My Final Post

I have just skimmed over some of my past entries to this theory blog. In doing this, I realise just how much I’ve learnt. In looking back at my first entries, I was really cautious about what I was saying; I was worried to give an opinion because I didn’t feel like I knew enough. As the lecture series has gone on, I feel like I have built up a good basis of knowledge to these subjects, and my entries have definitely become more confident. To me, the best thing about this series is that I feel like it has enabled us to go on to find out more ourselves. I admitted at the start of the blog entries that even though I had an interest in the topics that we would be covering over the months, I hadn’t ever made the effort to find out more. With half of my Christmas presents this year being books from the theory list, I’m confident that I’ve made a step in the right direction. Maybe it’s just that I’m growing up and its natural to develop more of an interest in these things, but I’m glad that it has been part of my education.

It is important to step aside from the design units at times and think about what we doing in the bigger picture. This can be in terms of our future careers and the education that we are getting right now. I’ve found it refreshing to question the things around us, and the society we live in, and even the usefulness of the education that we are getting. I think that the ability to question everything is a really important part of what I’ve taken from the course.

Another key point that I have taken from theory (which I have mentioned a few times in previous blog entries), is that sometimes there aren’t answers. I obviously knew this before the course started, but I suppose now I feel happier to accept it, and I also feel like my opinions are not necessarily wrong, maybe just different to others. I suppose it is a good view to take on life, that it is a continuous struggle and journey, where along the way you will always make mistakes, but you will always learn from them, and it is this process that you must learn to enjoy, and not the final result.  If you spend the majority of your life working towards something in a way that you never enjoy, to then have a limited time of actually doing what you want to do and feeling what you want to feel then is it worth it? I feel like I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here, and in the past I might have been hitting the delete key by now, but I feel that its ok to go off on one every now and then! It’s good to just write down the things that go on inside your head, and it can actually make you pay more attention to them when you consciously take the time to write it down.

So I think that’s about it. At the start of the theory course I was surprised at how the connection to architecture was not so direct, but I now realise that it is in fact incredibly direct. The buildings and spaces that we design are influenced by and take on an approach to all of the social, economic and political issues that surround our everyday lives. We have a real responsibility as designers to design for the right reasons and to do what we truly believe to be right. Aside from that, in general we owe it to ourselves and the people around us, to learn as much about the spectacle as possible. We shouldn’t be ignorant to important issues that affect our everyday lives. We should not be lazy, and should find the truth for ourselves.

I am confident that this is only the beginning for me, I have Marx and Freud for Beginners alongside ‘High Rise’ by J G Ballard on my bookshelf, all waiting for me to read once I’ve had a decent nights sleep after this madly intensive month of design work. Eventually I’ll be ready to read the rest of ‘All that is solid melts into air’. I’m looking forward to it.

'USA' by Dos Passos

My final read as part of this course was USA by Dos Passos – specifically the chapters ‘Tin Lizzie’, ‘The Bitter Drink’ and ‘Architect’. I found these short stories really enjoyable to read.

Dos Passos writes honest descriptions of the subjects’ lives. He chooses to focus attention on personal details that make people like Frank Lloyd Wright seem more human, and more understandable. He talks of how they are proud of achievements, and ashamed of mistakes, but at the same time how they have shown qualities that have led to their success in life. He writes how Henry ford admired Edison, and always listened to his mum’s advice. In doing this he makes the character easier to relate to, they seem more real, and this makes them seem more vulnerable. It is because of this that when characters like Ford spend the end of their lives reminiscing back to the times before their interventions had changed the world, that you start to feel for them more. Despite success and fortune, you feel something for them.

For Thorstein Veblen in ‘The Bitter Drink’, he ends up in a shack as an old man, alone, and with no interest in being remembered after his death. How can such a brilliant mind end up in this situation? It is because he is human.

All of these men were successful and have been remembered. All of these men are human. They all lived lives very similar to our own in many parts, and this can be forgotten. I suppose these chapters are fairly inspirational, in that you can start to see yourself reaching the same level of success as these men – why not? But then you see how even after all of this, it can end in disappointment and misery. I’m not sure what I’m getting at here but I think its great to think of our own lives being told in story in a similar way. Lots of things happen to us, lots of little stories to tell. We all have good and bad moments. We all have different kinds of relationships with different kinds of people. Some people make more money than others. Some people measure success by money, some don’t.  For some, money makes them happy, and for others it is something else. I suppose it is important to remember that these people are the same as everyone else, it’s so easy to think of achievements as beyond our own capabilities, but they’re not.

Henri Lefebvre's 'Social Space'

Ok, so I have just read Henri Lefebvre’s chapter on ‘Social Space’ from the book ‘The production of Space’. We were warned in advance that this would be difficult, and I think it is even more difficult than I imagined! After finishing the chapter, I realise I’ve written two A4 pages of notes, with the intention of extracting the essential points from the text, and being able to arrive at some kind of conclusion when I read over them again. Well unfortunately it hasn’t been quite as simple as that!

Lefebvre seems to know what he is talking about, but the way he writes confuses the hell out of me. He starts talking about one point and seems to either leave it with another question or give an explanation that even after ten attempts of reading over the same paragraph, doesn’t seem to make sense in my head. I have to say that it is frustrating to read a piece of writing that shows me enough that I am really interested in what he has to say, but then finding that the way it is written doesn’t let me get to grips with it.

I think there is a real skill in being able to convey a complicated idea in a way that makes it more easily understandable. This related directly to our design units too – the main challenge is turning a complicated idea in your head into a language that anyone can start to understand. I don’t know, I’m sure many brilliant theorists would disagree with me making a big deal out of this, and argue that what Lefebvre writes makes perfect sense, but I just think that writing in the way he does gives the impression that he is hiding in words.

With this said, I still got something out of this text, if not particularly a conclusion – and having said that, that is one of the main things that I have taken from this course; that sometimes there are no answers, but there is a process, and things must not stop or settle, they must keep going. As frustrating as that can be, constantly questioning what we usually except as the ‘right thing’ or the ‘truth’, will make us better people (as well as drive us mad).

So Lefebvre looks into the true meanings of production, work, and social space. Throughout the chapter he finds different meanings such as a ‘work’ being unique and a ‘product’ being reproduced exactly. He talks about nature being a work, and gives the example of a rose not knowing that it is a rose.  He goes on to say that humanity is killing off nature with signs and images, and labour and products. When talking about social space he describes it as the outcome of a sequence, and set or operations, and so cannot be reduced to the rank of a simple object, but at the same time there is nothing imagined or unreal about it.

The problem is, I am taking this all in, but I have no idea what the point is that he’s getting at. Maybe that will become clear when I read more chapters of the book, but I suspect that it might not… as mentioned before, I believe that maybe Lefebvre’s level of thinking is above his level of writing. Writing is about communicating ideas clearly, and at least in my case he hasn’t been successful!