Aside from the arguments that this is a big cop-out in not picking a specific person, I think it's a really fascinating choice; speaking to the idea of open, amateur participation, the power of the masses etc.
The salient quote from the article: "This response was the living example of the idea of our 2006 Person of the Year: that individuals are changing the nature of the information age, that the creators and consumers of user-generated content are transforming art and politics and commerce, that they are the engaged citizens of a new digital democracy."
I don't get the sense that they mean this as the Randian, libertarian empowered individual, but more as a collective mass of individuals who as a complex whole make an impact.
So how, if at all, is this applicable to architecture? It's already apparent that there's a movement away from the Howard Roark architect to something more team-based. Is Cameron's vision for an open-source architecture feasible?
"Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?
.....
Sure, it's a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred......"
i ain't a big youtube watcher and the NHL isn't something we get here in lala-land, so those clips were a treat...thanks. been years since i seen anything of a real game.
no idea about open source architecture cuz not tested yet...
but firefox certainly seems to hae more cool options than IE. admittedly lots of crap too, though that get sorted to the bottom fast enough.
team-based design is at least as old as modernism, esp. gropius and his crew...maybe internet makes it more feasible...would like to think so cuz TAC never did work that well did it.
they matter because they provide a cultural touchstone to which we can all relate. their names stand in for a bunch of information that we then don't have to say. just like bible stories.
bible stories and fairy tales. both provide cultural references which are good tools.
examples of phrases used in secular conversation but which we all usually can understand:
'wisdom of solomon'
'patience of job'
'parting of the seas'
'mark of cain'
those locutions point to the same kind of willful naivete behind sayings like 'reason is non-negotiable' or 'individual worth is directly proportional to will.'
Let's go back to the reason for this little contretemps: pedro, tell us how Rand and Roark - in a cultural sense, be it pop, high, or both - don't matter?
I can tell you how I think they do, but I want you to comment first.
liberty bell, they DO matter, for better or for worse, though i wish they did not. they matter in precisely the same way that other myths like 'prosperity is earned not given' matter. if you look closely, these kinds of fabrications are perfectly innocent sometimes, and sometimes they cause much harm. to wit: the myth of the individual, or the cult of the individual, or more broadly, liberal individualism, dismiss consensus, community, teamwork, impact of context, decentralization, and a host of other things as much as it promotes any silly sense of self empowerment. we've all seen where these notions can lead.
is herosim, logic, certainty such bad things? no, those things would be stupid to dismiss. and yes standards are necessary. but rand might have us believe that the vacuum of individual will is the very kernel of progress. thats silly on so many levels. less harmful on the level of fictional charicature or wonton comicbookeque mytholizing of power or genius, but nonetheless, its quetionbegging stupidity.
roark is the perfect blend of stagnated teenage angst and a frighteningly adult sense of (probably sexist - in rands case she wished to be a man - and possibly classist) superiority.
a bottom line question is: what does it mean at base to 'earn' anything?
Well-played, pedro. You just made me laugh out loud and totally evaporated my desire to post a nasty response to Rim Joist. Also, thank you for your lengthy explanation, and I don't disagree with any of it.
Back to archtopus' original question: These days, at least in the residential market, everyone considers themselves a designer. Half my billable hours are spent convincing clients their ideas are lousy!
LB... I know I would find it far less painful to have you direct a nasty post toward me than to have you say that you "don't disagree with any of" what Pedro wrote. Unthinkable, for me.
Well, all right, Pedro may in fact speak your thoughts, and beyond that he just may even exemplify and/or speak for the typical archinector. But this direction of thought truly mystifies me.
I disagree with every single bit of what Pedro wrote, and I have no urge to pretend otherwise.
The key to pedro's post, for me, is that simplistic distillations of ideas - any ideas, in any direction - are sometimes harmless, and sometimes not. These days I have that extreme level of non-commitment regarding just about everything, so I agree. Or at least don't disagree.
Geez - talk about lowering the bar. Just a couple years ago, Time was handing out the person of the year award to Bill Gates-type people. If I'm understanding the article correctly, (probably not, considering I was educated at a state school and am therefore viewed as mildly retarded by the archinect community) they're giving the award to those two Chinese kids on YouTube that lip-synched the Backstreet Boys while wearing matching Yao Ming jerseys?!? Who was second runner up? The fat kid having a light saber duel with himself?!?
