garethace
Forum Replies Created
- Posts
This kind of image, might explain better what i mean. The builder would hate you for all the metal casting etc. Only the OPW, like in the Botanical Gardens could get away with this, or perhaps Merrit Bucholtz in Swords. But look at how much it does mean for the people – think about buildings of Calatrava, and we do have one in Dublin too – clients, budget etc. It is a pity the Calatrava bridge wasn’t put down near Temple Bar or someplace, or one as good as it. Where it is, who uses it? Who enjoys it? At the moment anyhow.
Okay then, try this as a shortened version:
I just feel the debate as to how an Architect handles a client, has received altogether much less attention, than other aspects like Building Construction.
I would be particularly interested in how you define the client. How widely would you define the ‘client’, is it society, is it the person who uses the architecture or is it the government council who commissioned the architecture or the developer who stands to make a profit. How would you try to define the Architects relationship with all of this? I mean the Building Materials people, and many of the younger tutors in architectural schools would seem to have quite a wider definition of Architect/client/user/society relationships than you or I might prefer to have. Personally I find it much easier to define the client as just another individual in the design process – basically the guy with the check book. Read the part about having a large council, delegation or company as your client, which isn’t nearly as straightforward. Or defining the Architect in realationship to the broader social environment as Tracings 2 tries attempts to do. Which in ways is just a bigger challenge, and probably one that is vastly unsuited to a normal Irish 10-20 person Architectural practice. I think Louis Kahn bit off a lot more than he could chew, and his practice regulary lost clients, or just couldn’t keep up with the work. Very often his students at Philly would get his projects as studio exercises – I mean schemes as big as Chandigarh to do in studio in college. I got a MEGA-Project to do in 1997/98 in Fourth year in Bolton Street. And an Olympic Swimming Pool back in 1996/97 for the TS. I am leaving that open to question, the floor is all yours.
Who will be the Dr. Do Little of the Architectural profession?
This was an introduction to a book about Architects, the environment and society at Sinead Bourke’s Introduction to Tracings 2
This volume is a forum for discussion and the overall impression is one of seeking. This volume does not profess to provide answers and none are provided. What it does give the reader however are fresh viewpoints and insights. No doubt, the aim of this series is to expand our sense of awareness of the built environment to hopefully inform and bring about a better quality environment. This series has started a much needed process, one which needs to be extended however to make its presence more felt outside the realm of architecture. Should contributions be included from sectors of the community actually building the built environment, as well as from those affected by it, a more palpable and no doubt valid discussion would ensue.
I like that Eddie Murphy movie, ‘Doctor Do Little’, where he suddenly began to hear all the animals speak, and re-discovered the trill of being in medical practice for himself. This buzz, which had eluded him for so long, did somehow return. He started treating the animals and found himself giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the rats! Dr. Do Little re-discovered clients in the most unusual places. The Medical industry became really client/public oriented from the beginning. The Architecture profession can treat even its well off clients very poorly in my view.
I have even witnessed the company execs and rich house wives being practically shoved around by the Architects – not to mind the common rats. I mean the doctor is a professional, but that doesn’t prevent him showing courtesy to good clients. The doctor develops a real relationship to his/her client I think, and that helps him to diagnose the problems, notice mood changes etc. On another level, the medical profession can study the changes and swings generally in health care and the community over a longer period of generations.
Architecture might change some time in the future, and become more of a fully-grown service to society, the public, the client rather than a contract supervisory sort of thing. Louis Kahn was an architect who showed us how to become deeply related to the client, rather than the building contractor. Without allowing the client to diagnose the illnesses for you that is. He managed to show us, how Modernism with a little help from Beaux Arts times could in fact be more than what Mies had shown us. An Architect worth looking at from this particular viewpoint is Malaysian Ken Yeang, who holds dual qualifications in marketing and in Architect. Ken believes strongly in Architects educating their market, and does a lot of this himself to the well off Asian clients. There is a good chapter about Ken Yeang, in the Bryan Lawson book ‘How Designers Think’.
