So, been a while since I wrote in this thing. There is a reason for that. I don't want to turn this into one of those "I deal with my psychological / medical / social problem by blogging about it" things or some kind of assignment from my therapist but I do have a condition that makes it difficult for me to work a one thing for an extended period. The technical term is laziness. I know it looks made up but it's a real thing - you can Google it.
I decided to start writing here again because 1) my Facebook status updates were getting way too long and 2) someone requested I do it. If you are thinking 2) is weird and not very believable you are right - although in this case it happens to be true. And it wasn't my therapist. He told me to up the dose on my meds and stop complaining.
So there's that.
I live in Toronto. A few years ago some people here thought it would be fun for this city to host the Pan Am Games. If you don't know what those are you are not alone. What I know about them is this: they fuck up traffic. The city had three years to prepare a plan to deal with the anticipated increase of several thousand additional drivers on the highways during July and August. The plan they came up with was to ask commuters for a "voluntary 10% decrease in the number of cars on the road". No shit. I commute. That's one care. Or, using the math of the Games Organizers, 1.0 cars. I have tried to figure a way to get to work and back in 0.9 cars but it won't work.
I would like to know which cars belong to the 10% of people who are out on the highways at rush hour voluntarily. That is a fucked up hobby.
Anyway, the Organizers knew this wasn't a plan so much as a complete lack of a plan and so they added a couple hundred kilometers of HOV lanes. Three lanes going each way and one is reserved all day for vehicles with three or more occupants, taxis, and official games vehicles. Parenthetically, I have yet to see an official games vehicle - unless they are all driving modded Honda Accords. I've seen plenty of those with one person in them in the HOV lane.
The most annoying thing about this (and it is the top of a very long list) is the media have all agreed not to shit on the games because Go Canada! The traffic report now takes 50 minutes of every hour but the other ten are callers who love the HOV lanes because they are car-pooling. Fuckers.
It's not okay to gloat about car-pooling. It's like bragging about how much you recycle. Not cool. On the plus side, it has helped me understand why some Americans are so dead-set against socialized health care. It's obviously better than a private system but you just know some asshole is going to wreck it by gloating about not dying.
Friday, July 3, 2015
Thursday, April 3, 2014
The Moriyama RAIC International Prize
Raymond Moriyama and the RAIC have created a new prize for architecture - $100K awarded every two years for buildings that "reflect the values that are so important to Raymond: humanism, equality, and inclusivity." You can read more about it here.
I can appreciate why Moriyama and the RAIC think this will raise the profile of Canadian architecture (presuming a Canadian wins at some point) but it remains to be seen whether or not it is a good idea. Moriyama is of a very particular era, speaking only of his work as an architect. After WWII people genuinely believed architecture could play a significant role in social change and they were right. The war had destroyed whole cities in Europe and Asia and there was a tremendous "peace dividend" in North America, where everyone "knew" real estate was the only truly safe investment. Architects had the opportunity not only to employ new technologies on a large scale for the first time but they could also step in a create entire cities from scratch. The entire world was being rebuilt and architects had enormous social power.
Our circumstances have changed. Not even architects believe architecture is as powerful now as it was 50 years ago. What this award is likely to do is bring international attention to one very good building every two years and, while that isn't bad it doesn't really qualify as good either. I talked about this before in my spiel on niceness in architecture but award winning buildings are important to only a tiny minority of people. Architects themselves, architecture students, people who write about design. Hard to think of anyone else. The important buildings are different for everyone and about the only thing they have in common is no one pays any attention to them. And you can be absolutely certain no one wins $100K for them.
This award will be meaningful or not depending on who wins and why. It is a near certainty that none of the winners will actually need $100K. In that sense it is kind of stupid but I guess if it was only $20 the media would pay even less attention to it than they will now. If this award goes to the kind of building I think it is going to go to (the best example of the work of one of maybe ten or fifteen firms world-wide) then it will be meaningless. Or at least as bad as the Pritzker. It would be a different thing entirely to give $100K to a firm that was just starting out and could use the money. Or to split it into 10 prizes in different categories. Or to award it retrospectively to buildings that are not less than, say, ten years old. It's very difficult to tell how well a building will age and, given that this award is about quality in construction and "not a beauty contest", it seems like waiting to see if how the building ages might be a good idea. It would be embarrassing as hell to give the award to a building that fell apart six months later.
Having chosen the Aga Khan Museum as the site of the award ceremony does give me a tiny bit of hope the prize will be something more than an architects-only circle-jerk. The Aga Khan awards are about the only genuinely interesting architecture contest going. The jury consistently finds work that provides the architects of the world with bucketloads of details to steal (and is even more valuable for the world's architecture students). The work recognized by the Aga Khan is typically cheap, interesting, and innovative as hell. Part of that is because they recognize so many buildings. One building every two years just doesn't seem like enough. Another point in favour of the Aga Khan's is the buildings are from parts of the world The Architecture Record and Architecture Review don't visit very often. We'll see. If this turns into another occasion to celebrate the same office everyone else is celebrating that year, Moriyama wasted his money. If one of my friends wins, it will instantly become the best award since Alfred Nobel started blowing shit up.
