third year juries. blogs and privacy. 'a whistling woman'. baroque modernism

the third year juries went off as expected.. some good work.. some mediocre.. very few drawings were complete and none of the models. the jurors came in all shapes and hair styles, but i really could have done without the hopelessly cynical view of architecture that some of them had. it worried me that students might be influenced by the shallow crass reactionary and conservative ideology that was being propagated through the kinds of criticisms being given. to disparage ‘regionalism’ merely as being non-contemporary without being able to articulate what the concerns of the contemporary are was also immature and silly. some of us were violently angry by these comments, the students were too battered to react in any way, and i was too dazed. perhaps i should have resisted and fought at that time. too bad i did not. i only hope that there does not remain so much to undo. it’s a nice class ( not only because i know some of them might read this blog).

in fact it was just yesterday after the jury that i was discussing the difficulties of blogging as a teacher with siddarth and neelima. every word i say becomes so loaded with meaning – intended and unintended. language is such a double edged sword.

‘a whistling woman’ is the last of the quartet of as byaats novels on the life and times of frederica potter. it ends with so much tragedy and joy. the implosion of utopias, the dialogue between science and religion- the world of art, and all that love. i am going to miss frederica, her son leo, luk, marcus and vincent, daniel and bill, saskia and agatha.. and everyone else.

but back to architecture for a while… why is it so tough to find architects to design a home rather than a furniture museum? The new hyper attentiveness to detail seems more baroque in sensibility than modern. The essential difference between mies and corb. It was in the second year presentation of the swiss pavilion that brought back to me the free joy that characterizes the corbusian approach.. no modular mathematical formula can explain the red shaft of the useless column.