Thursday, March 26, 2009

untitled 09

untitled 09 (ariana huffington's powder room: self-portrait of iphone with owner)

This post isn't much of a cause or much of an action, but it does fall flat in the middle of what most undergrads lovingly refer to as 'spring break'. Right now, it's a place holder - like Brad Pitt's pink project in New Orleans; it's a promise that I will be back after the ACSA conference in Portland to write more about stats and its relationship in particular to birth control, infrastructure, religious freedoms, and books. Things are most definitely brewing - stay tuned.

The image is merely proof (as images are) that my iphone and I somehow found ourselves in Ariana Huffington's powder room last week (how crazy is that?). A guest of my Obama group friend, Andrew, we had an opportunity to hear Elizabeth Alexander recite her inaugural poem, eat mini grilled cheeses, and marvel over the sheer quantity of personal portraits that surrounded us in the Brentwood-based villa. Want a signed hard copy of the poem itself? I might just have an extra. Leave a comment; let me know.

As a nod to the honorary event, here is the text of the poem. It felt a little bit like being at the inauguration, only smaller, warmer, and unfortunately Obama-free (though he was in LA, and we were kind of hoping he might come by).

You could say, I imagine, that poetry is actually its own kind of cause, and this one, prosaic as the phrases might be, certainly endorses its own call to action.

So, there we have it - the cause this week is poetry, and to 'praise song for the day', this day, this spring, this week.

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.


Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by "first do no harm," or "take no more than you need."

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

a question of significance

Today is the Sunday before exam week, winter quarter 2009. I'm being explicit with the date because it is more than likely the close of the quarter that signifies not only my last bit of real required coursework in this PhD, but also the end of the first and likely only statistics course I will ever take. By Tuesday, 11:30 am, I will (hopefully) have lodged into my brain the range of quantitative methods that began with the probability of drawing an ace of spades, and ends with multiple regression, bivariate correlations, and the importance of R squared. We've most certainly come a long way.

Our final lab project ('our' here is my fabulous partner Naji and I) utilizes a multi-country global data set from 2000 in an attempt to discern which factors reported (independent variables) ultimately have a significant effect on income inequality (the Gini index). The fact that I can even write that sentence and know what it means is substantial progress for those of us who live primarily in the right side of our brain. On several occasions, I have compared the mental process of taking a math class to the slow turning of a giant freighter in a narrow canal (not so unlike the intended mission of the bailout package on the US economy) or the struggle to crank a wheel that has sat hidden and rusted for years (not so unlike that cartoon of a thing that seems to unhinge the island in time on LOST). Nine and a half weeks in, the gears have loosened and the fallout is at least comprehendible, if not comprehensive. Though I won't hide my excitement that the end of the struggle is near, I also can't help but be just a bit excited about the baby steps of inchoate bridging something like statistics provides. As someone consciously and laboriously building a bridge between the humanities/arts/architecture and social sciences, an awareness of the vocabulary and concepts that form the basis for 'substantiating' quantitative research might very well come in handy.

On the flip side, however, it also reveals itself as a shaky house of cards. If I've learned nothing else, I've most certainly learned that randomness is very important business and is the key to predicting everything (as in you must have random samples) and simultaneously the key to determining just how possible the probable might be (how confident or not you are in your results). Yes, what the 'outside world' (outside of quantitative methods) has been lead to believe is a more precise and exact form of research, is mostly the task of laboriously proving that results do, at best, hold some truthiness (thank you Stephen Colbert). Which is, actually, its own kind of rigor.

What statistics can also do, though, is gauge significance. By using the SPSS computer program (the wizard for us stats adolescents), you can determine the degree to which one factor in a data set influences another factor. (You stats people are laughing out loud at my over simplification. You other people are thinking - why on earth does this matter at all?) Briefly (taken from our current lab project), if we're trying to determine why a country has income inequality, we can test a correlation hypothesis in SPSS and it will tell us that, yes, how much a country spends on health care is significantly correlated to its level of income inequality. And then if we run that same test with other variables - say life expectancy or degree of urbanization - ultimately, we hope, we can find more and more of the factors that relate to income inequality and then, in the long run, work to change those factors to make societies more equal. Ah, if it were only so easy....

