Spomenik: propaganda or pure beauty?

   
Recently, I spotted a book by Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers called "Spomenik: The End of History." There are 26 photos of 25 weird but powerful structures, seemingly under poor maintenance, standing eerily on completely deserted lands. They are usually of gigantic scale and abstract geometry, resembling flowers, mushrooms, crystals, or blown-up micro-organisms. Most of them were built with concrete or stone, while some others with metal cladding or partly glazed. They make you wonder: what are these things?

Spomenik #1 (Podgarić), 2006

Spomenik #2 (Petrova Gora), 2006

Pomenik #3 (Kosmaj), 2006

Spomenik #4 (Tjentište), 2007

Spomenik #5 (Kruševo), 2007

Spomenik #6 (Kozara), 2007

Spomenik #7 (Grmeč), 2007

Spomenik #8 (Ilirska Bistrica), 2007

Spomenik #9 (Jasenovac), 2007

Spomenik #10 (Sanski Most), 2007

Spomenik #11 (Niš), 2007

Spomenik #12 (Košute), 2007

Spomenik #13 (Korenica), 2007

Spomenik #14 (Knin), 2007

Spomenik #15 (Makljen), 2007

Spomenik #16 (Tjentište), 2007

Spomenik #17 (Kolašin), 2009

Spomenik #18 (Kadinjača), 2009

Spomenik #19 (Mitrovica), 2009

Spomenik #20 (Brezovica), 2009

Spomenik #21 (Kamenska), 2009

Spomenik #22 (Ostra), 2009

Spomenik #23 (Sisak), 2009

Spomenik #24 (Nikšić), 2009

Spomenik #25 (Sinj), 2009

Spomenik #26 (Zenica), 2009

Spomenik literally means monument. These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković...), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their "patriotic education." After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.

From 2006 to 2009, Kempenaers toured around the ex-Yugoslavia region (now Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.) with the help of a 1975 map of memorials, bringing before our eyes a series of melancholy yet striking images. His photos raise a question: can these former monuments continue to exist as pure sculptures? On one hand, their physical dilapidated condition and institutional neglect reflect a more general social historical fracturing. And on the other hand, they are still of stunning beauty without any symbolic significances. I know this may sound schizophrenic if you also read my last post. But maybe there are forms that can transcend meaning...
          

Form follows meaning

   

The John Baldessari retrospective "Pure Beauty" at the Met (formerly at Tate Modern and LACMA) features more than 120 pieces spanning the Californian artist's career of nearly half a century. Walking into the galleries, one of the first things you encounter is The Backs of All the Trucks Passed While Driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January 1963 - a grid of photos Baldessari took when driving on the highway. The process sounds almost like a road trip game: take a picture every time you pass a truck. There’s nothing about aesthetics here, but the concept and disciplined structure of the exercise. It reminds me of Ed Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), only this Baldessari piece was three years earlier.

Now you know what you are getting yourself into. The show is handsomely installed, yet it's not there to please your eyes, but to provoke your brain. Regarded as a pioneer of Conceptual Art, Baldessari has always prioritized idea over form, or say, started from the meaning of art, and the expression came from it.

Meaning: text and/or image

If meaning is always pre-eminent in Baldessari's art, why is the show called “Pure Beauty”? Actually, the title reflects humor and the ironic quality that is central to his work. It comes from an early work in the late 1960s, where he simply painted the words “PURE BEAUTY” on a canvas. Text is not something beautiful by the traditional definition of art, but this particular phrase conveys the meaning of beauty. Baldessari equates visual and textual languages, sending the message without necessarily making a pretty object. He believes that this is the most "artless" but purest solution to make art.

