I’ve been watching the Tour de France this summer, awed by the physical prowess of the 190+ cyclists who brave the equivalent (it is said) of marathon after marathon, for three weeks straight. The American commentary is on Versus, an NBC satellite, with two seasoned Brits at the call and a former American competitor offering color commentary. There are not too many Americans in the Tour, and only one in the running for an overall victory, so most time is spent analyzing team tactics and supposed individual rivalries (the channel, after all, is called “versus.”)

The other day I noticed a man with dark skin among the sea of white riders. Quite a tan, I thought foolishly, and then I realized he must be African or part African. I was shocked to realize that he is, in fact, the only man of African descent in the entire Tour. His name is Yohann Gène, a Frenchman whose family is from Guadaloupe (a French territory), riding for Team Europcar. Most Tour cycling teams are based in one European nation or another, but all have international rosters. Despite this, and despite Europe’s rising racial diversity, most riders represent a single ethnic group from a wholly European source. That is, the Tour is not diverse; it is neither representative of the world at large nor even of the modern population of Europe.

I can’t imagine that cycling is such a narrow sport that more Asian or African or South American riders would not be qualified to ride in the Tour, as prestigious as it is. This is a sorry statement for modern Europe to make, given the recent tides of racial unrest in countries like France and Denmark, and the rise of nationalist, anti-immigration parties across the continent.

One might think that, given the complete lack of reporting about Gène on Versus or anywhere else, that having a rider of African descent on one’s team is not such a big deal. Wrong. Team Europcar’s manager says, “We have been subject to racism. I had to deal with a few problems and contact sponsors of two foreign teams about it. After the doping incidents, I couldn’t let racism be part of cycling.” Are you serious? This is happening? What decade is this?

This is, clearly, not a post about architecture, but I’m so incensed that I thought I’d vent a little rage here in this blog. To clarify, I’m angry that no major news outlet is reporting on this major breakthrough, and I’m angry that elite athletes and their managers would turn out to be racist.  I am not a jingoistic sort, but as an American I feel the least I can do is champion the principles of civil rights that have allowed our culture to thrive. Maybe we can get Versus to cover Gène’s story. Put a comment on the Versus Facebook cycling page, or tweet @bobkeroll (the Versus American commentator) and let them know that breaking ancient racial barriers is important to you. Thanks! ♦

I’ve long been a fan of Yayoi Kusama. She’s an important Japanese artist whose work resonates with the specific compulsions of modern women worldwide. Her dots series, installations covered in dots—on walls, on people, on trees, on things—are mesmerizing. Using this simple technique, Kusama creates these eerie immersive environments. For me, they represent certain obsessions: obsessions with the body and its perception, its shapes and holes and uses; an obsession with control. The images above of flower petals on the ground from the early weeks of May reminded me of her.

Kusama did much of her seminal work in New York, but returned to Tokyo in 1973 and has been living in a mental institution almost ever since. Paranoid schizophrenic, I believe. Many of her works are inspired by her hallucinations. There’s a great picture of her Self-Obliteration by Dots, a still of a performance from 1968, in BOMB Magazine’s interview. Another iconic set of works is the accumulation series, wherein Kusama glued protuberances to cover entire objects and whole surfaces. She posed with one of these pieces, Accumulation No.2, once perhaps a couch, and MoMA has the photo. It was printed on the Kusama Retrospective poster back in 1998, “Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968.” I put it up in my father’s former studio for inspiration. I thought of her more as a baby doll back then, looking so coquettish. Now she uses that same silhouette as a brand on her website. ♦

Very superstitious, writing’s on the wall,
Very superstitious, ladder’s bout’ to fall,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin’ glass
Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past

When you believe in things that you don’t understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain’t the way

Stevie Wonder. “Superstition.” Talking Book. Motown Records, 1972.

This photo was taken in the elevator of the “gold building” in New Haven, CT, on Church Street—you know, the one with the gold-tinted glass cladding. Every city’s got one. This gold building has a mezzanine, so the 12th floor.. is actually the 13th.

(Did you listen to the link? Here’s more Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street.) ♦

This is my first post following a long winter hiatus. A backlog of partially edited posts left unpublished has finally overwhelmed me. Eventually, the urge to write overpowers the fear of writing poorly—something too personal, too provocative, uninformed, or worse, just bland. I’m pleased to return to the log once more.

