Sheep/Goat/Ram vs. Cousins

   
HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!

Today is the first day of the “Yáng” year. The word “yáng” in Chinese may refer to several different animals in the Western sense, ranging from sheep, goat, ram, to even gazelle. Brits and Americans are both lost in translation. Actually this is not the only Chinese zodiac sign that would cause confusion. “Shŭ” can be rat or mouse, “Niú” can be ox, cow, or bull, and “Jī” can be chicken, rooster, cock, or hen…

The Chinese language may be vague in terms of animals. But when it comes to people, it’s extremely complex and specific. In English, all non-sibling relatives of the same generation are call “cousins,” while in Chinese there are 16 types of cousins. In the West, male relatives of the parents’ generation are all called “uncles” and females all “aunts.” But there are 15 types of uncles and as many as 21 types of aunts in a Chinese family, depending on whether the person is related to the mother or the father, as siblings or through marriage, older or younger.

This certainly reflects traditional Chinese family values, where extended family members are still closely connected and hierarchy is well respected. We can also understand this as a result of different worldviews. Western traditions focus more on the relationship between mankind and the outside world. The narrative of Western civilization is the story of man understanding nature with science and enhancing it with technology. Chinese traditions are more about relationships between people, and the civilization is better represented by social and cultural achievements. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century when “Mr. Sci” finally arrived in China. That’s why Western thinking tends to be more direct, simple, and objective, while Chinese culture is a bit ambiguous, sophisticated, and subjective.
   

Buroscape

   
I spotted an article on the BBC website yesterday about open-plan offices. “They can be noisy and distracting or depressingly quiet, and frictions with co-workers are guaranteed,” the article writes, “so why do so many of us continue to work in open-plan offices?”

It reminds me of another article I read in Wired a few years ago. Both articles reviewed the history of office layouts and accounted the start of the open-plan office to the Taylorist idea of efficiency. In the American industrial boom of the late 19th century, bosses packed more and more clerical workers in a completely open environment, assembling them into rows of desks facing one direction, much like on a factory floor with production lines. We can see this inhuman condition in movies, and the great work room in FLW’s Johnson Wax building is a living example, although better design and better materials did warm up the space. Hierarchy here is clear – the managers oversee the employees from the mezzanine level, from their private offices with a view outside.

King Vidor, “The Crowd”, 1928

Billy Wilder, “The Apartment”, 1960

Frank Lloyd Wright, Johnson Wax building, 1939

In the 1950s, Quickborner – a team of management consultants in Germany – developed a new office layout concept called “Bürolandschaft” (Office-Landscape). As a critique to the cold and rigid array of desks, this new plan looked free and organic. Desks were scattered in a seemingly random fashion, and clustered in work units of different sizes. Large plants softened the environment, and created some degree of differentiation and privacy. In fact, this overall arrangement was anything but random. It was based upon an intensive study of patterns of communication – between different parts of the organization and different individuals. The Quickborner team put company staff of all ranks together on one open floor, creating a non-hierarchical environment that encouraged communication, discussion, and debate, and at the same time allowing for future flexibility.

Walter Henn, Plan for Osram Offices in Munich, 1965

Osram Offices in Munich

Office Type Organizational Diagram

I don’t know if it was intentional, Ishigami’s Kanagawa Institute of Technology Workshop seems like a contemporary example of the Bürolandschaft idea.

Junya Ishigami, Kanagawa Institute of Technology Workshop, 2008

The Bürolandschaft concept inspired Herman Miller to produce the first modular business furniture system – the Action Office. It had flexible work surfaces that allowed the worker freedom of movement and the possibility to adjust work position according to the task. But the low dividers undermined the original openness and charmingly random quality of Bürolandschaft. Eventually, the competing demands of openness vs. privacy, interaction vs. autonomy landed in a compromise – the cubicle. This new solution defined personal territory while keeping chances to communicate with others, and it was cheap, versatile, and easy to assemble. Soon it became extremely popular and the sea of cubicles (a.k.a. cube farm) was born, although nowadays, especially in sci-fi movies, it has become the symbol of “ordinary and boring jobs.”

Herman Miller’s Action Office system

Jacques Tati, “Playtime”, 1967

Tron, 1982

The Matrix, 1999

A more open office environment may be too noisy and distracting. It may cause more conflicts, over minor things like windows open or not, absent-minded comments, inappropriate jokes, or even ring tones… But I am so glad that I don’t need to work in a sea of cubicles. I guess at the end a healthy office environment really depends primarily on the people who work in it.
   

Pushing the limits

   
“The decision has been made. Felix Baumgartner will jump,” the Red Bull Stratos live feed commentator announced. After being delayed for a few days due to weather conditions, the Austrian skydiver finally went up about 39 kilometers above ground tonight with a helium balloon and jumped back to earth safe and sound.

