MAKESHIFT // ARTICLES FEED

<rss version="2.0"><channel><title>MAKESHIFT // ARTICLES FEED</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk//rss/news/</link><description>ARCHITECTURE FOR THOUGHT, UPDATED DAILY</description><item><title>Habitats</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/52/habitats.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Inmidtown habitats 2011 called for entrants to design a suite of products for inmidtown - a environment enhancement company operating in the Holborn, Bloomsbury &amp; St Giles area of London.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;We were invited to submit designs for a beehive, planters and bird boxes to be installed in and around the area.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Concept&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Repurposing redundant office furniture to provide a range of habitats to increase biodiversity in central London.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The challenge presented in re-imagining beehives, birdhouses and planters is that they have already been well designed so what more do these creatures need? The answer is nothing. So the question is not what more do they need but what more do we need? Our starting point was to answer this question with another one, what do we not need?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Recognising inmidtown&rsquo;s desire for a sustainable business district our proposal uses raw materials sourced from local businesses from within the BID to provide a practical response based on the ethics of zero waste to landfill. This offers working partners the opportunity to contribute to the scheme as well as benefit from it through donating filing cabinets and shredded waste paper.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img style=&#34;border: 0px initial initial;&#34; title=&#34;office to office&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-134-imagefile.png&#34; alt=&#34;office to office&#34; width=&#34;700&#34; height=&#34;338&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Office to Office (Cradle to Cradle)&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The move towards paperless offices is making filing cabinets redundant in the workplace. This is especially significant in the central business district of London where office floor space is at a premium.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Our Office to Office approach takes these redundant filing cabinets, refurbishes them, and returns them to the environment from which they came.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Depending on the design of the cabinet donated, it can be converted to either a beehive, planter, bird box, or a combination of these. Cabinets are first cleaned, and assessed for suitability, then processed depending on their future function. All products will be repainted and have a decorative pattern cut or welded onto their sides.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Shredded paper collected from within the BID is compressed and sealed within orange plastic envelopes to provide insulation within the beehive cabinet.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;bees&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-139-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;bees&#34; width=&#34;700&#34; height=&#34;334&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Beehives&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Three-four drawer cabinets can be used&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Standard brood size WBC frames fit drawers&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Openings cut in base of drawers to allow passage of bees and mites to fall through&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Queen excluder lid to brood drawer&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Varroa mesh in base of brood drawer&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Super drawers can hold up to 15 frames allowing for increase in honey production&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Stability provided by water containers&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Cabinet lined with orange HDPE &lsquo;envelopes&rsquo; of recycled paper insulation stuck inside body&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Cabinets powder coated to inmidtown grey&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; CNC cut pattern in side of cabinet exposes orange lining&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Portability:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Beehives and planters can be transported using sack trucks.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Using water filled containers (40 litres = 40 KG) to stabilise the beehive avoids transporting unecessary weight.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Extra stability can be provided by bolting flat wide feet to the base in place of castors or by securing the unit to a wall using car seatbelts.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;plants&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-138-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;plants&#34; width=&#34;700&#34; height=&#34;291&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Planters&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;We propose two main types of planters:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Horizontal planters&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Drawers are removed&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Feet of steel PFC fixed to base to lift planter off ground&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Holes drilled in bottom for drainage&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Cabinet body repainted&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Orange HDPE liner with perforated base filled with growing medium (soil &amp; perlite mix)&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Soil retention mat to prevent soil washing out&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; CNC cut pattern in side exposes orange HDPE liner&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Vertical planters&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; 2 or 3 drawer cabinets preferred&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Holes cut in base of drawers and cabinet for drainage&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Feet to cabinet as above&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Drawers lined as cabinet body above&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Car seatbelts used to support drawers in open position&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Integrated water butt in back of cabinet also offers stability&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;birds&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-137-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;birds&#34; width=&#34;700&#34; height=&#34;239&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Bird boxes&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Suitable (high-sided) drawers are cut, rearranged and welded to form bracket mount&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Mount can be decorated with cut out pieces from CNC pattern elsewhere&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Mount is powder coated&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Mount is fixed to wall using resin anchor bolts&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Timber inserts suited to different bird species fix into mount&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Boxes made from 15mm thick planks FSC certified softwood&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&bull; Boxes painted externally only with non toxic water based paint&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;You can see more of the project here:&nbsp;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.behance.net/gallery/inmidtown-habitats-2011/3963983&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;http://www.behance.net/gallery/inmidtown-habitats-2011/3963983&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
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&#60;/object&#62;
&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Competition proposal for a former industrial site on the river Trent in Nottingham: planned as a self-build neighbourhood, using principles from&nbsp;&#60;span class=&#34;s1&#34;&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://issuu.com/alastairparvin/docs/2011_07_06_arighttobuild&#34;&#62;Right to Build&#60;/a&#62;&nbsp;and&#60;/span&#62;&nbsp;utilising the&nbsp;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.wikihouse.cc/&#34;&#62;&#60;span class=&#34;s1&#34;&#62;WikiHouse&nbsp;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/a&#62;open-sourced construction system. Two former warehouse depots are converted into a self-build academy / factory, where the UK&#39;s increasing number of self-providers may come to learn about self-provision, and manufacture house components for themselves.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p1&#34;&#62;&#60;em&#62;Awarded a Special Commendation in the Isover 2012 &#60;/em&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.multicomforthouse.co.uk/&#34;&#62;&#60;span class=&#34;s1&#34;&#62;&#60;em&#62;Multi Comfort House&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;em&#62; competition.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;DESIGN TEAM&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p3&#34;&#62;&#60;span class=&#34;s2&#34;&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.christopherpaulmatthews.co.uk/&#34;&#62;Chris Matthews&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p3&#34;&#62;&#60;span class=&#34;s2&#34;&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://bigpicturedesign.us/&#34;&#62;Eric Chancellor&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p3&#34;&#62;&#60;span class=&#34;s2&#34;&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.jordanjlloyd.me/&#34;&#62;Jordan J. Lloyd&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p1&#34;&#62;with thanks to&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;Alastair Parvin and&nbsp;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.architecture00.net/&#34;&#62;Architecture 00:/&#60;/a&#62;:&nbsp;developers of WikiHouse and the Right to Build model.&#60;/p&#62;
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&#60;p class=&#34;p1&#34;&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p1&#34;&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Shrinkflation&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-128-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Shrinkflation&#34; width=&#34;600&#34; height=&#34;322&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p1&#34;&#62;One of the most resilient and widely-accepted beliefs we have, propagated enthusiastically by journalists and broadcasters, is that rising property prices are good news, and falling property prices are bad news. &nbsp;You can pick up more or less any newspaper, or flip onto to more or less any news site, and you will find headlines such as &#34;House price slump may last a decade&#34; (Daily Mail),&nbsp;&#34;Hooray! Housing market rockets&#34; (Daily Express)&nbsp;or &#34;House prices are on the up&#34; (The Sun). And it isn&#39;t just the tabloids, the &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/houseprices/9172925/House-prices-fall-as-stamp-duty-holiday-ends.html&#34;&#62;Telegraph&#60;/a&#62; and &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/06/house-property-prices-mortgages-halifax&#34;&#62;Guardian&#60;/a&#62; are at it too.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;Even news outlets with an ostensibly more balanced view of the world are guilty of this. Beneath apparently benign headlines such as &#34;House price rise is temporary&#34; on the BBC news, the language makes it pretty clear what our view is meant to be. Increasing house prices are described variously as&nbsp; &#34;optimistic&#34;, a &#34;boost&#34;, or a &#34;revival&#34;, whereas stable house prices are usually referred to as &#34;stagnation&#34;.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE INFLATION GAME&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;It&#39;s one of those beliefs which is all the more fascinating because it is both incredibly popular and also spectacularly wrong. The newspapers and Sarah Beeny-esque TV programmes which repeatedly incant it probably do so less out of conspiracy, more out of habit. Nonetheless it&#39;s a very damaging habit. In Britain a whole generation of homeowners have come to believe that they almost have a &#60;em&#62;right&#60;/em&#62; to see their house go up in value beneath them. Where their other pension investments may have failed them, property represents, for many, the retirement fund to be relied upon.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Housepriceinflation&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-129-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Housepriceinflation&#34; width=&#34;600&#34; height=&#34;391&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;It&#39;s worth making clear that when we talk about rising property prices, what we really mean is &#60;em&#62;inflating &#60;/em&#62;property prices.&nbsp;The houses are the same houses - no bigger, no better, but simply inflated in price &ndash; money has appeared out of nowhere, a reward for no work at all.&nbsp;In 1971, the average&nbsp;price of a UK house was &pound;5,362. By 2008 it was &pound;227,765.&nbsp; To put that in perspective: had the price of food inflated by the same amount over the same period of time,&nbsp; buying a supermarket chicken would today cost around &pound;47 (&#60;a href=&#34;http://england.shelter.org.uk/&#34;&#62;Shelter&#60;/a&#62;).&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;The biggest chunk of that inflation took place from the mid-nineties to 2008 . In the last seven years of the boom, the average cost of a house in the UK rose by more than 200%; from &pound;98,000 to &pound;216,000.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;Ordinarily, any government which presides over runaway inflation is voted (or forced) out of power. But when it comes to housing, we don&#39;t call it inflation, we call it &#60;em&#62;growth &#60;/em&#62;or&#60;em&#62; boom&#60;/em&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;INSIDERS / OUTSIDERS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;The first, and most obvious explanation you&#39;ll hear for this is that it&#39;s simply a function of middle-class democracy; insular, blinkered homeowners, hiding behind their copy of the Daily Mail at Breakfast, thinking in their own self-interest, without regard for those left behind who &#39;missed the bus&#39;. I&#39;m one of them (minus the Daily Mail). It&#39;s those of us who are on the bandwagon vs those who aren&#39;t &ndash; and those of us who are form a sufficiently large voting bloc to get our way. Economists refer to this as an &#39;&#60;em&#62;insider / outsider&#39;&#60;/em&#62; problem.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p1&#34;&#62;But actually, when we stop to think about it, rising house prices are &#60;em&#62;not&#60;/em&#62; in our self-interest; even as &#39;insiders&#39;. Certainly, &#60;em&#62;falling&#60;/em&#62; house prices are a nightmare for those who find themselves in negative equity, but rising house prices aren&#39;t a great deal better either. If you&#39;re a mortaged-up member of the homeowning middle classes it might feel very reassuring to tell your friends your house has gone up in value since you bought it - but really it&#39;s just a figure. My house could be worth billions on paper, but until I actually choose to sell it, it&#39;s a meaningless number. When I do choose to sell it, I&#39;m still going to need a house, and of course if the price of all the other houses has gone up too by a similar amount, I&#39;m no better off.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;It&#39;s worse even than that. In the same period that house prices had gone up 200% during the 2000&#39;s, our average earnings only went up by about 28%. So anyone who was planning on upgrading to a slightly larger house than their own would have been doubly-screwed, as the &#39;property ladder&#39; grew faster than their income - and the rungs got further and further apart.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p1&#34;&#62;In truth, rising house prices are only beneficial to two kinds of people: retiring households looking to downsize (or use an equity-release scheme) and property market professionals: banks (who get to offer ever-larger loans), developers, estate agents, contractors, architects, and so on.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;In other words, rising property prices are only good news as long as you&#39;re primarily interested in houses as &#60;em&#62;things to sell&#60;/em&#62;, but terrible news if you&#39;re interested in houses as &#60;em&#62;somewhere to actually live&#60;/em&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;The problem is we seem to have collectively forgotten that we all do actually need somewhere to live. The more house prices go up, the more unaffordable somewhere to live becomes, especially for people who never made it onto the housing market &ndash; which includes pretty much anyone under the age of 50. Under 50s comprise about 2/3rds of Britain&#39;s population, but they own only 18% of the housing wealth.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;GETTING LESS FOR MORE&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;In pretty much any other market, we wouldn&#39;t have a problem recognising the obvious: that rising prices is bad news. In technology, for example, we&#39;re spoiled rotten: digital hardware is governed by a rule of thumb called &#39;Moore&#39;s&#39; law, which predicts that every 2 years your computer will either halve in price, or get twice as fast. It&#39;s fantastic, and the industry usually exceeds it. As a result, in 2012 we can buy a piece of kit for just a few hundred pounds which less than a century ago would have been considered to be worth millions, if not priceless.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;House price inflation is the same, but in reverse. If property prices go up 200%, it means either that buying a house has become twice as expensive, or your house has halved in size and quality. In other words, when price goes up, real value goes down. We may think we&#39;re getting richer, but in fact everyone is getting continuously less and less for their money.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;And that is exactly what happened: we got less and less for more and more. During one of the longest property booms in history, the UK found itself building &#60;em&#62;tiny&#60;/em&#62; houses &ndash; the second smallest dwellings in Europe &ndash; 25% smaller than the european average. In a decade of affluence we found ourselves essentially constructing places of deprivation: unhealthy, small, socially-isolating, inflexible and energy-hungry dwellings.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;House sizes&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-130-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;House sizes&#34; width=&#34;600&#34; height=&#34;392&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p1&#34;&#62;As the recession wallows on, it seems pretty logical to say we now have the opportunity to do something about it; to shift the conversation away from &#39;increasing property prices&#39; towards &#39;increasing housing affordability&#39; and quality for everyone, and to avoid any &#39;recovery&#39; which involves&nbsp;returning to such a badly-designed market. But we&#39;re not going to even begin to do it if we go on allowing ourselves to cultivate the myth of the &#39;property ladder&#39;, or continue to accept the empty-headed media that comes along with it; what &#60;a href=&#34;http://thewikiman.co.uk/&#34;&#62;Rory Sutherland&#60;/a&#62; calls &#34;All this property porn&hellip; (turning) the whole bloody country into a nation of speculators, all the while making property completely unaffordable for anybody under 40.&#34;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;He puts it pretty brusquely:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&#34;If we never see again another programme in which some vapid idiots mince around redecorating a house, our lives will have gone up in value by 30%&#34;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p class=&#34;p2&#34;&#62;&#60;em&#62;Data and graphs have been taken from&nbsp;&#60;a href=&#34;http://issuu.com/architecture00/docs/arighttobuild&#34;&#62;A Right to Build&#60;/a&#62;, a joint research project by Architecture 00:/ and University of Sheffield School of Architecture, exploring the UK Housing crisis and the future of housing.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F50%2Fshrinkflation.html&#38;title=Shrinkflation%21&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F50%2Fshrinkflation.html&#38;title=Shrinkflation%21&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F50%2Fshrinkflation.html&#38;t=Shrinkflation%21&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F50%2Fshrinkflation.html&#38;title=Shrinkflation%21&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F50%2Fshrinkflation.html@@ta 
&#38;=Shrinkflation%21&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F50%2Fshrinkflation.html&#38;t=Shrinkflation%21&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>The Profit Function</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/49/the-profit-function.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;div&#62;
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&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As governments have looked increasingly to private markets for the provision of public assets &ndash; cities, infrastructure, schools, hospitals and, in particular, housing &ndash; we have all unknowingly signed a profound contract between &#60;em&#62;private gain&#60;/em&#62; and &#60;em&#62;public good&#60;/em&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The Profit Function is an enquiry into the dynamics of that contract; the way that this seemingly simple economic shift might have fundamentally altered the way that buildings and cities are designed.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Based on the premise that profit has become perhaps the most prolific design project in history, but one with no corresponding theory or manifesto, this paper begins to construct a basic theory for the design of profit, and interviews those who one would normally associate with the production of profit through architecture. What is exposed is not &lsquo;bad design&rsquo;, as it is often perceived, but the precise opposite: the systematic &#60;em&#62;success&#60;/em&#62; of a design logic whose value systems can then be compared to our own.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;The Profit Function was written in 2008, just as what was then called &#39;the credit crunch&#39; began to hit. In some ways therefore it is a little dated &nbsp;(the ideas and situations have moved on, and we have learned more about what caused them) but in others it has been revealed to be highly pertinent now as then. In the words of Robin Murray, &#34;the first great crisis of the 21st century has been met with the instruments of the 20th&#34; &ndash; that is, even as the belief in shareholder profit as an engine to produce public good has almost universally been discredited, to the extent that it is no longer in any way controversial to state that free-market capitalism has failed, there remains a void where the alternatives should be. This is how we procured cities then, how should we do it now? &nbsp;The Profit Function, in retrospect, wasn&#39;t a bad place to start.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The Profit Function | Alastair Parvin, 2008 | University of Sheffield School of Architecture&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F49%2Fthe-profit-function.html&#38;title=The+Profit+Function&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F49%2Fthe-profit-function.html&#38;title=The+Profit+Function&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F49%2Fthe-profit-function.html&#38;t=The+Profit+Function&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F49%2Fthe-profit-function.html&#38;title=The+Profit+Function&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F49%2Fthe-profit-function.html@@ta 
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&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;WikiHouse is an open source construction set. Its aim is to allow anyone to design, download and &lsquo;print&rsquo; CNC cut plywood houses and components, which can be assembled with minimal formal skill or training. In short, to put the capability of designing and building your own house into the public domain. It is being led by &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.architecture00.net/&#34;&#62;Architecture 00:/&#60;/a&#62;,&nbsp;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.espians.com/&#34;&#62;Espians&#60;/a&#62; and &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.momentumengineering.com/&#34;&#62;Momentum Engineering&#60;/a&#62;.&nbsp;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It was John Maynard Keynes who once pointed out the simple fact that &ldquo;it is easier to ship recipes than cakes and biscuits&rdquo;. Yet, of course, the industrial economy of the 20th century was shaped by the opposite philosophy: carefully guarded intellectual property, factory mass-production, and the shipping of goods over vast distances, in search of artificially cheap labour.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Design now finds itself on the edge of a new industrial revolution.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It is a revolution which can trace its origins back over fifteen years ago, to the software industry, and the open source design movement. As the web grew, groups of programmers began to do something which, on the face of it, made no business sense: they started sharing their code &ndash; seemingly for free. Ostensibly, the principle was simply one of effectiveness: with more team members, development can progress more quickly and with more &#39;eyeballs&#39;, &#39;bugs&#39; are quickly found and solved. But open source design became much more than that, it became a philosophy, a culture; whereby users can download software for free, adapt it and improve it. &nbsp;In return, they share their improvements with everyone else. Open source products are now a major part of the software landscape. For almost every proprietary piece of software, there is now an open source equivalent: for Windows, there is Linux; for Internet Explorer, there is Firefox, for Office, there is OpenOffice. What is perhaps even more fascinating is that many of the tools web developers use to collaborate, down to the very languages they work with, are themselves open.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Software is much easier to share than hardware. Only now, years later, are we beginning to see the full emergence of an open source movement for the design of physical, material objects; often referred to as the &#39;maker&rsquo; movement. The driver for this is not just the web making design-sharing more global, but also a string of manufacturing technologies which are making automated manufacturing more and more local. High-fidelity manufacturing processes such as laser cutting, CNC-machining and 3D printing are becoming ever more accessible and more affordable. We can guess where this might lead and how radically it might re-shape our idea of industry; beyond the mass-production lines and supply chains of the 20th century consumer economy.&nbsp;Where the politics of the last century were driven by the democratisation of &#60;em&#62;consumption&#60;/em&#62; (Henry Ford, Coca cola, Tesco etc), the politics of this one, it might be hoped, will be shaped by something far more liberating and far more ecologically compatiable with the planet: the democratisation of &#60;em&#62;production.&#60;/em&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The factory of the 21st century might well be&nbsp;&#60;em&#62;everywhere&#60;/em&#62;, and the design team,&nbsp;&#60;em&#62;everyone&#60;/em&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It is not so much the technology of this revolution that should interest us, but the social forms of production that come with it. More and more, design will be something done not just by teams of professionals, but by open communities of user-makers, designing and making for themselves. Contrary to popular belief, these open communities are not working for &#39;free&#39; &ndash; they are not altruistic amateurs. They are participants in a kind of social, peer-to-peer economy which produces work and exchanges value outside the traditional &#39;firm&#39; or the monetary economy.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As professional designers, working within that economy has been as much an experiment for us as the project itself &ndash; a seeming contradiction, but an enjoyable one: WikiHouse has been the chance to scratch a long-held itch. It is an opportunity to apply open design thinking to one of the oldest problems there is. We are offering WikiHouse only as a window onto a wider movement, and the next logical step in a long line of architectural experiments aimed at lowering the social and economic threshold for making architecture; from Walter Segal to Hexayurt. What we find compelling about the WikiHouse system is its directness, the power to be able to turn design information into solid, buildable structures with such little effort. The first prototype, a 0.6m thick section of a house, went from CAD drawings to completion in less than 24 hours. It was erected in only 2 hours. Despite the complexity of the technology behind it, the assembly process itself feels oddly simple and traditional: &#39;barn-raising&#39; each section by hand, and malleting pegs into the connections.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;The WikiHouse process&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-123-imagefile.gif&#34; alt=&#34;The WikiHouse process&#34; width=&#34;600&#34; height=&#34;424&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It is also wonderfully sociable. &nbsp;The project itself has begun to gather a growing circle of friends and collaborators from a wide spread of disciplines. Herein lies the lesson for us. Every line of code, every detail must be dedicated to one clear aim: not complexity of form, but simplicity of process. The goal is to establish design &#39;standards&#39;, rules which allow the work of one person to be useful to someone else. It&#39;s not easy, but if it can be achieved, that is how projects like this will move from straightforward collaboration to full, powerful, open mass-collaboration.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Long tail&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-126-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Long tail&#34; width=&#34;629&#34; height=&#34;530&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The inevitable question will be, as it always is, what does open source hardware design mean for professional designers and architects? Is it a threat? The answer is: probably not. After all, the home printer is effectively a desktop printing press, but it has not made the professional print shop obsolete.&nbsp;In fact, as strange as it might seem, open design might well represent a form of salvation for the struggling design professions.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Firstly, because open design represents a liberation from the persistent myth of solitary authorship. One of the maxims of the open source movement is &#39;be lazy like a fox&#39; &ndash; don&#39;t reinvent anything from scratch, take what has already been done and tweak it slightly until it works better. Then share it and attribute the previous authors. It is a far cry from an architecture profession, where all too often unpaid interns will find themselves working into the night, solving construction details which have been solved thousands of times before, or that someone is also solving at the same moment. There is an economy of effort in mass-collaboration which architecture has never achieved.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Secondly, because the architectural profession represents only a tiny portion of architectural output. it is well known that most buildings have nothing to do with architects. &#60;a href=&#34;http://tedxberlin.de/2011/08/tedxberlin-2010-daniel-dendra/&#34;&#62;Daniel Dendra&#60;/a&#62; estimates that architecture&#39;s market share is something like 2%. Embracing open source design confronts not architecture&#39;s dominance of the 2%, but architecture&#39;s inability to reach the 98% of buildings which have nothing to do with architects, and for which hiring an architect would, realistically, be uneconomic. Rather than consign this &#39;long tail&#39; of building to the inadequacy and passivity of mass-consumer design, open design suggests an alternative role for architecture. Architecture can be concerned not just with the &nbsp;design of structures, but also the creation of tools and systems which allow others to design and make structures for themselves beyond architecture&#39;s traditional economy.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;WikiHouse at the Hub&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-124-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;WikiHouse at the Hub&#34; width=&#34;800&#34; height=&#34;533&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As experimental as they are, WikiHouse and open hardware experiments like it should be thought of as more than playful geekery. Whether these open source projects survive or are replaced by others, they represent early prototypes for something very powerful: a set of global, public domain design and manufacturing tools for the 99%: industrial infrastructure for a social economy. As one commentator put nicely; &#34;when you break it down, this is just trying to do for buildings and products what YouTube did for broadcasting, or what Wikipedia did for knowledge, lower the threshold for production, share it widely and see what happens.&#34;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;This article (edited) was first published in &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.architecturetoday.co.uk/&#34;&#62;Architecture Today&#60;/a&#62;, November 2011.&nbsp;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;Go to the &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.wikihouse.cc/&#34;&#62;WikiHouse website&#60;/a&#62;.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;Go to the &#60;a href=&#34;http://blog.wikihouse.cc/&#34;&#62;WikiHouse blog&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;Follow &#60;a href=&#34;https://twitter.com/#!/WIKIHOUSE&#34;&#62;WikiHouse on Twitter&#60;/a&#62;.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Team:&nbsp;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;https://twitter.com/#!/alastairparvin&#34;&#62;Alastair Parvin&#60;/a&#62; / &#60;a href=&#34;https://twitter.com/#!/nick_diaconou&#34;&#62;Nick Ierodiaconou&#60;/a&#62; /&#60;a href=&#34;https://twitter.com/#!/thruflo&#34;&#62; James Arthur&#60;/a&#62; /&#60;a href=&#34;https://twitter.com/#!/tav&#34;&#62; Tav&#60;/a&#62; / Steve Fisher / Austen Cook / Joni Steiner / Ruphina Choe / Indy Johar / Yogesh Taylor / ..............* (you)&#60;/p&#62;
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&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;To download the pdf, click &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.architecture00.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ArchEdforNextEconomy.pdf&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;here&#60;/a&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F47%2Feducation-for-architectures-next-economy.html&#38;title=Education+for+Architecture%27s+Next+Economy&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F47%2Feducation-for-architectures-next-economy.html&#38;title=Education+for+Architecture%27s+Next+Economy&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F47%2Feducation-for-architectures-next-economy.html&#38;t=Education+for+Architecture%27s+Next+Economy&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F47%2Feducation-for-architectures-next-economy.html&#38;title=Education+for+Architecture%27s+Next+Economy&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F47%2Feducation-for-architectures-next-economy.html@@ta 
&#38;=Education+for+Architecture%27s+Next+Economy&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F47%2Feducation-for-architectures-next-economy.html&#38;t=Education+for+Architecture%27s+Next+Economy&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Architecture Schools Should Be Dissolved!*</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/46/architecture-schools-should-be-dissolved.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Poster front&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-118-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster front&#34; width=&#34;842&#34; height=&#34;1191&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Poster reverse&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-119-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster reverse&#34; width=&#34;842&#34; height=&#34;1191&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Download the pdf &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.architecture00.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Dissolve.pdf&#34;&#62;here&#60;/a&#62;.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;This poster was produced by Sam Brown, Tatjana Schneider and Alastair Parvin for a debate organised by &#60;a href=&#34;http://projectcontext.wordpress.com/&#34;&#62;Project Context&#60;/a&#62; at the &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.shef.ac.uk/architecture&#34;&#62;University of Sheffield School of Architecture&#60;/a&#62;, in response to the motion &#39;Architecture Schools should be dissolved&#34;.&nbsp;You can watch the recorded video of the event &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.livestream.com/ssoa/video?clipId=pla_14fd3f8f-7874-4bec-b148-9543a32689e8&amp;utm_source=lslibrary&amp;utm_medium=ui-thumb&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;here&#60;/a&#62;. Please extend the debate using the comment thread below.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F46%2Farchitecture-schools-should-be-dissolved.html&#38;title=Architecture+Schools+Should+Be+Dissolved%21%2A&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F46%2Farchitecture-schools-should-be-dissolved.html&#38;title=Architecture+Schools+Should+Be+Dissolved%21%2A&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F46%2Farchitecture-schools-should-be-dissolved.html&#38;t=Architecture+Schools+Should+Be+Dissolved%21%2A&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F46%2Farchitecture-schools-should-be-dissolved.html&#38;title=Architecture+Schools+Should+Be+Dissolved%21%2A&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F46%2Farchitecture-schools-should-be-dissolved.html@@ta 