I can appreciate why Moriyama and the RAIC think this will raise the profile of Canadian architecture (presuming a Canadian wins at some point) but it remains to be seen whether or not it is a good idea. Moriyama is of a very particular era, speaking only of his work as an architect. After WWII people genuinely believed architecture could play a significant role in social change and they were right. The war had destroyed whole cities in Europe and Asia and there was a tremendous "peace dividend" in North America, where everyone "knew" real estate was the only truly safe investment. Architects had the opportunity not only to employ new technologies on a large scale for the first time but they could also step in a create entire cities from scratch. The entire world was being rebuilt and architects had enormous social power.
Our circumstances have changed. Not even architects believe architecture is as powerful now as it was 50 years ago. What this award is likely to do is bring international attention to one very good building every two years and, while that isn't bad it doesn't really qualify as good either. I talked about this before in my spiel on niceness in architecture but award winning buildings are important to only a tiny minority of people. Architects themselves, architecture students, people who write about design. Hard to think of anyone else. The important buildings are different for everyone and about the only thing they have in common is no one pays any attention to them. And you can be absolutely certain no one wins $100K for them.
This award will be meaningful or not depending on who wins and why. It is a near certainty that none of the winners will actually need $100K. In that sense it is kind of stupid but I guess if it was only $20 the media would pay even less attention to it than they will now. If this award goes to the kind of building I think it is going to go to (the best example of the work of one of maybe ten or fifteen firms world-wide) then it will be meaningless. Or at least as bad as the Pritzker. It would be a different thing entirely to give $100K to a firm that was just starting out and could use the money. Or to split it into 10 prizes in different categories. Or to award it retrospectively to buildings that are not less than, say, ten years old. It's very difficult to tell how well a building will age and, given that this award is about quality in construction and "not a beauty contest", it seems like waiting to see if how the building ages might be a good idea. It would be embarrassing as hell to give the award to a building that fell apart six months later.
Having chosen the Aga Khan Museum as the site of the award ceremony does give me a tiny bit of hope the prize will be something more than an architects-only circle-jerk. The Aga Khan awards are about the only genuinely interesting architecture contest going. The jury consistently finds work that provides the architects of the world with bucketloads of details to steal (and is even more valuable for the world's architecture students). The work recognized by the Aga Khan is typically cheap, interesting, and innovative as hell. Part of that is because they recognize so many buildings. One building every two years just doesn't seem like enough. Another point in favour of the Aga Khan's is the buildings are from parts of the world The Architecture Record and Architecture Review don't visit very often. We'll see. If this turns into another occasion to celebrate the same office everyone else is celebrating that year, Moriyama wasted his money. If one of my friends wins, it will instantly become the best award since Alfred Nobel started blowing shit up.
On Building Codes
NOTE: the absolute necessity of changing the way we design and build most new buildings is obvious to me and the current way building design is controlled by the government's concerned is through various Building Codes. So they will have to be changed. The basic concept behind those changes is equally obvious - both construction and operation of all buildings must consume less energy. As for how that might be achieved, I'm spit-balling here.
Sometime soon, probably in the next ten years, every Building Code in North America will have to be completely re-written. There are two simple reasons for this; one is very simple, the other slightly more complicated.
The first reason is energy consumption. Architecture is very energy intensive. We have been designing buildings for the last 60 or 70 years that are predicated on a circumstance that no longer applies, and hasn't applied in a long time. Concrete and glass buildings made sense when it was cheaper to heat and cool a building than insulate it. This was because we didn't calculate the true cost of heating buildings, just the user cost. Now we know the true cost is much higher - and possibly unimaginable. So building codes will become more prescriptive by necessity. If you are involved in either the building industry or the environmental movement that will be kind of self-evident.
The dominant type of large building in every city, big and small, in North America changed decisively because of the invention of air conditioning. Prior to air conditioning buildings were designed with thick skins and relatively small amounts of glazing - a delicate balance between dark interiors are stifling hot spaces. After air conditioning that balancing act was no longer necessary. Buildings were turned into giant windows with enormous cooling loads. There is almost no subjective difference between a building with relatively small windows and one with floor to ceiling glazing. The only time it really matters is the first time someone walks into the space and gets a chance to say, "I love the view." Then they hang shades over all the glazing to prevent the glare from blinding everyone. But the cooling load isn't changed by the shades.
So one very simple way to make buildings many times more energy efficient than they are currently is to start designing them like architects did in the 1930s. More articulated plans (the "T" and "H" plans being very effective), thicker walls off materials like stone and brick, and much smaller windows (preferably operable).
The second reason is the current structure or ideology of building codes. Pretty much every building code in the world is based on the lowest allowable standard. When people talk about something being "not up to code" it can sound like a bureaucratic complaint. Really, it's a pretty stunning indictment since the code defines the absolute lowest quality a building can be and still be legal. There are a lot of auxiliary guides (recommended practices and so on) that set a higher standard but they are strictly optional from a legal perspective. A client can demand a building that conforms to best practices but the legal authorities can only demand code compliance. This makes sense in a stupid kind of way. The law defines only what is legal and illegal. It does not define proper and improper or even good and bad. So less than the given standard is illegal but the standard is not necessarily typical or desirable.
