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I like this project for several reasons. First, at the core, it is attuned to human behavior and serves to assist as a device for social interaction. Second, it does not copy the vernacular verbatim, but updates it to current times, technology and trends. The stoop has clean lines and is wholly constructed from a single modern material. While our tastes in materials and aesthetics have changed, our behavioral roots have not. Vernacular architecture does not have to be archaic or boring, and can blend behavior with modern design to produce highly interesting and successful projects.

“I wondered if it would be possible to capture the essence of that indigenous behavior, so entwined with its site-specific nature, in order to have more flexibility to invite similar social behavior in other contexts than the entry to the home, on a block of homes on the grid.”

– Josh Owen

Can this line of exploration and design be translated into other projects? I believe that it can and that doing so can rejuvenate public space and enhance the social life and quality of living of many people. All too often we see design that uses the latest technology and exceeds many precedents of scale and ambition, but fail to adequately address the user and their experiences and behavior.

Paying attention to our own tendencies and behaviors can lead to the most successful and resonating designs.

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• The Future Is Smaller: GMC Teases The Urban Utility Concept (blogs.thecarconnection.com)

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• Chairs placed on streets of NYC, then tracked with GPS (boingboing.net)

Greenwald points out that there is simply so much data to fish through and so much gathered through broad and indiscriminate collecting that there is too much information to handle. Even with suspicious connections, communications and other warning gathered, no one was able to clearly see the whole picture. In an age of unprecedented surveillance perhaps we are learning to rely too readily on overwhelming technological efforts than on our own senses.

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• The Backfiring of the Surveillance State (angryindian.blogspot.com)
• Report on failed Christmas terror attack released (cnn.com)
• When perceptions cloud one’s judgment (washingtonmonthly.com)
• ‘The Buck Stops with Me’: Obama Releases Security Review of Attempted Bombing (abcnews.go.com)

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Going back to the fundamental base of Human Behavioral Ecology, all decisions are made to try to increase one’s own reproductive success. Status is of the utmost importance in the realm of sexual competition, as is social intelligence, risk and being a part of a group and following social norms. To continue with the example of Dubai, they took advantage of the opportunity presented in an economic bubble to build an unprecedented urban/coastal landscape that has elevated their status to world class, one-of-a-kind.

So what are the large-scale benefits of this building boom? Economics and status. It seems that evolved behaviors to gain status and wealth translates into similar competition between empires, nations, and metropolises.

I am also reminded of the amazing scale of construction completed in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics. With such rapidly increasing media coverage for the Games over the last decade, the Olympics have quickly become a forum for newer, bigger, (better?), and possibly more absurd architectural projects with little to no thought given for the long term. The opportunity is seized for an instant status boost, but, strangely, the status remains long after the project has been forgotten or failed.

Social intelligence seems to play a role in this as well as group identity and social norms. To sell the idea for the next architectural wonder requires a great deal of social intelligence; perhaps in the art of storytelling, convincing the audience that yours is the best, as well as for coalition building to assemble a team that can actually pull the project off. Further, it you want to identify yourself with a certain group, you must conform to their norms. If your particular group of desire is an elite, progressive and architecturally challenging metropolis or society like Dubai, Beijing, New York and others, you’ve got to follow the lead and continue to push the envelope. With the latest burst of the bubble, it will be interesting to see how this trend adapts.

Bottom Line? Decisions in architecture and urbanism are not always made in the interest of good design and wise decisions, but in the interest of short-term status gains.

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• World’s tallest skyscraper opens in Dubai (cbc.ca)
• Dubai Opening World’s Tallest Building Amid Crisis (abcnews.go.com)
• How Would Dubai Look In the Future? [Architecture] (gizmodo.com)
• Of Burj and Babel (online.wsj.com)
• Generate cityscapes with City Engine (makezine.com)
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“This presentation will explore how sound can be used creatively in film to expressively tell the story. One of the main themes of the presentation is that by applying an understanding of the principles of psycho-acoustics and human perception to the sound design process we will not only create better sounding films but also films that are more expressive and engaging.”