This is nuts! The successful freefall has made Felix the first human being to break the sound barrier and reach a speed of 1,342.8 km per hour (Mach 1.24) without a vehicle. He later explained that traveling supersonic was “hard to describe because I didn’t feel it.” With no reference points, “you don’t know how fast you travel.”

There was no epic small-step/big-step statement. “I’m going home now” was what Felix said before he jumped out of the capsule. When asked what he was thinking before the jump, he said, “When you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. You do not think about breaking records any more; you do not think about gaining scientific data. The only thing that you want is to come back alive. This became the most important thing to me.”

Such highly risky act cannot be accomplished by one man. There was a support team of 300 people on the ground, including 70 scientists, engineers, and doctors who had been working for five years on the mission. Among them was Joe Kittinger, the former US Air Force test pilot who set the record for highest freefall jump in 1960. He’s the only person who knows exactly how Felix feels. Now 84, he acted as mentor and was the person who guided Felix through the mission from the NASA-style control center, instead of being bitter about himself not being the record holder any more.

Joe Kittinger said, “Records are meant to be broken.” After the skydive, Felix said at the press conference, “I want to inspire the next generation. I would love to be sitting at the same spot where Joe Kittinger is sitting here, and there’s a young guy sitting right next to me asking for advices because he wants to break my record.”

This is the inspiring spirit of humanity. We need the courage to keep pushing the limits, and at the same time the humility to encourage other people to do so. Felix was brave to step out of his comfort zone and facing uncertainty. Curiosity and dedication pushed him to explore new territories. What his success symbolizes is precisely what drives our civilization to move forward.
   

The Olympic message

     
“Who will light the Olympic cauldron?” is a question that draws much speculation every four years. This time in London, people have compiled a list: would it be David Beckham? Daley Thompson? Bradley Wiggins? Tom Daley? The Queen? Prince William? Or even Pippa Middleton?

Finally, at the opening ceremony last night, seven young athletes lit the cauldron. They are “nobody” compared to the all-star guess list. But they represent hope of the future, potentials of something big. This choice reminds us of one of the key virtues of humanity: always look forward with hope. It’s not about what you have done, or what you are doing. It’s what you will do.

204 copper petals slowly rose and came together to form a large cauldron. These flickering flames symbolized 204 participating nations and regions, peacefully united as one. Our world is quite a mess right now. This cauldron lighting was like a fresh breeze, made me feel hopeful that we would witness the best of humanity in the weeks to come. Once again, Thomas Heatherwick managed to wow the world with a great British design. (Last time was of course at the Shanghai Expo.) A model of this cauldron will be added to Heatherwick’s exhibition at the V&A after the opening ceremony. (Should I go see it again?)

The rest of the opening was a big party with an overdose of British music, plus unique British wit and humor. Compared to Beijing, this was not as spectacular. But it felt more relevant. It's an Olympic of the common people, an Olympic of the moment, embracing a society of grassroots in the digital age. It will certainly “inspire a generation.”
     

VSBA and LVMH

     
Earlier this week, Robert Venturi announced his retirement. The Philly-based practice he co-founded with Denise Scott Brown is rebranding as VSBA, under the direction of a new generation of leaders. This new abbreviated name sounds a lot like those big corporate firms such as SOM, KPF, and HOK – honoring the founders yet dissociating from their individual authorship. The question is: will the legacy of the founders survive in their absence?

Franklin Court: The house is absent.

I’ve been debating with myself for quite a while now whether a design studio could continue if the head talent(s) were not there any more. I tend to say “No.” If the work of an office relies heavily on one or two particular “genius(es)” and his/her/their own sense of aesthetic and feelings, it is not sustainable. Taste and instincts are highly personal. It’s not teachable, not transferable. When the person goes, the sensibility goes as well. A more sustainable way (or at least relatively speaking) could be to nurture a method or a rigorous way of thinking and design. Offices that claim to operate on collective decisions always need to reason with hyper-rationality. But it gets boring easily, or sometimes even soulless. I guess that’s why spring-offs from You-Know-Who usually turn out stronger at the beginning than those from other offices, but they also wear out sooner.

Perhaps the only way to continue a name is to really make it a brand. Turn it into a hollow label detached from any individual, like SOM, KPF, HOK, or even Prada, Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton… It’s interesting to compare to fashion houses. Through generations of creative directors, fashion brands are less and less about the personal visions of Mario Prada, Christian Dior, Guccio Gucci, or Louis Vuitton. Consistency or identity (here I don’t used the word “style”) is no longer the highest concern of the companies. When LV took Moët et Chandon and Hennessy and formed a giant luxury goods conglomerate LVMH in 1987, it turned its identity from design to luxury consumerism.