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&#60;p&#62;The challenge of designing a pylon for the 21st century is, in some sense, a trick question. Or rather, it predicates an answer for which there is no clear question. Behind the challenge there lies, nonetheless, an interesting problem. As the UK National Grid faces its transformation over the next few decades of energy revolution, the grid itself will need to be renewed and expanded, with, inevitably, new lines being installed. Many of these will run across rural landscapes. The response is easy to predict: expect protests, local campaigns and acrimonious planning disputes. The existing design of the UK electricity pylon may be deeply-loved by some, but it is deeply reviled by many more. It articulates the contradiction presented by that part of us which protests against a &#39;blot&#39; upon rural skylines even as we insist upon resilient energy supply, or campagin against the installation of telecommunications masts near our homes, moments before complaining that we can&#39;t get a decent signal on our mobile phone.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It is an intractable problem, and understandably perhaps, the Energy Secretary and the National Grid&#39;s have attempted to tackle it through design. The logic goes something along these lines:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;1. People think pylons are ugly.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;2. Therefore we need to make them less ugly.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Q. Who is good at making things look less ugly? &nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;A. Architects.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Putting aside this painfully reductive view of architecture&#39;s role (the persistent, destructive myth that design is concerned only with the cosmetic appearance of physical objects), it is unlikely to succeed even as a strategic response to the dilemma. It is difficult to imagine that a cosmetic makeover alone will be capable of shifting popular perception, however beautifully it might be executed. Firstly, because citizens are not so stupid that they do not realise that pylons are devices deployed for reasons of economy: being far cheaper than burying power lines underground, and secondly, because health concerns about pylons will always factor equally with aesthetic ones.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Therein lies one trick in the question, but there is another. The problem with introducing a &ldquo;new&rdquo; design for the pylon (even one which is spectacularly beautiful as a sculptural object) is that almost immediately all other pylons will become &ldquo;the old one&rdquo;, rendering them either even more unpopular, or possibly, the opposite: suddenly popular &ndash; as a sense of nostalgia adds tint to the lenses through which they are viewed.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;So the question &#39;what does the pylon of the future look like?&#39; is one with no correct answers. To really engage with the root of the National Grid&#39;s dilemma, we need to change the rules.&nbsp;The proposal made here is based on two basic principles:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Darwin&#39;s Finches&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-113-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Darwin&#39;s Finches&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;383&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Principle #1: Mass-specialisation&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;If we reflect upon the technologies which are radically re-shaping design and manufacturing - in particular open, parametric design, and automated manufacturing &ndash; &nbsp;we are now able to recognise that the era in which the need for efficiency forced us towards mass-produced, &nbsp;indifferent to their environment, was only a short-term constraint. The pylon of the 21st century will not be a straightforward replacement for the universal pylon of the 20th, but rather a liberation from the monotony of &lsquo;one-size-fits-all&rsquo; design. No two places are the same &ndash; there is no longer any reason why any two pylons need to be the same.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;We now have the capacity, without any great loss in efficiency or economy, to allow functional and cultural specificity on a massive-scale. It is, in effect, a form of bio-mimicry, wherein each solution can be thought of a &lsquo;species&rsquo;. Like Darwin&rsquo;s Galapagos finches, each species evolves to be best suited to its local environment, and so becomes embedded in local climates, topographies, eco-systems and cultures. Effectively, the result would be to allow the British pylon to develop local and regional &#39;accents&#39;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;K6&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-114-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;K6&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;347&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Principle #2: Infrastructure as Cultural heritage&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If you buy a souvenir in Paris, it is more than probable it will depict the Eiffel tower. In New York: the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. In London however, the vast majority of souvenirs - trinketed fragments of cultural identity - depict not individual buildings, but infrastructure: red post boxes, red-buses, tube maps, and the red K6 telephone box.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Why should this be any less true in rural landscapes? Could pylons become just as much a reflection of cultural identity, such that visitors would be able to &lsquo;see&rsquo; a cultural map of Britain as they drive from one county to another, or walk from one village to the next? Could &lsquo;pylon-spotting&rsquo; become a national pastime?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Pylon1&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-111-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Pylon1&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;317&#34; /&#62;&#60;a title=&#34;Poster&#34; href=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-115-imagefullfile.jpg&#34;&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Poster&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-115-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;708&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;DARWIN&#39;S PYLON&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What is proposed therefore is not a singular design for the pylon, but rather a generative system; a piece of open, parametric software which allows the distinctive lattice pylon to &#39;evolve&#39; to its local environment. In each case, a unique structural topology is generated, which is articulated in a structural system of nodes and tubular steel connectors. These parts can be manufactured, shipped and assembled with the same efficiency (but far greater effectiveness) as a universal solution, but allows structural and programmatic mutations: pylons as landmarks, follies, agricultural hardware, secret bluetooth tags... In essex, one wildlife conservation group co-design a pylon incorporating a bat habitat. &nbsp;Near the M5 motorway, a parish council commission an artist, who fits fluorescent strip lights to the pylon structure. Unwired, the bulbs cast an eerie glow across the motorway as the magnetic field around the power lines activates the mercury vapour in the tubes. Guidebooks note that they are referred to locally as the &#39;ghost pylons&#39;.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The question of ugliness? Not solved, but somehow less important than it previously seemed.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;&#39;Pylons of Great Britain&#39; was an entry to the 2011 Pylon design competition, organised by the&nbsp;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.nationalgrid.com/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;National Grid&#60;/a&#62;&nbsp;and the&nbsp;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.architecture.com/&#34;&#62;Royal Institution of British Architects (RIBA)&#60;/a&#62;. It was not selected by the judges. The text and images in this article are based on excerpts from the submitted proposal. The successful entries can be viewed&nbsp;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.ribapylondesign.com/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;here&#60;/a&#62;.&nbsp;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Pylon2&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-112-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Pylon2&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;411&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Connections&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-116-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Connections&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;1423&#34; /&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Assembly&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-117-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Assembly&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;1518&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F45%2Fpylons-of-great-britain.html&#38;title=Pylons+of+Great+Britain&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F45%2Fpylons-of-great-britain.html&#38;title=Pylons+of+Great+Britain&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F45%2Fpylons-of-great-britain.html&#38;t=Pylons+of+Great+Britain&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F45%2Fpylons-of-great-britain.html&#38;title=Pylons+of+Great+Britain&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F45%2Fpylons-of-great-britain.html@@ta 
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&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Shrink&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-109-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Shrink&#34; width=&#34;800&#34; height=&#34;600&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The next decade will be defined, politicians now tell us, as an &#39;age of austerity&#39;. As many have countered, this is not an idea we should accept without question: since 2009, the word &#39;austerity&#39; has taken on a new meaning, associated as it now is with a particular political orthodoxy which assumes that it is legitimate to make society as a whole pay &#39;in kind&#39; to cover the cost of propping up of shrinking monetary economies. &nbsp;The politics of &#39;austerity&#39; is the equivalent of a company which avoids bankruptcy only by making its employees work extra hours for no more money, or by turning off the air conditioning. It improves the numbers on the balance sheet, but only by shifting the real cost onto areas were it cannot be quantified or accounted for, and often in ways which will damage the long-term viability of the organisation. Our situation is often described as one in which &#39;&#60;a title=&#34;Privatising profits and socialising losses&#34; href=&#34;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatizing_profits_and_socializing_losses&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;profits are privatised and losses are socialised&#60;/a&#62;&#39;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Whatever the political controversies or historic causes, it nonetheless seems reasonable to assume that the next decade will be very strongly defined by, if not austerity, then certainly &#60;a title=&#34;Scarcity&#34; href=&#34;http://www.scibe.eu/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;scarcity&#60;/a&#62;. Scarcity of resources, time, energy, housing and above all, public spending money.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE PROGRESSIVE&#39;S PARADOX&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;The paradox is that this event, whose causes seem to be so obviously external, happens to precisely co-incide with a decade in which a number of long-brewing crises will come to a head (many might justifiably argue that his is not a coincidence at all), and we will finally have to do something about them. Climate change is the most obvious example, but along with it comes house price inflation, escalating rail fares, rising food costs, peak oil, north / south inequality. In short, we&#39;ve arrived at a period of time which requires massive, game-changing investment in infrastructure just at the moment at which most governments have run out of money.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Conventionally, the Keynesian fiscal stimulus is advocated by economists as the perfect response to this paradox &ndash; to use massive government investment during a recession to create employment and, in so doing, lay the foundations for the next economy. Today, &#39;green industry&#39; is usually cited as the candidate for that stimulus.&nbsp;The problem is that very few governments currently have the political will or credit to seriously invest that kind of money in the face of mounting public debt (with the only possible exception being China).&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;To the political economist, this might be an intractable dichotomy: the variables are set, and the toolbox is bare. Applying a design lens however, reveals another, perhaps slightly more radical kind of innovation, which alters the variables in the equation.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As Rory Sutherland argued in &#60;a title=&#34;Rory Sutherland on TED&#34; href=&#34;http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;his 2009 TED talk&#60;/a&#62;, we naturally tend to try to solve big, heavy problems by using big, heavy solutions, often to little or no effect. What if, instead, we were to think laterally, and change the rules &ndash; &nbsp;take both the need for financial austerity and the need for progressive investment &ndash; and say &#39;yes&#39; to both?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Shrink1&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-105-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Shrink1&#34; width=&#34;533&#34; height=&#34;876&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;SHRINK: 3.6m &gt; 1.8m&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Shrink is both an illustration, and a serious suggestion. It proposes a strategy to double the capacity of the UK&#39;s road infrastructure over 5 years, without spending anything more than the price of... several thousand miles of white paint. &nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What if the UK parliament were to pass a piece of legislation determining that over five years, lane widths in the UK were going to halve &ndash; from around 3.6m to 1.8m, and that by 2016, all new vehicles on sale in the UK (with some key exceptions) would conform to this gauge. The premise is not as outrageous as it might seem. We have long been aware that car design needs to shift towards a micro eco-car norm, if only based on the illogical tendency in car design towards selling larger and larger vehicles which are used with an average occupancy rate of only &#60;a title=&#34;DfT&#34; href=&#34;http://www.dft.gov.uk/webtag/documents/expert/unit3.5.6.php&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;1.58&#60;/a&#62; people. Such a proposal recognises that we have a one-off opportunity to precipitate that change, and in the process to incidentally unleash huge extra capacity in the road network, for roughly no extra cost.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Shrink2&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-106-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Shrink2&#34; width=&#34;771&#34; height=&#34;429&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Almost overnight, an individual road would effectively double in width, without a single square metre of additional tarmac being laid beyond normal maintenance. But the legislation would also have a number of simultaneous effects beyond roads themselves. &nbsp;First, the gauge would also have an immediate impact on car parks and urban spaces. Car parks, particularly those at railway stations, would vastly increase in capacity, supporting a culture of short-range car use, long-range train use by providing cheap parking at railway stations. At the same time, parking capacity in city and town centres would multiply which, rather than being allowed to simply reduce parking costs, would be an opportunity to reclaim street space for pedestrians and create wide, exclusive cycle lanes. This discredits the myth that increasing capacity would necessarily encourage increased car use. In fact, more broadly, the centre-left&#39;s habitual stigmatisation of the car as necessarily &#39;bad&#39; should itself be put under scrutiny. Our objection to the car should not be against the car itself, but against its impact both upon its environment (a function of the fuel it uses), and its tendency to be used as an excuse for poor urban design. It is equally possible for the city to accommodate the car without being shaped by it as it is for our living rooms to accommodate the television, without being designed around it.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Beneath the surface, shrink legislation would be an economic intervention as well as a technological one. In effect, it presents the global car manufacturers with a very clear choice. Either they would choose to respond to the new conditions, accelerating their micro eco-car programmes to meet the UK market earlier than planned, or they would decide that this specific UK market is just too small to be worth such effort. In the latter case, Shrink would create a 5 to 10 year constrained window, within which small companies pioneering micro eco-car prototypes (many of which are UK-based, such as &#60;a title=&#34;Gordon Murray Design&#34; href=&#34;http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/index.php&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;Gordon Murray&#39;s T25 and T27&#60;/a&#62;) have the opportunity to radically grow to scale within the UK before taking on the global market. By that time, the rise of the urban middle classes in the far east might have generated a huge global market for such vehicles. In effect, Shrink legislation would act as a closet form of &nbsp;protectionism, temporarily sculpting out a market space which might well allow a global British car manufacturing industry to be revived once more. It privatises the cost of investment, but socialises the gains.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Shrink3&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-107-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Shrink3&#34; width=&#34;770&#34; height=&#34;502&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;(TLV) TWO-LANE VEHICLES&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;There are, of course, myriad complications, and a number of practical exceptions which would need to be built into the Shrink rule. For one, goods haulage (which itself represents an effective but vastly inefficient transportation system which will find itself in need of radical redesign as oil prices rise) would need to be accommodated as a new class of &#39;two lane&#39; vehicle. This class might also include (for a while at least) vehicles used by families, vans (particularly quick-hire &#39;streetvans&#39;, used for occasional journeys &nbsp;with lots of luggage) and vehicles preserved as historic artefacts. All of these exceptions would be subject to variable road tax conditions, &nbsp;making it not impossible &ndash; but certainly expensive &shy;&ndash; to completely ignore the Shrink should you wish to. Thus, it would not be illegal to drive a 2009 Aston Martin as a two-lane vehicle, but it would (until it had reached a certain age at least), be a luxury in tax terms, just as it is a luxury consumer commodity in the first place.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Whether absurd, opportunistic or inevitable, Shrink legislation might well represent one example of a different kind of government intervention, one led not by pure economics but by creative design thinking, one based neither on oppressive regulation, unaccountable spending nor laissez-faire privatisation. This is a kind of anticipatory, design-minded market choreography, which may have applications and implications far beyond the age-old problem of getting from A to B.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
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&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;&ldquo;I don&#39;t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing &mdash; a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process&rdquo;&#60;/em&#62; &#60;strong&#62;R Buckminster Fulle&#60;/strong&#62;r&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This is a creation story which should begin with a disclaimer. The worldview it sets out does not (and I hope never will) represent anyone&#39;s actual beliefs &ndash; that&#39;s to say, it is neither fact nor opinion. It is more of a wilfully heretical lens through which to view things for a moment, if only because it will provoke us to think harder about what we see when we look away again. &nbsp;It has no particular agenda, other than perhaps to challenge the lazy thinking which has shaped, on one hand, our received consensus on &#39;nature&#39; and environmentalism, and on the other the narrow-minded philosophies-of-convenience that are created to protect particular short-term financial interests. Imagine James Lovelock&#39;s &#39;Gaia theory&#39; , hijacked and put on speed; or our own logic reflected back at us, unfiltered by ideology, humanity or hope. This is the story of industry, design and progress as it might be told by an absurdly rational (and mildly sociopathic) alien, patiently watching earth through a telescope.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE SUPER-PROCESS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Of all the many mechanisms into which star dust has formed, planet Earth is one of the most interesting and complex: a self-regulating super system, itself consisting of billions of other sub-systems and sub-sub-systems: climates, ecologies, organisms, metabolisms. The planet is, as &#39;Gaia&#39; theorists have argued, like a single, complex, self-regulating organism. It is not &#39;intelligent&#39; in the conventional sense &nbsp;(having, for example, a personality), but nonetheless it is a processor &ndash; like a vast computer, constantly writing new processes to regulate its own internal conditions. &nbsp;The number of possible mechanical functions these systems can evolve to perform seems to be almost unlimited. They range from basic chemical processes to construction, reproduction, environmental sensing, optical effects, self-awareness, logic... In short, Earth is a process worth watching.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE NATURAL DISASTER&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Some time around 3,000,000,000 years ago a species emerged on earth which began to radically alter the composition of the planet&#39;s atmosphere. It began to pollute the environment with a gas which was poisonous to many of the native species. The species (or more correctly, phylum) was cyanobacteria, and the poisonous gas: oxygen. Photosynthesis was an ecological disaster which quickly got out of control. From the perspective of a homeostatic atmospheric system (one which is self-regulated by feedback loops) the problem was that photosynthesising species had too few counter-mechanisms. Even if their explosive colonisation of the biosphere could be slowed by natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, meteorite strikes or ice ages, the plentiful supply of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere made this exponential growth almost unstoppable. Eventually, &nbsp;counter mechanisms did evolve: sea-creatures and wandering herbivores, which breathed oxygen, &nbsp;exhaled carbon dioxide, and ate photosynthesising plants. They thrived in the oxygen-polluted environment, but there were too few of them to correct the imbalance.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;To make things worse, the plants, having sequestered carbon from the atmosphere, &nbsp;would then die, and their carbon &nbsp;remains would slowly be buried and compressed into the ground, locked deeper and deeper away in the planet&#39;s crust. It was a process with no counter-process &ndash; no homeostatic feedback loop to rebalance its environmental effects. Continuous fossil fuel formation made atmospheric carbon dioxide into a non-renewable resource: one that was slowly running out. To somehow replace this missing carbon dioxide would require massive, seismic events of the sort no mechanism on earth was capable of producing.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It took &#39;Gaia&#39; millions of years to evolve a solution to this dilemma. The cleverness of nature&#39;s solution was that it was not a vast, powerful seismic process, but a tiny, elegant malfunction in the brain of one of the oxygen-breathing species.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The species, of course, was &#60;em&#62;homo sapiens&#60;/em&#62;. The malfunction: &#60;em&#62;status&#60;/em&#62;.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The beauty of status is, firstly, that it is a psychological phenomenon. To the individual experiencing it, it is deeply real and compelling, but it still does not technically &#39;exist&#39;. Secondly, status is a phenomenon which is entirely infra-species. Although a number of related species (chimpanzees, for example), have evolved a similar malfunction, &nbsp;social status within one species does not &nbsp;translate into another. However, within a species almost everything individuals do (besides basic functions, such as eating, moving, sleeping and reproducing) is in some way orientated around gaining, exhibiting or responding to social status, be it individual, familial or tribal. &nbsp;In fact, even those basic functions become opportunities to compete for, and display status.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The desire to maintain and increase status drove homo sapiens to extraordinary acts far beyond what was in their own evolutionary self-interest: murder, war, slavery, industry, fashion, ... sometimes they would erect vast, apparently functionless structures, purely to celebrate the status of the dead, even as living populations starved in order to make such constructions possible.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;For many millennia, status was fleeting &ndash; &nbsp;its only longevity came through hereditary social institutions &ndash; tribal chiefdoms , monarchies and the promise of recorded history. Then, some time around 3000BC, &nbsp;a mechanism emerged which took this intangible, illusory urge and turned it into (what became) the driving organisational force of human society: money. Money was, in many ways the perfect articulation of status, an abstract measure by which to store, exchange and accumulate it; meaningless beyond the species, but inescapable within it.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;STATUS STORAGE&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Money has two extraordinary characteristics. Firstly, it is impossible to argue with. It turns spurious irrationalities into apparently pragmatic choices, and in so doing disguises them as rational, normal and justifiable. Money is an exclusive paradigm &ndash; the longer humans spend thinking about it, the less they can remember how to measure value by any other means. &nbsp;Within just a few thousand years, money had subsumed almost all social and political discourse &ndash; governments professed their loyalty to it, and dedicated their public service to its creation. &nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The second characteristic of money is that, unlike specific forms of tangible value, it is an abstract, imaginary thing, and therefore theoretically infinite in quantity. The invention of money created an endless scale upon which homo sapiens could compete for status. More and more, humans began to apply their creative and productive capacity to it. Commodities were mined and manufactured not to accommodate the finite appetites of need, but the infinite appetites of status. Where demand for a product was finite, organisations could increase their profits by prodding &nbsp;the tiny status malfunction in their customers&#39; brains. Huge posters were erected to belittle passers-by. Messages read: &ldquo;You do not have enough status.&rdquo; &ldquo;This product will give you more status.&rdquo; &ldquo;Obey your thirst.&rdquo; The desire to consume escalated &ndash; this tiny species of brilliant, irrational, naked apes, its population expanding, began to devise more and more ingenious, powerful mechanisms to consume in greater quantities: food, raw materials, space, energy.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It had taken over 2 million years for the evolutionary process to respond, but homo sapiens, itself over 250,000 thousand years old, ultimately fulfilled its evolutionary purpose in not much more than 200 years. Vast tracts of the landscape were successfully cleared of the photosynthesising species &nbsp;which had been poisoning the atmosphere. Competing to make themselves richer, humans went to extraordinary effort to invent diggers and drills to dig down into the earth&#39;s crust, recover the lost carbon, and burn it, often for no purpose other than to light up their vast mausoleums.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If we &#60;em&#62;can&#60;/em&#62; think of Gaia as having some form of &#39;intelligence&#39;, then we&#39;d be forced to admit it had achieved a feat of undeniable genius: it had contrived of a species willing to go out of its way to drill deep into the planet&#39;s crust, recover the Lost Carbon, and release it back into the atmosphere.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;HOMEOSTASIS ANXIETY&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;The most elegant characteristic of this carbon-dioxide replacement process was that it was, like all of Gaia&#39;s processes, &nbsp;self-regulating. Humans had evolved to survive in the oxygen-poisoned, cooled atmosphere - thus in completing their task with such disproportionate speed, they were conveniently auto-destructive. The ultimate result was homeostasis... &nbsp;not through human knowledge (as some had imagined it might be), but rather through the opposite: a perfectly tuned combination of human ingenuity and human ignorance. Despite a short burst of resistance from scientists and environmentalists, Homo sapiens&#39; natural addiction to status proved to be hard-wired and utterly intractable. Humans continued with their important work, even as they became aware of their role in the process. They had long assumed their own behaviour to be against nature &ndash; an aberration &ndash; thus they overlooked the more logical interpretation; that they themselves were a natural process.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Within another 200 years, their population had once again shrunk to a size which could produce carbon dioxide only as rapidly as the photosynthesising species could sequester it. Homo sapiens was a lasting homeostatic device. As the human species had been decimated by drought, disease, man-made-poverty, war, famine and scarcity, some had escaped northwards in search of more fossil fuels to drill and burn. Centuries later, colonies of humans still survive there, largely unthreatened but for the occasional &nbsp;storms and, to the amusement of the alien observer who is equipped with a sense of irony, the ever-present risk of being attacked by polar bears.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F43%2Fdrillers.html&#38;title=Drillers&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F43%2Fdrillers.html&#38;title=Drillers&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F43%2Fdrillers.html&#38;t=Drillers&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F43%2Fdrillers.html&#38;title=Drillers&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F43%2Fdrillers.html@@ta 
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&#60;div&#62;
&#60;div&#62;
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&#60;p&#62;These are tough times for MPs. In an era of brutal 24 hour media-politics, it&#39;s important to know how to get the most out of one of the most crucial weapons in your opinion poll conquering arsenal: your tie.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;To help, Makeshift have designed this handy guide, helping MPs navigate the often confusing world of neckwear-based subliminal communication and ideological cross-dressing.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Click the image above to view the guide&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F42%2Fa-politicians-guide-to-ties.html&#38;title=A+Politicians+Guide+to%3A+Ties&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F42%2Fa-politicians-guide-to-ties.html&#38;title=A+Politicians+Guide+to%3A+Ties&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F42%2Fa-politicians-guide-to-ties.html&#38;t=A+Politicians+Guide+to%3A+Ties&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F42%2Fa-politicians-guide-to-ties.html&#38;title=A+Politicians+Guide+to%3A+Ties&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F42%2Fa-politicians-guide-to-ties.html@@ta 
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&#60;p&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://vimeo.com/11706999&#34;&#62;Heathrow Airplot Competion&#60;/a&#62; from &#60;a href=&#34;http://vimeo.com/greenpeaceuk&#34;&#62;Greenpeace UK&#60;/a&#62; on &#60;a href=&#34;http://vimeo.com&#34;&#62;Vimeo&#60;/a&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;Last year, Greenpeace organised the collective purchase of a plot of land directly in the path of the proposed third runway at Heathrow. The so-called &#39;Airplot&#39; ended up with 90,000 co-owners named on the deeds of the land, forming a legal obstacle to compulsory purchase, and a symbolic expression of support. At the beginning of 2010, an architectural competition was launched to design a defensible structure which would occupy the airplot site in the event of the plans going ahead, which would serve as a symbolic and physical barrier to compulsory purchase and the demolition of Sipson village. Groundswell was selected as the wining design by the judges in April, and the design was unveiled as the new government announced plans to scrap the third runway project in may.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Groundswell During Accumulation&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-82-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Groundswell During Accumulation&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;212&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Groundswell After&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-83-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Groundswell After&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;212&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Groundwell1&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-84-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Groundwell1&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;600&#34; /&#62;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;AN ANTI-MONUMENT&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What is proposed is, in effect, an &#39;anti-monument&#39; - an inversion of the traditional architectural symbol. Whereas the conventional monument is a structure built by the few to impress upon the many, this would be the reverse: a structure built by the many to impress upon the few.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Via the Greenpeace website, each supporter would fund 1 (or more) earthbags, which is printed with their name and delivered to the airplot, where it is filled with earth. The structure which results is not such much a building as a carefully choreographed accumulation - forming a physical and symbolic mass: a literal &#39;groundswell&#39;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The final size or budget of the structure may not be known at the outset, but would essentially be a product of the extent of support, which may accelerate once the process has begun.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If it had to go ahead, we think groundswell would be the worlds first truly &#39;crowdfunded&#39; structure: a physical articulation of people-power.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Groundswell2&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-85-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Groundswell2&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;600&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;SOFT STRENGTH&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Each earthbag is woven through with 4 biodegradable plastic cable-ties, and connected to its neighbours. This means that the structure behaves not just as a heavy compressive mass, but also as a reinforced tensile mesh - making it almost impossible to mechanically dig or bulldoze.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Such a structure can be dismantled, but not quickly, or by using brute force. The harder the attack, the more resilient the structure becomes.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Groundswell3&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-96-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Groundswell3&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;600&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;UNCERTAINTY AS A TOOL&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Demolition contractors, like all companies, have to manage risk.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;During accumulation, a network of tunnels is embedded into the groundswell, comprising re-used LDPE barrels and water tanks.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The actual extent and layout of these tunnels is a closely-guarded secret. Digger operators therefore have no way of knowing where the protestors are hidden, and are therefore forced to assume that any intervention into the structure poses a risk to human life.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;During a siege, regular YouTube broadcasts would be made from within the groundswell. Supporters from around the world would be encouraged to mock-up fake &#39;sets&#39; of the tunnels at home or in their gardens, and replicate these videos on the internet; making it almost impossible for authorities to know with any certainty how many people are actually within the groundswell at a given time.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Groundswell4&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-98-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Groundswell4&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;252&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;EARTHWORKS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What is left behind is, in effect, a man-made hill. Once the earthbags and cable-tie net have degraded, and the hill is overgrown with grass and vegetation - it becomes apparent that very little has actually been brought to the area, or taken away from it. Thousands of people have simply added their names to it.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Airplot Hill is left as a community resource and nature reserve; providing fruit, vegetables, honey and spectacular views of Heathrow and the surrounding landscape.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Bagging&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-90-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Bagging&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;307&#34; /&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Stacked&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-93-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Stacked&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;329&#34; /&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;In tunnels&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-91-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;In tunnels&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;329&#34; /&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Airplot Hill&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-94-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Airplot Hill&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;335&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;Groundswell, and other shortlisted entries will be on exhibition at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf in London from 2nd-6th June. 11am-6pm daily. Admission free. For more information check out Greenpeace&#39;s website &#60;/em&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/oxo &#34;&#62;&#60;em&#62;here&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;em&#62;.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F39%2Fgroundswell.html&#38;title=Groundswell&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F39%2Fgroundswell.html&#38;title=Groundswell&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F39%2Fgroundswell.html&#38;t=Groundswell&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F39%2Fgroundswell.html&#38;title=Groundswell&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F39%2Fgroundswell.html@@ta 