Building codes have to address buildings as complete wholes and not address the isolated components within them. For instance, it isn't enough to specify the minimum R-value for a wall assembly and a roof assembly and so on. The total energy consumption of the entire building should be calculated in life-cycle cost and regulated based on a combination of volume, life span, and program. The problem with making this kind of measurement the basis of a legal code is no one has, to the best of my knowledge, created an acceptable measure for life-cycle costing. It is a measure that is surprisingly tricky. Take aluminum. It requires a massive amount of energy to get aluminum from the ground into a building but, once that energy has been spent, it requires surprisingly little energy to recycle the stuff. Steel is much cheaper (in terms of energy) to get from the ground to the building site but recycling it is surprisingly inefficient - the only net change is the energy spent getting it out of the ground.
I can imagine a set of codes devoted to energy budgeting. A certain type of building of a certain size is allowed a maximum amount of energy - one number for construction and another for yearly consumption. If you want to use more than that, you have to generate your own. It's not really difficult to make a building that generates its own power - we had many different ways of doing it prior to the invention of the electric turbine and we have even more now. You can choose the relatively simple (sticking solar panels on the roof) or the fairly expensive (like ground source heating and cooling) or relatively complex (check out this building by Baumschlager and Eberle) The point, to me, is we know how to make these. It isn't rocket science. It is a set of components and procedures that requires nothing more than a small additional expense during the design and construction phases and which, if we built every building as efficient as this example, would have an enormous effect on our net energy use.
Of course that energy would just be used some place else and the planet is still going to overheat on schedule and force the human race into a condition not unlike that portrayed in The Road Warrior or The Walking Dead. Shit, did I type that? I was trying to be constructive for once and write something that was only moderately bitchy but it just kind of slipped out.
Sometime soon, probably in the next ten years, every Building Code in North America will have to be completely re-written. There are two simple reasons for this; one is very simple, the other slightly more complicated.
The first reason is energy consumption. Architecture is very energy intensive. We have been designing buildings for the last 60 or 70 years that are predicated on a circumstance that no longer applies, and hasn't applied in a long time. Concrete and glass buildings made sense when it was cheaper to heat and cool a building than insulate it. This was because we didn't calculate the true cost of heating buildings, just the user cost. Now we know the true cost is much higher - and possibly unimaginable. So building codes will become more prescriptive by necessity. If you are involved in either the building industry or the environmental movement that will be kind of self-evident.
The dominant type of large building in every city, big and small, in North America changed decisively because of the invention of air conditioning. Prior to air conditioning buildings were designed with thick skins and relatively small amounts of glazing - a delicate balance between dark interiors are stifling hot spaces. After air conditioning that balancing act was no longer necessary. Buildings were turned into giant windows with enormous cooling loads. There is almost no subjective difference between a building with relatively small windows and one with floor to ceiling glazing. The only time it really matters is the first time someone walks into the space and gets a chance to say, "I love the view." Then they hang shades over all the glazing to prevent the glare from blinding everyone. But the cooling load isn't changed by the shades.
So one very simple way to make buildings many times more energy efficient than they are currently is to start designing them like architects did in the 1930s. More articulated plans (the "T" and "H" plans being very effective), thicker walls off materials like stone and brick, and much smaller windows (preferably operable).
The second reason is the current structure or ideology of building codes. Pretty much every building code in the world is based on the lowest allowable standard. When people talk about something being "not up to code" it can sound like a bureaucratic complaint. Really, it's a pretty stunning indictment since the code defines the absolute lowest quality a building can be and still be legal. There are a lot of auxiliary guides (recommended practices and so on) that set a higher standard but they are strictly optional from a legal perspective. A client can demand a building that conforms to best practices but the legal authorities can only demand code compliance. This makes sense in a stupid kind of way. The law defines only what is legal and illegal. It does not define proper and improper or even good and bad. So less than the given standard is illegal but the standard is not necessarily typical or desirable.
Building codes have to address buildings as complete wholes and not address the isolated components within them. For instance, it isn't enough to specify the minimum R-value for a wall assembly and a roof assembly and so on. The total energy consumption of the entire building should be calculated in life-cycle cost and regulated based on a combination of volume, life span, and program. The problem with making this kind of measurement the basis of a legal code is no one has, to the best of my knowledge, created an acceptable measure for life-cycle costing. It is a measure that is surprisingly tricky. Take aluminum. It requires a massive amount of energy to get aluminum from the ground into a building but, once that energy has been spent, it requires surprisingly little energy to recycle the stuff. Steel is much cheaper (in terms of energy) to get from the ground to the building site but recycling it is surprisingly inefficient - the only net change is the energy spent getting it out of the ground.
