Reading for 2/7/2007
Categories: Environmental Art Activism Archive, Texts
Design Like you Give a Damn: pgs. 10-55
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/artact/Design Like you give001.pdf
Porous Pavement: Preface, Forward, Chapts. 1, 3, 8
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/artact/Porous Pavement002.pdf
February 14th, 2007 at 1:03 am
After reading the Cameron Sinclair’s intro to the book, I realize that determination and extreme passion are the two strongest qualities one should possess when responding to humanitarian crises. I am truly amazed by the work he and his wife have accomplished, especially since everything started out of their tiny apartment. They basically began by making phone calls and rousing support from others with similar interests. But as he says early on, “…it became clear that creating partnerships was essential to implementing a project…We needed more than a great idea to get something built. Most important, we learned that if we wanted to get anything done, we’d not only need to raise funds but also retain control of them.†Obviously with any project, finances are an issue. However, support, is equally important, and I feel that their decision to use the internet definitely helped in this aspect. Hosting design competitions, as well, was a good idea since it furthered their support group, raised funds, and got artists and architects involved.
Basically, though, Sinclair gained expertise overtime as Architecture for Humanity grew, and I think his account reflects the stories told in Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. One cannot obviously go to school in search of a hairless mole-rat degree, and the same goes for all the men in the movie. Despite this, each man was expert in his own field, and they attained their expertise from experience which was nurtured by extreme interest in the subject at hand. Reflecting on this movie as well as Sinclair’s introduction, I really realize Natalie’s point in class about the distinctions people place on architects and artists. We really don’t need the help of a landscape architect to create a green roof. All we need is research and funding. What we also need, though, is passion, and I don’t know if we, as a class, have that right now.
February 14th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
The Design Like You Give a Damn reading includes the first 2 essay in the book, which I recommend you review in toto. However, for the purposes of class discussion please read with a view to accounting what sort of expertise is required to respond to Humanitarian crises. Note how this expertise is aquired, and what is the ongoing accountability? How has this involvement changed over time? What is the relationship between the expertise of the architect and the expertise of an artist? Do artists have expertise? Do environmentalists have expertise? Do NGOs have expertise? Do humanitarian crisis workers have expertise? What sort of expertise is required? What is the relationship between credentials in various fields, the performed expertise, and the actual work that people do? Which way do the flows of expertise; accountability; credit and blame flow?
February 26th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Corporations have realized that old fashioned expertise is easily transferable. A worker can readily be retired as his knowhow can be readily downloaded in Detroit and reinstalled in Shanghai. ( An especially frightening factoid that the Fast Boat to China article provided was that companies are actually building software systems for American employees to train their eventual replacements overseas. ) So, if this is possible, that the system that supports expertise financially can just uproot itself from the bodies that gave their time to acquiring it, to what new expertise should those bodies aspire?
Fast, Cheap, & Out Of Control provides one solution for avoiding losing the object of your expertise: become expert in a wacky profession. In this documentary, it is the subjects’ passion ( for those uneasy with the word, substitute “diligence” ) for a specific field and practiced craftsmanship that provided them with their expertise. Each of their stories –the roboticist, the lion tamer, the mole rat specialist, and the topiary gardener– is amazing to hear, however, primarily due to the peculiarity of their field and only secondly due to their obsessive handling of it. What is to be done with those who unfortunately get obsessed with programming, manufacturing, or other fields more lucrative and at risk of global transplantation?
I’ll admit that I’m just asking questions that I don’t really have the answers to, but in Design Like You Give a Damn, Architecture For Humanity shows that one person’s obsessive tinkering in an obscurely specialized field isn’t the only direction for enacting expertise. The authors also prove that the institutions that society has come to rely on as the experts to solve international crises are not always adept at doing so. I especially appreciated the discussion of the progressive specialization of international humanitarian efforts that came along with the rise of NGOs:
In my undergrad experience at the University of Georgia and since moving here to New York, I have met a number of people who work or aspire to work in such NGOs. Not to over generalize, but it has been my experience that much of the time such career aspirations seem to gear people more towards gaining policy degrees from prestigious universities in order to land administrative jobs at well-known non-profit organizations. I’m not trying to argue that their intentions aren’t honest and that their actions aren’t sometimes effective, but the framework for gaining and proving expertise in the field of NGOs seems to be quite dilapidated. If nothing else, the call from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to AFH’s cubicle office supports this point. From what I could tell in the reading, AFH at that point only had 2 or 3 core members at the time of that call, so how possibly could such a huge institution as the UN call for help from such a fledgling organization? ( Not to mention one of the cofounders, Kate Stohr, had not an architecture or design background but an expertise in journalism and documentary production. )
The reason that this call could exist in the first place is due to the power that the internet provides to quickly prove expertise as well as produce it. If the UN had come to visit the Cameron Sinclair’s cubicle instead of calling his cell phone, they most likely would have dismissed him as just another CAD monkey. Instead, they learned about AFH’s activities online, and because of that they approached them as experts.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:20 pm
http://subtopia.blogspot.com/2007/02/circus-of-detention.html
Just came across this scary article about nomadic
tent cities being set up for immigrant detention in Texax. The polar opposite of what AFH is proposing, scarily enough.
March 2nd, 2007 at 1:39 am
Turns out that blog like you give a damn is pretty good too. ( also by AFH )
http://bloglikeyougiveadamn.blogspot.com/
April 29th, 2007 at 10:17 am
The Porous pavement writing shows an interesting example of expertise. More so than any other reading on the blog, this one radiates expertise. And how…Statistical analysis’s charts and numbers. Anyone can speak in general terms about anything without much knowledge but if someone can argue something mathematically with numbers and charts it immediately moves them to a realm of “informed”. In presenting environmental art projects should the artist show numbers up front?