"Attack and defence, invasion and repulsion... it was as if breasts were little pieces of property that had been unlawfully annexed by the opposite sex - they were rightfully ours and we wanted them back."

from hornby's classic tale of the self-loathing male, addictive yet sheepish. surprisingly, the movie rendition uses most of rob's - or, for that matter, dick and barry's - best quotes word for word, even using the intended intonations and pausing. really a very nice book and highly recommended.*


*note: just dont use my copy - its apparently been once owned by a messy-eating, clumsy-bathing, page-tearing type, and is either full of character, about to fall apart or both.

"Persuasion, in the form of logos, ad campaigns, and the ever-broadening array of activities known as branding, has attained the status of Necessary Evil to many of us. Designers--as we repeatedly tell each other in school, in the studio, and at conferences--are all about function, emotion and progress; persuasion is for shills."

-from here

necessary? perhaps a stretch; i suggest 'assumed to be needed because, since its invention, its necessity & validity has never been questioned, its pertinence to every day life never analyzed - so long as profits remain."

in the wake of the our current (and looming) world economic situational adjust, superfluous activities and practices will begin to reveal themselves, gradually (but temporarily) stealing the limelight from - but then redirecting to - the still-profitable and relevant.

when absolute need begins to take precedence, the facade built by marketing & branding will slowly become useless and irrelevant. when the grip of absolute need is irrefutable, product & service design will realign to the constraints of base human activity while simultaneously prompting an evaluation of the 'need' concept.

Allison Arieff is the design correspondent for, and writes a column in, the New York Times. After helping found and run Dwell Magazine, she moved up the proverb ladder to General-Back-Patter at the Times. In a September 15th 2008 article about R. Buckminster Fuller's eccentric housing ideas (and ideals), and their correlation to modern 'pre-fab' housing design (the current exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art), she donates a paragraph to the plugging of one Michelle Kaufman - of Michelle Kaufman Designs, an architecture firm - citing the seemingly outrageous exclusion of her work from the museums collection.

Of three examples chosen, Arieff utilizes Michelle Kaufman Designs (MKD) as the requisite / token 'green' firm curiously excluded by the shows curators (the other two of similar design language, but not self-branded 'green'), citing a "greater public awareness and desire for greener homes" as the culprit behind this architectural firms recent triple in business, and thus preemptive validation for inclusion in this article.

So i had to check it out.

Initially the designs look quite interesting, with atypical roofing arrangements (indeed oriented towards maximizing natural lighting and view), a plethora of a sites both geographically and climatically varied, and of course a sparse sprinkling of (*yawn*) classic modern minimal bar stools, toilet fixtures and whatever else the package comes with.

Ok, ok, modern design is as predictable as what colors designers or heavy-metalers wear to functions (black), and so much so that its become a child's guessing game of content; Noguchi table? Check. Eames chairs of some sort? Check. Character-less house furnishings? Check. But at least that's - impart - relatively nothing to do with the houses them selves because, after all, this is an architecture firm, not interior design by the book, and one might be able to brush aside these trinkets as simply bait for the kind of consumer they are aiming to attract.

But what of the house - Can pre-fabricated houses (usually transported as panels, to be assembled on site) be cheaper to make? Less wasteful? Can one glove really fit all?

Viktor Papanek - the godfather of sustainable design - would argue that the very act of attempting to make something universal (uh-oh, sounds like universal design... scary!) is to make it over compensate making the end result complicated and simultaneously inappropriate. MKD's site shows pictures of the same exact house implanted into snow country, dry southern california chapparel and heavily wooded regions, with no change in design.

Can a cabin, built in the mountains and designed against a context with high precipitation and often below-freezing temperatures, possibly be a good or apt design for a relatively dry and warm climate? Or vice versa?

Here's one of my favorite pictures so far:


Oh look, honey, the business men are migrating again!

In the middle of a city square? Really? I'm sure commuting must be a cinch, but, seriously, i think id rather have the rolling hills, or snow country option.

So we've covered the bite (although i strongly encourage readers to investigate the site first hand, its quite entertaining), but hows the bark? Sadly, its even worse. The website is riddled with empty but hot-word ladden texts like:

"We believe that sustainable, well-designed buildings should be accessible to more people. To achieve this we have simplified our process and chosen off-site modular technology as our only means to create beautiful, eco-friendly homes. Our hope is that, through our practice, we will make it easy for people to build green and live a more sustainable life. We are making a difference one home at a time one family at a time."

and

"Whether working on one of our pre-designed homes, a custom home, or a development project, we apply a clean and green approach. We let the green in to every project through the use of eco-friendly materials, low-energy lighting design, energy efficient building systems, and a sustainable layout, allowing clients to live cleanly and lightly."

