Tuesday, December 1, 2009

CAVE CLAN EXPOSITION 2009

Finally! After 3 years waiting for the call... I was finally able to meet the Cave Clan. We met at a non-descript pub and then proceeded to explore 3 venues; Barfut's bat cave, The Lake and Pink House.

I first became interested in the CaveClan in 2006 whilst studying the effects situationalism could possibly have on architectural iterations in an attempt to more fully engage people with their surrounding built environment... I began to explore 'topside' (above ground), photographing back alleys, fireescapes and rooftops in the Brisbane CBD. Topside urban exploration, although if unenclosed is somewhat less clandestine, is also notably safer than urban spurlunking and draining, so I had opted to wait for a 'cave clan' expo before I started out on my own.

Barfut's Bat Cave started out below a trainline and contained a mix of both concrete, brick and blasted rock tunnels, exiting with a magnificent view of Brisbane. There were Bat's, and Roaches and Rats, and 8-bit music blarring out of a ghetto blaster :) It was amazing seeing the layers and weathering caused by stormwater continually moving over the surfaces, beneath restaurants whose smells wafted down to us, and beneath roads, whose traffic we heard, and past other bends in the tunnels, whose breeze we felt gratefully, being blessed with a good draft the entire journey.

The Lake began with a decent through a manhole and we walked through mostly concrete tunnel. We passed through an open air vent/overflow which provided a nice rest spot, the water below us bright red with oxidization. We then passed further along, coming to a large expansion chamber of Brick. The beautiful brick arches were somewhat spoilt by graffiti, consisting of some relics from the 80's punk movement, but many others more recent. Our journey was stopped prematurely by a high tide as we came to a junction, so we returned via a known manhole.

Our final exploration was of what is known as the 'Pink House'. The Pink House was absolutely filled with Graffiti and looked like it was under renovation. Evidence existed that it was still under occupation by squatters, but the overall effect was beautiful in the evening light. Not much remained of it's original fitout save for an old kitchen hood and some wiring. So we shortly left to rest and talk about what it is that makes the cave clan.

In our discussions about the 'dis'-organisation that is the cave clan, certain characteristics that define the brisbane Clan were discussed. The need for subtelty was important. Prime motivations for the effort it takes to remain below the radar include both avoiding the wrong type of people in attendance and avoiding the over-exuberant attentions of too-well-meaning-public-servants or Howard-era-fridge-magnet-waving-terrorist-hotline-regulars.

It is evident through the efforts taken to avoid collective attention, that the Cave Clan exists for the enjoyment of these forgotten urban spaces as they exist, in the rough. The entire time in attendance there was the subtle feeling of being under observation from within the group. They have been approached before by Writers seeking new places for their work, and other various characters. The Cave Clan appears to take pains to avoid these characters in order to protect both the integrity of their dis-orginaisation as will as the integrity of the drains and forgotten places for future generations of Urban Explorers. We spoke as well for the need for dis-orginizations to recruit new members and talent. There needs to be a future in all endeavours or else they become redundant and stagnant. In this respect the Cave Clan is no different. It requires it's participants to seek out new places of interest and bring them back to the group for their shared benefit.

Most of all... dis-organisations need to be enjoyable and without burden. Too much time spent on management (and worse still; micro-management) not only defeats the purpose of participants taking personal intiative in the group and contributing, but also removes the attraction for those that are committed to enjoying their clandestine activities. It needs to flow.

Beureucratic responses to The Cave Clan have been varied in the past. At one point senior members of the group were approached by Governments Agencies to provide information on potentially sensitive targets after 911. Then later was recommended for inquest because of it's apparent 'counter-culture' shadowy characters after the accidental drownings of two graffiti writer's in a popular drain named "Fortress" at sydney.


Finally: here is a link to the TED talk video of Miru Kim who does self-portraits in forgotten corners of the urban organism that is our forgotten places.

And here is a link to one of Brisbane's premiere' urban explorer's WEBSITE which is a Massive Mostache beyond Awesome.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

To Build A Castle

A quote from Vladimir Bukovsky's 1977 auto-biographical account of Krushev's Russia and the The Krushev Thaw and his sufferance under the iron curtain for basic human-rights entitled; To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter. (Viking Press NY, 1979)

A people, nation, class, party, or simply crowd cannot go
beyond a certain limit in a crisis: the instinct of self preservation proves too
strong. They can sacrifice a part in the hope of saving the rest, they can break
up into smaller groups and seek salvation that way. But this is their
downfall.

