Really? Actually? Literally?

So William Gibson published a new book earlier this summer, The Peripheral. I've been thinking about writing something on it for a while now. I even made some notes trying to figure out if there is some kind of pattern or meaning I could attribute to single versus multiple narrative POVs. But, fuck it. Two things.

First, you know things are completely fucked up when a Gibson book ends, "and then everyone got married and started living a healthier lifestyle (watching what they eat and how much they drink), some people had kids who will grow up to be caring adults and useful members of society, and everyone started doing yoga and shit because it's good for you."

Seriously, look at how Gibson's books end and watch the pattern emerge. There is an inverse correlation between the ending of his books (the beginning of the unknown and unknowable future from the perspective of the private universe of the novel) and the actual unknown and unknowable future from the perspective of the author. When the real future is kind of chaotic and dangerous as hell but still exciting and a cause of optimism the narrative future is dismal and bleak. And vice versa. Or maybe Bill is just getting old. Who can say?

The second thing is Gibson has been infected with the virus that causes him use the word "actually" way too often. "He was actually quite excited...", "She was actually sick...", "It was actually big...". It isn't as bad as "literally" but it's still annoying. And when I thought about it for a while and realized he meant "really" instead of "actually" it got even more annoying.

[Author's note: Since I haven't been writing in this too often I ACTUALLY proof read this one and found I had ACTUALLY used the word ACTUAL above, "the ACTUAL unknown and unknowable..." I did, however, use it to mean what it ACTUALLY means.]

My theory is people use actually instead of really because saying actually is kind of fun and saying really feels silly. AK-chewly. Or, if you are Canadian and pronounce your diphthongs like you are supposed to, Ak-chewel-ee.

Really sounds like everything else that ends in EE - like a stripper name of a word made up for little kids.

My theory about literally is people say it for the pauses. "It was...literally...something that wasn't figurative".

And my theory about all this micromanaging of our own vocabularies, our syntax, our speech, is because of the fucking internet. Twenty years ago there was no way for "literally" to enter our consciousness as something you should make fun of people for. The trolls have us policing our own speech to the extent we now use actually just because it sounds smarter than really. But on the other hand, porn. I guess we call the whole internet thing a wash.

Throw in DLing music for free and the internet starts to look like a win. Maybe. I'm still going to bitch about it tho.

A Hierarchy of Firms

When I was a student I heard Peter Clewes (sp?) lecture. I don't remember anything he had to say except for his neat hierarchy of architecture firms. He said there are three types. Type one are grinders; they take every job they can get and generate product. They are workmanlike and architecture is just a job to them. Type two are the boutique firms who can turn clients away if they don't care for the project (or the client). Type Two firms usually have another source of income (teaching, publishing, inheriting, etc.) because it is very difficult to run a boutique firm on architect's wages. The third type are the firms who take what they can get and then try to do it better. His firm Architects Alliance was a Type Three Firm (and might still be but I don't know if it is still his or if they are still Type Three!!!). When I heard this I immediately thought two things - that is really true and I want to be in a Type Three firm. I also thought I was the one making value judgements and turning his typology into a hierarchy.

Which goes to show what a dumb shit I was and probably still am since it took me the better part of a decade to figure out what complete bullshit that is. It is true there are boutique firms. And it remains true I don't really respect them (even when I admire the shit out of their work, like Williams Tsien). But almost everyone I have ever met in this profession is trying to do it as well as they possibly can. The only thing that makes a distinction between One and Three seem plausible is economics. Some firms have people who can sell. Sell the client on a project, sell the product to the media, sell the firm to potential employees. Sell sell sell.

There are also more ways of doing really good work than are apparent to people like I was at that time - people who consume architecture thru books and magazines. There are firms I could mention whose idea of a really good project is one that runs right on schedule and has almost no change orders. Just very professional work all the way through. And if you don't know how difficult that is to do on a big project don't think it is "less than" because it isn't.

I used to work for a firm that are well on their way to having the ability to turn away potential clients and they are very talented people who work extremely hard. Between the group of them they collectively possess brilliant designers, artists (who make the pretty pictures to sell the projects), big thinkers, poets, and a facility with selling themselves and their work many architects would kill for. And the people I work with now would dismiss them as dilettantes and amateurs. Which is okay because they would dismiss the people I work with now as ambitionless hacks.

I think the reason I fell for Clewes simple typology was I like rules that are easy to remember. The world is too fucking complicated and I crave simplicity. Except, in my experience almost nothing you can say about architecture without pausing at least once for breath is really worth remembering. Well, you could say, "Bjarke Ingels is over-rated and his only real talent is manic self-publicizing". That at least, remains true.

How to Exponentially Increase Your Chance of Winning a Governor General Medal for Architecture

Move to Saskatchewan.

I was going to write a bunch more about the political reasons for this but if you are the sort of person willing to move to Saskatchewan for the sole purpose of increasing your chances of winning a GG - have a safe trip and good riddance.

On my (non-triumphant) return to the internet and HOV lanes - in that order

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.

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.          

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.

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.