When the brand transcends design, identity is easy to maintain. The value of LV bags is more about the logo printed on them than the actual aesthetic or functionality of the product. Another big difference between architecture and fashion is that fashion commodities (not haute couture) are highly repetitive. If you’ve got the iconic little black jacket, or the perfect formula of No.5, you just keep producing them and you’ll always be Chanel. We architects can’t build the same buildings over and over again, even if you are Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid (they are pretty close though).

Chanel’s Little Black Jacket exhibition in New York

After the death of Alexander McQueen in 2010, his long-term assistant Sarah Burton stepped up as the new creative director to continue the label. She was instantly accepted, and got big jobs such as the design of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress last year. Maybe at the end, continuing a brand is more about picking the right protégé.
     

The iron words

   

Finally watched The Iron Lady. Meryl Streep was absolutely amazing. On top of that, I found the movie full of wise words. Here are some quotes I’d like to share.

Young Margaret Thatcher: For those that can do, they must just get up and do. And if something is wrong, they shouldn’t just whine about it. They should get in there and do something about it. Change things.

Denis Thatcher (referring to home videos of some memorable moments in the past): You can rewind it, but you can’t change it.

Margaret Thatcher the Education Secretary: If the Right Honorable Gentleman could perhaps attend more closely to what I am saying, rather than how I am saying it, he may receive a valuable education in spite of himself!

Margaret Thatcher (when giving her daughter a driving lesson): One must be brave if one is to take the wheel.

Margaret Thatcher (after visiting the US): They are unafraid of success. We in Great Britain and in Europe are formed mostly by our history. They, on the other hand, are formed by their philosophy. Not by what has been, but by what can be. Oh, we have a great deal that we can learn from them.

Airey Neave: If you want to change this party, lead it. If you want to change the country, lead it.

St. Francis of Assisi (quoted by Margaret Thatcher upon arrival at Number 10 Downing Street): Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Margaret Thatcher: People don’t think any more. They feel... Do you know one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas? Now thoughts and ideas, that interests me.

Alfred Roberts (quoted by Margaret Thatcher): Watch your thoughts for they become words. Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become habits. Watch your habits for they become your character. And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny! What we think, we become.

Margaret Thatcher: Yes, the medicine is harsh, but the patient requires it in order to live. Should we withhold the medicine? No. We are not wrong.

Margaret Thatcher: We will stand on principle or we will not stand at all.
 

Just the little things

Once again, Denmark has been rated the world’s happiest country. This time, it’s a report claimed to be the first ever official study, commissioned by the UN and published by Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Before this, the Gallup World Poll released data in 2010 ranking Denmark the happiest country among the 155 surveyed. In 2008, the World Values Survey by the US National Science Foundation also put Denmark on the top of their most content nations list. And back in 2007, surveys done by Cambridge University and Leicester University both agreed that the Danes are the happiest people on earth.

One can easily give several reasons for this. The Danes are quite wealthy, living in a secure society with almost zero crime and corruption. They grow up with good health care and education systems (they get paid to go to school). After graduation, they work only 37 hours a week (Mon-Thu 7.5 + Fri 7), with 5 weeks of paid vacation per year.

Good systems build up a more civilized society, but they don’t guarantee personal happiness, which is more a subjective emotion or attitude. “It’s probably because we have very low expectations,” my Danish friend Goldie told me. “When it rains, we simply shrug our shoulders. When the sun comes out, we’ll say, ‘wow, this is really amazing!’” Take a look at some of the questions asked by the Gallup Poll: Did you enjoy something you did yesterday? Were you proud of something you did yesterday? Did you learn something yesterday? I guess at the end, it all comes down to the little things people experience every day.

If you are not expecting much, many little things in your life can be wonderful. For the Danes, a few drinks with friends, a sausage on the street, or a dinner with family is enough to make a joyful day. They are proud of their lives and proud of what they have: Danish pastry, Carlsberg, Tivoli, Hans Christian Andersen, Georg Jensen, Arne Jacobsen, Poul Henningsen, Queen Margrethe, Lars von Trier (maybe until Cannes 2011), and Daniel Agger’s tattoos. They joke about the little mermaid being super tiny, but deep down, they love her as the romantic symbol of the kingdom. There are millions of bikes in Copenhagen. If this simple vehicle can take you around perfectly, who needs the newest model of Chevy SUV?

The Danes can find “hygge” in the dark and cold winters through the soft glow of a simple Le Klint lampshade, or the balmy smell of a candle. When summer comes, Copenhageners strip and lie down naturally on the waterfront deck in the middle of the city, sunbathing. Not far from the boardwalk, the Harbor Bath is certainly one of the most popular urban hang-out in the city.

Oh yeah, the Harbor Bath. You know Bjarke. He is so typically Danish and looks always so happy. He acts like a kid, easily psyched about simple, straight-forward, and sometimes even stupid ideas. He has this charisma that can convince anybody that architecture is in fact very simple and fun.

