Filed under: Aesthetics, Ideas, Politics | Tags: Architecture, criticism, Kazys, markets, political economy, theory
Goodbye marketechture, um I mean, starchitechture: many hardly knew ye.
At his blog, architecture theorist Kazys Varnelis shares some thoughts and questions on the post-critical moment in architecture, that lavish marriage of private wealth, tidal infusions of capital, technology, building, and design. This movement might be mercifully on the wane, at least for the time being. Varnelis summarizes:
Now that architecture has allied itself with a failed theory of the market, what will become of it? This isn’t an idle question. As society and culture reconfigure, an architecture that has little to offer except a direct representation of capital flows is unlikely to succeed. Moreover, the fascination that post-critical architects had with producing designs through software parallels the reduction of architecture to complex financial instruments that existed primarily in the network. This has already been called into question in the market. Architecture is, as usual, just a little behind.
The failure of markets to justly dispense goods and resources not only re-poses the question of a just political economy, but also with respect to the political significance of architecture. Will we begin witnessing the dethronement of the starchitect as the paradigmatic figure of building and design in culture? Can more critical perspectives on these relationships gain serious traction in architecture education, urban design, philosophy, and aesthetics? I would like to believe so, and in the process make amends for fawning over the overwhelming and nearly stultifying triumphs of Gehry, Mirer, Koolhaas, and the market-driven architecture that defined my adolescence and early adulthood. [kazys.varnelis.net]
Image: The Frank Ghery designed Deutsche Bank building in Berlin. As of this post, DB’s US stock closed today at $30.68 a share, down from a 52-week high of $135.49. Image source, Paw89, Flickr; stock source, Google Finance.
Filed under: Books, Literature | Tags: fragments, Games, Language, Literature
Nathan over at Prologus posted a wee, easy challenge to get the day started. My results are at the bottom.
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST
“Maria and I watched her place both hands on Henry’s head.”
Hanif Kureishi, Something to Tell You, New York: Scribner, 2008.
Now go and do the same for yourselves, and please try to post an image of the books’s cover for embellishment.
Filed under: Latinos, Rock | Tags: blogs on hiatus, campaign roundup, cholos, Kafka, political posters, Psychoanalysis, sexualities, voting
This post was originally going to be some sort of late-summer/early fall roundup of things worth re-blogging. But a handful of great things popped into my reader that just made me want to post these. In the spirit of brevity, here’s an abbreviated pre-election roundup of items of incidental bearing to today’s events. By Wednesday morning, perhaps we can finally look forward to conducting the people’s business come January 20, 2009.
- As a way to pay the bills and float his literary production, Franz Kafka spent his professional life as an attorney for the Workingman’s Insurance Institutue in the Czech Lands of the Austrio-Hungrian Empire. Through his work, he managed to write some of the most ominous, compelling, and prophetic literature of late modernity. A number of Kafka’s professional writings are now available in translation through Princeton University Press in a book entilted, Franz Kafka: The Office Writings. Oh, and I think I just found a new favorite blog. [ Zolius/Princeton University Press]
- Supervalent Thought wades into the problematics associated with sexualities, the instiution of marriage, and the most recent repressive incursion into sex, Proposition 8. What follows is a journey into spacing, intimacy, vulnerability, and of course, surprise (which is to say, contingency). To my friends in California: Please vote no on 8! [Supervalent Thought]
- Speaking of elections, this particular presidential campaign season was long, exhorbitantly expensive, and at some point, just tiring. But here’s a great review of the campaign, just to make sure you hang on to some of its more memorable parts. [This. Fucking. Election.]
- So, for all you Boston folks out there, you probably know this by now: Cambridge’s B-Side shuddered its doors for good. Which is a horrible thing if you like good food and even better drinks. **Sigh** [Big, Red, & Shiny]
- Speaking of shudderings, though this one temporary: One of our favorite blogs, Daniel Hernandez’s Intersections, is going on hiatus until next year. We here at tirado/thrown suppose that we’ll have to live with occasionally scouring the site’s rich archives while eagerly awaiting more dispatches from the first capital of the new world. At the very least, readers new and old will have some time to get caught up on two years of outstanding pocho musings from the ancient navel that is the primitive font of pochismo. [Intersections]
So for readers in the U.S., those eligible to vote are encouraged by tirado/thrown to get make your way to the polling booths toot sweet and pull the lever/fill in the scantron/punch the chad/touch the calibrated (we hope) touchscreen. The last eight years have been miserable enough. Let’s get to work on improving the situation for all of us.
Image credit: First seen at Guanabee; from an image at planetjan.