I can imagine a set of codes devoted to energy budgeting. A certain type of building of a certain size is allowed a maximum amount of energy - one number for construction and another for yearly consumption. If you want to use more than that, you have to generate your own. It's not really difficult to make a building that generates its own power - we had many different ways of doing it prior to the invention of the electric turbine and we have even more now. You can choose the relatively simple (sticking solar panels on the roof) or the fairly expensive (like ground source heating and cooling) or relatively complex (check out this building by Baumschlager and Eberle) The point, to me, is we know how to make these. It isn't rocket science. It is a set of components and procedures that requires nothing more than a small additional expense during the design and construction phases and which, if we built every building as efficient as this example, would have an enormous effect on our net energy use.
Of course that energy would just be used some place else and the planet is still going to overheat on schedule and force the human race into a condition not unlike that portrayed in The Road Warrior or The Walking Dead. Shit, did I type that? I was trying to be constructive for once and write something that was only moderately bitchy but it just kind of slipped out.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Nothing for a long time
I've been away, attending to things that require more than 15 minutes of thinking and typing. I have been keeping up with my climate science reading list and things are just getting worse - as predicted. But in the time I've been away from this thing (whatever it is) I've been having a lot more flesh and blood interaction. It has become devastatingly clear having some idea of the true state of climate science makes me a less than ideal conversationalist.
I remember the first Gulf War - Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. And among the things I remember is how the US used the (frankly insane) speeches Saddam Hussein started giving after the USAF started bombing his country back into the stone age as a pretext for the bombings themselves. Hussein started raving about rivers of blood and a carnage that would be remembered for a thousand years and so on. Commentators in the States began crowing, "We told you this guy was a maniac!!!" And a lot of people were swayed by that. It is worth remembering the first Gulf War was very unpopular until it was won (with some very cool pyrotechnic displays brought to us live by CNN). George Bush not the Lesser needed all the PR pushes he could get in the early days of the conflict and Hussein seemed to be playing along - acting the part of the comic book villain at just the right moment (right before American and coalition troops were to start the ground offensive.
For a lot of people Hussein's posturing seemed incomprehensible. His country was being destroyed. His military was hopelessly outmatched by the US. More precisely by the USAF. Every military in the world is hopelessly outclassed by the USAF. Gwynne Dyer put in perspective for me. He said, "Once you have the United States Air Force on your case, all the rest is details." Hussein could act penitent or insane or he could dance a jig and it wasn't going to change a thing. The USAF was going to destroy his armed forces ability to resist and then it was going to destroy everything else.
That's kind of how I feel right now. Once you have fucked the planet's climate so badly it will no longer support human life, everything else is details. There is no correct behaviour for this situation because nothing we do at this point is going to make a lick of difference. Chief climate apocalyptic Guy McPherson is trying to change our behaviour because he believes there is a chance that really radical changes might be able to preserve other species. I think he is fooling himself. When the wheels come off humans will not go gentle into that good night. We will take everything we can with us. We will eat everything that can be eaten, burn everything that burns, destroy for the sake of destruction. That is if history is anything to judge by.
All of which has reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's prophetic Cat's Cradle. The shortest Book of Bokonon is called (and I'm paraphrasing) "What Can a Reasonable Person Expect for the Future of the Human Race Given Three Thousand Years of History as a Guide" and the complete text of the chapter (and this is a direct quote) is: nothing.
I remember the first Gulf War - Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. And among the things I remember is how the US used the (frankly insane) speeches Saddam Hussein started giving after the USAF started bombing his country back into the stone age as a pretext for the bombings themselves. Hussein started raving about rivers of blood and a carnage that would be remembered for a thousand years and so on. Commentators in the States began crowing, "We told you this guy was a maniac!!!" And a lot of people were swayed by that. It is worth remembering the first Gulf War was very unpopular until it was won (with some very cool pyrotechnic displays brought to us live by CNN). George Bush not the Lesser needed all the PR pushes he could get in the early days of the conflict and Hussein seemed to be playing along - acting the part of the comic book villain at just the right moment (right before American and coalition troops were to start the ground offensive.
For a lot of people Hussein's posturing seemed incomprehensible. His country was being destroyed. His military was hopelessly outmatched by the US. More precisely by the USAF. Every military in the world is hopelessly outclassed by the USAF. Gwynne Dyer put in perspective for me. He said, "Once you have the United States Air Force on your case, all the rest is details." Hussein could act penitent or insane or he could dance a jig and it wasn't going to change a thing. The USAF was going to destroy his armed forces ability to resist and then it was going to destroy everything else.
That's kind of how I feel right now. Once you have fucked the planet's climate so badly it will no longer support human life, everything else is details. There is no correct behaviour for this situation because nothing we do at this point is going to make a lick of difference. Chief climate apocalyptic Guy McPherson is trying to change our behaviour because he believes there is a chance that really radical changes might be able to preserve other species. I think he is fooling himself. When the wheels come off humans will not go gentle into that good night. We will take everything we can with us. We will eat everything that can be eaten, burn everything that burns, destroy for the sake of destruction. That is if history is anything to judge by.
