who MAKES?

Increasingly architects are told within the academic as well as professional sphere to imagine architecture as a collective effort, similar to an orchestra, where through the collective efforts of multiple specialists who shoulder no responsibility towards the ACT OF MAKING a manifestation / condensation of all the input, all the feedback, all the data, constraints, opportunities, stakeholder engagements, policy compliance etc each Specialist / Social Scientist / Stakeholder / Client and Investor even will claim merit for MAKING "it" happen and therefore MAKING it...according to me ludicrous situation, similar to say a Paint manufacturer or Gallery owner or the Buyer can claim merit for works of the Artist. 

An excerpt from interview by an upcoming practice SER Architects:

"What needs to change in the field of architecture according to you?

From our point of view architecture needs to change starting from the figure of the architect. By eliminating the common understanding of a mastermind seeking the next masterpiece that will become an icon in history, we believe that architecture could find its way into the background of life and become an enabler and a guide rather than an imposer. We should be offering spaces of possibilities, rather than forcing the signature of a person onto the lives of other people. We think that architecture should be rather understood as a matter of relations than as matter of objects."

Their response above captures the current position architects increasingly find themselves in and often, like here start believing in what is being virtue signaled.

In an orchestra one only imagine the absence one would feel if the pianist or the violinist didn't show up! Ofcourse every musician would lend their own personal touch to the the composition through their presence and years of practice, but will they claim credits to the composition itself? or would one walk up to a Composer and say it is a collective effort and try not to make music as if its your next masterpiece and a milestone in history instead blend with the ambient sounds of the forest or better still let the musicians compose. Before a smartarse says "Jazz!", the musicians there play the role of composers that need probably significantly more discipline and ability to play a dual role of playing music and simultaneously composing in real time...they haven't relinquished the ACT of MAKING, they still PLAY and CREATE music.

Architecture as a profession still MAKES and it needs to take and be given credit for that. We would often lean on the expertise or specialisms or knowledge of others but the intentionality or compositional decisions or hierarchy of priorities are being pulled together by Architect. If anything, going by the abysmal quality of our buildings, cities and world we need some solid mastermind hero architects who take pride and confidence in putting pen to paper and calling out shit.

Work

When Gregor Samsa woke up transformed into an insect, his first concern was not to be late for work, Kafka's Metamorphosis (1915), summing up human existence, or specifically working class human existence.

Christmas and Architecture

Robert A. Scott in the book “The Gothic Enterprise: A guide to understanding the Medieval Cathedral” writes “We might also imagine that the long time required to build Gothic Cathedrals added to the depth of the collective identity they engendered. It almost seemed to serve their purpose that they should not be completed too quickly. It takes time for collective identity to form, develop and harden. The knowledge that Canterbury Cathedral, for example was 365 years in the making is very important part of the collective identity that has developed around it.

We are accustomed to asking how communities of people managed to build cathedrals, but we can turn the questions around and ask how cathedrals built communities. The sheer scale of the undertaking, which engaged generations of people as workers, witnesses and monitors, proponents and skeptics for periods of time measured not in decades but in centuries, strengthened existing forms of communitas and collective identity, and gave rise to new ones.”

Robert A. Scott above explores the connection between time, collective identity, and cathedral construction. The prolonged timelines of Gothic Cathedrals, like Canterbury, where 365 years were invested, contributed significantly to the depth of the collective identity surrounding them. Scott suggests that the deliberate pace of construction allowed for the gradual formation, development, and solidification of collective identity.

Shifting perspective, we contemplate not only how communities built cathedrals but also how cathedrals, through their monumental scale and multi-generational engagement, played a pivotal role in shaping and reinforcing existing forms of communities. 

The enduring construction site of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona exemplifies this evolution, where the Cathedral continues to be constructed through technological advancements afforded by passage of time.

The 2019 Notre Dame fire served as a contemporary example, revealing how the restoration efforts galvanized a global community. The swift mobilisation of funds, the involvement of over 1000 workers, and the use of centuries-old oak trees from across France underscored the enduring relationship between buildings and the communities they symbolise.

This dynamic interplay between communities and structures extends beyond cathedrals to encompass various religious and institutional buildings worldwide. The lesson for modern designers and patrons aspiring to create transformative urban spaces or “symbols of excellence” is clear: time is indispensable. The rush to achieve ambitious goals devoid of temporal investment risks rendering projects mere follies, devoid of the profound impact that the passage of time can bestow.

Nice quote on History

Eric Hobsbawm in his book Age of Capital quotes Pierre Nora as having written “Memory is life. It is always carried by groups of living people, and therefore it is in permanent evolution. It is subject to the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, unaware if its successive deformations, open to all kinds of use and manipulation. Sometimes it remains latent for long periods, then suddenly revives. History is always incomplete and problematic reconstruction of what is no longer there. Memory always belongs to our time and forms a lived bond with the eternal present; history is a representation of the past.”

Given the current times we live in, with ever increasing polarised world, with events and the past constantly being reconceptualised, one would assume studying history becomes ever more important, but we all know, there are very few professional historians and even lesser poets. World in state of global amnesia.

Nice quote / gloomy thoughts.

Sustainability and Resilience

The IPCC's "Final Warning" on Climate Change...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-report-delivers-final-warning-on-15c

...is possibly going to increase the frequency with which Sustainability and Resilience get used in meetings, something I am bracing myself for.

My friend Raffa often says, the road to hell is paved with best intentions. Like the movie "Don’t look Up" there is an impending catastrophe that we can see but the only opportunity of expression that our professions (so finely tuned to existing economic structure) affords is that of paper pushing bureaucrats. Every point of urgency captured into yet another aspect of the built environment to be quantified from embodied carbon to number of plastic bags a farmer in rural Vietnam uses...or Advocacy of small tweaks to planning policy, small enough to not threaten status quo but big enough for all round chest bumps on small change - big wins pretenses.

Meanwhile:

World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam
Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions
Historical climate emissions reveal responsibility of big polluting nations
Super-rich’s carbon investment emissions ‘equivalent to whole of France
more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless 
Urban water crises driven by elites’ unsustainable consumption

Private jet sales likely to reach highest ever level this year

Limiting demand of richest 20% saves seven times greenhouse gases required to meet needs of poorest 20%, researchers find

This illustrates Climate and Sustainability aren't Technocratic issues they are political and tied to access and redistribution of resources. If we have to be constructive and start somewhere, it is within Politics + Economy.

