It’s probably our fault to begin with. I don’t really know the exact numbers, but buildings use more fossil fuels than cars, construction debris makes up the highest percentage of our landfills, building roofs and parking lots account for the majority of storm water run-out issues, and Market driven greed for greater and greater return on investment fueled a decade of speculative office and housing developments at a scale never seen before. And, now entire communities sit vacant and waiting for a recovery that may never happen. Can Architects be trusted to come up with solutions for problems we played a major role in causing in the first place?
2. Architects solve
Architects are some of the only professionals that are educated and trained to find, explore, consider, analysis, and obsess over solutions for complex problems. These are skills that can be applied to create opportunities for community enrichment, or simply arrange toilet partitions. The trick is setting your priorities.
3. Architects create
All Architecture begins with a blank sheet of paper. We begin with nothing but a need, or a desire. And, Architects are able (or willing) to draw the first line on that blank page. That is a powerful position to be in.
4. Architects are current
Architects are obsessed with “now”. We are always looking for the next thing. We are drawn to innovations and new solutions. We are restless; always seeking a better solution; a stronger image; and a more elegant representation of our collective aspirations. Architects reinvent ourselves with each and every project.
5. Architects are right
Architects have consistently and persistently believed in the right things. We were designing buildings that were environmentally sensitive years before “green” design became a fashionable buzz-word. Architects believe in efficiency; water conservation, recycling, using our resources wisely. We believe in urbanity. We believe in communities. We believe in cities.
6. Architects hope
Architecture embodies the collective passion of mankind. Architecture asks us to be better than we are. What other profession can make that claim?
7. Architecture is in our DNA
The built environment creates the parameters of our life. We are born, live our lives, and die within the walls of Architecture. From hospitals, to daycares, to schools, to offices, to homes, to parks, to restaurants, to funeral homes, to cemeteries. Architecture stands beside us (consistently and patiently) as we define our very existence in the world.
8. Architects collaborate
Architects no longer “design” we “negotiate”. The art of creating buildings lies in the choreography of complex systems and diverse interests and forces. The Architect can act as leader, facilitator, counselor, our collective conscience, a touch-stone, inspiration, and lynch-pin. Architects are fuel for creation.
9. Architects are indestructible
In 2009, 40% of all Architects were laid-off. We are ALL still here. ALL of us started our own company. Architects continue to work because we see a continued need for our service and skills and efforts and talents and passion. Architects will continue to work for the needs of our community, with or without bank financing.
10. Architects are storytellers
No one is excited about the program of a building. No one cares about the materiality of the forms. No one thinks about the building systems. No one really loses sleep over the cost of a building. No one remembers the difficulty we traversed during the process of design. Everyone forgot the 2 week delay, No one is interested in the references we made, and no one remembers the speech you made about balance and harmony at the city council meeting. But, everyone remembers the folding chair they sat in to watch their son or daughter graduate kindergarten and middle school and high school and college. Everyone remembers their first job interview; their wedding day; or the 10 days in ICU after the birth of their 3rd son; or the first time they noticed their Grandmother’s fading memory; or looking into your future wife’s eyes at 2am and slowly brushing her hair out of her eyes and seeing a path that leads to the rest of your life. Architecture is not a form; Architecture houses a life.
Architects can tell that story.
The idea that there is an ‘other’ world beyond our world of flux and change arises only as a result of hatred for the actual world we live in.
—
Existentialism Basic Writings second edition (via laneplusultra)
This may give people insight about why I read fantasy novels and play a whole lot of video games.
Existential Vacuum — The psychological condition in which a person doubts that life has any meaning. This new neurosis is characterized by loss of interest and lack of initiative. According to Viktor Frankl, the existential vacuum is apparently a concomitant of industrialization. When neither instinct nor social tradition direct man toward what he ought to do, soon he will not even know what he wants to do, and the existential vacuum results.
Because of social pressure, individualism is rejected by most people in favor of conformity. Thus the individual relies mainly upon the actions of others and neglects the meaning of his own personal life. Hence he sees his own life as meaningless and falls into the “existential vacuum” feeling inner void. Progressive automation causes increasing alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and suicide. — Victor Frankl
A few days ago, I cut out my ex-girlfriend. Hopefully ceasing all contact with her will allow me to close that door and, after four years of shit, move on with the emotional side of my life. I feel like I should have done that shortly after we broke up, but I thought we could still be friends. That’s a lie. She thought we could still be friends, and I let myself cater to that.
The other news is much better, an hour ago, I figured out my dream job, and a hobby to go along with it. We need hobbies when we’re old, and I really doubt video games will cut it when I’m 50.
My goal is to become a freelance urban planner. Of course, this will be difficult to attain, as I’ll have to work for a development business for sometime and have some fabulous ideas to get my name out there. Provided I can do that, I could possibly work my way around Europe over a few years, helping out where I’m wanted.
The hobby is to be horticulture. I like plants, but I don’t have a whole lot to do with them atm. Horticulture is something I could study in spare time, or even while I’m at university. Libraries are your friend. Once I’ve settled somewhere, I might like to try stunting the growth of trees, so that each following sapling grows to bonsai size. that could take a long time, but I’m willing to invest. Also, someone has probably done that before and you can probably buy miniature trees, but I don’t care, I want to do it myself.