To be alone is an enormous responsibility. With his back
to the wall a man understands: "I am th people, I am the nation, I am the class,
and there is nothing at all." He cannot sacrifice part of himself, cannot split
himself up or divide into parts and still live. There is nowhere for him to
retreat to, and the instinct of self-preservation drives him to extremes - he
prefers physical death to spiritual death.

And an astonishing thing happens. In fighting to preserve
his integrity he is simultaneously fighting for his people, his class, his
party. It is such individuals who win the right for their comminuties to live -
even, perhaps, if they are not thingking of it at the time.

"Why should I do it?" asks each man in the crowd. "I can
do nothing alone"

And they are all lost.
"If I don't do it, who will?" asks the man with his back
to the wall.

And everyone is saved.
That is how man begins building his
castle.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Would Cedric Price be happier in a sandpit?



The continued blurring of our ephemeral and physical boundaries continues to grey as the speed of technic development exponentially increases and disperses. It is when exposed to news of new developments we find ourselves either decrying the loss of conservative superlatives and resisting inevitable change, our we are found enraptured by the promises of brighter futures, empowerment, efficiencies and new liberties.

There have been some very interesting and powerful projects recently, two of which have come from Carlo Ratti and the Senseable City Lab of MIT which use new technic media to further merge the ephemeral and physical in order to create new integrated environments.

The first is the Copenhagen Wheel by MIT. MIT students and Ratti have researched and developed a beautiful sexy product which could see very practical application within the public realm by providing both an attractive, marketable product to the public in the form of an auxiliary power source for cyclists (which constitutes an overwhelming percentage of Copenhagen's transport modes), as well as a research/community tool through the information gathering capabilities of inbuilt technologies.

The second project is what has been termed "The Cloud" and was presented by Carlo Ratti. Carlo Ratti's focus as Director of MIT's Senseable City Lab appears to have been in the realm of representation and information gathering of spatial-temporal data (as can be seen in his list of patents here). It forms a proposal for the Mayor's Landmark Precinct for the upcoming London 2012 Olympics.

The Cloud serves multiple purposes; as screen, as viewing platform, as place, and as technic innovation and physcial/ephemeral blur. Perhaps we can add gimick to the list of diasporic functions... an important function for a mayor nearing elections no doubt. But I am showing my cinisicm again, I digress. Ratti took inspiration from the olympic torch, Diller+Scoffidio's Blur project, and the Eiffel Tower, and has worked with both his Senseable City innovators and Arup Engineer's.

During the panel discussion of Ratti's Cloud proposal, the interesting point was made by Prof John Frazer (QUT's head of the School of Design) that the precinct due to be occupied by Ratti's Cloud was indeed close to the the old site used by Cedric Price for his Fun Palace proposal (1962). Price's Fun Palace claimed as it's tenants the provision of truly public space which empowered the community through both political and architectural means, responsive to the needs of the community.

A similar proposal was Magnet (1994), where a series of temporary bridges and viewing platforms enabled new social and spatial experiences of the city.

But in the words of Cedric Price; "technology is the answer, but what is the problem?" I seem to burden these technic enhanced ephemeral/physcial optimisations with my own prime agenda; which i guess today could be summed up in the objective: "the empowerment of "open source" communities". Perhaps this is a reflection of my own personal agenda, but regardless... in response this question, I find that technology has definite gaps in it's answer.

"technology is the answer... but what is the
problem?"

The Copenhagen Wheel provides a technic answer to the question for improved cyclist experience, and the need for optimisation of current transport modes through more accurate research methods.

The Cloud, however, seems to provide little in the way of solution to problem. Perhaps this is inherint in it's politically motivated commissioning (Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, wanting the most impressive building to stand in front of as it is opened in the lead up to an election no doubt), but still... it poses to me the question; "when does the blurring and technic enhancement of architecture move beyond useful to become mere gimick.

