By and large, elite architects have disengaged from efforts to make the most fundamental unit of architecture available to all. [...]
Contra Hadid and others, a truly revolutionary architecture would concern itself with how to provide permanent, quality housing for the nearly one billion people currently living in slums, how to create accessible housing for the millions more adversely affected by a global affordability crisis in urban areas.
— jacobinmag.com
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6 Comments
How dare you Zaha. You failed to build housing for one billion people. Shame!
Is this a Kimmelman piece?
We need writers who grasp English-- more of them, not fewer.
As for shit, we have plenty of it, starting with this essay.
I am impressed at how almost every architecture cliche is fit into this narrative. And yet never any architects that are both design and social, like say Holl, SHoP, or 99% of practicing firms.
"Her vision and ambition have been rightfully celebrated around the world in the weeks since." So let me shit on every project now and use her as a foil for my dubious social narrative of architecture vs. the people.
I think the author makes very good points, but the irony is that he is an accepting citizen of an apartheid colony (Israel) that profits from the oppression of the Palestinians, the theft of their land and to ethnically cleanse it from them. Although he has written on this topic from the perpective of a 40 something occupation, (also here where he states nearly 50 years) he has not gone far enough in confronting and condemning the realities and conséquences of the zionist project going back to the early 19 century and epically expanded from 1948 onwards . As such, there is quite a bit of hypocricy in penning the article linked. I read this yesterday or the day and found it very on point with regards to architecture. Was going to post it here then researched the author. Hypocricy to silently profit from the oppression and disappearing of another people and then to talk about how architecture doesn't attempt to remedy the oppression of people in general. Go cry me a river.
I usually enjoy Jacobin articles, but this one seems thin to me. It reads like someone with a tiny bit of architectural knowledge thought it would be a good idea to latch on the media hype Hadid's death created, and filled in the blanks of a pre-conceived conclusion with enough cherry-picked examples to make it look like he knows what he's talking about.
Agree, tduds. I couldn't even read the whole thing, I had to skim it. More of the same lazy stereotyping and logical fallacies brought on by failing to grasp a bigger context.
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