Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom for her Nobel Prize in economics. It’s refreshing to see a political theorist win the coveted prize and I’d like to see this trend continue. I personally disagree with the view that economics is somehow more “scientific” that political theory or sociology. By exclusively rewarding market theorists, we’ve been cementing the notion that economics is a stand-alone discipline that can successfully exist independently of a social and political context. In fact, this should have been a social sciences prize all along.

According to Robert Shiller, a Yale University economist, “this award is part of the merging of the social sciences. Economics has been too isolated and too stuck on the view that markets are efficient and self-regulating. It has derailed our thinking.”

As for Ms. Ostrom’s work:

Ms. Ostrom’s work deals in the concept of “commons” shared by a number of people who earn their living from a common resource and have a stake, therefore, in preserving it. Her most recent research has focused on relatively small forests in undeveloped countries. Groups of people share the right to harvest lumber from a particular forest, and so they have a stake in making sure the forest survives (NY Times).

I’m interested in seeing what implications her work may have on architecture. Privatization of land has always been used as a solution to the overexploitation of a common resource, otherwise known as the tragedy of the commons. In particular, I’m thinking of public space – the private shopping mall vs. the public street. Could our public spaces be designed and/or programmed in such a way as to encourage the kind of behaviour Ms. Ostrom is describing?

“Pour moi, j’émets le vœu que la photographie, au lieu de tomber dans le domaine de l’industrie, du commerce, rentre dans celui de l’art.” – Gustave Le Gray

(I hope that photography, rather than falling into the realm of industry and commerce, enters the world of art.)

Musée d’Orsay is hosting an exhibition on the early days of photography in Italy. Admittedly, the name of the exhibit – “voir l’Italie et mourir” – sounds exceptionally cheesy to me but I’m sure there’s a smart reference in there I’m not getting…

Most of the art shown, but not exclusively, is that of early photographic mercenaries  drawn to Italy like countless other artists before them. The themes are recurrent (people, landscapes, archaeology…) and the exhibit is nicely organized around the main subjects.

Fundamentally, it doesn’t really matter what Italy may have looked like around then; the work doesn’t aim to convey an image of the landscape but rather a perception of it. Many of the compositions, lighting, choice of subject… are no less evocative than their painterly counterparts. Perhaps this is partly a consequence of the young art’s early influences.

Carlo Naya – Venice

Gioacchino Affobelli – Rome

Gustave Le Gray – Palermo

The death of modernism has finally made the big screen! Well, sort of.

I’m especially amused by the note: “this is a video response to Philip Johnson on Charlie Rose”.

“Welcome to Palestine. After 620 kilometers of fence & Wall, all around, you are back where you were.”

These words can be found on www.sendamessage.nl, a website set up by a Dutch marketing group paired with local Palestinian NGOs. And thanks to them, you can now “buy” a message on the wall, have it spraypainted by Palestinian volunteers and even get digital photographs of your wall art emailed to you. In a true globalised fashion, anyone today within reach of a computer can leave their trace in an area they would most likely never have any physical access to.

From wedding proposals to humour to political statements, there is no limit to what can be seen painted on the concrete barrier. It not only provides financial relief to Palestinians whose livelihoods have been affected by the wall but also questions the nature of the separation, one post at a time.

As one contributor put it… “love conquers (w)all”

There is a commemorative plaque that stands at the site of St Ann’s church in Griffintown, the heart of what used to be a large Irish community. Today, although there is little left of the Irish, Italians or Ukrainians that populated the neighbourhood, there is nevertheless much to learn about what the area now is. To find out, I trek southwards from Little Burgundy to 1500 Ottawa Street, site of the abandoned Canada Post sorting facility. As for what Griffintown should become, there is much controversy and little consensus – the area itself offers few indicators for its future. If any insight is then to be found, it may be time to look elsewhere.

I begin my trek at Georges Vanier metro station and walk slowly southwards towards 1500 Ottawa Street, through neighbourhoods that have never had a place in Montreal’s official tour guide. First there is Little Burgundy: terraced houses and back gardens, then a large communal garden followed by the community church. The streets may have been empty that day, but there certainly was no lack of vibrancy in church. For a day that wasn’t Christmas or Easter, I have never seen such a roomful of people gathered in a church hall for service. The entire scene felt like a surreal movie set about an idyllic community whose vitality was unquestionable.
The vitality of my trip however was short lived. Barring a brief locus of activity at Notre Dame Street, the community feel was all but gone as I continued towards my destination. By the time I walked down Guy’s last stretch, all that was left was an underused semi-industrial landscape. The narrow street’s low-rise red brick warehouses were marked only by a few back doors and some graffiti. It wasn’t homely here anymore.

