The last day in Taipei I was very sad. Sitting in the metro I could cry.
Taiwan is the way it is, not because people want things better.
If people have wanted better, they have not wanted it badly enough.
It is like it is because people leave it like it is.
I am even more sad because before I turned an adult, I decided to leave Taiwan.
I have no right to criticize. I am just sad.
Showing posts with label diary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diary. Show all posts
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
評圖日記
這次在淡江大學評圖的是5年級的畢業設計
第二個來評圖的同學，在我問了兩個簡單的問題後竟然哭了
我很同情，但是我也嚇了一大跳，我也受到很大的打擊啊
從來未曾有學生在我評圖的時候哭的
通常學生都說我的意見‘很有用’
年輕人們很脆弱很急躁很憂鬱啊
前三個同學們關心的課題是回憶，消失，不見
才20嵗出頭的年輕人
應該是關心如何建立和創造的年紀啊
是我太直接了嗎？
在臺灣，對學生講話要能幽默、拐彎抹角、又說出重點才是藝術
我可能是荷蘭化了，直接了當，一點不留情，但是本意絕對是好的
第二個來評圖的同學，在我問了兩個簡單的問題後竟然哭了
我很同情，但是我也嚇了一大跳，我也受到很大的打擊啊
從來未曾有學生在我評圖的時候哭的
通常學生都說我的意見‘很有用’
年輕人們很脆弱很急躁很憂鬱啊
前三個同學們關心的課題是回憶，消失，不見
才20嵗出頭的年輕人
應該是關心如何建立和創造的年紀啊
是我太直接了嗎？
在臺灣，對學生講話要能幽默、拐彎抹角、又說出重點才是藝術
我可能是荷蘭化了，直接了當，一點不留情，但是本意絕對是好的
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Diary: Life is Like a Cake
我的人生就好像一個蛋糕
那個蛋糕已經攷好了
也很好吃
其他的煩惱就好像蛋糕上面的鮮奶油
所以再大的煩惱也只是鮮奶油程度的煩惱
因爲我已經有蛋糕了
但是沒有鮮奶油的蛋糕就不算是完整的蛋糕
那個蛋糕已經攷好了
也很好吃
其他的煩惱就好像蛋糕上面的鮮奶油
所以再大的煩惱也只是鮮奶油程度的煩惱
因爲我已經有蛋糕了
但是沒有鮮奶油的蛋糕就不算是完整的蛋糕
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Joburg Paradigms
After fear, revenge might be the new paradigm of Johannesburg.
Joburg Paradigms:
-1994: Greed
1994-: Fear
Now: Revenge
Joburg Paradigms:
-1994: Greed
1994-: Fear
Now: Revenge
Joburg saga
I didn’t make the homeless project because I exploited the subjects. This is entirely wrong. I also could have made a project on casino, or shopping mall, or office. But I made a project on the homeless. I did try to understand the city. I did try to think about it. And I did try to contribute to it. I succeeded, but after that, I also decided to leave the city. There is no other explanations than what I knew very well since years-
I don’t want other people to be my infrastructure.
I don’t want to feel guilty (for the deeds I didn’t do).
I don’t want to live in fear.
Mrs. Deckler was attacked in a squatter camp in Honey Dew, Johannesburg. She sensed revenge in the atmosphere of the city. ‘Someone has to pay for what happened’, she said. She sensed that S. African people are not so friendly any more. Some don’t react when you greet them on the street.
Julie’s movers arrive at 9:30pm at the gated, wanting to move her stuff to her dormitory 1.5 hours away from Joburg. Mama was scared and freaked out. When the movers’ truck arrived at the door, mama switched all the lights, waited in silence, did not dare to pick up ringing phones. She only could call Lihwen to come home quickly and wait outside somewhere hidden until the movers’ truck goes away. When this kind of things happens, you can only think, luckily nothing happened. The thought a possibility of something could have happened makes one made. What have the movers been doing since noon? Why do they come anyway since Julie had already cancelled today’s appointment with the company manager? Have the movers got other plans when they come at 9:30pm, to expect to work until late in the night? More creepy than what could have happened is the fear to communicate. Mama did not dare to open the door and talk to the movers.
In Rotterdam we’d just open the door and talk about it with the movers.
I don’t want other people to be my infrastructure.
I don’t want to feel guilty (for the deeds I didn’t do).
I don’t want to live in fear.
Mrs. Deckler was attacked in a squatter camp in Honey Dew, Johannesburg. She sensed revenge in the atmosphere of the city. ‘Someone has to pay for what happened’, she said. She sensed that S. African people are not so friendly any more. Some don’t react when you greet them on the street.
Julie’s movers arrive at 9:30pm at the gated, wanting to move her stuff to her dormitory 1.5 hours away from Joburg. Mama was scared and freaked out. When the movers’ truck arrived at the door, mama switched all the lights, waited in silence, did not dare to pick up ringing phones. She only could call Lihwen to come home quickly and wait outside somewhere hidden until the movers’ truck goes away. When this kind of things happens, you can only think, luckily nothing happened. The thought a possibility of something could have happened makes one made. What have the movers been doing since noon? Why do they come anyway since Julie had already cancelled today’s appointment with the company manager? Have the movers got other plans when they come at 9:30pm, to expect to work until late in the night? More creepy than what could have happened is the fear to communicate. Mama did not dare to open the door and talk to the movers.
In Rotterdam we’d just open the door and talk about it with the movers.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Simulacrum
Shopping mall is a simulacrum.
It is a copy of a copy of a copy.
A second-hand copy which becomes something else on its own right.
Something different from the original.
Something creative.
It is a copy of a copy of a copy.
A second-hand copy which becomes something else on its own right.
Something different from the original.
Something creative.
Behind walls
There are liberating shopping malls and imprisoning shopping malls.
We were at the Century City/Canal Walk (Cape Town, South Africa) today. It felt stressful and depressing.
From the N1 highway and the map I saw a prison next to the mall.
Behind walls people shop; behind walls people are jailed.
