About s||A

s||A may be a student of architecture at UBC and thus may be occasionally posting speculative and semi-informed ideas on architecture and community building.

Political Douchebaggery

Posted on May 21, 2010 by s||A

What is the relationship between power and the douchebag?

At the micro-level, the traditional weight-lifting muscle-douche is a literal powerhouse of testorone; at the macro-level political power can cause extreme community-related douchebaggery. The muscle-douche is foiled by the anti-douche (thank you Mr Slooth). How can a community react to political douchebaggery?

Example For Discussion_ONE: the erection of a new Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) + the douchebaggery-actions of the Vancouver Art Gallery Board of Directors.

Firstly, I want to make clear it that this article is not a discussion of the VAG relocation and should not be interpreted as such (although this should be discussed soon). Rather, this topic is an example of how douchey too much money or power in politics can be.

Moving the gallery has been on the agenda of the Gallery for many years. Legitimate studies have been carried out, and conclusions have been drawn. And then the douchbaggery starts:

On April 28th, 2010 at the Fairmont Empress, the Vancouver Board of Trade hosts a ‘panel discussion’ on a new gallery. Present at the ‘debate’: representatives of the VAG Board of Directors Michael Audain + David Alsenstat // VAG director Kathleen Bartels // moderated by CTV news anchor Coleen Christie. They promote the relocation of the Gallery to the site of the former bus depot/Larwill Park at W Georgia St and Cambie, 150 Dunsmuir St. This site would be donated by the City of Vancouver (estimated value of site, $60 million).
The VAG then pays a (rumoured) $80K for a double-wide, centre page spread in the May 13-20 issue of the Georgia Straight in which the move is presented as a done deal.
Pissed off, an actual public debate is then organized by UBC, SFU and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada at Robson Square. It is moderated by SFU’s Gordon Price and invited speakers are: Artist Ian Wallace // VAG BOD Michael Audain // Architect Joost Bakker // City Councillor Heather Deal // Vancouver Public Space Network’s Director Andrew Pask // moderated by SFU Professor Gordan Price.

At this event, a price tag of $350 million is mentioned for the new building. $50 million from the province, $40 million in private pledges and the rest….TBD (most likely from the City, province or feds)

Did they think that an arrogant ‘it has all been decided’, douchebag attitude would endear the project to the media, City of Vancouver and interested citizenry? $80K is more than most Vancouverites dream of earning in a year, let alone the prospect of spending another few hundred million dollars of taxes on yet another grandiose civic project (have we even cleared the olympic debt?). How can they think ‘Panel discussions’ that are limited to the business elite increase the chances of gaining public support for a new publicly-funded gallery? The douchebag at the club who says “like my muscles, want to come home with me?” has a better chance!!

Example For Discussion_TWO: the HST and the provincial budget deficit fiasco

Again, I want to make it clear that this article is not a critical discussion of the HST/budget deficit fiasco and should not be interpreted as such.

At the provincial level, another example of political douchebaggery:

Pre-election budget figures indicated a $495 million provincial budget deficit as likely.
Post-election budget deficit figures show a $2.8 billion provincial budget deficit. Evidence suggests this second, larger figure was known prior to the election campaign.
HST harmonization talks begin a mere three days after the BC liberal’s May 12th election win, after not mentioning it in any campaign material. A bill making the transition official is then speedily passed. Included in the HST harmonization are huge, upfront transfer payments from the Federal authorities.
A massive, nearly unprecedented public outcry at all of this causes a former politician to head up a (successful-so-far) anti-HST petition.

Political douchebaggery at its best. No public or industry consultation for a new tax? Let’s do it, we have power (a majority in the legislature) and a massive public relations disaster of a budget. The good citizens of BC will not care.

Let us be clear that these examples are process-related political douchebaggery, and that the individuals involved may or may not be douchebags. For discussion:

Can we define political decisions that do not account for the public as ‘political douchebaggery’?
Is political douchebaggery a direct consequence of too much power?
Or do hard political decisions necessitate a douchebag attitude (even though we hate douchebags, we respect their dedication to the gym/hipsterism/whatever the current douchebag trend is)?
Can you think of any douchebag political decisions that have been effectively anti-douched? How can one fight political douchebaggery?
Or is political douchebaggery simply bad advice from your communications consultant?

do your commuting choices disengage you from your community?

Posted on April 5, 2010 by s||A

in the car

on the bike

by foot

In these images, red is ‘private’ life, and the grey to white spectrum is ‘public’ life.