Three thousand miles away in Silvertown, one of the industrial wastelands to the East of London, I was given the same, albeit more dramatic, impression. It wasn’t welcoming there either. On a cold winter day, I precariously walked along a highway leading to Silvertown, ironically the only walkable link between the two closest DLR stations. On one hand, the ground plane had been replaced by warehouses holding up a derelict council block and an old church. On the other, a dramatic empty river-front landscape was pierced by a small factory. Save the millennium dome that could be seen in the back across the water, the scene spewed more of post-war desolation than 21st century London. A friend of mine once told me it reminded him of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has never been to the Middle East.
Silvertown shares not only a similar sounding name to Griffintown but also the industrial past, the workers’ housing, the post-industrial dereliction, the nostalgic accounts of life in the slums, the developers’ recent interest, the cities tired of the underuse… It seems every city in the western world hides a small Detroit somewhere. And by now, there is no community left in Silvertown either: “If you play hunt-the-corner-shop you might eventually find a small parade with a Costcutter, a chippy, a bookie and a greasy spoon, with a strip club two corners away.”

I finally make it to 1500 Ottawa Street and begin walking around the site. A huge expanse of grass allows me to look across the canal. I first notice the graffiti: “there is no use looking back” and then a few silos and warehouses. Further down, a recent residential development clad in red brick and large windows reminds me of those new developments I saw emerging around London’s own canals. Few of them reuse any existing buildings but evoke the old canalscape by imitating the warehouse typology, as if attempting to recall a past that was never as pleasant as it is portrayed to be. It seems the architects have found use in looking back after all.
I continue walking around the site, bound by low-rise buildings sporting lofts for rent. There is some office space used, and a Christmas tree shop, but the entire area’s activity is outweighed by the Canada Post building’s huge abandoned shell. In a way, this is London’s East End too, lost between its past and the promise of regeneration.

And after years of neglect, dereliction piles high in Silvertown: “Historically this is London’s largest sewage factory – the East End has always had the smells. With the westerly wind being dominant, that is why they put the houses for the poor in the East End in the first place.” But these days, I am told, this is where the money is. “Now the area appears on fancy sales brochures, with the river curled across it like a blue party ribbon, selling a new name and a dream of 120,000 new homes.” The stakes are high: developers and politicians are eager to develop one of the last of the great London brownfield sites into what they label “a vibrant new heart for the Royal Docks in East London”. The risk, according to Tim Dixon, is the creation of a transient community that exclusively commutes to places of work, play and learning due to the lack of local infrastructure: schools, hospitals, local employment opportunities… But isn’t this the Generic City that Rem Koolhaas describes? A point of density that accommodates a variety of quasi-urban activity?
It may simply be the return of the edge city to the city proper, replacing the decaying fringe that brought about the exurban flight in the first place. With the political focus shifting from creating a suburban idyll to an urban idyll, the imagery had to change. Suddenly, Silvertown emerges as a political construct, fuelled by the will to reinvent London’s urban public space through planning policies that cite Amsterdam, Barcelona and Madrid as examples to emulate. With the help of a rich and expressive use of media and marketing, Silvertown is now a brand: cosmopolitan, trendy and vibrant. After all, there will be an aquarium, riverside paths and boating facilities, set carefully around the listed Silo D building and a few other selected tokens of the area’s past. If Rem’s mat city is to be embraced, Silvertown is becoming a potentially good candidate.

The scale of Griffintown’s redevelopment is smaller, and so is its scope of problems. But the ambition remains: at $1.3 billion, it is the largest privately financed real estate project in Montreal’s history. One common thread between both cities is the apparent desire to address the significance of history in both schemes. I remember looking down Wesley Avenue in Silvertown, past the rows of newly built houses and matching minivans, only to spot a lonely factory chimney left over from the site’s past life. It stands like a totem pole guarding the area from its past ghosts and legitimizing its future. The cavemen at Lascaux were equally ominous: by drawing animals on the walls of their dwellings, their homes were protected from the spirits of the slaughtered bison.