Today  in my mailbox I discovered two publishing catalogs, one from Actar (the “Actalog”) and another from Birkhäuser. These are among the best publishers of books on architecture and design. (Other top imprints include Princeton Architectural Press, The MIT Press, Rizzoli, Phaidon, Taschen, and NAi.) Both catalogs show color illustrations of covers and spreads as well as reviews for each title. Birkhäuser begins with essays from their graphic designers about their work process, mentioning Slanted Magazine’s TypoLyrics—The Sound of Fonts, a section in which new fonts are showcased using pop/rock/hip hop lyrics. It’s now a whole book. I like the zen question behind the subtitle, “the sounds of fonts.” What does type sound like when no one’s there to read it?

Flipping through these catalogs, I curiously became filled with trepidation. I consume books voraciously, but paradoxically, I’m a slow reader. (Fortunately, monographs are mostly pictures.) I saw many books I’d like to own, or at least hold in my hands and read, and the more titles I saw, the more nervous I became. There’s a part of me which still carries a bizarre phobia I developed around age 16. This was about the age when, in typically egotistical teenaged fashion, I first felt I really understood the world, that I really knew all I needed to know in life. Yet this belief, one which gave me a sense of power and stability, was constantly challenged. More and more frequently I would hear about a critical event that passed my notice, find an important author I’d never read in a subject I thought myself fluent, or stumble across a whole branch of knowledge I knew nothing about. I feared being ignorant, or more truthfully, being seen as ignorant. The more I learned or tried to learn, the more crisp became the realization that there exists a vast body of truth I’ll never know. There’s simply too much for one person to know in one lifetime. This fact was hardly comforting. Every time I passed a book store I was reminded of my inability—not to be omniscient—but to be what I identified as worldly, as cosmopolitan.  When I saw arrays of art and design books in particular, the sensation of futility became crushing. I started to avoid book stores all together; I essentially feared them.

The local bookstore I most frequented growing up was the Strand, a gigantic used book store that in my youth advertised “8 miles of books.” (They’ve since tripled their retail space and now boast of 18.) I’d go there with my mother, who’d buy novels in French or sell auction catalogs. It was dark and dusty back then, dimly lit, like a basement news room. The closer book store was St. Mark’s Books, which has an excellent art and architecture section as well as self-published poetry and quirky magazines in the back. For a time, I refused to go inside it. I’d get a slice of pizza while my parents browsed. I’m not sure how I came to feel at home in book stores once again. I suppose I’ve developed a level of acceptance with the limits of the human mind, of my mind in particular, and the limits of my energy. I still seek to be cosmopolitan and informed, but narrowing one’s interests into a specialty is a common feature of the modern world, so I no longer feel innately inadequate. Still, every now and then, I wish I could have a memory that was more encyclopedic.

On my book list from Actar is Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines, 196X-197X, edited by Beatriz Colomina of Princeton fame. That was a very optimistic time for architecture, utopian; and who doesn’t love quirky little pamphlets in bright colors featuring walking buildings? ♦

I have the pleasure of sharing an office with two engineers, David Jacobs, a civil engineer, and Sameer Said, a visiting electrical engineer from Palestine. Both men are very good teachers sought out by their students for help and advice. Professor Said is particularly tireless and extremely generous with his time. He is often swamped with students seeking tutoring, particularly when they face looming exams, like right now. As we share an office we overhear each others’ conversations, and the other day while checking email I took note of the following exchange:

Student: Well, I think the answer is (some number of volts or the like).
Professor Said: You think? No, you cannot say, ‘I think.’ You must run calculations. In engineering there is no I think, there is only, I know.

Has a more clear distinction between the mind of an engineer and that of an architect ever been delineated? In architecture, there is no I know! There is only conjecture. There is only belief.

I ought to take a step back and say that in certain realms of architecture and design, such as urban planning or ergonomics, there is a body of evidence that points towards clear solutions to human spatial problems. Activated, safe streets include retail. The angle of the wrist must be parallel to that of the forearm to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. These are facts. Yet in most aspects of design, the architect exercises her preference. It is the architect’s preference that the client pays to employ. A contractor and a civil engineer can design a safe structure, an architect can design a surprising one. Forms, spaces, and structures are often delightful because they are surprising—because of the I don’t know. It’s nice to be involved with a practice that celebrates doubt. ♦