And LB - take it easy on RimJoist. He's obviously a huuuge fan of "Scrubs"... He probably went to a state school as well...
keep going. i think you ought to speak your mind. thats what legitimate forums are for. it's important.
i'm genuinely curious how you might proceed toward the third or fourth decade of your life clinging to the regressive simpliciy of a thought such as that randian boolshit. if you're in college i will grant you the slimmest of free passes.
i think you're most likely mistaking alacrity of intent, which we all should when we're at our best posess, with blind fits of dumb will. as in 'i want ice cream!!!!!'
rand pushes for the second with fancy language. even fancier than yours. and leave liberty bell out of it as you proceed.
I thought that, culturally, we in the west had already become as self-centered as we could possibly be. Guess this selection proves we can sink lower down than I had thought.
I understand their reasoning for the choice, but not their motivation.
i think the "empowered collective making impact" is just as ridiculous of a notion (in our time) as was the Randian empowered individual/Roark. they are both characters, created either by an amazing author, or a brilliant media director.
we like to eat these characters up because it touches something in us that is powerful, but perhaps would be more so in a more idealized sense/world.
open source architecture could be feasible, but i dont know if it truly relates to what is presented in TIME. I hope it isnt illusion so similar to the one presented there in TIME magazine:
perhaps we believe we are feeding into this structureless machine or whirlpool of information/data, but most often it is processed by the devices we use to connect to it... i.e. you tube, google (..the brands). maybe we believe we feeding this mass of data, but it is merely coming back into our own bellies as we consumeee....
Interesting similarity between You Tube / user generated content and the earlier remarks about spending all this time telling clients that their ideas are lousy.
What's lousy about your clients' ideas?
I can think of several kinds of lousy here.
When do you think open source construction documents will happen?
I should expand on that "lousy" comment, kablakistan.
In my field, residential work, the proliferation of DIY television shows has led everyone to think they can be designers too. The proliferation of design magazines also gives everyone exposure to the latest gadgets. I spend a lot of my time - time the clients are paying me for, if I'm billing hourly - explaining to them why the ideas they have formulated for the project are short-sighted or inappropriate.
For example (RA Rudolph you will get a kick out of this!) a famous plumbing company has recently come out with a solution to the missing half of the pot-filler phenomenon, that is, though you don't have to carry a heavy pot full of fresh water to the stove, you DO have to carry it away from the stove after cooking. Now there is a Pro CookCenter "sink":
This is a little pot combo next to the sink that both cooks and drains. It's a pretty cool function, but it's the kind of thing a client will get fixated on even though it makes no sense for them:
How often do you actually cook pasta? How often do you actually cook, period? Will this provide enough sink space for you, since this Pro-Cook Center reduces you to one medium-sized sink? Since your remodel means their is really only one logical place to put one sink without tearing up a lot of expensive slab to put in two, do you really want to reduce yourself to one sink, which you will find yourself frustrated with when you use it because there is a big pot taking up all your elbow room when you try to wash your crystal wine glasses? Don't you think this pot-thing looks ugly right in the middle of your elegant "entertainment" island?
I have spent time telling clients why ultra-suede does not make a good wallcovering for a high-humidity bathroom. I'm constantly fighting client's urges to build elaborate and expensive masking devices for components that one will never even notice if they are just left natural and exposed. I had to tell one client her measured drawings - that she did herself - and floor plan "sketch" were not going to be usable for me because she didn't realize the wall that looked like an average wall from the inside was actually a 12" thick masonry bearing wall. I have one who read an article about stamped concrete and thinks it is the best possible solution for his lovely historic Craftsman bungalow.
I could go on, but to take it away from personal experience, here is a bit from "Open Debate" in the recent "Masters of Design" issue of Fast Company, discussing just this notion that these days everyone is a "designer":
Joe Duffy, Duffy and Partners: Design decisions are made by most everyone every day. What should I wear today? What kind of car should I buy? What color? Which options? What about the new sofa for the family room? Access to information and a myriad of choices allow people to quite literally design their lives. This is a good thing. As Americans act more like designers, they achieve a better understanding of design's importance in their lives.