In the ‘How Designers Think’ book by Bryan Lawson, Michael Wilford who was a partner with James Stirling explains how difficult it is sometimes to deal with clients on larger master planning projects. Because sometimes the client is a large council or board, which can often change many times over the course of a longer design process. Indeed sometimes the Architect is the only remaining individual who began the process at the start. Indeed, learning to hear these clients say anything, or offer you any suggestions is really a job cut out for a Dr. Do Little. For a students final thesis here in Ireland, students are asked to develop a real relationship to a client. I remember one young man who wanted to design an Airport and took his motor bicycle out to Aer Lingus, to get a brochure from a receptionist! (Crash helmet under his arm) But at least he made an effort! Most students bypass that stage of the ordeal completely and draw, draw, draw.
I am really tired of people describing architects like Louis Kahn, as late bloomers. That Kahn never built anything in his life, and then suddenly started building all of these buildings. Perhaps Kahn had just gotten to know him self and others better at that stage? I think that Louis Kahn was sort of like the Dr. Do Little or the Architectural profession, who suddenly experienced super sonic hearing abilities. At the very moment, the Architect is like a very big hired piece of artillery, a bit more like the Panzer Four division of the German army. Something the client uses to go to war with on many different fronts.
This temperament doesn’t quite suit the client, public, user relationship thing as well though. I honestly do wonder, how much of the client/Architect relationship has indeed become watered down – through this insistence upon directing the builder’s operations from an office/contract. The reason I am just curious, is mainly owing to the fact, that my architectural education has been so dogmatic about the building technology side of things.
I am just looking at analogies for Architecture as a service industry. Things like exclusive clinics where professionals pander to the clients every need. I mean there is no point in turning over millions, if you still are insolvent at the end of the day. How ‘serviceable’ can the Architecture profession actually become, before you are putting too much of what you earn back into the service to your client. Considering that a good 3DS VIZ-ualists salary might be more than what some Architects make. On the other hand, I have seen Architect saying to clients basically, you are important up to a point, but basically you will have to take whatever I give you. Or what the builder can build, and I can stand over.
Were Architects like Kahn unable to delegate, was that model of professional practice a bit like ‘in an era of tall cuisine, it was the tallest cuisine around’? Certainly Kahn did go to great pains, compared to other professionals to care about his clients/users. I just feel the debate as to how an Architect handles a client, has received altogether much less attention, than other aspects like Building Construction. Is that a mistake, or a limitation of the profession? Your guess is about as good as mine, since I have never built anything. It’s easy to draw a dark shadow line on the buildings cornice, it can cost so much more to actually create it. The “Builders” very quickly reduce the cornice dimensions to typical lumber sizes or less costly profiles. In an effort to minimize costs and maximize profits, usually on the client’s behalf.
I think that the Chicago school, from what I understand of Werner Blaser’s books on the subject anyhow, was all about learning to feel the building through the weight of your pencil. To distinguish between a heavy line, or a light line and what have you. Even in the 1:20 detail profile, showing the steel sections for the builder to actually use. Mies van der Rohe, sat down one day with a young student at MIT and just looked at a drawing for an hour without saying anything. Then went out of the room, and none of the students said anything either. But they knew exactly what he meant – to look at what you are drawing! I like this quote from Cathal O’Neill, a description similar in fact to the practice of reading.
The purpose of the exercise was clear; it is, after all, the basis of every architect’s work process to propose, observe, refine. But the lesson was clear: architects spend too much time proposing and rarely enough time observing and refining.
But there is another kind of Architect too, the one who develops the client relationship a lot more. Even when that client happens to be a whole entire city or suburb. I talked a lot about how VIZ or drawing can teach you to see the world around you. Louis Kahn was very aware of how people experience and use his buildings. From all points of view, like how we use a room, a corridor (or sneak passages as he called the modern equivalent in high-schools etc), how natural daylight is the giver of all presences. His many models and sketches are all excellent vehicles of his understanding about clients/sites/briefs etc. Of his attempt to understand the relationship of people with the built environment.