We are kidding ourselves if anyone, like me, thought for a moment that technology can solve my interpretation of the problem; the same problems of community emancipation that Constant designed for, and that various sub-cultures have fought for again and again, their expression of community.

"Christopher,..." I hear you all whisper; "...gimicks sell architecture! Shutup before we loose our commissions!".
And sure, you're right for a lot of people. But I don't like to separate my needs for answers from architecture. And no one does architecture for the money or so I am told by those well off and impoverished alike.

We can see how the very absence of technology greatly empowers sub-cultures for community expression. The very campus containing the SenseAble City Lab used to house an old dilapidated timber radar research facility that was built during the second world war. After it's military occupation was redundant, it was appropriated by many students and modified daily to suit the use of inhabitants. There was no programmed constraints where the architecture disallowed the workflow, expression or community utility of the occupants. If the architecture got in the way, it was simply removed... knocked down or modified by the industries MIT students so that it did work. And in the hearts of generations of students, that old building was the most prescious piece of academic and community infrastucture. *

"Christopher..." I hear you whisper again... "but you are proposing that the best architecture is that which we care less about.. and yet love the most..."
Well, perhaps I am.. and this conflagrated conclusion seems the most linear and logical in the view of this argument, yet it appears to be the most unjustifiable economic logic (if the desires of a buildings occupants were to be harnessed to 'commodify architecture'). Perhaps it is my saving grace that I believe architecture to go beyond being "commodity".

So why do we buy a big mac meal when we only want fries?
"technology is the answer... but what is the problem?"

What is the problem that this technology exists for?


*refer the text "How Buildings Grow" by Stewart Brand. In it he describes numeruos examples of the same sentiment as well as this particular example; the MIT timber radar building.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Friendly Foe Scenarios

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw it. A nice innocent young girl boarded the peak hour train to the city from Northgate station, bearing this inconspicuous public service announcement on behalf of our beloved Queensland Rail

It's nice to know that you are safe...
seriously... who is going to take the time to purchase a bottle of water from the Northgate kiosk before engaging in an act of
a) graffiti; or
b) violent assault
goodness knows that some of these tasks can be dehydrating....
"thank goodness I purchased this refreshing beverage... running from the security contractors can be hard work"...

It's not even grammatically correct.

Is this what happens when we privatise our public infastructure?
What a waste of money.
That is all.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Thoughts on the Postmodernism of Jerde

I recently had a chat with a friend when canvassing topics for an essay on postmodernism in design. My thoughts led me to Jerde, and so for my own benifit, and anyone who cares to hear it... I thought I would post my thoughts here for all to absorb or critique or both.

To get to postmodernism I thought that I had to first address it's context as it followed from a Romantic period and then Modernism. The decision to use Jerde as an icon of postmodernism is based upon his dominance of the retail architecture market in the US. In this fashion, both the art movements during and preceeding postmodernism can be clarified against the political and economic developments (evident in trade and commerce) which occured during the same period of time. This will lead to a comprehensive insight into the context and character of the postmodernism of Jerde, and assist in the identification of postmodern characteristics in the creative outputs of others.

You can track romanticism and modernism through consumer culture and cultural imperialism over the last 200 years. Romaniticism and the ethnographic diversification of commodities occured significantly in the 19 and 20th centuries (refer the British Empire in India and China) due to imperial expansion.
As two World Wars ravaged the globe, the old Imperial Nationalist sentiments began to fade, grow guilty, and they began to relinquish their protectorates and colonies back to the people.
Modernism came with the adjustments needed to accomodate homogenity of political correctness removed from the once burgeoning reliance on ethnographic cultural commodies. It also accomodated the slow down of the industrial revolution and the developments of the technlogical age of new homogenous products of international (and politically/ethnically neutral) standard.

Modernism itself had to split into various tertiary camps to cope with the melee of dichotomy it found itself wading through; once that the vanguard of Imperial Nationalism and assosciated decrees of 'superior creative endeavour' were removed. The world was suddenly a smaller place with no sense of proprietary or 'standard'.

Then... after a few decades of modernism striving to find a new, ethically and politically neutral pure standard which could save the world from it's differences and woes (refer internationalism and the veiled internationalism farce that was old regionalism), Postmodernism poked it;s head into the mix and decided to cause some havoc.