Andrew Keen, AfterTV: My 4 ½-year-old daughter thinks she's a clothes designer. She comes down to breakfast in deep purple and electric orange T-shirts, odd shoes, even odder headwear. Can dreadful aesthetics be cute? Only to a parent. The consequence of your design democracy is an ugly spectacle of deep purples and electric oranges. It's a culture of me-me-me: my hideously personalized car, my hideously personalized sofa, my hideously personalized house. If we care about maintaining an aesthetic of public space, design should be left to professionals.
I'm not being elitist about this, I definitely believe in collaboration as a design approach and I can point to lots of details in jobs that originated as the ideas of the client. I get mad when people get stubborn about 'their' idea because "anyone can be a designer" - makes me want to bring up the brilliant analogy posted here years ago by Lula: "Yeah, everyone can design just like everyone can sing - but I don't go around calling myself Aretha Franklin".
I'm going to preface this by saying i haven't read the whole thread...
i do believe in user generated content / open source...
i do believe in bell's comment...
but here's where i differ... i think the content that we can grab is more cultural than technical... and i think that's where we need to draw the line... who stamps the drawings is the valid comment... and we can't convert to a socialist open source society where we all throw input into a building, software, machine, etc... and then governmental agency is charged the task of reviewing and being liable for the end product... it's just too far off to do anything but dream of it...
but i think open source content is now giving us a pool of ideas larger than anything history has generated so far... cultural precedents are being established at a far greated rate... what does that mean to trends, fashion, architecture, art... who establishes the next "it" when currently there is now a large number of entirely different ideas coming on the scene at the same time...
currently, the old guard is in place to establish trends, opinions, who gets paid... the NY's, the LA's, the Miami's, the $$$ is still able to pick and choose... but bloggers and other opinion makers, message boards, boards just like this one are gaining influence, archinect itself is certainly still conflicted as architecture is a broad topic of interest in general, but what if we start to link our community as a trendsetter, tastemaker, etc. what if we stopped buying the magazines, the newspapers, going to the galleries, and just logged on.
man, i need to get back to work... there's a point in there somewhere... errr. maybe not
Relevant to this thread is the fact that Architect Magazine's current editorial column mentions our beloved Archinect and this thread where we discussed the new magazine. In other words, "you" do have some influence, or at least a voice, that at least in some circles is being listened to.
Makes me want to be more professional here and stop posting comments about Brad Pitt, though I did consider a "top ten 2006 images of Brad" entry in the Top Ten Lists thread.
I see this similarity in music too: As music becomes more "open source", and the established notion of music becomes broken down...perhaps it becomes easier for an individual to add to this pool of knowledge. The negative perspective might be that this is actually diluting this pool and allowing paris hilton to record an album. But i think we should have faith in our cultural direction that instead of diluting it will open up. IT just becomes easier to notice the sheer magnitude of "bad design" or "bad music" in this pool, but we just need to learn how to filter it better.
I think when you look at it from some distance, its pretty inspiring because many more people are jumping into the pool, whereas 15 yrs ago, the thought of it would never have even crossed their minds. sure, it adds to the scum floating around, but now, we just have to have sharper eyes and ears... which, if it works right, could be so amazing and progressive! the only scary thiing for me is, who really is that person who judges this pool? hopefully its us.
maybe the more architects there are, the more likely something good will be built? despite the corresponding growth of bad design...hm.... argh.
Dec 20, 06 11:15 pm ·
·
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.
TIME Person of the Year
So, it's "You". Blogs, myspace, YouTube define the current age of narcissism. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570743,00.html
Aside from the arguments that this is a big cop-out in not picking a specific person, I think it's a really fascinating choice; speaking to the idea of open, amateur participation, the power of the masses etc.
The salient quote from the article: "This response was the living example of the idea of our 2006 Person of the Year: that individuals are changing the nature of the information age, that the creators and consumers of user-generated content are transforming art and politics and commerce, that they are the engaged citizens of a new digital democracy."
I don't get the sense that they mean this as the Randian, libertarian empowered individual, but more as a collective mass of individuals who as a complex whole make an impact.
So how, if at all, is this applicable to architecture? It's already apparent that there's a movement away from the Howard Roark architect to something more team-based. Is Cameron's vision for an open-source architecture feasible?
...and proud we are of all of you...
The CNN.com article about it is pretty funny:
"Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?
.....