All of which has reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's prophetic Cat's Cradle. The shortest Book of Bokonon is called (and I'm paraphrasing) "What Can a Reasonable Person Expect for the Future of the Human Race Given Three Thousand Years of History as a Guide" and the complete text of the chapter (and this is a direct quote) is: nothing.
Friday, March 21, 2014
The NDP should listen to me more
For those of you watching Canadian politics (an even smaller audience than those who care about my environmental dooms-day-ism) Thomas Mulcair finally made the national news. How? By doing what I told him to do. Specifically, by attacking new finance minister Joe Oliver for his record on the environment. Mulcair said Oliver is, "an embarrassment and that he should be named minster of finance for Canada is a real shame." Then Mulcair called Oliver a racist.
While Oliver was minister of oil he attacked climate science with the vitriol and dishonesty that characterizes the best of Canadian politics (American style). In his zeal to sell bitumen to whoever was buying he attacked Al Gore, whose claims he described as "wildly exaggerated", and James Hansen, whose predictions re environmental costs of the Keystone Pipeline he called "frankly nonsense".
So, Mr. Mulcair, if you read this you have to be prepared for the overblown, contemptuous, histrionic reaction of the Harper government. They will say you are unstatesmanlike. They will say you should be ashamed. They have already called on you to apologize. Take a lesson from the Right. When they say contemptible and idiotic things and are called upon to retract them, they never do. They double down. What you said was nothing more than the simple truth. Oliver was paternalistic and racist as a minister of the federal government. His shilling for the petrochemical industry is disgraceful. Many many people wonder if he even believes in anthropogenic climate change. Don't back down, double down. Attack him again. And again. And again.
When you hit him, you hit Harper. So keep swinging. Hit everywhere and every way you can. That this attack was launched against a minister who has publicly announced the Harper government's position on the environment makes it so much sweeter.
While Oliver was minister of oil he attacked climate science with the vitriol and dishonesty that characterizes the best of Canadian politics (American style). In his zeal to sell bitumen to whoever was buying he attacked Al Gore, whose claims he described as "wildly exaggerated", and James Hansen, whose predictions re environmental costs of the Keystone Pipeline he called "frankly nonsense".
So, Mr. Mulcair, if you read this you have to be prepared for the overblown, contemptuous, histrionic reaction of the Harper government. They will say you are unstatesmanlike. They will say you should be ashamed. They have already called on you to apologize. Take a lesson from the Right. When they say contemptible and idiotic things and are called upon to retract them, they never do. They double down. What you said was nothing more than the simple truth. Oliver was paternalistic and racist as a minister of the federal government. His shilling for the petrochemical industry is disgraceful. Many many people wonder if he even believes in anthropogenic climate change. Don't back down, double down. Attack him again. And again. And again.
When you hit him, you hit Harper. So keep swinging. Hit everywhere and every way you can. That this attack was launched against a minister who has publicly announced the Harper government's position on the environment makes it so much sweeter.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language"
I admire the hell out of good essay writers. Orwell is one of my favourites. I've written before that the first time I read an anthology of his essays I was depressed for weeks because he wrote over and over about how WWII would force England into a kind of "Capitalism with English values" - a form of Socialism with the State controlling all means of production. And in that he was very obviously wrong. Reading his essays again, I'm more struck by the breadth of his topics than his politics. He published on the cost of reading books, the mating cycle of common toads, boys magazines, good bad books, other writers, the Americanisation of England, English public schools, and cet. His most common topics, politics and writing, come together in the fabulous and famous (tho not famous enough) essay Politics and the English Language.
In it Orwell contrasts the common uses of language and its political uses. It is commonly used for communication but its political use is to obscure, mislead, and generally lie. Near the end of the essay he gives six simple rules every writer should follow:
1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2) Never use a long word when a short one will do.
3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4) Never use the passive [voice] where you can use the active.
5) Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word, or a jargon word if you can use an everyday English equivalent.
6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Orwell's main theme in Politics is canned metaphors and stock phrases exclude proper thought. It is not only the reader who is lost; the habit of misusing language eventually leads to sloppy thinking. Orwell challenges his readers to use language correctly and creatively.
The reason I am so fond of this essay, aside from my semi-professional interest in language, is the implications it has on architecture. I should follow Orwell's example and grab a sample of archi-speak to critique. Problematically, the architecture community in Canada is very small so the probability I would know the author is quite high. Let me see if I can grab something international. This is from Architizer's A+ Awards:
Each wing has its own qualities, different from each other and yet seamlessly connected to the next. In this way the building acts as an embodiment of the journey of education, with less distinction of any prescribed boundaries between disciplines. The colour strategy reinforces the identity of the academic disciplines, universally enhanced by the richness of natural materials, such as locally recycled timber. Planning allows the building’s circulation to constantly return to the library at its heart, and in this way is physically and experientially in parallel with the educational ethos of the school.
In it Orwell contrasts the common uses of language and its political uses. It is commonly used for communication but its political use is to obscure, mislead, and generally lie. Near the end of the essay he gives six simple rules every writer should follow:
1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2) Never use a long word when a short one will do.