Which brings us to the class I am teaching at Otis. Two weeks ago we had an 'intervention' of sorts. Struggling with the students' lack of commitment to the assignments, my astute co-teacher recommended we have an open session within which we could air our concerns, hopefully address them, and move past them to some real progress. It was a fantastic session and one really enlightening issue that emerged was, also, this question of significance. Here we are working with people who are homeless, one student said, and we're talking about making art. What good does art do - shouldn't we be doing something more significant? And, in turn, is promoting 'awareness' - one of our project options - a significant enough concern of art making? (As a short aside, it is interesting to imagine this in statistical terms, to ask if there really is some sort of correlation between an increase in awareness and a reduction in homelessness, or a reduction in the abuse that those living on the streets frequently receive.)

Of course I'm a strong believer in the fact that, in lieu of finding a way to house everyone in a single semester, there are thousands of alternative ways to contribute meaningfully to the lives and plight of people who find themselves marginalized. And, to bring this back to the cause of the week, that doing something with the smallest degree of significance is better than doing nothing at all.

I so often find myself speaking to people who are immobilized by the magnitude of the world's problems. Particularly now, when they seem so huge and so close to home. So, in honor of my stats final and my new found direction with my Otis class, I'm asking everyone to get unstuck, to turn the crank of small possibility, and do something that may seem insignificant, but isn't. And then do it again. And then do something else. Don't worry for now that you're not solving the big problems, not answering the big questions. Don't let the magnitude of need hold you back. Give yourself permission to warm up to greater things, greater risks even.

An easy one that I've noticed is buying a box of Girl Scout cookies. According to USA Today, Girl Scout cookie pre-orders were down 19% this year due to the economy and particularly harsh winter weather. Much of the funds they raise go to scholarships and community projects; one troop in Atlanta has used creative capitalism techniques to get buyers who can't or shouldn't eat the cookies themselves to purchase a box to be given to Operation Sandbox and sent to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It may seem insignificant, it may even be insignificant, but what stats has taught us, is that the most unlikely contributors might also prove to be vital. This week, allow even the smallest of opportunities - picking up trash, recycling something you usually don't bother to wash, giving away the 75 cents in your pocket - to become significant in its own right. Building on the small acts is the very thing that makes them worthwhile.


**thanks to the poster design team in my Otis class for this bit of visual research.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

A quick follow-up

For those who have not already seen this on Archinect, here is a link to their recently completed survey on the state of things in architecture as well as articles on the profession and the economy. It's not particularly optimistic, but near the end of the survey there are several participants who echo the possibility for opportunity this disaster has cracked open. There is one article as well entitled 'Reading material for unemployed architects' which I was hoping was going to be a survey of the most common books we all own but have never had the time to read. Alas, it was just another advice column. So I'm adding my interpretation of that title to the list of things to do during your unrequested vacation. As we turn the corner towards spring, is it those classics you skimmed in high school, Delirious New York, Complexity & Contradiction, Deleuze, Kant, or Lacan that you've never had time to really read? Marshall McLuhan, Richard Sennett, Kerouac (the new version, as written originally, is out in paperback!)?