Another good example of this typical Baldessarian subversive wit is Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell (1966-68). It's ironic for an artist who doesn't sell too well to give commercial tips / art maxims to other people, let alone the fact that the text was painted on a large canvas. Some of these "tips" sound amusing and absurd but at the same time so true. In the I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971) video piece, Baldessari repeatedly wrote the sentence “I will not make any more boring art.” Writing lines is a classic form of punishment in schools, because it's boring. Here Baldessari used it as an expression of oxymoron: the promise not to be boring isn't boring because it is.

Baldessari later switched to images - another source of direct communication - and constructed collages with stills from obscure B movies. By superimposition and juxtaposition, he destabilizes the significance of these found images, and re-appropriates them with new meanings. In Man and Woman with Bridge (1984), for example, the fox turns the stare into an ambiguous act of magic, affection, seduction, lust, trickery, or deceit. It's intriguing to see things that don't usually come together easily being so associated when they are put in the right tension.

"I really care about meaning in art," Baldessari once said, "I want things to look simple, but to raise issues, and to have more than one level of comprehension." In his art, simplicity and complexity co-exist paradoxically side-by-side. It's straightforward and at the same time profound and thought-provoking. The interpretation is open to viewers, and in a way they participate in the process of creating the new story.

Prima Facie (Third Stage): From Aghast to Upset (2005) exemplifies the open-endedness of interpretation. A single facial expression can imply so many possible underlying emotions, and some of them are even contradictory. Baldessari listed them alphabetically (a neutral order) next to the portrait to suggest, rather than to dictate, the possible readings of the face.

Baldessari sometimes opens the door to multiple readings by omitting information in the artwork. The signature is the color dots on people's faces. To him, what is left out can be as significant as what is left in. Missing pieces invite speculation. In The Duress Series (2003), the entire body of comedian Harold Lloyd was flattened into pure-colored figures of motion. But the simplification of form actually intensifies the moment because the physical stress or danger of the body is made even more vivid.

Form: structured with coincidence

Although The Backs of All the Trucks and early text paintings clearly show his intention to ignore aesthetic concerns, Baldessari's works are still full of striking visual/formal energy. Frames of different geometric shapes are collaged together with bold color paints blocking out parts of the image. When you think more about it, these oddly composed forms are actually strongly structured around certain intentions, even they are based on random information or coincidence.

Three Red Paintings (1988) shows how coincidence is adopted by Baldessari as a primary compositional tool. Three images are hung side by side, two askew, to make up part of a rectangular frame. Inside that imaginary frame is painted red to indicate the re-appropriated continuity of the edge. Here, three individual instances come together because Baldessari sees the one accidental common component of their contents.

Aligning Balls (1972) consists of 41 photos of a ball up in the air. The frames are hung completely out of alignment. When you see a hand-drawn pencil line on the wall, you discover that the dancing frames are actually the result of aligning the balls. Now you want to learn about the process of making: the photos are what Baldessari got when he tried to capture a ball he threw up in the air in the middle of the frame. All of a sudden, you realize this entire assembly with "no proper composition" is in fact determined by the combination of the forces of throwing, gravity, the flow of air, the speed of the artist's reaction and movement, and the shutter of the camera. A new order is created from a deliberate choice of accident.

Baldessari's work is cerebral as well as visual, playful as well as serious. In a world full of overtly fashionable but meaningless forms, it feels refreshing to let your brain run along with your eyes. This is actually odd and sad.
    

Communication in architecture

   

Storefront held a dialogue between Bernard Tschumi and Peter Cook last night. It was kind of a loose chat and it didn't really have a theme. But as I went through my notes, I actually found a hidden threat: the conversation had a lot to do with different means of communication in architecture. That makes sense. The event was supposed to be a book launch for Event-Cities 4 after all.

Books

There are telephone book kind of books - simply documenting projects with drawings and images. There are shopping catalog kind of books - grouping buildings according to their use, size, or location. And then there are story book kind of books - trying to construct a narrative with the materials at hand. Event-Cities 4 is more like the last type. Tschumi said, "When you practice, you have no time to theorize things. But when you are making a book, you start to realize the hidden consistent passion or idea behind the projects. In that sense, book-making is like conceptualizing a concept." Making a book allows you to think retrospectively and summarize what you have done in a way that might imply directions in the future.