3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4) Never use the passive [voice] where you can use the active.
5) Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word, or a jargon word if you can use an everyday English equivalent.
6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Orwell's main theme in Politics is canned metaphors and stock phrases exclude proper thought. It is not only the reader who is lost; the habit of misusing language eventually leads to sloppy thinking. Orwell challenges his readers to use language correctly and creatively.
The reason I am so fond of this essay, aside from my semi-professional interest in language, is the implications it has on architecture. I should follow Orwell's example and grab a sample of archi-speak to critique. Problematically, the architecture community in Canada is very small so the probability I would know the author is quite high. Let me see if I can grab something international. This is from Architizer's A+ Awards:
Each wing has its own qualities, different from each other and yet seamlessly connected to the next. In this way the building acts as an embodiment of the journey of education, with less distinction of any prescribed boundaries between disciplines. The colour strategy reinforces the identity of the academic disciplines, universally enhanced by the richness of natural materials, such as locally recycled timber. Planning allows the building’s circulation to constantly return to the library at its heart, and in this way is physically and experientially in parallel with the educational ethos of the school.
You want to take a shot at what that really means? I don't. I think I could puzzle some kind of meaning out of it but whether or not what I came up with was what the author intended, I have no idea. The more I read it, the more inconclusive it becomes.
This kind of writing is typical of architecture. The problem, very generally, is architects are trained to think visually and spatially. There is a vocabulary that has been invented, borrowed, or stolen from other disciplines to allow architects to write and talk about what they do but it is difficult to use with precision. So words that have specific and important meanings get tossed around until they become as meaningless as "fascism" is today. As an interesting experiment, try substituting "oogeyboogeymanism" for "fascism" in anything you find on the internet and you will notice how infrequently the meaning of the sentence changes.
Architecture is difficult to write about at the best of times. When the meaning of the words we use for the most fundamental concepts are debased by misuse it becomes impossible.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
How the NDP can (maybe) win the next election
Way back in the 1940s George Orwell wrote about the debilitating effects of being a permanent and pensioned opposition. The problem, as he saw it, was relegating yourself to the role of the perpetual critic means an inevitable decline in the quality of your ideas. It is far easier to just attack everything the government does than propose meaningful changes that reflect how things ought to be done. One could argue this is more true for the parties opposing the Harper government than it has been for any other opposition. Everything Harper's government has done is so readily available for attack it would make the most rigorous thinker a little sloppy. How hard is it to land punches on the guy who targets librarians as potential political enemies?
In my adult life the NDP has had two great leaders. One is of course Jack Layton. The other was Ed Broadbent. Old Ed never came close to winning an election and, in a way, that was the source of his greatness. It never seemed like he tried to win elections. To do that, you have to do the things Jack Layton was willing to do. You have to move away from organized labour. You have to appeal more to the middle class. You have to think in terms of power politics and vote scrounging and back room dealing. No one thinks winning elections is as noble as they made it seem on The West Wing. There is no one left who still believes politics is about an honourable presentation of different priorities or even conflicting ideologies. It is about winning.
The next federal election is going to come down to whether or not the Liberals can take Quebec back from the NDP. There is going to be a lot of talk about strategic voting in Quebec. "If Quebec goes to the NDP again we will be stuck with another Harper government." That is what the Liberals will argue and it is difficult at this point to argue with them. Harper is untouchable on the prairie. He will do well in Ontario but even without looking at any numbers, it is easy enough to predict a strong Liberal showing here. Harper will control Ontario the same way he did in the last election - picking out the 'must have' ridings and visiting all of them more than once. He will get the ridings he wants because of the make up of the constituency. These are the people in Toronto who voted for Ford and would again. They are small government, low tax ideologues. The polar opposite of people like me. They don't care about the systematic destruction of libraries or research stations. They don't care about environmental regulation. They don't care about very much at all except what this government is going to cost them and there is simply no way any party can beat the Conservatives in that game.
I don't know what will happen in BC or in the maritimes and I don't really care. It isn't important. The election will be decided by who takes Quebec. Ontario (Liberal) and the Prairie provinces (Conservative) will cancel each other out and the Conservatives will win unless the Liberals take Quebec. That is the situation everyone is planning for and it's a huge mistake for Mulcair to let it play that way. Yes, he has an opportunity to actually gain power while losing seats provided the Libs win enough of them to form a minority. But that is a bad bet.
What Mulcair needs is a new consensus. I think the NDP have made a calculation that the youth vote, such as it is, will go to Trudeau. And if Mulcair keeps on as he is going, it will. At least in Ontario. But these are not the same youth as those who voted for Trudeau Sr. These are the kids who were Occupiers. Who were part of the pots and pans revolution in Quebec. There is a consensus out there waiting and no one is trying to get it.
To win Mulcair needs a coalition of the young, the green, and the poor (and scared). He needs to frame the terms of the debate by constantly being the loudest and by hitting his issues every time he sees a microphone. Even when there isn't a microphone he should still be yelling about them because you never know what will wind up on Youtube. The problem he has now (other than a depressing lack of personality) is he has no issues!
