Of Nietzsche And The Nihilistic Global Culture

-Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche. Oil on canvas. Nietzsche standing on a bridge looking over the swirling world. His expression of deep thinking counterpart with the deep blue mountain.

3 weeks of excessive work has worn me out. Turning the pages of some Nietzsche's writings sparked back some quick adrenaline flowing in the vein, fascinated by how this 19th century intellect predicted the emptiness of the modern world.

'The attempt, for example, to use the theater as an institution for the moral education of the people, still taken seriously in Schiller's time, is already reckoned among the incredible antiques of a dated type of education. While the critic got the upper hand in the theater and concert hall, the journalist in the schools, and the press in society, art degenerated into a particularly lowly topic of conversation, and aesthetic criticism was used as a means of uniting a vain, distracted, selfish, and moreover piteously unoriginal sociability' -Friedrich Nietzsche.
-Architecture as mere street art - vain, distracted and unoriginal sociability.

Now and here, in the early years of the new century and in the middle of Asia, a mutation of architecture is undergoing, towards the nihilistic nothingness. The last sentence of that Nietzsche's line perfectly encapsulate the state architecture now. It was once the microcosm of civilization, the mother of all art and sciences, but it is now present in our days as a mere 'street art', short of identity and uniqueness, it is the 'free time toy' of society flush with financial capital, but of relatively scarce human capital. It remind me of a rich barbarian's closet: racks of fashionable designer outfits, could be easily worn onto the cold and naked body, of someone with an empty mind and soul. Architecture has now fail to be the best testament of the art and craft of his creator, it is a buying of the nihilistic dissoluted and shallow trans-global-culture under the patronage of consumer-driven capitalism and free-flowing capital. A paradox, a mutation.

The cause of our architectural emptiness is the sprouting middle class nouveau riche of the commercial amenities - the product of globalization and the favourist tyrant government. Architecture has degenerated from an important human enterprise to something diminutive in cultural significance, a fruitless hobby of our wannabe cultural capital who eagerly seek the touch of 'signature, studio-based star architecture firm' on their corporate edifice.
-The Malaysian government mega project - MATRADE Expo development with its controversially no open tender selection, this time said to be 'inspired by traditional Malaysian rubber seed and it blend with its surrounding natural context', we can see neither of the two claims ironically in this 'boutique architecture'.
-Another designer outfit on a culturally hungry body, another facade play, another alien - the new $628million MATRADE Expo with the government tyrant and 'ALIBABA' patrons looking on. There are already 6 major convention centers in the Klang Valley that are under-utilized including the $600million Putrajaya Convention Center. They are the 'White Elephants' of the privatization of GLC policy under NEP.

By blank-slake approach, designer-type firm are attracted to these developers who are short of interest in environmental and cultural contextuality, a platform which they exploit their creativity freedom in making form which is always nothing more than a naughty play of exterior building skin-deep-elaborate facades made of multiple playful material but yet supported by a modern framework of steel and concrete. Those 'play' they would argue to be traditional motif inspired, a clinical excuse of their exploitation in design freedom.

These designer-type firms is increasing in number, with steady technical expertise, they are in a position ready to generate icons and images to rebrand a new cultural identity of these desperately showy and money-fancy developing countries. This flock of firms opt to bypass opportunities in their own developed country that has strict code enforcement and property rights plus their architectural civilized and highly intellectual community. They stifle in favor of 3rd world's markets that embrace open, quick and trend-setting solutions to their economical boom. Their freedom in design always result in product that has little cultural attachment, a paradox between the regressive local cultural reality and their dramatic modern alien, carrying the tag of global culture of universality and essentialism.
Dubai - the wardrobe of the barbarian's outfits, the dead corpses city of the Gulf. These false landscape that falls onto some culturally unique Asian cities resonate a paradox between the nihilistic global fashion and the cultural void of our 3rd world society.

These 3rd world country nouveau riche who eagerly seek for their architectural tour-de-force have yet to realize the embedded mockery of their cultural and intellectual emptiness. Local society no longer has the authority to shape their own built environment and architecture. This is how I define architecture NOW in 2009...

Of Fascism Behind A Democratic Mask

-A Venetian mask protect and permit wearer to freely interact with people of all social status in a traditional Carnevale. Malaysia has it worn 52years, still counting.

There are too many ambiguous and lopsided systems exist in this country. Not hard to be identified. Both blaming its cultural and demographically diverse background, and finger-pointing to its geographical default, might sometimes lead to rational explanations on how messy this country is. The democratic propaganda is still loud in the air. But actual actions beneath this propaganda, usually undemocratic, are unintentionally perpetuated and manifested on one aspect that claim to be the most communicative mirror of a nationhood - its architecture.