Peter Cook saw this process of editing post-rationalization, while he also said concept is pre-rationalization to begin with. Perhaps we can say Archigram valued "the moment" more than what's before or after. But to me, whether post- or pre-, rationalization is not a bad thing. The key is whether the pre-construction or re-construction of narrative still conveys the truth of "the moment," reflecting what really happened in that particular set of circumstances. The act of editing should be the application of a new layer of meanings on top of the old ones, rather than replacing them (i.e. not simply to make things sound better intellectually).

Diagrams

Peter Cook entered this topic by quoting Tschumi: "The most precise architectural diagrams have nothing to do with forms or with words. They precede form and word; they are the graphic translation of thought." Cook argued that precision is a lost art now because it requires boring insistence. To be precise, you need to be thoughtful even with the selection of diagrams. In Tschumi's opinion, a diagram can be about relations - how the parts are grouped and interact; or about movements - arrows that could be corridors, stairs, or elevators; or simply a red cross on the things that you don't want to do. It doesn't need verbal explanations or formal expressions.

Tschumi said, "Architecture is not the knowledge of form but a form of knowledge." When asked what has changed in the way of thinking through the years, Peter Cook said, "When I was younger I was interested in architecture. As I get older, I am more interested in people. And with that I start to inhabit the diagrams." Architecture is not about the object. It's a container, an instrument. As Cook said, architects "manipulate" people.

Anecdotes

Peter Cook is not an abstractionist. He prefers anecdotes to diagrams. To him, anecdotes are just another medium to tell the story, and they are more fun and potentially more effective.

Metaphors

Tschumi sounded terribly annoyed by the return of what he called "violent metaphors." "Bird's nest," "Water cube," "Sails"... A name of the form is not an architectural concept, especially when it is largely arbitrary. He gave insights on its cause: metaphors are potent because mass consumption has made images the most direct and effective communication tool. In our fast-paced information-loaded society, people desire answers, not questions. And metaphors go straight to answers - not much conceptual thinking is required.

I have to say, not all of the accused architects are responsible for the metaphors. Many of those are just nicknames other people come up with. I remember Luis Mansilla talking about how the local newspaper described MUSAC as waves, flowers, etc., and that was never part of their concept. But he appreciated different interpretations. People want to talk about it, and the formal/visual aspect of things is the easiest to grasp onto. In a way, this is not architects manipulating people, but people manipulating architecture.

Peter Cook was completely comfortable with metaphors. I guess part of the reason is that metaphors sound rather anecdotal. And mostly, it tells the fundamental difference between an enthusiastic celebration of high consumerism in the 1960s vs. the abstract philosophical discourse on architectural semantics in the 80s.

  

R.I.P. cassette Walkman

        

Sony announced last Friday that it had shipped the last order of cassette-based Walkman and stopped production of the line. First introduced in Japan on July 1, 1979, this iconic device reshaped culture and lifestyle in the 1980s. It was such a cool thing to have: you can "walk" with your own music! Since then, technology of portable personal music has evolved dramatically. It's interesting to see there's a pattern of roughly 8 years between generations of Discman, MD Walkman, and the iPod. Now what we do is to just stream music from Pandora with our smartphones. Where is our music? Somewhere in the cloud I guess...

"High-tech" gadgets become obsolete easily. When was the last time you saw a rotary phone? The last time you took a roll of film to develop? The last time you heard the modem dialing sound? I was actually surprised that Sony was still making cassette Walkman up till last week. It may or may not be a coincident that the end-of-Walkman announcement was made one day before the iPod's 9th birthday on October 23.