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Exploring the importance of sound and storytelling reminds me of Juhani Pallasmaa’s book The Eyes of the Skin. Examining architecture and the five senses, the book disusses the devaluation of the five senses and we have become an increasingly ocular-centric culture. One part deals with architecture and hearing/sound and she points out that sound reinforces and enriches the visual experiences and that space is understood as much through its echo as it is visually.

In Atmospheres, by Peter Zumthor, one section of the lecture is entitled The Sound of a Space:

“Listen! Interiors are like large instruments, collecting sound, amplifying it, transmitting it elsewhere. That has to do with the shape peculiar to each room and with the surfaces of the materials they contain, and the way those materials have been applied”

The film project and writings described pose interesting opportunities of enriching architecture through sound and storytelling. Further, one can cite the close tie of sound and storytelling as for several millennia cultural transmission and storytelling were performed largely through auditory means. With such an evolutionary and historical bias towards hearing, there is a wealth of opportunity to be tapped.

Related articles:

• the acoustics of a mushroom cloud (3quarksdaily.com)
• A Serious Man and His Music (blogs.suntimes.com)
• FDR Fireside Chats Mash Up (netnewmusic.net)
• The Work of the Moving Image in the Age of its Digital Corruptibility (3quarksdaily.com)

Hunter S. Thompson —”Extreme Behavior in Aspen,” February 3, 2003

In similar veins of exploration to previous posts on storytelling and surveillance, this post will seek to examine how the stories told in our 24-hour media culture affect our vision of the world; our perceived reality. As previously discussed, storytelling plays a large part in cultural transmission and learning. So what affects are seen when we embed ourselves in an environment of stories about disaster, disease, death and terrorism?

According to a Gallup Poll done is 2007, 7 out of 10 Americans thought that crime was worse than it was in the previous year. This, in fact, was quite of out sync with reality. Data collected by the FBI and Department of Justice Bureau and Justice Statistics reported violent and property crime to be at historic lows.

In 1998, Florida State University School of Criminology and Justice completed a study correlating perceived fear of crime to television coverage of crime. The report cited Gallup polls that showed that about 3%-6% of people considered crime to be a major societal problem, a figure that held steady for decades. However, the number began to creep up in the 1990s, and jumped from 9% to 54% between 1993 and 1994, correlating with a 400% increase in the amount of time television networks dedicated to covering crime. Further, the study showed that people who watched the news 7 or more times a week had a fear rate that was double those who did not watch so much coverage of crime.

An article published by the New York Times in 2005 revealed that many tales of legions of armed looters, people shooting at helicopters and gangs of rapists terrorizing shelters were wildly exaggerated, if not entirely false. Of course, there were problems with looting and crime, but not to the degree was reported. What is more interesting is that these tales and rumors, after they head spread two or three degrees away from the source, were accepted as fact. Further, the rumors-turned-fact changed the responses from authorities. Some medical evacuation efforts were delayed in fear of volatile and hostile streets, and some police officers quit on the spot after hearing rumors of hundreds of armed looters approaching.

“Anytime you put 25,000 people under one roof, with no running water, no electricity and no information, stories get told.”

­––Lt. David Benelli, NOPD

Dr. Mark Warr, a criminologist and professor of sociology, asserts that research conducted over the last three decades shows that the mass media is an amplifying mechanism that can lead to great misconceptions about the reality of crime.

“People are bombarded with information about crime from the media, which makes them believe the world is a much more dangerous place than it really is.”

–– Dr. Mark Warr

Storytelling has the power not only to pass on cultural knowledge and make up a good portion of social learning, but also to augment the perceived reality we live in.