These exploratory images suggest that walking and or biking would offer more opportunities to interact with your community due to a physical closeness to the public realm. This also means that your car is in essence a projection of the private, domestic space of your home. Is this reasonable? What are the consequences of cars-as-private, domestic space on a city’s public realm? What if your community is far away, and you interact with them while driving on your (hands-free) cellphone? Do we truly interact with the our fellow citizens more when we walk or bike? Is your community composed of individuals you seek out, or those that you encounter by chance on the street?

How do your transportation choices impact your feelings of community with those around you?

mukmuk wakes up

Posted on March 5, 2010 by s||A

walking around downtown vancouver on march 1st smelt and tasted like waking up in your house after a party during which you’d ended the evening being carried off to bed while strangers enjoyed the contents of your refrigerator and cupboards. the feeling had to be expressed.

where are Mukmuk and the gang now? is there some retirement home for ex-olympic mascots? are they sipping tea and playing bingo with Misha and Waldi? do they compete for the image consulting contract for the as yet unknown Sochi 2014 mascot (although who was that large blue creature at Sochi house?) how many young Vancouverites are waking up, and sadly placing their new, favourite marmot at the back of the closet?

this rather partisan video should be interperted as such, and recall that it was completed prior to the release of the actual 2010 provincial budget. rather than accompanying it by writing yet another informative article about the impact of the Olympics on the provincial budget released this week, here is an abbreviated list of informative discussions:

the Tyee

Globe and Mail

National Post

the budget documents themselves

and the NDP‘s response

Can we re-brand the “I” ?

Posted on March 1, 2010 by s||A

letter-i-260 Currently, human communities are composed of a bunch of individuals, or ‘I’s. A traditional font writes I as I (times). Contemporary fonts are ‘sans-serif’; they drop the curly-ques at the ends of the letters. In either case, there is a close visual connection between I and 1, the numeral.

The numeral 1 is the first number in our counting system. Primary, singularity, and importance are all attached. In the same way, humans generally prioritize their personal existence and survival as the most important. Is this related to the “I” experience? Could we re-brand the “I” to be something else? Would community-building, fundamentally related to the prioritization of others before yourself be helped if we could escape the tyranny of I.

I will not pretend to be an expert in academic-semiotics. Semiotics is the study of communication and meaning. One of the more accessible and interesting branches of semiotics deals with the idea of signs and signifiers. Wikipedia notes:

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), the “father” of modern linguistics, proposed a dualistic notion of signs, relating the signifier as the form of the word or phrase uttered, to the signified as the mental concept. It is important to note that, according to Saussure, the sign is completely arbitrary, i.e. there was no necessary connection between the sign and its meaning.

The signifier is the scribble on the page, or image, or collection of vowel sounds. The signified is how we interpret and impart meaning onto that visual or verbal sign, and is arbitrary. Arbitrary means freedom. In the light of this knowledge, let us consider our famously divisive friend Rene Descartes and his best known:

cogito ergo sum
je pense, donc je suis
i think, therefore i am or i am thinking therefore i exist

His ‘I’ is a unity of mind and body — existence is based on thought. I am also not an expert on Descartian philosophy. However, to me this means the body and mind are one and the same. Mind is limited to the experience of bodily feeling. You, and your thoughts are dependent on the very existence of your body. Now, for a semiotic experiment:

I think therefore I am

Replacing I with E.

E think therefore E am

What does ‘E’ mean? Right now it is meaningless to the majority of individuals. What if we design meaning into E. And that meaning is something about how you are not just you. Your personal survival is dependent upon the survival of your community, and all that sustains it. And by community, E means everything from small bugs, microbes, birds, plants, small children, grass, light, water, clean air, evil humans, good humans, your family, to dirt and everything around you.

lettere Try it for awhile: intentionally replace all thoughts in your head that include the ego-tyrant ‘I’ with E, defining E for yourself as a total experience of community, something like that described above.

Extrapolate this to a larger group. A community is no longer a collection of individuals, all half-working towards a common good, and half working towards their own self-advancement. Rather, you are the community. In every thought, every sentence, every spoken word, you are community. It is no longer possible to exist outside of this.

Sounds totalitarian, a little too like Orwellian doublespeak eh?

Yet, if the world is as Marceau Merleau-Ponty describes, “glowing with meaning radiating from within”, our world might start to radiate with community.