Enter Jerde.
Jerde's postmodern retail architecture is almost a bridge between modernism and the romanticism of forgotten imperialist ethnic commodification. Jerde is (in my opinion) unafraid to recourse to the commodofied ethnographic pallette of the cultural imperialist romanticism era, whilst preaching the ethical and artistic purity (or corporate compliance) of modernism, embodying the conflict for us all to see.
Sometimes the juxtaposition between ethnic romaticism and modernism is delineated by the interior/architectural boundary (by allowing by each tenant through interior design to ethnically romaticise their shop for the sake of marketing their product [for example, Batavia coffee next to Sushi train next to the IMAX on Grey Street]. This is all in the structure and coprporate compliance of an essentially compliant and 'pure' architectural statement.

[add photoes *Grey Street*Paxton's Crystal Palace*Jerde's MOA]
Sometimes this postmodern juxtaposition occurs within the architecture itself by the mashing together of conflicting architectural 'elements'... a roman column here, a curtain wall with sexy stainless steel door furniture there, a spraycrete rendered neolithic cave entrance here, a fibreglass pirate ship mast there... et alia...
[add photoes of Jerde's Horton Plaza*Dreamworld*etc etc etc...]

Grass Roots Community Redevelopment

http://features.csmonitor.com/economyrebuild/2009/05/22/how-the-%e2%80%98average-jane%e2%80%99-changed-a-neighborhood/

A lovely article from TCSM I stumbled into.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

On Mapping... Minard and Weizman







The Minard Map of 1861 showing the advance and retreat of Napoleanic forces against Russia in the 1830's is considered seminal tactical battlefield mapping. It very clearly compounds the data from divergent contexts such as time, temperature, geography, mass etc...




Another Map which i recently stumbled upon was Weizman's 2002 map [link to notbored.org] of Jewish Settlements in the West bank. This data brings clarity to the "black spot" which google earth seems to have.

Systems Theory in Architecture???

Ever get the feeling like you are beating a dead horse, driving a lame donkey? My searching for a new Thesis topic may have recently been given a new lease of life.



I love getting the time to share ideas about community with both of my parents. My mother has been working as a professional in social community services and counselling and my father is a well respected town planner. Both have been practicing their respective crafts for over 25 years.



In talking with my father today a discussion began which centered around sustainable community and development evolution, both in the built environment, economy and community. For the first time I realised how closely my personal views about 'progress' had similar values as to those of my father. Little surprise there as I used to constantly raid his library whilst in High School, discovering titles such as "A pattern Language" at the age of 14.



Excitedly, i was able to get some refferences from my father for further reading again today. One is a book by Senge about the use of systems thinking in professional development called "The Fifth Discipline", the other is by a woman named Donella Meadows in an article called Dancing with the System [I highly recommend reading this article] . Both articles seem great introductions to applications of systems thinking... a kind of gestalt view of the interpolation and connective complexity in the world around us.



I find myself drawn to the Systems Thinking method; not to naively try and determine an increadibly complex future or design path or social panacea. But rather to find a more effective, efficient, sustainable and organic practice method.



It will be interesting to see how this ties in to my thoughts and deliberations on the sustainable grass roots methods of sub-cultures and community organisations; both illicit, malevolent, and benevolent.



For a taste of Systems Thinking: here is an excerpt from Senge's book. It hails from Chapter 21 of The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge. entitled "THE INDIVISIBLE WHOLE". Pages 370 and 371. Random House Australia. 1992. Milsons Point. NSW. Herein he describes the way Russell_Schweickart (a US astronaut) discovered the reality, benevolence and pertinent nature of "Systems Thinking"




"Floating in space, Rusty discovered the first principles of systems thinking. But he discovered them in a way that few of us ever do- not at a rational or intellectual level, but at a level of direct experience. The earth is an indivisible whole, just as each of us is an indivisble whole. Nature (and that includes us) is not made up of parts within wholes. It is made up of wholes within wholes. All boundaries, national boundaries included, are fundamentally arbitrary. We invent them"and then, ironically, we find ourselves trapped within them.
"He began to involve himself in activities that seemed congruent with his new understandings.