This is not Mussolini's fascist era, nor the country need giant rostrum to tell the world that we want to revive socialism. But as Sigmund Freud once said, 'real democracy have never existed, there lies a animalistic irrationality and violent in every human', silent practice of fascism behind the protective mask of democracy is both possible and feasible. A recall on the history of Mussolini's regime and its fascist architecture vision struck me in association on what is happening in Malaysia.
-Palazzo Dei Congressi of EUR - the fascist edifice.

I examined the 4 aspects of fascism with its level of real practice by the Malaysian government. There are four main characters of our nation's conduct in close similarity with the one used in pre-WW2 Italy. There is a 'dictator' with centralize authority on all systems, be it our controversially elected P.M., stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism through over-flavouring a certain race and the gradual marginalization of other. All these dictatorial policies are undergoing silently beneath the mask of constant democratic propaganda.

In pre-war Italy, Marcello Piacentini under command of Mussolini almost single-handedly built the idealized New Rome for the tyrant. The whole city was almost completed by the 1942 Rome Exposition before the Axis power were plunged into war. Its fascist architecture share resemblance with the dictated new public architecture of the 21th century Malaysia. Both communicative in its overwhelming statement of totalitarian oppression of other seemingly inferior cultures. Its socialist realism architecture leave nothing abstract, leave no implicit hint, for this sake it resorts to the 'carved image' of classical language. Thus, it reconstructs the semiotic triangle, the firm relation between signifier (architectural element), reference (eclectic classical reference) and signified (the superiority of a certain party).
-False monumentalism and intention for manipulation - a national shame.

The purpose of these kind of building is to certain the 'uncertainty'. Clearly communicated in those building's symmetry, the firm centres and routes, big walls as well as those historically well codified architectural elements (classic and local vernacular), in a reasonable mixture.

Those imaginary 'SELF' of racist and dictatorial ground would not last long. The 'mask' itself would 'unmask' what is behind. The ill-fated are now end up trapped, like in the Piranesi's Carceri d'invenzione - The Imaginary Prisons!
-Geovanni Battista Piranesi - Carceri Plate VII, The Drawbridge, 1750.

3 Musketeers' Pilgrim and The Beginning of An End Of A City-State

-An implicit clock gears metaphor of the rigidity and robotic nature of Singapore.-APEC as the clock gears repairman

Not a Hajj Pilgrimage though, nor this place inherit masterful pieces of architecture, that worth 3 Malaysian musketeers to set on a highly intrepid trip. Singapore has always been on high and low. This time, the high of the APEC summit and their doomy domestic worries has set a highly intense and contradictory display, suggesting the beginning of an end of their great 30 years of triumph, all found through the eyes of 3 Malaysian architecture musketeers.
-Harbourfront - 10 Nov 2009 - courtesy musketeer R.Y.TAN

The ever so predictable, systematic (or even robotic) tiny island nation, this time poise in front of me with a different messages, that could well suggest deeper truth from the average understandings from the mouth of others.

The 48 hours of hectic voluntary ushering in the Suntec Convention Center couldn't provide the points on our intrepid undertaking, without it impose strong hints for our better interpretation on their work ethics. The typical dictacting, systematic(even robotic) and the unbearably narcissistic nature of the nation's conduct manifested throughout the whole preparation for the summit. As usual, fear drive them forward.

Our architectural pilgrimage, unmask some masked reality of their high and low. Their Yeang's National Library, Kurokawa and Tange's office towers downtown plus all the ultra-modern high profile signature architecture are in opposite gesture with the worries posted on newspaper of educational, cultural and mostly, economical concerns. This pilgrimage tell us that the first are served for the survival of their ailing later. The mood under the Convention Center may be the same. Singapore treat APEC as the keystone of their economical arch in the future, with the rising economical powerhouse in the world increasingly impose greater pressure on the tiny island country. As usual, it is unmistakable. The fight for an Utopian free trade zone over AsiaPasific region and Singapore's subsequent survival is the masked reality. Harbourfront's mega casino is in the making, while the last grasp of Confucianist school of thought is in the brink of eternal banishment. The impending gambling culture means laissez faire capitalist economy is in their highest ethos. Singapore have made decision on the cultural-identity crossroad while they compensate their cultural sacrifice by instilling back Chinese oriented teaching in their school curriculum, in which the first is much a heavy bill.
-The other 3 musketeers in the making - Harbourfront Casino