Update // received "watching my paper straw dissolve in my coffee while..." meme today that captures my post rather well.

Stupid Cities_Part 2

Politics of Obsolescence: Planned Obsolescence is an integral part of consumer society, stretching from the Phoebus cartel of 1925 to present day marketing strategies adopted by car giants and tech companies. A planned obsolescence of technology in cars, mobiles, operating systems maintains a gradual stream of consumers. This when asserted on cities leads to a trend of steel and concrete buildings in cities like London, New York, Chicago having an average life span of 40 years, not necessarily due to material deterioration but instead opportunities arsing from speculation, facilitating wealth creation by increasing density over city spaces.

Kit of Parts: With modular technology, 3d fabrication and Smart city technology, our increasingly Smart buildings are moving away from being buildings built to last, but instead gadget-like that can be changed, retrofitted, upgraded. New innovations in timber construction and prefabricated modules allows for quick ways to not only construct but also dismantle buildings, bringing the building industry within this sphere of obsolescence. In such a speculative fast changing landscape it is only natural that most clients adopt Flexibility as their motto. If buildings are turning into gadgets, then the city is increasingly resembling a motherboard which mitigates and provides flexibility for each component and sustains its “pay as you go” citizens. Is this Fukuyama's physical manifestation of End of History? where as a human race we no longer have ability to design and deliver even institutional buildings that are solid?

As professionals of built environment, we must be clear, we do not make gadgets, we make buildings that displace air, cast shadows and influence space. It is this awareness that will make us take design decisions with greater sense of responsibility, thought and consideration.

Note: above is a summary of an ongoing discussion with my colleague and friend Konstantinos Dimitrantzos.

Stupid Cities_Part 1

While the technological components of Smart City and what each technological system can do is impressive, the representation of space and form of Smart Cities is increasingly caricatured, with a generic axonometric image stamped with icons, Wi-Fi symbols and acronyms. Following that is a long description on IoTs, Servers, Networks, real time mitigation of services and everyone’s favourite autonomous vehicles, yet there is no specificity to this technology’s influence on form and space.

The two big technological advancements, electricity and the internet were able to seep seamlessly into oldest of the old city cores from gothic quarter of Barcelona to Beijing without asserting a direct impact/influence on the urban form and space! So if someone is going to claim that a bunch of IoT devices and real time data flows are going to shape urban form and space ("in ways we have never imagined!"...all explained on ppt with black slides and vague Matrix like graphics that don't mean zilch)....we should insist on what does it look like???!!!

One exception that has had an impact on urban space is the invention of automobiles. In which case, Frank Lloyd Wright was able to interpret his image of a new city influenced by the technology of the automobile in the form of Broadacre City. 

Which again brings us to what does it look like?!

Curation

For me the act of design constitutes actively engaging with all the tools at one’s disposal, sketching, model making, cad, 3d. Even while one is doing a completely banal task of drafting there are decisions being made of alignments, offsets, widths, heights, proportions. There is rationalisation that takes place of the sketch being turned into a cad plan, and while doing that there is a continuous sense of improvisation, an immersion in the design process. For me an apt metaphor to explain this process is a potter who sits at the wheel, the clay is fluid, it moves, and possibilities emerge in split second on the wheel where the potter engages with the combination of earth, water, air and gravity. This is possible only when the potter “gets his / her hands dirty” in exchange for knowledge of consistency of the clay, its fluidity, the speed of the wheel, gravity and other forces that converge on that wheel at that moment. Like construction lines in cad which may or may not be used but they record a potential that was surrendered for a better one.
When this is compared to the design profession and its hierarchy, there is an attempt to design not by engaging with the tools or the possibilities each tool provokes but through curation. An individual standing far away from the potter’s wheel trying to make pots through a set of potters! Coming from an architectural school that placed strong importance to process, I have come to believe this process is not about making an array of blue foam models by underpaid interns, but a genuine exploration by the designer and the design team. Where the lead designer if there should be one, too should actively engage with the design tools.
The design profession having split into specialisations that arrange the process of producing space into compartments and each compartment requiring a hierarchy to produce (faster+cheaper not better) efficiently, gives rise to a hierarchy which in turn creates this disjunction where the lead designer having more liability needs to split their time across 3- 4 projects, keep tabs on fee burn, alignment with the brief, scope creep, etc. In doing so despite having only say 15% of time to spare towards design process the position is consolidated through the lead having maximum say in the design process. The position is rationalised / consolidated through the design lead’s contribution in the process via curation!
No need to design, just curate design and become a designer!
When I hear people from the design profession exclaim, I do not have patience for Cad, or I am actually a “big ideas” person, or I am just so busy that I have no time for design, etc…I am alerted by this individuals genius that believes idea equals product…(ie. I just need a bunch of minions to realise my vision!)…and then I run for my life.

Platypus

Dismantling through Platforms:
A recent trend of design jobs advertising “happy to work with individuals seeking flexible hours” or “position offers flexibility for individuals returning to the profession” sounds as if the profession has suddenly found its conscience for returning mothers or egalitarian duty towards part time students and young entrepreneurs! On the contrary this is Deliveroo-Uber, Pay-as-you-Go, No-strings-Attached employment at its best. The success of Deliveroo and Uber has only demonstrated that labour market can be fragmented further where through a platform, an employer can hire almost on an hourly or weekly basis with each individual in direct competition with the other. Obviously, this trend of dismantling existing laws is registered strongest in “civilised” world where there are necessary legal and constitutional mechanisms / processes to check and assert social justice, not so much in places where hire and fire is an accepted law of the land.
A Platform has become the new guillotine (Focault, Discipline and Punish), an invisible mechanism that shifts the locus of the act from the doer to the machine. A symbol that represents market justice and assists in management of guilt / liability / accountability.

Contradictions in Relevance:
Now unfortunately this trend has aligned with my own rather strategic decision to not comply with bullshit and become self-employed. So as I continue my social experiment of living the dream of borderline zero-hours employee, I am forced with every passing day to think of being relevant for my employers. But interestingly if I am part of this Deliveroo-Design it is absolutely essential that 
1) my employer is able to maintain me as dispensable / replaceable ie. Someone else should be able to pick where I left ie. My only contribution should ideally be restricted to time.
2) my employer is able to quantify my value purely based on time spent.
This is in contradiction to my inclination to make myself relevant through design and ingenuity, instead it places me and others like me in a position where we maintain relevance through hourly rate and speed.