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&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Now, perhaps more than ever, architects are compelled by &#39;The City&#39;; by the global 50% urbanisation threshold reached in 2008, by questions of density, mass, form, &#39;bigness&#39;. The whole conversation around the design of cities has been based on the idea of cities as objects on a map - surrounded by white space.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;But that view of cities is, of course, a myth. What we see as a &#39;city&#39; is really a stage set: an illusion of stasis created by buildings, institutions and routines. But the reality is that either we move around, or goods move around on our behalf. The survival of that stage set is totally dependent on systems which ensure the continuous supply of food, water, goods, and energy to our cities. Farmland, motorways, distribution centres, infrastructures, container shipping ports... these &#39;server&#39; systems are, in a very pragmatic sense, the super-architectures of our time. The engine of a consumer society at its peak.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;oil and food&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-68-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;oil and food&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;482&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Yet it&#39;s becoming increasingly evident that we can no longer afford to take the smooth operation of those systems for granted. In recent years, the consolidation of the food system, and the shift towards a &#34;just-in-time&#34; logistics model has created a supposedly hyper-efficient food supply, which at the same time is highly vulnerable to shocks - and hugely energy intensive. So fast is the turnover of food-to-waste, that the major supermarket chains report to COBRA that cities contain, at any one time, only about 3 days worth of food.*&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;distribution&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-78-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;distribution&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;550&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;Map of the UK Strategic Road Network&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;em&#62; Showing the location of the RDC&#39;s (Regional Distribution Centres) of the &#39;big three&#39;: Sainsbury, Tesco and Asda Wal-Mart.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Our food system does make a massive contribution to climate change, loss of biodiversity and global water poverty&nbsp;but the threats we face from it are far more imminent than that. DEFRA estimate that the true cost of food distribution to the UK economy is no less than &pound;9bn per year. Richard Heinberg points out that the perceived &#39;efficiency&#39; of the modern food system is also mythical - it actually takes 10 calories of oil to produce only 1 calorie of food. So it can only be perceived as efficient while oil remains so cheap.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Many of us have been enthusiastic to join the vilification of intensive farms, supermarket chains and motorways as&nbsp;put forward by many environmentalists, and echoed their call for &#39;retreat&#39;: a &#39;moral&#39; shift towards local, organic production, without use of fertiliser or pesticides, and an abstinence from meat. In doing so we have been guilty of a rather modern naivety (and hypocrisy). In reality, most of us wouldn&#39;t like to be without bananas, wine or chocolate, and would be unwilling to really live with the social implications of a sudden shift towards totally organic, localised food production, not only in terms of its impact on our own lifestyles, but also on the poorest - who would effectively be priced out of food by such a move.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Our generation faces a massive challenge - and opportunity - to fundamentally redesign our industrial-age system of &#60;em&#62;mining&#60;/em&#62; food - towards a resilient, sustainable mode of &#60;em&#62;farming&#60;/em&#62; food - all without losing our capacity to produce and distribute food on a massive scale. We need to embark of a series of large scale agricultural and infrastructural experiments in how we feed cities.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Server is one such proposed experiment - based an almost absurdly simple proposition: could a motorway be self-sufficient? That is, could we unhook it from oil, and tie it into the surrounding agricultural economy, a belt of farmland whose major crop is .. mobility.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;algae farming&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-69-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;algae farming&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;280&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;Algaculture producing Biodiesel&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;em&#62; The annual fuel-demands of the study section of motorway require an oil-field belt 292m wide.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The project takes a 7-mile section of the M1 motorway in the midlands, and investigates its redesign as a self-sufficient farming belt, producing no overall waste and consuming no major external resources.Based on existing processes, prices and capacities, it attempts to choreograph a sort of agricultural ecosystem, in which the waste of one process is seen as the feedstock for the next.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Ecology&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-131-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Ecology&#34; width=&#34;917&#34; height=&#34;790&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;Industrial Ecology&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;em&#62; In a very straightforward way, this is a replacement for the conventional &#39;masterplan&#39;. The viability of any given programme is judged more in terms of its compatability with this map than any spatial one.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Integrating these process, rather than allowing them to be seen as entirely separate industries within an exclusively monetary economy results not just in improved financial viability, but also suggests a kind of ex-urban productive landscape, which generates social and cultural conditions which are beyond the designers control. The shift from linear conveyor-belt industry to a balanced ecology extends beyond simply material processes but to the underlying approach towards knowledge. Effectively the server belt is conceived as producing not just food, but also knowledge - through experimental (&#39;knowledge-intensive&#39;) agriculture. Each programme broadcasts information, data and stories on wi-fi and short-range FM broadcasts. In effect, the belt becomes a sort of 1-to-1 museum, where users become citizens rather than consumers: exposed to a continuous knowledge of the agricultural and rural systems of which they are a part.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The result highlights the extent to which many of our social and cultural norms are actually byproducts of a very crudely designed industrial / economic complex. It constitutes a challenge to some of narrow political dichotomies which currently dominate green politics: negotiating trade offs, trying to persuade consumers to abstain, and investing our effort on what is effectively damage limitation.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;A good example of this can be found in a story which broke during the research stages of this project in 2009. The Highways Agency announced that the M4 motorway would switch its lights off in the middle of the night, knowing that statistically this would lead to a greater number of deaths, but justifying this on the basis of reduced carbon: a corrosive political trade-off between one human life and another. By contrast - the server belt would produce enough energy from CHP (combined heat and power) units burning biogas, that the lighting demands of the motorway would be met using only 10% of it. We need to see our task not so much as a &#39;green revolution &#39; - as an industrial evolution, designing generous terms of engagement in a &nbsp;smart industrial pattern rather than preaching abstinence from a dumb one.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Server, as a planning project would be a massive undertaking. It is hugely speculative - it&#39;s riddled with unresolved problems, unintended consequences. At the same time, confronted by the transition to a post-oil society, by the obsolescence of our industrial-age food system: it is beginning to look less like a speculation than a prediction, less inconceivable than inevitable. The big question is: why should we do it &#60;em&#62;now&#60;/em&#62;? Surely, one might ask, if oil is going to become an increasingly irrational dependency for the energy market, then won&#39;t the market itself begin to &#39;correct&#39; itself - in other words as oil becomes more expensive, won&#39;t the alternatives become more and more viable, and should we not just wait until that happens? Believe it or not, the broad government policy over the last decades has more or less stuck to this view, often being of accused of a &#39;let Tesco do it&#39; approach to the food system, and worse, a &#39;let the market respond&#39; approach to peak oil.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;There are 3 reasons why this project, and others like it, should be piloted on a purely anticipatory basis, rather than simply &#39;allowed to happen&#39; reactively.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;First, markets aren&#39;t actually as rational as we might assume. We know they tend to take a fairly narrow view of problems - so for example, businesses are more likely to focus on the average price of oil than the full &#39;domino&#39; effect of sudden shocks. It would be un-viable for them to totally factor the &#34;unknown unknowns&#34; into their everyday industrial architecture, (that&#39;s what insurance companies are for). Unless we take a positive decision to anticipate instability and design-it-out, there&#39;s a good chance we will find ourselves in more and more &#39;too-big-to-fail&#39; scenarios, where government is forced to prop-up unready corporates.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Secondly, to quote Twain: &#34;to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail&#34;. Industry, society and the planning system have got used to viewing and operating in a certain way, its very hard to get them to lead on a new paradigm. If we do so, the eventual articulations of this when they do occur are likely to look rather different. The various stages of the ecosystem will be fragmented and separate, with none of the advantages (both economic and social) that accrue from taking an integrated approach.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;And thirdly, of course, there is the &#39;Dubai&#39; argument - building a new roof while the sun shines. While there are risks and costs to acting ahead of events, there are also quantifiable benefits to being anticipatory: not just in having a resilience to shocks, but also in that by developing knowledge&nbsp;&#60;em&#62;before&#60;/em&#62; it is &#39;viable&#39;, the UK and Europe will have scaleable prototypes, developed, tested and ready to export when the first oil shocks roll in.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;cattle&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-70-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;cattle&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;Cattle Farms&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;&nbsp;The major by-product of the algaculture process can used as an organic, high-protein cattle feed, supporting 3200 head of cattle.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;cowfarm&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-66-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;cowfarm&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Biogas Harvestin&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;strong&#62;g&#60;/strong&#62; An average cow may yield 500L of methane through enteric fermentation, and 50kg of slurry per day. The proposal is that as much of this should be harvested as possible (the former through air-controlled environments under the superstructure), yielding a huge amount of biogas, which is burnt to generate heat and electricity.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Warehouse&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-71-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Warehouse&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;280&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;Programmatic Inte&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;nsification&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;em&#62; The Farming superstructure can be modified and rented out as an expandable zone - supporting other server programmes (such as distribution).&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;aircraft&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-72-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;aircraft&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;Server Planning Agency&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;&nbsp;The belt forms an ex-urban productive landscape. Construction within the belt is not regulated by local planning authorities, but is managed through a unique planning model within the server belt, which can be broadly understood as being more liberal in terms of spatial constraints, but more draconian in terms of waste and consumption.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;experimental agriculture&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-73-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;experimental agriculture&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;280&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Experimental Agriculture Zones&#60;/strong&#62; Along the fringes of the belt, micro-farming areas. These are serviced by &#39;land-scanners&#39;, a plug-and-play operated gantry farming system which enables &#39;knowledge-intensive&#39; farming: mixed-cropping, rotation farming, and even mechanical tools such as weeding. In effect: they become laboratories for the principles of permaculture to be applied on a larger scale (acres per farmer).&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;radio&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-74-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;radio&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;335&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;1-1 Museum&#60;/strong&#62; All programmes broadcast on short-range FM. These frequencies can be tuned according to users&#39; level of expertise.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;watford gap&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-75-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;watford gap&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;282&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Watford Gap Service Area&#60;/strong&#62; The ability to farm mobility rather than mine it, essentially debunks the idea of &#39;food miles&#39; - allowing us to redefine what we mean by &#39;local&#39;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;pool&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-80-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;pool&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;275&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Generosity&nbsp;&#60;/strong&#62;Since programme is generated by available resources, industrial, culture and leisure programmes become indistinguishable. In this case, excess heat from CHP units provides enough heat for indoor growing, palm houses and a swimming pool on the fuel field.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;shoot&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-76-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;shoot&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;280&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;Shoot &#60;/strong&#62;The field is designed to absorb, rather than destroy ground-conitions. Shooting posts above the field are designed such that steps can be easily negotiated by gundogs.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;aerial&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-77-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;aerial&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;280&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;To download a pdf of the project from Building Design Magazine, click &#60;a href=&#34;http://media.bdonline.co.uk/Class2009/AlastairParvin.pdf&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;here&#60;/a&#62;.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;* For more about the food system, check out&nbsp;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.hungrycitybook.co.uk/&#34;&#62;Hungry City&#60;/a&#62;, by Carolyn Steel.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F38%2Fserver.html&#38;title=Server&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F38%2Fserver.html&#38;title=Server&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F38%2Fserver.html&#38;t=Server&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F38%2Fserver.html&#38;title=Server&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F38%2Fserver.html@@ta 
&#38;=Server&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F38%2Fserver.html&#38;t=Server&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>What Markets Could Learn from Vinyl</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/37/what-markets-could-learn-from-vinyl.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Technological advancement today has reached unprecedented speed. Increased performance and physical shrinking of everything from computers to music players cater for the mass market in terms of sheer convenience.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Nothing could be more true than sales of music over the last three decades. Vinyl sales have declined steadily since the introduction of physically smaller mediums the 1970&#39;s, the 8 track followed by the audiocassette in the 1980&iacute;s. The apparent death knell for vinyl struck during the 1990&#39;s, with the rise of compact disc and finally online music, with digital music sales from Apple&rsquo;s iTunes store alone selling 8.5 billion songs since 2003.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Shifts in music format market ultimately come down to a form of convenience. &nbsp;Vinyl was replaced by the portable walkman that played cassettes, which in turn was superseded by compact disc - although larger played audio at a noticeably higher quality. The rise of Mp3 in the late 1990&#39;s presents an interesting paradox; in terms of audio quality it wasn&rsquo;t great; but its compression allowed it to be shared easily and is small enough so that you can now fit thousands of songs on one player makes it more convenient for the average consumer to buy digital. In other words, Mp3 wasn&rsquo;t technically very good, but it was g&#60;em&#62;ood enough&#60;/em&#62; to the point where the music industry did a 180-degree turn and inaugurated the digital music revolution.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;The rise of the supermarket&#34; onmouseout=&#34;this.src=&#39;/cms/files/Image/Image-49-imagefullfile.jpg&#39;;&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-49-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;The rise of the supermarket&#34; width=&#34;540&#34; height=&#34;218&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Now let&rsquo;s look at the steady decline of the traditional market in the same period. &nbsp;Until the 1950&#39;s, the traditional market model has been the basis for economic growth the world over, and certainly for urban growth in the UK. Chesterfield market in Derbyshire, for example, has been in operation since 1165. &nbsp;However, the rise of the supermarket and the convenience it afforded the average consumer has been fundamental to its growth. This coupled with ever-sophisticated volume distribution has allowed supermarkets to out-price its competitors in the traditional open-air market. Throw in the fact that supermarkets house most goods the average consumer needs in a controlled environment; and its little wonder why consumers choose to shop at Tesco over the open air market in the middle of a British winter.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Competition from supermarkets has not been helped by poor planning choices by councils over the country. A lack of investment in covered market halls, in addition to absurd planning regulations that discourage market traders yet favour the supermarket have all contributed to the decline of the market. Furthermore, out of town shopping centres now compete with high street discount retailers for a portion of the market share in consumer goods.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Retail Environments and their market share&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-50-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Retail Environments and their market share&#34; width=&#34;350&#34; height=&#34;613&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It is hardly surprising then to learn that the total revenue generated by all the independent traders in every market in the UK accounts for just between &pound;1-3 billion pounds a year, contrasting with Tesco&rsquo;s 2008 annual sales revenue figure of &pound;41.5 billion. The increasing market share provided by online shopping (of which major supermarkets generate a great deal of income as well) does not bode well for traditional market stallholders without the resources to provide convenience for their customers.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;But let&rsquo;s return to vinyl. Vinyl sales from the music major labels although a fraction of what they were three decades ago have actually remained steady. &nbsp;Even stranger is the spiralling growth of vinyl sales for independent labels and artists. There are many factors contributing towards this resurgence: nostalgia, a cult following from audiophiles, collectability, the popularity of the DJ revolution, large-scale artwork and detailed liner notes, etc. &nbsp;Vinyl has a number of unique selling points that appeal to consumers who want a flavour of authenticity to their musical purchase, now largely devoid of character when lost in a seeming plethora of &#39;homogenised&#39; digital music. &nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This unique niche overcomes convenience in favour of &#60;em&#62;experience&#60;/em&#62;. The experience of concentrating on the record, as there is less choice and more attention involved in playing the music, in addition to time spent admiring the artwork . Here then lies the potential for the future of the market; a unique shopping opportunity made up of a community of traders and consumers, which celebrates speciality goods and regionalism in a way that supermarkets and chain stores can&rsquo;t. Local traders selling local products makes one market in one part of Britain completely different from another, and therefore makes it worth visiting.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Queen Victoria Market / Image Credit: Flickr user Sensesbedumbed&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-48-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Queen Victoria Market / Image Credit: Flickr user Sensesbedumbed&#34; width=&#34;540&#34; height=&#34;405&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;There is a real sense of place about markets that is entwined with our nations culture. It supports local businesses and encourages spending in the local economy and can reduce our environmental impact by buying local products. Often, products ranging from fresh fish to fishing tackle can be bought cheaper than everywhere else. &nbsp;The spaces of markets themselves are flexible to offer added value, such as live music, artworks, ethnic food; the list goes on. &nbsp;All these &lsquo;added value&rsquo; programmes, just like vinyl records, offer an experience, over convenience. &nbsp;Farmers markets in the UK and successful markets such as Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne offer a unique experience to visitors, combining a vibrant day and nightly events that effectively tie together the idea of markets with all of its independent restaurants, bars, and entertainers through careful management and promotion for the benefit of all. &nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The market of the future offers more than just buying and selling. One idea is to propose a &lsquo;shared stall&rsquo; scheme, where traders specialising in wool for example, share stall space (or two stalls) with the local knitting group, advertising free knitting lessons to the general public, with supply within arms reach. The same can be said of cooking classes next to fresh produce. How about kids toys next to a managed &lsquo;kids corner&rsquo;?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img style=&#34;border: 0px initial initial;&#34; title=&#34;Experience as a primary function of the traditional market&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-46-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Experience as a primary function of the traditional market&#34; width=&#34;540&#34; height=&#34;716&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The future growth of markets lies here: it is about experience. &nbsp;Just like the experience that vinyl records give for music lovers can be applied to a thriving market community that offers culture, leisure, and education in addition to simply buying and selling. It is time we pushed what makes markets great and celebrate the unique place that markets have to offer us.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;div&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F37%2Fwhat-markets-could-learn-from-vinyl.html&#38;title=What+Markets+Could+Learn+from+Vinyl&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F37%2Fwhat-markets-could-learn-from-vinyl.html&#38;title=What+Markets+Could+Learn+from+Vinyl&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F37%2Fwhat-markets-could-learn-from-vinyl.html&#38;t=What+Markets+Could+Learn+from+Vinyl&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F37%2Fwhat-markets-could-learn-from-vinyl.html&#38;title=What+Markets+Could+Learn+from+Vinyl&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F37%2Fwhat-markets-could-learn-from-vinyl.html@@ta 
&#38;=What+Markets+Could+Learn+from+Vinyl&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F37%2Fwhat-markets-could-learn-from-vinyl.html&#38;t=What+Markets+Could+Learn+from+Vinyl&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>How to be a Good Architecture Student? Be Bad</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/36/how-to-be-a-good-architecture-student-be-bad.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE WRONG QUESTION&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It was probably the first thing I asked, and it is something that I have since been asked more times than I can remember: &ldquo;&#60;em&#62;What A-levels should I do if I want to be an architect?&#60;/em&#62;&rdquo;, or sometimes a variant of the same question: &ldquo;&#60;em&#62;W&#60;/em&#62;&#60;em&#62;hat skills make a good architect? Do I need to able to draw&#60;/em&#62;?&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;There are &#39;correct&#39; answers to these questions. Normally something along the lines of &ldquo;&#60;em&#62;A mix of arts and sciences&#60;/em&#62;&rdquo;, and &ldquo;&#60;em&#62;No, you don&#39;t need to be able to draw, but it helps. You need to be able to think spatially.&#60;/em&#62;&rdquo;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It&#39;s not that these answers are wrong (my slightly more direct advice might be: &ldquo;&#60;em&#62;Learn Chinese&#60;/em&#62;.&rdquo;); they are perfectly benign, well-intended answers &ndash; but to precisely the wrong question.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The most obvious flaw in the question is that it assumes that there is &#60;em&#62;such a thing&#60;/em&#62; as a &#39;good architect&#39;, or a &#39;good architecture student&#39;, and that the two are in some way connected. The second assumption inherent in the question is that whatever qualities might constitute a &#39;good architect&#39; are established and unchanging. &nbsp;Neither of these assumptions are true. While we can say what made a &#39;good architect&#39; in the 20th century, what constitutes a &#39;good architect&#39; in the 21st century is very much up-for-debate.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE OLD, LINEAR EDUCATION MODEL&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;We can&#39;t predict the future. It&#39;s almost impossible to imagine what the world will be like in 7 years. Yet, if we think about it, that&#39;s precisely what our historical model of architectural education has claimed to do.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Although we tend to think of architecture as an art, and architects as artists or intellectuals &nbsp;&ndash; &nbsp;it is not a &#39;subject&#39; in the traditional sense. Unlike students who study physics for example, who don&#39;t necessarily study in order to ultimately become a professional &#39;Physicist&#39;, architecture students almost &#60;em&#62;always&#60;/em&#62; study architecture in order to become an &#39;Architect&#39;. Architectural education is historically aimed not at producing world-ready architectural knowledge but producing practice-ready architectural professionals. As much as the rhetoric it generates might shroud the fact, &#60;em&#62;structurally&#60;/em&#62; that&#39;s what it&#39;s still designed to do.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;By laying out a linear route to &#39;becoming an architect&#39;, progressing through Parts I,II and III, (interspersed with periods of &#39;professional experience&#39;), architectural education is effectively a prediction, made in the face of wild unpredictability, that things will stay &#60;em&#62;more or less&#60;/em&#62; the same. It is, effectively, a 7-year-long tunnel and once you&#39;re in, there is usually very little room for flexibility (besides dropping out).&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The problem is things &#60;em&#62;don&#39;t&#60;/em&#62; stay more or less the same.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Some changes, even unpredicted ones, are sufficiently peripheral to the everyday commercial business of designing buildings that architectural education can ignore them, or simply absorb them. There has (as many heads-of-school will make clear in speeches) been a shift in education away from rote learning of a fixed core of knowledge, towards the more general ability &#39;to think&#39; about problems as they arise, in order to be able to absorb some of the messy, unexpected change that can&#39;t be predicted 7 years into the future. But that tolerance is effectively a surface-effect on what is, under the bonnet, still a linear process.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The recession has confronted architecture with an unpredicted change which it cannot absorb: the massive contraction of demand. &nbsp;The collapse of the credit-driven financial paradigm (upon which professional architecture has become dependent) and the forthcoming contraction of public spending has erased the market we have been aiming towards. There are hardly any jobs. In other words our 7-year education aimed us towards a world that no longer exists.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;ARCHITECTURE&#39;S EDUCATION CRISIS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;But even as the &#60;em&#62;business&#60;/em&#62; of architecture has failed so dramatically, the &#60;em&#62;idea&#60;/em&#62; of architecture has, perversely, &nbsp;never been more successful. More students than ever are enrolling to study architecture at university. In the last decade, the number of architecture students graduating every year has risen from 1000 to 1400, and that number is still growing. &nbsp;Architecture finds itself in the bizarre situation of being &#60;em&#62;culturally&#60;/em&#62; oversubscribed at the same moment as it is &#60;em&#62;economically&#60;/em&#62; stranded.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The result is a massive human surplus of architectural intelligence. &nbsp;More and more architecture graduates &nbsp;competing for fewer and fewer jobs.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This is, in many ways, the architectural community&#39;s elephant-in-the-room, and there are many older architects who would rather ignore it and carry on as before. But students and graduates can&#39;t afford to. Whether we recognise it or not, by sheer weight of numbers, this generation of students is going to force a change in what we see as the end point of architectural education, because not all of us &#60;em&#62;can&#60;/em&#62; be employed in the role traditionally defined for the architect, but none of us want to go and work behind a bar.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;GREAT ESCAPISM&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In order to picture how this crisis might change things, it is first important to make clear how &#60;em&#62;deep&#60;/em&#62; this assumption - that the aim of architectural education is to get a job as a designer in the construction industry - &nbsp;goes.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The answer is: much deeper than we realise. As students we are still set imaginary briefs to design imaginary buildings, at the service of our own &#39;original concept&#39;. The ultimate &#60;em&#62;destination&#60;/em&#62; for each project is the end of term &#39;crit&#39; (a ten-minute pitch), followed by the end of year exhibition &ndash; each a sort of false finale at which point the merit of your effort is judged not by its social, economic, technical or even intellectual impact, but more by its internal &#60;em&#62;cultural&#60;/em&#62; impact, conferred by the favour of the architectural establishment and potential employers. In other words, a &#39;good&#39; architecture student is one whose portfolio is crammed with work which impresses other architects.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The problem is that this audience has no real appetite for realism &ndash; the frustrations of everyday practice seem to create an almost unquenchable thirst for exquisite, escapist fantasies. The result is a bizarre, internalised currency of aesthetic innuendo, opaque, esoteric language and unimpeachably cool (often hand-drawn) drawings. Intelligent, ambitious, morally-aware students find themselves pinning their careers on beautiful drawings of a &#39;&#60;em&#62;Retirement home for Amnesiac Wizards&#60;/em&#62;&#39;, desperately competing to impress the establishment on its own terms &ndash; for jobs which either don&#39;t exist or prove to be heart-breakingly, mind-numbingly uninventive by comparison.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This is quite difficult to admit to: that all the outward noises of architectural education &ndash; seeming to be endlessly creative, fresh, radical - &nbsp;are in fact manifestations of the precise opposite. A kind of intrinsic conservatism that serves the status quo by gratifying its fetishes rather than challenging its assumptions.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Wrapped in its own solipsistic media-cycle, insulated from reality and feeding a non-existent jobs market, architectural education is failing to recognise not only that it is doing its students a disservice, but also that beyond its walls, society is about to go through a period of massive, profound change, and that architectural and design thinking (beyond simply the design of new buildings) has a potentially massive contribution to make to a society in transition. Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that while the architecture industry is (quite literally) redundant, it&#39;s obvious that society-at-large has never had such a pressing, urgent need for ambitious designers to really think about our future: about our relationship with resources, the topology of our industrial society, about economic systems, social inequality, climate change, technological game-changers, man made disasters... Hard to believe it, but now might actually turn out to be a very exciting time to be a designer.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR BEING A &#39;GOOD&#39; ARCHITECTURE STUDENT?&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Put simply, architecture and architectural education are being forced towards a massive paradigm change (or at least a paradigm &#60;em&#62;expansion&#60;/em&#62;) &hellip;. and that might not be as negative as it sounds. In many ways it is a long-overdue opportunity for architecture to go through a wake-up: from childish self-involvement, &nbsp;through adolescent awkwardness, towards a less marginal, more diverse engagement with wider social aims.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;But if this is going to happen, it is unlikely that the change will be lead by the establishment itself, but rather by an ambitious, socially-responsible generation of students, young designers and progressive tutors using their time in architecture school to come up with different ways of doing things. &nbsp;In cliche: Don&#39;t change yourself to go into architecture. Go into architecture to change it.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If being &#39;good&#39; in the traditional way carries such little reward, I hope more and more students will have the confidence to be &#39;bad&#39;. Not &#39;bad&#39;, as in lazy, thoughtless or arrogant, but bad in terms of a willingness to misbehave; to ask difficult questions, to be disobedient. Not to settle for unemployment or drudgery, but to look for other applications for architectural thinking, to focus much less on the design of art objects and assets, &#39;space&#39; and &#39;form&#39;, and much more on the social, economic and environmental systems that shape them, on value and values, on social norms, on processes and production. Basically: on what architecture does.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Here is a (very) rough manual for the &#39;bad&#39; architecture student &ndash; some suggested rules of thumb:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;QUESTION THE QUESTION&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It&#39;s almost always wrong.