And on a completely lighter note (isn't humor supposed to be the best medicine?), I wrote a few months back about the Ben & Jerry's flavor, Yes PeCan! that was being sold as part of a pro-Obama fundraising effort for the Common Cause Education Fund. This past week I received a follow up email forwarded from my friend Alex. Here is a selection of the George W Bush alternatives to Yes PeCan! as suggested to Ben & Jerry's by a comic (and fictitous) public. Enjoy:

- Grape Depression
- The Housing Crunch
- Abu Grape
- Nut'n Accomplished
- Iraqi Road
- Chock 'n Awe
- WireTapioca
- Guantanmallow
- imPeachmint
- Heck of a Job, Brownie!
- Neocon Politan
- The Reese's-cession
- Cookie D'oh!
- Nougalar Proliferation
- Death by Chocolate... and Torture
- Freedom Vanilla Ice Cream
- Chocolate Chip On My Shoulder
- Credit Crunch
- Mission Pecanplished
- Country Pumpkin
- Chunky Monkey in Chief
- WMDelicious
- Chocolate Chimp
- Caramel Preemptive Stripe


Personally, I'm sticking happily with my Yes PeCan!

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Finding Opportunity in Catastrophe

In the last month and a half, cause of the week has expanded somewhat from its initial objective of easy actionable items to a broader set of calls, contextualized in positive ideological frameworks that support larger and more long-lasting evolutions. This is primarily the work of the four invited guests who raise the very valuable points that external change requires a kind of systemic vision of interrelationships (the taco and immigrant rights; health and the planning of sidewalks) and internal change a kind of reinvention of identity and purpose (practice as an activist and you are one step closer to being one). Encouraging everyone to capitalize on the vast value of design and designers has both internal and external implications and, by the day, seems more and more timely. Both small actions and shifting beliefs are valid and valuable, and I hope to continue to balance the small and the large, providing easy opportunities to act now with bigger inspirations for long-range influence.

This week's 'cause' is inspired by an email exchange among friends and former UNCC students. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of unemployed in the US increased an additional 598,000 in January to 11.6 million total. The percentage of unemployed rose from 7.2 to 7.6%. I can't quickly locate the numbers for architects alone, but I can tell you from simple anecdotal experience, reductions in the field are massive and pervasive. Not one person I have spoken to in practice remains unaffected. Everyone is either laying off or being laid off, cutting benefits or cutting jobs all together. As we're all beginning to realize, this is a problem that starts and ends at the banks. The layoffs are not simply from a loss of new work, but also from a freeze in work already awarded or in early stages of development where necessary financing is no longer available to move the project forward. In this instance, trickle down economics is most definitely working - to the detriment of all. Less loans mean less commissions mean less construction; a loss of jobs in architecture firms means the ranks of unemployed construction workers from drywallers to day laborers will be growing exponentially. No wonder the AIA sent lobbyists to DC to fight for a slice of the stimulus pie.

The loss of jobs and the overall downturn of the economy is most certainly disastrous. Yet, as Naomi Klein reminds us in The Shock Doctrine, and Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella in The Resilient City, the flip side of every disaster is opportunity.** Not to downplay the direness of the situation, but this email exchange I referred to above and the other conversations I've had with peers in floundering firms, seems to be proving Bryan Bell right and then some. Our training is solid and broad; our ability to be inventive and resilient is inspiring in the face of uncertainty. What the down turn in the economy seems to be doing for architecture and its aspirants is multi-fold, and well worth capitalizing on. Here are several ways to imagine collective optimism rising from the ashes of economic catastrophe:

First, the growth machine has come to a screeching halt. Finally. The neoliberal insistence on growth for the sake of growth has been a prime contributor to a quantity over quality mentality that has left our built environment a collage of steroidal disasters. The opportunity here is to shift the priority from quantity to quality and consider more carefully the what, where, and how of design and building. Or of shopping, for that matter, or of eating, or of our precious leisure time. With less to go around, it's twice as important to make wise decisions rather than simply make decisions. Some of the projects that have been halted are probably better off dead.

Second, we are a profession always short on money and even more short on time. This is the chance to hit a reset button and take back our lives. This is a chance to amend the abusive practices that have become ingrained in the architectural habitus. This is a chance to reconsider the 60 hour work week, the unpaid overtime, the under-paid intern. When firms rebuild post-recession, let's ratchet up the expectations we have of ourselves to be good stewards of our peers, our colleagues, our clients, and our employees. Let's not sell ourselves or our abilities short, but recognize that good work takes time, energy, vision, and commitment, all of which grow more sturdy in healthy individuals. This is not a call to laziness, but a call to some kind of normalcy we have lost. Reset.