Mitigation through Specialisations:
So to work around this, most people try to mitigate this erosion of hourly rate through specialisations. Specialisation through knowing tools or through knowing bureaucratic processes. Some invest time into accruing various alphabets after their names like Boy Scout Badges that will ensure the employer of their credentials. But believe it or not platforms catch-up and soon even if one can build a billion Revit families and have all the acronyms of professional excellence covered, someone will still be cheaper than you.
So when one of my employing practises started an enabling discussions on how “we” (their practise) could be more relevant, I brought up the possibility of specialisation and training the workforce to transition into more updated BIM tools.

Resistance through UnSpecialisation: 
But it was only a matter of time when the conversation leaned towards someone else out there being cheaper (offices charging lower fees) or faster or socially /politically connected to the client. At that point a close friend retorted, no! we don’t specialise. Another joined in saying we could diversify. Ofcourse this was a special group of people who have consolidated together in one such office. Me joining them has been a conscious decision, even if it means being part of the informal labour market. Back to the conversation, slowly a possibility was formulated…we become unique and NOT specialised. Meaning, if we specialise we will still be a part of a labour pool that sits in some vague classification that says knowledge of Revit, experience of Planning process in UK etc. So in case one such individual leaves the company, the product will still get delivered uninfluenced by his / her presence or absence (dispensability), whereas if someone who uniquely engages with design leaves the company the output is influenced. There is a conspicuous change in what will be produced…so we diversify, we become even more aggressive with design, we blur boundaries between departments of urban design, architecture, graphics and interior design…we pick tools of sketching, historical data, arts, music and everything that has been marginalised by the present market of production of space…we become Platypus.

P.S despite the grim picture I build of my self-employed experience, it certainly is not as financially taxing as someone who works for Deliveroo or Uber. The pressure to innovate and be relevant is certainly not as acute as, if I were a musician playing in the tube with a 3 second window to make my pitch and come with a new tune the next day. Day to day life is not filled with as much insecurities as someone at the shopping tills who feels the wave of automation. Ofcourse not a day passes by when I don't feel a peculiar hint of angst with regards to the immediate future but for now I am protected by my privileges.

Disjunction

“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”, is a quote by Winston Churchill. In 1943 after the destruction of the Commons Chamber during the Blitz, the Commons debated the question of rebuilding the chamber. Churchill insisted on the rectangular shape of the older layout was responsible for the two-party system vs the semi-circular amphitheatre shapes being adopted elsewhere. This design to this day forms a key element of British parliamentary democracy. 
It is this chicken or egg relationship between the built and us (culture / policy-regulations / politics) that over the recent years has broken down. Architects and Urban Designers are no longer cultural markers with capacity to imagine new lifestyles, new urban environments or new narratives, instead they have been reduced to service providers to speculators. In such a scenario we increasingly see urban environments transform from diverse morphology to a uniform image of banal, increasingly sterile, strongly surveillanced environments. We no longer have capacity to create multi-layered, diverse cities with complex environments, we can emulate it at the best like cheap Disney versions that amplify this impotency of the profession.
The locus has shifted from Design to Bureaucracy of Design.  But it is exactly this disjunction where planners attempt policy framework and hope to create good design without having the ability/patience to test it. Also policy frameworks through personal experience have been amazingly easy to be hijacked. A look at how “Cluster approach” to redevelopment has been interpreted in Mumbai can alone work as an effective cenotaph to that argument. Financial feasibility experts work as mere extensions of the current market and banking structure. I bet Grenfell Tower victims may have a different take on this.
Not to say I do not believe in multidisciplinary approach, where an Engineer works with a Doctor to make Frankenstein…the possibilities are endless. But I do strongly feel a multidisciplinary approach with current trend of specialisation only works towards amplifying this disjunction in the profession. A planner by the end of his / her course has become so specialised that he or she has no ability to develop form / space. Also, this structure of specialisation tends to work along some kind of Fordian system of producing design. This in turn results in creation of hierarchy based on which part of the machine is most useful, a motor or the windshield(?) This hierarchy where the designer is only incidental and often dispensable cog in the wider mechanism, a naïve fellow who does not understand issues that will have far greater influence on design, like policy framework, financial feasibility, blowjobs etc, shifts the centre of gravity away from design and towards management of design. This shift comes at the cost of the urban environments we inhabit, which in turn has a subtle retarding influence on our existence with every passing day.
So while everyone plays the multi-pronged Jane Jacobs, the Designer is the only one who is able to put pen to paper and provide something that is a committed representation. It is not abstract like set of words strung together which may convey multiple meanings, it isn’t a framework in the form of constitution and design guidelines that may or may not capture something meaningful, it isn't poetry, it is a solid form, something that will cast a shadow and when built will displace the very air. It is something that all the multidisciplinary idiots who have spent time ruminating can now come and critique, hopefully giving their sense of existence in the project and the world some reason to be. It has drawings that one can discuss around and draw over.
On another note, I watched four films over the last week,
1) Tuscanyness
2) Nostalgia for the Future
3) The Great Estate - The Rise and Fall of the Council House
4) What have you done today Mervyn Day?
Each of these films is beautiful and captures the loss of hope in Architecture / Design through a sense of Nostalgia…those were the days…or maybe I am just growing old.

