Future Faculty: Post-Socialist Russian City Project » shauna

April 15th, Meeting and Roundtable Discussion

shauna — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:59:28 +0000

We started our meeting with a short discussion of our housework (content coming), followed by a presentation by Dimitri on the common line of evolution of Russian urban development: building blocks progressing from the Stalinist quarter to microrayon to larger microrayon to residential rayon.

The History of Public Space in Soviet Mass Housing Developments by Dimitri Zadorin

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After Dimitri’s lecture, Leslie Kavanaugh gave a inspiring overview of the development of “collective,” and the individual’s place within the world in philosophical terms (and also an essential reading list for budding philosophers).

POLIS (CITY) = Politics

Plato – Republic - “philosopher king”

Machiavelli – The Prince

Sun Tzu – The Art of War

Hobbes (1651) – Leviathan

Locke (1689) – Second Treatise on Government

Rousseau (1762) – Social Contract

Proudhon (1850) – General Idea of Revolution – negative social contract

Marx (1848) – Communist Manifesto

Paris Commune (1871) – basis of European system, idea of local governance, labor laws, separation of church and state, etc.

Negri/Hardt (2000) – Empire - hypercapitalism

Leslie started her talk with the thesis that politics is intrinsically linked to “city” (and thus ideas of how we should live together) from its linguistic Greek origins. She continued her presentation by giving an overview of major turning points in philosophical thought that are taken for granted in our modern world. Her final message was that how we organize ourselves economically is how we organize ourselves socially. She left us with the message that it is up to us to explore new ways of living together, that we should not shy away from being “political” as designers, and that there is a whole spectrum between the two extremes of Hypercapitalism and Communism.

Coincidentally, I read something related on John Thackara’s blog, Doors of Perception. He says:

John Michael Greer…suggests that the time may be ripe to change the question. “Oversimplifying reality into two rigid categories is probably the most pervasive source of failed thinking in the modern world”, he writes. “Rather than limit ourselves to a choice between two unpromising alternatives – “capitalism” and “socialism” – why not look at different frameworks, such as distributism.

Distributism. Right. Having paused to find out what distributism is, or was I return to find Greer writing about another novelty: the Druid notion of ternary thinking. “The basic practice is that when you encounter any classification of the world into two and only two sides (we call this a binary), think of a third option that isn’t simply a compromise between them. With practice you get very good at noticing the blind spots that make binary thinking seem to make sense. Yes, you can then go on to look for a fourth, fifth, etc.!”

Finally, we concluded with a mindmapping session. We split up into five small groups to consider the term, “ideal neighborhood.” Some major themes present throughout individual mindmaps turned out to be intangible qualities of neighborhoods that can manifest themselves in tangible ways:

safety, social control/neighborhood watch, responsibility, tolerance, connection, interaction and communication,

as well as good proportions of

diversity/uniformity, structure/chaos, identification, individualism/collectivism

Assignment 3: The Neighborhood Pt.2, April 22nd

shauna — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:16:17 +0000

In continuing our study of the neighborhood, we consider design interventions on the neighborhood scale. For your own neighborhood come up with some examples of interventions that could improve the quality of your neighborhood. These can be products, services, events, etc. Go crazy, there are no wrong answers!

Alternatively/additionally please give some examples of good and bad design interventions.

Reading

Boym, Svetlana. “Nostalgia, Moscow Style”. Harvard Design Magazine, 2001.

Geraci, John. “The Future of Our Cities: Open, Crowdsourced, and Participatory“, April 6th, 2009.

Related Links

Putting People First, Daily insights on user experience, experience design and people-centered innovation.

April 8th, Meeting and Roundtable Discussion

shauna — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:59:28 +0000

Here are the slides from yesterday’s meeting (especially for our remote participants and other curious people). We will put up the slides soon from Bastiaan’s talk.

Introduction Of The Post Socialist Russian City Project

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Talk by Bastiaan Kwast

Assignment: The Collective

Also here are some images of brutalist architecture for inspiration, from Claudia Muresan, one of our collaborators.

Assignment 2: The Neighborhood Pt.1, April 15nd

shauna — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:54:28 +0000

In thinking about what “the Collective” means, we will first examine our own neighbourhood situations. Please take either your current or home situation. What makes your neighbourhood a neighbourhood or not? What are the qualities it exhibits that make it a neighbourhood? Are these qualities good/bad/neutral? What are other qualities (tangible/intangible) that create neighbourhoods?

Some questions to think about:
- is a neighborhood necessary?
- how are neighborhoods different in urban and rural settings?
- what is the ideal neighborhood (please bring some pictures of ideal neighborhoods)?

Also, please read the Communist Manifesto in preparation for our discussion.

Irony of Fate

shauna — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:54:28 +0000

From Irony of Fate, 1975. This is a beloved Russian classic, based on the idea that everything everywhere is the same in Russia…from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

Overture Cartoon

First minutes (FRENCH)

Please see here for the English version (watch 5:25 – 7:26 minute mark)

From IMDB

“A group of old friends have a tradition of going to a public bathing house on New Years eve. Occasionally too much vodka and beer makes two of them unconscious. The problem is that one of them (Sasha) has to go to Leningrad but another one (Zhenya) goes. Zhenya wakes up at Leningrad airport. Believing that he is still in Moscow he takes a taxi and goes home. The street name, building and even apartment number, the way an apartment complex looks the same and the key coincide completely – just typical Soviet-type ‘economy’ architecture. Imagine the surprise of Nadya when she enters her apartment and finds a man without trousers in her bed. What’s more – Nadya’s fiancé also finds him there…”

Assignment 1: The Collective, April 8th

shauna — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:42:56 +0000

What does “the collective” evoke for you? Please write a short paragraph and find some representative images and send these digital to info@futurefaculty.org and bring them to the first meeting (April 8th). We will be brainstorming and discussing our (pre)conceptions, ideas, expectations, etc. This assignment is meant to be fun and open ended. There are no wrong answers! If interested please send a mail to info@futurefaculty.org

International participants who can’t join the round table discussion, you can join the project by sending your thoughts and images via the mail!

Project Russia @ NAi

shauna — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:12:01 +0000

This past Saturday was the opening of the new NAi exhibition, Building for Bouwkunde. There we handed out flyers promoting the Future Faculty platform and Project Russia pilot project.

For those who are not familiar with Building for Bouwkunde, the exhibition was a presentation of 50 proposed designs for a new Architecture building/campus. Additionally, the jury’s pick for best projects was presented at the opening ceremony.

Thanks to all those who made it out to help promote Future Faculty. Make sure to check out the exhibition and look for a video interview with our very own Jean-Paul!

Award ceremony, photo credit: Elbert