Irony.
We were at the Century City/Canal Walk (Cape Town, South Africa) today. It felt stressful and depressing.
From the N1 highway and the map I saw a prison next to the mall.
Behind walls people shop; behind walls people are jailed.
Irony.
Becoming less
I am in the process of becoming less South African.
Opposite of Deleuze’s becoming/flight towards something.
Instead I am on the way to becoming less of something, away from something.
What is the opposite of becoming?
When I see people’s eyes I see myself.
I see how I am identified.
I don’t belong here.
The wall is in the eyes
Opposite of Deleuze’s becoming/flight towards something.
Instead I am on the way to becoming less of something, away from something.
What is the opposite of becoming?
When I see people’s eyes I see myself.
I see how I am identified.
I don’t belong here.
The wall is in the eyes
Monday, December 25, 2006
Inside-Outside
In Johannesburg people are always inside.
When you are always inside, you are actually only always outside- of a community, of nature, of a richer and more complex world.
Was I ever part of Johannesburg/south Africa? I thought I was, and maybe I was, but I am not so sure now. I was judged; my work was judged on the basis of my skin- not because I was black, or white, but because I was either black or white. I was not part of the old South Africa, so I am not part of the new South Africa.
I left, not because of fear of crime or economic instability, but because I didn’t feel part of it. I tried through my projects. Through one’s work, one can fully understand how one is truly being judged.
South Africans were not able to see that non-South-Africans can produced deep and sharp works on South Africa. They are very narrow-minded. The ‘becoming’, which Deleuze valued so much, was not yet a known concept. Imagine the enormous effort of ‘transformation’ and becoming put into making the homeless project. This project should have been appreciated particularly because it was done by a foreigner.
When you are always inside, you are actually only always outside- of a community, of nature, of a richer and more complex world.
Was I ever part of Johannesburg/south Africa? I thought I was, and maybe I was, but I am not so sure now. I was judged; my work was judged on the basis of my skin- not because I was black, or white, but because I was either black or white. I was not part of the old South Africa, so I am not part of the new South Africa.
I left, not because of fear of crime or economic instability, but because I didn’t feel part of it. I tried through my projects. Through one’s work, one can fully understand how one is truly being judged.
South Africans were not able to see that non-South-Africans can produced deep and sharp works on South Africa. They are very narrow-minded. The ‘becoming’, which Deleuze valued so much, was not yet a known concept. Imagine the enormous effort of ‘transformation’ and becoming put into making the homeless project. This project should have been appreciated particularly because it was done by a foreigner.
Friday, January 26, 2001
Tuesday, December 12, 2000
Diary: Bad Architecture Stories (Hunch 3)
30 September, Johannesburg
I emptied the swimming pool to clean up the two-year-old muck at the bottom. The pool had been colonized by 18 frogs and their endless sons and daughters. I threw the frogs into the river 150 meters away from the pool.
The next day, all 18 frogs came back. The pool is the only place they know. The power of their simple-mindedness made them oblivious to the hardship of the return. The exhausted frogs all dried to death in the afternoon.
6 October
One buys things, money goes, and soon the things sit around, losing importance. One stops noticing them.
And suddenly, one needs to GET RID OF ALL THE STUFF; the memories attached to materials become less important than the simple urge to make them disappear.
13 October
The Bed’s Life
People came with a truckload of family and friends to fetch their new bed. They cheered and raved, loading a new life with a bed. By the end of the 300-kilometer trip back to the township, the bed had been rejuvenated.
22 October
It’s a cleansing process.
In order to move on, one has to let go. And in order to let go without too much loss, I end up selling. The Jumbo Sale! I’m selling it all to my neighbors’ servants!
I open the gate and let them in to my family’s nine-year accumulation of furniture, pots and pans, clothes and memories.
12 November
I’ve just spent three days examining the work of third-year architecture students at my former school, the University of Witwatersrand. I hadn’t met these students before, but from their presentations, I could describe the neighborhoods they come from, the houses they live in, and what their parents talk about at the dinner table. There is a shocking degree of complacency, a total absence of confusion and struggle; as a result, the works are limited to resolving what is trivial to architecture, society, and life. Was I also timid and apathetic as a third-year student? Was I also too comfortable? Or was I too angry?
18 November
I try to practice my Berlage thesis — “THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE WALL AND ITS UNSPEAKABLE OTHER SIDE” — on daily basis. South Africa is a compression of all possible cultures and all possible hang-ups; wherever there is an interface, there is a wall. The walls here become street furniture. After awhile, they are not even brutal; they are simply the frontline of the battle between middle-class and poor.
I opened my gate to let people in — to buy or to chat. But the open gate didn’t invite; they still rang the bell for permission.
19 November
At dinner, chairmen were sitting all around me, each conspiring to be more important than the others.
Important in a minor culture of South Africa, in a minor club, in a minor tribe. Importance and status get blown out of proportion, and finally this villagey world becomes the WHOLE WORLD of existence.
20 November
Because of the Jumbo Sale, I’ve gotten to know all the invisible inhabitants of my neighborhood. I memorize people’s names and talk to them on the street. I don’t feel scared and foreign anymore.
Non-blacks have warned me that it’s dangerous, but I think it’s more dangerous not to know the people that pass one’s door everyday.
21 November
The Chinese are going to build a cultural center on a prime site in Midrand, a booming city between Johannesburg and Pretoria. In the coming five years, the land value will increase ten-fold, I was told.
At the meeting, I sat again with all the chairmen. They want CHINESE-STYLE ARCHITECTURE. After five minutes, I was asked to estimate how big the activity hall for 1,500 people should be and how much it will cost. The architect’s job is to estimate COSTS and make DRAWINGS, I realized.
22 November
I’m making some new friends who are all domestic workers here. There’s Anna, who works and lives just up the road. She comes to shop at the Jumbo Sale with her sister-in-law. Sometimes they stop by during their lunch hour to have tea and complain about their bosses.