Sure, it's a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred......"
um. 'they' is us?
don't underestimate the TALENT
you're talkin bout the hockey, right vado?
i ain't a big youtube watcher and the NHL isn't something we get here in lala-land, so those clips were a treat...thanks. been years since i seen anything of a real game.
no idea about open source architecture cuz not tested yet...
but firefox certainly seems to hae more cool options than IE. admittedly lots of crap too, though that get sorted to the bottom fast enough.
team-based design is at least as old as modernism, esp. gropius and his crew...maybe internet makes it more feasible...would like to think so cuz TAC never did work that well did it.
hilarious vado, that was the first thing i thought of when i saw the issue..
amazing how rand and roark persist in getting mentioned on archinect. they don't matter. did they ever matter?
they matter because they provide a cultural touchstone to which we can all relate. their names stand in for a bunch of information that we then don't have to say. just like bible stories.
"the year of the empowered idiot mass"
we're in such good hands.
bibles stories or fairy tales steven.
bible stories and fairy tales. both provide cultural references which are good tools.
examples of phrases used in secular conversation but which we all usually can understand:
'wisdom of solomon'
'patience of job'
'parting of the seas'
'mark of cain'
The year of the bored yuppie? 'You' doesn't seem to include anyone without a computer, a net connection, and free time.
Great Lebowski image!
good point steven.
those locutions point to the same kind of willful naivete behind sayings like 'reason is non-negotiable' or 'individual worth is directly proportional to will.'
Bible stories and fairy tales and the philosophy of ayn rand, all boiled down together into some sort of time-saving cultural reference shorthand.
Well that was easy.
What will you really smart people be breaking down for us naive masses next?
what do you need to know about, rim? we're really just here to be the targets of your derision, after all.
How bout we just drop a funky beat?
Um, MY derision? Nice try.
Let's go back to the reason for this little contretemps: pedro, tell us how Rand and Roark - in a cultural sense, be it pop, high, or both - don't matter?
I can tell you how I think they do, but I want you to comment first.
that's a fun word: contretemps. makes your mouth feel funny when you say it.
self-expression has become mass expression, but the presence of an outlet does not entail the presence of an audience.
liberty bell, they DO matter, for better or for worse, though i wish they did not. they matter in precisely the same way that other myths like 'prosperity is earned not given' matter. if you look closely, these kinds of fabrications are perfectly innocent sometimes, and sometimes they cause much harm. to wit: the myth of the individual, or the cult of the individual, or more broadly, liberal individualism, dismiss consensus, community, teamwork, impact of context, decentralization, and a host of other things as much as it promotes any silly sense of self empowerment. we've all seen where these notions can lead.
is herosim, logic, certainty such bad things? no, those things would be stupid to dismiss. and yes standards are necessary. but rand might have us believe that the vacuum of individual will is the very kernel of progress. thats silly on so many levels. less harmful on the level of fictional charicature or wonton comicbookeque mytholizing of power or genius, but nonetheless, its quetionbegging stupidity.
roark is the perfect blend of stagnated teenage angst and a frighteningly adult sense of (probably sexist - in rands case she wished to be a man - and possibly classist) superiority.
a bottom line question is: what does it mean at base to 'earn' anything?
Pedro, I think I can help. I'm writing you a prescription...for two testicles.
haha! make sure to add refills.
Well-played, pedro. You just made me laugh out loud and totally evaporated my desire to post a nasty response to Rim Joist. Also, thank you for your lengthy explanation, and I don't disagree with any of it.
Back to archtopus' original question: These days, at least in the residential market, everyone considers themselves a designer. Half my billable hours are spent convincing clients their ideas are lousy!
"Now we already know exactly what we want, we need you to figure it out for us thats all"
i'd vote for paris hilton.
she's transcended our 20th century modernist notions of celebrity and become a fully actualized post-modern, signifier celebrity.
LB... I know I would find it far less painful to have you direct a nasty post toward me than to have you say that you "don't disagree with any of" what Pedro wrote. Unthinkable, for me.
Well, all right, Pedro may in fact speak your thoughts, and beyond that he just may even exemplify and/or speak for the typical archinector. But this direction of thought truly mystifies me.
I disagree with every single bit of what Pedro wrote, and I have no urge to pretend otherwise.
Moving on.
the delivery was good...
