U.S.A. by John Dos Passos

U.S.A. by John Dos Passos

THE BIG MONEY- The Bitter Drink

This chapter of the book is dedicated to a sad story of one man’s life, Veblen. It talks about a hard working family and a son who wanted more than what the family created or wanted in life. A great rebellion, which resulted in an educated man, who was known by many in the educated word. To a farmer he was a son and a lazy one at that. To the women of his time, he was unstoppable and a heartbreaker.

The story is about development and sets out the hard working father and a quick fix son who wanted less effort for maximum result. This is a great example of how one’s life can change due to the choices we make. Veblen was an extravert who wanted new things and to develop minds and machines. Like many great man who devote themselves to their work he had a vision. He died alone and wanted no record of his life due to this vision. For all his great ideas he had a sad life full of disappointments. Conclusively, this chapter is dedicated to people who have a chance to do something different and live a happy life, or, do something one wants and sacrifice everything for it, even happiness.

The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead (1949)

“no man takes what’s mine”

It is a story of a complicated preachment on the rights of the individual in society and also upon the privilege of a lady to change her mind.
Starting out to tell the story of an architect (Howard Roark) who insists upon fashioning buildings as he wishes or not at all, the plot very soon involves him with an unusually idealistic girl, a power-mad newspaper publisher, a vicious critic and a weak, exhausted old friend.
It is a tale of an architect who believes in his own idea, principal, design and philosophy, who we may call a stubborn or arrogant.
He is unbelievably patient and tolerant, even his critics called him “an mature arrogant” because he is a type of professional who doesn’t believe in the past and only looks and think forward, also he believes that “a building got its integrity like a man” also “form of the building should follow its functionality”.
Others have rights, including the right to protect themselves against cheats and dishonest people. The man who puts his name to the designs for the building in this picture is a dishonest man. Furthermore our hero, in full awareness, is an accessory to his dishonesty. If all were excused such transgressions, then society would indeed be in danger!

All that Is Solid Melts into Air

All that Is Solid Melts into Air

“the idea of an affinity between the cultural ideal of self-development and the real social movement toward economic development.”
This was the essence of Faust before he died at the age of 83. This huge craving for development as the book explains has been in many forms beginning from being a good character to an evil one. As Marx called “the powers of the underworld”, Faust’s ideas went hand in hand by dangerous roads. I would like to explore this need for evil.
Faust influenced the philosophy behind intellectual, moral, economical and social ideas. Yet these ideas came at a cost, where people did not know the outcome of these developments. Not every person is willing to accept change and will fight till the last breath to defend it. It’s the unknown, the great dark, deep hole where no one can see the light. It’s this unknown that made Faust’s “relationship with the devil”. Faust was a free thinker where he was not afraid to explore the unknown, however, not everyone thinks like this. It’s because of this leap of faith and ambition Faust is known as “The Developer”. Ones who like tradition would call Faust an evil person for thinking out of the box, but, if we did not have people like Faust how will the human race improve and land on the moon?

Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall

“The problem of architecture as I see it is the problem of all art- the elimination of the human elements from the consideration of form. The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is build to house machines, not men. “
As an architectural student who has worked on endless life projects and designed many structures in education, I find the above quote to be extremely difficult to agree with. The reason for this is that, for a designer to state such a strong thought on the need for design and what it is designed for is extremely suppressing. We as designers, design to accommodate the comfortable limits of space for its occupier; it being humans, “monkey” or machines.
I believe this character in the book is a depressed designer and wants the easy way out. Any designer knows, designing for people are hard and designing a house is the hardest. This is only due to the fact that clients talk back and question ones design where machines do not. It is because of this I do not like this idea of factories being the most beautiful designed structures true. Anyone can design a factory due to its required space for it to be functional. People who are not architects have been designing houses for centuries, how hard can it be to put a roof for machines?

Howl

Howl by Allen Ginsberg

The poem “Howl” is looking at a few different things, such as, Ginsberg’s good old days and psychopathic friends, alcoholics and the rest. Ginsberg also mentions friend from psychiatric hospital whom Ginsberg is trying to illustrate as a victim, or, innocent or what so ever he means by using the world “lamb”.
As I understand Ginsberg is an addict and a left winger who lives in the heart of the capitalist world which makes the life far more difficult for him to live.
Obviously as an addict he should have had lots of terrible trips and hallucinations in which he imaging the facade of a hotel as a beast that eat his friends.
So far I believe none of these are strange or new to the world we live in. We all have memories of the pleasant past, good friends that we have missed and so on. However, the world we live in never been fair or nice to every one of us especially if we have a different point of view on things like the political systems or ideology in which makes the things far difficult to digest.
My final conclusion is that; Ginsberg is talking about the pains of life that people have been experiencing since the beginning of man’s existence in his poems stretching from addictions to betrayals, pain to non satisfying sacrifices. Ultimately, Ginsberg is describing life from his eyes.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas

Well, I have never been to Las Vegas itself or Reno "The Biggest Little City in the World". However, I think Vegas is one of those things that you do not have to go to know what it is all about. At the end of the day seeing is the believing!