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;QUESTION THE MEASURES OF SUCCESS&#60;/strong&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Don&#39;t get too hung-up on getting a first. They&#39;re nice for job interviews, but don&#39;t help as much as you might think, and the more fixated you get on high grades, the harder they tend to come anyway.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;TRUST YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Often the most important questions are the ones which are so obvious that no one dares ask them for fear of being branded na&iuml;ve or stupid.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;DARE TO FACE REALITIES&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Be they financial, technical, legal, social, environmental... This might begin simply by asking: &#39;Who pays for it?&#39; or &#39;Why do we need it?&#39;. Real problems are actually much more interesting than invented ones, even if they&#39;re harder to solve.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;SEEK UNCONVENTIONAL SOLUTIONS TO CONVENTIONAL PROBLEMS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Not conventional solutions to unconventional problems.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;RESEARCH RIGOROUSLY&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;It&#39;s the best way to fend-off ignorance.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;BE LESS INTERESTED IN THE WORLD OF DESIGN AND MORE INTERESTED IN THE DESIGN OF THE WORLD.&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;(Thanks Bruce Mau)&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;DON&#39;T BUY INTO JARGON AND B.S...&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What does &ldquo;materiality&rdquo; actually mean?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;... BUT AVOID OVERSIMPLIFICATION&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;At the same time, don&#39;t pretend that non-thinking is a form of pragmatism. Grapple with complex ideas, find words to communicate them.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;DON&#39;T WORSHIP EMPTY IDOLS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;John Maynard Keynes shaped the future. Zaha just sells futuristic shapes.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;TAKE YOUR IDEAS TO OTHER AUDIENCES&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Why produce ideas just for job interviews and exhibitions? If you have good ideas, publish them, show them to economists, politicians, farmers, investors, anyone who will listen. If you have a brilliant idea, start a business. Don&#39;t let architects be your only jury.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;INFORM YOURSELF&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Read the FT, New Scientist, Wired, Adbusters; watch TED talks, study anything that interests you. Be an amateur generalist.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;COLLABORATE&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If you work better with a friend, work together. Produce amazing work and dare your school to fail you.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;DEBATE AMONG YOUR FRIENDS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Don&#39;t let your tutor lead the conversation. (The best ones will love not having to).&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;FOCUS LESS ON OBJECT AND MORE ON OUTCOME&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&ldquo;We should be less concerned with the design of bridges and more concerned with how to get to the other side.&rdquo; (Cedric Price)&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;BE SELF-CRITICAL (ISH)&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;There is no, single, &#39;correct&#39; way to look at the world, there are lots of different ones, so try on different pairs of spectacles from time to time and see what your work looks like through multiple lenses.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;DROP-OUT CREATIVELY&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;One of the most counter-productive symptoms of the linear education model is the negative stigma attached to changing one&#39;s mind. Since the purpose of education is to find what it is you&#39;re good at and make it your work (even if a job description doesn&#39;t exist for it yet), dropping-out is one of the more positive decisions anyone can make &ndash; it makes you much less a &#39;failure&#39; than those who stay on their current course for lack of imagination.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-size: xx-small;&#34;&#62;&#60;em&#62;This Article was originally written for &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.architectureapple.com&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;Architecture Apple&#60;/a&#62;, a website providing information and advice for current and prospective architecture students. Check out also some interesting related links:&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/architecture_and_design/article6875085.ece&#34;&#62;Who would want to be an architecture Student? (and the following comments)&#60;/a&#62; Tom Dyckhoff / Times Online&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;Do Schools Kill Creativity?&#60;/a&#62; Ken Robinson&#39;s TED Talk&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F36%2Fhow-to-be-a-good-architecture-student-be-bad.html&#38;title=How+to+be+a+Good+Architecture+Student%3F+Be+Bad&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F36%2Fhow-to-be-a-good-architecture-student-be-bad.html&#38;title=How+to+be+a+Good+Architecture+Student%3F+Be+Bad&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F36%2Fhow-to-be-a-good-architecture-student-be-bad.html&#38;t=How+to+be+a+Good+Architecture+Student%3F+Be+Bad&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F36%2Fhow-to-be-a-good-architecture-student-be-bad.html&#38;title=How+to+be+a+Good+Architecture+Student%3F+Be+Bad&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F36%2Fhow-to-be-a-good-architecture-student-be-bad.html@@ta 
&#38;=How+to+be+a+Good+Architecture+Student%3F+Be+Bad&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F36%2Fhow-to-be-a-good-architecture-student-be-bad.html&#38;t=How+to+be+a+Good+Architecture+Student%3F+Be+Bad&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Value Systems</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/35/value-systems.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;In public at least, the collapse of the financial system marks the end of an ideology. In 2008, even Alan Greenspan, in many ways the 1990&rsquo;s figurehead of the free-market paradigm, went as far as to express &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/24/economics-creditcrunch-federal-reserve-greenspan&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;&ldquo;shocked disbelief&rdquo;&#60;/a&#62; that &ldquo;self-interest&rdquo; has turned out to be anything but a productive force in creating value&nbsp;for society.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;VOID&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;But if the Milton Friedman worldview of &lsquo;pure&rsquo; economics is now dead, what&rsquo;s strange is the absence of a political worldview to replace it. What has been left behind is an ideological void which still somehow holds the shape of the obsolete model. As the major political parties set about patching and propping-up the old system (whilst simultaneously working hard to give the appearance of slapping bankers&rsquo; wrists for being &#60;em&#62;too&#60;/em&#62; self-interested) they find themselves wielding the policies and language of a bygone era. As economist Robin Murray puts it: &#60;a title=&#34;Robin Murray Danger and Opportunity NESTA&#34; href=&#34;http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/provocations/assets/features/danger_and_opportunity_crisis_and_the_new_social_e&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;&ldquo;The first great economic crisis of the 21st century has been met with the economic theory and instruments of the 20th century.&rdquo;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Not least of these is privatisation. Far from having been diminished by the banking crisis, the headlines have been filled with debates over the further privatisation of state services and assets as a means of resolving the government deficit, ranging from motorways, the BBC and royal mail.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE MYTH&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;Intuitively, quite a lot of us are against privatisation &ndash; but largely for what we&rsquo;d think of as sentimental reasons rather than calculated ones &ndash; whether founded in bad experiences of train travel, or simply a mistrust of Big Bad Wolf .plc who is interested only in its profit margin at the expense of &lsquo;people&rsquo;. These criticisms are not superficial: the policy of privatisation has been comprehensively discredited on a moral basis by writers such as Naomi Klein, Polly Toynbee and even advocates of &lsquo;triple bottom line&rsquo; accounting, for its tendency to be chronically short-termist; to exploit workers and resources. Behavioural economists meanwhile have pointed out that the reliance on the consumer to make fair and rational choices and thus drive true competition is also totally unrealistic. Yet despite this there seem to be very few ways to rationalise this &#60;em&#62;moral&#60;/em&#62; awareness into anything which challenges the established policy consensus &ndash; to challenge the structural assumptions that underpin privatisation.&nbsp;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The established wisdom still seems to be that subcontracting or privatising a service introduces competition, and as a result increases efficiency.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;And it does.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;But &#60;em&#62;efficiency&#60;/em&#62; is not the same as &#60;em&#62;effectiveness&#60;/em&#62;, and it is that distinction (and our difficulty in understanding it) that exposes the false-logic behind universal privatisation.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Efficiency is really a financial ratio &ndash; it is not necessarily based on any kind of real world outcome. Most importantly, the increases in efficiency that can be measured in an account book do not take any notice of where the extra value derived as profit actually &#60;em&#62;comes from&#60;/em&#62;. It simply takes it for granted that as long as it is coming from somewhere, the organisation must be doing well. The fundamental, fatal assumption behind the belief in&nbsp;improved &lsquo;efficiency&rsquo; through privatisation is that in the handing over from the public to the private sector, the end service or commodity remains essentially unchanged - &nbsp;it is simply delivered in a different way. If we look at privatisation not from a political or financial perspective, but rather from a &#60;em&#62;design&#60;/em&#62; perspective &ndash; looking at the properties of the whole system, and changes to the products or services themselves, then we can quite logically see that this assumption is far too simplistic, if not profoundly wrong.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;Bus networks run not for profit&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-41-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Bus networks run not for profit&#34; width=&#34;540&#34; height=&#34;373&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;A NOT-FOR-PROFIT BUS NETWORK&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Let&rsquo;s take, as an example, the design of a bus network, which covers both densely populated urban areas and less dense rural areas. When operated on a not-for-profit basis, the network&rsquo;s operators have only three aims: to provide the widest possible service, for the minimum possible ticket price, whilst ensuring its own long-term survival.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This means that is that any given time up to 49% of the network &#60;em&#62;can actually be running at a&#60;/em&#62;&#60;em&#62; loss&#60;/em&#62; &ndash; and it doesn&rsquo;t matter &ndash; that is simply what webs to: absorb shocks and distribute energy. As long as all the employees are well paid, the buses are safe, and money is being put towards future innovations, it doesn&#39;t matter if one half of the system subsidises the other. The routes running at a loss are counted as gain, because they are maximising the real output.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;The privatised bus network&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-42-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;The privatised bus network&#34; width=&#34;540&#34; height=&#34;373&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;A PRIVATISED BUS NETWORK&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;When this same bus network is run for profit, its operators (acting entirely rationally and morally) very quickly realise that half the network is running at a loss. Given that their ultimate goal is to maximise the profit margin for the shareholders, their logical course of action is to shut down all these loss-making services, so that the surplus value which was previously being used to subsidise them can be taken as profit.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The result is a dramatic gain in efficiency (since shareholder profit has been maximised) but at a catastrophic cost to the overall effectiveness of the system. &#60;em&#62;Financial&#60;/em&#62; value has been optimised but the overall ability of the system to create end&#60;em&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/em&#62;value has been massively reduced.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;img title=&#34;The contract protecting value&#34; src=&#34;/cms/files/Image/Image-43-imagefile.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;The contract protecting value&#34; width=&#34;540&#34; height=&#34;373&#34; /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;CONTRACT&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In fact, this is more or less what &#60;em&#62;did&#60;/em&#62; happen to a great many regional bus networks over the course of the 1990&rsquo;s. As they were privatised, rural routes were closed down and there was intense competition for busy urban ones. But that is not &#60;em&#62;quite&#60;/em&#62; what happened. The &#39;third way&#39; approach is that any part of the service which is deemed to be obviously of public interest, but would not be catered for by the market, is written into the original contract as an obligation. In the case of bus or train routes, this might mean specific obligations to provide a service to certain places, at certain times of day or for a capped price, regardless or whether or not it is profitable to do so. The same phenomenon can be found in almost any privatised public service: whether as regulated fares for train operators or Section 106 agreements for housing developers &ndash; they are all instances of essentially the same idea. As far as the companies themselves are concerned, they are effectively little more than a non-monetary tax; a calculated loss which comes out of their profit margin. They would rather not have to pay it &ndash; but will do so as long as the overall venture remains profitable.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Throughout the 90&#39;s and 00&#39;s, this method has been the bedrock of &#39;the third way&#39;: to encourage markets to perform almost every role, and then to create social value as a form of tax.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The crucial flaw in this method is that the contract is being used effectively to &#60;em&#62;defend&#60;/em&#62; the end user from the system which is supposed to be employed to &#60;em&#62;serve&#60;/em&#62; them.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As you would expect, this places an almost impossible load on that contract, not only because conditions change over time and the contract is fixed, but also because, as sociologist &Eacute;mile Durkheim once observed, &ldquo;so much that is contractual is not in the contract&rdquo;. Public value ends up being produced by organisations which are intrinsically designed to gain advantage by reducing it. If the contract insists on a &lsquo;bus service&rsquo;, a provider will (over time) seek to reduce what is meant by &lsquo;service&rsquo;. If the contract insists on &lsquo;2 bedrooms&rsquo;, a provider will have a motive to constantly reduce what is meant by &lsquo;bedroom&rsquo;. So when the construction sector announces better-than-expected performance during a recession, most people would instinctively interpret that as good news: but in fact it is probably an indication that the actual end product is&nbsp;&#60;em&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&amp;storycode=3155322&amp;channel=783&amp;c=1&amp;encCode=0000000001a9bcec&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;poorer&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&amp;storycode=3155322&amp;channel=783&amp;c=1&amp;encCode=0000000001a9bcec&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62; - not better&#60;/a&#62;.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&lsquo;MARKETISATION&rsquo;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Far from simply delivering the same product or service by a different means, privatisation profoundly changes the nature of the product or service itself, because it changes its ultimate &#60;em&#62;purpose&#60;/em&#62; in terms what kind of value it aims to create, whether through architecture, mobility, infrastructure or public services. The simplistic narrative of &lsquo;efficiency&rsquo; is insufficient to understanding this. Although both models are looking at the same basic transaction, they&#39;re seeing fundamentally different things. A private company will look at the transaction and ask &ldquo;how can this be designed to maximise profit?&rdquo;, whereas a not-for-profit organisation will look at the same transaction and ask &ldquo;how can this be designed to maximise value?&rdquo;. Even in purely quantitative terms, these are not the same.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Moral Philosopher &#60;a title=&#34;The Economics New Clothes Stephanomics for the BBC&#34; href=&#34;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2009/11/the_future_of_economics.html&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;Michael Sandel&#60;/a&#62; makes a related point (albeit in a much broader context), in discussing how the &lsquo;marketisation&rsquo; of all social exchanges fundamentally alters their nature, and the social norms around them. He uses the example of the blood supply, studied by Richard Titmuss, which was observed to become measurably poorer in quality when the transaction was shifted from an altruistic norm (blood donation, as in the UK) to a market norm (blood selling, as in the US).&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;VALUE SYSTEMS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This is &#60;em&#62;not&#60;/em&#62; to argue that all private markets are flawed &ndash; far from it. Neither is it an advocation of a return to centralised / nationalised structures. There was, undoubtedly, a huge amount of wastage and inefficiency in some nationalised services, but our reaction to that has been vastly disproportionate, and listed in favour of a particular economic ideology, which has now been exposed as false. Many innovators and policy makers are now arguing for a much more significant role for &lsquo;third sector&rsquo; community enterprises and not-for-profit organisations. The individual design of these needs to be driven by an awareness that no blunt, one-size-fits all approach can any longer be applied to all situations without a more sophisticated (and in fact rational) whole-system approach &ndash; and a worldview which can consider how specific systems alter, exchange or create different forms of value through the human interactions within them. Rather than harness old mechanisms to grudgingly deliver forms of value they were never designed to, we need to develop new mechanisms which are purpose-designed to &#60;em&#62;want&#60;/em&#62; to produce more value; regardless of whether that value is always financial or not.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F35%2Fvalue-systems.html&#38;title=Value+Systems&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F35%2Fvalue-systems.html&#38;title=Value+Systems&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F35%2Fvalue-systems.html&#38;t=Value+Systems&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F35%2Fvalue-systems.html&#38;title=Value+Systems&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F35%2Fvalue-systems.html@@ta 
&#38;=Value+Systems&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F35%2Fvalue-systems.html&#38;t=Value+Systems&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>The Gap</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/31/the-gap.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;Design is a discipline with its head in the library and its hands in the cookie jar. When we talk about Design on TV, in books, or in film, we treat it as an art or a science, whose principles are platonic and founded in ergonomics, culture or knowledge. We give design much the same credit as we give to &#39;History&#39;, &#39;Sculpture&#39; or &#39;Music&#39; (or other &#39;subjects&#39; you can learn in school and exhibit in galleries). But at the same time, we all know that design is a business.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;When we think about design, we&#39;re normally thinking about designers, and when we&#39;re thinking about designers we&#39;re normally thinking about professional designers: people who design for money. The reality is probably even more stark than that: everything that we conventionally call design is actually design that can be paid for (and increasingly - design that pays).&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE INDUSTRY VIEW&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In many ways it&#39;s actually an incredible contradiction, but we&#39;ve come to accept it as normal. That acceptance seems to have slowly gravitated towards a particular view of design&#39;s role in society which, to a large extent, could only have survived as long as no one talked too much about ... well... design&#39;s role in society.  Like so many things, that idea of design has now been absorbed as a subset of The Economy called &#39;the design industry&#39; .... often associated with chic marketable products: &#39;designer&#39; shoes, &#39;designer&#39; vases, &#39;designer&#39; houses. But that idea is changing.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Forced perhaps by the recession, perhaps by a growing sense of urgency over climate change (and the inadequacy of the &#39;green product design&#39; narrative as a response to it), or perhaps simply by a collective wake-up to social need, there seems to be what ecological economist Tom Green describes as &#34;a growing will to question fundamental assumptions&#34;. This obviously applies to economics - but also to design.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;An encouraging recent example of this was the Today programme&#39;s interview with design critic Alice Rawsthorn on BBC Radio 4. Asked to commentate upon shifts in the design industry, she emphasised a change away fr&oslash;m our traditional focus on material objects towards software design and what she very succinctly labelled as &#34;social design&#34;, &#34;process-design&#34; and systems-thinking. It reinforced  Bruce Mau&#39;s  assertion:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;&#34;No longer associated simply with objects and appearances, design is increasingly understood in a much wider sense as the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes&#34;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;These statements are incredibly refreshing, but (as the interviewer on Radio 4 exposed)  they don&#39;t fit comfortably with the publicly-accepted Industry / Business view of design as we have hitherto understood it.  What would be the point of buying a Phillipe Starck process? As if waking up halfway through the strangely-shaped vase / shoe / art gallery it was drawing and looking beyond its own wallet for the first time in decades, professional design needs a back-story that makes more sense to the conditions it finds itself confronted by. It suddenly needs to think more seriously, and more connectedly about what design is, and what it should be doing. All in a way that other disciplines and society at large can make sense of.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;div&#62;
&#60;div&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE DESIGN BRAIN&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;div&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;div&#62;Strangely enough, it has taken non-designers to suggest that design is actually far more fundamental (and universal)  than designers let on (or realise). Neuroscientists suggest that the human capacity for design is strongly connected to the extensive growth of parts our brain collectively called the frontal lobes - in particular the prefrontal cortex. All neuroscientists are quick to warn against jumping to the myth that any one part of the brain &#39;does&#39; something in isolation, but the general gist seems to be that the prefrontal cortex is associated with our ability to simulate outcomes - to imagine consequences of actions - &#39;to see one thing in terms of another&#39;.&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;div&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;div&#62;&#34;Human beings have this marvellous adaptation that they can actually have experiences in their heads before they try them out in real life. This is something none of our ancestors could do and no other animal can do it like we can.&#34; - Dan Gilbert&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;div&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;div&#62;This capability is a critical event-horizon in our evolution - because while wildebeest are forced to embark on vast annual migrations in pursuit of rain, and elephants have evolved a spectacular memory to record the location of water-holes during the dry season, the human species can effectively solve the same problem by speculating upon the properties of clay, and making vessels to store and carry water; thus artificially distorting the seasons in their favour.&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;DARWIN&#39;S EPILOGUE&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In other words, while all species &#60;em&#62;a&#60;/em&#62;&#60;em&#62;dapt to their environment&#60;/em&#62; over hundreds of thousands of years by means of genetic selection, humans actually have the ability firstly to &#60;em&#62;adapt their environment to them&#60;/em&#62; (for example: shelter, arable farming, central heating, cloud-seeding...) and secondly to literally &#60;em&#62;participate in their own evolution&#60;/em&#62;. Design is a means by which we are able to creatively modify ourselves in order to augment specific capabilities without waiting for natural selection.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;So, for example: Tweezers modify our fingers to handle smaller things than they would otherwise could. A JCB does the opposite*. Bicycles improve our speed, wheelbarrows our maximum load. Whether consciously (through science) or unconsciously (by intuition) these leaps of man-made evolution mimic, in very obvious ways, characteristics which other species might have evolved naturally for certain environments: clothes in place of fur - a diving mask, aqualung and flippers in place of gills and webbed feet - or binoculars, sunglasses or night-vision goggles. Wetsuits are a skin-upgrade. Body armour in its various forms is a very obvious application of technology to improve our evolutionary chances - medieval armour even &#60;em&#62;looked&#60;/em&#62; like a sort of artificial human exo-skeleton.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;That ability to &#60;em&#62;augment&#60;/em&#62; our own abilities also allows us to &#60;em&#62;mitigate&#60;/em&#62; (or even annul) the effects of our &#60;em&#62;dis&#60;/em&#62;abilities, whether they are natural or unnatural (contact lenses, hearing aids, wheelchairs)&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Other evolutionary upgrades are not so much about altering our relationship with the environment, but rather our interactions with one-another (for example wristwatches, high-heels, condoms).&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This way of looking inevitably raises the question of how much technology is applied simply to mitigate risks or conditions created by other technology (Airbags, high-vis fabric, anti-virus software...)&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As is often highlighted, the distinction between what we&#39;d call our &#39;nature&#39; and these technological interventions into our nature is becoming more and more fuzzy - merging through pharmaceuticals, bionics, stem-cell growth and, ultimately, genetic engineering itself.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE GAP&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;But that model of design, even as a general idea, doesn&#39;t match up to what we can observe about the design industry, and that might be the point. Somewhere along the line we became much more focused on the objects themselves and much less focused on the outcomes those objects enabled - or indeed the processes that went into making them. It&#39;s not particularly hard or controversial to suggest why: the design industry was never created to attend to our evolutionary advantage. In fact it is a much more recent phenomenon than most of us assume. Professional design (as we know it) only emerged in the 20th century at the service of a consumer economy; in other words imagining things which could be marketed and sold, as opposed to what was needed or was in our best interest as a species.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As behavioral economists have observed, we unconsciously make choices which are &#39;against our best interest&#39; all the time.  Funnily enough, that also has something to do with those same frontal lobes of our brain which allow us to simulate the outcome of our actions - but getting it wrong. So we make choices that overestimate the difference that a decision will make (&#39;will buying that pair of high-status jeans really get me laid?&#39;), and we make choices that underestimate the difference a decision will make (this burger will nourish me - and the &#39;happy&#39;-meal toy that comes with it is harmless). The design industry only needed to make money in order to exist , it didn&#39;t need to make us evolutionarily any better off either individually or collectively. As long as it sold, it was good design, and advertising played an equivalent, or possibly greater part in determining what sold than design did. So we designers now find ourselves hooked on designing &#39;products&#39; rather than evolutionary adaptions, and often in doing so using up resources and creating ecological and social inequalities which on the long run are actually working &#60;em&#62;against&#60;/em&#62; human evolution.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE GAP&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;div&#62;Perhaps it&#39;s this gap between design-for-market-outcome and design-for-human outcome which commentators like Alice Rawsthorn, Bruce Mau and Tim Brown are trying to bridge when they talk about the shift fr&oslash;m objects to processes, fr&oslash;m products to experiences, fr&oslash;m &#34;design to design-thinking&#34;. It&#39;s what Cedric Price meant when we talked about &#34;thinking less about the design of bridges and more about how to get to the other side&#34;. It&#39;s what Buckminster Fuller called &#34;Anticipatory Design Science&#34;. There are myriad names and definitions for it - of which this is only one.&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Collectively, these are the outward noises of a generation of designers waking up and trying to shift the paradigm of design professionalism away fr&oslash;m the marginal &#34;priesthood&#34; of &#34;aesthetics, image and fashion&#34; towards a more engaged view of design which can offer insights into the complexities of how we foster resources and time; how we interact, analyse, learn, and participate in the economy not by increasing consumption but by redesigning it. It&#39;s not a revolution - and the critique is anything but new - but it&#39;s happening now. Probably for no better reason than... it has to... or we&#39;re really screwed.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;* Credit: Brian Duffy of Modified Toy Orchestra&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F31%2Fthe-gap.html&#38;title=The+Gap&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F31%2Fthe-gap.html&#38;title=The+Gap&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F31%2Fthe-gap.html&#38;t=The+Gap&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F31%2Fthe-gap.html&#38;title=The+Gap&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F31%2Fthe-gap.html@@ta 
&#38;=The+Gap&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F31%2Fthe-gap.html&#38;t=The+Gap&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Local Energy Networks</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/32/local-energy-networks.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;In a year where global food and energy prices hit record highs - followed quickly by economies around the globe reaching the brink of collapse, we have be given a glimpse of the inevitable political and economic upheaval post-peak-oil. &#60;a href=&#34;http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1850356/LocalEnergyNetwork.pdf&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Adam Park Local Energy Network&#34;&#62;The Local Energy Network project &#60;/a&#62;&#60;em&#62;(click for full project pdf)&#60;/em&#62; is inspired by and responds to some of the social and architectural implications of these fundamental changes from a community scale, tactical &nbsp;position.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;ENERGY&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The national grid uses 5 watts of heat energy from coal or gas to deliver each 1 watt of electricity. This striking inefficiency of this has to be addressed to have any chance of meeting national &amp; global carbon targets on climate change.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;A national network requires vast upfront investment. A decentralised, local network is instead allowed to grow organically. It can therefore begin with a limited investment in a handful of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) terminals, and expand as more and more people appreciate the benefits of locally generated affordable heat and power.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;REUSE&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;A key obstacle to the implementation of small, community-scale energy networks is the difficulty of establishing of establishing new communal areas, and for each area, siting a focal facility from which that energy-community might operate.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;But infrastructures of that scale have existed before, and the problems posed by the dereliction of those infrastructures could well be a perfect fit for the community energy problem. Those infrastructures are, of course, community schools, and their historic catchment areas.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In the case of Sheffield, a perfect opportunity is presented by remaining Sheffield Board schools, evenly spaced around Sheffield&#39;s hillsides among the streets of terraced they once served. Following the 1870 education act, the Board schools formed an impressive network of grade 2 listed buildings across the city for almost a century.&nbsp;Most of them were later closed as a local side-effect of a high level government policy to consolidate more, smaller schools into fewer, larger ones. Particularly on the eastern side of the city, a&nbsp;whole string of these former schools across the city lie now vacant &amp; vandalised&nbsp;after it was deemed cheaper to build brand-new education facilities than to upgrade historic infrastructure.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;After serving as the heart of the local community for over a century, you cannot underestimate the negative impact of letting important community buildings rot, especially when they occupy such prominent positions in the city.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Conservation and heritage has often been a subject dominated by conservative thinking. This project was about combining a need of an urban community with some local infrastructure that was sitting there just begging to find a new role, by reemploying of one such school as a local energy centre.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The former school sits as a hub in the centre of the network. The site hosts adult education, energy advice centre, as well as being the very first CHP terminal in the network. On-site workshops produce recycled insulation for use in local home improvements.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;VALUES&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Energy can no longer be treated as separate from culture, community, heritage, leisure etc - a way of thinking that we have grown up with since the birth of the modernist national-scale energy grids. The new era, where resources begin to become less reliable and more scarce, will require new values in terms of energy both the appearance and functionality of our, homes, streets and local infrastructure.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;Ann&#39;s Grove Local Energy Network was a Final-Year thesis project produced by Adam Park at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1850356/LocalEnergyNetwork.pdf&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Adam Park Local Energy Networks&#34;&#62;To View Full Project PDF, click here.&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F32%2Flocal-energy-networks.html&#38;title=Local+Energy+Networks&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F32%2Flocal-energy-networks.html&#38;title=Local+Energy+Networks&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F32%2Flocal-energy-networks.html&#38;t=Local+Energy+Networks&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F32%2Flocal-energy-networks.html&#38;title=Local+Energy+Networks&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F32%2Flocal-energy-networks.html@@ta 
&#38;=Local+Energy+Networks&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F32%2Flocal-energy-networks.html&#38;t=Local+Energy+Networks&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>INTERDEPENDENCE UK_OPEN CITY BROADCAST</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/40/interdependence-ukopen-city-broadcast.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62; 
&#60;object classid=&#34;clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000&#34; width=&#34;600&#34; height=&#34;490&#34; codebase=&#34;http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0&#34;&#62;
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&#60;/object&#62;
