops of Philip Dick's protagonists - "Bladerunner" being the best example, mirroring Los Angeles in dystopia) - could've also led to that thought...

Blade Runner

Reading that Dick drew upon Carl Jung's theories and hypotheses was something very enlightening (and slightly goosebump-raising) as well, as his "collective unconscious" theory was something substantially referenced in my M.Arch thesis. This may be a bit of a far reach, but the whole rhizome idea which premises the thesis project - whether biological or Deleuzian - bases itself on multiple entities which function independently, and are almost mutually exclusive save for their source. One could (in a state of lucidity, probably) allude this to parallel space-time universes which begin from the same event, or multiple personalities originating from the same person, each personality functioning and behaving differently and taking completely different trajectories.

The Deleuzian Rhizome (or its unfathered variant) in the flesh!

And as Hollywood draws upon these great works on existentialism and the multiple self from yesteryear, so too do architecture students in various states of delirium, and boy, isn't that a whole lot of fun. For if space and time keep going in an endless continuum, and if we think there are multiple "space-time" entities, then it would follow that there will always be parallel universes from which our imagination (and architecture ideas!) can be drawn.

Lucid Dreaming

Picked up a couple of books which are proving to be a rather interesting read - "Flow" and "Creativity", both by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (that was not a typographical error!), on the recommendation of Ronald, our very own archijournalist. Csikszentmihalyi was the former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. (Interesting that he's the father of one of the associate professors of the MIT Media Labs as well.)

"Flow" documents the state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity, and that in essence leads to pleasure, typified by "an exhilirating feeling of transcendence" over one's sense of time and one's emotional problems.

That is to say, the level of pleasurability of any activity is directly variable with how much "flow" one attains, and the theory goes that this flow can actually be controlled, by "setting ourselves challenges - tasks that are neither too difficult nor too simple for our abilities".

Now, if this already sounds like a self-help book to you ("How to Lose a Guy/Girl in Ten Days", "How to be in Touch with your Inner Self", "Feng Shui by Lillian Too" - is there even a "Feng Shui by Lillian Wan"? - or the ilk), it probably is. However, much in the book is referenced to - and derived from - two decades of psychological research, and in reading it, the book does suggest ways of tuning yourself into that state of concentration and consciousness. Translate all that into something that motivates, and you get a bestseller.

And then some...

I'm barely done with the first, but the second, "Creativity", which bases itself on the Flow Theory, is starting to get interesting as well. While the first book dealt with maintaining optimal levels of satisfaction in whatever activity, thus becoming productive at it, the second deals with channeling that productivity into transcendence - i.e., being innovative. With it, more theories on the psychology of discovery and invention come into the picture.

On another note, this is also worth a catch - "A Scanner Darkly", based on the compelling (if grammatically-ambiguous) 1977 novel of the same name by Philip K Dick. Bad choice of a pen-name notwithstanding, Dick has written books which have been translated into some of the most avant garde films ever - 1984's "Blade Runner" which needs little introduction, and 2002's "Minority Report". ("Total Recall" fell somewhere in between, but wasn't quite as tasteful.)

Anyhow, even if not for the existentialist blabber, the animation technique for 'Scanner' is equally compelling:

It's a technique called "interpolated rotoscoping" (more details in the link above), which lends it a rather lucid quality (to me at least), reminiscent of A-ha's 1984 music video for "Take on Me" (more laboriously produced), and more recently, Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" in 2001:

And I've realised that in order to make an existentialist film, one would need the following things, in order of priority: cutting-edge animation software, Ethan Hawke, Wynona Rider and Robert Downey Jr.

As for the books, I'll post something slightly more useful when I'm through (and through) with them...

life = education = life

Here's an excerpt from the article Hann wrote about in the previous post regarding the work of the Population and Community Development Association's work in building schools in the rural areas of Thailand. The account was written by Jessica Shortall, CEO of Catalyst Strategy Advisors. Jessica is making the trip as one of the first Population Development International fellows, whose task it is to learn about PDA’s work and share that knowledge in their own communities and with others working in social enterprise.