Coal-end

Posted on February 4, 2010 by s||A

Last week I printed google-map directions from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Media Centre to their National Convention Centre. I then followed these directions.

At 10:23am, I left the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Media Centre/Convention Centre and using only the times and directions on the map from Beijing, I ended up at the point at which Stanley Park meets English Bay and the West End at 11:17 am.

The derive, or ‘drift’ was an essential method of urban exploration for the Situationist movement (1958-1971). A ‘drift’ is a day or multi-day long wander through a city, directionally random, yet with a strong focus on the poorer and thus more invigorated neighbourhoods. Psycho-geography is the method of recording such wanders, and involves the division of the city into non-cartographic sectors, based on such non-specific criteria as ambience, emotion, authenticity, and welcome. Today, many romantically-inclined urban aficionados might include these terms under the umbrella of ‘community’.

Coal Harbour is a distinct psycho-geographic community from the West End, and they are divided by Robson St.

COAL HARBOUR

The architecture and landscape of Coal Harbour are very authorized (read: planned + manicured), making a true ‘drift’ difficult, as the body is directed along a very specific set of paths and journeys
It is possible to have the awkward hallway you-go-this-way-I-go-that-you-go-my-way dodging game in the middle of cross-walk, with only two people present.
Coal Harbour is a place of hierarchical spectacle. This ranges from the spectacle of the mountains and the voyeurism of viewing people on the seawall from your glass tower; to the micro topography of the seawall’s successively higher grade of walking path, benches and bike path
Your presence in Coal Harbour on a weekday must be authorized: this can be demonstrated through: conference name tag, business suit, olympic dog-tag, construction vest and work boots, landscaping or rent-a-cop outfit. Servant or served, you cannot be neither without being actively observed and questioned by those with the correct clothing mix
North-south penetrations of the city are difficult, roadways, signs and pathways consistently direct you on the west-east axis

THE WEST END

Predominantly low-rise, residential architecture, combined with a few key commercial strips, filled with drift potential; alleyways, small streets and through-passages abound. A heterogenous built environment means the body is constantly intrigued by its’ surroundings
Also a place of spectacle, yet it is a dinner-theatre event to the formalized national opera house of Coal Harbour
Mobility scooters and/or short haircuts are requirements for inhabitation
Rent-a-cops take the time to coo at small babies, without looking askance at your loitering
Name tags are removed with care and stowed in re-usable shopping bags

The ‘drift’ is a non-judgmental journey, rather the experience is to simply allow situations to happen to you and you turn cause situations through your very presence. Based on these observations and your personal experience, what do you think of these nieghbourhoods’ psychogeographic feel, or community? Have you drifted before?

the corridor//community isolation?

Posted on January 25, 2010 by s||A

One of the key goals for the modernist project has been an ongoing search for efficiency in all areas of life, but particularly in the home. Layered into the contemporary home are a few hundred years of effort on the part of builders, designers, and corporations trying to smooth out the daily lives of its inhabitants into one, frictionless existence.

Social structures have traditionally informed the locus of this spatial research; a few examples are the intensive studies on kitchen layouts in the early 20th C; or the placement of groom’s quarters adjacent to the stables in earlier centuries. In recent years the search for efficiency in spatial layout has been based on the need to streamline the family experience in order to maximize individual production/leisure/consumption time, the triad of the ideal late capitalist existence.

Kitchens, while interesting, remain over-analyzed. Let us examine the corridor with this context in mind. How can a corridor effect the spatial efficiency and community of a home or workplace?

The corridor has a relatively recent existence, being invented around 1600 at Beaufort House, in England, in order to separate servants’ movement from the wealthier inhabitants. At this point, rooms could still have several doors, leading from one to an other. This separation slowly developed into complete hierarchy of space, with individual rooms adjacent to corridors, with a single door leading into each space. Robert Kerr’s “The Gentleman’s House” (1864) talks about the ‘wretched inconveience of thoroughfare rooms’. This slow spatial retreat of rooms from each other has been related to evolving relationships of our society to privacy, household structures of power and the prevailing social view of the body.