At the same time, let's also reset our egos - but not our confidence - and embrace the opportunity to become a less autonomous part of a larger, interrelated world. At the same time, let's make contributing to the people and the places less likely to be served by our expertise a part of the new priorities.

An opportunistic part of these layoffs is also the current luxury of time. What I was most impressed with in these email exchanges among UNCC graduates is how many of them are using new found time to explore things they have had to shelve for years or to move forward on objectives they normally would have had to squeeze in between work and sleep. They are studying for and taking the Architectural Registration Exam (go Fish!), LEED certification tests, and the "NABCEP photovoltaic system design and installer certification" (go Nick!). They are attending workshops on energy and green design and going back to school in record numbers, according to Archinect and the latest stats on grad school enrollment (go Joe and his MBA in Real Estate!); and they are doing design competitions - a freedom of time, energy, and creativity often sucked away by the daily commitment of office work.

These layoffs, awful as they are, also are an opportunity to re-evaluate what you have been doing and what you hope to be doing next. Many, many of the emails and calls I have received start sentences with, "I will never again...." ... work for the man, sell my soul, be trapped inside for 60 hours a week, 'design' another hospital, sacrifice my health. Or, even more simply, will never work at a large firm or for corporate clients. So many of us boarded the train of architecture and followed its trajectory rather than leading it. Now is the chance to take that trajectory into our own hands, or hop this train for another one - even a very related one. My good friend Tim first thought that when his impending layoff came, he would come to California, camp on the coast for a few months and paint. He's an amazing landscape painter and never has had the luxury of time to pursue it fully. Yet, when he did get laid off about a week ago, he fortuitously found himself in conversation with representatives from the state about getting a job documenting and evaluating state park structures, a way to get back in touch with nature and interact with and serve the public - something he's been missing while sitting behind a computer for the last decade.

Finally, there is the question of the architecture that already exists and what's to be done with the market glut of the unsellable and the unleasable. Again, this bursting of the bubble is a form of much-needed market leveling, but that fact doesn't do much for the millions of vacant square feet of leasable space and thousands of unsellable or undervalued homes. Nate brought up this issue, as his property firm alone has 1.5 million square feet of unleased office space, and suggested that there must be alternative adaptation/reuse/reinvention strategies for what's already out there, underutilized. LA Forum ran a design competition in 2004 that sought new uses for dead malls. The conclusion in their case, I would say, was that the market-driven, privatized, single use model of the mall is no longer a naturally sustainable one. The best entries converted the inward focused and locally isolated mall into a region-specific, multi-use, public/private framework that capitalized on large spans, vast areas of flat pavement, and cheap space to invent new, socially-conscious and sustainable models of collectivity and commerce. Nate's question is a good one - and likely to be THE question for the coming generation of designers: what can we do with the underutilized stock we already have? Vertical farming, anyone?

Personally, as always, I'm inspired by the proactive nature of our UNCC grads and, generally, most of the architects I come across who work on a regular basis for long hours and for little money to make a mark on the landscape that elevates the experiences of all who pass by or occupy. It's no easy task, even when times are flush, to do good work. Yet, it seems this latest catastrophe might be the impetus for some reconsideration, and (fingers crossed) this stimulus package might go beyond repair to reinvention. This week, these weeks, how can we use this as a moment of pause on the often too fast road of our career pursuits? Like that sign I found in Biloxi post-Katrina, the house may be gone, but the people and trees are fine, so let's get to work.

And Obama, if you are listening, I know some hard-working experts looking for new opportunities.



**a much greater consideration of disasters and architecture from our PhD colloquium, Uneasy Urbanism: Incidents and Accidents under Dana Cuff, will be published this spring in PLACES magazine.