Diary: Bad Architecture Stories (Hunch 2)

5 March 2000
I am going to Shanghai in 26 days.
Fifty years ago, my parents left China and went to Taiwan to escape communist rule. In 4 weeks’ time, I’ll be back to where my father came from.
Nowadays it is fashionable for architects to go East or to Africa. Because of their urbanism.
For me, it’s GOING HOME. For the first time.
I’ve heard stories of Shanghai.
It’s where my grandfather owned paper factories and where my father went to school until he was 11. There was a noodle stand on the corner of his block; winters there so cold that people’s piss froze into sticks; gangsters fought for territories along Huangpu River.
But that’s not the Shanghai I’m going to visit. This Shanghai doesn’t remember my grandfather’s factories.

7 March 2000
Acknowledgement: For our generation working and studying in the Netherlands, it is very hard to escape the KOOLHAAS MAGNETIC FIELD. Some would always deny their hang-ups, some forever acritically criticize him, some suffer from the eternal paranoia of his omnipresence and affectivity.
And I think I’ve spoken enough about him.

8 March 2000
I knew I was already in love with him when Elia told me about his villa. He has visions, intelligence and rigor.
He understands the art of compiling, editing, and presenting his highest inspirations in perfect fusion. He is passionate about architecture.
But Michel thinks my love for Hadrian is like puppy love
He doesn’t quite agree that Hadrian respects, and therefore truly loves architecture. For him Hadrian is more like a rapist, displaying what he’s conquered, ripping off pieces he likes, and then putting them together again.
As an enthusiastic traveller, he called various parts of the Villa after the places and monuments that had made the greatest impression on him- the Pecile, the Academy, the Pritaneo, and the Lyceum of Athens, the Valley of Temple in Thessaly, the Canopus in Egypt. The Villa was a kind of open-air museum of antiquities, in which Hadrian the connoisseur assembled his collection of Egyptian, neo-Egyptian, classical and modern works of art. It is reality plus fantasy, a collection of inspirations from the empire.
In Hadrian’s Villa, nothing is accidental; everything has been deliberately orchestrated, edited and controlled to achieve specific aims. Whatever appears casual is the result of the careful study of landscaping effects; the site, buildings, and gardens are all bent to precise spatial and structural requirements.
For me, Hadrian’s Villa is the unconscious pioneer of the theme park. Indispensable to its functioning is its SECRET SUBTERRANEAN NETWORK like that of Disneyland. The undesirables- noise, dust, traffic jams- are shoved out of sight, and different speeds, atmospheres, purposes, classes can be spatially separated into layers of movements in order to achieve efficiency, hygiene, and pleasantness.

Hadrian himself has the job description that enables him to be HYPERARCHITECT. His identity is one which all architects openly or secretly desire (or are at least frustrated for not having). It goes beyond the trinity of DEVELOPER + ARCHITECT + THEORIST; Hadrian’s ultimate role as POLITICIAN and CLIENT equipped him with unlimited power and affordability.

I’ve been thinking about powerful people like Hadrian. If we take the Berlin Wall, Auschwitz and the South African apartheid landscape as architectural projects, it amazes me how architecture is the direct and immediate medium through which the most brutal human nature is materialized. In these cases, architecture’s power to organize makes it the instrument to SEGREGATE, SUPPRESS and EXTERMINATE. And the majority of these projects are planned and executed by those in positions like Hadrian.

It gives me a chill to think of what architecture can do. I’m ashamed of my admiration for Hadrian.

10 March 2000
My thesis has become a quest to understand the nature of physical, immaterial, or metaphorical walls- their horror, brutality, ugliness, and tragedy, but also how they organize life, the PRODUCTIVE TENSIONS they create- their necessity, indispensability, and inevitability.

14 March 2000
Do I really have to phone Shanghai from Amsterdam to reserve a table for our study group at the restaurant on top of the Jin Mao building with seats right next to the windows? Do I really have to ask them to FAX US THE MENU in advance?

15 March 2000
Before we went to Tokyo last year, I didn’t quite understand what it would mean to me.
Tokyo was already familiar to me- not the sight and sounds of real Tokyo, but the IMAGINARY TOKYO that existed in Manga books, the cartoons I grew up with, Murakami’s novels, wrapping papers from imported Japanese candies, Kitty Cat gadgets, and the Japanese immigrants’ school just two blocks away from my house in Taipei. It was a child girl’s dream city, where cherry blossoms were more pink, gardens more poetic, and love stories more romantic; but also where Chinese people are respected and discriminated against at the same time.
My childhood was filled with jealousy towards Japanese kids, who were surrounded by new media and fantasy, and an INHERITED HATRED inevitable from a former colony and a war barely two generations ago.
It was in this intertwined mental state that I went to Japan. On the one hand, I was paying tribute to a country that shaped the fantasies and fairytales of my childhood. On the other hand, I was CHECKING OUT THE COUNTRY THAT INVADED MINE.
My father and many people from his generation never had second thoughts about their feelings towards Japan; it was their real memory and experience. They had no choice between keeping the memory and reconciling it. It was a part of their lives.