“If you know how life works, you know how to educate.”
- Khun Wichean, headmaster, Lamplaimat Pattana School

Lamplaimat Pattana School (LPS) is calm. This is the first impression I get upon approaching and entering this beautiful village school (grades K – 5). It’s a private school (with startup funding from a wealthy British businessman) with working farm plots, shaded outdoor spaces, rabbits hopping around the grounds, indoor and outdoor plants, and high ceilings. The children, sitting in stockingfeet on the floors of their classrooms, are just so…calm. They laugh, call out answers, and play games, but not in that manic, over-sugared and low-attention-span way.

We soon delve into the complex system that is contributing to this calm atmosphere. School starts every day with a 20-minute meditation, in which the children and their teachers do simple yoga, coordination exercises to focus the mind, and low-brain-wave meditation. The children’s attention is then drawn along throughout the day and the whole semester by a 10-week curriculum centring on a single subject of study. Students decide the subject with their teachers – this year one group is studying fish, another electricity, and a third, clothing. Through this ongoing project students write stories (improving their writing, language, and thinking skills), learn English, do science experiments, study history related to the subject, learn skills (like sewing, for the clothing project), create art and music, and gain digital literacy by doing research through the school’s bank of internet-ready computers. What about testing and government benchmarks, I ask Khun Wichean, the headmaster. “I don’t take government tests seriously,” he replies. “We use authentic assessment here.” At LPS this means the teachers assess students across all categories (what most of us would put into silos and call “subjects” like reading, maths, etc.) in each project. The children do in fact do well on the government tests but this is more of a box to tick than a goal in itself.

Drawing from any thinking it finds useful for its paradigm of life-as-education (from Montessori to Steiner, neohumanist thinking to Eastern philosophy), LPS sees its students not as “boxes we must fill with knowledge”, but as humans who need to decide for themselves which knowledge is important, and who need tools to go and get that knowledge. “Everyone doesn’t have to know the same thing,” he notes. True: that’s not how life, and good old Adam Smith’s specialisation and division of labour, works.

Read the entire account here. You will find at the same link, her experience with the PDA. I studied the PDA for my dissertation and was very inspired by the work of Meechai. Read Jessica's blog posts for a better idea of what they do. You can also the link to PDA's website at the bottom of the sidebar on the right.

Of seeds sown, and seedlings grown

(Kindly pardon the Dr Seuss-esque subject for this post, I was just entertained by a full-length version of one of his scripts earlier in the evening.)

I bought a camera recently, and found that one of the pixels on the LCD was inactive. A technology-enthusiast would call that a hot or dead pixel, which shows up as a bright spot on the LCD screen, regardless of whether an image has been captured by the camera or not. Now, what's one pixel out of 230 000, you say, but the net effect is somewhat similar to a bright-red pimple smack in the middle of the temple of Helen of Troy. (Call this obsession an occupational hazard if you might.)

Nevertheless, I was thoroughly impressed by that particular manufacturer's after-sales service, and their willingness to replace this with a new product (of the same model of course). Thus, Helen of Troy, post-adolescence. This was particularly impressive as company (and product) policy dictates that a unit can be replaced only if there are at least five such hot pixels.

...

I had a bit of a think about programmes like last year's DMP (Design My Place, an "architecture- and urban-awareness" workshop geared towards upper-secondary and pre-university level students) and more recently, the roaringly successful YUP (Young Urbanist Programme, a similar workshop for primary-school students), and what it might give birth to.

The YUP programme, by virtue of its objectives (or maybe by virtue of its acronym!), is somewhat reminiscent of a programme that some of us might have participated in in primary school, called the Young Scientist's Award. It's the programme where you research on bugs and achieve an Entomology badge, sort out some waste and achieve an Environmentalist badge, and so on. After x number of badges - and therefore, x number of ticks on a checklist - you'd become an eponymous Young Scientist.