Apple is famous for killing old technologies. When the Virgin Megastore in Union Square closed last year, it was kind of ironic to see the "closing" sign right next to an iPod ad. With the first MacBook Air, Apple skipped the optical drive - with all software available online, we won't need discs to install anything. Now the second generation of MacBook Air has just been released and it uses flash chips for data storage. When Steven Jobs said, "we think all notebooks are going to be like this one day," he officially killed the hard drive.

Inside a second generation MacBook Air, there's no hard drive.

I remember ten years ago I was complaining about how inconvenient it was to work with teammates with an iBook - there's no floppy drive! Now I know, it was the first notebook to have built-in wireless networking! People say, things are constantly changing and we need to adapt and survive. I think in the process of evolution, instead of just trying to detect and adapt to the changes, we could be the ones who have visions and cause changes. I bet that's how people at Apple see themselves.

   

AMDM? AMDM.

   

Adobe launched their Museum of Digital Media (AMDM) earlier this month. It's an institution that only exists in the virtual dimension. There are no doors, no guards. Admission is free, and it's always open. The mission of the AMDM is "to showcase and preserve groundbreaking digital work and to present expert commentary on how digital media influences culture and society." It is "an ever-changing repository of eclectic exhibits from diverse fields ranging from photography to product development to broadcast communications. To inspire fresh conversation on the constantly evolving digital landscape, exhibits are overseen by guest curators, each of whom is a recognized leader in the field of art, technology, or business."

Sounds revolutionary? I was pretty interested in the premise, so I went on the site and see how it really works. I was shocked. First of all, loading takes forever. Then the intro comes up with a wheat-looking twisting tower appearing in different real cities in the world. Then there's this jellyfish eyeball zooming in and out with a creepy sweet voice that sounds like V.I.K.I. in I, Robot. What the F is going on?

The Adobe Museum of Digital Media "building"

Virtual viewing device

If this is a virtual museum, why is there a building at all? Why is it a tower with such an overt physical presence? This "unique structure" is designed by Zaha Hadid veteran, Italian architect Filippo Innocenti. The "building tour" says, the atrium is a grand "space" designed to hold exhibits. "In the real world," it would span 57,680 square meters. There's a auditorium for live lectures and events. And for the archive and the permanent collection, "we have erected towers reaching 50 stories sky-ward." Give me a break! It's purely digital and you don't need 50-story towers to house the archive!!

Creative Director Keith Anderson says, "one of the things that we kept stopping and asking ourselves as we were developing the museum is: How would this work in the real world? How would it be in a real brick and mortar museum? We want to make sure that we can take the museum experiences that were familiar to people and then transfer those over to the digital space." I think they were asking themselves the wrong questions. What they should be thinking is how this virtual institution operates DIFFERENTLY from a museum in the real world; what it really means to have a museum solely digitally. Copywriter Mandy Dietz explains the reason why there's a viewing device: "we need to let people walk through the virtual museum because people can't physically walk through." But did it ever occur to the project team that people actually don't need to "walk through" the exhibits? We are not in MoMA. Visitors are sitting in front of the screen.

Actually, MoMA has been creating nice interactive exhibition webpages for most of their shows in the past years. To embrace the notion of virtuality, the key to curating AMDM is to put on things that start in digital form and end in digital form, i.e., something that is produced and consumed only digitally, not a scan or a photo of a physical art work in MoMA. If MoMA's webpages are to reproduce the experience in a physical museum, it's more like the Matrix - programs to simulate reality. You are not supposed to be aware of being in a different reality. But AMDM, with a more radical premise, should be like what Cobb knows about dreams in Inception. Time measures differently; gravity can be manipulated. It is a totally different world. Our existence and value system will be completely recalibrated. The inaugural project "Valley" by Tony Oursler is actually a good pick. It shows how digital media doesn't rely on any built space at all. Curator Tom Eccles calls it "site-specific." I am not sure if he's being sarcastic.