Someone said to me the other day, not everything in life comes to you on a plate. It is funny I didn’t actually know what that person meant by that statement and I casually brushed it off initially. That is, until I was chatting to a very knowledgeable music type of individual. He asked me to explain Architecture to him, as best as I could. I proceeded into my normal long effort of what I think Architecture is/is not. But suddenly I drew back and said, lets wait a minute here – perhaps things don’t always come handed to you on a plate. So I suggested that I e-mail him a few hyperlinks, to some of my deeper discussions about the topic.
I mean, isn’t there something in the effort of reading? Isn’t there some sense of achievement when you have finished that page, and worked yourself to understand something relevant or important? I mean if I give it straight up on a plate in a pub/cafe, to some guy who thinks he knows everything (and possibly does too) about music, did that person have to work for that? No. So my question is precisely this, why isn’t Architecture about learning how to read, to observe and to refine, AS WELL as learning how to propose?
Is information just tasty bite sized chunks now? A seudo, pre-processed version of the real thing, and are we all like puppies? Until the Architecture profession does learn to be a thinking, a probing, a questioning profession, it will perhaps never ask the right questions about itself. Not to mind find any of the right answers. And I go back to my friend Louis Kahn once more: “A good question is always much better than the best answersâ€.
Louis Kahn died in a toilet cubicle in some foreign airport, on the way back from Pakistan to the United States. It just explains what a great affection the man really did have for his clients, his site and the whole rich process of designing Architecture. I imagine more young architects nowadays would just say to hell with that. E-mail me over some digital photos of the site, and a schedule of accommodation – I will have something for you by Friday. That is I suppose the biggest criticism I have of projects like the Egyptian Museum one in Cairo. At least the winning entrants actually flew over and drove around the dusty roads, in some Egyptian guys Taxi!
Another person said to me recently, “Go and build something and then you might know what Architecture is all aboutâ€. I wonder is that the problem, that Architects are in a mad rush to build something? I think that Louis Kahn has left behind him, as many UNBUILT great projects as REALISED great projects. And what he actually built seems to have this timeless quality about it. It does not look like something built in the 20th century often, and I believe he intended that to be the case too.
Yet in the current profession a design, which is un-realised is deemed to be inferior. As if most Architects actually got on planes and taxis to visit that much Architecture anyhow. As if looking at the real photography of a new building in a magazine, was any different from looking at a VIZualisation. You see the blatant hypocrisy? The traditional well-trodden path taken by Architect after Architect over the past 100 years has been this.
1. Architect meets with a client willing to build.
2. Architect builds a building for that client.
3. Architect then draws concept sketch for the building and proceeds to talk to other Architects and to post-rationalise what (s)he has done.
4. Architect then publishes their words, opinions and photographs of their work in a magazine. They expend more effort after the design has been completed attempting to imbue something rather lifeless with life and to inject it with some class.
5. Architect then becomes famous and a household name amongst circles of rich clients and other Architects.
6. Architect then perpetuates the myth of their very own celebrity.
Notice how ready-made, easy to consume, like watching a TV programme as oposed to reading a book, this whole process is? All the talking and looking normally happens when the cheques have all cleared and the Architect has some spare time to waffle and debate. Everything looks rather different in hindsight. The Architect doesn’t really discuss his/her work with the client, but with other Architects. Notice how very easy it is to summarise things now, and package them into nice tasty bite sized chunks? I find it very intriguing the way that Louis Kahn in fact, by-passed a lot of the Architecture of today, and went right back to the sourse to identify what the Architect really is, in relation to the people of this little world.
Brian O’ Hanlon. 14th September 2003.
An interesting study of the Washington Metropolitan area found this interesting results:
WASHINGTON (September 8, 2003) – Metropolitan areas with more compact growth, a wide mix of land uses, plentiful transportation options, and which were mostly developed prior to the use of the automobile are generally less expensive places to live, in terms of the combined costs for housing and transportation, according to an analysis of consumer expenditures by the Urban Land Institute (ULI).