&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Cities can be (and normally are) drawn as objects on a map, surrounded by white space. Cities are where architects work.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;They are also, of course, a myth: a fictional condition comprising discrete objects, forms and routines &ndash; all of which combine to create a&nbsp;convincing stage-set called &lsquo;human settlement&rsquo;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;But the illusion of geographical stasis created by the term &lsquo;city&rsquo; is an increasingly fragile one. The reality is that either we move around or goods move around on our behalf. That cities ever became advantageous environments to live in was a measure of humankind&rsquo;s ability to farm surplus food and distribute it to regions of continuous concentrated demand. With the consolidation of the mass consumer market, we have never been more instantaneously dependent upon, or vulnerable to the massive logistical systems which serve cities - primarily by sea, air and road.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Confronted by widening cracks in this illusion, architecture is being forced to change its lens. If, instead of drawing urban masses, we begin to draw a few of the systems upon which UK cities are totally dependent (transport infrastructures, oil pipelines, distribution centres, shipping ports...), what is revealed is an inverted diaspora &ndash; a complex web of dependencies.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This project explores the idea that cities instead exist within and depend upon a wider ecosystem. In the UK we have developed an &lsquo;Island Architecture&rsquo; for survival, yet we remain dependent on global resources and services. Mainstream society (architects included) is scarcely aware of this service infrastructure supplying lifeblood resources to our cities. We take &lsquo;this stuff&rsquo; for granted. But with the challenges posed by the &lsquo;Triple Crunch&rsquo; &ndash; environmental, financial and peak oil crises &ndash; as well as the massive social and economic upheavals within cities caused by globalisation, we can no longer afford to remain oblivious.(1)&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Our broadcast aims to starkly reveal the hidden infrastructures which nourish the Open City. In doing so we anticipate that as architects, we will be forced to design processes that enable us to live convivially with the people we rely on. This will involve extending the conventional perception of our cities to include wider flows of human resources as well as manufacturing and agricultural processes. We suggest that truly open cities must begin to look outward, scrutinising the surrounding &lsquo;white space&rsquo; on the map and surveying further afield.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Traditionally public service broadcasts were produced to raise awareness of a pertinent issue. They were shown in exhibitions, cinemas and other public venue screenings, as well as following news bulletins on television and radio. Yet increasingly they have been evacuated from these public venues. Online broadcasts and web streaming is now the convention. Even our politicians are turning to You Tube to spread their message.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Studio six feels that the broadcast should return to a public venue, albeit with the inevitable potential of having a supplementary web presence. In doing so, we hope to bring conversations about cities and their support systems into the public domain and to question the very things we take for granted.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;1 Our thinking on interdependence stems from working alongside the Interdependence Day project: &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/interdependenceday/index.shtml&#34;&#62;www.interdependenceday.co.uk&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;INTERDEPENDENCE UK_OPEN CITY BROADCAST was produced for the&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;4TH INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE ROTTERDAM -&nbsp;PARALLEL CASES&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Narrated by Alex Kirby&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;University of Sheffield School of Architecture Studio 6&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;India Aspin&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Lukas Barry&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Edward Fowler&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Richard Holland&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Tomas Kangro&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Martin Lydon&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Alastair Parvin&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Patrick Skingley&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;and&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Jordan J. Lloyd&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Adam Towle&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Executive Producer:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Renata Tyszczuk&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;OPEN CITY BROADCAST is produced by Studio Six, the University of Sheffield for the Interdependence Day project, &copy; 2009.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;For more information on this project, please visit &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/interdependenceday/index.shtml&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;www.interdependenceday.co.uk&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F40%2Finterdependence-ukopen-city-broadcast.html&#38;title=INTERDEPENDENCE+UK_OPEN+CITY+BROADCAST&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F40%2Finterdependence-ukopen-city-broadcast.html&#38;title=INTERDEPENDENCE+UK_OPEN+CITY+BROADCAST&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F40%2Finterdependence-ukopen-city-broadcast.html&#38;t=INTERDEPENDENCE+UK_OPEN+CITY+BROADCAST&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F40%2Finterdependence-ukopen-city-broadcast.html&#38;title=INTERDEPENDENCE+UK_OPEN+CITY+BROADCAST&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F40%2Finterdependence-ukopen-city-broadcast.html@@ta 
&#38;=INTERDEPENDENCE+UK_OPEN+CITY+BROADCAST&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F40%2Finterdependence-ukopen-city-broadcast.html&#38;t=INTERDEPENDENCE+UK_OPEN+CITY+BROADCAST&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Design After Credit</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/29/design-after-credit.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I am an architecture graduate &ndash; and therefore expect to be unemployed. There is nothing controversial about that statement &ndash; which is odd, because really, there should be. It is remarkable how completely unsurprised we are by each new report of insolvent architecture practices, job losses in the design professions and mothballed construction projects. Even before the UK entered formal recession in January, the number of architects claiming unemployment benefit in the last quarter of 2008, according to the Office of National Statistics, had gone up by a staggering 544%. But no one really staggered. The news was met by a chorus of nods, and a run of smart, pragmatic discussion within the mainstream architectural media about how to &lsquo;survive&rsquo; economic recession. &nbsp;We all &#60;em&#62;know&#60;/em&#62; that when the economy goes down, so does architecture. Design is just one of those professions, alongside car manufacturing, banks and, apparently, brothels that can be used as indicators of the state of the economy. But while many people have speculated upon what architecture says about the state of the economy, hardly anyone has asked the opposite. What does the economy say about the state of architecture? The idea that design &ndash; a profound human activity; what Bruce Mau refers to as&#60;em&#62; &ldquo;the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes&#60;/em&#62;&rdquo; - is something that only happens when there is an ample supply of financial credit, is not one we should be taking for granted. &nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;MIS-DIAGNOSIS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Contrary to what the media&#39;s preoccupation with bankers&#39; bonuses might suggest, the causes behind the recession are far less superficial and distracting than the personal greed of a few city workers.&nbsp;According to the economist &#60;a href=&#34;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Herman Daly&#34;&#62;Herman Daly&#60;/a&#62;, the financial turmoil which has snowballed out from the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market has been totally mis-diagnosed. &nbsp;He argues that it is not a crisis of too-&#60;em&#62;little&#60;/em&#62; &lsquo;liquidity&rsquo;, as it has been hailed by the stock market, but something much simpler: &ldquo;&#60;a href=&#34;https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/81/steady_state_economy.html&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;A must-read article in Adbusters by Herman Daly&#34;&#62;The crisis is the result of the overgrowth of financial assets relative to the growth of real assets &ndash; basically the opposite of too little liquidity&rdquo;. &ldquo;The 100 dollars of virtual wealth I carry in my wallet are a lien on real wealth in that those dollars enable me to buy pork at the store&hellip; &#60;/a&#62;The problem &hellip; has arisen because the amount of real wealth is not a sufficient lien to guarantee the staggering, outstanding debt which has been exploded as a result of &#60;a href=&#34;http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;If you do nothing else today, watch this video &#39;Money As Debt&#39; by Paul Grignon&#34;&#62;banks&rsquo; ability to create money, loans given out on shaky assets&#60;/a&#62;&rdquo;. In other words, &nbsp;we have created more debt (money) than there is &#60;em&#62;value&#60;/em&#62; to pay it back.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In the case of the economy in general, this mis-diagnosis has led us to assume that the correct solution is to get back to economic growth as soon as possible&ndash; to spend loyally until the economy is strong again and can resume the creation of credit, overlooking the fact that this was the problem in the first place. The conventional wisdom that design stops when credit stops, buys into the same mis-diagnosis.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;THE BIG DEPENDENCY&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What the collapse of design work demonstrates to us is that architecture as we have come to know it, and in my case, learn it, is the business of social and economic growth through the production of commodities. In other words &ndash; an amount of money becomes available and a designer is someone who can translate that money into some form of investment which might increase its value. As &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.architecture00.net/index.php&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Indy Johar and Architecture 00:/&#34;&#62;Indy Johar&#60;/a&#62; puts it so succinctly: architecture has been the business of &ldquo;creating assets and inflating assets&rdquo;. For example, when designing rows of speculative apartments, each of which is sold onto the property market, architects are &#39;creating&#39; assets. When they are then commissioned to build an &#39;iconic&#39; sculptural &#39;form&#39; (be it an art gallery or a department store), what architects are really doing is &#39;adding value&#39; (inflating) the price of the apartments that are nearby. After the Guggenheim, this is what was known as &#39;the Bilbao effect&#39;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;VALUE&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.rex-ny.com/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Rex&#34;&#62; Joshua Prince Ramus&#60;/a&#62; points out: architects, by selling themselves primarily for their three-dimensional and aesthetic dexterity, have actually been &#60;em&#62;over&#60;/em&#62;-prioritising the creative design of objects, and &#60;em&#62;under&#60;/em&#62;-prioritising the creative design of those processes by which those objects are made. Naturally, while doing that, they&#39;ve also been overlooking the extent to which the form of value that these objects generate may actually exclude their users (or indeed, those who could never afford to be their users in the first place).&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Actually a lot of architects have known this for a while. In voicing their concerns over &lsquo;quality&rsquo;, architects have indirectly been warning society that the buildings we are designing seem to more closely resemble asset-value than use-value. It isn&rsquo;t a coincidence that in the last few years of economic prosperity, both the business and the culture of the architecture have been strangely object-centric in the face of realities which are outcome-driven, interconnected and complex &ndash; it&rsquo;s been energetic, but also frustrating. Architecture hasn&rsquo;t necessarily understood the value it was generating. It&rsquo;s not just architecture that has done this. The word &lsquo;Design&rsquo; itself has become associated primarily with oddly-shaped white vases or expensive high-heeled shoes - &lsquo;value-added&rsquo; commodities &ndash; and architecture has essentially become the business of scaling these vases up to the size of cities. The very idea of &lsquo;Design&rsquo; has come to be defined as something which can be relegated to a weekend pull-out section of the &#60;em&#62;Guardian&#60;/em&#62;, or a wry fifteen minute interview on&#60;em&#62; The Culture Show&#60;/em&#62;. This has been lucrative in the past &ndash; but that doesn&rsquo;t mean that&rsquo;s all there is to professional design. Maybe it took recession to see it, but architecture, as a profession, has allowed itself to be pushed into such a small corner of what the capacity of design might be, that we are, quite literally, redundant.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;WHAT ARCHITECTURE CAN LEARN FROM TAKE-AWAY RESTAURANTS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;All this does &#60;em&#62;not&#60;/em&#62; mean that architecture needs to stop making money &ndash; in fact the opposite. It means we need to publicly redefine what architecture does, and recognise that the process of design is not so incredibly narrow as merely the production of commodities, but the intervention of an imaginative, pragmatic, connected-up mindset to situations where money and resources are scarce. Architects are already good at this; otherwise they wouldn&rsquo;t be able to make buildings happen. There is no reason why architecture&rsquo;s existing intelligence should go fallow because it is only used to producing one kind of outcome.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;One of the surprises of the economic recession has been the soaring profits of the fast food sector. Apparently it would seem that when there&rsquo;s less money around &ndash; people buy more fast food. In economics terminology, that&rsquo;s called an &lsquo;inferior good&rsquo;. It&rsquo;s not a disparagement; it simply means a product that is in greater demand when money is tight. There is no real reason why professional design shouldn&rsquo;t be one of these. In clinging to (and allowing others to cling to) the idea that architecture is only in the business of constructing assets, professional architecture is desperately underselling itself. It&rsquo;s overlooking the fact that in order to design assets in the first place, architects needed to get good at a kind of multi-scale, solution-finding, questioning, value-led, politically-sensitive way of looking at the world. As a number of people have begun to realise, the same design intelligence might be applied to different sorts of design questions, some of which only architects might be able to ask.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;EXPANSION&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Released from the straitjacket of busy credit-backed construction, we may actually find it much easier to have a public conversation about the kinds of end value for which design is responsible. We may be able to go public with the idea that design is ubiquitous &ndash; it&rsquo;s how we distribute food, it&rsquo;s how we use our resources, it&rsquo;s how we spend our time, it&rsquo;s how we choose to relate to one another. If big, renowned architecture firms can sell smart design strategies as easily as shadow gaps &ndash; process diagrams as easily as sections - or get paid (in the spirit of Cedric Price) for helping their clients to avoid building anything at all - they might find an untapped market they can put their name onto. Architects might even start charging fees based on a percentage of the money they &#60;em&#62;save&#60;/em&#62; clients as much as the value they bring them.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;A MOTHBALLED GENERATION&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;The silent construction projects towering over city centres didn&rsquo;t stall because they were morally corrupt or financially inept, they stalled because the assumptions they were founded on have shifted from beneath them.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;My career seems to have suffered the same fate. Seven years of architectural education prepared me for a world that no longer exists &ndash; but for more of us than might admit it, that is a paradoxically optimistic turn of events. Our view is that projects and businesses can be &lsquo;mothballed&rsquo;, but the reality is that you can&rsquo;t &lsquo;mothball&rsquo; several thousand architecture graduates &ndash; either they&rsquo;ll give up, or they&rsquo;ll change the topic. We form a kind of surplus intelligence which, rather than be expected to simply disappear, should be seen as a forced opportunity. If we all work together, the collapse of credit might signal not architecture&rsquo;s retreat, but a paradigm-shift in professional design that was perhaps overdue before the first sub-prime mortgage was even issued. &nbsp;So put the message out: architects can help you punch above your weight.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;*Due deference must be given to the superb phrase from which this is hiijacked: CP&#39;s lecture entitled &#34;&#60;em&#62;Technology is the answer but what was the question?&#60;/em&#62;&#34; available on Pidgeon Digital.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F29%2Fdesign-after-credit.html&#38;title=Design+After+Credit&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F29%2Fdesign-after-credit.html&#38;title=Design+After+Credit&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F29%2Fdesign-after-credit.html&#38;t=Design+After+Credit&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F29%2Fdesign-after-credit.html&#38;title=Design+After+Credit&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F29%2Fdesign-after-credit.html@@ta 
&#38;=Design+After+Credit&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F29%2Fdesign-after-credit.html&#38;t=Design+After+Credit&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>The End of Style</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/28/the-end-of-style.html</link><description>&#60;p style=&#34;text-align: center;&#34;&#62;&#60;em&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#34;All change is a change in the topic&#34; Cesar Aira*&nbsp;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If anything could announce the collapse of architecture&#39;s 20th century grand narrative (&#39;form&#39;, &#39;function&#39;, &#39;style&#39; ..) beyond all possible doubt, it would have been the Prince of Wales&#39; &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lncxc/Richard_Dimbleby_Lecture_Facing_the_Future/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Facing the Future&#34;&#62;Richard Dimbleby lecture, broadcast by the BBC on 8th July 2009&#60;/a&#62;. Sublimely incongruous (a manifesto for social change read against the lavish backdrop of St James&#39; palace), it seemed to inevitably represent some kind of end to the debate. And Charles won.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;PRINCE CHARLES VS ARCHITECTURE&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It&#39;s important to point out that I write that not as a long-standing supporter of HRH, but the precise opposite. Since his first intervention into the design of the extension to the National Gallery in 1984, the accepted view among architects is that HRH&#39;s intervention in architecture has been as a meddling traditionalist, peddling a conservative worldview against the majority of &#39;modernist&#39; architects, who were standing up for progressive semi-socialist values and refusing to employ anachronism - fake traditionalist architecture to endulge the whims of the few. It was always a debate made very awkward for its lack of substance, always about &#39;style&#39;, with each side invoking the &#39;will of the people&#39; in support of their position. &nbsp;It is to the modernist side which I, like many designers, have hitherto belonged, if only on the basis of stylistic preferences .&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;LENS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;But those battles lines are, of course, now exposed to be totally obsolete. The terms of debate were so stubbornly narrow that their very existence depended upon seeing Architecture as an autonomous cultural platform, whose policies could be debated separately from say, politics or economics.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;By effectively stepping-back and (one suspects) post-rationalising his own career, HRH expanded the terms of debate beyond those old fashioned boundaries. What he presented was a surprisingly cohesive critique of the modernist project and its relationship with the earth&#39;s resources; not really mentioning architecture and urban design until the very end of the talk, instead focusing largely on the bigger picture of resources, agriculture and economic philosophies.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In fact, he admitted early on in the talk that he had failed to make this case before: &#34;&#60;em&#62;It must have appeared as if I was flitting from one subject to another...from agriculture to architecture to healthcare. But I was merely trying to point out where the imbalance was most acute&#34;.&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;INTERDEPENDENCE&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;By including architecture as part of the solution into his expanded frame of reference, what he was effectively doing was making an incredibly powerful case for the &#60;em&#62;importance&#60;/em&#62; of architecture as a very&nbsp;&#60;em&#62;non-&#60;/em&#62;separate thing - and doing it in a way that the architectural profession itself has largely failed to do. In fact it might even be said that architecture has worked hard for several decades to do the opposite. Mainstream architectural journalism, for example, still occupies two (increasingly hard to distinguish) roles:&#60;em&#62; Industry Journalism&#60;/em&#62; - a fairly solipsistic but functional information service provided to professionals (generally quite conservative but brilliant for encouraging the use of innovative materials within that framework) and &#60;em&#62;Cultural Journalism &#60;/em&#62;- for example written &#39;Reviews&#39; of newly opened buildings, commented upon by critics as if they were films or works of art in an exhibition. Both of these (to borrow a phrase from Bruce Mau) have much more to do with the &#60;em&#62;world of design&#60;/em&#62; than they do with the &#60;em&#62;design of the world&#60;/em&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;CAPITAL&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;By contrast, HRH&#39;s integration of architecture into his argument made a very convincing case for its central role in balancing &#34;financial... natural and community capital&#34;, specifically setting the challenge for architecture to become much more familiar with bio-mimicry and systems thinking. That&#39;s actually a very progressive and valid idea - certainly not something you&#39;d normally associate with a neo-classical conservative.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As the lecture progressed, it was hard not to think that the caricature of meddling traditionalist didn&#39;t really fit. Like many people, I am mistrustful of entirely hereditary power systems, so it&#39;s very hard to admit that HRH was showing a certain kind of leadership. But by expanding the debate beyond architecture itself to a wider view of our industrial / economic complex, he&#39;s forcing his opponents to do the same. Of course, this is not &#39;the end of style&#39;, but it &#60;em&#62;has&#60;/em&#62; left anyone who is leading their debate on primarily stylistic terms (&#39;traditional&#39; vs &#39;modern&#39; etc) looking uselessly out of date.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;PRINCE IN THE TOWER&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;OK - so he has undoubtedly post-rationalised his position on architecture. And there are still some pretty major flaws in his perspective. His lecture at times showed signs of an almost absurd traditionalism - a totally false belief that at some point in the past humans had a more &#34;harmonious&#34; relationship with nature and each other. This was coupled with dubious criticisms of &#34;empirical, mechanistic&#34; thinking, a rather lame advocation of contextualism (&#34;local materials&#34;) and above all, a rather naive romanticism of nature itself and its &#34;organic grammar of harmony&#34; (tell that to a wildebeest being ripped apart by a pack of hyena simply because it was unlucky enough to be born disabled).&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It could equally be said that to many of us, much of what was being said is not new - but what was striking was&nbsp;who was saying it, and to whom. The scope of the manifesto was reminiscent of &#60;a href=&#34;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Stewart Brand&#34;&#62;Stewart Brand&#60;/a&#62; or &#60;a href=&#34;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Buckminster Fuller&#34;&#62;Buckminster Fuller&#60;/a&#62; (from whom he borrowed a coinage at one point - perhaps unknowingly). Equally, some of the best ideas could have been taken from a &#60;a href=&#34;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Herman Daly&#34;&#62;Herman Daly&#60;/a&#62; or &#60;a href=&#34;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Layard,_Baron_Layard&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Richard Layard&#34;&#62;Richard Layard&#60;/a&#62; lecture:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62; &#34;Most would agree that the main result of progress should be less misery and more happiness. In our modern situation these ends have become dangerously confused with the means to the point where now wealth, innovation and growth have become the ends. They have become the destination when they were only ever meant to be the means of getting there.&#34;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;But by advocating a different sort of progress he has undoubtedly changed the game. That&#39;s an uncomfortable development for the architectural discipline, not least in light of Charles&#39; recent controversial intervention into a housing scheme in Chelsea on what were, I suspect, largely aesthetic grounds. But there&#39;s no getting around it: If architects and designers are serious about allowing new environmental and social awareness to radically change what we&#39;re designing (and a lot are), HRH is a public figure who, from now on, we&#39;re going to have to see more as a difficult ally and less as an easy enemy.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;em&#62;*Quoted in Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F28%2Fthe-end-of-style.html&#38;title=The+End+of+Style&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F28%2Fthe-end-of-style.html&#38;title=The+End+of+Style&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F28%2Fthe-end-of-style.html&#38;t=The+End+of+Style&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F28%2Fthe-end-of-style.html&#38;title=The+End+of+Style&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F28%2Fthe-end-of-style.html@@ta 
&#38;=The+End+of+Style&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F28%2Fthe-end-of-style.html&#38;t=The+End+of+Style&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Hyperreality</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/30/hyperreality.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;The universally accepted demise of the &#39;1950s concrete monolith&#39;, exemplified by the Park Hill Estate in Sheffield, &nbsp;and subsequent renovation (or lack of - covered in a recent BBC Two documentary) provoked me to consider what the future holds in terms of paradigms of &#39;style&#39; for architecture.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;REVIVING MODERNISM&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I feel it would be disingenuous not to reveal my best guess on what the future holds &nbsp;- considering my only enjoyment of Modernism is the irony I enjoy through hindsight. But to&nbsp;put my thoughts in context, I need you to entertain the idea that &#60;em&#62;Post-modernism&#60;/em&#62; should only be used as an umbrella term to describe an &bdquo;ethos&#38;#8223; and not relate to &bdquo;aesthetics&#38;#8223; of buildings, because in fact the current condition of Post-modernism only serves to surppress various paradigms which have failed to emerge with significant might to overthrow the Modern architecture that is ubiquitous across the globe.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;FROZEN UTOPIAS&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;The problem with Modern architecture, (amongst many other things) is its inability to address social problems through design. This is most noticeable during its early years in the USA where corporate capitalist might and the perceived utopia that it developed was seen as a means to create a complete society - but is equally evident in the european socialist utopias - which aimed to construct the solution to social problems around the idea that society was becoming more equal.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In reality, society was becoming &#60;em&#62;more&#60;/em&#62; polarised and stigma became attached to the physical form of these buildings as representing one side of that divide.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Unsurprisingly a desire for a lifestyle free from the sterile, elitist context arose, manifesting itself in places like Las Vegas and Disneyland, and the subsequent rise of Pop Art and work by the Ant Farm collective in particular provided a deeper critique of the Modernist hegemony.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;HYPERREALITY&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The dilemma of many modernist buildings (Park Hill included) is the perfect illustration of a society whose cartographers have created a map so detailed that it covers the very things it was designed to represent (both literally and metaphorically). When the empire inevitably declines, the map fades into the landscape and there is neither the representation nor the real remaining- just the hyperreal.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Hyperreality tricks consciousness into detaching from any real emotional engagement, instead opting for artificial simulation. Instead, emotional stimulation is found through simulation and imitation of a transient simulacrum of reality, rather than interaction with any &bdquo;real&#38;#8223; reality.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Pornography, Dubai, online games, virtual reality and McDonalds are all synonymous with modern life; but more influential than these is the role&nbsp;of media in creating the hyperreal. Such as the promotion of the facts and version of events in the recent Israel Gaza war, reality TV and the disgusting endorsement of a desire for lives which cannot be (such as the perfect facsimile of a celebrity&#39;s invented persona).&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Osama bin Laden, a man whose continued existence is pretty much irrelevant, as long as his simulacrum (a combination of blurry photos and wonky videos) exists within the media - he does his job, both for his supporters and his opponents, as hero and villain. Even al-Qaida itself only &#34;exists&#34; as a loose notion of shared values, rather than a cohesive organisation. It comes into being because individuals and groups act in its name; and because we (via our political representatives and the media) also attribute those actions to it. The representation is bigger and brighter than the reality, although looking for the links between the two are futile.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;9/11 &nbsp;- 11 / 28&nbsp;&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;So, to highlight my ideas (with more dramatic effect than accuracy): Modernism died on September 11th 2001 when the iconic Twin Towers were destroyed.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Not to be outdone on any Post-modern fun George Bush appeared in Iraq in November 2003, bearing a Thanksgiving turkey. The turkey was intended to represent the peace and prosperity that the coalition forces had brought to Iraq, thus offering a perfect simulacrum- a hyperreal symbol for something that doesn&#39;t exist. To add to the irony of the situation the turkey was also fake.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Modern architecture has passed up, down and through many aesthetic and economic hoops far more successfully than any alternative- mainly due to its ethos rather than for any aesthetic reason. We can hope though that there may well be a return in the short-term, up to a point - in public architecture and design. Indeed, government investment in building might even be necessary to help kick-start the economy in the months ahead. Schools, colleges and hospitals would require architects to think outside of the &#34;iconic&#34; box. Commercial skyscrapers and big-name museums and galleries have been flashy in recent years to draw maximum attention to themselves and to their promoters. This wouldn&#39;t be necessary, or even desirable, in the case of public buildings.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The hyperreal in contrast, ignorant to sign exchange value and devoid of context, proposes a very serious response to the tabula rasa of Modernism.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;2009 -&#60;/strong&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Maybe a new modesty will emerge for a while. However you only have to look at all the bright colours, visual jokes, architectural puns, allusions, elisions and illusions of the Park Hill redevelopment to realise that the chances of a paradigm manifesting in a physical form is very unlikely and this redevelopment definitely won&#38;#8223;t be the catalyst.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Although providing an&nbsp;interesting visual parody of the organisations involved, it definitely doesn&#38;#8223;t showcase an example of architects succumbing to power and greed anytime soon.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Hopefully, akin to Jean Baudrillard, who once wrote &ldquo;Dying is pointless&rdquo; and, &ldquo;You have to know how to disappear.&rdquo; We just haven&#38;#8223;t noticed Modernism has gone.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Bring on the Hyperreal.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F30%2Fhyperreality.html&#38;title=Hyperreality&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F30%2Fhyperreality.html&#38;title=Hyperreality&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F30%2Fhyperreality.html&#38;t=Hyperreality&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F30%2Fhyperreality.html&#38;title=Hyperreality&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F30%2Fhyperreality.html@@ta 
&#38;=Hyperreality&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F30%2Fhyperreality.html&#38;t=Hyperreality&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Drawing Closer</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/27/drawing-closer.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&ldquo;Everyone has their own secret galaxy of stars. A corner of my galaxy is reserved for good drawers and imaginers. What is drawn always distorts what has been imagined. But what has been imagined must be given shape by drawing and is not fully imagined until it has been drawn.&rdquo;&nbsp;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: normal;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;Warren Chalk, Archigram&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Painters paint, Writers write, Sculptors sculpt, Engineers engineer, Builders build, but what do Architects do? The title &lsquo;architect&rsquo; is understood to derive from the Greek arkhitekton &ndash; which translates literally as chief-builder; but that&#39;s really a misnoma. Contrary to popular belief, architects in the main do not produce buildings, what they actually produce are &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;drawings&#60;/span&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Ever since the &lsquo;original&rsquo; architects (Master-Builders) started scratching their designs in the compacted internal earth floors of construction sites; the relationship between architect and drawing was established behind closed doors. Over time the profession of architecture has virtually digested the act of drawing to a point where it has become either unnoticeable to anyone looking on from outside the profession or when it does emerge the appearance is either incredibly exclusive or simply patronising.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;More recently, in the last 50 years, a romantic image has developed in both the public and professional psyche that sees the architect (typically lone) express his talent in an intuitive quick drawing &ndash; often referred to as the sketch. The sketch is marketed as being able to be generated at any time, place or circumstance &ndash; at lunch, on the toilet, or whilst shopping. But it also has the benefit of being able to be drawn on any surface &ndash; the dinner napkin, the toilet paper, or on the back of a receipt. The more absurd the situation and drawing surface, the more kudos the sketcher tends to assume.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The sketch unfortunately has a tendency to be incomprehensible without the aid of its author to decode its original message. Enter stage left &ndash; the architects other &lsquo;Weapon of Mass Description&rsquo; &ndash; the diagram. Whereas the sketch is noted mainly for representing intuition, spontaneity, and creativity; the diagram, on the other hand, is mainly renowned for its reductive, rational, and deliberate qualities. The diagram has come to the forefront of the contemporary architect&rsquo;s arsenal as the profession grapples with more and more issues and attempts to engage with more and more disciplines and needs a means through which to communicate ideas and strategies clearly and concisely.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The sketch and the diagram are arguably the most common working drawing devices the profession has used and still uses today. However, it may be the case that even though they are the most familiar devices, each role has become further detached, confused, misused and even abused in the process of design; meaning more often than not, a loss of integrity and intimacy in the resulting architecture.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;A PERSONAL MANIFESTO FOR CHANGING HOW ARCHITECTS DRAW&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;1. Appreciate your audience&#60;/span&#62;: &nbsp;Instead of seeing a drawing as a statement &nbsp;- a &lsquo;transparent window&rsquo; into an architects mind, see it as a means to establish a two way dialogue - something you draw on top of, not put in a frame.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;2. Value drawing as verb as well as drawing as noun:&#60;/span&#62; Remember drawing is an &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;action&#60;/span&#62; as well as a thing to be hung up on walls. The latter is necessary for closing down possibilities, where as the former is equally as necessary for opening up new ones.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;3. Draw inclusively:&#60;/span&#62; Rather than drawing walls we should be laying out paths.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;4. Be actively critical whilst drawing:&#60;/span&#62; Challenge the contemporary dilemma of both the sketch and diagram being overly used as universal instruments; where technique has once again become the chief instigator of design and is often left unquestioned.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;5. Keep a journal: &#60;/span&#62;Follow Ariadne&rsquo;s lead and leave a &lsquo;thread&rsquo; to guide your future self.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;6. Appreciate when NOT to draw anything:&#60;/span&#62; There are times when drawing nothing is of more use than making a single mark.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F27%2Fdrawing-closer.html&#38;title=Drawing+Closer&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F27%2Fdrawing-closer.html&#38;title=Drawing+Closer&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F27%2Fdrawing-closer.html&#38;t=Drawing+Closer&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F27%2Fdrawing-closer.html&#38;title=Drawing+Closer&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F27%2Fdrawing-closer.html@@ta 