Anyone with any amount of analytic-oriented brain cells might notice that there are no concrete ideas, concepts or promises - just vague statements using and reusing buzzwords to lend validity. (What the hell is sustainable layout, anyway?) Compare to the very first statement on Rocio Romero's website, Areiff's third why-arent-they-included example:

"Rocio Romero LLC is committed to simplicity in design. We rigorously employ the principles of minimalism to produce comfortable spaces with balanced proportions, clean lines, and spaces that promote natural air and light. Through our commitment to simplicity in design we produce homes whose construction is straightforward and affordable.

No buzz words, no "making life better" slogans, just statements about design and architecture. Arieff's other example is of a firm called Resolution 4: Architecture that, albeit a somewhat lousy name, seems to be entirely sure that their product speaks louder than words, keeping their print to bare minimum, while focusing primarily on photos - even less self-praise and blather.

Why do firms like MKD get coverage via New York Times? Because people simply do not know - ignorance. This is not to say that people are incapable of knowing, or that they are predisposed towards not knowing, its simply a statement about the educational systems in place, and a comment about information dissemination. It is, however, shameful that Arieff - a person put in a position of great power - chooses to promote sub-standards (given her opportunities to do much more) and in turn promoting a system of ignorance now backed by "people of knowledge" and somehow, therefor, valid.

In a move of sheer genius Michelle Kaufman Designs has decided that putting an MK in front of their products would make for a great marketing scheme; Move over McMansions, there's a new pandemic in town; the MkLoft.

Check out:
- Michelle Kaufman Designs
- Roceo Romero
- Resolution 4: Architecture

"Amar Bose believes that imperfect knowledge of psychoacoustics limits the ability to adequately characterize quantitatively any two arbitrary sounds that are perceived differently, and to adequately characterize and quantify all aspects of perceived quality. He believes, for example, that distortion is much over-rated as a factor in perceived quality in the complex sounds that comprise music, noting that a sine wave and a square wave (a hugely distorted sine wave) are audibly indistinguishable above 7 kHz. Similarly, he does not find measurable relevance to perceived quality in other easily measured parameters of loudspeakers and electronics, and therefore does not publish those specifications for Bose products. The ultimate test, Bose insists, is the listener's perception of audible quality (or lack of it) and his or her own preferences.[22] Unlike other major speaker manufacturers, Bose does not publish specifications relating to the measured electrical and objective acoustic performance of its products.[23] [24]. This reluctance to publish information is due to Bose's rejection of these measurements in favour of "more meaningful measurement and evaluation procedures"..." - aka, the listeners ears.

-from the wiki article on Bose.

well, sadly, for those who dont already know, RUDE SAFARI is, er, on sabbatical, while we (ben and i) sort out a new home. apparently, red church got a number of complaints that (in general) the bar was too loud (actually, its neighbors complaining to the council (local authority) who then came down on red church), so in an effort to stem further injunctions, davide (mr.manager) closed all the non-essential nights (ie, sunday, monday, tuesday and, yep, wednesday).

this loss strangely coincided in my work becoming a 70 hour a week thing, so i barely had time for it anyways. however, work has died off again (man i want a regular timed job), leaving me free to, amongst other things, get RUDE SAFARI going again! YES!

so the journey continues.

hopefully RS will shortly find itself a new off-night party spot with eager locals and willing ear drums!

theres an awesome (so far) article over at core 77 about the realities of sustainability through the eyes of an economist! yay! people are getting it! (it, interestingly enough, reminds me of another article of theirs, from some time back, that really helped me fight the struggle for validity)

heres a nice quote

"... To truly do "sustainable" design, the solution must reach beyond the drawing board and into economic reality. Economists and scientists have actually already paved the way toward robust arguments for sustainable energy and design, but to understand them it is first necessary to profoundly reframe the lens through which we view the world.

Looking at the world through such a lens makes one thing clear: Despite our mansions and our roadways, our designer jeans and our iPhones, human beings have made very little. Instead we've transmuted stored energy into temporary value in exchange for long-term waste. All of the growth that our politicians seek to perpetuate is not growth at all.

Politicians and naysayers will often object to sustainable initiatives on the grounds that they limit "growth" and increase "costs." While these arguments remain difficult to refute on a commercial level, two simple observations are enough to defuse or derail even the most economically sophisticated political arguments against sustainability.

Market forces cannot align with the common interest of humanity so long as prices reflect costs and benefits that occur in: (A) displaced locations and (B) periods of time other than the present. ..."

and another!

"Indeed, barring backyard gardening and pedestrian travel, most of us have never paid the true temporal or geographic costs of a product in our lives."

from 'Just A Test', on Hello Nasty;

"...
its the Imagery,
Technology -
is 'What you Get,
is What you See!
..."

aka, wysiwyg - for y'all suckas!

plans for noonan media's teenage kicks 2008 are coming together fast! heres the eflyer:



hows that for cramming in way to much data into one sad little eflyer?