Automation

A recent study undertaken by the Bank of England to look at resilience of economy and labour market predicted England would lose 15 million jobs to automation. This automation is different from the earlier historic waves of industrialisation, as machines can now replace not just manual work but also cognitive. Often being referred to as the Third Industrial Revolution, it conjures polarised ideas of the future. Unable to mitigate the scale of change the economy would need to incorporate this automation, some warn of the march of machines laced with dystopian visions of Artificial intelligence; While others optimistically look at this as an opportunity to break away from daily 8 hour jobs -a Star Trek like utopia where people have more time to pursue culture, pleasure, our place in the universe, space cakes etc.
Specific to the profession of design, tools like Grasshopper, Revit -Dynamo and other parametric software are able to not only test multiple options to find the one that mathematically best satisfies all the requirements, but they also enable for change mitigation if there is a change in brief. This has resulted in a much leaner workforce that knows the tools. A colleague of mine had once said “our profession thrives on inefficiencies, if we lose all the inefficiencies we do not have a profession” …which was a response to my wish that automation could get rid of all the manual work and free us some time to do design.
Another group is a group that maintains its relevance through knowing the bureaucracy of delivery and how like a well trained chartered account, one can bring value through strategic subversions -  maintaining the project within legal parameters and yet negotiate a “win-win deal” that facilitates desired profits. Sometimes hearing a planner with a classic C3PO voice explaining “lets put an outline planning application for a private park, then put in an amendment of terraced housing, after which we can get our community consultation partner to pimp us a good result and I know John in the council who can guide us through this…blah blah blah”, makes something inside me die a little.
But both these groups continue to maintain relevance due to their engagement with design delivery, rather than design. With further automation like Residential Engine, City Engine, etc the Developer could skip these “middle men” completely. 
When the camera disrupted the Art world and artists who maintained their relevance as purely replicators were rendered useless, this wave of automation too will strike at these redundancies and the only way to maintain our relevance as designers would be to find the locus, the purpose of our profession. This wave of automation according to me is the best case scenario, a massive disruptor which will come at a huge cost but will certainly take the design profession towards a more meaningful destination…until then we continue to patiently hear the hum of managers, bureaucrats and technicians talking bullshit.

Space Vacated

I remember the first day of my architectural training (1999 Bombay) started with the then Director of the school giving us an introductory talk. He emphasised on the diversity and flexibility afforded by architectural education where numerous students had gone ahead to do work that was only peripherally connected to the act of building. 
This flexibility over the years has allowed professionals to use the knowledge gained, towards working with NGOs, starting Art practises, Film making, CGI animations, Robotics, Cooking…turning into Magicians et al. While some have been genuine choices, others have come about through helplessness to find a legitimate venue to intervene as architects.
The individuals who stressed on structure of knowledge / way of thinking have moved to other professions from where they attempt to map, critique, frame ideas. This move has resulted in an intellectual void, a vacated space which has been filled by: 
1) Individuals who have the necessary inheritance and entitlement of networks and capital required to build and intervene as architects and with ease facilitated by having trained in the knowledge of structure, like Haussmann they are blameless extensions of the current system.
2) Labour force which wants to continue in the profession but being financially compromised through student debt / pressures of day to day subsistence, incapacity to take risk etc do not have a voice, so most tend to submit to the “that’s how the world turns” scenario.
This has compromised the quality of design as well and the discourse in the profession of design. It can be a multidisciplinary team with an all-encompassing multidisciplinary effort, but the final deliverable is built environment. The concerns are still to do with proportions, form, space and order. Not having capacity to interpret the “big picture” (gained through countless excel sheets, onsite interviews, GIS, etc) into specific interpretation as a committed form / space, according to me is wasted effort.
I feel to once again produce meaningful work that serves communities / people / society we as designers need to reclaim that space where design is envisioned, designed and delivered. When we do, through experiments and some failures we may bring back sense of hope and purpose that the profession was meant to have.

Bombay Pixels

Some friends I have could go on for hours talking about the assertion of individual identities on Bombay's skyline...any simpler explanation from me like "maybe there are 6 people joint families in every room"...nope...
Some who come from Ahmadabad with stronger roots into Indian-red-clay-tradition could provide me explanation  of the cultural context and how the particulate pollution outside that settles on the wet clothes works as a herbal remedy etc...if I even start "maybe...225 sq. ft of accommodation does not really allow space for wet pajamas."...nope...
Some with more urban-metropolitan leanings tend to come up with rather cute branding terms like "Bombay Pixels" etc and normalise things...sometimes actually even revel in the beautiful complexity that is Bombay...the pollution - intoxicates you, the density - supports you, the complexity - enriches you and corruption...nope...stop patronising.
5th December 2017 to 28th December 2017....groan.

Working in Multinational Global Design Firms for Dummies

"Welcome to the real world" was the line that started my career in global corporate design world which when said with the right tone of enigma, optimism and pointless positivity can convince a hardworking earnest young minion just blessed with a student loan to choose the right pill (yes welcome to the real world, free will and choice exists and you are going to pick that one there). It especially being said by a cross between Philip Johnson-Corbusier, a giant dodo in red socks with confidence of an early-rising-chest-pumping cockerel, can also immediately disarm any misconceptions that his/her intellect or power of reasoning earned through years of academic engagement /investigation is going to be anywhere near useful...keep the skills, those we need the rest is a fluffy pink cotton candy that purely helped you get our company's attention. After this, phrases of "have you watched Karate kid?", "it builds character", "it's like playing the piano" and last but not the least, all of us Islanders' favourite "keep calm and..." were concerned, conciliatory burps that formed an important percentage of the atmospheric composition in the (smart) building.

But one cannot deny the exposure one receives here! Exposure to rotten human nature, horrible coffee, overwhelming sense of hierarchy, pointless repetitive tasks, confused acronyms and other big and small things that make up the anus of global capitalism. Now some of you may find use of this rather crude anatomical metaphor in bad taste (anus and taste too are not great combination to use but I am trying to represent the very pulse of private multinational global enterprise that does it's fair share of lobbying/**s licking and may well be the best one I presently have at my disposal).

So there I was finally "in the real world"...in some bumhole, learning from experiences and trying not to get shit over myself.

"Let's keep it simple" if effectively asserted on a team of designers for clients, ones with loads of money, inversely proportional attention span and an even shorter patience to engage. This often asserts an overall retarding influence on projects. For readers not from my field to comprehend this retardant quality, imagine a city, say imagine Venice with all its history, contradictions, complexity, multiple ownership, tenancies and everything else that constitutes a rich dense juicy urban space with promises of equally enriching experiences...never mind this is already getting too complicated and I personally have no idea or patience on how to salvage that sentence, so forget all that, let's keep it simple...And that is how this truly gem of a phrase can be unleashed (!) to tactically assert pointless ill informed authority and transform all reason to resemble a shriveled penis. Now some readers may for a second time take offense at my surprisingly placed word of inappropriate anatomical metaphor but believe me I am not trying to play a Guerrilla Warfare of Inappropriate Anatomical Metaphors (or G.W.I.A.M. as my company would call it within 3 days of its discovery, with its dedicated team in a dedicated department run by a dedicated cheerful fellow photographed against a umber brown background in compliance with graphic standards dedicated for that specific department).