Then there’s Margritte. It wasn’t until her fourth visit to the sale that she bought something. Then we started to chat. She told me that I will have five children — three daughters and two sons.
One has to be sensitive. The majority of South Africans, the have-nots, do not expect sympathy or even understanding from the haves. The walls are more than 100 years old in Johannesburg.
24 November
Just returned from an exhibition at my former university. Bumped into quite a few people I used to know. They’ve gone somewhere and I’ve gone somewhere else. Their lives, collectively, are like a big truck; once I was on it with them, but by choice, I got off. NOW I SEE THE TRUCK DRIVING PAST ME, and somehow I feel lonely, very lonely.
25 November
Today I really wouldn’t mind working for any of the big-name architects in Holland.
26 November
I’m probably going to get the Chinese cultural center project, but I’m not sure whether I want it. I'm scared to build. I’m also scared not to build. But I can’t just talk about Jon Jerde, I want to be like him, or go beyond him; and to do that I have to do all these things I don’t feel ready for.
28 November
The other day, while I was writing, someone was in our garage stealing things from the Jumbo Sale. Six hours later we got the guy.
1 December
For the past three days I’ve been homeless in the middle-class sense. The phone line at home in Johannesburg has already been cut off and now the house belongs to someone else.
8 December
I know the burglar.
His name is Mike.
I also know his brother, Charles.
Mike worked in the garden for three months and also did the paint job. Charles worked before him. I know their whole family, their friends. They are from Malawe.
The morning of the burglary, Mike came by with a friend to look at the stuff for sale; they left without buying anything. That evening, when I came home at 7:00 p.m., no one else was there. The house was so quiet; I felt anxious; so I wrote until 10:00 and then decided to go to a movie by myself.
While walking to my car (which was parked right outside the garage since the garage was packed with the Jumbo Sale stuff) I noticed light coming from the side door of the garage. So instead of going to the car I went to the side door, which was WIDE OPEN. There was Mike, in the brightly–lit garage, four meters away from me. We were face to face.
For a moment I was confused — I was so accustomed to seeing him that I thought I might have let him in myself. But he immediately shouted at me, and then sideways, which made me think there was someone else there.
Then he ran towards me with the stuff he has chosen in his hands; I turned; he threw it at me; I wasn’t hurt.
Then I ran like mad and hid myself in a dark corner of the garden, under a tree, where I could see the property gate and the garage. I opened the gate with the remote control in hope that he — or they — would just leave. Someone ran towards the gate but didn't go out.
Squatting under the tree, I started to dial the emergency number with my mobile phone. But when the phone light went on, I changed my mind — afraid that it would help Mike to locate me.
For a couple of minutes, there was no sound. Nobody attacked me from behind, nobody left the property from the gate, and nobody came back.
Then, before I realized what I was doing, I was running back to the car, jumping in, locking the doors, and driving out towards the police station.
Four hours later, the cops came without a torch, without weapons, and their van broke down in my garden. They looked around anyway. Obviously no one was still on the property.
Then I took them across the street to where Mike stays. It was 3:00 a.m. and Mike was sleeping tightly with no pants on.
I was at the police station until 4:00 a.m., writing my own report.
12 December
The story of Mike and Jumbo Sale didn’t go any further.
I feared that Mike or his family and friends would come back for revenge so I packed all our stuff in two days and left the house. The things I hadn’t sold, I gave to our domestic workers or donated to charity. I didn’t see Mike again, I didn’t hear from the cops or the court, and I never went back to the police station to inquire about the case.
It was a sad end for our nine-year home.I left with a
I emptied the swimming pool to clean up the two-year-old muck at the bottom. The pool had been colonized by 18 frogs and their endless sons and daughters. I threw the frogs into the river 150 meters away from the pool.
The next day, all 18 frogs came back. The pool is the only place they know. The power of their simple-mindedness made them oblivious to the hardship of the return. The exhausted frogs all dried to death in the afternoon.
6 October
One buys things, money goes, and soon the things sit around, losing importance. One stops noticing them.
And suddenly, one needs to GET RID OF ALL THE STUFF; the memories attached to materials become less important than the simple urge to make them disappear.
13 October
The Bed’s Life
People came with a truckload of family and friends to fetch their new bed. They cheered and raved, loading a new life with a bed. By the end of the 300-kilometer trip back to the township, the bed had been rejuvenated.
22 October
It’s a cleansing process.
In order to move on, one has to let go. And in order to let go without too much loss, I end up selling. The Jumbo Sale! I’m selling it all to my neighbors’ servants!
I open the gate and let them in to my family’s nine-year accumulation of furniture, pots and pans, clothes and memories.
12 November
I’ve just spent three days examining the work of third-year architecture students at my former school, the University of Witwatersrand. I hadn’t met these students before, but from their presentations, I could describe the neighborhoods they come from, the houses they live in, and what their parents talk about at the dinner table. There is a shocking degree of complacency, a total absence of confusion and struggle; as a result, the works are limited to resolving what is trivial to architecture, society, and life. Was I also timid and apathetic as a third-year student? Was I also too comfortable? Or was I too angry?
18 November
I try to practice my Berlage thesis — “THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE WALL AND ITS UNSPEAKABLE OTHER SIDE” — on daily basis. South Africa is a compression of all possible cultures and all possible hang-ups; wherever there is an interface, there is a wall. The walls here become street furniture. After awhile, they are not even brutal; they are simply the frontline of the battle between middle-class and poor.
I opened my gate to let people in — to buy or to chat. But the open gate didn’t invite; they still rang the bell for permission.
19 November
At dinner, chairmen were sitting all around me, each conspiring to be more important than the others.
Important in a minor culture of South Africa, in a minor club, in a minor tribe. Importance and status get blown out of proportion, and finally this villagey world becomes the WHOLE WORLD of existence.
20 November
Because of the Jumbo Sale, I’ve gotten to know all the invisible inhabitants of my neighborhood. I memorize people’s names and talk to them on the street. I don’t feel scared and foreign anymore.
