Learning from Everything

I finally got my own copy of the classic “Learning from Las Vegas” and finished reading it over the break. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

There is a perversity in the learning process: We look backward at history and tradition to go forward; we can also look downward to go upward. And withholding judgment may be used as a tool to make later judgment more sensitive. This is a way of learning from everything.
Venturi, Brown & Izenour, “Learning from Las Vegas”, revised edition, The MIT Press, 1977: 3.

Have a Branded Ied

As if holiday season has not been commercialized and transformed enough with mobile technology, here’s a text message I received from a friend that captures it all :)

Hatiku mungkin gak sebening XL atau secerah Mentari.
Banyak salah yang kubuat.
Fren, kuminta Simpati-mu.
Bebas-kan aku dengan maafmu.
Selamat Idul Fitri 1427H.
Semoga amal ibadah kita mendapat acungan Jempol di mata-Nya.

Mall Hopping

With parents and old friends coming to town, I went out entertaining people most of the time during this holiday break. And guess where we go? The malls. Where else could we Jakartans go? And guess why Jakarta’s streets seem so deserted? Its because those who are in town are in the malls. These places are literally swamped with people, I get so drained from simply being immersed in the wasted energy. Traffic aside, where else could one walk around in Jakarta without being devoured by its pollution, heat and humidity?

Ied in/and Jakarta

The Ied is just around the corner now. Nicest time of the year to be in Jakarta: traffic-free streets and significantly reduced density. The atmosphere even feel almost eerie as you start wondering whether everyone has evacuated the city because they know something you don’t.

Holidays like the Ied here in Indonesia or Thanksgiving in America always make big impact on the density of cities, as millions of people are travelling to be with their families and relatives, or simply taking time off for a vacation away from home – wherever that may be.

In a city like Jakarta, where millions of its population are migrant workers (including myself), the impact of Ied is extremely significant. You suddenly realize how overly crowded the city is, and how inefficient it runs normally. And you start thinking how nice it would be to experience the city when your mood is not clouded by the irritation you get from being in traffic.

Enjoy it while it lasts! Happy holidays and Selamat Hari Raya Idul Fitri 1427 H.

Why Architecture is Important

Having said that importance of anything is subjective in this posting, here is a posting to argue why architecture is important, objectively speaking.

Here’s a start: The study of architecture is the study of the built environment. By this definition, then anything built (be it actual, mental, virtual, or hyper, to name a few) by human is architecture. The discipline has existed as long as human has started to build on natural environment. It is one of the oldest and most developed disciplines of knowledge. Few other disciplines could pose this reason as an argument.

Altogether, the actual built environment (buildings of all kinds) creates what we know as human settlements, where cultures take form and create civilizations. All kinds of civilizations, in turn, leave behind settlements, some of which that survived enable us to understand about human history on this earth and its development over time. This bit especially explains the close relationship of architecture with cultures, sciences (hard and soft) and arts (fine and applied).

The mental built environment happens inside our minds. As we can walk through spaces in real life, we can also walk through spaces within our minds (for example, when we read description of places in literature). But, I would argue, mental built environment goes beyond walking through spaces mentally.

Mental built environment includes the creation of images we have within our minds, how we construct our thoughts, how we structure the world around us to understand it, how things fall into place. The actual built environment affects the creation of our mental built environment, and vice versa. This is why the design of actual built environment matters and why the creation of mental built environment is pertinent. This bit especially explains the close relationship of architecture with literature (of all kinds), thinking, and philosophy.

The virtual built environment refers to any computer-generated environment. This is one of the later mutations of architecture that has breached into previously unexplored frontiers. Likewise, architecture has crept into other disciplines, including computer.

The hyper built environment is also another later mutation of architecture. It entails the creation of space that is hyper-real, being described rather simply by Eco in “Travels in Hyperreality” (1986) as “… [a condition where the] [a]bsolute unreality is offered as real presence.” Makes you think of the wedding cake houses mentioned here, doesn’t it?

So you have got to admit: Few other disciplines are as fluid and as interconnected to other disciplines as architecture as they currently stand. Since human evolution has practically rendered most of us unable to survive in open nature for too long of a time, architecture is therefore indispensable to modern life.

And here’s the end of my argument: All beings exist in space. As such, what else can be as important as architecture? :) It’s all about argument, isn’t it?