&#38;=Drawing+Closer&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F27%2Fdrawing-closer.html&#38;t=Drawing+Closer&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Subtopian Dreams</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/26/subtopian-dreams.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Editorial: Subtopian Dreams is Tom&#39;s thesis project produced at Sheffield University School of Architecture. Tom is a friend of ours - our diplomas overlapping by one year &nbsp;- so while the rest of us were working on earnest mini-utopias - often blunt expressions of social optimism or naive good intentions, we were forced to witness the birth of this highly legitimate child of brutal wit and razor-sharp rationalism. In short, the project takes the military/industrial complex, what Virilio calls &#39;Pure War&#39; - and holds a mirror up to it, exposing its intimate relationship to suburban distraction, industrial capitalism and political machevellianism (the carefully constructed infrastructure of ignorance?)- the civilian apparatus to sustain permanent war. &nbsp;It is an incredible essay not only on design as political commentary, but also on the brutal logic of design in a sense much broader, and in fact much more real than the rather more pious, less threatening version of events that the rest of us tend to surround ourselves with.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Tom writes:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#34;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: normal;&#34;&#62;The fact of having increasingly sophisticated weaponry deters the enemy more and more. At that point war is no longer in its execution, but in its preparation. The perpetuation of war is what I call Pure War, war which isn&rsquo;t acted out in repetition, but in infinite preparation. &#34;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Paul Virilio &amp; Sylvere Lotringer,&nbsp;Pure War&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#34;The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children. The fronts are everywhere to be seen. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is fortified. Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage.&#34;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Churchill, Winston /On the Radio /June 18 &amp; House of Commons 20 August 1940&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The suburbanite is in a state of constant warfare against their neighbours, nature and terrorism. Luckily at the suburbanites command is a whole host of military developed technologies to help them rid all their work surfaces of 99.99% bacteria &amp; maintain a sterile home whilst inadvertently helping to keep the war industries in business. Somehow we have confused the strict military ordering of things with the act of living!&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Seeking an optimal performing suburban pattern for the top layer, various network configurations are evaluated on the basis of defense and access. A combination of types becomes the chosen condition that is then mirrored and repeated. Meanwhile, below that cleansers and domestic technologies are being manufactured for consumption. And, yet again, meanwhile below that troops are training in subterranean bunkers for the next call-up. The military-industrial complex and the suburban-industrial complex unified in marital bliss.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;For more images or to see Tom&#39;s other projects, visit his&nbsp;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.imakegoodtea.com&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;I make Good Tea&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;website&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;.&nbsp;There has also been some interesting commentary on this project &#60;/span&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://subtopia.blogspot.com/2009/02/military-suburbanism-how-to-plan-for.html&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Subtopia&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;here&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62; and &#60;/span&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://infranetlab.org/blog/2009/01/student-works-suburban-defense/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Infranetlab Blog&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;here&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F26%2Fsubtopian-dreams.html&#38;title=Subtopian+Dreams&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F26%2Fsubtopian-dreams.html&#38;title=Subtopian+Dreams&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F26%2Fsubtopian-dreams.html&#38;t=Subtopian+Dreams&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F26%2Fsubtopian-dreams.html&#38;title=Subtopian+Dreams&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F26%2Fsubtopian-dreams.html@@ta 
&#38;=Subtopian+Dreams&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F26%2Fsubtopian-dreams.html&#38;t=Subtopian+Dreams&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>This Building Leaks</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/24/this-building-leaks.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;This Building Leaks&#60;/span&#62; is a real-time exhibition broadcasting from the University of Sheffield School of Architecture; part of the school&rsquo;s centenary celebrations.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;All exhibitions are dishonest. Work is curated, filtered, conditioned &ndash; by which time it is always &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;late&#60;/span&#62;. &#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;This Building Leaks&#60;/span&#62; is an exhibition not &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;by&#60;/span&#62; Sheffield School of Architecture but &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;of&#60;/span&#62; Sheffield School of Architecture. The Upper Floors of the Arts Tower have been bugged, leaking snippets of work, activity, conversations...&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Every night the Arts Tower leaks light. The lights are always on. Anybody might think that the Arts tower is a silent institution for insomniacs. The premise behind &#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;This Building Leaks&#60;/span&#62; is to break that silence. For the next few months, those in Sheffield, or anywhere in the world, can infiltrate the school in real-time, and listen-in / watch current activity.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The exhibition has been (un) curated by three final-year Architecture Students, Alastair Parvin, Adam Towle and Lukas Barry and can be accessed online at &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.thisbuildingleaks.co.uk/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;This Building Leaks&#34;&#62;www.thisbuildingleaks.co.uk&#60;/a&#62;.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F24%2Fthis-building-leaks.html&#38;title=This+Building+Leaks&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F24%2Fthis-building-leaks.html&#38;title=This+Building+Leaks&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F24%2Fthis-building-leaks.html&#38;t=This+Building+Leaks&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F24%2Fthis-building-leaks.html&#38;title=This+Building+Leaks&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F24%2Fthis-building-leaks.html@@ta 
&#38;=This+Building+Leaks&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F24%2Fthis-building-leaks.html&#38;t=This+Building+Leaks&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Every City is a Factory</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/23/every-city-is-a-factory.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;The design of the waste system, like many of the systems we depend on every day, is more or less invisible. Very few of us really know anything about where our waste&nbsp;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;goes&#60;/span&#62;. It is, after all - waste - we&#39;d rather take it for granted. But at the same time, we are increasingly aware of the disastrous environmental consequences our waste has. But &#39;recycling&#39; has worked its way into the conventional wisdom without really being subjected to local interrogation. In order to really think about what recycling waste might mean, we need to strip off some of the confusing myths and red-herrings&nbsp;that surround it.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold; text-decoration: line-through;&#34;&#62;RECYCLING IS A GREEN ISSUE&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;A huge assumption which overrides our conception of waste is the persistent association between recycling and &#39;green&#39;ness. It is an easy shorthand that tidies the issue away into a neat vacuum, and disconnects our perception of recycling from the real complexities of its environmental impact. Even the phrase &#39;green&#39; is disconcertingly honest about its deceit: it replaces genuine environmental awareness with an empty aesthetic; a colour. Today we are constantly bombarded by the banal iconography of &#39;green&#39; - a moralised smoke screen behind which almost anything could be happening. In Sheffield at least, the moral line between recycling and not recycling is far from being black and&nbsp;green. Waste systems are, in reality, defined by all of: politics, psychology, class &amp; culture divides, value systems and above all, economics.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold; text-decoration: line-through;&#34;&#62;RECYCLING IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO PERSUADE PEOPLE TO &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;WANT&#60;/span&#62; TO DO&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;By moralising waste, we have created an environment in which many people believe that the only way to increase the amount of recycling is to persuade those who do not recycle to&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;want&#60;/span&#62;&nbsp;to make the sacrifice of time and effort which they assume to be an inevitable part of recycling. There is some unwillingness to admit that recycling is almost exclusively a middle-class phenomenon - which depends on a particular set of values and privileges (such as owning a car). Some are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths of enforce these moral values in those who do not share them: using advertising, awareness campaigns, &#39;education&#39; &nbsp;programmes, taxes and even surveillance and draconian punishments for those who do not recycle.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;All this assumes that the system is, in design terms, perfect - and it is the &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;people&#60;/span&#62; that are deficient. In fact, a survey by Sheffield Homes revealed that the vast majority of those in council-rented housing (even estates where conventional black-bag systems are struggling) &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;were willing&#60;/span&#62; to recycle. Clearly then, there is a gap between what we &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;say&#60;/span&#62; we&#39;d do and what we &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;actually&#60;/span&#62; do - and that, I&#39;d argue, is a design gap. Investing our efforts into behaviour change may be money thrown away when there is a huge gain to be made up in the design of the system itself, and we should probably look at that before we go about redesigning people&#39;s minds.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold; text-decoration: line-through;&#34;&#62;RECYCLING IS SOMETHING EXTRA TO THE DEFAULT&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The introduction of recycling policy has only ever been incremental. As a result, it&#39;s considered normal for recycling bins (blue, green, red...) to be issued as &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;extra&#60;/span&#62; bins on top of the standard black bin. Apart from the resultant &#39;bin rash&#39; - this approach creates a condition in which recycling becomes counter-intuitive:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Firstly the total volume of all the bins at any time is actually larger (even if the increase in bins is offset by less frequent collections), so recycling seems like adding waste, not subdividing it. Secondly, and more crucially, it articulates recycling as an extra to the default, which is often harder to access and empty. In our day to day lives, we are too busy to think too much about waste, so we inevitably gravitate towards the default - the low-effort black bin. If recycling is to be integrated into waste, we need to see it is a profound evolution in the way that the waste is &#39;normally&#39; disposed of. In other words, we need to redesign the &#39;default&#39;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;WASTE STRATEGIES&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The School of Architecture six-week Live&nbsp;project for Sheffield Homes was an intense research exercise into the underlying dynamics of the city&#39;s waste logistics, bringing together a messy collection of approaches ranging from work-shadowing to economic scenario planning, but it was&nbsp;nonetheless&nbsp;tied back to these central questions and principles. How might we begin to put together a collection of possible future strategies for waste management in UK cities?&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;1. Redesign the Defaul&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;t&#60;/span&#62; Thaler and Sunstein, in their book &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Nudge&#60;/span&#62;, introduce the idea of &#39;choice architectures&#39; - that the environment in which we make choices is always (whether we know it or not) designed. In the case of recycling, that choice is not a fair one. With a nearby black bin competing with the time and extra effort required to go about recycling. So by moving the point of choice to the point of disposal (say, the kitchen bin) designers can create an environment in which it is &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;just as easy (or hard) to recycle as it is to not recycle&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;On reflection, this seems pretty obvious. Although we looked at the design of cheap, space-saving recycling bins (including the &#39;S-Door&#39; - a time-generous interface for collecting waste through the front door) it&#39;s not about the design of bins. It&#39;s about the idea that council&#39;s and ALMO&#39;s might find much more leverage (effectiveness per cost) by providing free point-of-disposal sorting bins to every household.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;2.Redesign the Infrastructure&#60;/span&#62; Particularly in the case of 1960&#39;s high-rise estates, it would be prohibitively expensive to retrofit existing waste-chutes to handle multiple waste-streams. An alternative system involves &#39;time-sampling&#39; the existing chutes - using a button operated input device at the chute-head to control a mechanical sorter at the chute-foot - allowing the single chute to be used for several different types of waste. Once again, all the choices become equal at the point of disposal.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;3. Redesign Communications&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62; &nbsp;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;Historically, w&#60;/span&#62;aste schemes are burdened by their reliance on &#39;one size fits all&#39; solutions. Having arrived at the idea of introducing an information feedback-loop from estate managers to residents as a positive psychological tool, part of the team realised they were inadvertently looking at a means of providing continuous feedback, which would allow pilot schemes to be matched to specific estates with a much finer brush - creating the opportunity to creative virtuous (communal) feedback loops in service provision.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;4. Design a Waste Economy&nbsp;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;Most profoundly&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;, of course, we are forced to reconsider the very idea of &#39;waste&#39; itself - the idea that we can extract &#39;raw materials&#39; &#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;ad infinitum&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;, and use them rather inefficiently before burying or burning them. Implicit within the concept of &#39;waste&#39; is the assumption that there is somewhere else that it can go (In the case of the UK, that may currently be Asia). But clearly, planet earth has no waste chute, so it has go somewhere. Paradoxically, we must be hoping that what we are sending away in fact has some value.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It is an odd product of Britain&#39;s political history that we see &#39;waste&#39; as a single topic or problem, which can be contracted to a single&nbsp;organisation, or designed as a single system.&nbsp;We would never try to impose the same level of organisational simplicity on, for example, supply. How we supply ourselves, with what, from where, and how often has become a matter of societal expertise. We are good at it - in fact we are almost certainly&nbsp;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;too&#60;/span&#62;&nbsp;good at it: Shopping has subsumed leisure, culture, public space... But the complexities of supply are understood as market complexities, where demand, desire, brand, lifestyle, logistics and ethics compete. The final destination of the consumption pattern is the house. Beyond the house - suppliers lose interest.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;THE WASTE DIVIDE&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;We don&#39;t (yet) see waste in the same way. We don&#39;t yet see houses as commercial units for the production of valuable &#39;waste&#39;. The big difference is that over the last century, the central mantra of supply has been choice. The ability to choose between products not just in and of themselves, but increasingly for the &#39;ethical&#39; choices they represent: &#34;Fair trade&#34;, &#34;Organic&#34;, &#34;Local&#34;. &nbsp;The first, and most obvious thing to point out about these is that this kind of choice is made according to moral value systems, and those value systems belong almost exclusively to the upper / middle class. They are a green-chic gloss over the core reality: That these choices are luxury products, completely inaccessible and value-less for about one third of the UK population. The same can be said of the &#39;choices&#39; introduced to the waste market. As unpalatable as it may seem, &#34;recycling&#34; and its moralisation has become a think-lite moral luxury, assuaging the guilt of the relatively well-off, but of little or no concern to everyone else. It is an exclusively Nigella / Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall class phenomenon.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;COMMUNAL PRODUCTION&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If the city &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;is&#60;/span&#62; a factory, with each household manufacturing a commodity called &#39;waste&#39; - we are expecting the workers to work without pay. In fact, we are even expecting them to &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;pay&#60;/span&#62; for the pleasure of their sacrifice. At present only a tiny minority of waste materials are profitable (there has been a sharp increase in the theft of lead from church roofs for sale as &#39;scrap&#39;), but that may well shift with the rising price of oil in the next 20 years. Whether or not the deployment of municipal incinerators and anaerobic digesters (means to reconcile environmental targets with the requirements of contractors&#39; profits) delays this shift or accelerates it is up for debate, but it hints at an increasing scope for entrepreneurs and non-profit community&nbsp;organisations&nbsp;to intervene upstream of the major waste contractors and siphon off the most profitable household waste commodities.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;One fairly clear conclusion is that as architects and designers we are going to have to expand our dealing with waste beyond the location and appearance of bins. We need to see waste not in terms of objects, but as a set of resource-flows which do not end in the kitchen. This doesn&#39;t mean that bins should become the centre of attention - part of our current confusion lies in the bizarre tendency to make bins into foreground cultural artifacts - but it does mean we have to see communal waste production, and its impact upon our environment, our time and our finances as being much more central to personal well-being than has ever previously been fashionable.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://03liveproject2008.blogspot.com&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;&#39;System Default&#39;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&nbsp;was the product of a six-week Live Project at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture. It looked at the waste disposal system in Sheffield, and in particular future strategies for waste design on council-owned flatted estates.&nbsp;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Client:&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.sheffieldhomes.org.uk&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.sheffieldhomes.org.uk&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;Sheffield Homes&#60;/a&#62; (An Arms-Length Management&nbsp;Organisation, managing council-owned housing in Sheffield)&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Project Team&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;: Romain Arnoux / India Aspin / James Kenyon / Mike Swiszczowski / Peter Sofoluke / Alastair Parvin / Sarah Bryan / Oliver Cartwright / Cristina Cerulli (tutor) / Tom Kangro / John Pillar&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;div&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/div&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F23%2Fevery-city-is-a-factory.html&#38;title=Every+City+is+a+Factory&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F23%2Fevery-city-is-a-factory.html&#38;title=Every+City+is+a+Factory&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F23%2Fevery-city-is-a-factory.html&#38;t=Every+City+is+a+Factory&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F23%2Fevery-city-is-a-factory.html&#38;title=Every+City+is+a+Factory&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F23%2Fevery-city-is-a-factory.html@@ta 
&#38;=Every+City+is+a+Factory&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F23%2Fevery-city-is-a-factory.html&#38;t=Every+City+is+a+Factory&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Pt.2 - Dubai</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/25/pt2-dubai.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;PROJECTIONS&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Dubai is the latest act in a vehemently scripted drama. It looks undeniable that there is an important role for it to play in our future understanding of architecture and the city. If only as a calling for architecture to take itself less seriously.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Koolhaas observes:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Our society continuously reinvents its needs, and these needs are real... I think architects are unable to read the mutations that&nbsp;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: normal;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;take place and to reinterpret certain phenomena as being new versions... of phenomena they previously knew in architectural terms... we as architects still look at it in terms of a nostalgic model, and in an incredibly moralistic sense, refuse signs of its being reinvented in other more populist or more commercial terms.&#60;/span&#62;[1]&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;On deduction, the following projections are perceived mutations to the city as we expect it. With a brief tribute to Koolhaas&rsquo; Generic City&mdash;This is Dubai&rsquo;s Tribute City:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;1. Welcome&#60;/span&#62; to Tribute City. 1.1. Your connecting flight will be leaving shortly.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;2. The pseudo-population&#60;/span&#62; of Tribute City is part-time. 2.1. You are either here: on a business meeting sustaining the economy, as a tourist sustaining the myth, as a builder/chef/cleaner sustaining its attractions. 2.2. There is no such thing as &lsquo;locals&rsquo;. 2.3. One of the many fleeting, magnetic incentives of Tribute City has brought you here. 2.4. You are now categorised as either the cosseted or the cosseters. 2.5. Density in the pseudo-population is a myth&mdash;everyone who &lsquo;lives&rsquo; here also &lsquo;lives&rsquo; somewhere else. 2.6. &lsquo;Home&rsquo; is a fictional concept used by the pseudo-population. 2.7. Tribute City is constantly functioning at a fraction of its maximum capacity. 2.8. Segregation does lead to the successful coexistence of many cultures. 2.9. As a temporary citizen you have little genuine affiliation with Tribute City, your loyalty is conditional. 2.10. When Tribute City implodes you can simply run away.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;3. Architecture&#60;/span&#62; in Tribute City illustrates, concurrently, the climax of the Icon and its ultimate submission to commercialism. 3.1. The skyscraper is a play thing and a ticket to the elite club. 3.2. Function, form, efficiency, originality as justification for architecture are all pass&eacute;. 3.3. Tribute City has become saturated with extravagance, rendering the possibility of distinction obsolete; therefore the &lsquo;starchitect&rsquo; and &lsquo;cad-monkey&rsquo; are one and the same thing. 3.4. Architecture is the servant of capital&mdash;its current typology has become the resort. 3.5. You should produce, by any means available, expedient, disposable architecture that adequately addresses just the problem at-hand[2]. 3.6. Tribute City is factored so that things that change at similar rates are together.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;4. Nature&#60;/span&#62; in Tribute City exists only to be tamed. 4.1. The prevalence of profligacy ensures both urbanism and architecture are unsustainable. 4.2. In the future, the final battle of the current crisis of sustainability and global-warming will be fought in Tribute City&mdash;sustainability will be the biggest protagonist in the revolution for a brand-new model of city life&mdash;until then, stainability is simply a pithy marketing mantra. 4.3. Landscaping is either for the purpose of golf courses or identifying wealthier areas of the city. 4.4. The unsustainable is the tourist attraction of the global-warming era.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;5. Infrastructure&#60;/span&#62; comes second to creating spectacle in Tribute City&mdash;the usual, prehistoric, considerations are left to flippant afterthought. 5.1. Other forms of transport exist, but the car is the only one that is used. 5.2. Tribute City boasts 4.9 taxis per 1,000 people, compared to 1.6 in New York and 2.7 in London 5.3. Power and water are the biggest challenges facing Tribute City. The power and water demand rises at an incredible 20% and 15% respectively every year. 5.4. All of Tribute Citys water come from desalination plants and it has the highest water consumption per capita on the planet&mdash;you have to keep the greens green. 5.5. Maintenance needs have accumulated, but an overhaul is unwise, since you might break the system.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;6. The urban grain&#60;/span&#62; has become a piecemeal of follies&mdash;the city is no longer a slave to the master-plan. 6.1. The master-plan is rigid, misguided and out of date[3]. 6.2. Piecemeal growth is undertaken in an opportunistic fashion, starting with the existing, living, breathing system, and working outward, a step at a time, in such a way as to not undermine the system&rsquo;s viability&mdash;the programme is simply enhanced as you use it[4]&mdash;refactor unrelentingly. 6.3. If you can adapt quickly to change, predicting it becomes far less crucial&mdash;hindsight is better than foresight.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;7. Farewel&#60;/span&#62;l. 7.1. This is the last call for flights leaving Tribute City&mdash;please pass through again soon.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;1. Koolhaas, Rem. &ldquo;Conversations With Students&rdquo; in Architecture at Rice 30. (New York: Rice University School of Architecture/Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), p.44-45.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;2. Foote. &ldquo;Big Ball of Mud&rdquo;. Go to &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html#ThrowAwayCode&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html#ThrowAwayCode&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;3. Ibid. Go to &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html#piecemealGrowth124&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html#piecemealGrowth124&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;4. Ibid. Go to &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html#piecemealGrowth&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html#piecemealGrowth&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F25%2Fpt2-dubai.html&#38;title=Pt.2+-+Dubai&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F25%2Fpt2-dubai.html&#38;title=Pt.2+-+Dubai&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F25%2Fpt2-dubai.html&#38;t=Pt.2+-+Dubai&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F25%2Fpt2-dubai.html&#38;title=Pt.2+-+Dubai&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F25%2Fpt2-dubai.html@@ta 
&#38;=Pt.2+-+Dubai&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F25%2Fpt2-dubai.html&#38;t=Pt.2+-+Dubai&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>The Urban Pantry</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/21/the-urban-pantry.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;We have reached a tipping point in the history of human civilisation. &nbsp;With over 50% of the world now living in an urban environment, sustaining large concentrations of people will become a big issue in the future. &nbsp;With oil prices fluctuating and the greater demand for meat and grain in the rapidly industrialising Far East, there has been global increase in food prices by up to 8.3%. &nbsp;Will there come a point where what you pay for food comes at too great a cost? &nbsp;It has been said that all cities are days away from anarchy, and considering the population of London consumes a land mass 125 times its own size, it is a chilling proposition.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;You are where you eat.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Thankfully, food is a topical issue in the eyes of the public. &nbsp;We are seeing mass media interest in local foods once again - since globalised food products are the default choice in the typical supermarket, local food has somewhat become the luxury food of the average consumer. &nbsp;Added value comes not from how far away your food has travelled, but how little - complete with packaging that displays images of the grower, with data of how far raw product has come, that little bit of personality in an otherwise bland but necessary commodity. &nbsp;For the average consumer, the paradigm of &#39;you are what you eat&#39; is now synonymous with &#39;you are where you eat&#39;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;A great amount of diversity is found on your doorstep. &nbsp;DEFRA figures suggest that 71% of all the UK&#39;s apples are imported from overseas, which one to wonder why there seem to be only four varieties available&#39;. &nbsp;Considering my city of Sheffield alone yields about 30 varieties within its borders, it is little wonder that projects such as Abundance are reaping the rewards of harvesting Sheffield&#39;s seasonal glut of fruit year after year,&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;Lessons from Havana&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Havana, Cuba shows us that urban growing programs can successfully manage food production for an entire city. The Urban Pantry contextualises the idea of growing food in the city of Sheffield through collaborative synergy of its communities. &nbsp;Can Sheffield itself be home to thousands of microfarms of orchards, plots and livestock enclosures that can self sustain the city&#39;s inhabitants indefinitely?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;With the rise of mass collaboration occurring through the internet, how long will it take for this collaboration to spill over into the real world that takes organisation from the realm of the blogs and onto the urban plot? &nbsp;Working in the vibrant inner city neighbourhood of Sharrow, the Urban Pantry scheme aims to locate and manage potential food growing sites within a 5-10 minute walk of it. &nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Food is inherently a social and cultural entity. &nbsp;These localised exchanges of food and knowledge cannot even be valued on a purely economic level, but rather as an indicator of wealth built upon social capital (the intangible value of connections between people) not seen in generations. &nbsp;A well organised Urban Pantry should be a place where people not only eat food in the knowledge that it has travelled in metres and not miles, but becomes an alternative public forum where ongoing community discussions take place next to a vibrant annual calender of events that accommodates the diverse community of which it serves&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;Redundancy&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The built strategy itself is based upon the idea of seasonality and impermanence - a provisional construction. &nbsp;The Old Sharrow School is a Victorian school that was earmarked for renaovation since the school itself moved to a new facility 300 metres down the road. &nbsp;In the re-imagining of the school as Urban Pantry, only the masonry shell remains, as a catalyst for further development should the Urban Pantry fail as a scheme through lack of interest - its constituent parts, as an inhabited internal structure, are constructed in such a way that no trace of it is left should a developer acquire the site in the future. &nbsp;The Urban Pantry therefore through its construction acknowledges its own redundancy when it is no longer useful to the community it serves. &nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Indeed, this redundancy has also informed the building servicing strategy; why even bother with building services at all? &nbsp;This pre-industrialised notion of seasonality is a small pocket of resistance that echoes back to a time where seasons were measured by the passing of the sun, rather than the passing of the hands on a clock. &nbsp;Or why bother with lighting? &nbsp;When it gets dark, it&#39;s dark - candles and bonfires come out and a meal shared over a fire makes for great conversation, the antidote to today&#39;s isolated and hectic lifestyle. &nbsp;Local food is not just about environmental and economic sustainability; at its core remains the simple fact that food is a necessity, so why not make it fun at the same time?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F21%2Fthe-urban-pantry.html&#38;title=The+Urban+Pantry&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F21%2Fthe-urban-pantry.html&#38;title=The+Urban+Pantry&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F21%2Fthe-urban-pantry.html&#38;t=The+Urban+Pantry&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F21%2Fthe-urban-pantry.html&#38;title=The+Urban+Pantry&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F21%2Fthe-urban-pantry.html@@ta 
