Short Reflection Week 6 reading

A pattern language has been talk about very much in all my other classes. Although I did not read the entire book during the last six weeks, i was able to borrow a copy long enough to appreaciate it's context. We also used the book throughout of assignment as refence for diagram drawing. Movment patterns, social locations and places where people interact can all be describes nd predicted from the ideas in the book. I feel that a pattern language communicates very effective town planning ideas in a very 'tactile' way. I

Interem Presentation: Reflection

All in all I feel we work very well as a group, there was a small amount of tension for a while but it always lead to good results. I would definatly work will these boys again. Although very different to how I would have layed them out had i just been myself, the boards looked great and I think they stuck out from the rest. Our 2m speech went well also.

I think other people has done great work but in different directions to us.

Project Overview: Reflection

I would have to say on reflection of the recent assignment, that I have learned a great deal about brief and critical thinking in comparison to previous design assignments. Although I feel I still have a lot further to go, I am developing a better ability to pull a brief apart and sink my teeth into the issue that are being asked to address. An example of this would be the ‘Architectural Possibilities’, and realising that even though we created the characters, they still had needs and passions, not just a need for ‘green energy’.

 I also found that generating character forced us as a group to throw ourselves into the project, and I feel we all developed an affinity with the fictional world. I believe that this is a understated but powerful design mentality. It allows for everyone to get totally, but unselfishly, engrossed in the characters, as it becomes less about our own precious ideas about architecture and directs us to design for the characters. I really feel I can take this skill to other design situations as well.

In terms of the real life outcomes of a project like this, I feel that we are on the verge of an exciting new future, and I really do believe that young adults are beginning to set aside the consumerist habits and relish in this new trend of living sustainably and the peace of mind that comes along with it. I feel that we as a group delved more into the physiological and humanitarian impact of sustainable living.

I feel that as a designer focusing on current issues and actually creating an envisioned future is the most effective way of creating a successful community. Although I’m sure this is what town planners do, as an architect I feel that this is a very powerful tool to harness.

Project Progress: Updates on the Community Vignette

Project Progress: Community Planning Diagrams

Short Reflection - Week 5

The idea that stuck up for my in the week 5 reading was the idea of 'experimentation'. I feel that this is easy to relate to our assignment as our community is experimental and totally unique. We are able to play with ideas and the limitations of the system. I love the way Isozaki mentions the list functions and the experiment way to address them, i feel that for this assignement we can use this idea to systematically address social issues as we discover them.

Architectural Possibilities

The lecture on New York was extremely provoking. It really showed how projecting a future can leave a legacy for designers. I have never really though about what my designs with communicate in the future but rather the right now implications. I feel that I'm walking out a better 'Architect'. My ideas have been broadened to focus on the future and how they can provide for and facilitate future growth.

Project Research: Permaculture Community.

A Hawaiian community based on permaculture and living off the grid.

Project Research: Amazing Video on Colaboritive Consumerism

A short video taken from youtube, that displays a possible type of economic system for our community.

online reference youtube.

Project Research: Could rising stress levels encourage a change in social priorities?

I have noticed that there has been a lot of study about rising stress levels. I am left to wonder - it there a final threshold, i assume that it will not get to the point were we all drop dead from heart attacks. So it leaves me to speculate, will there be a time when we suddenly realise that in order to curb this trend our energies must be spent elsewhere.