If life is all so simple and beautiful, why do we need ambitions? Georg Jensen and Arne Jacobsen gave their answers through quality: design with close attention down to a single screw or a door knob. Bjarke seems to believe in quantity: do a competition every week and you may win every month. Either way, the little moments of simple pleasure could lead to greater joy at the end.

Doghouse, keys, remote, and Prada

       
This is probably the best Frank Lloyd Wright story I’ve ever heard. A 12-year-old boy Jim Berger from San Anselmo, CA asked FLW if he would design a home for his black Labrador, Eddie. “I would appreciate it if you would design me a doghouse, which would be easy to build, but would go with our house...,” read the letter dated June 19, 1956. “[My dog] is two and a half feet high and three feet long. The reasons [sic] I would like this doghouse is for the winters mainly.” And he mentioned to pay with the money he made from his paper route. FLW was quite busy with the Guggenheim at that time, but he did eventually send drawings to the boy 5 months later, free of charge.

Jim Berger’s letter asking FLW to design a doghouse

FLW’s response

The fact that somebody like FLW would agree and actually designed a doghouse for some 12-year-old kid is amazing. By “someone like FLW,” I don’t mean “the greatest architect of all time” as some others think. I’m talking about a famous but self-centered, arrogant, cunning, and ingratiating old man. Ken Burns, who made a documentary on Wright for PBS, called him a schmuck. Lewis Mumford described that “he lived from first to last like a God, one who acts but is not acted upon.” When questioned about his vanity, FLW justified himself by saying: “Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility; I chose honest arrogance.” Once while testifying in court, FLW referred to himself as the world’s greatest architect. Asked later how he could make such an excessive claim, he replied, “Well, I was under oath, wasn’t I?”

FLW saw Le Corbusier as a rival. He called the Villa Savoye “a box on stilts.” When Corb was in Chicago, FLW declined to meet the visitor from Paris. On the other hand, Corb himself also had a rather difficult and controversial personality. Nicholas Fox Weber, author of Le Corbusier: A Life, used contradictory words to describe him: compassionate, arrogant, generous, selfish, Calvinist, hedonistic, proud, enraged, ecstatic, sad, provocative, unique. When Corb went to America, he wanted to dominate the design board for the new UN headquarters, and eventually got into a power fight with Wally Harrison. Corb’s relationships with clients often ended badly. He was not very kind to his own employees either, even people like Iannis Xenakis, who contributed greatly on fantastic design of the Philips Pavilion and La Tourette. Corb started to dislike Xenakis after he found out that Xenakis had kept direct contact with a client without his permission. One summer when Xenakis went back to the office after vacation, he found the lock had changed. Shortly after, he received a letter from Corb which begins, “Modern architecture triumphs in France; it has been adapted. Today you may find a field of application for everything which you have acquired by yourself as well as through your work with me.”

This reminds me of how Steve Jobs treated Wozniak. After leaving Apple, Woz decided to start a company to make a universal remote control that he had invented. He approached frogdesign, a California-based company who also did design work for Apple, to design his device. But Jobs stretched all his power to make sure it didn’t happen. He told the Wall Street Journal, “We don’t want to see our design language used on other products. Woz has to find his own resources. He can’t leverage off Apple’s resources; we can’t treat him specially.” Woz was not the only victim. Walter Isaacson wrote that Jobs was “frequently obnoxious, rude, selfish, and nasty to other people.” Even his old lover Tina Redse complained that it was incredibly painful to “be in love with someone so self-centered.” She read a psychiatric manual about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and decided that Jobs met perfectly all the criteria. In the office, he was mean and abusive, super hard to work with. He would “introduce tension, politics, and hassles,” with a mood swing that “resembles a high-voltage alternating current.” He was prone to tell people they were “dumb shit” and what they had done looked like shit. At the same time he was also a master of manipulation. Once you fall into his “reality distortion field,” you would be easily encouraged to work your ass off for him. Most of the Mac team, for example, got extremely burnt out at the end, and some even went schizo.

Many architectural offices also have the reputation of over-working people, and OMA is probably the most notorious. Rem would call up his staff in the middle of the night asking for design updates, just because he was bored in the hotel room in a different time zone. It’s so hard to get him for meetings that the teams had to rent a conference room at the airport and meet him there. But there was no guarantee that he would show up. For the times he did come, he might cut you off in the middle of the sentence and said, “How can you be so fucking stupid? I have a plane to catch.” I remember when I visited the OMA Rotterdam office, people got so nervous when someone said “Jesus is coming!” It reminded me of the scene in The Devil Wears Prada when Meryl Streep walks in the office. Well, Rem wears Prada as well.