The analysis, conducted by ULI Senior Resident Transportation Fellow Robert Dunphy, involved consumer expenses in 28 metropolitan areas during 2001, according to spending data released earlier this year by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not surprisingly, housing accounted for one-third of spending by U.S. households in 2001, twice the amount spent in 1972, reflecting “higher homeownership and larger and lavish homes,†Dunphy said. However, transportation costs ranked a close second to housing, at 19 percent of the average household budget, more than food and clothing combined. The average household spent more than $7,600 annually on transportation, of which $7,200 was for buying and maintaining cars and trucks. In comparison, an average of $400 was spent on public transportation, which included expenditures for air fares.
Good idea for a thread i think actually. I did come across an interesting link today, dealing with the idea of landmarks in the middle of other urban functions, like urban housing etc.
Rarely do football stadiums look or function like baseball parks. Football does not have a tradition and history as deep as baseball’s. Football stadiums are bigger, they generate more automobile traffic on game days, and the team plays there only a few days a year (whereas major-league baseball teams play at least 81 homes games a year). Since football stadiums sit empty most of the time and generally have mammoth parking requirements, they don’t make promising urban building blocks.
ANTI-URBAN BEHEMOTH
Eisenman’s design for the Arizona Cardinals, though praised in The Times, is downright anti-urban — surrounded by parking lots. Such big, isolated structures naturally tend to be designed as “object buildings†or “icons†rather than as contributors to lively, mixed-use urban districts. Photographers conspire with the architects, the team owners, and whatever companies bought the stadium naming rights to show how dramatic these venues look like from the air, as opposed to documenting how they look from the poor pedestrian’s perspective. “They’re designed for the blimp shot,†Sandy Sorlien, a Philadelphia photographer, complained on the Tradarch e-mail discussion list affiliated with the Institute for Traditional Architecture. Not uncommonly, architectural writers glorify such stadiums if they look novel and striking, even though their design and siting are unneighborly.I am rather interested in this discussion here. Driving to qualify, lower house costs and much higher transportation costs. It is true to say, that having your money tied up in a more expensive house in a better location could appreciate. Whereas having more money tied up in running two cars per each once-off rural bungalow means depreciation of investment longer term.
I like your line of thinking there James, because i feel in dense countries like Holland, you get the impression that land is respected and taken care of by everyone. I must say i do like that way of seeing things. I Helsinki i also noticed the approach to land, roads, development, houses and vegetation was so much more environmentally friendly than here. I mean as soon as we build houses here, we have to suddenly rip up nature and tame it, to straighten it out and replace it altogether. I was interested in Helsinki how nature was often allowed to co-exist, and buildings were merely using the ground as sensitively as they could manage to. But in that harsh Northern climate, people did not attempt ‘to beat nature’.
However, the idea of the estate breaking up is incorrect in my view. I most parts of the country, where the land commission worked, right up until 1979 (when it had lost its relevancy completely and become another fat extension of buerocracy, to be used and abused by politians and people alike) it was used to take property off many older people in the West or Ireland. They change of focus to un-utilised land as it was refered to – or land where the owner was perhaps too old, and his/her kids/relations were in Dublin opting for a different lifestyle. The neighbours would simply make a cartel together and decide which piece they wanted to have for themselves. The land commission was simply another ‘farmer get rich quickly scheme’.
How alot of these people who received land back in the 60s or 70s even, in this fashion, are getting old themselves. The state would end up keeping them in homes etc, as they grow older, but rather than burden the state, liquidising their assets allows them to remain somewhat more independent. You see the same happening in Dublin nowadays with the ‘nanny’s old house in town’. In England, the State forced older people to sell the house, and they are put into homes. Paying out of the money for their houses.
Most plots the land commission gave away initially were just starter packs, to get people off-the-ground. One cow, a few hens, a pig and some hay, spuds etc – subsistance famer really, like in the third world. However, most of those 10-acre plots which the land commission gave away initially in the 1930s were soon found to be un-economical, and were re-distributed to people who got bigger and bigger and bigger gradually WITHOUT paying for a scrap of land, through the land commission. Why do you think today that farmers own so many segragated, scattered across the whole parish, narrow 10-acre plots stretching back from our rural road infrastructure?