What happens when we think about the evolution of “the passage” and its relationship to community building? Maybe a little friction is required…

(referencing the image below) On the left is the passage-less space (the matrix system in archispeak, hilariously). On the right is the usual passage/room combination we are so used to experiencing (a series of servant/served spaces in archispeak). From top to bottom, the comparisons are:

movement in these spaces: matrix vs. corridor circulation system

the matrix layout: unintended meetings happen merely through movement; social space is created and a social community must be negotiated. The body is stimulated as it is forced to negotiate multiple spatial conditions
the passage creates transitory moments of connection, easily avoided by the maintenance of a direct gaze. Vision and the eye is bored by a single perspective

activity + movement:

the matrix: private activity is difficult, creating social norms around the sharing of tasks and ideas
the passage effectively segregates activities from the movement of the passerby. isolation, solitude and secrecy are encouraged

activity only:

solitary activity is possible in the matrix system, yet there is always a connection to others in the space.
private activity is the default in a corridor system, unless two individuals choose to inhabit the same space (who works in the corridor beside those who clean it?)

Perhaps it is time for a little community friction, caused by the implementation of more matrix-style spaces, complete with glowing numerical wallpaper.

What do you think? How does the spatial layout of your home or workplace impact your community?
note — this article was inspired by Robin Evans’ excellent essay “Figures, Doors + Passages” (1978). read it if you are curious about these sort of things.

.eco

Posted on August 27, 2009 by s||A

recently the adeptly-named ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) proposed the creation of a .eco domain name. the concept would be to reward organizations that meet certain environmentally-aware criteria with a .eco site. potential visitors to such sites would be guaranteed to be supporting climate-friendly organizations. interestingly, the two front runners to administer this ‘certification’ are Big Room Inc. (out of Vancouver!) and Dot Eco LLC (associated with Al Gore). we can guess that support from the ‘father of the internet and contemporary american environmentalism’ will have some serious weight in the decision-making process, but it would be nice to see hometown heroes get a slice of the pie. as a former LEED-consultant, I understand some of the controversy associated with eco certification and I am sure the .eco will be subject to more of the same; let us leave the eco-labelling controversy for now and turn elsewhere.

the .eco discussion made me think about .com. I thought: ‘how cool would it be if .com was short for .community’. this seemed likely, given the networked nature of the internet and the clear sociological links between the communal aspects of online life and sitting in the olden days village pub/square, listening and observing your village’s social life. not to be. the capitalist machine wins again: .com stands for .commercial.

commercial evokes images of flickering product advertisements on television, consumers buying their life-goods, and bland glass-enclosed steel and concrete business districts. this site describes other domain names including: .org (formally restricted to non-profits, now open to any individual or business), .net (formally restricted to technical concerns, namely web-providers), .biz (business only, I think of used-car salesmen when I see it), and a number of others. the most interesting is the .coop (reserved for coops, although I have never seen one in use).

these are the most popular of the .somethings and all have become available to business. does this make the fundamental purpose of the internet economic? to me this is concerning in light of the essentially anti-community, rapine nature of the capitalist corporate model we live in today (maximize returns to shareholders while minimizing and externalizing costs to the surrounding environment). what if .com stood for .community? would this affect our perception of our communities, both virtual and real?

tangentially, this means the most popular ‘community-building’ website — FACEBOOK.com — is a business concern. somehow it produces income for the venture capitalists invested in it. is this a problem? consider this: how would you feel if your real-life, community-centres were run as for-profit institutions? they could never offer the same range of money-losing services: poorly attended yoga classes, low-income mum’s groups, or 2$ drop-in soccer. every decision made by facebook must be put through a profit filter; does this make them a good forum for community building? think on it before signing in and posting information about you and your real community.

the evil banana

Posted on July 21, 2009 by s||A

Some of you may have heard of my ongoing war against the humble banana. if a harangue from me has not convinced you, maybe this will. (full credit to treehugger.com for this excellent munitions package!)

1. Bananas

We eat them every day, and their carbon footprint is huge. This fruit originated in Asia but is now raised in the tropics across the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Brazil is the leading banana producer, followed by Uganda, India, and the Philippines. Latin American countries supply more than 90 percent of the bananas eaten in North America.

Take into account that getting a single banana to your table uses about 8 pounds of carbon for a four ounce serving or .13 % of your year’s allowance, according to Eat Low Carbon Diet. If you eat a banana every day for a year that would equal nearly 49% of your goal average. In the event that you can’t fight off your banana

craving, try buying an organic variety. Then you can at least ensure that your bananas weren’t treated with tons of chemicals and pesticides, which can destroy the stunning tropical eco-systems from which they come. If you eat one every other day, a day or two or week, or sparingly you an see how much you can drop your carbon footprint, just by changing your banana habits!