The island is founded with no more than swampy land, before they eventually realized the importance of westernization and capitalism on the survival of their city state. The two subsequently embraced without more consideration, and their citizen are now enslaved to the giant regime of western consumerism, nonreturnable and blindfolded. Squeezing into the rank of Middle Class is in the mind of everyone here, the rank which capitalist crave for, a giant rank consist of high spending power slaves, who wander narcotically in the trap of rivalry, envy and sarcasm circle. The politically and socially inert Singaporean is undoubtedly a sample consequences of the Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays's long forgotten psychoanalytic theory in tamming the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy. Consumerism and the subsequent people's psychological pursuit of imaginery self-portrait (or self-branding) are everywhere, from the self-and-brand-conscious student to the highly narcissist office-woorking class, the two are modern forms of cocaine invasion and political dictatorship. Singaporean in real need of help...
-Yeang's National Library revisited - 11 Nov 2009

The mistake of their urban planning authority 30 years back of allowing the development of many low density housing could be traced everywhere on the island. The initial planned target of maximum 6.5million inhabitant is now on its 4.99 mark. Until it reach the point 6.5, I am wondering in what style, the highly mass transit oriented transportation will collapse. The rising rank of middle class would means more and more automobile on the road which has now reach its ultimate buffer, the incursion of foreign labour then also will force its mass rail transit to its brink. In housing, this means more dominos on more reclaimed land, courtesy of Malaysian soil. These are all closer and closer to the much awaited modern vision of Ville Contemporaine.

This give reasons for them to worry. But those fear would still drive them forward in the beginning of its end...

-Towards an intrepid traveller...- 13 Nov 2009 - train.

Post-Functionalist, Beauty and The Struggle of Representation

-An oil refinery silo that demonstrate sheer functionalist beauty of assisting nature's tasks.

Modern era represent beauty of functionalist thinking but functionalist thinking couldn't be singly represented by modernism. Functionalist perspective of absolute beauty has deeper root and longer history than what the Utopian and dictating modernist had single-handedly claimed.

One day in Athens, student Aristippus met master Socrates...
Aristippus tried to challenge Socrates' view on the relationship
between 'good', 'beautiful' and 'usefulness'...
Aristippus:"Can you describe what constitute 'good'?"
Socrates: "There could be nothing good in itself but only in relation to something. A thing must be good for something in order to be good."
Aristippus:"How about 'beautiful'?"
Socrates:"A beautiful wrestler is unlike a javelin beautiful for swift and powerful hurling."
Aristippus argued that the two answers given by his master are overlapping and repeatedly the same. Socrates then explain:" Is a dung basket beautiful then? Of course, and a golden shield is ugly, if the first is well made for its special work the later badly!".
But for Aristotle's Functionalist theory, a work of art that is truly 'beautiful', is one that could function to complete mother nature's unfinished design of the world. The higher rank in life scale, from insect to animal to human, the more nature require them to assist her task. Provided the rational faculty of art, man is able to come to nature's aid and the art done by human functions to fulfill her uncomplete task. (example: an oil refinery plant is a beautiful work of human art to solve the incapability of nature to convert oil into power resource) A physician/doctor use the law of nature to do the heal of health of a person, when nature made mistakes and incapable to do so. The skill and machinery of a physician carrying out his job, has help nature to reach the desired result of providing health. This is the true reason and the beauty of human art.

The end of modern era see the lack of rational understanding of the beauty of architectural art. Those classical faith and thinking of functionalist beauty faded and the whole post-modern world plunged into a deep abyss of identity struggle in the search for 'beauty'... called it the Struggle of Representation. One full century of functionalist modern rationality proven to be too cruel to some ill-fated human, who always wish to live in idealised imaginary world (especially those in third world country which literary understanding of the meaning of modernism is lacking), the 'hamster wheel' of Struggle begun. Morality neglected, the responsibility of completing nature's unfinish task pushed aside, the naive, emotional and irrational reviving of the fading identity barricade the human eyes! The Struggle continues...
-The rude and banal etnocentric post-modernist revivalism - a giant Golden Shield?

'Man shouldn't be able to see his own face - there's nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.'

- Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Of Impulse Conversion and a Masterpiece of Spatial Concept

-The museum of hearing...?

Parallel to what biomorphic architecture has to do with the borrowed idea from human organic inner structures, some component in our body (other than the physics of the skeletal structure), are able to show enormous functional proximity and physical metaphor with how we shape our building art. This time the idea is from our ear cochlea.

To achieve genius architecture spatial quality need no devine transcendental interfered idea, a close look at how our sensory organs work might do you well. The working of Cochlea, an auditory structure in our inner ear, shows close resemblance with how the greatest 20th century architectural space functions to rise human sensation in art appreciation, it is the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York.
-5thAvenue, Upper East Side, New York.

