I guess with time passing the "shock" of our tutors' approach is gone and we all get the grips with reality and start making our own ideas about it: my view on the whole thing is that this is pretty much community orientated advanced Architecture.

the edge which is usually associated with this type of Architecture is taken off by an attention to the small scale, the human, sometimes the phenomenological. Whereas the data in advanced Architecture comes from numbers, facts and figures, our data comes from close observation of the local conditions, at curb level, at street corner level.

There seems to be a split down the middle in the studio: some people are using this approach head down, and some others are using it in a more personal way, adapting it to their own agenda.
And the people in the first group are struggling, some have not ewven developed a prototype, a proposal of any kind.



It has to be remembered that the EOTM site analysis, the LOOM as a development infrastructure, are techniques still being developed, and they have so far only been applied by a limited number of likeminded people.

Is it right to teach such a method to students who should be laying the foundations to their method of enquiry and design development? Will they learn another trick to add to their bag, or will they simply end up being more confused?

I, for one, and the people i have been most closely working with, have our own agenda, or at least we believe we do. We know what we dont like (definitely better than what we like) and we can be highly critical toward those things. It becomes probaly easier for us to relate to this method being taught to us.



Others, which are not as cocky and as self assured as we might be, seem to be having a harder time developing their proposals, because they are required to think in a new way. I guess that they can potentially learn a lot more from thing, whereas we might not WANT to.



My proposal is starting to take shape, it's going to be all about the roof, with elliptical-cone-sections domes that reflect sound, and a demographics-based radio programs schedule of music and community programs.



A little note: yesterday night i was browsing through content (the oma/amo book) and i read am critique of the word community...never thought about it in that sense, but calling a goup of people a community is foundamentally an isolation act toward them, communities today are a virtual entity, with multiple belonging, sometimes opposing each other within the same group. The term is used in socially orientated Architecture with a grouping function, and i think that in the long run it brainwashes the Architect into considering the area he is working on as an island.
so from now on we ban the word. no more community hosing, community projects, community actions...


NEXT!

this post is brought to you by the addiction of the week, kitkat and coffee...take a bite of the candy bar, drink some coffee and feel the chocolate coating melt in your mouth...coffee high, sugar high and endorfines released by the chocolate...it keep you going for hours!

down the bar for £1.20.

this addiction is brought to you by how much i miss my girlfriend.
both were brought to you by copying the GSD blog