Disgusting Things

There are two things in life that are not to be doubted. One is the innocence of a child, the other one political correctness of the BBC. I saw a news item on BBC breakfast yesterday morning that caught my attention, and I will share the following thoughts with you.

So the BBC found out something shocking. You might not have known this, or might not have cared, but apparently, there are those cheap rubber bracelets in different colors, with each color representing how far a person is willing to go (sexually). It starts at yellow and goes all the way to God-only-knows-what color. As the presenter (Sian Williams) put it, the first two represent “kisses, then hugs… and then things which are too explicit to say on television” and added that “children as young as 8 are wearing the bracelets”. I thought: “Big deal, it’s not like those kids know that, they’re just wearing those things because they think it looks nice”, or as it often happens, out of peer pressure.

The funny thing was the kids did know that those bands means everything, from your XOXO’s to the XXXs. I was especially touched when one of the children interviewed said he knew what they means (hugs and kisses), but that he also knew of, but would not do those other “disgusting things”. I bet that in ten years, if he’s not doing those “disgusting” things, he’ll be at least be wanting to do them.

I am not for people to be all sexed up at young age, but there are two things that we need to clarify.

One: Who the hell gives these “darker connotations” to such stupid cheap items?

Two: Is this newsworthy? There must be tens of thousands of items in schools with sexual undertones. Beginning with tables…

Peter S

Are Sweet Dreams made of This? The Sequel

Autumn seems generally a good time to have disturbing dreams, mainly because a lot of things happen in a very short period of time. Days start getting darker, school and stress kick in, the weather turns miserable, and the time shifted by one hour. No wonder my brain gets soft and I start having weird dreams. While some dreams are not worth remembering, and some are worth forgetting, the one I had lats night was extremely bizarre.

As some of you might know, there is a resistance group at our faculty, they’re anonymous, so I’ll just call them PURSE. Anyway, last week, on of the PURSE activist googled the name of their organisation and got to my blog. While I won’t repeat the whole story, let’s just say they took something without my permission and misinterpreted something I wrote. This was all fine, though I thought it rather embarrassing. Then yesterday, I wrote a piece about PURSE (which is password protected, ha)… That’s where my dreams began… (The dream sequence that follows was a DREAM, NOT REAL, I am NOT ACCUSING anyone, I am recounting the workings of my bizarre mind).

While the piece was very impartial, un-serious and uncritical toward them, I know that ‘fuck context’ attitude can also be applied to the written word. Nevertheless, the nightmare started when one of he PURSE people got hold of it, and basically started ranting on their blog (they are anonymous and have a blog) against my a-political stance and using the ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ rhetoric.

This hurt me, especially since they got hold of a nude picture of me, that they posted on that site (I haven’t any nude pictures of myself, just that you know, and btw, you could just see my face and bare shoulders.). Somehow, they managed to conclude I was twelve, and all the comments (there were lots), posted their nude childhood pictures. This was especially disturbing, because their comments carried the same tone as the article.

Then I woke up, I actually went to check the internet, if everything was OK. It was.

This is this year’s nominee for my weirdest dream award.

Peter

Oh My God, Someone Killed my iPod! Bastards!!!

While I would have thought that things have calmed down by now, that my turbulent episodes with ‘evil corporations’ stealing my iPod were long gone, a disaster has struck. I was so keen to walk off into the sunset with my iPod, to spend our honeymoon on the tropical beaches of bad pop music, this is not likely to happen anymore.

For my iPod was killed. Well, not really. It still plays music, but I somehow managed to break the screen. Don’t ask me how, but I have my suspicions. I always leave my iPod in my jacket pocket, and during the day, I hang the coat on the nearest chair, because I move around a lot. That said, we had a round of presentations the other day (well, a couple of weeks ago). The room was full of people, going somewhere, etc… Therefore, anyone (including me), could have stepped on the jacket pocket, hanging from the chair, killing the screen.

Needless to say, if I wanted an iPod without a functioning screen, I would have bought the Shuffle. But fear not, I have a sneaking suspicion that a family member (whom I’ve told all about my iPod problem, will buy me a new one, the one for the upcoming Christmas. This is how my favorite piece of gadgetry looks now ->

So, it’s been almost two years, and I’m really sorry to see you go. But as long as machines don’t have feelings and human rights, it’s off to the recycling plant.

Peter S.

Over…

I just remembered something this Thursday, after my fingerprints were being taken. I am not a teenager anymore, I’m now in my early twenties.