19 April 2000
When we arrived in Shanghai, I woke up in my 200-year-old dream.

1 April 2000
In my childhood, Shanghai dialect was always spoken by people from my parents’ generation. So for me it is a LANGUAGE FOR GROWN-UPS- an old, ancient language.
I was surprised to hear children speaking it today.

3 April 2000
Thoughts after meeting with university professors and developers in Shanghai in one day: as architects, MONEY is bound to be our biggest enemy. That’s why we’ve got to have it.

6 April 2000
April in Shanghai is a beautiful time of year;
everything is awakening, I was told.
There is a powerful positivism in the air.
Slogans of reform and modernization have replaced Mao’s portraits.

12 April 2000
Our Shanghai Hangout
We had some noodles in an eating-place near our hotel one evening. Small but well decorated, clean, delicious and fast. The owner was very interested in our crowd. And she was delighted to find out where we came from: Croatia, Germany, Japan and Taiwan.
After she checked my political position, she asked me how people do business in Taiwan. Yuko and I ended up giving her ideas for her noodle business. Yuko took photos of the façade, the presentation of noodles, and the owner in front of the counter, and is going to send the photos and a recommendation letter to companies writing travel guide books in Tokyo.
The owner was so happy with our visit, she wouldn’t let us pay. We insisted, so she gave us cigarettes as presents.
A week later I went back again with Frank.
Again she was interested in his nationality- Belgian.
And again she wouldn’t let us pay.
We insisted, so she gave us cigarettes as presents. The cigarettes were worth much more than our noodles.

5 May 2000
In the neighborhood, old man fishes on the bank of the little stream, old woman shaves beards and cuts hair for neighbors, cops chit-chat on the lawn, many others HANG AROUND THE ENTRANCE GATE to gossip.

6 May 2000
The local courthouse of Minhang District in Shanghai was built as a copy of the White House in Washington D. C. An official from Nanking was also there to visit. He said he wished that they also had such a nice building for their courthouse.
I asked him if he found it strange to have an American symbol for Chinese juridical buildings. He said no, it’s GOOD ARCHITECTURE.

13 April 2000
Thesis is a constant wrestling with one’s own habits, fears, dreams, desires, and conformity to the norm. How to resolve my fear for the horror, and my admiration for the sublime beauty created by the wall?

14 April 2000
I AM NEITHER BLACK OR WHITE.
But in South Africa, Blacks take me as Black, Whites take me as White. As a member of this sensitive society, I find myself holding a passport to both sides.
I can’t identify myself as either, but feel close to both.
I AM BOTH CHINESE AND TAIWANESE.
But in China, Chinese take me as Taiwanese; in Taiwan, Taiwanese take me as Chinese. As a member of this big unhappy family, I have license to enter neither of these societies.
I identify myself as both, but am recognized as neither.

My quest to understand opposition and prejudice does not come out of a sense of justice; it is simply a splinter in my life. It drives me mad. The wall as a condition follows me on all Chinese territory, on all South African territory, everywhere. If everyone has and needs an imaginary enemy, this wall is my enemy.

21 April
Relieve. I wish I could describe this feeling with sophisticated language and some theoretical back up, but I simply can’t. THE LECTURE THAT NIGHT WAS ACTUALLY A RELIEF. Koolhaas didn’t disturb us like Jeff Kipnis did. And he wasn’t as entertaining, inspiring, or informative as Massimiliano Fuksas was.
For the first time, disappointment is relieving.

22 April
The wall is in Berlin, in Johannesburg, in Auschwitz, between China and Taiwan, but also in your house, in your ATM card, in your computer, on street corners.
It is crucial to maintain the oppositions and the dynamic that walls create, but the world is full is walls; the enclave is ending and the world of shared surveillance is coming. The abstract measure of inclusion and exclusion will be the new invisible yet omnipresent wall surrounding us and following us.

23 April
On a nice warm day, accompanied by two students from Tongji University, we sat on a rented bus to the suburbs of Shanghai. On the way to our planned destination, the satellite town of Jiading, we saw some Roman architecture, several pyramids, and other familiar shapes in the distant landscape.
After visiting Jiading’s suburban developments- some very successful and others deteriorating even before being found by buyers- we decided to check out the buildings we had seen from the highway. It turned out to be a theme park- the Around-the-Globe Park- and had been closed for more than half of its five-year lifetime. Wires blocked off the entrance inefficiently, so we entered easily.
In the park we saw an abandoned amphitheatre, a copy of a Roman gateway, and colonnade (all very fascist-looking); several hollow pyramids; an artificial lake (very big); Hundertwasser building; Japanese village; Thai village; Mexican village; concrete cactus; a copy of Disney castle; Mount Rushmore, with the carved-out faces of American presidents; Holland village (again!); and many other familiar images.
The complex is partially surrounded by a residential area. A few people from the neighborhood came for an evening stroll; somebody was fishing by the lake.