"Let's take a step back and play a game!" if said with enthusiasm of a 10 year old that has just seen a giant ice cream van distributing free ice cream, has the super power to influence entire swathes of suburban deprived communities (demographic make up: NIMBYs, Luddites and Plebs) in giving up their rights to properties and paving way to greater common good of men, women, children, migrants, refugees and elves. Now to be asking a 70 something to pick a card from a deck, representing his/her home crumple it into a ball and fling it far away, or asking a single mother to throw a dice and comically jump around on a small map of Bullwinkleshire, or ask an unemployed homeless youth to simply leave, all can sound physically demanding but it does soften the bludgeoning of redevelopment and turns it all into a comedy fest that professionals and victims alike can look back on and smile with nostalgia of those good old times with funny characters! ("character" said in manner of a UKIP voter describing Nigel Farage) And to conclude these festivities with a planner in robotic voice giving necessary disclaimers and conditions for a gentle CPO (compulsory purchase order) nudge always contributes a textural richness of a well wrinkled nut-sac. Now this is the third time some of my sensitive, readers may find my comparison of community participation process to a scrotum, an inappropriately ballsy decision, but here too I ask for patience and sincere apologies as never before have we witnessed such promise of fertile change that will transform lives from suspiciously limp organs of design initiative and goodwill for all mankind. Believe me I am not "writing you in my balls" ( it's a Greek phrase that is frequently used in serious formal conversations, eg EU negotiations, though in this context I would specifically advise the reader not to combine the image of a wrinkled scrotum and Wolfgang Schäuble as that may derail the point of this paragraph)

"I will get him, to get her, to get him to, to get him to do it" can be an excruciatingly long phrase depending on the number of hierarchical links all the way down to the last minion, but if delivered and executed with precision can allow for entertaining the idea of one contributing useful work and playfully back pat the team for WE having done a great job. This if done with right amount of positive social initiatives and enthusiasm bordering on orgasm can successfully camouflage the obvious relationship of the author of such a statement being a harmless looking hairy mole like tumour outgrowth that sticks around and in some instances may even provide comical relief but is difficult to determine its true purpose in your life. Now yet again (fourth time!) my politically correct liberal right leaning readers may find this metaphor of a hairy mole/wart tumour like outgrowth unwise as it asserts negative connotations towards the handicap or appearance of a hairy mole wart tumour like outgrowth but I have to point out that such a combination of hair, mole, wart, tumour, comic relief and uselessness is naturally impossible to exist given that not only have I invented a whole new anatomical condition but also embedded it with qualities of comic relief and uselessness. In retrospect my point of such a condition really existing may get defeated if the reader brings up Jeroen Dijsselbloem.

"Ok lets be practical" or "but who is going to pay for it" or "financial feasibility" are all multiple avatars of one unreasonable idea that is to be presented as a scientific process that employs the power of cutting edge analysis, prevalent market cases, projected growth....and a small white elephant in the room the developer's profit. This small white elephant in the room can vary between 25 to 150% profit off the total cost of the project which is A Given (pronounced Uggh-even), or also known as the Supreme Force or numerous other abstract terms of Divinity that make any questions raised to challenge this number an aberrational blasphemy. This concoction of mysticism, cutting edge science and one cuddly Dumbo contains within it the sublimity of well rounded flatulence that skillfully balances the sweet and sour notes, journeying its audience through feelings of despair, intrigue and pleasure. Now once again (fifth but hopefully the last time) a well intentioned, free market, go-getting, reader may point to my comparison of the field of financial feasibility and market assessment to...fart...yes I say it again...a fart not completely appropriate, but I have to point that l no longer have any apt anatomical metaphors remaining and have had to transcend this to a whole new anthropological platform of small day to day activities that connect humans and form the matrix of civilization. Similar to the way we in London are held together striving for day to day existence by the farts of George Gideon Oliver Osborne, son of 17th baronet Peter Osborne and Felicity Alexandra Loxton-Peacock, who clearly is a self made hardworking striver with a BA degree in History.

"Good Jaab" can sound bit of a cliche given the generosity and how generally it gets used, right from expressing gratitude to someone being able to bring coffee without spilling it to instances where someone averts a global disaster of epic proportions, but yet if done with a sense of earnestness one could use "good jaab" as a potent replacement to employee raises, increments, bonuses or anything involving really doing anything more than exclaiming "good jaab". By now the handful few readers who survived this read through inappropriate metaphors of anus, penis, balls, hairy moles and farts of the field of design within corporate environments and are hopeful that all this is going somewhere or you deserve something useful for your time, patience, energy then I promise not to let you down...here...Good Jaab!!

10 Comrades

I love Bombay; while I think of it sitting in the comforts of my London home, thinking it is about time someone made a difference out there. But while I grow beard and hatch plans for revolution I think about the colourful comrades I met while back in Bombay.

I felt it was important to record these colourful comrade-specimens before these last animals of a disappearing species go extinct, driven away to greener pastures. "Yes it is important to map the people, not the space!" a friend of mine exclaimed with finger pointing to the sky in the manner of Lord Krishna dispensing Bhagvat Geeta. Space didn’t matter, people made space and if we map people space would fall in space..or place, depending on whether one is Cartesian or Phenomenonlogisticalist! (A new field of phenomenology but only 1000 times richer discovered in a recently found papers by Jacques Derrida who uses excerpts from Gaston Bachalard’s hand written but never published papers that almost got lost while he on the verge of clinical claustrophobia tried burning his work, to suggest "it does go much deeper" and we have only scratched the surface in phenomenology and its sequel Phallogocentriology).

So here goes:

Please note, despite these comrades also being my very close friends, I as an unbiased writer/mapper, have tried maintaining a cold, detached and almost scientific attitude while interacting with them and writing about them (though we only know too well there is no such thing as the unbiased eye, maybe unbiased spleen...maybe, but one can never tell). So in the manner of David Attenborough in Madagascar, I in Mumbai note and report:

Comrade 1: (Day to Day constructive acts comrade): Jigisha Khandelwal born to a filthy rich industrial tycoon, was also coincidentally an optimist, optimism not stemming from her Marwari wealth or her schooling from Eton, Harvard and Yale, but from her deep faith that just like her fafda eating ancestors had invented philanthropy in India, she too could make a difference.