For me, this means a lot. I finally go out of my awkward teenage years, and entered the slightly less awkward realm of being twenty-something (twenty at the moment actually). I remember, that my photos started to look very awkward after the age of 12 or so. And not just vacation photos, but mainly passport and official documents photos. For a long time, I was too thin, somewhat hunched, spotty, etc…

This was not a good thing. even as an 18-year-old, when I had my TU Delft picture taken (for the campus card), I looked like a mass murderer (I was quite tanned and my skin was greasy and all shiny). Recently, I had a new campus card made, because I lost the first one. There, I am smiling, looking like I always wanted to. Even my driver’s license photo sucks a bit, because I was 19 at the time.

So they took my picture and fingerprints. I am having a new passport made (what did you think?). I saw the passport picture and it was surprisingly very good. I was mucho satisfied with it. And that’s all because I ain’t a teenager no more. See, if I were 19 in that picture, I would have looked really horrible, but at this early stage, aging is actually something good.

Some people are good-looking through their entire lives, some only in their childhood. For me, I looked good as kid, but my teenage years were awful. It’s never going to be great, I’ll never look like George Clooney, but I certainly ain’t going back to that teenage nightmare. Yes…

Peter S.

Visitin’ 020 or AmsterDAMN!(13/10/09)

This semester, we’ll (among other things) have to design a chair. I’m really low on inspiration (as of now), so I thought a  trip to the Amsterdam Central Library, with a temporary exhibition of Rietveld chairs might do me some good.

First of all, the area near Amsterdam Central Station is not a happy place. Like in Rotterdam, or The Hague, the Central station is being refurbished. Unlike the two other cities, the area of building activity in Amsterdam is more extensive, so all the way from the station, to the library, one passes a network of fences, small cranes and temporary pavements. It’s better when you reach the library, which is one of three standing buildings (one of which is being refurbished).

The Central Library in Amsterdam

The Library is quite a collage, and is actually quite nice and compact compared to the horrible NAi by the same architect, Jo Coenen, who either does something very well, or very badly (if I should ever find it, I’ll post an image of his project for the  Delftse Poort; which he, thank God, did not win). But enough about the library. The exhibition room is quite small, and to my dismay, the vast majority of the displayed chairs were scaled 1:3. But some were full size, so I’ll show them to you:

The Zig-Zag Chair and the Military Chair

f.l.t.r. Crate Chair, Child's seat and Brace Chairs

Unfortunately, the famous Red-Blue Chair was only a small model, but at least the small models were correctly displayed, at eye-level, which is more than the little Rietveld model collection that our faculty currently displays.  But hey, it was free, and the displays were actually very good and well-presented.

The Red-Blue Chair, 1:3

Since the exhibition was so small, I wanted to go to ARCAM (Architectuurcentrum Amsterdam), but I couldn’t find the way, since there are fences everywhere and the directions were a bit misleading. It was also getting late, and I really wanted to see this one movie, which I did see (more about that later).  I got on the tram just outside the famed complex of the Passenger Ferry Terminal, With the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ and the Movenpick Hotel (by Claus en Kaan). Methinks the modernistic formalism is not all that great, but to each his own.

Modernistic Formalism

The Next time I will go to Amsterdam is probably when all the work in the city centre is finished (including the new underground), which should be around 2017 or something. Or maybe earlier, as long as the Central Station is all done.

Peter S

Life, Art, Whatever… (update)

In a matter of moments, one’s feelings can change from despair to hope. From frustration to some form of happiness and back to frustration again (though for different reasons). Let’s talk about what’s been happening these past few days and weeks.

Firstly, my cousine is trying to go to America far half a year, as a part of some study abroad programme. I have mixed feelings about this. While I cannot resent her for going to the United States (even if I wanted to go there first from my generation), I am actually afraid for her. It strikes me as odd, I always considered her just a kid (though she’s only four years younger), and to see her growing up so quickly… It mightn’t be that she’ll come all grown up, but she’ll certainly be more worldly than any of us. It frightens me, because I am afraid that she won’t need me. Not that we’ve spent that much time together, but I think talking with her has never been just small-talk or some trivial domestic conversations. I’m afraid I will no longer be worth talking to. That she’ll somehow see right through me. That I’m just a self-centered shallow boy, with no real hobbies or anything worth talking about. But I wish her all the best and I hope she’ll take good care of herself (but as Agatha Christie once wrote  ” ‘I can take good care of myself’ should belong to the Great Last Words”).

