Alain Badiou - This Crisis Is the Spectacle: Where Is the Real?

Honestly this piece was hard for me to read, other than Badiou’s wonderful use of a good simile - which my secondary school English teacher would have loved him for, I just wasn't that interested! I had to read it several times just to understand it. How many times do we need to hear about our "crisis" and the (here comes it first metaphor of the night) masked villains who drove us to destruction? Honestly right now I find myself numb to the whole thing, at one time I was furious, sad and even distraught, but come on!! Can you blame me, as "FINANCIAL CRISIS", "GLOBAL WARMING" and simply "WE'RE FUCKED" is repeatedly shouted at us like a never-ending, relentless broken record?

When did I stop caring? Honestly I don't even care about not caring. I like to think of myself as being informed, capable of taught and action, as not being one of "those who are watching the show" as Badiou puts it. And I hope I can reignite my (for lack of a better word) interest in well…. us, as a species, in our world and in our future. But right now please just shut up, pour a pint, put on a catchy tune and dance.

P.S. - Please don’t associate me mentioning alcohol in my second blog with the fact that I am Irish. Irish people drinking alcohol is a stereotype and an unfair one to many Irish people, as such I don’t want to be labelled as one ……. Even though I am lol.

Jonathan Meades - Zaha Hadid Interview

Okay here I go with my first blog, hopefully at least 50% of this will make sense, if it doesn't ....oh well!! First of all, let me clear up the title of this post because this interview was less about what Zaha Hadid said and was more about Meades’ interpretation about who she is. Meades isn't exactly sugar coating his responses to Hadid's more vague answers. His tone through the piece is constantly critical and at times almost insulting. However there is also an admiration if not for her, for her creativeness and her knowledge. He mocks her by saying that "I rather suspect that Zaha has the ancient, habitual, superstitious fear that to discover how her processes work would be to jeopardise them". Her fear has no real merits, no scientific basics but his tone suggests to me that he believes that her "processes" are real, her creativity and talent is tangible, her works are not mere flukes.

Some people have even questioned: what qualifies him (or any other person for that matter) to comment on an architect’s work? I believe that the answer is that anyone has that qualification. Sure we are artists, we create, sculpt and shape spaces and skylines, but our work affects others. We design not for ourselves but for the client and end user, and perhaps we should also add to that list, the passer-by. Architecture is art with rules, our creativity must always co-exist with functionality. While Zaha may pride herself on creating wonderfully chaotic and disturbing forms, the truth is if she had not added function, she would still be sitting behind her desk, sketching away and spending daddy’s money without any of her buildings being constructed.