The key to pedro's post, for me, is that simplistic distillations of ideas - any ideas, in any direction - are sometimes harmless, and sometimes not. These days I have that extreme level of non-commitment regarding just about everything, so I agree. Or at least don't disagree.
Geez - talk about lowering the bar. Just a couple years ago, Time was handing out the person of the year award to Bill Gates-type people. If I'm understanding the article correctly, (probably not, considering I was educated at a state school and am therefore viewed as mildly retarded by the archinect community) they're giving the award to those two Chinese kids on YouTube that lip-synched the Backstreet Boys while wearing matching Yao Ming jerseys?!? Who was second runner up? The fat kid having a light saber duel with himself?!?
And LB - take it easy on RimJoist. He's obviously a huuuge fan of "Scrubs"... He probably went to a state school as well...
rim joist,
keep going. i think you ought to speak your mind. thats what legitimate forums are for. it's important.
i'm genuinely curious how you might proceed toward the third or fourth decade of your life clinging to the regressive simpliciy of a thought such as that randian boolshit. if you're in college i will grant you the slimmest of free passes.
i think you're most likely mistaking alacrity of intent, which we all should when we're at our best posess, with blind fits of dumb will. as in 'i want ice cream!!!!!'
rand pushes for the second with fancy language. even fancier than yours. and leave liberty bell out of it as you proceed.
Rim Joist for Prez...
dammson please advocate for mr rim or ms rand....
i guess the prescription work...
ok. looks like you need the refill....
nice...good job pedro...
I thought that, culturally, we in the west had already become as self-centered as we could possibly be. Guess this selection proves we can sink lower down than I had thought.
I understand their reasoning for the choice, but not their motivation.
i think the "empowered collective making impact" is just as ridiculous of a notion (in our time) as was the Randian empowered individual/Roark. they are both characters, created either by an amazing author, or a brilliant media director.
we like to eat these characters up because it touches something in us that is powerful, but perhaps would be more so in a more idealized sense/world.
open source architecture could be feasible, but i dont know if it truly relates to what is presented in TIME. I hope it isnt illusion so similar to the one presented there in TIME magazine:
perhaps we believe we are feeding into this structureless machine or whirlpool of information/data, but most often it is processed by the devices we use to connect to it... i.e. you tube, google (..the brands). maybe we believe we feeding this mass of data, but it is merely coming back into our own bellies as we consumeee....
(im not trying to sound so negative.)
o yea, http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads.php?id=29798_0_42_0_C
Interesting similarity between You Tube / user generated content and the earlier remarks about spending all this time telling clients that their ideas are lousy.
What's lousy about your clients' ideas?
I can think of several kinds of lousy here.
When do you think open source construction documents will happen?
who will stamp these open source drawings???
I should expand on that "lousy" comment, kablakistan.
In my field, residential work, the proliferation of DIY television shows has led everyone to think they can be designers too. The proliferation of design magazines also gives everyone exposure to the latest gadgets. I spend a lot of my time - time the clients are paying me for, if I'm billing hourly - explaining to them why the ideas they have formulated for the project are short-sighted or inappropriate.
For example (RA Rudolph you will get a kick out of this!) a famous plumbing company has recently come out with a solution to the missing half of the pot-filler phenomenon, that is, though you don't have to carry a heavy pot full of fresh water to the stove, you DO have to carry it away from the stove after cooking. Now there is a Pro CookCenter "sink":
This is a little pot combo next to the sink that both cooks and drains. It's a pretty cool function, but it's the kind of thing a client will get fixated on even though it makes no sense for them:
How often do you actually cook pasta? How often do you actually cook, period? Will this provide enough sink space for you, since this Pro-Cook Center reduces you to one medium-sized sink? Since your remodel means their is really only one logical place to put one sink without tearing up a lot of expensive slab to put in two, do you really want to reduce yourself to one sink, which you will find yourself frustrated with when you use it because there is a big pot taking up all your elbow room when you try to wash your crystal wine glasses? Don't you think this pot-thing looks ugly right in the middle of your elegant "entertainment" island?