1500 Ottawa Street is being handed a similar fate. Recently released proposals for the site include fours pre-existing basins that are to be dug up. The basins, originally used by the local industry, will be restored to their original artificial splendour. This must be the Generic City after all, the one where ”there is always a quarter called Lipservice, where a minimum of the past is preserved (…) also called Afterthought, Waterfront, Too Late, 42nd Street, Simply the Village” and more importantly that “celebrates the past as only the recently conceived can”. The city that once disappeared unlamented is being brought back through mementos. They are there to give the new city their tacit approval.

I finally approach the Canada Post building. The sickly trees with spotted leaves around the structure remind me of the asbestos warning signs I had seen in Silvertown. A few joggers pass by along the canal, by now used to the huge structure’s empty presence. It will be torn down but it could have been left standing just as easily. It could have been the past that was chosen to be remembered.

Sources

Aubin, Henry. “November Has Been a Dreary Month for Montreal Island”, The Montreal Gazette web page, November 2008
Dixon, Tim. “Commuter Culture”, The Guardian website, August 2006
Johnston, Craig and Mark Whitehead. New Horizons in British Urban Policy: Perspectives on New Labour’s Urban Renaissance. Hants, 2004
Koolhaas, Rem. “The Generic City”, S,M,L,XL (1994)
McGhie, Caroline. “The Golden Gateway”, The Telegraph website, October 2006
Second Griffintown Project Unveiled”, The Montreal Gazette, 13 November 2008

Let’s get straight to the point: EUROVISION 2008.

It’s that kind of show you want to watch but don’t really want to admit to having seen. Or you’ll play the 90s “ironic” card and maintain the purity of your coolness by claiming you watched it under a veil of sardonic humor.
And you know who’ll help you with that? BBC commentator Terry Wogan. Here are a few highlights of his “commentating”*:

Referring to Swedish commentator Björn Gustafsson:
“You look like a million dollars, Björn.”

Just when the Latvian pirates (literally) are about to take the stage:
“Now’s the time to practice your Johnny Depp impersonations.”

About the Polish singer:
“You haven’t seen teeth like these since the Osmonds.”

(Allow me a bit of a side rant concerning Denmark’s entry. How many times will people still be allowed to call a song some variation of “dancing all night long”? We get it. You can stay up late.)

But putting aside the pirates, the angels and the dancing Danes, there were nevertheless a few (two) highlights:
- The 75-year-old Croatian man called 75 Cent: priceless.
- The French entry: brilliant but I’ll get back to that later.

As for Sir Terry, he was not happy the UK ended up last tied with Germany and Poland. In fact, the unfortunate consequence of the UK’s terrible night was an angry outcry from Sir Wogan himself against bloc voting, expatriate minority voting and even racism – obviously the only possible explanations for the UK not winning.
Though there may be some truth to these statements, the attitude is besides the point really: one either goes down the path of dry wit or embraces the trashiness and vows for the top spot, the Nobel of tacky. You can’t have both (and I say go for the first).

And that’s where France shined. They had a man riding in on a golf cart holding a balloon, a trippy song and bearded female vocalists singing something about the milky way. They maintained their dignity and pride by not bothering to be above or below the competition, but completely beside it. How’s THAT for ironic?

*I send a public invitation for more Terry Wogan quotes that I may add to my collection. Any help is welcome.

Say hello to the world’s first diamond-encrusted credit card. No this isn’t a joke, this is the Royale Mastercard; the card that will get you any transaction regardless of size and amount on credit, “preferential access to the Burj Al Arab Hotel”, “special yacht charter deals” and a personal manager. And your key to the heavens comes with a solitaire diamond smack in the middle of it, obviously.

I’m intrigued; the medium of exchange has become the object of desire (and status) in itself. A prelude to the gold leaf dollar bill?

Happy St Patrick’s day!

That’s dedication right there…

I’ve posted below a few screenshots and an extract of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Il Conformista. The film explores fascist psychology through a mid-level civil servant (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who joins the secret police in his quest for normality. Not only is the screenplay well thought out, the settings are stunning. Shown below are a few screenshots of Trintignant walking across the government headquarters. Got to love those huge empty halls.

Even Coppola makes a tribute to the film through the blowing leaves reference in the Godfather II (yes, I’m a fan).

This is the asylum scene. I love the huge white box and the lined benches. Notice the flying leaves scene….