 She explained her family employed 5 people (job creation!!), a gardner (Santosh), a maid (Sakkubai ofcourse), a driver (Mangesh), a guard or watchmen (Tejbahadur) and a cook (Lata tai). She said these people are like a family to us. On enquiring why Sakku bai (who was meanwhile sweeping the floor around us) had stayed for past 40 years in exactly same spot while Jigisha and her family became more prosperous, Jigisha gave a shriek of anger. She pointed angrily to Sakkubai and said she IS a family to us and is here by her choice. Sakkubai by now having guessed the discussion in English may have involved her, asked alarmingly "Jiggi beta sagla kai tikh?" (Jiggi dear everything okay?). This is when Jiggi beta did something shocking, she got up, hugged Sakkubai and went to have a bath (not because she felt that was hygienic thing to do but it was time for her to have a bath), Sakkubai after the hug continued looking at me intently for couple of minutes in the manner of a suspicious bull mastiff and went back to sweeping the floor (not because she had to sweep the floor but because she liked to...supposedly).

Comrade 2: (We got the whole thing wrong Comrade): Mandar Apte had grown into a grizzly wearing a very tight marine blue lacoste t-shirt that seemed to work more as corset and give Mandar's breathing a whizzing quality. He was the the first to recognise me, while I desperately tried to look away. I had to look away as this guy had earned himself a pungent aura of sweat and piss. We shook hands and without wasting time Mandar exclaimed in the manner of Zac Galifinakis in a standup, "we got the whole thing wrong dude! hahaha", his manner suggesting that he was now enlightened by the right way to go about "the thing". I was able to continue the conversation by holding my breath for 2 minutes, after which I would excuse myself and go a little away from the table, take massive gasps of fresh air and come back. Mandar fortunately for me didn’t notice that, he was too euphoric singing Jim Connell's Red Flag and waving his 3 pitchers of beer (all held in his grizzly paw) in the air and laughing hysterically.

We sat there for 4 hours past midnight, in a dingy bar drinking beer and Mandar explaining how everything we had thought of was way wrong, but on insisting on the point of right way to go about “it”, he would give vague burps and order more beer.

Comrade 3: (Demonstration Comrade): On hearing I was in the city, Hari Prasad had visited home, wearing a biege kurta from Fab India. Hari having done his MA in Indian languages, spoke fluent Bodo and Dogri and had studied history of Gondia between 3^rd Nov 1265 AD to 22^nd Jan 1285 AD (he was the only historian specialized in that region for that time period). He was actively demonstrating in various protest marches for and against various issues affecting and not affecting India. "I love candle light vigils, they have such a peaceful quality..., for some time as a break I think i will be sticking to them, maybe after couple of months I may take part in a rape protest", Hari said with a certain sense of satisfaction. On enquiring about his health he replied, "I had joined in on the anti corruption hunger strike, but the government just won’t budge and we had to call off the strike because everyone was so damn hungry bhai!” Here was a man who had made demonstration a way of life. While leaving he removed a donation box and asked me for donations for tribals of Andaman and Nicobar islands. I gave him 500 rupees, he looked at me with disgust in his eyes and asked, "we are demonstrating for children’s safety on the western railway tomorrow, will you join us?" On replying no, he spat in my aquarium and left.

Comrade 4: Undercover Comrade (Poor are genetically inferior, lazy and therefore poor comrade): Rajiv Kukreja born to a developer had grown with us but always seemed to censor his thoughts, but no more he said as we sat at the dinner table in his 8 storey 'bungalow'. He went on to elaborate, however rich he was he worked very very hard to earn money while the poor laze reluctant to even earn their livelihood! This time I had the pleasure of spitting in his aquarium.

Comrade 5: (Comrade Comrade) (elder brother of Comrade 4, they haven’t exchanged a single word for the past 30 years which is shocking as they are 31 now): Amol Kukreja used to live in Bandra in a plush flat, but he sold everything off to buy a small printing press and a flat in Nala Sopara. The newspaper he tried to publish called Nava-Horizon didn’t do very well and he had lost all his money...maybe because he had tried printing newspapers on inkjet printers. He offered me a soup being cooked at home, I refused, because I had seen him put an old shoe in the pot. He had stood by his principles and presently wanting to share a shoe soup with me.

Comrade 6: (with and against comrade): Geeta Joshi whose Napoleon complex had only given her a strategic vantage point to develop a “with and against” “mechanism”, in quotes highlighted by her with hooked fingers gesture. She explained me this with and against mechanism, which certainly had done her well. She said how she worked for multinationals interested in entering the Indian market, but with the money she earned she would publish a book critiquing the very same companies, hoping that the book would sell, spread the word, make her some more money in the process and most importantly give her some conference invites. On the whole this was a theory of “spontaneous simultaneity” (orang utan hooked fingers gesture for in quotes again)

Comrade 7: Reluctant Rich Recluse Comrade (commonly called high on pot comrade): Could not meet Harshad Shah, as he was reclusive, high on pot and reluctantly well to do, as the name suggests.

Comrade 8: Small microscopic inserts Big Global change comrades (plural because they are twin sisters one a Virologist and the other a IT programmer both trying to invent a virus): Nanda and Manda Malwankar spoke alternating words thereby completing a sentence, with the punch line being said in chorus. I believe this feat in communication was possible due to their strong and common sense of faith that the key to change is often a small strand of hair lost in the Atlantic or the Grand Canyon or Deccan Plateau (which ever decreases the chances of finding it the most). Virologist believed greed could be cured because it was all genetic, she just had to make a virus, while the IT programmer believed that infecting all transaction with a computer virus that could deduct fair taxes and create a leveling field, both had named their future creations Anna Hazare.

Comrade 9: Lost Battle Alcoholic Comrade (usually hangs out with Comrade 7, who also pays for his drinks and other expenses): Rohit Vora having failed entering into any of the top universities abroad with his thesis on “Role of Educational Institutions in Global Capitalism” had sadly taken solace in alcoholism.

Comrade 10: (Happily Married Comrade or Also can be referred to as Nostalgic “Those were the days” Comrade): name speaks for itself.

By now you may have realised that these colourful endemic individuals living their day to day lives trying to adapt to the fast changes taking place on their seven islands (it is actually 6, but 7 sounds so damn poetic that they counted a float to be the seventh, which also had the only Maharashtrian Koli fisherman sitting on top) as they evolve new limbs, appendages, feathers to compete for food, nourish their young ones and finally simply to just survive.

At this point in time it is difficult to tell if they are pimping or limping their cause!