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• New York marks fewest murders ever (cnn.com)
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• FBI says property crime is down nationwide, but on the rise in Seattle (queenanneview.com)

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So why the positive assessment of this change? Author Julian Sanchez suspects that it may be more of a vote of confidence than a specific opinion; that many people polled simply hope that the increase positively correlates with a safer environment rather than a rational response. Despite studies in San Francisco and London indicating that increased surveillance has little positive effect on reducing crime, many people are either unaware of these studies or would rather cling to the illusion of safety. San Francisco completed a five year study of surveillance cameras and found that petty theft was somewhat reduced (up to 23%) while there was no effect on violent crime. Cameras, if failing in a preventative measure, can only be used in a retrospective manner to try to give authorities a clue as to the perpetrators ID. Does this fact make us feel better, that even if we are violently attacked, at least we may one day learn who was responsible and hopefully have them brought to justice? Perhaps it cuts down on the unknown and boosts the perceived potential for justice. Perhaps, but it seems pretty thin.

What is more interesting to question is why a society in which many voters value freedom and are wary of too much government control would support increased surveillance measures, especially with no tangible results. Even London, with the most dense surveillance network on the face of the Earth, was victim of a bombing on the Tube. The cameras did not deter the perpetrators, nor identify who they were. But still more cameras are added under the auspices of increased safety.

Well, and perhaps in the end that is the point, the illusion or hope of increased safety; the cultural fairytale that we are safer than before, even if in less control. With a fast-paced world seeming ever more chaotic, maybe these cameras serve as a symbol that someone, somewhere, is still in control.

For more insight into this phenomenon, see David Murakami Wood’s blog.

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“In a society under the reformed ‘Real-Time’ Calendar, without history nor future, everybody is faceless. A woman panics when she wakes up one day with a face. With the help of the Spectral Children she slowly finds out more about the lost power and history of the human face and begins the search for its future.”

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This is a fascinating example of how one may sidestep the usual privacy/control/security debate and look at the inherent opportunities of surveillance, particularly huge systems like the one found in London. My architectural thesis project similarly sought to take advantage of surveillance technologies and cultural obsessions of the media image for new explorations in new media art. It will be interesting to see how Faceless is received and what future projects it may inspire.

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• Cameras or Cops? (freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com)
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By looking at how the urban fabric can be uniquely tied to a place, for example the Moorish neighborhoods of Granada as compared to the courtyard patterns of Northern Africa, it is clear that there are cultural rules, preferences and traditions. But are these traditions linked in any way to an oral or written tradition of stories or folktales? Given how much learning is tied to storytelling, it would be an interesting experiment to see if design responses based on different folktales would differ noticeably.
Check back for more in depth research into vernacular architecture and folklore, as well as experiments involving invented folktales and corresponding design charettes.

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Image by paalia via Flickr

What is also interesting is cultural transmission through storytelling. Proverbs, fables and folklore pass on common cultural knowledge that will help people fit into and share in cultural identity. Each culture has a set of stories that nearly every child hears as they grow up. Many of them include lessons about acceptable behaviors and other social rules and constructs.

I also find it fascinating that works of fiction to capture cultural conditions or become indicators of future cultural changes. The Great Gatsby captured the promise and nostalgia of a fading American Dream that diminished at the end of the roaring 20s. Catch-22 outlined the schizophrenia of war and hinted at the looming military-industrial complex. 1984 imagined a level of surveillance and paranoia that is closer to a reality than it was when the book was penned. The military has also taken inspiration from science fiction in developing new technologies for communication and war.

So where does that leave architecture? Could any cultural stories explain architecture and urbanism as we see it today? Further, if a set of architectural folktales were developed and embraced by the culture, would architecture begin to change with the generations? I think that these are interesting question to consider and open many avenues for exploration and experimentation.

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• Theories of Culture Guides to Theological Inquiry by Kathryn Tanner – 5 Star Review.pdf (slideshare.net)
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• Looking Ahead: The New and Eternal as a Decade Commences (nytimes.com)
• Inspiration: It Starts With One Story (familyfamine.blogspot.com)