On the other hand, I’ve been bumping into people this whole time. Apart from Sam’s farewell party, where the bumping into people was not accidental, I managed to see Ying-Ying (twice), Paul and Davide (I don’t count Ines as she’s at the faculty right now, but she’s completely in a different place). Usually on a train station, but no matter…

This evening I said something that really kind of made me think how horribly self-centered I really am. In a casual conversation with my brother, I said I Tube instead of You Tube. Kind of sad, eh…

In other news, other things are going swimmingly. In order to shame my best friend (we decided to stop pretending and drop the ‘ex’ from ‘ex-best friends’), I decided to read more and big, thick books. Even they are architecture books, they’re not the usual ‘lite’ stuff that Taschen likes to publish, with 70% of the content being composed of glossy color photographs. These are real texts with little black and white photographs. And they are also not compulsory, so I consider them something I read voluntarily.

Firstly, I am trying to read the Writings volume by Aldo van Eyck. I’m still on The Child, the Artist and the City (the thinner volume). Sometimes, the text is very well written, but oftentimes, van Eyck is full of big words, complicated grammar, which make him sound smart, but which also makes the whole thing less readable. It’s basically like attacking a carrot with a nuclear bomb, when a simple knife would do. But, I heard that van Eyck, although not-bad, was quite arrogant. I hope the second volume (which comes with a three-and-a-half hours worth of DVD).

Then, I am also trying to read Gideon’s classic Space, Time and Architecture. It’s written in a more accessible style, and while Gideon is somewhat biased and predisposed to Le Corbusier worship (then again, half the architects are), the book reads well and within two days, I managed to read 106 pages out of 881. From van Eyck’s book, I’m now on page 137 after about a week and a half.

Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History has not been opened since the summer, when it seemed the dullest book on earth. Damn it! I paid the money, so I better finish it (or burn it, at least it will keep me warm).

On an unrelated note, we started Form-study. We’ll be asked to design a chair, which is really cool. I mean, If the whole building thing don’t work out, I could always go the Eames way. I already have an idea for a chair, and I even have a name for it, though I will not probably work on it during the lessons (it’s always good to have an extra design up one’s sleeve, even if you won’t really use it).

But before we got to some sweet chair-designing, we’ve been asked to make a collage. What I made wasn’t exactly a collage, they were more like compositions in-on a cardboard. I made three and you should see an evolution. I have a feeling that I might need to part with the first and the smallest one (first one), not because I have to, but because I want to. It could look well on someone’s wall. That someone doesn’t know yet, but I hope they like it when they receive it. Here they are:

Peter S

NS or How to run Trains on Earth Day

I’m not the complain about NS (the Dutch railway carrier) or write about Earth day or both at the same time.

But as it often happens, one thing leads to another and today, the train that I take to Delft was late again. It’s the Intercity train that leaves Den Haag Centraal at X:51 and goes to Venlo (a place famous for Wilders).

Anyway, it’s quite busy, morning rush hour and the train is 5 minutes late. For me, this makes little difference, but there are people who have a choice and choose to take the train. Therefore, NOT running trains on time is not the right gesture towards these men and women. During the last academic year, I could count the number of times that the Intercity to Venlo was late on my hand. The approximate number of times it has happened in a past few weeks.

This is not the right message, either the train runs on time, or the schedule needs to be changed, so that the schedule is not too ambitious and things are on time (albeit later, but still ON TIME).

And of all things, the damn train is late on Earth Day, when we all should think of the environment. But how can we contribute if we do not have the tools ready. And don’t you dare suggest biking to Delft. That would kill me, and a cremation would probably release a lot of CO2.

Peter

Mullerpier

I was essentially appalled at the way that the Mullerpier in Rotterdam was designed, urbanistically and architecturally. To give you an idea: the urbanist wanted to express the original harbour function of the pier, so he got a couple of architects into a workshop and told them to design boxy building of that type, with that many dwellings, etc… The boxy form was to create an industrial port atmosphere. Then, when the architects were done, he distributed the buildings onto the land. Then, some adjustments were made to the design.

This whimsical, almost tabula rasa approach really bugged me. I had to see it to believe it. But you know what, it wasn’t that bad at all. the spaces are not bad, and the buildings themselves seem like they could house several different functions over the course of the years. That means that they’re not your archetypical houses with sloping roofs and stuff. I could definitely see potential there. I think that the Mullerpier could be a prototype of new city-building. Imagine a superblock with traffic all around, and high-rise on the edges, mixed with low rise inside the block, the spaces building slightly angled to charge an otherwise bland space. With underground parking, mixing of functions and multiplication of these superblocks, a city with wide avenues and cosmopolitan appeal could develop, yet remain safely walkable and playable inside. Cool, right?

So although the process was wrong, the result isn’t, which goes to show that not all thought experiments and mental exercises are applicable in real life.