I believe this is where the original farmer getting hand-outs came from, in an era before there was dole, or free education, unmarried mothers allowance or very much else – the clergy and nuns were taking care of education, health, and basically most services to the community. Like in the third world today, it is dangerous to give people too much, too quickly – the land commission in its second and final phases, helped to start a trend of ‘over-dependency’ by the farming culture, which has continued right until this day – the current bungalow row, is just the last great battle in this long saga between people and land.
So while, you have struck upon a very relevant point there, I am afraid you need to get a bit of ‘on the ground’ info first, before tearing off in any one direction or argument. I would love to see the Irish people living in cities like Dublin, be able to buy the land required for LUAS project for instance. Since so much money is being spent, it would been nice if the thing had worked out better. Perhaps Bertie should have been stronger willed there also. Another point i would like to mention, is that Dublin City Council would love to get rid of alot of park areas around Dublin, and little open spaces – sell them to private interests and make them inaccessible to the public. Again, in a place like Paris, Barcelona, Helsinki this doesn’t happen as much.
But don’t forget for a second, it was the current Bertie administration who initially gave the thumbs up to selling very important assets we had control over, such as the Eircom company. I know that Bertie’s government must have got temporarily obese with the gains from selling Eircom, and has managed to spend all of that cash already. So we are back to square one, and I think the information infrastructure could have been much improved to develop some of the remoter parts of Ireland, and to bring them up to the 21C. So don’t blame the farmers now, for wanting to be entreprising in their own right – they learned from the Master in that – Bertie.
You’ve had that problem too? Yeah, the sheets and amounts of sheets, and repetition of the same information on more and more and more paper seems to be a joke now. That is speaking from a point of view of someone with some architectural training that is. However, what do the planners have?
Naw, we are just going to do what we damn well feel like. In a country like Ireland, these high values are a bit of a mis-nomer. Mario Botta built some lovely structures in a wild Swiss structure, which aren’t so remote anymore. Look at the history of France in the mid 20C. It held on to rugby as a remnant ofor rural nostalgia, but it became industrialised. The great teams still come from the more rural south. Gaelic football and hurling will be the same in Ireland in the future. I can even see it happening already. But I hear you about the 10 second news at 6 type of political swinging happening now. Bertie feeds on the media – he’s a rolling stone, except they don’t like cameras so much anymore.
As for the idea of centralisation – that is what they did in China, which is the most centralised country in the world. Some states in the USA like Oregon tried to do the same. Richard Florida, would argue that people are just drifting to places, where you find other people like you. As oposed to North v South politics in America, now you have 50/50 politics at a molecular level. Conservative areas, and then very Liberal areas. Pro-war and Anti-war, Pro-Bush and Anti-Bush. A bit like the hot and cold currents than run through our planets oceans.
what a great enterprising young nation we have matured into! 🙂
Here is a link for our foreign neighbours who might not have RTE!
This is another useful little background piece i have found written by Donal Hickey:
What Bertie said last July 2003
The Taoiseach said the Government shared the resolve of trade unionists to build more affordable housing.
I mean, in realilty, what once-off housing actually amounts to is a form of affordable housing for many first-timers these days. Because there is no affordable housing to be got in towns and cities – so the landscape and urban sprawl situation has to suffer owing to a nasty nettle that has never been grasped by Bertie in the towns/cities in the first place. I repeat, none of these people building bungalows have anything to do with the land nowadays.