We aired Fritz Lang’s Metropolis as part of our lecture series last week, and only two people showed up, which is a shame. I first saw it in college, perhaps in a class. I know I went out and rented it and made my two closest friends watch it with me over and over. I loved the imagery, the sets and painted backdrops in shades constructivist, futurist, and expressionist. The treatment of the main female character, however, left a lot to be desired. Maria embodies the traditional virgin-or-whore dichotomy, enforcing the notion that a woman is either one or the other; nothing in between. To be precise, Maria is the saint and her robot double, the false Maria, is the sinner. My two friends and I promised to start a band called The False Marias, but school got in the way. I like to think we’d sound like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Given a choice between the roles of good girl and bad girl, I’d choose bad girl every time. Actress Brigette Helm must have had so much more fun as false Maria than true. Just look at her delicious expression! Remember the TV show Jem and the Holograms? I liked the Misfits. Jem is particularly distressing to look back on. Why would a rich secret rock star be ruled by blind devotion to some jock preppy guy? 1980′s, I don’t miss you!

The next film in the lecture series is Jia Zhang Ke’s 24 City. I hope we have a better turnout. ♦

We are lucky if in the course of our everyday lives we come across images as inspiring as those of the work of Nelisiwe Xaba. While looking for journals about nomads in the periodicals room of the reference library, I came across Art South Africa magazine, which featured an article about Xaba, a dancer and performance artist in Soweto. I recently traveled to South Africa for the first time. Never in my life have I been more aware of my race than while walking the streets of Johannesburg, even more so than when, in Taiwan, I was the only white person in sight. (The most unnerving thing about Taiwan, and the rest of Asia, is not being able to read the signs.) South Africa is unique. It may surprise you to learn that it’s the most racially diverse nation on earth, with thriving Indian and Malay populations mixed among native Africans and whites. In that way it is not unlike Brazil. Yet while vacationing in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2002, I was the least aware of my race as I’ve ever been, so profoundly comfortable did everyone seem together on the beach. (My Brazilian friend Flavia, who was also my guide, told me that in other parts of the city, however, it’s not the same.) In such moments—on the beach in Brail, on the street in Johannesburg or even Cape Town—the unspoken rules governing space and the separation between groups within one’s own culture (for me, the United States) are revealed for the obtuse, falsely constructed monsters that they are. I came home from South Africa sad at our lack of progress regarding integration and equality since Reconstruction. South Africa, of course, is on a whole other level. Xaba has something to say about it.

Q: You are very interested in the politics of the body.

XABA: Yes, of the female black body. The Black Consciousness movement existed because there was racism. So if I didn’t perform a lot in Europe, and only in Soweto, it wouldn’t be a question… If your work mainly gets seen in Europe it is important to acknowledge that consciously. Who is consuming what you are doing?

Art South Africa, December 2009, v8.2

The Black Consciousness movement began in the 1970′s, based on the writings of Steve Biko. (Denzel Washington played Biko in the movie Cry Freedom.) I bought a small compilation of Biko’s essays in Cape Town called, “No Fear Expressed.” (ISBN No: 0-9802591-2-6) The title is a phrase he used in an interview which encapsulates much of his message. The complete sentence is, “To understand me correctly you have to say that there were no fears expressed.” As someone for whom fear has often been an obstacle, Biko’s words spoke to me: “We must remove from our vocabulary completely the concept of fear.”¹ “Is it this fear that erodes the soul of black people in South Africa…How can people be prepared to put up a resistance against their overall oppression if in their individual situations, they cannot insist on the observance of their manhood?”² Biko was tortured and killed by the government for violating his house arrest. I have since thought of this great intellectual as one of my personal heros.

Biko and Xaba both politicize the body as a landscape of struggle. They remind us that it is important always to be aware of the nature of one’s own identity as consumed by others. The final image in the triptych above is a photograph taken in Regina Mundi church in Soweto. In the summer of 1976, police fired on unarmed, retreating students during protests in the townships. The bullet holes in the church’s ceiling remain as irrefutable evidence that the bullets themselves were not made of rubber, as the police later testified, but were decidedly lethal. The church balcony now displays a collection of photographs marking the events of that summer. You can see my reflection in the glass of this particular photo depicting one of the many horrors which occurred as the apartheid system fell apart. We cannot escape ourselves, and so must instead recognize our own identity as perceived by others. Xaba’s work reminds us to consider this key part of the creative process.