To win Mulcair needs to make a commitment to freeze tuition and make a substantial reduction in student debt. He should promise to reduce tuition by 30% over the next four years. He should promise to forgive all student debt above $30K and cut the interest rate on all student debt to prime. Both the Cons and Libs are available to attacks on this front. And this doesn't just win young votes, it wins the votes of parents who are wondering how the hell they are going to put two kids through university.
To win Mulcair should scream about everything Harper has done to scientists and librarians during his government. He should make the immediate repeal of those laws his first act. He should form a parliamentary commission on climate change to make the current data available to MPs and every Canadian and he should promise to fund climate science particularly in the Arctic. He should also promise to kill the Keystone Pipeline. I don't know how he feels about making promises he can't keep but he should attack the Keystone Pipeline at every opportunity. This would be both good governance and good politics. The Americans can make it happen if they really want to but our government should make it as hard for them as possible. The Cons record on environmental issues is so miserable this is really a no brainer. This should be a constant source of misery for Harper. Mulcair can force Harper to take a position that will cost him seats in both Quebec and Ontario to protect his core in the prairies. Even if the strategy is to go for a minority with the Libs, these should be core issues for Mulcair.
Mulcair should promise a complete overhaul of our tax system and the creation of two more income tax tiers. The system should be redesigned to move the onus from low and middle income families and place it on corporations and the people who run them. Mulcair can make this attack because multimillionaires don't donate to the NDP anyway. And this is the kind of move that will free those in the middle class who vote their wallets but would like to vote their conscience to do so.
The last thing Mulcair has to promise is transparency in government. This means subpoena power for parliamentary budget oversight. Everyone else has lied to Canadians about a transparent government, now it't the NDPs turn. The ugly fact is the NDP are the only party who can promise this without being faced with their previous broken promises.
This is a coalition that can gain seats for Mulcair. He can keep what Layton won in Quebec and build in the other provinces. But he has to become more forceful to do so. He needs to be on the attack all the time. Every time he is near Harper he should hit him on the environment and on the structure of the tax system. Every time he is near Trudeau he should hit him with a lack of ambition - all style and no substance. He should be pounding taxes, tuition, transparency and the environment but he won't. I wish I could find a synonym for environment that started with a 't' but I can't. Actually it works better if you communicate the concern for the environment as support for science and scientists. People still, stupidly, argue about the environment but most Canadians are offended by an American style attack on science.
Mulcair should support these issues because they are right. I have made no secret about my support for them and my distaste for those who attack them. But more importantly, he has to fight for something. Canadians like to think we are the friendly nation but the truth, if you look at our electoral record, doesn't support this. We like fighters. We loved Trudeau and he declared martial law. We loved Chretien (who was best described as "looking like the guy who drives the get-away car" and was manifestly crooked). We loved Harper and that pains me to say but the guy has been in total control over his party forever and the nation for far too long. We love fighters. It's what we loved about Jack Layton. He took Quebec on two things: sympathy for his illness and the fact he took absolutely no shit from anyone in the debates. Mulcair needs to get dirty. He needs to become a scrapper. I don't think Trudeau will. He will put up just enough of a fight to make it clear he has no patience with Harper but, on the whole, his strategy will be charm and the occasional bon mot.
Frankly, I think the deal is already done. I think the best the NDP are betting they can do is prevent Trudeau from forming a majority and that's a scary thought because we don't know how Trudeau will stand up as a party leader in a national election. We know Harper will be a machine in a sweater. With a plan. And money. Trudeau remains an unknown. Given the performance of the last three Libs to hold the top seat, I think it would be a huge mistake to bank on them doing anything. And if the NDP throws and Harper wins another government, I'm not only never voting NDP again - I'm leaving the country.
In my adult life the NDP has had two great leaders. One is of course Jack Layton. The other was Ed Broadbent. Old Ed never came close to winning an election and, in a way, that was the source of his greatness. It never seemed like he tried to win elections. To do that, you have to do the things Jack Layton was willing to do. You have to move away from organized labour. You have to appeal more to the middle class. You have to think in terms of power politics and vote scrounging and back room dealing. No one thinks winning elections is as noble as they made it seem on The West Wing. There is no one left who still believes politics is about an honourable presentation of different priorities or even conflicting ideologies. It is about winning.
The next federal election is going to come down to whether or not the Liberals can take Quebec back from the NDP. There is going to be a lot of talk about strategic voting in Quebec. "If Quebec goes to the NDP again we will be stuck with another Harper government." That is what the Liberals will argue and it is difficult at this point to argue with them. Harper is untouchable on the prairie. He will do well in Ontario but even without looking at any numbers, it is easy enough to predict a strong Liberal showing here. Harper will control Ontario the same way he did in the last election - picking out the 'must have' ridings and visiting all of them more than once. He will get the ridings he wants because of the make up of the constituency. These are the people in Toronto who voted for Ford and would again. They are small government, low tax ideologues. The polar opposite of people like me. They don't care about the systematic destruction of libraries or research stations. They don't care about environmental regulation. They don't care about very much at all except what this government is going to cost them and there is simply no way any party can beat the Conservatives in that game.