Made this screwing around on Adobe Illustrator, based on a table going around the internet, inspired by a question from zombots.
I love this, especially the nihilist column. “NO NO NO NO ALSO NO. AND NO.”
This is stupid. The epistemological nihilist within denies the validity of the chart but the metaphysical nihilist within me also denies my existence and the existence of the chart. The only consistency in modern nihilism is 4Loko.
Camus confuses me. If it’s meaningless, what are we supposed to attain from facing the absurd? I mean, I get that on the whole every action I do means nothing in the long run. At some point the world end, consumed by the sun, at some other point, our species will possibly go extinct, nullifying every action and every word ever to come from any person ever.
Looking for meaning beyond a legacy, which you could possibly dream would last a few thousand years (Jesus and Muhammad, etc, etc), though unlikely. Living for no reason at all is also absurd. An individual should apply their own meaning to their own life and live that. Of course, this individual may borrow meaning from others, or without knowing seem to feel the same purpose.
I went through a phase a few months ago when I came to realise, of my own accord, that there was no point to life. Another billion years is nothing to the universe, but it borders on infinity to humans. On that scale everything we could possibly do is entirely meaningless and can have almost zero true effect. If someone created a black hole between three solar systems and it consumed all three of them, it would not mean a thing, even if each planet was teeming with life.
So I realised all I can do is work toward leaving some form of legacy. Work toward making things better for my children and their children and theirs. For every generation to follow us.
If I say or do something that you feel is discriminatory,
feel free to call me out on it. I want you to. I don’t like it, though sometimes I don’t realise I’m doing it. It’s not how I feel, a person is still a person, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, anything that makes them who they are. You can go to town and tear shreds off of me. My immediate reaction may not be pleasant, but the message will sink in.
You’ll probably find that the discriminatory things I say are from this white, male privilege place that I was raised under, that many of you have probably grown up under. What I want to do is separate myself from that, so that I can set a better example than was set for me.
The only exception to this rule is if I’m calling someone a hipster, however, I expect this to change at some point.
This post is in regard to the video that I reblogged earlier. Excuse the way it’s written, this is my brain flowing through my keyboard - it may be messy.
While I was growing up, society and my family impressed upon me what it is to be a man. As Mr Porter also stated, it is to be void of emotion except anger, to never fear, sex is about conquest, basically that men are above women. In my twenty-four years, I have not seen sufficient evidence to support this point of view - if anything, it is indeed the opposite.
I was taught that women cry, that women do housework, that women cook, that women look after the children, that women feel pain, that women have a far wider emotional range than men should ever allow themselves to feel. I was taught that women were weak and that it was very bad to be anything like a woman.
From what I remember, I hit puberty quite early, both physically and emotionally. I faced ridicule for everything that happened to me, even from my closest friends. Children can be so mean. For almost four years (the end of grade three through the start of grade four) I had feelings for just one girl, a girl I never “dated”. I look back and wonder how this was possible at such a young age and I still don’t understand it. The point is, I was ridiculed by my family for liking a girl. As a result, I began hiding myself. Socially crippling myself at the age of twelve.
My emotions still stay hidden from everyone, bar those I let in or those who somehow get through my defenses. I find it incredibly difficult to change this. When I was fifteen, the year after my parents divorced, I was discovering the internet and the wonder of chatrooms. I met a girl in an ancient javascript chatroom and developed feelings toward her, without knowing whether or not she was really a girl (oh internet, you so tricksy), which doesn’t really matter at all when I look back. We’d been talking for months and I told her of these feelings that I had. She told me that I had to open up.
I’ve had some minor success with this in the last eight years, but I still find it impossible to be open in public and it’s incredibly difficult for me to cry at all - this is always done in private. I think it’s been two or three years since I last cried.
There is hope for me yet. I’ve been noticeably growing as a person over the last four years and I’m gaining some sense of identity (with many thanks to those I’m following here on tumblr).
What I’m noticing now though, is that I have trouble separating myself from these views that have been pressed into my brain by society. I know that women are not weaker and that it’s not wrong to be similar to a woman. Hell, I don’t even know what it means to be a “good man” or a “good woman,” but I hate when people use those words. Man and woman are not important, it’s who you are as a person that matters. Back to the point of this paragraph, I still use “woman”, “man”, “boy”, and “girl” in the negative manners taught me. I know I want to change this, but I don’t know how. Do I spend a year or two attempting to remove the use of such words from my idiolect? What about the influence of the people around me and them using those words in that same negative way? The future of my family is definitely worth this, but I find it so difficult.. Am I to argue with every person who uses a term in an oppressive way? I want to, but is it appropriate?
[TL;DR] When I started writing this, I had a point that I wished to make, it was this;
I am disgusted with the way society has educated me and the people I grew up with. I am disappointed that my family could not see the way things are. I am disappointed in myself that I so difficult to throw off these shackles. I’m disappointed that I feel imprisoned by things I don’t believe in.
How can I be a man?
It took me three hours to write this… It’s easily the most personal thing I’ve ever left on the internet. I will not be deleting it.