The cochlea is filled with watery liquid that moves in accordance with vibration coming from the middle ear. There are 'Hair cells' inside the spiralling scala vestibuli that set into motion when a low frequency vibration is detected. While the liquid moves along the spiraling 'rotunda', Hair Cells convert vibration into electrical impulses and are sended through neurotransmitter to the brain to produce SENSATION.

-The spiralling rotunda of our cochlea. -Wright's sectional drawing of the Guggenheim Museum.

The Guggenheim Museum simply works the same way as with the Cochlea. The extraordinary experience of walking down the spiralling ramp while enjoying endless piece of artwork on the spiralling wall, could have putted the cliche of 'architecture as boxes' to the test. The spatial concept here intensify the sensory link between the messages of the art on the wall with the human soul.

Here, you walk down the spiralling ramp, your physical present metaphorically works as the 'vibrational input', the museum's volume of space as the 'watery liquid' of cochlea, the artwork on wall as the 'hair cells' on the spiralling scala vertibuli, the messages and the texture of the artwork as the sensory 'impulses',...all in one coincide within a beautiful moment, INTENSIFYING THE SENSATIONAL RETHINK OF THE MEANING OF TRUE GREATNESS!

Of termitidae's Harmony and homo sapiens's Unending Dialectic

The last century of earth will see human species in sorry state of inculpativation. The intolerable nature of human is critically contradicting the rest of nature, making them the strangest animalia kingdom ever existed on this planet. The paradox of humans nature, which is much represented by some of their works like Energy-Mass-Speed relation, the exploitation of uranium or even their self-admit overly high energy consumption, can be easily seen through and proven by comparing the stark contradiction of humans' and inarguably, termites' architecture.
Ventilation vents in termites mount.

While the dialectic discourse of human on the agenda of finding a fresh new glamour Logos of architecture, the rest of the world (termites a preferable sample) do not seem finding it hard to have a eternal solution of producing a lasting excellent architecture. The theoretical progress of humans architecture, which has yet reach its ultimate harmony, would continue to stumblingly struggles, failing in each attempt to find the ultimate centre. A harmony termites mount would be far adrift the amalgamation of human architecture which is still within great uncertainty.

In the middle of our boast of how complicated our biomatic sustainable architectural terminology is, of how we blend our architecture with nature, nature scoff off a sigh of scorn on our naiveness. A sub-Sarahan African termites mount has all the reasons to proof the incompatibility of human's architecture compared to theirs. With the body size of not more than the size of a quarter of a tiny rice, termites has built comparatively 2743 feet high 'building' while the tallest human made structure now being the Burj al-Arab is only 1922 feet high. Inside the mount, they farm fungus which is their primary food source which must be kept at exactly 87 degrees F, while the temperatures outside fluctuate between 35 at night to 104 degrees F during day. A termites mount achieve this remarkable (LEED Platinum certified maybe..) feat by constantly regulating the opening and closing a series of heating and cooling vents. By using the principal of convection currents, air is sucked in at the lower part of the mound, down into enclosures with muddy walls, and up through a channel to the peak of the termite mound. The industrious termites constantly create new vents and plug up old ones to regulate the temperature. This 'architectural' wonder, existed approximately 251,000,000 years ago since termites evolved. Sadly, we human only learn this from nature in the year 1996 of the 20th century, approximately 250,999,987 year later!

Another page of humans strange architectural evolution.

The Eastgate building in Harare, Zimbabwe, which emulate the bioclimatic features of a termites mount, symbolize not just another page of human contradicting boundless theories in architecture, but also the contradicting humans nature with the other parts of nature. The Eastgate development, owned by corporation Old Main, is itself a mirror of the conflict of human which has until now failed to find the true harmony. Pre-industrial past, tradisional culture was the leading way of thought; industrial age with Modernism as the ultimate episteme; while in post-industrial time see humans' continued struggle for a proper representation, neither Pop, Neo-, Ethnic, Mass, Deconstruct nor parametric could speaks for the majority global dwellers. The establishment of a eternal representation of human architecture stumblingly continue. Old Main, along with the likes of Barclays and others are those who secretly funded the reign of Zimbabwe's president Mugabe, amidst the lasting civil war, hunger and severe corruption the failed nation is facing.
The ventilation holes at Eastgate as direct imitation of the system in termites mount. An architectural mutation it would seems.

A theoretically boundless, strange but avant-garde architecture, ironically found in the trouble-proned continent of Africa, with the most unlikely context of a failed community using it, Eastgate is in stark contradict with the highly organised community system of King-Queen-Worker-and-Soldier living inside a termites mount, those who found the true harmony...While nature cast off a scornful smile on us...the Human.