London Architecture Summer Shows

One of the many summer treats, an exhibition of one years blood, sweat and tears by an exceptionally talented group of people who strive to convince the world of their brilliant ideas, while the world comes to watch and judge. Some (like me) happy to simply see the energy and sincere attempts at trying to solve problems/come up with alternatives/change the world etc while others tinker and question if this is too far and disconnected from its immediate applicability in the field of architecture...no water-proofing details here!

Unfortunately for some, these exhibitions exhibit ideas not products.

All these brilliant minds will soon enter professional space, they will be methodically told to tone down, be subtle, some times even downright stupid, in the manner of "so that even my grandma understands" a phrase that sums up the process of design within professional space so effectively that I cant help but smile when someone says that around me, wondering how our previous generation in their old age still continue to have a profound influence on the field. Systemically their work will be assessed and shaped to obliterate all the forms of experimental inclinations. 

So this is definitely the right moment in time to see their best works by far.

Elephants in Bombay

1) A City Ages

City:
Mumbai over the past few years has come to be a city that is in a constant state of construction. As if the audacious concretization aspires to compete with the speed and scale of natural deterioration within the city, where built forms catch dust, moss, cracks and crumble, very often at a rate faster than the human bodies that inhabit it. Signs of age seem to climb over every object, building and person like creepers that grow slowly but with a fierce determination rooted in consciousness of the inevitable outcome.
Presently raising the FAR/FSI is seen as a solution to trigger regeneration, but I only wonder what would happen in another 40 to 50 years when these 20 to 25 storey towers grow old and are crumbling, what would be the collateral then? How would the deficit between the true cost of maintenance and affordability based on earning capacities be rationalized  What kind of maintenance model will be required if the option of raising FSI is no longer viable? Or will a constant flow of infrastructure projects allow continuous expansion? Either which ways, this dialectics of ageing and reconstruction are here to tango till the bubble bursts or life here becomes unbearably agonizing and people migrate to second tier cities.
Through this turmoil of injections of new infrastructure, new construction, old decaying fabric, the city is in a state of constant change and that too with rapid speed, making it unable for someone to completely be able to grasp or even conjecture the nature of an intermediate state it tries to evolve towards.

Most of the spaces of my childhood memories have been forgotten by the city only to be replaced by skeletal concrete monoliths that form a wall depriving the city the very symbol of future hope, the line where the sea and sky meet, the horizon.

Friends:
Most of us are now old enough to savour nostalgia, a feeling that comes when the balance between past reaches a critical limit in relation to the future, enjoying memories of what it used to be like and city that Bombay once was and how it has come to be Mumbai. The utopian optimism of being able to fight back, small intervention-big change attitude has been replaced by either proposals that are geared towards damage control (Zizek's capitalism but with a human face) or intense mapping exercises (AMO's this is the present, now and here and no use resisting it), and so interestingly most sentences in most conversation seem to start with the word "interestingly", summing up the total disconnection that professionals have from the built environment, restricted to purely being witnesses that record, re-record and represent these recording in subversive ways to balance the guilt of impotency.
Like everything else, age has caught up if not with them then with people close to them, as they try to find solutions to the state of ageing in this city.

Grandparents:
My grandmother who has crossed 85, recently moved in our home. Her frail and fragile body bears witness to this city she lived in, her entire life, Dadar Shivaji Park (1937 to 1951),Thane Charai (1951 to 1960), Goregaon Pandurangwadi (1960 to 1962), Cotton Green Kala Chowki (1963 to 1985), Mulund (1986 to 2012),Borivali (2012 onwards). Having short term memory she constantly enquires of her grandchildren once an hour which my father patiently responds to, in manner as if the question was never asked before.
My maternal grandfather lives with my aunt and struggles through with similar problems of age.
This state of vulnerability and return to innocence according to me is the most merciless but yet in some ways appropriate form of redemption to our existence, and deserves the dignity that this fast paced, aggressive city very often cannot afford.

A Thesis on old age homes:
A friend of mine, Namrata Kapoor, few years back had researched and designed an old age home as a thesis topic. One of the issues that she dealt with was the relevance of having old age and its supporting institutions within the city and and not exiled outside the city limits as is the case with lots of old age homes here. I wonder given the changes that have taken place within this city and the aggression that seem to increase exponentially with increase in density and shortage of resources, would the question of "is old age relevant to this city?" needs to be reframed as "is this city relevant for old age?"

The process/state of ageing here is not a noble one, dignified with responsibilities of holding our collective past, neither is it Clint Eastwood commanding respect and a farewell with a finale, rather it is a sad process of decay and suffering and old age only inhibiting memories...bearing witness to this nature of change to me is somewhat like asking a grandparent do you remember me and seeing their eyes desperately search for signs of recognition in your face, just as i search for fast eroding spaces from my childhood in the city of Mumbai.

2) A City comes of Age
Optimism:
As Bombay grows in infrastructure and density, amid all the chaos there seems to be a sense of optimism from some people whom i spoke to, of things changing rapidly (for good or for worse was not of much concern, but the speed), and within that rapidity one has to fish opportunity at the precise moment it jumps towards you (think of Alaskan bears catching salmon). This strange optimism only seems to be growing, as if with a little more toil, little more risk and little more compromises the battle with the city would be won; dreams, desires and aspirations fulfilled. As one of my friend back in Bombay said, over the past 1 year he can see the boom of a booming economy. 

Faith:
Another one explained that a lot of things presently seem to work purely out of good faith, like the experience of crossing a highway and having good faith in the driver that he wont run over you, while the driver having complete faith in you breaking the traffic signal and crossing from unexpected places, so his speed is slow and he is more alert than an average driver abroad. 
The complexity that Bombay shelters provides for a constant source of study, research, mapping, representation and interventions, built and unbuilt, professional and academic of various scales. the opportunities and potentials are endless..the unrest will follow..."it is only a matter of time...have faith..."

3) Elephants in the City

To me witnessing changes in Bombay is like the experience of seeing elephants in the middle of the city. One is immediately struck by awe at the magnificence of the beast, only to dwell on how the animal survives and then looking carefully at damages that the city life has done to it. It is surreal experience with certain sense of strange optimism mixed with melancholia(?). There are no absolutes here, as even elephants dissolve away in the noise and smog of the city.