I keep asking myself: does one really need to be either a psycho or an asshole to excel in creativity? Are those callous behaviors natural companions to fame and success? A friend said he did not mind arrogance as long as the person had real talent. Another friend said it was just a way for them to get things done. I guess if you look at it positively, you will find words like confident, passionate, decisive, persuasive, and efficient. Just that they have pushed it too hard that it appears as cocky, stubborn, controlling, manipulative, and cold-blooded.

I live in a modernist apartment building, reading the biographies on my iPad, and posting this text with a Mac. At the end, the asshole personalities of these stars are transcended by the brilliance they’ve left us. As said in the “Think Different” ad, “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
       

Measuring time

     
December 30, 2011 doesn't exist in the history of Samoa. The country chose to skip this day and went from Dec 29 straight to Dec 31. The reason is that they wanted to improve ties with major trade partners such as Australia and New Zealand by jumping over the International Date Line. Instead of 23 hours behind Auckland, Samoa is now one hour ahead.

The International Date Line is an imaginary line that designates the place where each calendar day begins. Crossing it eastbound or westbound would mean you lose or gain one day, respectively. It sounds familiar because people in many countries are used to losing one hour in spring and gaining it back in autumn.

All this skipping, leaping, and traveling back in time reminds me that the whole system of measuring time, or more precisely, marking time, is actually man-made. Time lapses. It does not bear absolute markers of the beginning or end of anything. But we found the natural cycles, and tried to organize time according to the cycles with a system called calendar. Most countries now use the Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. It is based on the natural cycles but there are still discrepancies:
- A Lunar month is about 29.53 days;
- A sidereal year (Earth's orbit cycle) is 365.256363004 mean solar days;
- A tropical year (a complete cycle of the seasons) is 365.24219 days.

There have been different proposals for reform of the calendar, such as the World Calendar, International Fixed Calendar and Holocene calendar. The UN considered briefly to adopt such a reform in the 1950s, but eventually all the proposals lost their popularity. Anyways... until any change happens, Happy New Year!
     

Picking cherries

       

When harvesting cherries, the pickers would select only the ripest and healthiest ones. This is a normal and reasonable process. But for outsiders who can only see the selected fruit, it is hard to get the whole picture. They may wrongly conclude that most, or even all, of the fruit is in such good shape.

The term "cherry picking" is thus used to describe the tendency of people favoring information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses, while ignoring cases or data that may contradict that position. This "confirmation bias" may occur as selective attention while gathering information. If you believe something/someone is bad, you tend to notice negative evidences more easily or recall mainly bad memories to prove the argument. You see what you are looking for. It can also be partial and biased interpretation. People see things through lenses. Even if two individuals are presented with the same information, they can still draw different conclusions based on their preconceived opinions.

When someone is assigned or paid to advocate a particular position, like a debater or a lawyer, he or she may pick cherries intentionally. In normal circumstances, cherry picking is a common unintentional act that anybody may perform automatically without even noticing. Some scholars explain this with the limitation of our ability to handle complex information. When things get complicated, people tend to look for shortcuts, which in this case mean "availability heuristics" - the ideas that readily come to our mind or easily follow our train of thought.

Other researchers suggest that confirmation bias involves emotional motivations. In a study during the 2004 US presidential election, a group of people were shown contradictory statements by all candidates. A MRI scanner was used to monitor their brain activity when they were asked to evaluate the information. When it came to their favored candidate, the subjects' emotional centers of the brain were aroused, which didn't happen with the other statements. Our desire to believe and to defend our beliefs blinds us. We don't like to be wrong. We intuitively seek to confirm rather than falsify hypotheses because confirmation makes us feel confident and proud. To overrule a preconception, we need very powerful evidences and at the same time very strong will.

Imagine several people going to the same design meeting. Their debriefings after the meeting could be very different. The attendants may have caught only those comments that are in line with their own ideas, or put more importance to the aspects that interest them more. They may recall selectively comments from many previous meetings and insist on their own understandings. They may also interpret the bosses' verbal descriptions as utterly different material forms. With all these different hand-picked "cherries," those who didn't go the meeting would get completely lost.

Preconceptions affect judgment. We should all try to come in neutral and open-minded, and give fair evaluations to different opinions. Making the right call should be more important than proving oneself. I guess it’s easier said than done.
     

Bipolar society

  

This is the front page of the latest Weekly Telegraph. The juxtaposition of the two pieces of news makes a compelling example of the status of our culture: the two poles of hard and soft stories, conflicts and fantasies. When you turn on the TV, you see news about Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Then switch the channel, voila! American Idol! Well yeah... Let's go watch Thor.
      

Found humanity

  
Totally unplanned, I went to the Davy Rothbart event at the CAC when I visited Cincinnati. Davy is the creator of FOUND Magazine, a yearly publication that collects discarded notes, letters, memos, written chats, doodles, etc. At the CAC, Davy hit the audience with one after another funny notes picked up from various cities, seasoning them with his energy and extraordinary reading skills. The event turned out to be two sweet, hilarious, and amazing hours well spent between some art and a fancy dinner.