I have found other countries such as the United States nowadays asking that very same question:
We will all just look like a crowd of miserable ould women, waffling on about the beauty of the Irish rural landscape. No one in this country gives two f**** about the landscape, when the kiddies want a playstation, or a new CD, and the guy in his bungalow is doing 12 hour shifts with 3,000 other robots down in DELL. He doesn’t get to experience much of this beautiful landscape you are so keen to preserve. What he does need is a really fast car to make the 7.30am starting bell though! 🙂 Ah who gives a shite about the Irish landscape, its one big real estate property and we are all Michael Dell’s merry men and women now anyhow! 🙂 I spent 4 months making cardboard boxes inside in that shed on the outskirts of Limerick city, with a beautiful view of the landscape, but i didn’t see much of it. I was joined by about a thousand old farmers. I did get sick of hearing Limerick 95FMs same 10 songs all the time though!
Now you hit Berty with some of Florida’s concepts of Creative classes and what have you, and you just might convince peoples’ attitudes in all walks of life to change from this rap music, shopping centre spending irish celtic tiger song we are all so sick of listening to.
Ah now, you are making sense. Because you are discussing the environment from a specific point of view – the density issue. I rambled off admittedly on a rant about the people living in urban/rural areas, and the difficulties they face. How Dublin based politians often cannot relate to the populations outside the capital, to whom they are supposed to provide government to.
But I can see where you are coming from now. I am from the country yes, but early this year i did find myself having to deal with an urban proposal for the Broadstone/Kings Inns area in Dublin. Which has sort of been left behind by the O’Connell Street and Harp urban rejuvenation Master Plans. I being from the Country, had a difficult time relating to the issues etc, in that project for college in BOlton Street.
But one collection document from California, USA did help: http://www.greenbelt.org. Try reading about Smart Growth, or Smart infill as it is often called. New Urbanism was another debate raging in the States. But it deals more with tracts of land that you drive to in a car, on roads. Whereas the idea of Smart Infill is public transit based communities.
The classic screw-up is here in Dublin where we first built the suburbs and now have light rail projects following motorways and stopping at 5 different sets of traffic lights on the Mad Cow roundabout.
But to be honest, while i accept the focus of the discussion, that about urban density and sustainability. I often do find Architects and Planners have a habit to dwell on the Building aspect of design, or the Planning aspect of design. While the people on the ground actually using the environment we talk about – who studies them?
You see my point? THis fellow Richard Florida web site has tackled the social aspects to our environment, and studied how the globalisation of society has impacted the places where we have always lived. And dealt with issues like social inclusion/exclusion. Which are much more detrimental to the human fabric that makes up the environment, than green space at times.
It is nice to be able to enjoy the green space from a distance, from a holiday makers point of view in Dublin. But the people living in all the green space, how are their chances in the new century? Especially as their traditional means to survival, agriculture, has almost now evaporated. Because this ultimately what will make the environment unsustainable or not – not solar panels and green fields.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
People think very often that because you build say 1,000 new houses at the edge of Dublin/Meath that is somehow the end of the whole story. But another point of view would argue, that its best to weave and mix some other functions through these masses of residential areas, to make diversity, and variety possible within communities. I mean, most of Ireland is suburban now, it isn’t just about building beside the parents, since none of these people living beside their parents will have anything to do with the land anymore, since no money is to be made from the land anymore. They will all be working in towns and driving on the roads to everything. So is there a strategy to provide better open public facilities in the major Irish Towns in Ireland. Opportunities for adult education etc, and better strategies to deal with traffic, parking and so on.
Why do you have to wait for a godshite like Ahern to set the ball rolling, why not prove that the board here at Archiseek can have its own independent opioions about the problems facing rural Ireland nowadays, and cover the broader angle, as oposed to just a tiny little focus that is to do with media spinning and vote collecting. Ahern’s big talent, was he was more hungry to impress people, and win them over with the energy and his personality. Mr. Noonan, looked far too old and shagged by the time he got to do his leadership thing, and run for general election. The politians major function is to focus in on things that will swing popularity in their favour at the right time. An Architecture board, should aspire to a little bit more.
