At "Home" Once Again

It took me all weekend to find a space where I feel like I can work productively....but I finally have my desk set up just right. Tall desk in studio, check. Good light, check. Water, check. Caffeine, check. Goldfishes (albeit stale), check. Sun is down, check. I'm also kind of perching on this stupid studio chair (I know...) and hoping my back won't give out on me tonight.

I've got my tunes on too (Jack's Mannequin station on Pandora) -- btw I just discovered this artist called OWL CITY...their album cover looks SUPER cheap (done in photoshop in about 5 minutes) but I can see how it sells with the high school crowd.

I think I'm done wishing I didn't have to leave home and my do-only-what-I-want lifstyle...for tonight anyways.

Navigating the World

Below is what I had to turn in for one of my classes on Design Theory and Criticism. It's abour 3x too long for what the prof wanted, but 3x too short for what I could have said. At any rate, go out and read Koolhaas' "Architecture and Globalization" and think about it in terms of the current situation. I think this has gotten as close as I can get to expressing why, on one hand, graduating in 2009 is filled with opportunity and more possibilities than ever before, but on the other, figuring out how to naviagte the world as a "global citizen" seems impossible at times.

Architecture is “being subjected to movements going in absolutely opposite directions: one direction is globalization and the other is…a kind of regionalization. I think it is a wrenching movement, a tension and a torsion between an expansion of perspective on one hand, and an implosion of perspective, on the other hand.” – Rem Koolhaas, “Architecture and Globalization”

Koolhaas hits on a current that seems to run through the discourse in many circles. We seem to live in an increasingly globalized society, as Thomas Friedman’s _The World Is Flat_ and Robert Reich’s _Supercapitalism_, amongst many others, will attest to. At the same time, all over the globe, a renewed interest in all things local has popped up. In Italy, wines and foods are considered more “pure” if they are produced by traditional means and in the same regions that they originated from; locally-grown organic foods and the Slow Food movement have gained popularity in many parts of the industrialized world; and in America, cultural preservation, in the form of interest in ethnic foods, customs, and practices, is particularly important.

Translating this into architectural discourse, postmodernism has produced an attraction toward “regionalist” or “vernacular” architecture in order to give spaces context, but it is also happening at a time when location is becoming increasingly unimportant. Being in San Francisco versus being in Shanghai is not so important as much as being able to communicate and move goods/ideas/resources between these places is. But while the Global North becomes increasingly connected, the gap between the “First” and “Third” worlds seems to be as wide as ever, with billions of people living in poverty. Geographical distance is not so much what defines these distances as do income and consumption power – Tijuana, by many standards, is a Third world city, but San Diego is one of the most rapidly growing areas of California; even within the same city both of these extremes exist (as they do in the critically acclaimed film “Slumdog Millionaire”).

It is no wonder then that Koolhaas was shocked to realize that he had artificially divided the world into areas of architectural possibility and impossibility, because in many instances there seem to be irreconcilable differences between the dialectics of today’s world. However, the ability for Manhattan-esque forms to be built all over the world exists in opposition to these divisions. These differences are reminiscent of Lefebvre’s conception of the “everyday” and its tension between oppressive monotony and the potential for change and revolution within the same framework. The “gulf” between what Koolhaas was teaching and what his students were experiencing, and between the “real Japan” and the “true ambitions of Japanese culture” are further evidence of this tension, which I think is what Sklair is trying to talk about when he says that there are real implications in terms of experience for the “global spaces” that are location-independent. It’s difficult to say that location can be completely taken out of the equation when trying to understand the built environment, because local influences such as politics, economics, and cultural practices do create different experiences and meanings, even if the same shopping mall is built in Singapore and in Texas.

Spring Break

It's almost over!

I don't want to go back to school though.

I had a good time at home though. California is beautiful and I love my room at home. I also love just hanging out in my apartment...watching NPH...and eating tasty food. I'm sooooo dragging my feet with getting back to my school work. I have 6 weeks till I'm done with studio, and a few days after that, graduation. So much will change between now and then and as always my heart is torn between getting through this as fast as possible and savoring all the "lasts" and good moments.

Anyways, there were no exotic cruises, trips to europe, or traipsing around NYC like I wanted, but that's okay...it was still a very much-needed break.