It all started after one snowy winter night in 1999 when Davy went to his car and found a note on his windshield. It was addressed to another guy named Mario:

Davy was fascinated by this mixture of hate and love. There was clearly a love triangle but Amber was still somehow hopeful at the end. With this passion, he set out to collect more found stuff and made it into a magazine. Then the readers started to send in their finds as well. After a decade, FOUND has become almost like a cult that worships little scraps of paper.

Here's one that seems to be a monthly budget typed up by a neat person. The list starts with rent 600, cell phone 50... food 500, liquor 600 (!), and... crack 600 (!!)... Another one is a comparison made by a woman trying to decide between two men. Andrew or Paul?

After a good laugh, I realized it was more than just something funny. We humans have all sorts of emotions, sometimes conflicting ones (like Amber). It's interesting to see how people would/could think and how they decide. These found notes give glimpses into other people's personal and intimate moments. As Davy's mom puts it, it's like "people watching on paper." The notes were written without any self-consciousness or pretense, since they were not meant to be public. So they reveal humanity in a rather raw and unfiltered manner. Through these notes, we can get a sense of all the kinds of lives being led around us, even if we don't necessarily connect with each other on a daily basis or in meaningful ways.

Davy saved his all-time favorite find to the end. I think it's about friendship. (Video found online, taken from another event.)

            

"I like it!"

     

In the introduction to The SANAA Studios 2006-2008 publication, Florian Idenburg recalls a review with Sejima when he was still a student in Rotterdam:

I remember Sejima sitting, quietly smoking, listening to an exhaustive argumentation to justify one of the less elegant proposals. After a long silence her response was liberating. Pointing first to a sketch and subsequently to a plan she spoke softly: "This… I like… this… I do not like."

Florian took Sejima’s seemingly intuitive comment as a breath of fresh air. But to me, this subjective judgment dismissed all reason and logic. It was like saying, "You do this, not that. End of discussion."

The word "like," by definition, implies feelings of pleasure, favor, or attraction. It's all about personal emotions and taste. That's why "I like it" and its counterpart "I don't like it" are very feeble arguments. You can like it or dislike it, but it doesn't necessarily mean it is good or bad. In fact, not even the most popular things are always the best. If you ever wondered how W. got to that position twice, you would easily understand why winning a poll doesn't really prove anything.

Teaching a design studio is not about getting all students to do the same thing (i.e. whatever the instructor likes). Rather, it is to help students to discover their own potential and develop skills to achieve their intentions. In school, when students present something, they should be clear about what they attempt to do. Then the professors can gauge whether or not the design expresses the idea and make suggestions accordingly. That's why they are called "critics," not commanders. Without this layer of rationality, there's no ground for discussion. If one says "I like it" and the other says "I don't like it," they would keep arguing forever. So in a way, "I like it" is an anti-social statement, putting an end to any potential discourse, because subjective feelings are simply not debatable.

In a professional environment, "I like it" is the killer of collaboration. No two people think exactly the same. If the work is all about personal feelings and taste, how can the team act on the same page all the time? In a design meeting, nothing can be more hollow and deadly than a conversation like this:

Boss: I like it. What do you guys think?
Partner: Yeah, I like it. It looks great!
Team members (V.O.): What else are we supposed to say?

So we are doing it just because he likes it? But why does he feel that? What's next? It's full of unintelligible guesswork. Now imagine in another office, where there are more reasoned civil discussions on the design itself, the meetings would be far more productive and the work would benefit greatly from the palpability of decisions. Collaboration requires structured democracy and rational and clear mutual understanding.

Of course everybody has the right to like or dislike things. I don't oppose gut feelings; just they shouldn't be the direct reasons for important decisions. A statement of like or dislike is not useful without reasons for that like or dislike. I am not sure if Sejima actually elaborated on why she preferred one sketch to the other. If she did, it would be way more helpful because the student could learn how to improve in the future. Let's admit, design is always personal and subjective to some extend. But behind every decision there are intentions. Be rational about why we feel a certain way can sometimes be an almost psycho-analysis process to reason after the fact. By collectively doing so, we human beings create accumulative knowledge about emotions. Why are certain things more beautiful and appealing? We can talk about proportion, composition, materiality, color principles, context, etc. Yet there's another (arguably more important) set of standards. It's to check whether the design actually makes sense. Things exist with a purpose. What it does weighs more than how it looks, or in some cases, dictates the look of it.

In architecture, the complexity of design and construction requires the involvement of a large number of constituencies. When it comes to assessment, sorry, it's not just about you.