¹ Black Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity, 1973.
² I Write What I Like, Frank Talk. “Fear — An Important Determinant in South African Politics.” 1971. ♦

My dreams are extremely vivid, visual, and tumultuous. I often write them down. They describe intricate narratives—many fearful—which have me running down twisted corridors or along bizarre city streets. These dreams are certainly architectural, even hyper-spatial. Sometimes I see the earth below in a distorted fish-eye perspective, blocks laid out as though pressed against a sphere, like in Zaha Hadid’s early paintings.

Stairs feature prominently in these dreamscapes. Last night’s dream found me at a gem store where everything was free for the taking. Or that’s what I thought. Grasping my stolen treasures, I ran down the stairs to escape but they kept going on and on, father and farther down, with no way out.

As a child, every night when I got into bed I turned to lay on my side. My father thought I’d fall asleep faster if I adopted the right sleeping posture. When I put my ear to the pillow, I could hear a faint throbbing, like the beat of a distant drum. As I drifted off, I would imagine that the drum was really the sound of someone in the stairway. The old wooden steps still creak with every foot fall. I would listen to the beat as the steps disappeared into the distance and drift off to sleep.

I suppose now that the throbbing noise was the sound of my own heartbeat, which I can’t hear as distinctly any more. The steps, however, remain. They are quite plain, the steps themselves. I went back to photograph them just recently. Yet however common, I know that for me they are iconic. The image of these particular steps and their balustrade will never leave me. ♦

The incoming architecture graduate students at the University of Hartford were treated to a day in New York City on August 26th. I led this third annual tour of the city’s cultural institutions, joined by 17 students and 3 other faculty from the department. This tour was similar to the previous two, though I attempt to make variations with each iteration. Our itinerary included the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the Center for Architecture. We ended the day at Saigon Grill on University Place, having worked up a healthy appetite.

The images above are of the installation by the Starn brothers on the Met rooftop titled “Big Bambú.” I tried to see it earlier in the summer but was turned away due to rain, so I was really excited to finally visit the growing structure-as-art looming 50 feet above the roof. You can walk along the pathway built into the structure with special, get-up-at-7am-to-wait-in-line tickets, so long as you meet certain criteria (over 4’10″, under 400 lbs) including not being drunk. The only irony there is that alcohol is readily bought and sold on the Met rooftop. Big Bambú is really fantastic, and working on it has to be the best summer job ever. It’s not built the way an architect or engineer would build it—it’s not efficient. Rather, it’s highly fetishized, with extra bits of string hanging down from all the lashings, footings rendered useless by continued construction that leaves them dangling a half-inch above the ground, reams of cloth tied up to provide shade to the mountain-climbers-turned-builders, and wrapped objects likes stones embedded into the bamboo network. It is awesome. And it’s only up until October 31st, so go see it.

The first year grads will be working on an addition to the Whitney Museum, the one Renzo Piano tried to do directly adjacent to Breuer’s building, but the neighborhood said “no” too many times. [more...]

Now that classes have ended it’s time to return to my research with renewed force. To prepare my brain for the delightful onslaught of knowledge, I watched some documentaries about modern philosophy and modern philosophers. Renewing creative force via distracted absorption is advice directly taken from my Inspiration and Authorship lecture. These films remind me why I care about the intellectual’s life, and why I choose to function this way in the world.

He who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors.

The quote above is Martin Heidegger, and begins a 1999 BBC documentary, Heidegger: Thinking the Unthinkable, which is part of the series Human All Too Human, itself the title of one of Nietzsche’s texts. The film is slow-paced but insightful, the quote above presented as a partial apology for the fact that this great thinker was a Nazi. I try to block that out when enjoying his work, but it’s ever-present. The film can be seen on Google video.

Astra Taylor’s documentary Examined Life (ZeitgeistFilms, 2009) is a set of short conversations with renowned contemporary philosophers who explain either the kernel of their work or reflect on some critical question of our age. My favorite thing about this film is that Taylor decided to interview each philosopher while he or she walks or moves through space. In the New York Times’ article about Examined Life (“Thinkers in Transit, Philosophy in Motion,” Feb 20, 2009), Taylor mentions this idea came to her after reading Wanderlust, a ‘discursive’ look at the history of walking, by Rebecca Solnit. I’ll have to check that out. The notion that motion changes an individual, liberates them, is an intriguing one. As a source of inspiration, Examined Life delivers. I had to pause it several times to jot down incoming thoughts. Here’s the trailer. ♦