What these programmes have done is that they inculcate a seed (possibly more, depending on their response to various conditions) of interest and participation in architecture and urbanism (I use the term rather loosely here) in this case. There are, the cases of DMP and YUP, projected plans of continuing and sowing similar seeds (how's that for a Seussian alliteration?) in a larger pool of schools, across multiple levels of education preceding higher learning (at this point, primary, secondary and pre-university students have already been involved). More sites in Singapore would be covered, concomitant with more ideas, greater ideas, and unbridled visions of what the city could be - perhaps even more unbridled at primary-school level than at pre-university level, but that's a discussion in another room.

In essence, the seeds are thrown over a larger hinterland, with one constituent area being responsible for - or accountable towards - another.

Yet, with the passing of the programme, though, what becomes of the participating students? The sowing of seeds (I apologise for the poor metaphor in the earlier paragraphs which has been taken up to this point) over a larger area might (and likely) lead to a lapse of attention, a lack of nurturing, in the previous seeds which have just begun to grow. While having an interest in architecture and urbanism (again, don't philosophise too much on the word in the context of this blog entry) inculcated in them by having participated in the workshop, it might be very soon before the interest gets superseded by the more daily demands of having to survive the many other obstacles of pre-planned academia - the PSLE, O and A Levels, plus the multiple variations of secondary and pre-university baccalaurates and integrated programs that could well snuff out that interest in architecture. Case in point - I might have participated in that young scientist award programme, but it didn't make me a scientist.

While I'm definitely not arguing that every (current or future) DMP and/or YUP participant should aspire to become an architect at some point, what I'm championing is the nurturing of the now-seedlings that have been planted in them. The idea is to be able to engage previous workshop participants at a higher level of involvements in future workshops, and this can be two-prong:

1. To engage the participants of the previous workshops as facilitators - and eventual veterans - of future workshops.

2. To enable them to participate in workshops that are now more in-depth, and thus engage their thinking and creativity (for lack of a better synonym!) at a level that is now in tune with their maturity, and

(Point number 2 would work out when there are workshops that sufficiently bridge the various levels of formal education, but given the current infrastructure, a YUP participant at primary-school level could well benefit from the DMP programme when he/she is at the upper secondary/pre-university level.)

Now all that rant above simply elaborates on this - the long-term vision for these workshops could include the possibility of inculcating a long-standing commitment with various schools and curricula, beginning as an "attache programme" to the existing curriculum, and possibly assuming greater involvement in formal curriculum in the future. That is to say, good "after-service service", for the sake of bringing this point of the discussion back to the initial thought about the good follow-up service rendered in the replacement camera scenario.

Which leads to the next point.

How would a structure like this fit, and feed back, into a larger, longer canvas? How would the curriculum host programmes such as DMP and YUP if they are taken into the long haul, and thus involving greater labour, more resource and higher levels of commitment by the personnel of participating schools?

Taken several steps further, wouldn't it be ideal if the students, through these programmes, have direct involvement in the spaces that they learn in, and/or the softer aspects of their curriculum (akin to what students of certain liberal-arts universities might relate to)?

A conversation with Tay Kheng Soon, at some point in a very enjoyable semester last year, one highly successful - and one can only hope is contagious - example came up. Kheng Soon was closely involved with the planning of one such school together with Mechai Viravaidya - Thailand's Condom King might ring a louder bell - the latter having launched the now-renowned Cabbages and Condoms chain of restaurants and resorts. That school is the Lamplaimat Pattana School in Thailand (see a write-up of it here, by Catalyst in Thailand), and for the sake of brevity (and trust in you having read that Catalyst article), the students across six primary-level grades are genuinely involved in their learning spaces and curricula. Some students have even set up their own radio station, broadcast to students of the school alone. (How many of us would even think of doing that at any point in our lives? We are taught to "pass with flying colours", except that those colours come from a very limited palette.)

The administrators have administered, and remarkably, stopped at that. They have allowed for room to grow, without any semblance of an overbearing hand in controlling the child's destiny, so to speak. They have facilitated, and in that process, nurtured the growing seed.

...

Programmes such as YUP and DMP could be that which tills the land, at the very first step of that long-drawn, and often endless, process of learning.

Comments, refutations and anything in between are very much welcome. ;)

Ongoing Exhibitions at URA

Here's a bit of publicity for URA - definitely worth taking a look, especially since there're three of them, all under one roof!