    

The true reality

In his new book The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking tells the story of goldfish bowl ban in the Italian town Monza. The town council official Giampietro Mosca explained the reason: "A fish kept in a bowl has a distorted view of reality... and suffers because of this." Hawking asks, "The goldfish's picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?" He goes on and suggests that reality is basically the observer's mental model. Since it's impossible to remove the observer from the perception of the world, it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observation. Hawking calls this view model-dependent realism.

Reality varies from one person's perception to another. What seems to someone as something just happened naturally may be seen as the nastiest betrayal by someone else, like in the recent much-talked-about facebook movie (a.k.a The Social Network). Many reviews say the story is quite distorted and the real Mark Zuckerberg is not that arrogant and desperate for attention. But we have to know that this movie is based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, and Mezrich's primary source was Eduardo Saverin - Zuckerberg's best friend at Harvard and later the victim of a facebook financial dispute. This is Saverin's side of the story, and of course it won't quite match Zuckerberg's narration if he makes one. I bet the Winklevoss twins would tell something different too. As screenwriter Aaron Sorkin told Time, "There were a number of different versions of the truth coming from three or four or five people... Everybody has their own version, and everybody is right, and everybody is wrong." When it comes to Hollywood storytelling, it's just like what the second-year law firm associate says in the movie, "85% of it is exaggeration, and the other 15% prejury."

What did Mark Zuckerberg say about this? "It's a movie, it's fun." The movie is labeled as a drama so it's understandable that the events were dramatized. But when we talk about documentary, it's another story. Casey Affleck has become another recent talking point after he confessed that his new movie I'm Still Here is actually fake. When released, the film was announced as a documentary that followed Affleck's brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix on a descent into celebrity disintegration. But in fact, every single bit of it was acting. They hired actors and there were multiple takes. Where is the supposed honesty of a documentary film? Genre suggests expectation. If they said in the first place that the movie was a drama and the scenes were all staged performances, at least I would say Phoenix is a good actor. But now? I will just call it a lie.

Left: Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in The Social Network; Right: Joaquin Phoenix (Joaquin Phoenix) in I'm Still Here

Casey Affleck defended himself with a quote from Picasso: "Art is the lie that tells the truth." But what did Picasso actually mean by that? We all know a portrait is not the real person; a landscape painting doesn't contain real trees. But there's a difference between being real and being true. Art is true in the sense that it shows the artist's observation of the subject and it tells the artist's version of reality. A Cubic painting represents an attitude totally different from, say, lip-syncing. When Ai Weiwei covered the floor of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern with more than 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds, he didn't pretentiously go around and tell people those were real sunflower seeds. Instead, he was rather true to the facts and open about the fabrication process in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. The seeds express Ai's view towards the phenomenon of "Made in China," and his association with China culturally, politically, and economically. The seeds are not real, but the art is true.

Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds (at Tate Modern), 2010

Ai's Sunflower Seeds are sculptures of seeds. They look like seeds but they are NOT seeds. Some say, "Who cares whether they are real or fake? They look like real." I found this line of thought quite post-modern. "Look like something" doesn't mean "it is something." Maybe that attitude is the reason why people can be perfectly content with gypsum half Greek columns attached to a plaster white wall.

In Seven Lamps of Architecture, John Ruskin categorized direct falsities in architecture into three basic types: 1) structural deceits (e.g. steel structure that pretends to be stone or wood); 2) surface deceits (painting or cladding that confuses the reading of materiality); 3) operative deceits (false manufacturing process). Set aside the old-fashioned despise of iron and machine work, the bottom line of the argument is that if something in architecture is trying to look like something else, it is a lie. He elaborated with examples: the delicate fan tracery on the ceiling of Milan Cathedral is a deceptive act of painting, while the Sistine ceiling is no deceit because Michelangelo was not trying to trick you into the belief that God and Adam were actually up there.

Left: Milan Cathedral, tracery pattern painted on the ceiling; Right: Sistine Chapel

And there is also the issue of expectation, like the drama of The Social Network vs. the "documentary" I'm Still Here. In Ruskin's opinion, gilding in architecture is no deceit because nobody would actually expect the building to be made in gold; while in jewelry it is, because it could be understood for real gold. In general, we tend to believe rather than disbelieve (especially when it comes from our dear friends and loved ones), because honesty is regarded as a moral norm in our society. When someone makes a fake that very few can tell, it may be because the trick of counterfeiting is so well performed, but largely it is just taking advantage of people's common expectation for truth. One doesn't get credit by telling convincing lies. Rather, it is a narcissistic pretense to think that making oneself believed is more important than telling others the truth.