Latest APA Survey Reveals Deepening Concerns About Connection Between Chronic Disease and Stress

Psychologists warn of a rising public health dilemma, especially for high-risk groups

Washington—The American Psychological Association’s (APA) newly released report, Stress in America™: Our Health at Risk, paints a troubling picture of the impact stress has on the health of the country, especially caregivers and people living with a chronic illness such as obesity or depression.
The Stress in America survey, which was conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of APA among 1,226 U.S. residents in August and September, showed that many Americans consistently report high levels of stress (22 percent reported extreme stress, an 8, 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale where 1 is little or no stress and 10 is a great deal of stress). While reported average stress levels have dipped slightly since the last survey (5.2 on a 10-point scale vs. 5.4 in 2010) many Americans continue to report that their stress has actually increased over time (39 percent report their stress has increased over the past year and 44 percent say their stress has increased over the past 5 years). Yet stress levels exceed people’s own definition of what is healthy, with the mean rating for stress of 5.2 on a 10-point scale— 1.6 points higher than the stress level Americans reported as healthy.
While 9 in 10 adults believe that stress can contribute to the development of major illnesses, such as heart disease, depression and obesity, a sizeable minority still think that stress has only a slight or no impact on their own physical health (31 percent) and mental health (36 percent). When considered alongside the finding that only 29 percent of adults believe they are doing an excellent or very good job at managing or reducing stress, APA warns that this disconnect is cause for concern.
“America has a choice. We can continue down a well-worn path where stress significantly impacts our physical and mental health, causes undue suffering and drives up health care costs. Or we can get serious about this major public health issue and provide better access to behavioral health care services to help people more effectively manage their stress and  prevent and manage chronic disease,” says psychologist Norman B. Anderson, PhD, APA’s CEO and executive vice president. “Various studies have shown that chronic stress is a major driver of chronic illness, which in turn is a major driver of escalating health care costs in this country. It is critical that the entire health community and policymakers recognize the role of stress and unhealthy behaviors in causing and exacerbating chronic health conditions, and support models of care that help people make positive changes.”

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2012/01/chronic-disease.aspx

People and Lifestyles: Collaberative Consumerism

I found this article on, not the end of consumer driver society, but the beginning of a new paradigm, collaborative consumerism.

In November 2008, a 34-year-old security guard called Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, New York, by what local papers described as an "out-of-control" mob of 2,000 "frenzied" shoppers who had queued overnight in the promise of a slash-price sale. With the crowd outside chanting, "Push the doors in", staff climbed on to vending machines to escape the resulting stampede. Even when police later declared that the shop was closed because it was now a crime scene, angry shoppers remonstrated with officers. One yelled: "I've been queuing since yesterday morning." The bargains on offer included a 50-in plasma HDTV priced at $798.

Rachel Botsman, a "social innovator" who has presented her ideas at Downing Street and before Microsoft and Google executives, retells the event in her book, What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live. "It's a sad and chilling metaphor for our culture at large – a crowd of exhausted consumers knocking down the doors and ploughing down people simply to buy more stuff."

Botsman rails in the book against the excesses, futility and contradictions of mass consumption, but she doesn't rehash the usual tropes of anti-consumerism. Rather, her book is a cry for us to consume "smarter" by moving away from the outdated concept of outright ownership – and the lust to own – towards one where we share, barter, rent and swap assets that include not just consumables, but also our "time and space".

The notion of "collaborative consumption" is not, she notes, new – it has been around for centuries. But the arrival of internet-enabled social networking, coupled with "geo-located" smart phones, has super-charged a concept that was already rapidly gaining primacy owing to the twin pressures of our environmental and economic crises. Echoing the Japanese concept of muda – the relentless hunt for, and eradication of, inefficiencies in any system – collaborative consumption aims to exploit previously ignored or unnoticed value in all our assets by both eliminating waste and generating demand for goods and services that are otherwise "idling".

Botsman uses the example of motoring to show where collaborative consumption already makes sense. "Cars are 90% under-utilised by their owners," she tells me from her home in Australia. "And 70% of journeys are solo rides. So we now see car club companies such as Streetcar proving very popular in cities. In Munich, BMW now has a scheme where it lets members pay for a car by the minute rather than by the hour. And websites such as ParkatmyHouse.com are allowing people to make money from unused space outside their properties. A great example is a church in Islington, London, which was facing financial trouble. But it started renting parking space out front and it now makes £70,000 a year from doing so."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jun/14/collaborative-consumption

People and Lifestyles: Awesome footage of the last uncontacted human beings on Earth

A short documentary about the type of life styles we are considering for our community.