Non-blacks have warned me that it’s dangerous, but I think it’s more dangerous not to know the people that pass one’s door everyday.
21 November
The Chinese are going to build a cultural center on a prime site in Midrand, a booming city between Johannesburg and Pretoria. In the coming five years, the land value will increase ten-fold, I was told.
At the meeting, I sat again with all the chairmen. They want CHINESE-STYLE ARCHITECTURE. After five minutes, I was asked to estimate how big the activity hall for 1,500 people should be and how much it will cost. The architect’s job is to estimate COSTS and make DRAWINGS, I realized.
22 November
I’m making some new friends who are all domestic workers here. There’s Anna, who works and lives just up the road. She comes to shop at the Jumbo Sale with her sister-in-law. Sometimes they stop by during their lunch hour to have tea and complain about their bosses.
Then there’s Margritte. It wasn’t until her fourth visit to the sale that she bought something. Then we started to chat. She told me that I will have five children — three daughters and two sons.
One has to be sensitive. The majority of South Africans, the have-nots, do not expect sympathy or even understanding from the haves. The walls are more than 100 years old in Johannesburg.
24 November
Just returned from an exhibition at my former university. Bumped into quite a few people I used to know. They’ve gone somewhere and I’ve gone somewhere else. Their lives, collectively, are like a big truck; once I was on it with them, but by choice, I got off. NOW I SEE THE TRUCK DRIVING PAST ME, and somehow I feel lonely, very lonely.
25 November
Today I really wouldn’t mind working for any of the big-name architects in Holland.
26 November
I’m probably going to get the Chinese cultural center project, but I’m not sure whether I want it. I'm scared to build. I’m also scared not to build. But I can’t just talk about Jon Jerde, I want to be like him, or go beyond him; and to do that I have to do all these things I don’t feel ready for.
28 November
The other day, while I was writing, someone was in our garage stealing things from the Jumbo Sale. Six hours later we got the guy.
1 December
For the past three days I’ve been homeless in the middle-class sense. The phone line at home in Johannesburg has already been cut off and now the house belongs to someone else.
8 December
I know the burglar.
His name is Mike.
I also know his brother, Charles.
Mike worked in the garden for three months and also did the paint job. Charles worked before him. I know their whole family, their friends. They are from Malawe.
The morning of the burglary, Mike came by with a friend to look at the stuff for sale; they left without buying anything. That evening, when I came home at 7:00 p.m., no one else was there. The house was so quiet; I felt anxious; so I wrote until 10:00 and then decided to go to a movie by myself.
While walking to my car (which was parked right outside the garage since the garage was packed with the Jumbo Sale stuff) I noticed light coming from the side door of the garage. So instead of going to the car I went to the side door, which was WIDE OPEN. There was Mike, in the brightly–lit garage, four meters away from me. We were face to face.
For a moment I was confused — I was so accustomed to seeing him that I thought I might have let him in myself. But he immediately shouted at me, and then sideways, which made me think there was someone else there.
Then he ran towards me with the stuff he has chosen in his hands; I turned; he threw it at me; I wasn’t hurt.
Then I ran like mad and hid myself in a dark corner of the garden, under a tree, where I could see the property gate and the garage. I opened the gate with the remote control in hope that he — or they — would just leave. Someone ran towards the gate but didn't go out.
Squatting under the tree, I started to dial the emergency number with my mobile phone. But when the phone light went on, I changed my mind — afraid that it would help Mike to locate me.
For a couple of minutes, there was no sound. Nobody attacked me from behind, nobody left the property from the gate, and nobody came back.
Then, before I realized what I was doing, I was running back to the car, jumping in, locking the doors, and driving out towards the police station.
Four hours later, the cops came without a torch, without weapons, and their van broke down in my garden. They looked around anyway. Obviously no one was still on the property.
Then I took them across the street to where Mike stays. It was 3:00 a.m. and Mike was sleeping tightly with no pants on.
I was at the police station until 4:00 a.m., writing my own report.
12 December
The story of Mike and Jumbo Sale didn’t go any further.
I feared that Mike or his family and friends would come back for revenge so I packed all our stuff in two days and left the house. The things I hadn’t sold, I gave to our domestic workers or donated to charity. I didn’t see Mike again, I didn’t hear from the cops or the court, and I never went back to the police station to inquire about the case.
It was a sad end for our nine-year home.I left with a
Friday, May 12, 2000
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 2, 2000
Diary: Citizenship
I’m neither black or white. But in South Africa, Blacks took me as Black, Whites took me as White. As a member of this sensitive society, I actually found myself having the passport to both sides. I can’t identify myself as neither, yet 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 never was given the license to enter neither of the societies. I identify myself as both, yet being recognized as neither.
My quest for opposition and prejudice did not come out of a sense of justice; it is simply a splinter in my life. The wall is a condition following me on all Chinese territory. If everyone has and needs an imaginary enemy, this wall is my enemy.
Tuesday, November 9, 1999
Diary: Bad Architecture Stories (Hunch 1)
7 January 1999
It’s so refreshing to be back to Holland.
Even though buildings are buildings, people are people, and sky is sky, the differences cannot hide themselves. Take scale, for instance- I mean the size of people. I’m sure it influences my perception of cities. In Holland I feel small and insignificant in the crowds. In South Africa I am medium-sized. In Taiwan, I’m massive; it’s never easy to buy trousers, shoes, or shirts. But I feel more in control, more secure on the street. It’s nice to be able to look over other people’s heads. Sometimes I get the feeling I can do anything I want in Taiwan.
12 January
I thought Taipei was an ugly city when I lived there. Ugly and humid. It wasn’t until later- in architecture school in South Africa- that I realized for the first time how UNUGLY Taiwan is. It’s dusty, dirty, polluted, smelly, and crowded with vendors and pedestrians; but not ugly. It’s collaged with sign boards in all possible relationships with the structures they are attached to: resting on, elevated above, hung under, cantilevered, suspended. Older buildings are “host structures” to newer, added structures that are latched on like parasites, throwing them visually off-balance, but functioning like prostheses that reinforce their functions. Most have no style.