Kant said, "without truth, social intercourse and conversation become valueless." Deceit shatters the human intuition of trust. We can't even be confident in our ability to distinguish truth from falsity any more. When discover an untruthful part, we start to cast a suspicion upon the whole thing, and then even question the credibility of the person himself. Let's go back to Casey Affleck. Will you be fully convinced if he tells you he will make a real documentary film next time? Another frustrating thing about deceit is that it interferes with our effort to apprehend the true state of affairs, and therefore impair our judgments. With misleading information, we cannot situate ourselves correctly, nor can we make the fair apple-to-apple comparison. We may say things differently if we had the knowledge of the truth. Dishonesty and pretense are not merely playful jokes. It's utterly disheartening to find out all the things you built your assessments upon were not true.

Everybody encounters different constraints and difficulties in life. From time to time you find yourself in a situation that nobody else can fully comprehend. So it's natural that people construct different models of reality and base their decisions and actions on them. But being true is absolute. To maintain integrity and credibility, you must get the facts straight. No matter what actually happened between Zuckerberg and Saverin, neither of them would go all the way to claim that he alone invented facebook.

   

Important engagement

       
There are many differences in our world. Politics, cultures, personalities... They all have very different opinions and values. At the Al Manakh 2 launch event at Columbia last Friday, Rem Koolhaas situated the research on the Gulf region in the global political context, and argued that the topic of the Middle East is still extremely relevant and remains a very important engagement. He advocated, "the different political systems need a continued commitment to communicate."

Unfortunately, they are not talking. 911 and the current economic crisis were cited by Rem as events that made the US and Europe turn their backs to the rest of the world. Sorrow turned into anger and bias, and the narrow-mindedness stirred up our societies with controversies like the Danish cartoon, Swiss minarets ban, WTC mosque protests, and the stupid Koran burning proposal. Arrogance comes from ignorance. And the refusal to communicate only makes the sad misunderstanding even worse.

Rem was clearly annoyed by the fact that this ridicule even appears on an intellectual level, when he quoted Joshua Hammer's description of Dubai in his review in The New York Review of Books: "Here, Americans stick with Americans, Brits stick with Brits, Indians with Indians. Everyone keeps to his own kind." Rem said, "He wrote this critique as if its different everywhere else... In fact, when I was in Dubai, I experienced a level of social mixture that even this room can't compare."

In this context, Al Manakh 2 is a valuable attempt to understand. If Al Manakh 1 was an academic observation from the outside, this second installment is more a down-to-earth version trying to form an inside-out perspective. It features a collection of 140 essays, mostly written by local authors reflecting on their own situation and expectations. In a way, this has broadened the notion of research in our field to a rather open-minded and open-ended process of curation.

After American journalist Daniel Pearl was brutally murdered in Pakistan in 2002, his widow Mariane Pearl turned sorrow into strength. It was not strength to seek revenge but to continue Pearl's mission, to address the root causes of his death. She and the family formed the Daniel Pearl Foundation. The homepage of their website states: "The foundation's mission is to promote cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music, and innovative communications." This reminds me of a quote from Thomas Szasz: "The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget."

Related: Notes: "Al Manakh 2" debate 12/12/09
         

When the Dougong was small

          

During the Shanxi trip, I saw many new constructions right next to major tourist attractions. A lot of them are contemporary expansions or additions to very old existing temples, but they try so hard to look like the old ones. I couldn't stop but wondering: why can't we just build something true to our time?

There are many examples of temple expansions in history. A very good one right in Shanxi is Jinci. Jinci Temple started during the Western Zhou Dynasty (1045-771 BC) and has got to what it is now through thousands of years' additions and replacements. Structures of different dynasties reflect different styles, techniques, and preferences specific to their time of construction. They don't even want to be in the same axial alignment. As a result, the whole complex becomes a rich library of historic sentiments, especially different types of Dougong - a key element of Chinese wooden construction - with variations in size, number, and decoration that have developed through time.

Plan of Jinci Temple in Shanxi, China

Saint Mother Hall (Song, 1023), oldest existing structure in Jinci Temple

The large Dougong of Saint Mother Hall

Offerings Hall (Jin, 1168)

Offerings Hall interior, with the Memorial Archway (Ming, 1576) on the left.

Mirror Terrace, the front and back parts were built separately in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

When Ming style meets Qing style

Tangshuyu Temple, the Dougong was much smaller

Juntian Terrace built in the Qing Dynasty (18th century), the Dougong is very decorative.

When the Dougong was smaller, people were aware of the spirit of their times and wanted to express that architecturally. They didn't repeat the context with huge Tang/Song Dougong system. When we are building now, why do we just fake antiques by imitating the way old buildings look, but not learn from the way our ancestors think?

Maybe the question is what is a contemporary Buddhist temple? What are the transcendental aspects of Buddhism? The spirit of Zen? The pursuit of balance and harmony? In the Western world, a lot of contemporary churches are being built, with modern designs of architecture all the way down to objects like candle holders and chalices. Maybe for a contemporary temple, we should start with a new design of the incense burner.