The index page of Tony Oursler's AMDM inaugural show "Valley"

Facebook reshaped how people interact with each other in the virtual space. But it didn't start with a common room with Victorian decorations or an urban plaza with grand Spanish steps. When virtuality becomes only an excuse to make the most overt thing ever, AMDM could only mean "Architects' Memorial of Delusional Masturbation."

  

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.

   

The girl who sat at the window

  
Congratulations to Iwan Baan on the Julius Shulman Photography Award! It sounds like a Monday morning quarterback now, but I always think Iwan Baan is the Julius Shulman of our time.

I still remember the story Iwan told me about how he got the close-up of a girl sitting at the window of Toyo Ito's Mikimoto building in Tokyo. He was taking pictures of the building from the other side of the street, and suddenly he saw this girl sitting elegantly at one of the windows. He quickly aimed the camera towards her, framed the shot, and pressed the button. He didn't know who she was at the time, but soon after, he was told that it was Kelly Chan, a famous Hong Kong pop singer. This reminded me of the two girls in Julius Shulman's signature photo of Case Study House #22. When the assistants were setting lights for him, Julius strolled outside of the house just out of curiosity, and he caught the classic moment that perpetually defines the image of Modernism in America.

Iwan Baan: Mikimoto Building by Toyo Ito.

Julius Shulman: Case Study House #22 by Pierre Koenig.

Clearly, Iwan took his inspirations not only from Julius Shulman but also figures like Henri Cartier-Bresson. It's a mode of photo journalism. Like Cartier-Bresson, Iwan loves to catch real people in action. He rarely stages the scene but rather let the architecture be the stage of life. He also travels continuously around the globe. It's actually hard to find him in one place for more than a week.

When hear the name Julius Shulman, one will almost immediately think about Richard Neutra. In a similar manner, Iwan Baan has been associated to his fellow Dutchman Rem Koolhaas. While Julius's pictures represent the pristine quality of Neutra's high Modernism - always clean, organized and efficient, Iwan's work dares to expose messiness to reflect a different Zeitgeist. He tends to capture the chaos of metropolitan life - the pulse of our time that Rem also addresses - while maintaining high quality light and texture. Iwan also utilized new media technology and created interactive virtual tours with the help of a Swiss-made mirror ball and computer software, taking architectural photography to another level.

Both Julius and Iwan had help from architects in the early stage of their photography career. And in return, they both took their responsibilities as members of the architectual community. Julius helped discover hidden gems like Herb Greene, and Iwan's photos have brought our attention to several new talents, including young Japanese Sou Fujimoto and Junya Ishigami, as well as Giancarlo Mazzanti from Colombia. In 1990, Julius "retired" as he was upset by the ubiquitous postmodernism. When he heard that a new owner bought the Kaufmann House and was willing to undertake serious restoration, he helped enthusiatically by providing all the photos he took of the original house, including eighty of them that he never actually printed.

The responsibilities were not limited to architecture. Julius was an advocate of environmental awareness. He initiated a program called "Project: Environment U.S.A." to show how architects could relate to good environment in their design work. Iwan has a keen interest in the developing world. He goes frequently to China, India, Mongolia, and countries in South America and Africa, covering issues such as poverty, cultural identity, and democracy. This enthusiasm could be seen as early as in his school thesis project: a report on the Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus who founded the Grameen Bank in 1976, the first bank in the world dedicated to microcredit to the poor.

Here are just some of the obvious characters Julius Shulman and Iwan Baan have in common. Maybe another one to add: they are both so nice! As a professional and as a person, Iwan deserves to be the very first winner of this award.
 