&#38;=The+Urban+Pantry&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F21%2Fthe-urban-pantry.html&#38;t=The+Urban+Pantry&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Parliamentary Architectures</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/20/parliamentary-architectures.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Building Design&#60;/span&#62;&nbsp;magazine this week reports on the &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&amp;storycode=3126421&amp;c=1&amp;encCode=0000000001865c8f&#34;&#62;support a number of architects have given to the idea of replacing the semi-permanent tents occupying the river-side terrace of the Houses of Parliament&#60;/a&#62;. Labour MP Andrew MacKinley has called for them to be ripped down because &#34;they are disfiguring AW Pugin&#39;s grade I listed Palace of Westminster&#34;. &#34;This is a world heritage building...It should be jealously safeguarded but these marquees have become a permanent feature. It&#39;s outrageous.&#34; Who would have guessed that&nbsp;a number of architects would leap to the support of the idea - lending childishly lite architectural rhetoric to the moral virtuousness of the proposal: &#34;Something could be done that is much more 21st century, with photovoltaic cells and a light, airy structure - rather than this stripy tented thing.&#34; The extraordinary, self-serving cynicism of this aside, the response is a neat illustration of the irrelevance of conventional architectural wisdom, and its proximity to what is, essentially, protracted advertising.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;So firstly - I have to justify my criticism. Why is it such an absurd thing to propose?&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;- By proposing to replace a canvas structure with a &#39;permanent&#39; one that performs essentially the same role, architects are exposing a deep-seated antisocial priority: The cultural longevity and aesthetic integrity of the scene - the preserved cultural artefact - is treated as more important than those who actually use the building or those who would otherwise benefit from the expenditure of cash. Not only does it seem extraordinarily elitist that the many should owe&nbsp;allegiance&nbsp;to the aesthetic whims of the few, but it seems utterly illogical. Surely a permanent, &#39;elegant&#39; structure would be &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;more&#60;/span&#62; invasive, more a contentious mark upon the face of the preserved landmark than would a cheap one which can always be removed. The primary role of these semi-permeant&nbsp;marquees is to liberate the users from the claustrophobia of &#34;permanent&#34; design decisions - their cultural and financial worthlessness may be their greatest value.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;-It seems&nbsp;extraordinarily solipsistic that of all the debates one might have about the design of our governmental architecture, we should choose something so utterly asinine as the riverside refreshment tents. It looks almost like a metaphor for architecture&#39;s socially marginal status - a false humility.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;So what if we were to do the opposite? What if architecture was to suspend its peripheral status and take seriously its capacity to design something more fundamental than nostalgic cosmetics? A while ago, &#60;a href=&#34;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5126400.stm&#34;&#62;Jack Straw&#39;s proposal to open a competition to rethink the design of the debating chamber of the House of Commons&#60;/a&#62; was scrapped before it got off the ground - but it would be interesting to see what ideas would emerge if designers and students &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;were&#60;/span&#62; to apply thinking to the future of parliamentary democracy. Here are 3 to start:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;#1: The Microcosm Parliament&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;One of the most common criticisms of the houses of parliament (and the origin of Winston Churchill&#39;s assertion that: &#34;first we shape our buildings and then they shape us&#34;) is the extent to which the layout of the debating chamber reinforces the tit-for-tat party sectarianism of British Politics. Many would argue that in the 21st century, the&nbsp;confrontational&nbsp;party-centric mindset dominates political outcomes to the detriment of constituents. What is proposed therefore is an alternative seating plan, where Right. Hon. Members are seated &nbsp;not according to &#39;front bench&#39; &gt; &#39;back bench&#39;&nbsp;hierarchies&nbsp;but simply according to geographical location of their&nbsp;constituency. Each member still carries the ideals and allegiances to their party, and undoubtedly clustering will occur, but nonetheless their position in the house is dictated primarily by those they represent. It is interesting to note that until recently, this would have seated Tony Blair next to William Hague.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;#2: The National Network Parliament&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The Houses of Parliament should be emptied and leased as a Hotel, Museum and Conference Centre - uses befitting its &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;de facto&#60;/span&#62; role as tourist icon and cultural relic . Parliament meanwhile would form a partnership with the British Rail Network. MP&#39;s offices would be located either at stations across the country and/or in the trains themselves (thus allowing surgeries to be attended during the daily commute). Debating chambers meanwhile would be established a key national nodes and offices in underused post-industrial rail depots. The London-centric power&nbsp;hierarchy&nbsp;would be replaced by a regional fluidity - and railway towns such as Runcorn, Crewe and Rugby would take on renewed status. The result of this is that the financing of the project (bolstered by revenues from the Westminster Palace Hotel) aligns the interest of access to democracy and affordable mobility as a citizen&#39;s right.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;#3: The Expiring Parliament&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The Houses of Parliament would be demolished, and the site designated as a national commons. Parliament is relocated to sites along particular lengths of UK coastlines retreating due to erosion. Government would buy this land from those homeowners who have been ruined by the devaluation of their houses, who are currently &nbsp;eligible&nbsp;to no compensation. The land would be bought at full normal market value, since the constant threat of collapse - which is undesirable to dwellings - is of great &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;value&#60;/span&#62;&nbsp;to government. The construction of a lightweight, low embedded-energy administration building upon a retreaing coast would force a condition in which parliament must collapse and be rebuilt further inland every few years - so we would arrive at a situation of&nbsp;institutionalised&nbsp;change: where each generation must rethink and redesign its conception of democratic government.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F20%2Fparliamentary-architectures.html&#38;title=Parliamentary+Architectures&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F20%2Fparliamentary-architectures.html&#38;title=Parliamentary+Architectures&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F20%2Fparliamentary-architectures.html&#38;t=Parliamentary+Architectures&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F20%2Fparliamentary-architectures.html&#38;title=Parliamentary+Architectures&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F20%2Fparliamentary-architectures.html@@ta 
&#38;=Parliamentary+Architectures&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F20%2Fparliamentary-architectures.html&#38;t=Parliamentary+Architectures&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>The Migratory Zoo</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/18/the-migratory-zoo.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;There has been &#60;/span&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/search?q=zoo&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;renewed interest in the design of the zoo&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/a&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;. But much of the interest has revolved around an approach which is structurally innovative, but strategically conservative. About a year ago a competition in that mindset - to design &#39;The Environmental Zoo&#39; of the Future&#39; - provided a perfect opportunity to explore the wider question: Do Zoos &#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;have&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62; a future? The alternative model imagined here is not the result of any personal opinions about animal welfare (although others with such views may welcome it), but simply a speculation upon economic and cultural logic. The Migratory Zoo is half-proposal, half-prediction:&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;The Zoo of the 21st century will not be concerned with the design of enclosures for animals but the design of enclosures for human beings.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The Zoo is a raw example of architecture as a distorter&nbsp;of time and distance. When it was invented, as a&nbsp;Parisian Menagerie, its premise was that because most could not go to see the world, the world should be brought to them. The power of an empire could be measured by the diversity of its zoo.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Architecture, previously concerned with the&nbsp;adaption of the environment for human beings, now&nbsp;had to apply itself to mediating this artificial distortion.&nbsp;Animals had to be permanently housed in stage sets,&nbsp;which for tropical species, could simulate heat and&nbsp;humidity - even introducing &lsquo;native&rsquo; flora as well as&nbsp;fauna to enhance the illusion. For nocturnal&nbsp;species, time is completely &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;inverted&#60;/span&#62;: creating dim night-like conditions during opening&nbsp;hours, and bright day-like conditions at night (which&nbsp;the public never sees). The key challenge is proximity -&nbsp;housing prey so close to predator, architecture&rsquo;s&nbsp;only option was to disarm the food chain, replacing it&nbsp;with feeding patterns, walls and fences.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;MICROCOSM&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Constructed usually in densely populated but open areas such as city parks, the traditional zoo became a microcosm of the planet: an inhabitable world map. On a Sunday afternoon, it became possible to wander between continents in a matter of minutes - a form of power-augmentation made&nbsp;explicit in the zoning-plans of some zoos: the Africa Zone, the Australasia zone... Since the enclosures became icons for their inhabitants, zoo architecture became an agglomeration of theatres, a scale model of globalisation itself.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;MIGRATION&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;With mankind&rsquo;s increased ability to augment his&nbsp;capabilities&nbsp;through technology has come an increase in human migration on a&nbsp;massive scale. Beginning with the drive-thru safari park, we have created a condition in which&nbsp;we no longer place animals in protective cages, but humans. This inversion is important, and radical. Enclosing an&nbsp;animal in a cage ASSUMES humans&rsquo; intellectual&nbsp;superiority. Enclosing a human and an aqualung in a&nbsp;cage and lowering them into shark-infested waters&nbsp;RELIES upon humans&rsquo; intellectual superiority.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;There is a&nbsp;healthy mutual respect between the brutality of the environment&nbsp;and &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;man-only-with-the-help-of-technology.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;THREAT&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Globalisation has presented another fundamental challenge&nbsp;to the traditional zoo. Faced with the growing human population and its expanding patterns of consumption, the original habitats&nbsp;themselves have become endangered enclosures. Zoos, paradoxically,&nbsp;find themselves running&nbsp;as a funding and&nbsp;education mechanism for the &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;real&#60;/span&#62; work of global wildlife&nbsp;conservation in original habitats under threat.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;From the zoo as a model of the planet, the planet has&nbsp;now become a zoo.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;AIRSHIP&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What is proposed is a gradual decommisioning of the&nbsp;artificial distinction between public wildlife captivity&nbsp;and private wildlife conservation. The Migratory Zoo is an airship, a mode of transport chosen for its ability to transcend topography,&nbsp;hover for unlimited periods of time, move from&nbsp;continent to continent within hours or days, and above&nbsp;all, achieve intimacy with natural environments while&nbsp;inflicting almost zero footprint (physical, acoustic, environmental).&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;SAFARI&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Following prevailing wind currents around the world in order to minimise fuel consumption, the Migratory Zoo is effectively a hotel on safari -&nbsp;refuelling and restocking at cities most in need of an&nbsp;economic boost.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The decision to apply technology to the development&nbsp;and construction of mobile human-enclosures&nbsp;rather than static animal enclosures is an admission that architecture cannot compete&nbsp;with the spectacle of nature, and that the original&nbsp;habitats, rather than the man-made ones, are the ones that&nbsp;most need to benefit from the tourist economy.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;CONSERVATION AS SPECTACLE&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Despite its potential to be environmentally noninvasive,&nbsp;the objective will not be passive observation,&nbsp;but the airship will be a tool for the&nbsp;various conservation projects it visits (a useful platform&nbsp;for tracking down / treating large mammals, submerged&nbsp;sealife, birds), it will be an active agent establishing&nbsp;operational relationships between human and environment,&nbsp;including vetinary, scientific or political action.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The tourists, more than just consumers, are invited to&nbsp;participate in live projects. Thus the zoo is both leisure&nbsp;facility and educational institution (it is still relatively&nbsp;unusual to return from your holiday with an accredited&nbsp;qualification of your increased knowledge).&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;PLANET AS ZOO&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This capacity to engage first-hand with local and global&nbsp;issues will not be restricted purely to wildlife, but all&nbsp;aspects of planetary husbandry- including water supply,equitable industry, deforestation...&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The naively optimistic subtext of the Migratory Zoo is that the contrivances of tourism&nbsp;might become agents of global citizenship / responsibility rather than the opposite. At the same time it accepts the inevitability of the literal or metaphorical glass floor behind which the tourist is trapped.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;THE MOBILE PRISONERS&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Just as traditional zoo keepers must introduce stimulation for animals in enclosures, so the tourists&nbsp;will be confronted by the looming threat of boredom. To this end, the Migratory Zoo is stuffed with information and toys, including&nbsp;a Golf driving range. Each golf ball contains a wireless mote capable of broadcasting environmental data and activity. So should the tourist over-hit the ball into the landscape below, it will only serve to increase the amount of information available.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F18%2Fthe-migratory-zoo.html&#38;title=The+Migratory+Zoo&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F18%2Fthe-migratory-zoo.html&#38;title=The+Migratory+Zoo&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F18%2Fthe-migratory-zoo.html&#38;t=The+Migratory+Zoo&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F18%2Fthe-migratory-zoo.html&#38;title=The+Migratory+Zoo&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F18%2Fthe-migratory-zoo.html@@ta 
&#38;=The+Migratory+Zoo&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F18%2Fthe-migratory-zoo.html&#38;t=The+Migratory+Zoo&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Yellow Cities and Future Slums</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/17/yellow-cities-and-future-slums.html</link><description>&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#34;Jefferson Place sits right at the heart of this unprecedented new urban oasis, it is perfectly placed for residents to take advantage of all tha (the) greenquarter has to offer.�&#60;/span&#62;
&#60;p&#62; &#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p style=&#34;text-align: right;&#34;&#62;Life�s Great at greenquarter Manchester (www.crosbyhomes.co.uk)&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;There are many things that I have seen in the last year that have concerned me when it comes to what is being built in the UK, but nothing comes close to what I saw in Manchester�s so called �greenquarter� today.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;As part of a planned walk by the collective of artists and architects called the Building Initiative; I, along with several other native and adopted Mancunians participated in the event to walk an area of Manchester and was asked to bare in mind the question: How Yellow is Manchester?.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;�The Building Initiative uses the concept of �Yellow Space� as a metaphor for shared social space within the public domain. All around the world, yellow is used as a sign for useful things, shared objects, and public goods. Yellow can be understood as the colour of consensus, utility, and universal access. It denotes what could be called an �active neutrality� � a common ground created through usefulness�&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p style=&#34;text-align: right;&#34;&#62;Yellow Press � October/December 2008, Issue 4&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The Building Initiative�s position is �&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;if we can say that cities can be yellow, than we would have to admit that in many ways cities everywhere are getting less yellow.�&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;To paraphrase one participant today; �Manchester is a muddy yellow�.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Part of the walk took us through a new residential development in Manchester called �the greenquarter�. The greenquarter site occupies Brownfield land to the north of the city centre and lies next to the River Irk and a redundant railway. The development is made up of a collection of 15 to 20 storey residential blocks that uncomfortably rub shoulders with one another. Not only is it not green in any sense of the word, it is certainly not yellow either. Put simply the greenquarter is a monument to Capitalism and worse, a future slum in the making. The scheme is a perfectly built specimen of the �Boom and Bust� circumstances that accompany the �Credit-Crunch� times we live in.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;We stood beside a dull patch of grass which naturally demonstrated the poor levels of daylight available for near ground dwellers living here. Car-parking oozes out of the basement to occupy the first two floors of each tower block. Sandwiched between two slab blocks is a pissing water feature that sprays beneath identikit suicide balconies that overlook this depressing space. Bolted to one of the black steel fences that borders this controlled space from the base of one tower is a sign that reads: �&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;NO DOGS ALLOWED&#60;/span&#62;�. I feel glad that dogs are not subjected to such a poor experience, unfortunately for the human inhabitants this is home life � their kennel.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What makes this situation potentially worse is the unsurprising knowledge that the majority of these flats are not selling. High levels of privately funded residential surplus and increasing demands for affordable property makes the possibility of them being purchased by the local authority for social housing stock all the more likely. Unlike social housing though, the private housing market only has to meet building regulations and does not need to satisfy any sort of minimum spatial or social standards, and therefore profit is not only king but it is for country as well. This overwhelming sway for privatised profit is I would suggest, proving to be to the detriment of yellow space as it consumes the public domain and spews up vulnerable built and social environments. That is not to say that profit should be removed from the built equation, but that it should be rethought to factor the importance of making life better for everyone who lives, works and walks their dog. I join the Building Initiative by asking: How yellow is the place you live? and go one further to say: and What are you going to do about it?&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F17%2Fyellow-cities-and-future-slums.html&#38;title=Yellow+Cities+and+Future+Slums&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F17%2Fyellow-cities-and-future-slums.html&#38;title=Yellow+Cities+and+Future+Slums&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F17%2Fyellow-cities-and-future-slums.html&#38;t=Yellow+Cities+and+Future+Slums&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F17%2Fyellow-cities-and-future-slums.html&#38;title=Yellow+Cities+and+Future+Slums&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F17%2Fyellow-cities-and-future-slums.html@@ta 
&#38;=Yellow+Cities+and+Future+Slums&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F17%2Fyellow-cities-and-future-slums.html&#38;t=Yellow+Cities+and+Future+Slums&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>God 2.0</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/16/god-20.html</link><description>&#60;span style=&#34;font-family: Univers; font-size: 16px;&#34;&#62; &#60;/span&#62;
Our generation is witnessing a gradual (but unprecedented) shift in its relationship with everyday technology. Where previously the internet has been a mechanism connecting human being to human being, t&#60;a href=&#34;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34;&#62;he semantic web&#60;/a&#62; represents the next crucial step into a world in which the internet forms a complex, real-time link not just between people but between inanimate objects. Before long, your toaster will be having a conversation with your car. While you�re on the phone to a loved-one, the picture frames around your living room will prod your memories of the person you&#39;re talking to. Even performing simple functions, these conversant domestic objects will form some kind of total system - a complex web of simple synaptic functions - a global supercomputer. For the first time in mankind�s history we will have made a processor with no off button; events and trends flocking across its thin, spherical surface like meteorological patterns. Is it conceivable that these fluctuations will constitute semi-autonomous thought� even total awareness? A global brain?&#60;br&#62;&#60;br/&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What an evolutionary twist it would be if, after centuries of mysticism and superstition, mankind were to finally &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;manufacture&#60;/span&#62; God - not &#39;up&#39; (in heaven) - but as the sum-total of our technological project on earth. The last possible Babel.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62; &#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F16%2Fgod-20.html&#38;title=God+2.0&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F16%2Fgod-20.html&#38;title=God+2.0&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F16%2Fgod-20.html&#38;t=God+2.0&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F16%2Fgod-20.html&#38;title=God+2.0&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F16%2Fgod-20.html@@ta 
&#38;=God+2.0&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F16%2Fgod-20.html&#38;t=God+2.0&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Pt.1 - Dubai Dreaming</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/14/pt1-dubai-dreaming.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;08.09.08&#60;br /&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;Arriving in Dubai - &#39;The Fun is Building&#39;*&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I begin my descent to Dubai International Airport. Surprisingly, the plane is only half full which seems at odds with Emirates grand expansion plans. I have two seats to myself but still I can&rsquo;t sleep. A battle for window space erupts as people struggle to get a look at the wealth of new islands being birthed out of the sea off the shores of Dubai. As if to confirm busyness, a small dredging boat arcs a &lsquo;rainbow&rsquo; of sand onto one of the smaller islands; my guess: somewhere in the region of the &lsquo;new&rsquo; South Africa. Is this a show, akin to a water fountain display, saved for each new plane full of passengers? This is the first, and last, view I get of &lsquo;The World&rsquo; as it is far too exclusive for me to warrant a closer glimpse. I wonder if, from land, it would ever look as spectacular anyway? I touch down. I am welcomed into an air conditioned, airport shopping emporium.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Welcome to a strange paradise.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I pass through an endless arrangement of air conditioned comfort, along travelators, down escalators, airport/hotel pickup and eventually to the door of my hotel. At last I am outside. I am whacked by a wall of heat. This place is hot. It&#39;s already 37 degrees centigrade and it&#39;s only 8:00am.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;My first impressions of Dubai are formed from stolen glimpses out of the Taxi window. Muted pictures, through the sand haze, of what this city aspires to be. Acre on acre of concrete, fenced in with scaffolding and overhung by tower cranes. Tower blocks look eerily abandoned rather than half-made. So much is out of bounds&mdash;still a building site, everything else: desert. It is like nothing I&rsquo;ve seen before... and it is like nothing I&rsquo;ve seen of Dubai before either. What I&rsquo;ve seen up to now are renderings and artists impressions, immediate in their pictorial seduction, but all still some way off completion&mdash;still building sites littered with cranes and workers dressed in their matching blue overalls. Dubai is the stuff of the current city in its pure form. It is a city in construction &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;now&#60;/span&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If I am to get any where near close to understanding this place it is clear I am going to have to read it differently from anywhere else. From this point on, the existing model of the city is dead. This unmistakably unique enterprise at city making, this city of endless means and ambition, needs to be understood on its &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;own&#60;/span&#62; terms. Sudden conclusions and first impressions will be affected by my distinctly Western/Middle/Eastern** cultural baggage. I need to find a host of positions that are as plastic as they are imaginative.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It is not going to be enough to describe the &#39;Dubai Model&#39;... the newly minted term for this particular brand of honed development package of unashamed growth and expansion. I can&#39;t simply litter a critique with superlatives or words like fantasy and authenticity. Without doubt, some of the spatial/political practices being carried out here are in need of urgent critical interrogation and accountability. But a Western/Middle/Eastern** paradigm can surely no longer be the benchmark?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I&#39;m tired. I spend a few hours by the rooftop pool contemplating and procrastinating. I go to bed.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;* With the motto: &#34;The Fun is Building&#34;, &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.dubailand.ae/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Dubailand&#34;&#62;Dubailand&#60;/a&#62;, conceived by Mohammad Al Habbai, CEO of Dubailand, will be the largest destination for family-oriented tourism and entertainment in the World. Dubailand will feature a number of theme parks, including what&#39;s going to be the largest water park in the world, and the Manchester United Football Academy within Sports Land.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;** Delete as appropriate&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;09.09.08&#60;/span&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;Discovering Hidden Dubai - Deira&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Hidden within Dubai, like a clearing in a skyscraper forest, is the still-beating heart of the original city. Called Deira, the &#39;old town&#39; which built up around the creek is worlds apart from the curtain walling and concrete. I journey through the narrow streets, from canopy to canopy, finding shelter from the sun. This city, with a whole mechanism of services, networks of trade, community, and tourism, operates on a parallel economy, outside that of &#39;New Dubai&#39;. Moving deeper into its maze of alleyways and arcades, my arrival in Deira feels accidental. There are no monuments that declare &#39;you have arrived&#39;, there are no skyscrapers here. Here the purposeful remains just that, there is no pastiche...&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#34;Watches mister? Nice watches! You want watch? I have Rolex, Omega, Breitling!&#34;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The pace increases, with pedestrians, shoppers, bicycles, sellers, all, presumably, with somewhere to be. It is difficult to distinguish who is working and who is socialising; everyone appears busy. I stop for a second to consider buying a hat when I&#39;m interrupted by a shopkeeper from the adjacent store inviting me to look at his wares instead. An Emirati women barters over the price of some silk while a man brushes by with boxes, stacked impossibly high, on a cart&mdash;he disappears in to a dimly lit alley.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I walk past a small cafe, it was never meant to accommodate its clientele, people sit on crates and use a cart as a make-shift table, drinking out of plastic cups. Activity defies building in Deira, here impression is nothing. I find some hope. Deira doesn&#39;t need Dubai.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;Discovering Hidden Dubai - Al Quoz&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;New developments burgeon in the desert, beyond the older cores of Deira and Bur Dubai, linked by freeways and ring roads. Any remaining space is quickly filled by a lower-intensity, car-dependent urban sprawl. I ask my taxi driver to take me to Al Quoz, one of these intermediate spaces. He looks a little incredulous but obliges. The Al Quoz Industrial District houses many of the immigrant workers who service projects such as Dubai Marina and Emirates Hills as well as the freezone in Jebel Ali. Some facilities (my tax driver says &#39;labour camps&#39;), my taxi driver tells me, can hold up to 2000 labourers, who are segregated by nationality, in an effort to avoid disputes.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The roads here are more open... more English. People still stop and chat and greet each other as they pass. The absence of women is startling and the atmosphere, in one camp I make my way through, is disarmingly civilsed and upbeat. A lot has been written on the appalling conditions of these camps and the inhumane conditions under which labourers are expected to work. But I witness an admirable care and attentiveness within the camps, a willingness of living that is overlooked by the media coverage of these labourers. The coverage may have the ideals and interests of these labourers in mind but rarely delve beyond the impersonal, staggering statistics to impress, shock and provide substance for quotes. The dire circumstances I have read about are not prevalent, here anyway, and I leave with the news that some contractor businesses are beginning to listen to the worldwide demand for improved conditions... a small token gesture maybe, but more hope none the less.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;10.09.08&#60;/span&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;Why &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;are&#60;/span&#62; we &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;still&#60;/span&#62; &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Learning from Las Vegas&#60;/span&#62;?&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Fifteen hours later I am, again, lying by the hotel pool. I am slightly uncomfortable from my all-you-can-eat breakfast and the persistent heat. In between applications of sun-spray I attempt to reacquaint myself with &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;Learning from Las Vegas&#60;/span&#62;.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It&#39;s not hard to start drawing parallels. Both grew out of the desert at blink-and-you&#39;ll-miss-it speed. I wonder if there is a divergent path for Dubai to take&mdash;with all the intelligence and imagination and money it has already invested&mdash;could it continue to set new examples by developing new models beyond even their comprehension?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;...No longer unshackling itself from the landscape by brute force of wealth (that can buy out nature with air conditioning, terraforming and by sustaining a massive system of desalinisation and irrigation), Dubai accepts the dryness, heat and beauty of the desert. Learning more from &#60;a href=&#34;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Arcosanti&#34;&#62;Arcosanti&#60;/a&#62;, Dubai has a zero-sprawl rule, finally putting the cities love of the skyscraper to good use. Vertical density is exploited to the extreme. Neighbourhoods grow vertically, learning from the palms fronds, they minimise their impact on the ground while maximising the effectiveness of shared services. Each Island collects its own water and generates its own power. The city has snubbed infrastructure all together, going completely car-less. No more 6hour traffic jams on the Sheikh Zayed Road, highways or pollution, only blimps and magic carpets moving between towers. The entire city can be crossed in less than an hour. Celebrate the pleasure of building babel-esque edifices. The sky is the limit...&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;50 years later I watch as Dubai gets on with it&#39;s daily grind and the only criticism that can be attempted is one that questions to what degree Dubai exploited its freedom from history and culture. Did she go as far as she could? Was she as outrageous as she could have been?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;11.09.08&#60;/span&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;Branding a Revolution - Dubai Inc.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I decide to head along the beach front, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Palm Jumeirah and get the customary tourist photo of the Burj Al Arab. Plus, there are likely to be girls in bikinis.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Once again I make the intrepid journey along the Sheikh Zayed Road by taxi. The traffic is already intolerable. A taxi ride that might take ten minutes at midday lasts an hour at either end of it. I ask the driver to drop me off at Wild Wadi, he laughs. &ldquo;Are you ready for a very long chat?&rdquo; he says.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I take photos of as many of the colossal billboards as I can. I am sure the taxi driver is looking at me in his mirror. I don&rsquo;t make eye contact. The billboards are spread all along the Sheikh Zayed Road, promoting Dubai&rsquo;s ambitious building projects and further magnifying the image of a city obsessed with pomp and wealth. The largest billboard in the world stands out in the desert showing the finished Burj Dubai alongside a simple rubric: &ldquo;History Rising.&rdquo; The signs emerge from the desert in the same way the buildings do. Many in stasis.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;These inescapable signs are stage-sets that promote the desired personality of a covetable Eden. Most depict a disarmingly familiar vision: a pastel-clad, white population (devotedly engaged in harmless activity) and contemporary Arab families in a dreamlike vision for expats and perfect locals. They command their messages to anyone passing with superlative-littered slogans: The World&rsquo;s Largest X, The Most Prestigious Y. They are here to instill an immovable emotional impulse, a brand that goes beyond the product&mdash;after-all the product doesn&rsquo;t (yet) exist. It dawns on me (maybe I&rsquo;ve been reading too much Learning from Las Vegas?) the landscape is currently defined by its peculiar penchant for megalomaniac graphics and quirky typographical messages. This is the architecture of a new kind of city and a tightly honed form of brand awareness.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In a world with only plausible truths left, as critic Michael Speaks states, &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;bullshit&#60;/span&#62; can become a reality when it is accepted as something we can work with.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I glimpse the beginning of Palm Jumeirah from the road. I can&#39;t see any way of getting closer on foot and I&#39;m becoming exhausted from being outside for so long. The realisation of the first palm-island is a &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;massive&#60;/span&#62; achievement. A grand moment in the history of architecture. The idea of monumentalising suburban housing like this, with a strict symmetrical layout along a linear axis, has something of Versailles about it. Extravagance and opulence is, of course, nothing new.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I return to a taxi. It is not easy to hail a taxi on a twelve-lane-wide highway. I decide to try ticking off the places on my list I still haven&#39;t been to. It is possible to get in to a taxi, and, over a matter of hours, instruct the driver to transport you between a bizarre plethora of places: &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;a href=&#34;http://www.globalvillage.ae/Home.aspx&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Global Village&#34;&#62;Global Village&#60;/a&#62;, &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.greencommunity.ae/main/index.aspx&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Green Community&#34;&#62;Green Community&#60;/a&#62;, &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.dhcc.ae/EN/Pages/Default.aspx&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Healthcare City&#34;&#62;Healthcare City&#60;/a&#62;, &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.dubaiinternetcity.com/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Internet City&#34;&#62;Internet CIty&#60;/a&#62;, &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.dubaisportscity.ae/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Sports City&#34;&#62;Sports City&#60;/a&#62;, &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.dipark.com/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Investments Park&#34;&#62;Investments Park&#60;/a&#62;, &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.impz.ae/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;IMPZ&#34;&#62;International Media Production Zone&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/span&#62;. Driving form one &#39;free zone&#39; to another could be likened to real-time browsing. The zones have turned abstract nouns into concrete (literally) propositions... almost like a city-wide built encyclopedia in progress.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;12.09.08&#60;br /&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;A Wander Around The Mall of The Emirates&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Dubai Inc.&#39;s defiant, proud stance and its extravagant impulses are exposed through its many shopping malls as well as its skyscraper follies.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I walk from one boutique to another looking for clues; any hint as to what is special about this place in comparison to a Western mall. It dawns on me as I stop, wistful, outside one particularly exclusive store: the archipelago of malls in Dubai provide a (rare) kind of public space&mdash;one different from that in a Western mall. In a desert city, dominated by skyscrapers, freeways and exclusivity, the mall becomes the one scale, density, and interiority that all the population can relate to.