I don't know what will happen in BC or in the maritimes and I don't really care. It isn't important. The election will be decided by who takes Quebec. Ontario (Liberal) and the Prairie provinces (Conservative) will cancel each other out and the Conservatives will win unless the Liberals take Quebec. That is the situation everyone is planning for and it's a huge mistake for Mulcair to let it play that way. Yes, he has an opportunity to actually gain power while losing seats provided the Libs win enough of them to form a minority. But that is a bad bet.
What Mulcair needs is a new consensus. I think the NDP have made a calculation that the youth vote, such as it is, will go to Trudeau. And if Mulcair keeps on as he is going, it will. At least in Ontario. But these are not the same youth as those who voted for Trudeau Sr. These are the kids who were Occupiers. Who were part of the pots and pans revolution in Quebec. There is a consensus out there waiting and no one is trying to get it.
To win Mulcair needs a coalition of the young, the green, and the poor (and scared). He needs to frame the terms of the debate by constantly being the loudest and by hitting his issues every time he sees a microphone. Even when there isn't a microphone he should still be yelling about them because you never know what will wind up on Youtube. The problem he has now (other than a depressing lack of personality) is he has no issues!
To win Mulcair needs to make a commitment to freeze tuition and make a substantial reduction in student debt. He should promise to reduce tuition by 30% over the next four years. He should promise to forgive all student debt above $30K and cut the interest rate on all student debt to prime. Both the Cons and Libs are available to attacks on this front. And this doesn't just win young votes, it wins the votes of parents who are wondering how the hell they are going to put two kids through university.
To win Mulcair should scream about everything Harper has done to scientists and librarians during his government. He should make the immediate repeal of those laws his first act. He should form a parliamentary commission on climate change to make the current data available to MPs and every Canadian and he should promise to fund climate science particularly in the Arctic. He should also promise to kill the Keystone Pipeline. I don't know how he feels about making promises he can't keep but he should attack the Keystone Pipeline at every opportunity. This would be both good governance and good politics. The Americans can make it happen if they really want to but our government should make it as hard for them as possible. The Cons record on environmental issues is so miserable this is really a no brainer. This should be a constant source of misery for Harper. Mulcair can force Harper to take a position that will cost him seats in both Quebec and Ontario to protect his core in the prairies. Even if the strategy is to go for a minority with the Libs, these should be core issues for Mulcair.
Mulcair should promise a complete overhaul of our tax system and the creation of two more income tax tiers. The system should be redesigned to move the onus from low and middle income families and place it on corporations and the people who run them. Mulcair can make this attack because multimillionaires don't donate to the NDP anyway. And this is the kind of move that will free those in the middle class who vote their wallets but would like to vote their conscience to do so.
The last thing Mulcair has to promise is transparency in government. This means subpoena power for parliamentary budget oversight. Everyone else has lied to Canadians about a transparent government, now it't the NDPs turn. The ugly fact is the NDP are the only party who can promise this without being faced with their previous broken promises.
This is a coalition that can gain seats for Mulcair. He can keep what Layton won in Quebec and build in the other provinces. But he has to become more forceful to do so. He needs to be on the attack all the time. Every time he is near Harper he should hit him on the environment and on the structure of the tax system. Every time he is near Trudeau he should hit him with a lack of ambition - all style and no substance. He should be pounding taxes, tuition, transparency and the environment but he won't. I wish I could find a synonym for environment that started with a 't' but I can't. Actually it works better if you communicate the concern for the environment as support for science and scientists. People still, stupidly, argue about the environment but most Canadians are offended by an American style attack on science.
Mulcair should support these issues because they are right. I have made no secret about my support for them and my distaste for those who attack them. But more importantly, he has to fight for something. Canadians like to think we are the friendly nation but the truth, if you look at our electoral record, doesn't support this. We like fighters. We loved Trudeau and he declared martial law. We loved Chretien (who was best described as "looking like the guy who drives the get-away car" and was manifestly crooked). We loved Harper and that pains me to say but the guy has been in total control over his party forever and the nation for far too long. We love fighters. It's what we loved about Jack Layton. He took Quebec on two things: sympathy for his illness and the fact he took absolutely no shit from anyone in the debates. Mulcair needs to get dirty. He needs to become a scrapper. I don't think Trudeau will. He will put up just enough of a fight to make it clear he has no patience with Harper but, on the whole, his strategy will be charm and the occasional bon mot.
Frankly, I think the deal is already done. I think the best the NDP are betting they can do is prevent Trudeau from forming a majority and that's a scary thought because we don't know how Trudeau will stand up as a party leader in a national election. We know Harper will be a machine in a sweater. With a plan. And money. Trudeau remains an unknown. Given the performance of the last three Libs to hold the top seat, I think it would be a huge mistake to bank on them doing anything. And if the NDP throws and Harper wins another government, I'm not only never voting NDP again - I'm leaving the country.
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