Online reference: youtube

People and Lifestyles: Is money an actual problem in a community?

As we continue with our research, I am studying the following:
1. The rejection of Commercialism
2. Less reliance on financially driven motives
3. Communities based on human interaction.
4. Education as a social system

However as we began our research it did appear that money was the enemy and to be blamed. But I found this recently:

I don't agree at all that if we just got rid of money our problems would disappear. The alternative is barter which is far worse, more inconvenient and more susceptible to coercion and unfairness. If you are an apple farmer in a world without money, you can only trade your apples to get things. If you have a drought one year, you're screwed because apples can't be stored for long. Money is what allows a farmer to save when they have a surplus and use that money to buy food, clothes, etc when they have a drought. And this is just one of many ways money can be useful.

Money is a tool and like all tools, can useful or abused. Blaming money for our problems is like when people blame computers or hammers or homes for our problems. It conveniently avoids taking responsibility for our actions while finding some 'evil' to blame our woes on.

Online reference: http://gma.yahoo.com/going-without-money-hurt-economy-one-mans-quest-211049892--abc-news-topstories.html

I think this is very interesting and that with an ethical system 'money' will be a valuable asset to the community.

Short Reflection - Week 4

This weeks reading (Politics and the Situationist International), was a bit harder to relate directly to the assignment considering we had just visited the site. But it did highlight how the political climate can influence the aesthetic qualities in architecture. It did remind me of a book that I really loved about Soviet Russian Architecture. I really loved the way the bold concrete forms reflected to sternness of the whole nation. Although I didn't gain to much directly related to the assignment it did open my thinking to the subtitles in society that effect everything from human activity to the shape and visual quality of the built environment.

First Site Visit

Our group had its first site visit to the Woodford folk festival site today. I really feel that the future vision of the CEO and it's ground staff strongly align with those of our group. That being:
That there is a social change coming that can we expect to appear over a one hundred year period that will see the rejection of material consumption and a return to the nurturing of the human mind, body and soul.
We expect most sustainability issues to resolved, and with an abundance of energy we will need to be responsible for how we populate the planet.

The Folk festive organisers seem to seamlessly align with our vision for self contained communities that live almost tribally with a strong emphasis on strengthening the spirit and treating every living thing as sacred, and that is what our proposal will address.

Sustainable Futures

I have done some thinking about what type of sustainablity will appeal to the group, and as I cast my mind back to when I studied ecology, it appears quite simple. I believe that sustainability is the resilience of ecological and human processes for future generations. I feel that this could be a 'mantra for our group'

Short Reflection - Week 3 Reading

The content covered in the week 3 (Shearing Layers) reading was relevant and related to both the functionality aspect of the assignment and also the ideas of fiction. The diagram of how the interior exterior and stuff interact is a perfect example of fleeting our ideas can be. The other concept of set and scene help to understand to almost treat architecture as film making and tool to create moments and experiences.

Sustainable Futures: Designing for Future Conditions.

The lecture pod-cast really began to open my mind up the possibility of designing for a future world, possibly 10 years into the future. Statistics about global trends and the direction that society is headed should also be extremely useful in formulating a design proposal.

Short Reading Reflection - Week 02 Reading

I found this reading extremely interestion, particularly the section of 'Rural Self Sufficiency'. I have often tough about centralised mega strucures in the middle of naturalistic county side, where the existing ecology is able to remain untouched. However this reading bring some reality to the idea, by high lighting the reason people move to country in the first place.

I also discovered through this reading that the idea of permaculture is quite recent.

What it means to be an Architect

As I consider more and more what the role of the Architect is. I have have been thinking that not only are the the designer, they facilitate 'design'. By coordinating the other desiplines to archieve a inifiled outcome, architects allow for other design opportunitys to be realised.