I was not unhappy to see that this theme park, like others we had visited, was so unpopular. It proved that Chinese consumers, although just starting to be exposed to fancy stimuli, are not blindly accepting whatever comes their way. But maybe if this ruin is informally open to the neighborhood, it could take on a second life. Who knows?
I will never forget the image of the artificial lake in the foreground, a fisherman by the shore, weeds and bushes behind him, Roman colonnade in the background, the dusk light, and myself looking at it all from the Dutch village.
It was all so peaceful, yellow, quiet and weird.

28 February
I’ve discovered Rene Magritte. Thesis work has been a process of bringing forward what is hidden in the shadow of my consciousness, of trying to articulate what I think it (my question) is during the day and what I dream about it at night, and of being surprised by what it turns out to be. Magritte’s paintings are visual textbooks on the acknowledgement and registration of the mind. Many of his images are explorations of the strange affinities between objects, of how to induce the strangeness and bring crisis to objects, and of how to respond to the instability and ambivalence of reality. They are very didactic and direct in relation to architecture, but how to do it with architecture?

4 May
Until recently, many of South Africa’s huge rural slums were not shown on official maps. Soweto is one of the few townships that made it to the map for the purpose of PROTECTING WHITES FROM ACCIDENTALLY ENTERING this zone.
The maps we bought in the Shanghai bookstores are the most thorough ones I’ve ever seen. They don’t give much attention to tourist attractions, but they mark all the important and unimportant public buildings, community centers, schools, public bathhouses, along with companies, factories, stores, restaurants, and shopping areas. No one of these names is given more importance than the other. The maps are dry, informative, serious, and dignified.

They manifest a serious attitude and ambition towards industrialization and modernization, at the same time they never forget that most people need to know where they can find medicine, paper, light bulbs and baskets.

8 May
One afternoon we went to the local teenager shopping heaven: Huating Road. It is a narrow street, from beginning to end, occupied on both sides by shops built of makeshift structures. I FOUND A PRADA BAG FOR ¥30 ($4). It is not the ‘real’ Prada; the spacing between the letters is slightly wider. Other people bought Nike shoes; only the font is different from the real Nike.
I’ve always wondered who on earth would go to the trouble, in the ever-changing consumer market, to copy products. For every item, the pirate factory has to copy the mold, the production process, get the same material, textile, rubber, whatever, and assemble them exactly the same way as the ‘real’.
A local artist I talked to thinks that these pirate products actually come from the same factory as the ‘real’ products. The manufacturers keep some, or vary minor details and material quality, then sell them for their own profits. He thinks that more and more one doesn’t feel better wearing ‘real’ brand products. Friends tease him for wearing the fake even if it’s REALLY REAL.
This makes me happy. Somewhere, where branded products are manufactured, the myth of the brand is collapsing.

12 May
Thus Spoke Chinese People 1: Since things are less bound by rules, people anticipate much more according to everything that happens around them, other people’s movements, the moods of the society, and rumors.

15 May
Thus Spoke Chinese People 2: We met Prof. Luo, a 76-year-old teacher of architecture from Tongji University. She told me: you don’t always need to justify yourself. THINGS PROVE THEMSELVES through time. Those who understand it will understand it; those who don’t, won’t. There are so many people in China, we don’t have to do all and say all. And we don’t all have to be the ones that shift paradigms.

16 May
Thus Spoke Chinese People 3: The Chinese are not very good at explaining and showing themselves. We are taught to not show our tempers; not to admit our own goodness; to be modest, modest, and modest.
Usually, if foreigners want to see what they want to believe, THEY GET WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE.

19 May
I miss the sense of purpose and common goal people have in Shanghai. I also miss its energy, positivism, and commitment towards the future. When I walk on the streets in Rotterdam, I need to CLOSE MY EYES and think of Shanghai.

20 May
The wall must be the most banal element in architecture: a line on a plan. Architects draw them all the time. Making every wall demands deliberation and intelligence. If you have to make a wall, make it perfect. IT’S THE WALL BUILDER’S RESPONSIBILITY.
After thesis, I know I will never draw a line on a plan the way I did before.

24 May
Story by Anand
There were many fruit trees in the field: peach trees, apricot trees, and pear trees…
Someone came along and put red marks on these trees
After a while, people no longer saw the fruit trees: peach trees, apricot trees, and pear trees. They only saw the red marks
And I seem to remember a story about the Emperor and his new clothes.