It is one of those dark and stormy nights if not for the fact that instead of dark and stormy it was cloudy and windy and it was in the late morning but it felt like a late afternoon.

yay!

http://www.notcot.org/#23993

remember, "it is all as it is"

che in bolivia, perhaps they didnt want that revolution.

"Che" is all in the present tense. He has made an irrevocable decision to overthrow governments, he explains why in his descriptions of injustice, he identifies with peasants and not with his own ruling class, and although he is nominally a Communist, we do not hear discussion of theory and ideology. He seems completely focused on the task immediately before him. His method is to give voice to popular resentment against a dictator, win the support of the people and demoralize opposing armies of unenthusiastic soldiers. He needs few men because he has a powerful idea behind him.

from rotterdam, "The Chilean coup d'état of 1973 is a landmark in the history of Chile and the Soviet-American Cold War. On 11 September 1973, the government of President Salvador Allende was overthrown by the military in a coup d’état.

The coup occurred two months after a first failed attempt, the Tanquetazo — Tank putsch — and a month after the Chamber of Deputies (with an Opposition majority) condemned President Allende’s alleged breaches of the Constitution. President Allende died during the coup; the cause of his death remains disputed.

A military junta took control of the government, with the original plan of power being rotated between the heads of the Air Force, Navy, Carabineros (Chilean police force) and the Army lead by General Augusto Pinochet. However the head of the Chilean Army being the oldest branch of the military, originally founded in 1810 was determined to be the first of the co-rulers, a role that was never surrendered to the other military leaders of the country as it should have been. Thus General Augusto Pinochet assumed power after deposing President Salvador Allende, establishing a military government that ruled until 1990."

likes prouve, s&b, early koolhaas and hertzberger. but architecture which references its own discipline gets boring after a while, don't you think?

If art will eat art up, architecture will exhaust itself soon enough.

fun weekend, cool beans with fun people. "someone to call home", but who says people can't move house aye. grin.

if you could compare urbanism to park/garden landscaping, where the french model of a god's eye-view, perhaps that could be used to describe many planned cities.

berlin on the other hand, a plan that has been mutilated, collaged and stitched back too many times to remember, maybe defies its initial intention (if there was any. but one can always retroactively dig up a pretension).

So it feels more like the english garden, a series of follies not necessarily related in program, theme or style, but only by virtue (and chance) of their geographic proximities. This freedom gives each their own developmental arcs and specific mutations (understood through program, demographic, section, scale, materiality and poche.)

The fact that Berlin was a city designed for 5 million but now inhabited by 3 million gives it this degree of freedom - for areas to expand and contract without contamination.

reinventing storytelling in the digital age

http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15302v1001

// mcluhan

if its not general enough for everybody, then it should be specific enough for somebody, shouldn't it?

whats arbeit macht frei mean? work will set you free...

who said that? its actually the motto of FAR.

in Times, adaptation to climate change is favouring species which reproduce faster (faster gene adaptation?), which means that insects and weeds are actually faring better. Mammals, especially those which have longer life cycles and slower rates of reproduction, are not doing as well. extrapolate this, and could it mean that mammals are soon going to be at risk? hmhmhmhmm

The increased scale of interiority and divorce from the street evolved the increasing scale and spectacle of signage.

they don't have to agree with it. All's needed is for them to believe

Wall of Words

... we use language almost to render it useless. The overuse of superlatives ("they have the best cocktails." "it was really cool"), instead of creating a point of agreement or consensus, actually becomes an excuse to sidestep it.

In Berlin, there's always some event to do, somewhere to be, something to do. In light of this deluge, staying home no longer becomes a default but a choice. The habit of laziness transforms from boredom to a luxury.

"flooded in orange."

The park feels like a series of smaller areas, with views and access to others not always coinciding with each other. Sound is a large factor in experiencing it as a larger whole, always when one is in one section there is the screams of children or beat of a dj from the neighbouring area to remind one of the park's totality. The scale thus, of what could be extremely monumental, is reduced to very bite sized sections. Divisions are realized through the use of different densities of plantings, different floor treatments (sand, grass, pave, asphalt) and sectionally.

you must understand that Modernism was a primarily ideological movement and should not be confused with its physical manifestation - i.e. grids, orthogonal structures, industrial aesthetics.

perhaps we should disengage modernism from the industrial revolution: surely, they mutually inform each other, but they are not the same thing. Modernism was chiefly about the masses. Primarily humanitarian perhaps? (correct me if i'm wrong). The reduction to numbers, the frankfurt kitchen et al, were a product of the ideology with the constraints of the time. The criticism of modernism as alienating or being reductive was not the fault of modernism itself but with the scale and resolution that it was allowed to execute its ideology.

Wired's "how to live by numbers" illuminates this- the increased resolution with which we are able to cast a lens upon, document and evaluate.

perhaps then the grid, even if it breaks down, is not a bad thing. how much more inefficient would it be if a building were non-cartesian? computing can now optimize the material and structure. Thus, not much more or less would be my guess. Why Stick To The Grid then?

I propose thus that now in this time it is possible to become modernists again. the same song with different instruments.

ain't no 'me' in Society

"no! don't jump"

but it payed no heed. bubbling with anger it flung itself off the cliff edge in olympian form. it fell like it were weightless yet heavy or gravitational. it fell with the grace of an ice skater tracing a priouette on ice.

on its way down, it murmers first with a low guttral sound like a throat being cleared before letting loose an avalanche of white noise - theatrical. we could only forget our panic and watch in awe. if only you were there

a boudoir, the sterile attempts the sensual. But the frayed edges of glitter-glued red cloth, a poor cousin or stunt double of heavy velvet, and gold-sprayed plastic caricatures the scene a barbie house, albeit an endearing one at least for its serious effort. 

"shhh. never say what it is, only what it tries to be."

"I just try to keep my mind open so I can see what I'm not expecting."