This can not be our revolution

For the first time in many years I find myself motivated to pursue cultural revolution. And ashamedly, I find my motivation in a selfish desire to avoid violent protests of a banal consumer nature to beat me to it. My distraction almost complete, I felt prompted to write about it.

Let me explain:

Every 20 or so years there is a cultural revolution. The beat and jazz revolution in the 40’s with the likes of Kerouac, rhythm and blues, and the emancipation of women’s clothing (The Bikini!) and employment and the dissolution of old empires. The 60’s had their revolution spurred on by rock’n’roll, the evolution of the beat movement into ‘counter-culture’ and the sexual revolution. The technological revolution of the 1980’s and the rise of hiphop and DIY rock in a variety of forms emerged (I won’t mention the fashion). All accompanied by new invention, new cultural expression and social forms.

…And then it would seem that we waited for 30 years… We shelved space travel and interplanetary colonization, we developed the genres incrementally and diversely but didn’t really create much that was new, there was nothing new under the sun, and we could have it all… and we had ‘the clash’ playing ‘know your rights’ on repeat. We didn’t really go anywhere from there, and we re-embraced 80’s fashion, and vinyl, and aviators. We were cyclical consumers, re-living the latest revolution through our on-demand discographies (don’t get me wrong.. I love listening through my collection of late 90’s grunge or early millennium pop-punk).

And then on a Monday morning in 2011 I find myself watching the youth looting the European cities that I love, destroying their own neighbourhoods, demanding ‘respect’ and ‘equality’ and change. I see the whole world irrecoverably indebted to each other and facing collapse. I see a season crying out for creative invention and re-definition. What do we live for now? What is our future in this new uncertain world? And how do we get the change we want for our youth and for our cities? And not just incite unproductive conflict.

These latest riots in England have been characterised by one thing. Consumer choice. Sold a culture of accessories that they can’t afford, and unable to dismiss the proseletising of the TV, the rioting in London was not directed at symbols of the state or symbols of questionable morality, but at shoe stores and electronics games retailers and a few jewellery stores. Ipods, Gucci, Sony and Nike. Lootings looked like a child’s Christmas wish list rather than the hard won artifacts of rebellion.

Now note where the looting is taking place... Looters are targeting places based on their innaccessible consumer choices because that is what they think a) they need, and b) will demonstrate their rise to power and garner respect from authority and people to make them pay attention to their issues.

They can’t possibly really believe that A) we give a rat's arse about foot locker, and B) This crap they are taking is worth anything politically or socially. Are our youth really that naïve???

This is not meant to read as a justification by any means, I find it increadibly pathetic and very very sad. Here we have the cyclical cultural revolution (I suspect there is one brewing on the back of a GFC2.0, as essentially we have been waiting for one since the 80's)… ...but these kids are wasting their youth, their energy, and their creativity on shit. And we may only get a few opportunities to define what it is this future culture will be about beforeit gets hijacked by the hyper polar nodes of extremism and ultra-conservatism. I do not want 'my-revolution' to be about gucci bling and xbox. I want my future to be about communities, fiscal responsibility, p2p economies, creatively hacking oppressive systems to iterate and establish new equitable ones which focus on social rehabilitation instead of exploitation, and the power and purpose of youthful play and creative resilience in the face of immovable conservatism. I want it to be about liberty to create better freestanding systems that can be folded into the mainstream as a result of their success in a meritocracy. There has to be more for the youth to inherit. There has to be connection and ownership and civic evolution and cultural filigree.

We need alternatives to consumer-citizen engagement with place and people, and we need it now! We need to identify our limits, and overcome them daily with new creative and beautiful actions that, based upon their merits and success, can change the way we see and interact with the world.

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.