Why Go Out?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N-xHcvug3WI

Amazing graphics, motion and depth of this artificial world, but what intrigues me about this is that the developers are making this game up as a 'job'... albeit an action packed, helicopter flying murderous job, but something you have to do.  When you're bored of doing that bit, you need 'leisure time' out from the job... hey, why not go biking in the hills?  or scuba diving in the bay?  But don't get off your sofa...

Building meshes for CNC modelling

Developing terrain for use in a CNC router to build a masterplan model of Beirut

Beirut density #2

Just some of the laser cut boards to create an accurate model of the city, every floor plate laid out.

The apparent density starting to appear...

Model building in my 'office'

Brazilian idealism

I'm currently researching cities which have been artificially created for a post-grad 'taster' essay, leading into a dissertation.  When I say 'artificial', it implies that unplanned building is 'natural' or organic, which I understand has its own issues.  But the simple idea that someone, a king, president, or in the case of China, a committee, could effectively wave their hand and create new place, with all the attributes a city contains, is fascinating, even if it is rarely seen as successful.

Regardless, looking at the plan of Brasilia shows a strain of idealism which I think can still be seen in (much) smaller projects by people like Isay Weinfeld.  Brasilia has had many of the urban problems associated with developing cities everywhere, coupled with a high cost of living which many capitals are afflicted by, but I can't help but be impressed by the initial idealism of Niemeyer and specifically, Costa's plan.

On a side note, how amazing to be able to get such an amazing book, with original pullout maps and introductions by J.K. and Niemeyer, not to mention Corbusier, for four quid off Amazon!  Brilliant.

High density Beirut

creating the files for laser cutting a model of Beirut created a super high density map, all the same volumes and masses but in a new digital layout, created by a different set of rules.

History & Theory #8: Ayn Rand 'The Fountainhead'

The Fountainhead seems to me to be a polemic on the evils of 'the collective' rather than a realistic statement of what Ayn Rand expected, or really wanted, from the individual.  Despite saying that Roark's characteristics were truly what she aspired to, the real blood and guts and human empathy of the story comes from the characters who Rand sets up to be despised or feared - the weak, derivative Peter Keating and the evil, Machiavellian Ellsworth Toohey - although even they too become merely two dimensional ciphers at points.

Written during the war, and coming from an American-Russian writer, it is unsurprising that she should have a polarised view on the politics of what she termed 'collectivism'.  The Fountainhead creates a platform for her mouthpiece, the architect Howard Roark, to explain Rand's philosophy in a climatic court scene.  Roark, accused of being an egotist and a traitor to society because of his unwillingness to conform, successfully argues that the human spirit and its inquiring, creative mind cannot be subsumed to any collective will, and its creations will always be owned by its creator.  Set in juxtaposition to the terrors of Nazi Germany and the corruption of Communist Russia, it is completely understandable why this was an incredibly popular sentiment at the time, and it chimes in very nicely with the the American idyll of the independent man, free to own, roam and do as he will on the frontier.  The complete individualism that Rand champions seems to work better in some nostalgic vision of the pioneer past, than it would in actuality in the present, urban world.

The two very distinct positions set out in the book (Roark/individuality/freedom/integrity/striving for the best vs. Toohey/collective/compromising/enslavement/meekness) leave the reader / viewer with no choice but to agree with Roark's closing statement - who in their right mind would choose Toohey's debasing mob-minded enslavement to collective will?  But the book entirely fails to answer what might happen should men of Roark's extraordinary will to power succeed in exercising their full range of abilities, and if they weren't so terribly nicely balanced as Mr. Roark.  It also fails to answer where this 'Truth' that drives Roark comes from - at the beginning he has not even studied architecture, and yet he knows what a building wants to be, how to build it.  What if the person was mistaken?  What if this perfect idea he is so convinced by, that the masses don't like, really IS crap?

Rand basically skips this by making the character of Roark completely unconcerned with anyone else opinion or needs and always inherently RIGHT - he is completely selfserving, an egotist as he proudly says.  When Toohey begs for some recognition, even in terms of an insult, Roark replies, "but I don't think of you."  For Rand, following on from Nietzsche, these talented individuals, ubermensch, who would be completely self-interested, would create things for their own needs and as a by-product of the good they do themselves, the rest of society would benefit, but it would not be done FOR society - that was enslavement.  This idea of Rand's relies on the talents of the individuals concerned to be in some productive areas - Roark loves to build, to make, so he does, and it is just lucky for the people who live in his buildings that he happens to have designed them.  Rand's philosophy here relies on these people always being in the right, and knowing the true course to follow.
What this fails to address is that not all people are so talented, nor so well adjusted.  In a society that glorifies the talented individual, what happens to the people who exhibit talents in areas such as charismatic manipulation for instance, like Hitler and Stalin?  Rand feared the tyranny of the collective, the Nazis and the Communists, but her alternative was the rise of the totalitarian, the Hitlers and Stalins - two sides of the same coin.