The cityscape looks like a mess, but if you read carefully, you can trace the geology of this lump of structures. Happily, honestly, though not neatly, the buildings complement one another; layers of activities fill 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I loved all that, and kicked myself for thinking Taipei was ugly. Then I took loads of photos and showed my classmates in Johannesburg proudly.
14 January
Calvino’s city has multiple entries and the same number of exits. Haruki Murakami’s city has one entry and the same gate out. My city has controlled, numbered, known entries- led in by lines along which movements are channeled: solid lines, fluid lines, air lines…There are not gates.
5 February 1999
I have a theory about tofu.
Maybe it’s not very “deep” or architectural, but I’d like to use it as a tool to compare Japanese and Chinese cultures.
After our field trip to Tokyo, I traveled down to other parts of Japan (Kyoto, Osaka, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Yokohama). In Kyoto I discovered this very expensive meal (20,000 yen, or 330 guilders) made completely of tofu:
Tofu in ice water
Tofu in noodles
Tofu standing on its own
Tofu in soup
No matter what the dish was, all the tofu blocks were cut into perfect cubes, and all kept completely white, as if it had not been cooked or processed at all.
For a Chinese/Taiwanese person, this is striking. We never, well rarely, eat tofu in little white cubes. We fry it, break it, stir it, deep-fry it, and mix it with all kinds of other foods. In China, it’s cheap food- easy to make, easy to consume, NO BIG DEAL.
If a food is wonderful, why not use it in as many different ways, combine it with as many different materials, as possible? I guess Japanese think that Chinese cooking destroys the purity and virginity of tofu. Chinese are loose-ended. Japanese are after purity and perfection.
7 February
We, architects, one way or another, impose our values on others. Good or bad, these values- carried by our buildings- can lead to consequences bigger than we expect. We commit crimes sometimes.
8 February
I kept swinging from one side to the other, but I never left either of them.
9 February
I believe architecture is not a good taste activity.
Nor is it an intellectual elite club.
For me, architecture is to innovate, create, and break new grounds. I believe in Utopia, the Ideal, the Perfect, God and Devil. I believe in what people do. I believe architecture is a service and
I believe architecture should acknowledge the power of lifestyle, desire and paradise.
10 February
Concentration:
I am incapable of concentration.
23 February
In Nagasaki, I visited a place called Holland Village.
It’s a Dutch theme park. All the buildings and scenery there fit together VERY NICELY.
When I entered, everyone was taking pictures. The windmills are much smaller and lower than the real ones so that tourists don’t have to walk too far to take a shot. They are arranged so that you can usually get two or three into one photo. And finally I experienced what it feels like to be surrounded by tulips, something that still hasn’t happened in the Holland I know.
I recognized some of the buildings immediately. They were all familiar, but somehow WEIRD. Amsterdam Central Station is scaled two or three times larger than the original. And actually, it’s a hotel. The interior is grand, bright, westernized (though not Western, really), and expensive.
The copy of the Utrecht Dom Church tower takes advantage of its height- it’s used as an observatory and restaurants since Holland Village doesn’t need a real church.
Of course what tourists go to see in the real Holland is often a Holland that no longer exists- a memory of Holland. How much of Amsterdam is a living city and how much is habitable museum?
In Holland Village, people can rent traditional Dutch costumes and have their pictures taken in them by professional photographers.
We only saw two western people in Holland Village: the “cheese people”- also in traditional dress- demonstrating the production of cheese. We spoke to them after their day’s work. Both were Dutch. They said these buildings were “a bit” like those in Holland.
June 29
After Jon Jerde, Jeff Kipnis is probably the best and the worst thing that has happened this year.
He TOTALLY DESTABLISED the Berlage- rearranged the power structure in five minutes.
It was agony. I’ve never learned so much.
5 November
What I worry about is that this generation I belong to is bombarded with MTV, lifestyle magazines, colored contact lenses, plastic surgeries… Speed is more important than depth; variety exceeds details.
I get bored so easily
but too often find myself in innocent confusion.
The gel that grows out of time
the flavor that brews over time
is nowhere in me.
I’m not old enough to have accumulated enough assets.
I’m not young enough to enjoy my cuteness and naivety.
I don’t want to look back one day and see life as a compilation of boring postcards.
Swore once to be like
a glass of orange juice made of 5 oranges
rather than one orange
It’s so refreshing to be back to Holland.
Even though buildings are buildings, people are people, and sky is sky, the differences cannot hide themselves. Take scale, for instance- I mean the size of people. I’m sure it influences my perception of cities. In Holland I feel small and insignificant in the crowds. In South Africa I am medium-sized. In Taiwan, I’m massive; it’s never easy to buy trousers, shoes, or shirts. But I feel more in control, more secure on the street. It’s nice to be able to look over other people’s heads. Sometimes I get the feeling I can do anything I want in Taiwan.
12 January
I thought Taipei was an ugly city when I lived there. Ugly and humid. It wasn’t until later- in architecture school in South Africa- that I realized for the first time how UNUGLY Taiwan is. It’s dusty, dirty, polluted, smelly, and crowded with vendors and pedestrians; but not ugly. It’s collaged with sign boards in all possible relationships with the structures they are attached to: resting on, elevated above, hung under, cantilevered, suspended. Older buildings are “host structures” to newer, added structures that are latched on like parasites, throwing them visually off-balance, but functioning like prostheses that reinforce their functions. Most have no style.
The cityscape looks like a mess, but if you read carefully, you can trace the geology of this lump of structures. Happily, honestly, though not neatly, the buildings complement one another; layers of activities fill 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I loved all that, and kicked myself for thinking Taipei was ugly. Then I took loads of photos and showed my classmates in Johannesburg proudly.
14 January
Calvino’s city has multiple entries and the same number of exits. Haruki Murakami’s city has one entry and the same gate out. My city has controlled, numbered, known entries- led in by lines along which movements are channeled: solid lines, fluid lines, air lines…There are not gates.