Why start another Bertie thread? Why not aim higher, and start a rural Ireland thread? Grow up people and aim for a brighter future. This debate is so OLD and TIRED now, it is no worth dragging up again, yet we as a nation spend so much of our time, being way-led by politians down these cul-de-sacs while they proceed to fuck up this nations chances of ever building a future. Why do you think all the tech firms want to leave? Because this country still hasn’t got an efficient information highway, a fast, economical and reliable way for people to do their knowledge based work. Other countries around the world are willing to offer that. What did Ireland do, but sell its biggest asset – the phone network to T. O’Reilly who is now busy ripping it up to see what he can make as a profit. No longterm goals for broadband access or anything. Wake up people, this is 2003 and we are heading for 2004.
One of the more comprehensive definitions of Social exclusion comes from the European
Commission:Social exclusion refers to the multiple and changing factors resulting in people being
excluded from the normal exchanges, practices and rights of modern society. Poverty is
one of the most obvious factors, but social exclusion also refers to inadequate rights in
housing, education, health and access to services. It affects individuals and groups,
particularly in urban and rural areas, who are in some way subject to discrimination or
segregation; and it emphasizes the weaknesses in the social infrastructure and the risk
of allowing a two-tier society to become established by default. The Commission
believes that a fatalistic acceptance of social exclusion must be rejected, and that all
Community citizens have a right to the respect of human dignity.The term ‘social exclusion’ is often interpreted as being more or less synonymous with poverty or disadvantage. However there are important differences. First, the concept of poverty is primarily concerned with the extent to which a household’s income falls below a particular level. Second, disadvantage, as a concept, focuses on the lack of material resources and social services and supports. Thus policies that address poverty and disadvantage primarily are concerned with resource distribution (including goods and services).51
By contrast to poverty, social exclusion examines dimensions like poverty and disadvantage within a wider context. Most notable, it sees social exclusion as a consequence of fundamental structural changes occurring in the global economy that have transformed local economies. In addition to the impact of globalization processes on social exclusion, the concept also considers national economic policies, welfare regimes, rights of citizenship and local governance as affecting social exclusion. While the causes may be structural, its effects can also be ameliorated or exacerbated by the attitudes, activities and policies of governmental bodies at all spatial scales.
Next time, you want to persaude anyone, you know anything about rural Ireland, try and do a bit better than just giving us all your own personal Dublin no. 1 slant upon things. I come originally from rural Ireland myself. But i am sick and tired of the problems facing rural Ireland being so over-simplified, and nicely packaged into this 10 second sound byte, which is so easy for D1s to swallow while watching the 6 o’ Clock news. When the real problems are pretty damn obvious to everyone who lives there, but they demand due consideration and proper treatment by experts (excluding Mr. Ahern right from the off).
Brian O’ Hanlon.
Now guys, before we all push that boat out and allow yet another debate about the environment become all so coloured by hatred for your own elected representatives… which we love doing in Ireland, and wastes loads of time I think, why not widen the debate about rural Ireland. Lets look at the wider picture of rural Ireland, some hard facts, rather than just allowing a couple of stupid farmers down the country define the problem for us, in their very limited perspective of the whole thing. I come from such an area in West Limerick and read some of my experiences of services to the community here, in particular information services:
You just don’t build houses, because where you have lots of houses, you have lots of kids coming out of them, and lots of places the kids need to go and learn etc, etc. This discussion is also pretty damn interesting in relation to the Dublin/rural contrast for young kiddies growing up i think. Kids in Dublin have everything, whereas kids down in LImerick might have houses but very little else i am afraid.
I was in DIT in Angier Street there recently for the nightclass registration and it was like a god damn football match. What is the equivalent in Limerick, a job working shifts in DELL computers in Limerick, on a temp contract? How many knowledge communities are they going to establish where all of these bungalows are built?
Something else familiar i am sure:
I have just been thinking people, about a fair enough point raised in a thread by what? That not everything in life comes to you on a plate. It is funny I didn’t actually know what that poster meant by the statement. That is, until I was chatting to a very knowledgeable music type of individual. He asked me to explain Architecture to him, as best as I could. I proceeded into my normal long effort of what I think Architecture is/is not. But suddenly I drew back and said, lets wait a minute here – perhaps things don’t always come handed to you on a plate. So I suggested that I e-mail him a few hyperlinks, to some of my deeper discussions about the topic here at Archiseek.