Peter S

Classify Me 2/4/2009

My new project: classify myself. Not that I don’t know what species I am, I want to be more classy, I mean, I will be twenty in two and something weeks. So last week on Friday, I have gotten a new mobile, which isn’t too show-offy, but is still quite nice (I managed to kill my old phone ans had to use a spare one). Now I need a few more things. One is a wallet. My old wallet is made from some sort of green textile, which is torn at several places.  Moreover, it has huge letters BH on it, which, considering the Dutch meaning of the word bh (=bra) is probably not the best thing to have on your wallet. So I’ll have to go out and buy a new one, especially since the green one is about six or seven years old.

The next thing is: sunglasses. I have a bit of a shades thing. I would actually prefer to wear glasses, but there is no reason to, as my eyes are perfectly all right and even I’m not THAT pretentious. So I’ll have to stick with sunglasses. I lost my last pair in Dubrovnik last year, I don’t even know how. But now that I actually earn money, I have decided that the best thing would be to buy Ray-Bans or something like that. Wallet and a pair of sunglasses are basically on my shopping list for this weekend.

Peace out y’all.

Peter S.

PS: The bathroom is nearing completion now. We’re still missing a few minor details, but I’m looking forward to finally using it. Yay!

Of MAT-Buildings, Madonna, Brutalism, Futility, Boredom, Work& Being Alone

There’s been a lot going through my head since the beginning of year 2009. It’s best that I get it all out right now, otherwise, if I try to write something coherent, it will be painfully embarrassing, like the five entries that are in my Drafts section, waiting to either be updated and de-embarrassed or deleted. I don’t really want anyone to see them in the state they’re in.

Anyways, for the past couple of months (since October actually, but the madness is slowly escalating), I have been obsessed with Alison & Peter Smithson, Team 10, and The New Brutalism. I know that the realized architectural output of the Smithsons is rather limited, and that 90% of their stuff is just ghastly. I mean, they’re the most gruesome-looking buildings ever. But I will talk about that later, maybe in another entry. Naturally, I am totally excited about Mat-buildings, a concept developed in the 1970’s. I want to make my design for this semester into a mat-building.

Then there’s Madonna. My unhealthy obsession with someone who could easily be my mother one and a half times is not really going anywhere, it’s just frustrating. No new videos (Give it 2 Me was OK, but compared to old-school stuff from roughly 1989-1995, it’s crap), And the tour, which I though was finally over is getting extended just as I was getting anxious to purchase the rumoured live album. OK, that’s all about that damned bitch for now.

Then there’s always the realization that I used to write more-or-less funny things, but now any humor seems unintentional, awkward and unfunny (Just like JK Rowling, really). I am finally sensing that my true calling lies within the world of academia. From the latest exams, I got quite good grades, namely 8.3 from urbanism and 9.8 from Architecture (both out of 10). Academia here I come. Sadly, the only good thing is the amount of vacation. Half of my time is spent on doing nothing, the other half on catching up and pondering why my schedule is so full. Damn me!

To top it all off, my family deserted me to go skiing for the upcoming week, which is OK, at least the cats are here. But as mostly I spend my time talking, having no-one to talk to is really uncomfortable, and talking to myself and/ or an imaginary friend is not an option, since I ain’t that crazy yet.

Work is fine, There is however one thing that I find really weird. I’m basically working on a regular piece called “Streets of BK City”. I just run around the faculty with a tape recorder, and ask people their opinion on some current (or not) issue. When I wasn’t working for them, they used to ask questions like: “Do you think that faculty should be opened 24/7?” Now I asked “Do you think there are any (unwritten) design rules that limit/direct students?” WTF? You can’t answer that with two sentences like the former. Apart from that, all is swell.

OK, as a bonus, I’ll recollect this dream I had on Thursday. Basically, my best friend’s grandfather was killed by his wife, who ran off with their Japanese neighbor. She stabbed him with a knitting needle repeatedly. I tried to object to this notion by saying it’s nonsense, seing how his wife (in real life) died before he did (he is also dead now, God rest their souls). When I said this, my aunt and grandmother started nagging me about being insensitive and they showed me the pictures from the crime scene on my grandmother’s laptop (WTF?, she’s computer illiterate). I won’t describe the state of the body, only that it made me sick to look at it.

So there, my dreams might not be frequent, but when it comes to being bizzare, they’re definitely up there.

In the next few entries, we could discuss Kollhoff, Eames-es, Smithsons and my very own terribly awful art. And very possibly the … Movie franchise.

Until then, may the force be with you.

Peter