“We are living in the most decadent society that has been in the history since the Roman Time”.
(“Virtual Las Vegas” Documentary on C4-1995)

Las Vegas is a unique triumph on its own, nothing has ever been built like it or experienced like it. In my opinion it is an adult fantasy city, a 20th century “Sodom & Gomorrah”, and a sin city that anything happens or can happen. Nevertheless that does not finish there; I would say it is the only city in the world that has been built based on human psychology, technology, as well as, how one can be controlled by one’s mind and manipulated. The psychology of gambling has a great impact on the design of the casinos, that is;

Never have any windows

Never let anybody know whether it is day or night, because if the gamblers start to see the sunrise,

they get pretty uneasy that they get home and get some sleep.

Never have a clock in the casino

Never make it as a separate room that you go in to or go out off. It is simply in the public space.

You become a prisoner of your own greed with your own wishes!
Also the signs are playing a big role in the human psychology as the casino operators discovered. The rule of thumb is; more action on the sign, the brighter the sign the more people become excited and want to have fun and gamble. As a friend once told me, “when you enter the city, there is so much light that makes you want to search all your pockets for money and spent whatever you got on you, just to be part of the excitement”.

The colours in the animations in the signs, as Tom Wolfe says “Right here in the middle of the desert, American architecture was developing a whole new art form”.
You can look at the Las Vegas from miles away on route 91 and see no buildings, no trees only signs but such a signs, they revolve, they oscillate “the sour in shape before the existing vocabulary of art history is helpless”. The architecture of Las Vegas relates to “Disney World” rather directly. This extraordinary performance architecture thought is something that Las Vegas has gone beyond Disney world, it is an arm race of architecture one stage further, it is “Disney part III” combined with gambling.

In my opinion however, Las Vegas pays for its sin that is the beautiful face of it.
Legalised gambling legislation was designed to raise needed taxes for public schools. Today, more than 43% of the state general fund is fed by gambling tax revenue and more than 34% of the state's general fund is pumped into public education.
Legalised gambling returned to Nevada during the Great Depression. It legitimized a small but profitable industry. That same year construction started on the Hoover Dam Project which, at its peak, employed 5,128 people, and this is just small portion of examples

The Production of Space

Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space

"Change life! Change Society! These ideas lose completely their meaning without producing an appropriate space. A lesson to be learned from soviet constructivists from the 1920s and 30s, and of their failure, is that new social relations demand a new space, and vice-versa.
(Lefebvre in Criticism of Soviet urban planner’s modernist model of urban design)


This argument is like the famous one “which one came first? Egg or the chicken?”

In theory we can change the meaning of things as we wish, argue them, make them to a theory, lecture them or whatever we want to do with them, but the true meaning of them as we know them, understand and imaging them stays as it is.

I distinguish a meaning between work and product and that to me is, work as a physical activity by consuming energy and product is the result of our work to create something in need, or as he describes it “the energy utilized for the satisfaction of a need” exactly how we create a room or a city, a country.... according their sizes we give them a name to just imaging it easier.

I suppose Venice was built as a result of a need of space or possibly the person or persons simply liked that place to stay and live. For sure Venice was not build based on a plan. You could say “one thing lead to another” or simply the role and effect of the water developed that accidental creation of space. Maybe London is a good example of that development to look at.

On the “Nature” discussion, if I want to follow the theory of “nature create and no produce” or a flower does not know that is a flower, then I would argue that if a flower has a life as a living thing, then it should know is a flower a I know that I am a human and not a tree!

It’s like those theories that recently we have been true that all this happening is nothing but our mind imagination or “Matrix” that even David Icke was supportive of it. Theory of “Big Bang”.

That I could argue that if all this happened by a big bang what caused the big bang, mega explosion or whatever you name it, if no explosive there would be no explosion.... look at the detail of our amazing body, how many of those accident could have happened that eyes are where they should be as your mouth, ears, brain......and this should not make me religious or a man of God.