A Recent Spat

A recent spat between Chipperfield and Wolf Prix over the brief for Venice biennale  represents the contradiction that exist within our profession. There are architects who believe their contribution works towards making this world a better place, while some like me are always suspicious that we are assisting in creation of environments that will only assert and strengthen the same socio-economic hierarchy, so the true exploration of 'Common Grounds' should be represented differently.

RIBA as an institute that provides licences to architects to practise in the UK and thereby maintains quality but has very little power when it comes to the market forces that govern the price or even the size of the dwellings. According to a recent survey the dwelling sizes in many cases are as low as 77% of the recommended size. so in such cases the 'element of humanitarian effort' is often shouldered at an individualistic level, in the spirit of trying to do our best within the constraints which ofcourse comes with an asterisk of if the developer permits. These endeavours often become personal battles waged with option 1 which is more profitable and option 2,3,4 and 5 developed during late after office hours by some underpaid intern or worse, a slaving optimist, to have the opportunity to do some good. The choice of the preferred option is determined by the profitability, so option 1 wins, but there is always a warm feeling that we tried out best, and the saving grace skewed block from option 2 did get accepted in option 1. So it wasn't all that bad, we lose some we gain some...and many other self congratulatory phrases that I feel go along the lines of Zizek's anecdote on subversive politics.

To be blatantly honest as architects we have very little control over the environments we design, if the economy and market forces facilitate shoebox houses with bad light and ventilation and on the condition they start selling, we would be very soon presenting each other case studies and precedents of such "interesting high density" housing types.

A very basic preliminary survey of all the new developments taking place around London mostly due to the coalition government's policies geared towards first time buyers and faith in the idea that we can build ourselves out of recession, shows a considerable reduction in floor heights, this in itself is an excellent example of how even the best practise standards are manipulated by the market, so if an architect were to design such a residential project, he/she would ofcourse do the best one can but within the specifications of low ceiling heights as kindly requested by the developer, or if you are BIG who follow the motto Yes if More, you could reduce the height even more so that ones hair brushes against the ceiling, but with an advantage of a beautiful lush garden on the rooftop with collages of happy families enjoying the views to the city.

So what should we do? one friend suggested, "just make a choice, either this side or that". I wish it were as simple. to print my ticket to global occupy movement and become a farmer, or take refuge within academic space.

Another said think of it as subversive..with and against, fighting the system from inside, this unfortunately keeps bringing the happy Russian farmer (from Zizek's link above) to my mind...or the example of university professors who teach in Columbia but their true heart resides in Cuba. (Zizek you bastard! I was happy once!)

Though another friend who was more sympathetic to the confusions brewing in my head explained, life is like driving, if everyone drives strictly by the rules there will be accidents all around, so instead we look around, negotiate with the context and continue driving, but with an acknowledgement that contradictions do exist and we have to drive none the less, because there is no choice.

I hope by the end of our drive, atleast some of us, reach a destination that we pride in as architects living lives filled with constraints, complexities and most importantly contradictions.

The presence of absence of presence....

Camels in Koran
Luis Borges in 'Argentine writer and Traditions' responds to Edward Gibbons doubts overs Koran being an Arabian work, "Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubts as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work", and further elaborating that camels being a part of everyday life, it may have never occurred to an Arab to mention it, and thus the absence actually is a stronger evidence than the animal being mentioned.

Canary Wharf

Trailing along this narrative we can say that the role of industry in Britain may have been such that it never felt any necessary need to invest energies in branding (a strategic word that comes into effect when people try to sell shit for more than what it is worth) itself, its role and relevance was rest assured within the bigger scheme  of things, say as against banking which comes across as a more abstract entity with people clueless about why banking is more precious to British economy than Industry that it gets a state intervention (bailout) when in need...or what is it that they produce? or make? that makes their presence in the middle of urban areas more legitimate than industry or agriculture especially in an era where the image of transaction of numbers with light speed can be done from and to any place on this networked globe.

Pages of record
In Tomas Alfredson's film, 'Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy' based on a book by John Le Carre, the audience is introduced right in midst of 1970s cold war era's British intelligence suffering through enemy infiltration and its efforts to purge this enemy within. This plot further layered with signs, symbols and dialogues that only arouse suspicion of every character, including the lead detective on the case George Smiley played by Gary Oldman, the audience by the middle of the film looks at every occurrence as a plot. But there is only one moment in the film where, both the audience so well trained in suspicion and the detective are absolutely sure of the evidence, which is the absence of pages that record Ricki Tarr's (played by Tom Hardy) message sent on the stated day. This absence of pages is a stronger evidence of his innocence than say them finding the pages with his stated message, wherein there would had always been doubt if this record too is a part of a bigger plot! 
Maybe it is this absence of industry that provides a stronger evidence of its sincerity to put it naively (In "Extracts from L'Organisateur" 1819, Claude-Henri de Saint Simon (1760-1825) having baptised by the French revolution in his lifetime makes a sharp distinction between the idle and the useful in society through the sincerity of effort of production/making). 

Einstein forward
In a viral anecdote that everyone receives sometime or the other as an email forward, an atheist professor trying to explain his students the absence of God through presence of evil, is proved wrong by a young student who replies back that the presence of cold is purely the absence of heat or presence of dark is only the absence of light, just as presence of evil is purely the absence of divinity. Maybe the absence of industry purely proves the absence of much needed state interventions of Olympian proportions to encourage industry, which instead were going towards development of special economic zones for the service industry?

Maybe all this tirade is only a reaction to my recent visit to the Olympic Park. Its landscape changed beyond recognition, having successfully turned into a place with no memories..a clean slate, we don't know the industry that existed here, the people who used to work, the inventions that took place here, nothing. The confidence provided by the massive investment of global capital is so strong that it was never felt at any point in time that maybe somethings could reflect the history or some idea of the past. The surrounding area which once was strongly integrated with people, their livelihood and the community is reduced to artificial manicured background landscape of canals, canal side walks, jogging tracks and bridges for the urban bourgeoisie content with having a matchbox house within a sketchup building surrounded by an equally sterile landscape devoid of any complexity/contradictions, to finally feel at home....smells like a rotten cat to me.

ArchLeaks

In the world of our friendly neighbourhood underpaid intern or rather intern who pays to work...a world where architects eat their young, and RIBA cant do shit...and magazines are filled with glorified egos of slave driving practices...there is some hope for venting frustration if not changing situations...Archleaks.