"One that had a special impact was learning about the "Gaia" hypothesis - the theory that the biosphere, all life on earth, is itself a living organism. This idea, which has deep roots in many preindustrial cultures such as Amednican Indian cultures, "struck a deep chord in me,"says Rusty.

"For the first time it gave the scientist in me a way to talk about aspects of my experience in space that I couldn't even articulate myself. I had experienced the earth in a way that I coldn;t even articulate to myself. I had experienced the earth in a wat that I had npo way to descrinbe. I had experienced the ALIVENESS of it - of it all."At the conclusion of the leaderrship workshop, someone asked spontaneously, "rusty, tell us what it was like up there?

"He paused for a long time. When he finally spoke, he said only one thing.

"It was like seeing a baby about to be born".

"Something new is happening. And it has to do with it all - the whole"



I hope this all turns out with legible syntax. It is rather late (or early morning) as I write this. Food for thought none-the-less.. and some new leads.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Design and Advocacy in Action
[online]
[facebook]

I discovered this through a friend; Adriana Yoto. You may know her from her socio-economic experiments with the "live-in-mall" et alia.

The CUP's activities are a beautiful way of contributing greatly to communities by empowering them with knowledge. Some times I find myself wondering how I can place a beam, or a column or a flashing or a concealed fixing in order to save the world, searching for something that will justify my existance beyond money....and then i realise i am being a post-justified wanker... and every time i just have to settle for having made either a) money, or b) something pretty or c) a powerful or rich person happy... and at the very least... d) complied with legislation.

May it never be only D....

Sometimes instead you just crave to a) give away money... b)remind something pretty that it is falliable... c)annoy the rich and powerful... d) challenge legislation.... yet in a seeming contradiction... e) ... Give unto others a real act of justice.

For now I will just wish you HIS Peace...

Sunday, April 26, 2009

A beautiful Essay on the racial experience of Architecture

A beautiful essay on the racial experience of architecture

Architecture can be about a lot of arrogant bullshiting, so it is nice for once to see someone trying to combat the facadism of rhetorical architectural metaphores in order to bring about a relevant architecture of experience. It is no wonder that the RIBA is engaging in professional protectionism in the face of royal criticism when the identifyable hallmarks of the profession are irrelevant post-justifications.

This is different to Stephen Hole and Palaasma's "eyes of the skin" experience which over the last few years quickly rose to rhetorical popularity and quickly spawned textural catchphrases in university critiques. This is about experience directly tempered and altered by the ethnographic character of it's users rather than the haptic qualities of materials.

If architecture is to succeed in it's role of mediator and advocate between the dichotomy of values and components which form a building, then ethnographic discussion is unnavoidable, and architects need to lower their walls of rhetoric which effectively halt the open and honest communication required. Then we will be able to answer the questions demanded of us in an open and honest fashion. Then even our biggest detractors in the public realm will respect us for our integrity.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

SI and Architecture

Flicking through my old diary entries I discovered a summary for what I intended to be part of a university undergrad thesis. I figure if at the very least I can post it here, then I can either move on from it - or actually apply myself to it's realisation:

Since the birth of the SI, cultures and expressions within the built environment have changed dramatically. Sub cultures have developed, independantly of the SI, new systems of revolutionary thought that have become (or have the potential to become) more readily accessable to larger communities and cultural groups. Where the SI had trespass and graffiti, there now exists a plethora of other, more palatable vehicles through which the larger public can challenge their built environment's assumptions and oppression.

Activities identified for the purposes of further investigation include:
Parkour
Skateboarding
Technological Age Graffiti
Guerilla Gardening
Draininge/Vadding

It is proposed that these activities all share some foundational attitudes and methods which enable their effective implementation. All of these groups adopt a peer based, web enhanced network through groups such as facebook and online forums. The Web element relies on contribution by all members of the community to encourage and inspire each other. It is organic and often a pure meritocracy in organisational structure. Spontaneous and self-directed engagement is expected, placing the power of development and change directly in the hands of each individual participating.

