The kids on the street never miss a beat...

...but I've missed to make quite a few blog entries lately, so here begins a backtracking session, from the really early stuff several weeks ago through to the latest developments. I've saved up some notes in a separate document that I will try and post in one go now, as I couldn't really find the time (or the energy that day the other week when I was down and out with the Dip9 bug) to get around to it before. I will put the corresponding date at the beginning of each entry (who knows, maybe in the future Movable Type will sort out there act so as to make it possible to change the dates post the fact), and in those cases where I haven't got any images yet, I'll just enter the line [images to follow] and add them later.

First, on popular demand (okay, on Monia's and Natasha's demand), that infamous letter from Sylvia Lavin to Alejandro Zaera-Polo from the second installment of the theory seminars:

[24 October?]

LOVE LETTER

Sylvia Lavin has shown an interest in psychoanalysis in the past. Maybe it's not too far a stretch, then, to read her text as if it is filled with underlying double meanings.

In a way her critique is a kind of love letter to Alejandro Zaera-Polo, albeit the kind of letter a much older and more experienced woman might write to a younger man.

"I like you," she seems to be saying, "I just don't like the way you over-simplify your arguments, and I find your aesthetics quite boring."

She acknowledges that being a critic is not quite the same as being a client, but hastens to add that "most architects would like their clients to love them" thereby implying that most would also want to be loved by the critics. Alejandro and Foreign Office need new modes of seductive speech, she says,  a new book of rules for how to seduce clients - and critics like herself.

If we take Lavin's statement about the critic not being a client but being equally important for the architect to seduce as a client, then the next sentence becomes interesting: "The first rule for how to successfully hook a client (- or a critic -) might be to take him/her out for a drink."

What does Lavin want her drink with Alejandro to be like? Well, before getting her clothes off, she wants to talk about serious issues: what this new mode of seductive speech, of seduction itself, might be. It mustn't be complicated and filled with jargon, she says, it must be a speech that can be understood by the people and by journalists. And it mustn't be based on data and analysis - this can be misunderstood or falsified. So what should the speech be like? Like an image. Not a word image that stands for or signifies something else - a metaphor - but an actual image that "has no logic or verifiability, or truth, or even of use", that "has no particular theme and stands for nothing". She brings up Boullée and Andy Warhol and their interest in shadows, a monochrome murkiness that at least makes me think about where she wants to go with Alejandro after that drink.

WORDS

psychoanalysis

love letter

boring

critic ≠ client

seductive speech

new book of rules

drink

jargon

no data/analysis

image

no logic

shadows

QUESTIONS

For the  Zaera-Polo group:

1) You say that "something wasn't quite working in (y)our carefully crafted discourse," but it seems like you're jumping to conclusions when you automatically believe this is because it was too hard for the public to understand. Maybe it was just boring. Don't you think it's a problem to hold the position that one should give the people what it wants rather than what it didn't know it wanted? Isn't this a problem of how you convey your ideas rather than the ideas themselves?

2) You basically say (p. 80) that you need to use an icon, an image, and then build that image in order to justify formal experimentation. This raises several issues: i) you may end up having to build the actual image rather than experiment with it, ii) there's a lot of scope for people mistaking your "hidden" intention for the real thing, iii) you don't explain why this projective strategy is better than any other one. In particular, you talk about "local iconographies" as a naturalisation of materials and geometries, basically an over-simplification of context, in a way that makes one think of the latter-day films of Woody Allen. "Ah, a film in Spain. Then we should have... let's see... bullfights! And, er... Gaudî! And maybe some... flamenco!" We would say this can be a lot of fun on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but doesn't necessarily produce great art.

3) How do you find the time to "rid the project of any symbolic and representational content" when you're busy deploying "pure metaphorical dressing... to qualify... a(n) unintelligible... assembly"?

4) Why do you assume that an "architectural output would make the plan threatening to the public"? (p. 84)

5) Why is it better for an architect to seduce the entire public rather than a single client? (p. 87) If you believe that the public would feel threatened by architecture, then why do you trust on them to allow you to do fantastic things, rather than a single patron?