“Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities” is, at least nominally, about urbanism and architecture. [...]
The problems, not the solutions, presented in “Uneven Growth” are very real. Before Gadanho and his teams of architects, planners, and researchers can suggest productive solutions, they would do well to acknowledge that their fellow practitioners hold responsibility for the very state of urban affairs they seek to remedy.
— blouinartinfo.com
8 Comments
Are they really saying that architects are responsible for the socio-economic ills of megacities, and we're not doing enough to fix our mistakes? I went and read the article, and it seems so... Attack us for our hypothetical solutions etc. Architects don't have the money or political power to enact solutions, many of which would be an affront to the elites of the world who DO hold the money and political power to ACTUALLY make real change. All this coming from a journal that reports on the art world for the elite, hardly a perspective I would reference when critiquing an exhibition focusing on "those" people...
Mr_Wiggin, we have driven ourselves to this position. Just look at the architectural education, we focus on form driven design, and this transcends to most of what happens around us. So in other words, we have relinquished our power to affect change to the "elites with the money and political power", and frankly it is too late to change anything now.
I think I was more pointing out the fact that the critique was a pointless piece trumpeting that fact. I think a much more interesting exhibition would be how we take the power back... A much more realistic topic to investigate than how we can design a better world through utopian design theories. I'm not all that worried about our culpability in the current state of things as the world governments cow-towing to moneyed interests and the Bilderberg types are entirely to blame as they have always had the real power to do the right thing. We'll just continue to point fingers till while the world burns...
Who are these Euro curators that keep being excreted into formerly great American institutions--all preaching the same obsession with things that are vaguely political-high liney with a sprinkle of patronization of the poor in fetishization of favelas and slums and a love of "smart cities" and Silicon Valley worship. I prefer how Le Corusier and the modernists dealt with a design problem--with architecture. You may not like their imperfect imitators but at least it was building.
Again there is a reason why poor people continue to move to cities like New York, because of the promise of its architecture.
So spare me the architecture isn't important line. It's the only important thing. I guess the most radical solution today is to build a building.
To the extent that Corbu's urban models were followed, then yes, architects are responsible. Also for for not refusing to do things that will have obvious bad results. But it's investment money and politics that sets the parameters in which architects work.
"Again there is a reason why poor people continue to move to cities like New York, because of the promise of its architecture."
You, sir, sound like an idiot.
+++ doc
Ball don't lie
http://m.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303773704579266431847188194
Guess the data/history is made by "idiots".... Sir
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