as Constant wrote in the exhibition catalogue published by the Haags Gemeetenmuseum, The Hague, 1974;
"The culture ...does not result from isolated activities, from exceptional situations, but from the global activity of the whole world population, every human being being engaged in a dynamic relation with his surroundings. There are no a priori links between anyone. The frequency of each man's movements and the distances he will cover depend on decisions he will make spontaneously, and which he will be able to renounce just as simultaneously. Under these conditions social mobility suggests the image of a kaleidoscopic whole, accentuating sudden unexpected changes -- an image that no longer bears any similarity to the structures of a community life ruled by the principle of utility, whose models of behavior are always the same. In our case, the urban must respond to social mobility, which implies, in relation to the stable town, a more rigorous organization on the macro level, and at the same time a greater flexibility at the micro level, which is that of an infinite complexity. Freedom of creation demands in any case that we depend as little as possible on material contingency. It presupposes, then, a vast network of collective services, more necessary to the population in movement than to the stable population of functional towns."
(from: http://www.notbored.org/new-babylon.html. Accessed 5 April 2009)

An analysis of the contexts surround the developments of these groups would be benificial, beginning to understand the socio/media petri dish which each has developed from, and the communications systems used for community.

It is also important to consider threats to these new methods of free thought and movement, both perceived and real. Certainly a battle of ideals exists between the poles of community freedom and security based authoritarian fear mongering. Certainly in this current security culture the presence of a free spirit is like a breath of fresh air.

Lastly, In contrast to New Babylon's (Constant Nieuwenhuis) unbridled accomodation of hyper-desire and forced revolutionary thought, how can we make fertile the current built environment for new expressions of freedom, whilst exhibiting some sense of social responsibility and reason?


POSTCRIPT
Having said all this... I discovered a quote from Chtcheglov (on wikipedia of all places) which I believe gives some grounding to the despondancy I have felt lately as a result of my derive'(s)

"The dérive is certainly a technique, almost a therapeutic one. But just as analysis unaccompanied with anything else is almost always contraindicated, so continual dériving is dangerous to the extent that the individual, having gone too far (not without bases, but...) without defenses, is threatened with explosion, dissolution, dissociation, disintegration. And thence the relapse into what is termed ‘ordinary life,’ that is to say, in reality, into ‘petrified life.’ In this regard I now repudiate my Formulary’s propaganda for a continuous dérive. It could be continuous like the poker game in Las Vegas, but only for a certain period, limited to a weekend for some people, to a week as a good average; a month is really pushing it. In 1953-1954 we dérived for three or four months straight. That’s the extreme limit. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill us” (Ivan Chtcheglov, excerpt from a 1963 letter to Michèle Bernstein and Guy Debord, reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #9, p. 38)."

Food for thought.

Peace.

Parkour + Aikido

In a recent bid to cure my curiosity, I engaged in a four week introductory course at Michiharu Mori's Yoshinkan Aikido dojo in West End.
Thankfully there was no "40-year-old-mid-life-crisis-street-fighter-wannabe-martial-art-guru-of-awesome" to be seen within a mile. Aikido proved to me to be a very appreciable martial art, being a non-competitive dscipline, and being very much focussed on values of "harmony", ki, flow and efficiency (minimum effort, maximum effect). It seemed very alien to the marketing of BJJ, Maui Thai and Krav Maga (not to strike these off my list... my actual plan is to try a bit of Capoeria and then move on to try some BJJ, MT, TKD et alia... I know it shows no consistency - but for now I am just curious - I can settle on one thing later :)

I have found both the movements and the vocabulary of Aikido to be much akin to the vocabulary and movements of Parkour; "Flow and Efficiency". Being confident in a movement, being at peace all through the movements, being balanced and using pins, pivots, distribution etalia as opposed to muscle strength to achieve a feat.

I very much enjoyed the experience and plan to return at a later point once I have tasted a few other disciplines...

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Zaha Hadid and Skateboard Architecture

Oslo Opera House by Zaha has evolved another step from her Phaeno Science Centre, to further integrate the oppurtunities and constraints of balancing the pragmatic requirements of public space whilst also providing the amenities for 'anti-social' social engagement of the public realm by skateboarders. This is achieved throuh an array of surface finishes which could be deemed to constrain and control behaviour, not so much as through prohibition which is so prevalanet in public space management today, but rather through the controlled provision of amenity.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

WELCOME

Finally, the new and improved CJRawlinson.com is begining to take shape. We are now hsoting w/ CRAZYDOMAINS.COM (an Australian host).