Money Honey

I get the impression that my father doesn't think I am going to make enough $$ when I graduate (or rather that I'll be underpaid). "Nonprofit" is almost a taboo word. Well I hate to break it to you daddy, but that's all your doing. You raised me with an amazing sense of community and family, an appreciation for the landscape, the value of hard work without pay, and being selfless. I make do with what I have, and when I need more I find a way to make it happen, but normally I realize that it is not really the material things in life that matter.

One of my classmates seems to have complete opposite values from me. She'd rather take a job she hates as long as it pays a ton (and by a "ton" i mean almost the equivalent of what my family brings in each year, but for a single-person household), so she can have time off to do something extravagant. While I want to travel the world too, I spend MORE of my time working and I want to do something that MEANS something to me. And I don't need to jet off all the time because I have family and friends to be with. [This is perhaps why my lack of a love life and my inability to find someone to share my life with is so disheartening for me.] I've never truly wanted for anything...and yet this person's basic living expenses for the year cost more than double what mine do. Is my life radically less privileged than hers? In most respects no. I can't say for sure because I don't have her life, but I'm willing to bet that in many respects mine is far richer.

So this is why I am kind of disgusted right now. Somewhere there is probably a seed of jealousy in me, but I was definitely surprised to find that my initial and overwhelming reaction to someone "needing" that much money to be utter ridiculous.

Education....seems to be low-priority.

First, I am freaking out over job prospect(s). But more on that later. The education stuff, which makes me sad, comes from the fact that LMUSD sent out a TON of pink slips to teachers this past week and a bunch of people showed up to the board meeting to discuss it. An NHS alum sent out a message about the meeting, and this is part of what he had to say:

The fact of the matter is this, we live in a society that weighs entertainment, and military over education. If you want someone to blame, blame the community, start with yourself. When was the last time education was a on the top of your political agenda? The truth is that the congressional districts 22 and 23 have long sat silent while our teaching staff has been underpaid and under-appreciated .

APparently some people are just on witch hunts, trying to place the blame on anything they can. But this guy is right - we have sat silent too long. Education has always been at the top of my short-lived political agenda, which probably speaks to my age more than anything else, and I have long been more than a little conflicted over the state of our K-12 and higher ed system - I feel like it fails to really reach so many students, but at the same time it's under-funded. And teachesr that are not so great probably had a not-so-great education in the first place - lovelyyy cycle. But despite my reservations and frustrations, I've never really voiced it in a public/constructive manner.

More thinking to follow over spring break. Right now I need to do studio work, study for a midterm, and decide on a job...

Weekends?

I miss those...

Only two weeks until I can sit in the sun on the beach and then SLEEP IN ON A WEEKEND. Without feeling guilty.

Daylight savings time robbed me of an hour of my Sunday and will make me late for everything else for the next month. The longer days, while taunting me while in studio, also remind me why I don't know if New York will ever really work out for me. I love long afternoons and warmth - visual and in terms of temperature - and need to live somewhere with short winters and short summers, because fall/spring are where it's at.

What If

What if you were Muslim but wanted to join the US military? Or if there was a draft and you were Muslim and drafted in? How would you and your family feel? How would your commander feel? Your peers? How would they treat you?

I'm not really sure what sparked that particular train of thought.


I sometimes feel like shit for having the privilege to criticize our involvement in wars and the president (former and otherwise) and not really paying much attention to what is going on in all of those things when I know some of the people who are laying their lives on the line to protect us, our safety, our freedom of speech, and our ways of life. I take their efforts for granted some (most) of the time. And my soul wonders....what do they think of me?

Still working

Here's something I'm continually struggling with: getting overwhelmed. I don't want to get overwhelmed so I don't read e-mails or start my work or whatever - basically I procastinate. Then I've procastinated to the point that when I do start, I've run out of time and I'm overwhelmed because I started so late.

My intentions have gotten progressively better on this front - at least I'm aware of my own tricks now - but it's something that I still need to work on.

I'm off to start my reveiw post-mortem.

Late-Night Playlist

My late-night playlist on Pandora includes:

Britney Spears' last two albums
Timbaland
Lady GaGa's album
Kanye's 808s, Stronger
CALABRIA 2007 by Enur
MGMT's Oracular Spectacular album
Christina Aguilera
Katy Perry's One of the Boys album
Kylie Minogue
Rhianna
PCD

......basically super classy music that I don't have to think about but isn't too mellow that I fall asleep, either.