I mean, isn’t there something in the effort of reading? Isn’t there some sense of achievement when you have finished that page, and worked yourself to understand something relevant or important? I mean, if I give it straight up on a plate in a pub, to some guy who thinks he knows everything (and possibly does too) about music, did that person have to work for that? No. Is information just tasty bite sized chunks now? A seudo, pre-processed version of the real thing, and are we all like puppies?
Mies felt the same way about drawings as i do about reading now, i suppose.
delighted somebody brought up the concept of zero actually. You might find some of this discussion entertaining too – missions to Mars were skuppered, due to the difference between the english pound and the american pound. Engineers and Imperial
Apologises btw, for my ridiculous behaviour of dragging individuals like Konrad Gallagher into the discussion, but I am just looking at analogies for Architecture as a service industry. Things like exclusive clinics where professionals pander to the clients every need. Boob jobs? I mean there is no point in turning over millions, if you still are insolvent at the end of the day. How ‘serviceable’ can the Architecture profession actually become, before you are putting too much of what you earn back into the service to your client. Considering that a good visualists salary might be more than what some Architects make. On the other hand, I have seen Architect saying to clients basically, you are important up to a point, but basically you will have to take whatever I give you. Or what the builder can build, and I can stand over. Were Architects like Kahn unable to delegate, was that model of professional practice a bit like ‘in an era of tall cuisine, it was the tallest cuisine around’? Certainly Kahn did go to great pains, compared to other professionals to care about his clients/users.
I just feel the debate as to how an Architect handles a client, has received altogeher much less attention, than other aspects like Building Construction. Especially in Bolton Street and places. Is that a mistake, or a limitation of the profession? Your guess is about as good as mine, since i have ever built anything.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
P.S. A poster at another message board, did offer his point of view as follows, and it might tie in with what Cathal O’Neill has said in fact.
Architecture on the everyday level is so lacking in detial and feeling. You seem to allude to this in many of your posts. SO much of this has to do with the costs. It’s easy to draw a dark shadow line on the buildings cornice, it can cost so much more to actually create it. The “Builders” very quickly reduce the cornice dimensions to typical lumber sizes or less costly profiles. In an effort to minimze costs and maximize profits, usally on the clients behalf. Where does this leave the architect… “You can’t beat um jion um”.
This is similar to the Firefighters here in the US. Thier unions and associations fought to ultimately eliminate wood truss construction. Due to the inherent rapid failure rate in fire. Many still to this day have a real problem with wood truss construction. Commercial use is protected by automatic sprinkler systems from, at least in part, that effort. But the real piont I’m making is, not one FF I know opted for the additional cost of standard wood framing in thier own homes. Go figure. At the end of the day it’s about costs.
Ideals fade quickly when it costs money.So I suppose really what Mies and Kahn did have in common, was being able to prepare a design, which was perfection of sorts – either from the build-ability point of view, or the clients/user experience point of view. And that the Architects ability to draw, sketch or design spaces that people can enjoy happens before and not after the building has been constructed. Sounds like a convincing explanation of what an Architect does alright, and a good defense of his/her major activity – that of handling equisse designs, sketches, working drawings etc. Working through the language of a drawing to learn more about a project. Except in Kahn, it was a lot more like a classical, ancient esquisse drawing. Whereas in Mies, it was a rational means by which to build.
The purpose of the exercise was clear; it is, after all, the basis of every architect’s work process to propose, observe, refine. But the lesson was clear: architects spend too much time proposing and rarely enough time observing and refining.
I like this quote from Cathal O’Neill, a description similar in fact to the practice of reading. Instead of just consuming little bites of information in handy disposable quantities.
I wonder where this Mies, Johnson connection came from? Did they have any friendship? I know that Mies used to like to have young students call into his apartment to tell stories, and drink brandy etc.
Did you ever hear the story about Wright knocking on the windows of the Glass house looking for the door?