5 February 1999
I have a theory about tofu.
Maybe it’s not very “deep” or architectural, but I’d like to use it as a tool to compare Japanese and Chinese cultures.
After our field trip to Tokyo, I traveled down to other parts of Japan (Kyoto, Osaka, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Yokohama). In Kyoto I discovered this very expensive meal (20,000 yen, or 330 guilders) made completely of tofu:
Tofu in ice water
Tofu in noodles
Tofu standing on its own
Tofu in soup
No matter what the dish was, all the tofu blocks were cut into perfect cubes, and all kept completely white, as if it had not been cooked or processed at all.
For a Chinese/Taiwanese person, this is striking. We never, well rarely, eat tofu in little white cubes. We fry it, break it, stir it, deep-fry it, and mix it with all kinds of other foods. In China, it’s cheap food- easy to make, easy to consume, NO BIG DEAL.
If a food is wonderful, why not use it in as many different ways, combine it with as many different materials, as possible? I guess Japanese think that Chinese cooking destroys the purity and virginity of tofu. Chinese are loose-ended. Japanese are after purity and perfection.
7 February
We, architects, one way or another, impose our values on others. Good or bad, these values- carried by our buildings- can lead to consequences bigger than we expect. We commit crimes sometimes.
8 February
I kept swinging from one side to the other, but I never left either of them.
9 February
I believe architecture is not a good taste activity.
Nor is it an intellectual elite club.
For me, architecture is to innovate, create, and break new grounds. I believe in Utopia, the Ideal, the Perfect, God and Devil. I believe in what people do. I believe architecture is a service and
I believe architecture should acknowledge the power of lifestyle, desire and paradise.
10 February
Concentration:
I am incapable of concentration.
23 February
In Nagasaki, I visited a place called Holland Village.
It’s a Dutch theme park. All the buildings and scenery there fit together VERY NICELY.
When I entered, everyone was taking pictures. The windmills are much smaller and lower than the real ones so that tourists don’t have to walk too far to take a shot. They are arranged so that you can usually get two or three into one photo. And finally I experienced what it feels like to be surrounded by tulips, something that still hasn’t happened in the Holland I know.
I recognized some of the buildings immediately. They were all familiar, but somehow WEIRD. Amsterdam Central Station is scaled two or three times larger than the original. And actually, it’s a hotel. The interior is grand, bright, westernized (though not Western, really), and expensive.
The copy of the Utrecht Dom Church tower takes advantage of its height- it’s used as an observatory and restaurants since Holland Village doesn’t need a real church.
Of course what tourists go to see in the real Holland is often a Holland that no longer exists- a memory of Holland. How much of Amsterdam is a living city and how much is habitable museum?
In Holland Village, people can rent traditional Dutch costumes and have their pictures taken in them by professional photographers.
We only saw two western people in Holland Village: the “cheese people”- also in traditional dress- demonstrating the production of cheese. We spoke to them after their day’s work. Both were Dutch. They said these buildings were “a bit” like those in Holland.
June 29
After Jon Jerde, Jeff Kipnis is probably the best and the worst thing that has happened this year.
He TOTALLY DESTABLISED the Berlage- rearranged the power structure in five minutes.
It was agony. I’ve never learned so much.
5 November
What I worry about is that this generation I belong to is bombarded with MTV, lifestyle magazines, colored contact lenses, plastic surgeries… Speed is more important than depth; variety exceeds details.
I get bored so easily
but too often find myself in innocent confusion.
The gel that grows out of time
the flavor that brews over time
is nowhere in me.
I’m not old enough to have accumulated enough assets.
I’m not young enough to enjoy my cuteness and naivety.
I don’t want to look back one day and see life as a compilation of boring postcards.
Swore once to be like
a glass of orange juice made of 5 oranges
rather than one orange
Saturday, December 12, 1998
Diary: Bad Architecture Stories (Hunch 1)
7 November, 1998
So, we went to LA.
At first, things went smoothly. Lots of driving.
One afternoon, I heard that there would be a lecture that evening by some kind of develop-architect. People said it wouldn’t be very interesting, but I thought it was kind of cool and weird for SCI-Arc to invite a NOT VERY INTERESTING DEVELOPER.
BY the time we got there, the lecture hall was packed. Impressive. What kind of developer would attract so many SCI-Arc students? Who were all these people?
The lecture started.
Jon Jerde.
Never heard of him.
He started by explaining that he didn’t always get so dressed up- in a dark suit with a tie- but he had just had a meeting with Michael Jackson. Then he went on about a project with Jean Nouvel, Citywalk in LA, something in Germany, and Canal City in Fukuoka- a huge shopping, business, hotel complex, with a semi-circular canal flowing through it. It seems that he’s covered most of the affluent countries.
As he went on, I felt a grin started to appear on my face, and to grow bigger and bigger.
Something unusual was happening to me.
I still don’t know if I like Jerde’s buildings, but maybe liking them isn’t the point. Somehow, I don’t hate them either. The funny thing is, HE’S REALLY SINCERE. He wants to create a “place,” a “community,”- all that. And he talked about how successful these buildings have become- how much money they are making for his clients. MONEY!
Everything he said related to what I already know in architecture, but the way he uses these qualities or social demands is very different, even opposite. It’s so perverse.
Somehow, this contradiction with my education- with that attitude towards architecture I had learned to have- made me uncomfortable.
At the end of the lecture, only one person asked a question. The crowd dismissed peacefully and easily.
For the rest of the evening, I sat with my excitement and confusion and said “IT’S SO PERVERSE” maybe 20 times.
The next day we had a seminar.
The last speaker, Ann Bergern, had written a thesis on Jon Jerde’s work and the “Architecture of Pleasure.” I wondered what there was in his work to write a whole thesis on. She went on and on for maybe two hours about Plato and Freud and the grin on my face got even bigger. I was satisfied to see an attempt to reveal all the possible layers.
