i guess it's mother nature's not so gentle way of saying summer is here and it's time to move out. this house at the end of whitis avenue is nearly empty and though i'll be the last to close the door this weekend i take my first small load to san antonio tomorrow. between then and then i'll try to pack in plenty more hill country springs/west campus pool swimming. good lord it is hot.
i think i planned to write something that would tie together this past semester and would make sense of it all. about how i had learned a little more about the brutally banal real world of architecture in practice but had still managed to be that much more optimistic about what architecture could do. how my focus had switched from this little thing called college to thinking about my future outside of school. how i felt fundamentally different about the whole thing.
well apparently somethings never change. my grades are all back and i am an average student. i tried holding a job like thousands of other students and i get fired from that. girls come and go and really were never there in the first place. i sit on my little stool thinking somehow i'm slightly different and can see things slightly clearer but in reality i've got nothing to show. it's amazing how much someone can work the system by being in the top 10% of their high school to automatically get into a good university, be in a good university and automatically get into a good firm, and god knows what else one can work oneself into. simon told me repeatedly i'm a good talker but i figure talk IS cheap and ultimately gets you nowhere. and here's the point where i digress and note that it's not that bad and i tend to exaggerate.
so in this pitstop along the great roadtrip i will find myself now not going to new orleans in order to sit here in conroe and watch tball games and hear about how my dad and his friend sold a donkey to a strip club. it really is a funny story though the summary of "my dad and his friend sold a donkey to a strip club" pretty much says it all.
well that's it kids. finals all complete and the grades are rolling in. i've come to accept the fact that i'm a borderline student and all the great ideas are built on the borderlines. anyway, i've gotten so much more out of this semester that couldn't be transcribed into alpha-numeric-check-plus-minus code. it took reading back on a few of these past entries to realize that.
now as the air starts to smell like summer, i hit the road. austin. conroe. new orleans. austin. san antonio. austin. san antonio. conroe. galveston. conroe. and the back to san antonio to live the rest of my 7 month days. that's a lot of central southern soul searching and gas stops across this great land of america. i'll see you along the way.
seeing as i've been going in and out of consciousness for the past 12 hours i'll write my little summary and call it a day. review happened this morning so i'm in that period where all your cares in the world seem gone and the future shines bright. on the other side of a review you see how much you can really accomplish when you dedicate yourself to something, espcially when it's something you care about. this thing coupled with the theory papers have really kept me going over the past month of unemployment. it's a natural high we're talking about kids. of course that's all grand and well until you realize you've fallen back into three months of horrible summer laziness.
hell, i've earned lazy for a few days before i take on any more worldly issues. my wittle brain is worn and my xacto induced wounds need a vacation.
p.s. i'm listening to the dj abortion and pretty show on wtul. it's been great listening to these girls late fridays over the past four years but sadly this is the last show. thanks nicole and kristen for the memories...of me sitting alone at my computer on a friday night.
one week from now it really won't matter. with finals over, this project completed, and this hacking sickness but a memory, i'll be made in the metaphorical shade. until then, let's dock the sleeping hours and become that robotic marc we all know and love.
i'm tired.
We’ve found ourselves now at a point of apathy. This is not to say the average person doesn’t tie themself into some sort of passion – be it religion, political cause, or pop star – but these are just manifestations of large scale ideas. They give significance to people by the millions. I mean to say we’ve lost care for the smaller, everyday events that truly dominate our lives without our much knowing it. What happened to the individual? I’ll stop myself before I get too general because the subject at hand is just architecture and I don’t believe it alone can amend the world. If you want to start a revolution you should try being a minister, politician, or pop star, but if you want to make the way a person goes about their everyday a bit more enjoyable then architecture is the appropriate scale. We’re constantly surrounded by the built world so why not allow an evocative emotion or two to be evoked by it.
The question now is if one can actively create the small scale moments that incrementally add to our experience and burn in our minds. Can you match that sensation of a lightening bug at dusk, unable to fly yet still pulsing a second at a time from the ground until it stops and the remaining blue sky fades to obscure the insect against the adjacent twig or leaf? If architecture can even touch on that sensation then something is right. What about the similar flashing of red lighted radio towers far in the distance that you catch at surprising moments from surprising angles and always seems to remind you of that time in your childhood riding across a freeway overpass that gave you the same such glimpse. Good architecture should read as a run on sentence.
Though architects around the world have successfully crafted the great pieces of architecture that catch our attention and cover our magazine pages, what happens when you turn the corner and run into the local office park? We have fallen too far into the “weekend mentality” of biting the bullet Monday through Friday only to enjoy Saturday and Sunday and in turn again dread the following Monday. The side streets, shopping centers, and storage sheds of the world have just as much to offer as our symphony halls. Good architecture has no beginning or end.
This is not to say that a master architect is needed to design the world. In fact it is when we try to see the world as a large canvas to be painted upon that we lose its multifaceted character. This was the failing of the International style and the shortcoming of most city planning endeavors. We are not all the same, as political correctness might imply. The world is full of inconsistencies and variables amongst its people and landscapes so let them exist and thrive in that character. Good architecture is erratic.
We must avoid, however, the manufactured character of Disney World sets that our neighborhoods and cities have become. It’s not simply architecture at issue here because most of the man made world has been filtered and focus group tested to death so that we arrive at highly polished and processed environments. Furthermore, though a building’s primary purpose is to protect us from the elements, we’ve now shielded ourselves to the point of no surprises. Hot and cold mean nothing other than that they frame 72˚ on each side of the dial. When problems do arise, we are left astonished and ill prepared. Good architecture is full of chance.
Interestingly enough though, these individual persons, buildings, and moments do not exist completely independent of each other. Everything is infinitely intertwined and the beauty is that we’re constantly ebbing and flowing alongside each other. This adds to the overall complexity. The key is to not get lost in the tide and to allow that one evocative flash of emotion to stick out in the blinking crowd every so often. With that, you revolutionize that one space on earth at that one place in time, and in that moment nothing else matters.
maybe the reservations we have about manifesting our thoughts on architecture, life, and everything in between into a two page essay stems from our reluctance to take a stance on what we're not sure of. i came into college almost four years ago anxious to tackle intellectual subjects and wax philosophical in coffee shops (with me of course drinking hot chocolate) so as to come up with the grand answer to it all. needless to say, both me and the world have changed greatly in the past four years and the tiny little issue of all-the-world's-problems seems a bit more complex than it did to my eighteen year old eyes.
so i played devil's advocate and then played no one's advocate. this semester has finally forced me to advocate my own thoughts for a change. really you have to draw a line somewhere between the Sun-Ridge-Grove Mansions and the Bricklane slums. where do you stand? what is your manifesto destiny?
for now i'm still unsure but i'm definitely tackling the subjects with some sort of passion.
i need to get to new york city. they're calling me. the people, the buildings, the idea. they're all calling.