How to Get There

The URA Centre, 45 Maxwell Road

Nearest MRT Station: Tanjong Pagar

Singapore 1:1 ISLAND

16 November 2007 - 11 April 2008

Singapore has been likened to a 1:1 scale, life-sized gallery ofarchitecture and urban design. "Singapore 1:1 Island" highlightsSingapore's architectural and urban design uniqueness through a selectionof architectural projects completed island-wide, outside of the citycentre, over the past four decades. For more information on the exhibition,please visit http://www.ura.%20gov.sg/spore1_%201/island/

President's Design Award 2007

15 February 2008 - 11 April 2008

The President's Design Award is Singapore's most prestigious award for itsdesigners and designs. It recognises the significant achievements andcontributions of the nation's design talents. The Award entered its secondcycle in 2007 and was conferred on seven Designers of the Year and sevenDesigns of the Year. This exhibition showcases the works of the 2007 AwardWinners. For more information on the President's Design Award, please visit http://www.designsi%20ngapore.org/%20pda/award.%20html

The National Art Gallery of Singapore

7 March 2008 - 28 March 2008

The National Art Gallery of Singapore (working title) is a new visual arts institution which will contribute to building Singapore as a regional and international hub for visual arts. To seek the best design concepts for theNational Art Gallery, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), in association with the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA), launched a two-stage architectural design competition in Februarylast year. This exhibition showcases the three winning entries. For more information on the National Art Gallery, please visit http://www.national%20artgallery.%20sg/

The exhibitions are open Monday - Friday, 9am to 7pm; Saturday, 9am to 5pmand are close on Public Holidays. Admission is free.

Lego Architecture

What do you get when you bring a group of architects together, throw them a pile of white lego bricks and ask them to just have fun and engage spontaneously with the materials? Loads of creativity!

The Building Asia Brick By Brick project done in collaboration between Andrew Maerkle of Art AsiaPacific and Wei Wei Shannon of People’s Architecture seeked to to promote awareness of architectural preservation in Asia where much urban development occurs at the expense of historically significant or unique buildings. In raising awareness, the project hoped to get people to look at their environments critically.

I was personally quite impressed with the end results of many of the projects. It just proves that we can certainly come up with more creative alternatives to the heavy-handed tear down and rebuild approach that many developing countries are taking, in the name of economic growth. I also noticed that the goals of the Building Asia Brick By Brick project was very much similar to what we do in re:act! Perhaps we could get Lego to sponsor the next Design My Place or YUP project? That would be great wouldn't it?

Read more here

Young Urbanist Programme (YUP)

Fun, great, cool, creative, interesting, crazy, scary, brain wrecking, spectacular, challenging, the best, excellent, shiok, record breaking, oh my gosh… This was how the primary 5 students had described the pilot YUP workshop completed on Monday, 10 Mar 08. Held at URA Centre, the workshop was attended by 31 participants from Radin Mas and River Valley Primary School. The programme was really packed – it was like the 3-day Design My Place workshop (for JC students) compressed into 1 day! But somehow, it was still magically manageable.

Enjoy the photos!

RICHARD SERRA & THE MATTER OF TIME

corten stairs


corten sculpture

corten steel and rusting compliments phenomenological ideas of time, impermanence and emotions. if anyone is familiar with the telok ayer stairs of WOHA, climbing up and down a phenomenological object for two years, some say, may take away some of its aura and bring it back to the reality of everyday. thinking back, i actually enjoyed climbing up and down that circular corten stairway. it was a place to stop and chat (it echoed a lot in the stairwell), the lights were soft, and every step you take goes bong-bong-bong-bong.

phenomenological everyday.

sigh, nostagia descends.

anyway, read the article "In Praise of Rust: Technics and Poetics of the Ferrous Patina" by Cheah Kok Ming in Singapore Architects 242. It is a well researched article with many examples of corten use in various ways. one of my favourite examples in his article is Gigon-Guyer's signal box in Zürich (Stellwerk Vorbahnhof) which is, ironically, NOT made out of corten but concrete with iron oxide pigments.

a rare well-written article in a magazine. i pored over it assiduously.