Then the discussion began.
Some said Jerde’s work was not worthy of discussion. Others called it second-rate: BAD ARCHITECTURE.
I thought: Where do we draw the line between good and bad? Who decides what is first-rate and what is second-rate? By what logic or rules do we categorize buildings into architecture or Architecture?
I was terribly disoriented.
And I still haven’t recovered.
8 November
Fieldwork is half research- searching for something; half experience- letting it find you. Intelligence weaves them together, connecting what you found to what you thought you were looking for.
14 November
After all these years of studying architecture, there’s still a tremendous gap between what I like to do as a girl- a very ordinary girl- and what I’m cultivated to think as an architect. I like going shopping. I like ice cream. I like toy stores. I LIKE PINK THINGS! But in my architecture-life, I see myself, my friends, my classmates taking a distance from everyday life. In Johannesburg, I used to drive around with other architecture students, groaning at all the developments and shopping centers popping up. But none of us ever tried to identify what happened in our society to cause them.
We loathe them.
We despise them.
But we don’t understand them.
Meanwhile, we expect that once we graduate we’ll be qualified to handle building projects, clients’ needs, developers and contractors, and still be architecturally correct.
As architects- the kind of architects we’re learning to be- we always differentiate US from THEM. We design for THEM. We analyze THEIR lifestyles, as if we’re not part of it.
When I first came to Holland, I would walk around Rotterdam hating “those people.” How could they be so damn happy (at least they looked kind of happy) with their neat little lives- their most-fashionable outfits, most-comfortable living units, most-advanced communication tools. It frightened me how they could park their SHINY LITTLE CARS, full of accessories and decorations, with high-tech stereos blasting their newest CDs, in the middle of the Kruisweg, blocking traffic, each convinced of being the coolest person on earth. What is this all about? If this is everyday life, can I handle it?
But I also envied them. Is it against the rules for me to embrace these things too?
LA was liberating in its shameless enthusiasm for kitsch- in its mastery of the trivial.
My friend Hadar took me to see this musician’s front yard. He has 17 of Michelangelo’s David raised on pedestals in front of his home: 8 on the left, 9 on the right. In the middle is a statue of Venus. The whole world can see his admiration. Anything I could ever imagine to be “bad” is built and loved in that city, and I have to admit, I am inspired by the badness, rather than the goodness, of Jon Jerde’s works. But who decides it is bad? Is our work judged by “us” or “them”? Aren’t we part of this “consumer society,” “popular culture,” “middleclass landscape”? For how long can we detach ourselves?
“SECOND-RATE’ ARCHITECTURE IS COVERING THE GLOBE.
It is the architecture that people find it easy to engage with. It is loved and used in millions of everyday lives. Shouldn’t we be looking more closely?
19 November
I have no destination, only lots of little stops.
If I zoom out I see them as happy stops, though I’ve anxiously stumbled through them with too much ambition, too little time, not enough sleep, too hungry, too busy, too stressed, too satisfied, too determined. What I remember from each are not the glorious moments, not the rewards, but the battles between myself and myself, the climb from one thought to the next, the brief moments of enlightenment.
27 November
Sometimes an idea gets stuck. I can’t move forward for days. Everyday, I say to myself: “It’s coming today. I feel it.”
19 December
In the beginning, I didn’t like Stan Allen.
Didn’t trust him.
I was hard-headed and his suggestions seems outrageous- he didn’t seem to “get” what I was trying to do. But as the first term progressed, his ideas turned out to be brilliant, very powerful. After a few crits, the project began to grow, almost by itself.
I think I started to take Stan seriously when I discovered that we like the same Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. I love Murakami’s pace- his speed, and then his slowness. He can go on forever about the details of the interior, the smell, the food, the woman’s body; or about how to make pasta. But then, another time, he’ll blurt out the story so quickly- LIKE AN ACTION MOVIE- that I have to cover the next line so I don’t miss any details and jump into the ending. He writes he’s like talking. Maybe he worked hard to develop this style, but I wouldn’t know.
So we were in LA, wandering around this Neutra house; Stan was chatting with his friend- who lives in the house- on the terrace.
I overheard the friend say: “I like the girlfriend.” And Stan said: “She will come back later.”
I thought: WHAT GIRLFRIEND WILL COME BACK LATER? Then I saw the book in his friend’s hand- The Wild Sheep Chase. I had finished it only the week before.
So I told Stan’s friend that Murakami is my favorite Japanese writer, and recommended Norwegian Forest. I didn’t say more. But after that I started to wonder.
Now I know that Stan is a great teacher. But the most important thing I learned was to let him teach me. MY EGO WAS KILLING ME.
After finally earning the title “architect,” I didn’t like being called a student.
But now I’ve changed my mind: I always want to be a student- a LEARNER.
You know that feeling you get when you’re in Ronchamp, or La Tourette, or Hagia Sophia? When I signed my name in the visitors’ book after seeing Le Corbusier’s chapel, I swore that for the rest of my life I would always sign my profession as “student.”
So, we went to LA.
At first, things went smoothly. Lots of driving.
One afternoon, I heard that there would be a lecture that evening by some kind of develop-architect. People said it wouldn’t be very interesting, but I thought it was kind of cool and weird for SCI-Arc to invite a NOT VERY INTERESTING DEVELOPER.
BY the time we got there, the lecture hall was packed. Impressive. What kind of developer would attract so many SCI-Arc students? Who were all these people?
The lecture started.
Jon Jerde.
Never heard of him.
He started by explaining that he didn’t always get so dressed up- in a dark suit with a tie- but he had just had a meeting with Michael Jackson. Then he went on about a project with Jean Nouvel, Citywalk in LA, something in Germany, and Canal City in Fukuoka- a huge shopping, business, hotel complex, with a semi-circular canal flowing through it. It seems that he’s covered most of the affluent countries.
As he went on, I felt a grin started to appear on my face, and to grow bigger and bigger.
Something unusual was happening to me.