I have spent time telling clients why ultra-suede does not make a good wallcovering for a high-humidity bathroom. I'm constantly fighting client's urges to build elaborate and expensive masking devices for components that one will never even notice if they are just left natural and exposed. I had to tell one client her measured drawings - that she did herself - and floor plan "sketch" were not going to be usable for me because she didn't realize the wall that looked like an average wall from the inside was actually a 12" thick masonry bearing wall. I have one who read an article about stamped concrete and thinks it is the best possible solution for his lovely historic Craftsman bungalow.
I could go on, but to take it away from personal experience, here is a bit from "Open Debate" in the recent "Masters of Design" issue of Fast Company, discussing just this notion that these days everyone is a "designer":
Joe Duffy, Duffy and Partners: Design decisions are made by most everyone every day. What should I wear today? What kind of car should I buy? What color? Which options? What about the new sofa for the family room? Access to information and a myriad of choices allow people to quite literally design their lives. This is a good thing. As Americans act more like designers, they achieve a better understanding of design's importance in their lives.
Andrew Keen, AfterTV: My 4 ½-year-old daughter thinks she's a clothes designer. She comes down to breakfast in deep purple and electric orange T-shirts, odd shoes, even odder headwear. Can dreadful aesthetics be cute? Only to a parent. The consequence of your design democracy is an ugly spectacle of deep purples and electric oranges. It's a culture of me-me-me: my hideously personalized car, my hideously personalized sofa, my hideously personalized house. If we care about maintaining an aesthetic of public space, design should be left to professionals.
I'm not being elitist about this, I definitely believe in collaboration as a design approach and I can point to lots of details in jobs that originated as the ideas of the client. I get mad when people get stubborn about 'their' idea because "anyone can be a designer" - makes me want to bring up the brilliant analogy posted here years ago by Lula: "Yeah, everyone can design just like everyone can sing - but I don't go around calling myself Aretha Franklin".
I'm going to preface this by saying i haven't read the whole thread...
i do believe in user generated content / open source...
i do believe in bell's comment...
but here's where i differ... i think the content that we can grab is more cultural than technical... and i think that's where we need to draw the line... who stamps the drawings is the valid comment... and we can't convert to a socialist open source society where we all throw input into a building, software, machine, etc... and then governmental agency is charged the task of reviewing and being liable for the end product... it's just too far off to do anything but dream of it...
but i think open source content is now giving us a pool of ideas larger than anything history has generated so far... cultural precedents are being established at a far greated rate... what does that mean to trends, fashion, architecture, art... who establishes the next "it" when currently there is now a large number of entirely different ideas coming on the scene at the same time...
currently, the old guard is in place to establish trends, opinions, who gets paid... the NY's, the LA's, the Miami's, the $$$ is still able to pick and choose... but bloggers and other opinion makers, message boards, boards just like this one are gaining influence, archinect itself is certainly still conflicted as architecture is a broad topic of interest in general, but what if we start to link our community as a trendsetter, tastemaker, etc. what if we stopped buying the magazines, the newspapers, going to the galleries, and just logged on.
man, i need to get back to work... there's a point in there somewhere... errr. maybe not
Relevant to this thread is the fact that Architect Magazine's current editorial column mentions our beloved Archinect and this thread where we discussed the new magazine. In other words, "you" do have some influence, or at least a voice, that at least in some circles is being listened to.
Makes me want to be more professional here and stop posting comments about Brad Pitt, though I did consider a "top ten 2006 images of Brad" entry in the Top Ten Lists thread.
well there could always be a "professional" architects website. cant see it as being that much fun though...
I see this similarity in music too: As music becomes more "open source", and the established notion of music becomes broken down...perhaps it becomes easier for an individual to add to this pool of knowledge. The negative perspective might be that this is actually diluting this pool and allowing paris hilton to record an album. But i think we should have faith in our cultural direction that instead of diluting it will open up. IT just becomes easier to notice the sheer magnitude of "bad design" or "bad music" in this pool, but we just need to learn how to filter it better.
I think when you look at it from some distance, its pretty inspiring because many more people are jumping into the pool, whereas 15 yrs ago, the thought of it would never have even crossed their minds. sure, it adds to the scum floating around, but now, we just have to have sharper eyes and ears... which, if it works right, could be so amazing and progressive! the only scary thiing for me is, who really is that person who judges this pool? hopefully its us.
maybe the more architects there are, the more likely something good will be built? despite the corresponding growth of bad design...hm.... argh.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.