Henri Lefebvre

Best bit yet and although I feel Im becoming a bit like Stephen Fry and arrogantly talking to myself as if loads of people really want to read my thoughts, I cant help it! At least this module gives me a reason to do so.

Ive read this piece three times now and although I love the beatnik nature of Tom Wolfes piece Ive spent alot more time thinking about Lefebvres philosophy.

I think its generally about our concept, as players of the current cultural theory, of 'reality', in particular and in direct relation to our understanding of Space. We all know about Marxism and its conotations toward communism, but I certainly dont know the details, which I think is the reason I feel the need to understand it.

So to what degree is social space a product? To answer that question we have to ask what is a product, and what is social space. The issue of social space, certainly in Lefebvres mind, is intertwined with the human concept of product and reading this shit is fascinating, it challenges the things that everyone plays along with every day!

His discussions revolve around Marxist thinking, use value and exchange value. I see that as monetry (current political and economic) value and real, personal, natural value and that these are the very basic building blocks of a system that allows our current capitalist world to work.

As a result of this we discuss the difference between A product and A work and the more you get into it the more you realise that whilst both have their own distinction, they are, in current society, difficult to seperate and have been since at least Roman society.

Im rambling cos Ive drunk several bottles of wine and Ive had a mental week, but I think that the answer is that social space is a product, it may be far removed from the basic idea of a product, but it is a result of societal work, which is in turn a product of the political and economical world that weve all been living in for a long time!

Shawn Phillips

'The Politics of Amnesia' by Terry Eagleton

A departure from the last two pieces, this is first of all a book, not an article and has a stronger constitution. As Paul pointed out, the other two pieces are like mutations of theory, this however is more serious. Eagletons approach is immediatley more philosophical, he talks about ideas and ways of thinking rather than general happenings and occurences in modern day life. Indeed this chapter is about that very thing. The state of theory today, how we got here and where we are going.
Theory obviously develops with time as we learn from our predecessors, what Eagleton is saying is that currently we arent really making the leaps and bounds in cultural theory and thinking that have been made up until recently and that current theoretical thinking has strayed to popular and philisophically thin subject matters. I tend to agree with him, not that I know that much about the great theorists before us, but the world does seem to be a quagmire of consumerism and indulgence more than ever before. On the other hand he argues that never before have we been so liberated in our cultural theory and I think thats the point where are we and where are we going.



http://www.scribd.com/doc/13652422/Politics-of-Amnesia-Terry-Eagleton

Mike Davis - Fear and Money in Dubai

Fear and Money in Dubai - what a fascinating article, fascinating in part because my oldest and best friend has lived in the middle east since I first met him at boarding school and now lives in Abu Dhabi, where I will be heading to be his best man in 6 months time!

I have always been a bit perplexed by the existence of the UAE and how such a monstrous place could have been created from the nothing that it was all of roughly 60 years ago. This article has definately offered a better understanding of how and why all this happened.
The edifice complex of bigger is better rules over all and its interesting how this has been created through the running of Sheikh Al Maktoums country like a business and the global marketing of that business which in turn feeds the gigantisism. If you look up Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum you will find some pretty wild facts, for example he has 19 children, a senior and junior wife and in 2008 was estimated to have amassed a fortune of 28,000,000,000 us dollars!

The problem with all this however is that the world pays for it and oil is where it all started, Saudi just next door owns 13.9% of the worlds oil reserves by contrast the UAE only owns 3.2% of the worlds oil. However the UAE is only 4% the size of Saudi so by land mass is far richer in oil. I always find statitistics difficult to accept because they only pertain to one single number relating to one single relationship. Anyway its clear that UAE has loads of dosh! The question now is not why but how do they have so much dosh and I was interested to read how Al Maktoum has created these low tax incentives to draw in business from the rest of the world so that it isnt just oil that keeps the economy ticking.

Finally the question of ethics arises and clearly ethics are not a gigantic factor in this world of biggism, no matter how you look at it its pretty clear that work forces are drawn in from poor countries to build the place. The BBC ran a Panorama documentry on it earlier this year:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7985361.stm

and what pisses me off more than anything is the rich bastards who dont seem to be doing anything about it. Architects moreover like Zaha who head out there to produce their wild and wonderful concotions should be at the front of the opposition.


http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2635

ZAHA HADID: THE FIRST GREAT FEMALE ARCHITECT - by Johnathan Meades

Johnathan Meade’s excellent article is a sort of intellectual dissection of Zaha Hadid. He does this, as discussed, through the examination of a number of agendas that contribute to the zaha amalgam.
Context seems to me to be the most interesting and important question, whether it’s the physical environment into which her buildings are dropped, the social context of the architectural world, or the places where she lives and works. Her designs are so outrageously extreme I think this is a valid subject to address.
This render of a competition entry she did for the Centre for Islamic Art in the Cour Visconti at the Louvre is a prime example, the shape of the intervention is so far removed from the existing courtyard that it isn’t easy to see how it was born. However, her buildings are, as Meades says, sensitive to their surroundings. She is not drawing forms directly from the surrounding landscape rather making an intervention into the existing space to make a better and more exciting use of that space. There is further context in this design in the geometrical patterns of the cladding, an acknowledgment of what lies within. So she may appear to be ‘anti-contextual’, but in reality the designs still need to come from somewhere.

http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/zaha-hadid