I still don’t know if I like Jerde’s buildings, but maybe liking them isn’t the point. Somehow, I don’t hate them either. The funny thing is, HE’S REALLY SINCERE. He wants to create a “place,” a “community,”- all that. And he talked about how successful these buildings have become- how much money they are making for his clients. MONEY!
Everything he said related to what I already know in architecture, but the way he uses these qualities or social demands is very different, even opposite. It’s so perverse.
Somehow, this contradiction with my education- with that attitude towards architecture I had learned to have- made me uncomfortable.
At the end of the lecture, only one person asked a question. The crowd dismissed peacefully and easily.
For the rest of the evening, I sat with my excitement and confusion and said “IT’S SO PERVERSE” maybe 20 times.
The next day we had a seminar.
The last speaker, Ann Bergern, had written a thesis on Jon Jerde’s work and the “Architecture of Pleasure.” I wondered what there was in his work to write a whole thesis on. She went on and on for maybe two hours about Plato and Freud and the grin on my face got even bigger. I was satisfied to see an attempt to reveal all the possible layers.
Then the discussion began.
Some said Jerde’s work was not worthy of discussion. Others called it second-rate: BAD ARCHITECTURE.
I thought: Where do we draw the line between good and bad? Who decides what is first-rate and what is second-rate? By what logic or rules do we categorize buildings into architecture or Architecture?
I was terribly disoriented.
And I still haven’t recovered.
8 November
Fieldwork is half research- searching for something; half experience- letting it find you. Intelligence weaves them together, connecting what you found to what you thought you were looking for.
14 November
After all these years of studying architecture, there’s still a tremendous gap between what I like to do as a girl- a very ordinary girl- and what I’m cultivated to think as an architect. I like going shopping. I like ice cream. I like toy stores. I LIKE PINK THINGS! But in my architecture-life, I see myself, my friends, my classmates taking a distance from everyday life. In Johannesburg, I used to drive around with other architecture students, groaning at all the developments and shopping centers popping up. But none of us ever tried to identify what happened in our society to cause them.
We loathe them.
We despise them.
But we don’t understand them.
Meanwhile, we expect that once we graduate we’ll be qualified to handle building projects, clients’ needs, developers and contractors, and still be architecturally correct.
As architects- the kind of architects we’re learning to be- we always differentiate US from THEM. We design for THEM. We analyze THEIR lifestyles, as if we’re not part of it.
When I first came to Holland, I would walk around Rotterdam hating “those people.” How could they be so damn happy (at least they looked kind of happy) with their neat little lives- their most-fashionable outfits, most-comfortable living units, most-advanced communication tools. It frightened me how they could park their SHINY LITTLE CARS, full of accessories and decorations, with high-tech stereos blasting their newest CDs, in the middle of the Kruisweg, blocking traffic, each convinced of being the coolest person on earth. What is this all about? If this is everyday life, can I handle it?
But I also envied them. Is it against the rules for me to embrace these things too?
LA was liberating in its shameless enthusiasm for kitsch- in its mastery of the trivial.
My friend Hadar took me to see this musician’s front yard. He has 17 of Michelangelo’s David raised on pedestals in front of his home: 8 on the left, 9 on the right. In the middle is a statue of Venus. The whole world can see his admiration. Anything I could ever imagine to be “bad” is built and loved in that city, and I have to admit, I am inspired by the badness, rather than the goodness, of Jon Jerde’s works. But who decides it is bad? Is our work judged by “us” or “them”? Aren’t we part of this “consumer society,” “popular culture,” “middleclass landscape”? For how long can we detach ourselves?
“SECOND-RATE’ ARCHITECTURE IS COVERING THE GLOBE.
It is the architecture that people find it easy to engage with. It is loved and used in millions of everyday lives. Shouldn’t we be looking more closely?
19 November
I have no destination, only lots of little stops.
If I zoom out I see them as happy stops, though I’ve anxiously stumbled through them with too much ambition, too little time, not enough sleep, too hungry, too busy, too stressed, too satisfied, too determined. What I remember from each are not the glorious moments, not the rewards, but the battles between myself and myself, the climb from one thought to the next, the brief moments of enlightenment.
27 November
Sometimes an idea gets stuck. I can’t move forward for days. Everyday, I say to myself: “It’s coming today. I feel it.”
19 December
In the beginning, I didn’t like Stan Allen.
Didn’t trust him.
I was hard-headed and his suggestions seems outrageous- he didn’t seem to “get” what I was trying to do. But as the first term progressed, his ideas turned out to be brilliant, very powerful. After a few crits, the project began to grow, almost by itself.
I think I started to take Stan seriously when I discovered that we like the same Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. I love Murakami’s pace- his speed, and then his slowness. He can go on forever about the details of the interior, the smell, the food, the woman’s body; or about how to make pasta. But then, another time, he’ll blurt out the story so quickly- LIKE AN ACTION MOVIE- that I have to cover the next line so I don’t miss any details and jump into the ending. He writes he’s like talking. Maybe he worked hard to develop this style, but I wouldn’t know.
So we were in LA, wandering around this Neutra house; Stan was chatting with his friend- who lives in the house- on the terrace.
I overheard the friend say: “I like the girlfriend.” And Stan said: “She will come back later.”
I thought: WHAT GIRLFRIEND WILL COME BACK LATER? Then I saw the book in his friend’s hand- The Wild Sheep Chase. I had finished it only the week before.
So I told Stan’s friend that Murakami is my favorite Japanese writer, and recommended Norwegian Forest. I didn’t say more. But after that I started to wonder.
Now I know that Stan is a great teacher. But the most important thing I learned was to let him teach me. MY EGO WAS KILLING ME.
After finally earning the title “architect,” I didn’t like being called a student.
But now I’ve changed my mind: I always want to be a student- a LEARNER.
You know that feeling you get when you’re in Ronchamp, or La Tourette, or Hagia Sophia? When I signed my name in the visitors’ book after seeing Le Corbusier’s chapel, I swore that for the rest of my life I would always sign my profession as “student.”
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