The catalyst function of architecture

    

Maybe it was because of Architecture for Humanity, whenever people say "architects' social responsibilities," I always assume they only refer to providing low-cost shelter and reducing poverty. When I went to MoMA for the new exhibition "Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement," I was glad to see the type of projects ranged from museum in South Africa to housing tower refurbishment in Paris, from an art school in LA to an urban cable car system in Venezuela. But at the same time, I still felt something inadequate about it... Aren't these projects still primarily talking about underserved areas? Building a school out of mud certainly sets a good example in Bangladesh. But is that all architects can do to be "socially engaged"? Then there's a second question: to what degree are the social changes result of architecture? We are talking about bringing changes to society, but how many architects actually started with a social concern rather than saying "Oh great, I can build an art school!"?

METI - Handmade School in Rudrapur, Bangladesh

Transformation of Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in Paris, a new layer of balconies was added.

Inner-City Arts in LA, by Michael Maltzan

Metro Cable in Caracas, Venezuela

Community Living Room / Senior Housing in San Ysidro, CA, by Teddy Cruz

Rem told us, you also need to take on social responsibilities when working in places like Dubai. How to maintain the village-like lifestyle on the other side of the city? What's the significance of a Dubai project in the global political/economic/cultural/architectural context? When Le Corbusier envisioned the revolution of architecture, he always kept in mind architecture's social missions. (Happy Birthday, Corb!) A material and structural system to build efficiently in the new age, a lifestyle to reflect the zeitgeist, a city to live in harmony with nature... Issues of society are always diverse and complex, so the concept of social engagement must be broad and inclusive. It can be involvement in disaster relief as well as precaution of potential negative impacts. We should fight poverty as well as improve quality of life in general.

When I strolled down to the "Counter Space" exhibition, I saw the Frankfurt Kitchen. I saw the perfect answer to both of my questions right in front of my eyes! Designed in 1926–27 by Grete Schütte-Lihotzky, this compact and ergonomic space reflects a commitment to reshape the lives of ordinary (not just poor) people in a transforming society. The design addressed the notion of modernity in the domestic sphere, based rationally on new theories about efficiency, hygiene, and workflow. Its social agenda was to reform domestic labor through the reorganization of space, injecting a groundbreaking agency in the reconstruction of women's role in society. As Schütte-Lihotzky said, "Women’s struggle for economic independence and personal development meant that the rationalization of housework was an absolute necessity."

Frankfurt Kitchen in MoMA

Compared to the projects in the "Small Scale, Big Change" exhibition, nothing looks particularly fancy in the Frankfurt Kitchen. No intricate tectonics, no funny geometries, no wavy roofs. Perhaps a design doesn't really need to be "Architecture with a capital A" to perform as a social catalyst.

                   

Architectural dance

     
Stephen Petronio stood at the edge of the roof at Whitney, leaned out, and balanced his body to a perfect horizontal position facing down. Then he started strolling down the wall as if he was walking on a horizontal surface. It was an awe-inspiring sight. The verticality of space was transformed into horizontality by the act of the performer. For a moment I felt like I was incepted in Cobb's Paris.

This was the re-enaction of dancer/choreographer Trisha Brown’s 1970 “Man Walking Down the Side of a Building,” as part of the "Off the Wall" show on her early works. One can say Trisha Brown's dances are very "architectural" because they display a particular interest in the movements of the body in relation to space. In a similar indoor piece "Walking On the Wall" (1971), dancers walk, jump, and run parallel to the floor along two intersecting walls of the gallery. The dance defies gravity and hence challenges our perception of orientation. The observed space in the room spins like a rolling dice. Up and down, left and right all become relative.

These performances remind me of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when champion gymnast Li Ning ran along the rim of the stadium to light the Olympic cauldron. In this theatrical finale, the inner wall of the roof was unfolded into a long scroll showing the footsteps of the torch relay.

Li Ning ran on the inner rim of the Bird's Nest's roof

Space always exists, but the definition of space is through inhabitation. Spaces gain and alter their meanings from different user interactions. In a way, the design of architectural space is the choreography of user movements. Of course, architects can't foresee every possible use of the space they design. Creative "misuses" of space, like in the cases of Whitney and the Bird's Nest, usually cause surprising yet convincing effects.