Terry Eagleton’s After Theory

Terry Eagleton’s After Theory

Terry, a Self styled intellectual outsider who was once the country's "top" literary professor. When he was Warton professor of English at Oxford he styled himself "a barbarian inside the citadel"
The arrival of literary theory from France was broadly welcome, for it crushed with its harshness the worn out grumble of conventional philosophy. Yet while he was theory's ambassador, he always managed to signal his own distance from it. Literary Theory ended with what became his personal statement of the hidden importance of politics in logical life.
It’s a big difference between being an observer and a critic to a “grumpy old man” as he describes the difference between being sexy and sex. In the good old days of 60’s for example the “Woodstock” was a musical concert of political messages of peace and love to the world and the politician in particular. Those participants had a different meaning of having sex in the open air as “love and being loved” rather than a raunchy sex of a porn star couple who want to impress the world by their size or number of positions they know! Yet using the drug was another way to reach the dream of true peace rather than get stoned and stab the innocent as we experiencing today.
In my opinion theory has gone lost, but not because it has encouraged academic of withholding information from the public and severe reductiveness.
It is because it has not been political enough. So, as a "radical", Eagleton is necessarily out of step with even the intellectual fashions for which he once seemed cheerleader. "It is not pleasant to be out of line,"
He is caught between two attitudes to the academic business. On the one hand, he rather wants to laugh at all those serious undergraduates (and lecturers) attaching the same arguments about sexual misbehaviour to whatever they are studying.
There is also a Marxist Terry, who sees the duty of all, intellectuals (in particular) to be revealing the criminal act of capitalism. On this matter he speaks sadly of the shortcomings of "cultural theory". We live in "a social order which urgently needs repair" and we are told that "theory must be harnessed to practical political ends". Yet it is not quite clear what he thinks is to be done. How is the study of culture to effect the revolutionary changes he dimly sketches? He talks about "fashioning a world in which the hungry could be fed", but takes it for granted that this is not something that would ever concern those professionally involved in politics or commerce. He is superciliously dismissive of all politicians. He likes to use the word "democratic" about what he likes, "the whole idea of cultural theory is a democratic one", and so on. Yet his only word for the state in which we live is "capitalist".

Dubai the Glamorous Hell

Not everything lasts forever. Dubai is not yet over, however, in my opinion not far to go...
The region of Dubai when looked closely is not a great holiday location. Almost all the surrounding countries are in trouble with war; Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and on the far North location Russia.... looks complicated?
It is not, because like everything it starts with money and everyone wants a piece of the pie. For that reason, I shall explain the ongoing game of war in this region briefly from my personal experiences. I was involved in military forces in the first Golf War (Iran & Iraq War) for over 9½ years. The game started back in the early 70’s when the Shah of Iran announced that he has no free oil to give to the West and become the West’s number 1 enemy when he created the the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
Dubai, one of the Persian islands back in few decades ago separated to become part of what we know as United Arab Emirates. In my opinion Dubai is mainly liberal in compare with the rest of the Arab world and enjoyed the wealth they did not even dream about so far. However, that dream is slowly coming to an end.
This wealth generated from oil money caused nothing but laziness for the rich, so much so that even their children are over-weight from very early age with servants running after them. Literary everything is imported from outside except oil. The laziness or the richness in other words, is so vast that even the oil is pumped out of the region by foreign companies. Comfort and financial security never pushed the people of Dubai to ‘exercise their brain cells’. On the other hand their relationship with the Western world gave them even more sense of security. Believing and trusting their American friends will be always there; as their neighbour Kuwait was protected against Iraq’s invasion and not by Kuwait’s armed forces.
In my opinion with all this power of money due to natural sources of oil and the so easily changeable laws to suit the rich, as well as, the support of the West for economy and military, the construction in Dubai has come to a stop for many of the projects. So as we can see the foundations of Dubai were not set strong and they based their wealth on something which cannot last forever, oil. They are experiencing the effects of the global crises at first hand where 90% of the construction is stopped and gives the city of Dubai a ghost town look. Therefore in my opinion, Dubai is slowly becoming a glamorous hell.

I think of Zaha

We like her or not she’s big, not only in her physical size but in what she does too.
In this case I’d say even if she was my enemy I’ll respect her because she believes and
has faith in what she does.

I believe in professionalism as a full package which includes a professional personality and attitude which she lacks. She has a reputation as a rude person that even a colleague of mine
left his job just after 20 minutes from start!!! She even calls her first partner Patrick Shumaker “potato” (Potato, potato can you come to my office?) She says when the speakers are on and literary everybody can hear her. This for me wouldn’t make a pleasant work environment or a boss to work for.

It was with Koolhaas that she met the engineer Peter Rice who gave her support and encouragement early on, at a time when her work seemed difficult to build.
Possibly this is a point for all of us to pay attention as architectural students, as always been said: “you must be in a right time and right place” just like Albert Speer charming Hitler or perhaps we all should only be an AA graduate to be accepted in a global architectural family!?

In 2008, she ranked 69th on the “Forbes” list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women”

A winner of many international competitions, theoretically influential and groundbreaking,
Who a number of her winning designs were initially never built. A long term paper architect who was famous for “building nothing” possibly because of her work being as difficult to built as her personality, yet mysteriously pleasant and respectful.