Finally — and importantly; you CAN eat bananas in canada if you grow them yourself. case in point — see alison and my efforts (photo). and always remember high carbon = low community; more bananas = less farmer’s markets = communal sin

A cursory search of the thoughtsphere turns up ihatebananas.com; curiously little to do with the cursed fruit, but i rather enjoy the white button

HELLO new-new urbanism

Posted on April 3, 2009 by s||A

The idea of new urbanism was developed a number of years ago by architects and planners in order to combat urban sprawl, tract housing, and all of those evil ideas.

A common criticism of new urbanism is that it exclusively creates community or private space; you are either always around people who you sort-of know, and are accountable to for your actions, or are by yourself/your family and are accountable to them. There is no ‘public space’ — areas where you can be anonymously public or free to be loud or quiet, private or open without fear of long-term social consequences or judgements.

There is a corresponding concern about the architectural aesthetic that is often built in concert with new urbanist communities. Rather than encouraging or allowing diversity in the urban form, design is handicapped by neighbourhood restrictions (not always a bad idea…). An extreme example of this is the Disney-town of Celebration, FL. However, this is not the place for a discussion of architectural aesthetics but rather of community.

Returning to this idea of private/public/community space. One reaction to this criticism could be the new HELLO development in Brooklyn, NYC. The development is urban infill — ie creates space within the existing urban fabric. The key word is ‘within the existing urban fabric’; rather than demolishing or redeveloping an entire block, the buildings are small-scale interventions carefully inserted into a few block radius.

This allows the existing community of businesses, residences, etc to maintain their internal dynamic while slowly integrating new residents. Rather than a downtown-eastside feeling of ‘street, big fence around wealthy enclave with amenities, street’ (woodwards redevelopment?), they are forcing their residents to interact with the community at large. They are carefully placing a new social/built network into an urban environment.

The network is facilitated by the following: within each building in the HELLO development there are community facilities available to HELLO residents: a pool, wi-fi lounge, exercise room, kid’s area, etc. They are accessed by a key card available to all residents. This means a trip to an amenity could start in ‘private’ space (your home), enter ‘public’ space (the street), and end in ‘community’ space (HELLO’s gym). This combination allows residents to feel safe (at home), interact with the community-at-large on the street, and finally exclusive (only they access their amenities).

I know there are numerous discussions about the merit of exclusivity and community; at the same time everyone loves the feeling of being in a secret club!

Are developments like this the future of new urbanism? How would this work in Vancouver? Could this be applied to other communities — artist’s studios, offices, etc — could we create networks of communities that require the same resources, but do not need to share a physical, built connection?

Building community centres without…community

Posted on March 10, 2009 by s||A

Our big studio project this term has been to design a community centre based off one of several long-span (read really big room) precedents. My studio prof has literally won a Governer’s General Gold Medal in Architecture for her community centres. Our community centres consist of a large gymnasium area, lounge, social kitchen, meeting rooms, and washrooms/changerooms. They are designed on a north/south axis with the appropriate light control devices to create beautiful, indirect natural lighting. Thermal comfort is an issue of concern with detailed studies into the insulative qualities of the latest in architectural materials. Counters and stairs are based on the dimensions of the human body to enable ergonomic access to the various facilities. Dynamic spatial sequencing is of key importance. Sounds good so far eh?

But —- WHERE IS THE COMMUNITY?

Should not community centre should be centred around a community and involve the active participation of community members in the design process? What does the nieghbourhood need? Who will use the facility? What are the cultural and social values of the community?

As it is, a whole year of architecture students have learned a few great things about design, and one important lesson. The community is secondary to your design genius. Astute commentators may say that this is a school project and they can only do so much, and that we are learning many different and relevent ‘first principles of good design’. Definitely true, given that as David Clark says “the architect is both an agent and mentor/teacher of a client”. However, note in which order we are learning these roles: firstly mentor, then agent. By ignoring the stakeholder consultation aspect of the design process the school has effectively prioritized our egos over the well being of our ‘client’.

In some cases this may be an appropriate response, but surely the last project on which we impose high ego-based design is a community centre. And surely not under the leadership of one of Canada’s top community centre designers, at least according to the design fraternity.

Or does this expose a certain weakness among that self-same fraternity?

There are numerous other ‘long span’ structures from which we could learn these principles. Save the community centre for a time when we have the time and space to carry out some consultation, at least in theory.

The Daily Gumboot

using ideas from everywhere to build community

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