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Six Secrets to &#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: line-through;&#34;&#62;Business&#60;/span&#62; [for &#39;Business&#39; read &#39;City&#39;] Success:***&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;1. Work On Your Business&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;One of the biggest pitfalls in growing your business is to become so busy running the outlets and specifics that you don&#39;t take the time to run your business. It is easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day details that there&#39;s really no strategy for mapping out the future and then making it happen. My advice is to schedule time to grow your business.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;2. Market and Measure&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Another mistake is people don&#39;t spend enough time marketing their business; plus, they mistake advertising for marketing. Advertising is just one piece of marketing. All the techniques used to attract and persuade consumers need attention; everything from your business&#39; culture and positioning, through market research, new business/product development, advertising and promotion, PR, and arguably all of the sales functions as well.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;3. Be Customer Centric and tailor your product to meet an identified customer mind-set.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;People in the embroidery business are very product-centric. You ask them what they do, and they talk about their product and what they sell. Retailers should concentrate on being more customer-centric. They should be focused on getting a customer&#39;s business and then keeping that customer. Understanding and responding to each customers unique needs is a vital prerequisite to creating a compelling and relevant experience.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;4. Add Value&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Also, in your industry, if you&#39;re not careful, you can become a commodity business very fast. The only way to keep from being a commodity business is to add value for the customer so that price doesn&#39;t become an issue. When you&#39;re very customer-centric and focused on delivering great experiences, price will not be the customer&#39;s major decision maker.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;5. Be Different, Be Unique&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It is important to differentiate yourself in a crowded market. You must look at what is unique about your brand and transfer that into an outwardly visible identity. It doesn&#39;t mean you have to offer something totally unique, but it does mean you have to do something to set you apart from your competition.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;6. Deliver Great and Real Experiences&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;In today&#39;s world of product and brand proliferation, it is often said that &#39;shopping is the purpose of life&#39;. If so, it is important to create something that makes every trip memorable,&nbsp;turning it from simple experience into voyage of discovery that appeals to all the senses. Customer service continues to be a buzzword, but many retailers don&#39;t manage it well.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;***adapted from &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/apparel-accessory-stores/4443639-1.html&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Six Secrets to Retail Success&#34;&#62;Six Secrets to Retail Success&#60;/a&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;13.09.08&#60;/span&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;text-decoration: underline;&#34;&#62;Stockholm Syndrome&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I wake up early on my last day in Dubai. I feel a little regretful. Maybe I&#39;ve not done this city justice in the short time of my first visit? I feel I owe it to the city to understand it better, listen to what it has to say. My problem: any attempt to be timely with a commentary on Dubai is already largely out of date, the city is changing &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;so&#60;/span&#62; fast it would appear to be resisting being perceived candidly at any one moment.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&ldquo;Build it, and they will come&rdquo;, said Dubai&rsquo;s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, echoing the disembodied whisperings heard by Kevin Costner in the 1989 American fantasy baseball film Field of Dreams. And they&rsquo;re coming&mdash;from everywhere. At 4:40am, the arrivals board at Dubai International Airport shows flights from Addis Ababa, Amsterdam, Bangkok, Beijing, Bahrain, Colombo, Dublin, Heathrow, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Kabul, Mal&eacute;, Melbourne, Osaka, Shanghai and Singapore&mdash;all within three hours.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The Muslim call to prayer (Fajr) was being relayed in Terminal 1 as I joined the check-in queue. I notice a big sign that I missed at arrivals. It reads &ldquo;Welcome to Tomorrow&rdquo;. I swap between being awed by the scale of ambition here, and concerned by its flamboyant futurism. Yet, in those stolen moments, peering out of a taxi window, I have been transformed and taken by the strangely subtle (yes, subtle) strokes of invention, ingenuity and brilliant idiocy on show. People I have spoken to seem proud of their young city, but cautious about what the future might hold. Increasingly, they seem to be aware that they are living as tourists in their own city.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This is where I shock the high architectural profession: with its mish-mash of garish towers, its gated communities, its commercially acceptable Experiences&trade;, its dark spaces, by-products and leftover conditions, its 3 storey high billboards, its sheer unwavering belief in what it is doing, Dubai is a newly sublime experience and I have been satisfied by its motives.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F14%2Fpt1-dubai-dreaming.html&#38;title=Pt.1+-+Dubai+Dreaming&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F14%2Fpt1-dubai-dreaming.html&#38;title=Pt.1+-+Dubai+Dreaming&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F14%2Fpt1-dubai-dreaming.html&#38;t=Pt.1+-+Dubai+Dreaming&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F14%2Fpt1-dubai-dreaming.html&#38;title=Pt.1+-+Dubai+Dreaming&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F14%2Fpt1-dubai-dreaming.html@@ta 
&#38;=Pt.1+-+Dubai+Dreaming&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F14%2Fpt1-dubai-dreaming.html&#38;t=Pt.1+-+Dubai+Dreaming&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>I &#38;#9829; Tapes</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/15/i-love-tapes.html</link><description>Recently I found myself spending time, probably more than I should, browsing &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.tapedeck.org/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;tapedeck.org&#34;&#62;tapedeck.org&#60;/a&#62;. The site, it&#39;s creators claim, is &#34;built to showcase the amazing beauty and (sometimes) weirdness found in the designs of the common audio tape cassette&#34;. It catalogues all common tape designs by brand, playing time, and quality.&#60;br&#62;&#60;br/&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;It brought back pangs of emotion remembering walks to the music store and Woolworths. Making mix-tapes on my dads tape-to-tape recorder. There were a lot of different blank cassette tapes to choose from. As someone who suffered(?) with a car that only played tapes up until fairly recently I always used to find myself buying new cassettes based, not on their playback quality, or length, but on their graphic design. They remind me a little of the spatial challenges faced by designers of adverts on the side of buses. Surely the best being the early Guinness adverts by Benson�s drawn by John Gilroy? One that springs to mind invited you to turn the bus on its side to read the slogan �Guinness for Strength�.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;The cassette tape was born in the 1960s by the dutch electronics company Philips as a portable alternative to the large vinyl formats. Having not been patented the cassette tape design was quickly copied by many manufacturers. Cassettes boomed and hit their peak during the mid 1980s when they accounting for more than half of the worlds total music sales.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: normal;&#34;&#62;Also check out the great cassette case graphics at &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.polaralert.com/exhibition/top100/index.html&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Polarart.com&#34;&#62;www.polaralert.com&#60;/a&#62; and the nifty cassette wallets at the &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.designboom.com/shop/cassettewallet.html&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Cassette wallets&#34;&#62;designboom&#60;/a&#62; shop.&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;I&#39;ve added a few of my own collection above.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F15%2Fi-love-tapes.html&#38;title=I+%26%239829%3B+Tapes&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F15%2Fi-love-tapes.html&#38;title=I+%26%239829%3B+Tapes&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F15%2Fi-love-tapes.html&#38;t=I+%26%239829%3B+Tapes&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F15%2Fi-love-tapes.html&#38;title=I+%26%239829%3B+Tapes&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F15%2Fi-love-tapes.html@@ta 
&#38;=I+%26%239829%3B+Tapes&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F15%2Fi-love-tapes.html&#38;t=I+%26%239829%3B+Tapes&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Airseum</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/13/airseum.html</link><description>The main hall of Paris&#39; Louvre Museum has become virtually indistinguishable from the check-in halls at Charles de Gaulle or Orly, into which its visitors can return in under an hour. Queues of tourists lining up for tickets and baggage scans, many still standing over wheeled-luggage, are processed with industrial efficiency. The presence of security guards, escalators and scanners has come to be considered entirely unremarkable.&#60;br /&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If the world&#39;s departure lounges, meanwhile, were to be seen as a hypothetical global network-city, whose citizens are tourists and business-class nomads, uniformed in tie-less suits, and whose only programmes are retail and security, then it is a city that is increasingly discontented with the culturally-evacuated homogeneity we&#39;ve come to expect from it. International aiports seem to be called upon more and more to exhibit a flavour of their host city, while iconic national museums seem to exhibit more and more of the generic, non-place characteristics we associate with the airport terminal.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;Are we witnessing the gradual convergenc&#60;em&#62;e&#60;/em&#62; of the &#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;International Airpor&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;t and the &#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;National Museum&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;em&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62; &#60;/span&#62;&#60;/em&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold;&#34;&#62;as typologies?&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;This may have &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;begun&#60;/span&#62; with the construction of airports which pursue the articulation of &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;difference&#60;/span&#62; and cultural &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic;&#34;&#62;status &#60;/span&#62;(Such as the Barajas terminal for Madrid designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners) but programmatically also it seems inevitable that airports will begin to become stop-off microcosms of their host city. If culture has become subservient to a &#39;museum economy&#39;, is it inevitable that we will see activities other than exclusively shopping filling the waiting time on the &#39;air side&#39;? Will museums, theatres and art galleries begin to infiltrate departure lounges and arrival halls?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Catering to the millions of passengers catching connecting flights every year, cultural institutions would be almost like embassies or substitute experiences for the host city within the cultural blankness of the airport building. Fast-track cultural institutions will allow you to &#39;do&#39; London without ever leaving the terminal building.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;To start with at least, the version of events on show will be a politicised, cleaned-up, tourist-book synopsis of each city, a curation of perfect clich&#60;span style=&#34;font-family: Arial;&#34;&#62;&#233;&#60;/span&#62;s which would be tainted if you were to &#60;em&#62;actually visit&#60;/em&#62; the real thing: Chocolate museums in Brussels. Madame Tussauds at Heathrow. A Beatles museum at Liverpool. The Berlin Wall rebuilt at Tempelhof. Already, Shanghai has designated an urban quarter as &#39;&#60;em&#62;Chinatown&#60;/em&#62;&#39;, in an effort to fabricate an appropriately &#39;Chinese&#39; postcard image to sustain tourism in the face of the city&#39;s rampant modernisation.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Perhaps though, the airports themselves might, by introducing cultural programmes to the departure lounge, begin to aquire an authentic programmatic gravitas of their own. Fuelled by the advancing boredom of its citizens, the global airport city might generate its own cultural institutions: exhibitions of global migration statistics, or confiscated contraband in glass cases (Loisville aiport, Kentucky, already sports &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/309924706/&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Photo by Telstar Logistics / Flickr&#34;&#62;an impressive accumulation of abandoned baseball bats, bought at &#39;Loisville Slugger&#39;, &#34;America&#39;s most famous baseball bat manufacturer&#34;&#60;/a&#62; ).Can we anticipate a point at which cultural programmes in the terminal-city extend beyond cheap distilled clich&#60;span style=&#34;font-family: Arial;&#34;&#62;&#233;&#60;/span&#62;s  to performance events, art installations or even libraries, gardens, universities or parliaments?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62; &#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F13%2Fairseum.html&#38;title=Airseum&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F13%2Fairseum.html&#38;title=Airseum&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F13%2Fairseum.html&#38;t=Airseum&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F13%2Fairseum.html&#38;title=Airseum&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F13%2Fairseum.html@@ta 
&#38;=Airseum&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F13%2Fairseum.html&#38;t=Airseum&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Architecture&#39;s long tail</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/10/architectures-long-tail.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;What would happen if we were to take every single architect registered in, say, the UK, and see how famous they are in relation to each other? Well - the graph above is...not quite that. There are about 4000 registered practices in the UK, but it shows an (almost random) sample of 300 of those practices typed as &#34;terms&#34; into Google, logging the number of results thrown back. OK - So it&#39;s debatable whether &#39;Google bandwidth&#39; is any reliable indication of fame, but if we can accept that it is a rough indicator of &#60;em&#62;something&#60;/em&#62;, it throws up some pretty interesting observations.&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Firstly, you get (as you might expect) a power law - that is to say a population where a minority of architects command the majority of the attention. You might have heard of the &#39;80/20&#39; rule of thumb (or the &#39;Pareto&#39; principle) which is applied to situations where 20% of a population hold 80% of the total wealth..for example. No surprise there then in architecture - but the power law is even sharper than you might have imagined, its a lot more dramatic than 80/20.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Before we get into the anatomy of architecture as a media inequality, it&#39;s worth putting architecture as a cultural discourse into perspective. On the day of writing, Rem Koolhaas comes in at a little over 1 million results - making him slightly less &#39;googleable&#39; than Sharon Osbourne. Zaha, with easily the highest bandwidth of any architect at about three times that (3,170,000 on the day of writing) - may seem to hold a media monopoly on architecture, but is still well below Geri Halliwell in the fame stakes.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;So if we treat the architectural discipline as a (relatively isolated) phenomenon - a network of information flows and interactions - what would the&nbsp;system need to have for it to show those characteristics? One of my current interests is looking at the inbuilt &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;tendency&#60;/span&#62; of systems - what it &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;wants&#60;/span&#62; to do. Looking coldly and logically at the architectural discipline as a system, with all its educational institutions, media, professional qualifications, prizes and conferences, you are forced to come to a couple of conclusions:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;1. Architecture, like many systems, rewards success with success. It does not self-regulate, as would, for example, a greenhouse which, upon becoming too hot, opens a window (negative feedback). In architecture, the media-hot become media-hotter (positive feedback), because by and large the more attention an architect attracts, the higher the value of commissions come rolling in, and thus the more attention they attract...&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;2. Architecture&#39;s basic command is: &#60;span style=&#34;font-weight: bold&#34;&#62;Copy&#60;/span&#62;. Rather appropriately, this isn&#39;t my idea. In &#39;The Architectural Brain&#39;, Mark Wigley makes the argument brilliantly with reference to innovation:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#34;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;The mechanism is designed to minimise the amount of novel formulations&#34;. &#34;Our discipline is about as defensive a system as it is possible to imagine&hellip; The global infrastructure of professional organizations, schools, magazines, books, conferences and lectures is an array of concentrated nodes that safely redistributes and diffuses energy around the network. More than a million architecture students around the world are efficiently networked to each other to slow things down.&#34;&#60;/span&#62;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The traditional assumption is that architects, who are seen as a creative bunch, come up with original ideas. But it makes a lot of sense to think about it the other way around, we effectively copy almost everything, from the language we use to the type of projects we do. Sometimes this copying is literal (architecture students hunched over &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;D&#60;/span&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;etail&#60;/span&#62; magazine in the week before a deadline), sometimes it is more tactily communicated through the pervasiveness of aesthetic codes and keywords. Architecture books, journals and magazines then become vehicles for &#39;memes&#39; -ideas which are distributed and copied. So saturated and abstract does this media enrionment become that architects are likely to refer more often to those books and magazines when embarking on a design project than they are to their immediate situation and surroundings. Could that be a partial explanation for the chronic myopia which seems to come so easily to us?&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;All this &#60;em&#62;should &#60;/em&#62;be pretty depressing stuff - but only if we retain our hang-ups about &#39;originality&#39;. Abandoning the myth of originality and assuming that architects are generally &#60;em&#62;not &#60;/em&#62;original might actually be incredibly liberating, allowing us to become more curators of ideas than creators. Assimilating, connecting and applying information from an unlimited, transdisciplinary knowledge base sounds like quite a useful thing for a designer to be doing.&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;What it does mean though is that the &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;flow&#60;/span&#62; of ideas becomes really important. We have to take a critical look at the architectural discipline as an &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;information system&#60;/span&#62; and  work out where the memes are coming from, where they&#39;re going to, and  why.  In other words, we have to learn to &#60;em&#62;design &#60;/em&#62;the discipline.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The current media streams within architecture are, by and large, carrying images and ideas from a few &#39;successful&#39; &#60;em&#62;firms &#60;/em&#62;at the top of the graph downwards to a majority of architects, students and &#39;laypeople&#39;.  Bolstered in importance by monographs, prizes, and glowing documentaries, ideas are flowing in &#60;em&#62;one &#60;/em&#62;direction from old to young, from established to not-established, from those with a large vested ( often financial) interest in the status quo to those with less of one. It&#39;s probably inevitable that a media system so monolithic is going to have some sort of influence over what &#60;em&#62;sort &#60;/em&#62;of ideas and thinking are actually transmitted. If the media system carries memes from the top of big-business (the disguise of &#39;artist&#39; has long since rubbed off in the heat) down the pipeline to everyone else, we shouldn&#39;t be too surprised if we end up with generations of students at architecture school eagerly regurgitating the latest expensive forms in compliance with an industry which is at the service, by and large, of a particular economic market. The discipline is effectively &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;designed&#60;/span&#62;&nbsp;in order that we should aspire to it rather than look beyond it.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;The problem with that is that it creates a design-culture which is inherently unlikely to evolve. By suppressing genuine mutations rather than amplifying them, architecture is concreting itself into its own cell. Where other industries (particularly music and film-making) have experienced a revolutionary activation of their long tail (chiefly&nbsp;through the web) architecture has yet to do so. Legions of young (and that doesn&#39;t just mean &#39;under 40&#39;), intelligent designers with huge ambition and healthy social conscience are still treated purely as &#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;consumers&#60;/span&#62; of architectural media. A quick glance at the graph above shows that there are many more designers in the &#39;tail&#39; of the graph than there are in the peak, so it makes sense that the architectural media system should to be extended to take them seriously as&nbsp;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;producers &#60;/span&#62;of ideas.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Architecture schools in particular, can no longer be seen as institutions to turn out graduates, but engaged, experimental and anticipatory think-tanks, which produce not just each successive generation of graduates, but with them each generation of accompanying ideas (which are then broadcast out towards industry and society). This really isn&#39;t such a big leap - architecture schools have always (by sheer force of time) been concerned with the future of the discipline, but no longer can that betrothal to the future be one based on the replication of the status quo. Back in 1974, Buckminster Fuller predicted that universities would become primarily producers of video documentaries. A model within which you can easily imagine design students challenging conventional thinking, and re-engaging (as designers) with wider social conditions and the possible contribution a design-minded approach could make to them.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#60;span style=&#34;font-style: italic&#34;&#62;Makeshift&#60;/span&#62; is of course, in part, an attempt to ride on / push that broadening of architectural media - to create a platform for debate, ideas and design thinking where fame or wealth is not a prerequisite for publishing. It&#39;s an experiment more than a prediction, but the logic upon which it sits - the observation of architecture&#39;s media crisis and the evolutionary necessity to&nbsp;activate&nbsp;its long tail - is held up by some surprisingly large numbers.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F10%2Farchitectures-long-tail.html&#38;title=Architecture%27s+long+tail&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F10%2Farchitectures-long-tail.html&#38;title=Architecture%27s+long+tail&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F10%2Farchitectures-long-tail.html&#38;t=Architecture%27s+long+tail&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F10%2Farchitectures-long-tail.html&#38;title=Architecture%27s+long+tail&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F10%2Farchitectures-long-tail.html@@ta 
&#38;=Architecture%27s+long+tail&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F10%2Farchitectures-long-tail.html&#38;t=Architecture%27s+long+tail&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Re-Programming the Wall</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/9/reprogramming-the-wall.html</link><description>On the 31st August 1994 the IRA announced a cease-fire of military actions. At that time there were 15 recognised peace walls in Belfast. 12 years on there are over 40 and they are still growing in number, length and height.&#60;p&#62;The proposal to re-programme one such wall was derived from the story of two middle aged women who live on the interface in Belfast. Even though they have lived their lives without seeing &#39;eye to eye&#39; they both agree on one issue: that they cannot see a future without the wall. It has become engrained not only physically but psychologically in the minds of those who live within its presence. The proposal aspires to create a possible future for the Peace Walls of Belfast, by imagining a scenario where the walls are celebrated and utilised by both communities as a dynamic urban phenomenon unique to Belfast.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;The wall is to become a device that can be programmed over time to facilitate and sustain cross-community activies. The various programs and urban prototypes will work within a &#39;new planning process&#39; that will subvert the current legislation for peace wall construction and expansion, and work towards their adaption and partial removal by active participation. Overseeing the programmes will be &#39;angels&#39;; various people and devices involved in the process; with the ability to have exceptional powers at certain moments in time.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;The project can be viewed in full &#60;a href=&#34;http://www.shef.ac.uk/architecture/main/gallery/gal/diploma/studio2/stud0506/strategies/08_Paul/Strategy_Paul.htm&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Re-Programming the Wall on UoSSoA studio 2 archive&#34;&#62;here&#60;/a&#62;, there is also a video &#60;a href=&#34;http://youtube.com/watch?v=coQMrfMHw8Q&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;Re-programming the Wall on YouTube&#34;&#62;here&#60;/a&#62;. &#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F9%2Freprogramming-the-wall.html&#38;title=Re-Programming+the+Wall&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F9%2Freprogramming-the-wall.html&#38;title=Re-Programming+the+Wall&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F9%2Freprogramming-the-wall.html&#38;t=Re-Programming+the+Wall&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F9%2Freprogramming-the-wall.html&#38;title=Re-Programming+the+Wall&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F9%2Freprogramming-the-wall.html@@ta 
&#38;=Re-Programming+the+Wall&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F9%2Freprogramming-the-wall.html&#38;t=Re-Programming+the+Wall&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Things we thought we knew about architecture</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/8/things-we-thought-we-knew-about-architecture.html</link><description>&#60;p&#62;That architecture is concerned with the design of buildings is one of the most staggering myths in circulation. Partly because it&#39;s so widely accepted without question. Partly because it&#39;s so reslient. Partly because theres an industry worth billions of pounds built upon it. Even the Oxford English Dictionary has been completely duped by it. By and large, once you&#39;ve told someone that you&#39;re an architect, it takes at least five minutes to explain your way out of it.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;And most architects don&#39;t even want to. They&#39;re happily bought into the idea. Even as they are completely ready to admit that the design of a building takes place within a complex set of conditions and systems, architects seem unwilling to engage with that complexity as designers, opting instead for spatial simplification or a simulated complexity via visual games. The first bubble to be burst here is this idea that to design &#39;a Building&#39; makes you &#39;pragmatic&#39; and down-to-earth, wheras to design something else is somehow abstract, utopian or escapist. There is a sad fashion among architecture students at the moment to proudly declare their intent to finish their project with a building as if to do so is to take a stand against head-in-the-clouds, theory-led abstraction - or as if somehow a building is less &#60;em&#62;contrived&#60;/em&#62; than not-a-building. In a dark moment, you might be forgiven for reading that as a subtle side-effect of the recent economic boom; a psychology of compliant ambition filtering through architecture schools. But the idea of a &#39;Building&#39; of course, is sheer contrivance- in fact it&#39;s a super-abstract idea. Much like the concepts of &#60;em&#62;Warwickshire&#60;/em&#62;, &#60;em&#62;Permanence &#60;/em&#62;and &#60;em&#62;Wednesday&#60;/em&#62;, the word &#39;Building&#39; is an entirely invented (western) construct. In the west especially we display a constant desire to categorise time and space. The fact that design commisions have tended to come from discrete clients who request alterations to portions of the planet identified by legistlative red lines, for a set amount of money and within a certain time interval has generated a shared illusion called &#34;Building&#34;. Architecture will probably always have something to do with shelter, enclosure, identity-marking etc, but the word Building is becoming an increasingly useless way to describe those things. In a world where &#60;em&#62;connective &#60;/em&#62;intensities increasingly overwhelm &#60;em&#62;collective &#60;/em&#62;intensities, the design of buildings as isolated environments is becoming more and more obsolete; more and more a process of furnishing the status quo, more and more a lucrative career arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;If &#39;Buildings&#39; are a bizarre abstraction -  a hangover from several centuries of reading Vitruvius in gentlemen&#39;s clubs, capped off by two decades of Pevsner - then why is architecture still so tied up with them? A reasonable suggestion would be that the discipline is institutionally designed to resist change. This condition is a topic that deserves its own, lengthly debate, but in short: dont be fooled by architecture&#39;s rhetoric on innovation and change. Architecture is an intrinsicly conservative discipline. At the point of action, it is paid to crystallise conditions, which it does through a process of such imposing slowness as to bear comparison with an intellectual oil tanker. Being therefore expensive, it instinctively provides tools of empowerment to the wealthy, serving to reinforce power hegemonies more often than challenge them. As a dynamic discipline, the architectural sub-culture also seems to tend towards reproduction (copying)- either in the form of tutor&gt;student indoctrination, employer&gt;employee control, or simply the distribution of success-compliant media. Architectural media has always focused on the completed building- a means of modifying students aspirations to fit the existing value system. A profession in which the young look to the old for new ideas is not one likely to be light on its feet. As Mark Wigley points out, the globalisation of architecture can serve to exaggerate this phenomenon; in fact architecture may be systemically (if accidentally) &#60;em&#62;designed &#60;/em&#62;to &#34;minimise the amount of novel formulations.&#34;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Probably our most debilitating mental block is our obsession with prioritising things we can see over things we can&#39;t. Architects think in 3D objects, they fetishise details, materials, shapes. So we are naturally pre-programmed to ignore things we can&#39;t see - time - movement - intensity, power, desire, processes, systems. But what if instead of realising our ideas as objects and appearances, we thought about architecture more as a set of what Cedric Price called &#39;distortions&#39;. If we see design as being a means to deliberately distort time, money, energy, territory,  existing processes &amp; resources (in any combination) then we can begin to see that &#39;Buildings&#39; are only a small corner of what architecture might be concerned with. I think Football managers are about the perfect model of what a designer could be. They think four-dimensionally, they weigh up multi-layered conditions and come up with ideas. Most importantly, even though they never set foot on the pitch, and never touch the ball, they seem to be held responsible for the success or failure of the team (and they&#39;re paid accordingly).&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Like quite a lot of things worth saying, Rem has already said it; &#34;Maybe architecture doesn&#39;t have to be stupid after all. Liberated from the obligation to construct, it can become a way of thinking about anything - a discipline that represents relationships, proportions, connections, effects, the diagram of everything.&#34; The application of &#39;design intelligence&#39; in this way represents a kind of paradigmatic evolution for architecture, where we can begin to think about our work not as created object, but as a distortion of social, ecological and economic conditions to achieve beneficial (sometimes unknown) outcomes.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;Visiting the exhibition at the Tate Modern recently, it occured to me that architecture has really yet to have its &#39;urinal&#39;  moment. (It&#39;s a pretty exciting place to be in that respect). What Duchamp is widely accepted as having done for art, and Andy Kaufman for comedy, was to trigger a paradigm shift that architecture has yet to match (but desperately needs). I would contend that in fact, architecture&#39;s clue came in the early sixties:&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&#34;We should be less concerned with the design of bridges, and more concerned with how to get to the other side&#34; - Cedric Price&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;It is an astounding act of conservatism that this fundamental shift in the way we might think about design has been so broadly ignored, or at times wilfully misunderstood. For architecture to stick exclusively to the design of Buildings is like art refusing to do anything other than paint oil canvases. Our building-centric view of the world is placing us at the end of a food chain that should itself be the object of our attention.  In his 1969 book &#39;The Human Zoo&#39;, Desmond Morris made the anthropological argument that urbanism began not with the first building, but in fact the first &#60;em&#62;field&#60;/em&#62;. The ability to intensively produce food, and thus surplus, provded man with the ability to live in dense concentrations for the first time - cities.  This is exactly the kind of thinking we are missing out on. It may turn out that if we begin to apply architecture as a form of &#60;em&#62;propositional geography&#60;/em&#62;, we&#39;ll uncover a massive industry for the kind of design thinking architects are really good at. I suspect this market already exists, unexplored, (DEGW and AMO are about the closest so far). Of all the professions, architecture is within closest striking-distance of this new design industry, but we&#39;re allowing ourselves to be distracted by our own smokescreen. There&#39;s a strong risk we might carry on letting the Stirling Prize go to an interestingly-shaped, medium-sized &#39;Building&#39; every year, and slowly earn our way to extinction in the most glamorous and boring way possible.&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;
&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F8%2Fthings-we-thought-we-knew-about-architecture.html&#38;title=Things+we+thought+we+knew+about+architecture&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F8%2Fthings-we-thought-we-knew-about-architecture.html&#38;title=Things+we+thought+we+knew+about+architecture&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F8%2Fthings-we-thought-we-knew-about-architecture.html&#38;t=Things+we+thought+we+knew+about+architecture&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F8%2Fthings-we-thought-we-knew-about-architecture.html&#38;title=Things+we+thought+we+knew+about+architecture&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F8%2Fthings-we-thought-we-knew-about-architecture.html@@ta 
&#38;=Things+we+thought+we+knew+about+architecture&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F8%2Fthings-we-thought-we-knew-about-architecture.html&#38;t=Things+we+thought+we+knew+about+architecture&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Siteweb (Venice)</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/7/siteweb-venice.html</link><description>This is an entry to the recent 2G architectural ideas competition - Focusing on Venice, a city which (by necessity) presents the perfect testing ground for a conception of architecture closer to the sense in which computer programmers use the word. A social intelligence topology - the application of a scale of technology that so far architects have rarely engaged with. Using calculated interventions to infrastructure, mobility and construction processes, it&#39;s about making visible regional conditions which otherwise remain hidden.&#60;p&#62;&nbsp;&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;&#60;em&#62;01&#60;/em&#62;&#60;/strong&#62;.The survival of the Venice lagoon as a habitable environment depends on conditions which are, at present, invisible to its inhabitants.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;02&#60;/strong&#62;.The data from huge numbers of&#60;span&#62;  &#60;/span&#62;scientific research projects studying these conditions in the Lagoon are, on the whole, disconnected and part only of a private, &lsquo;expert&rsquo; experience of the city.    &#60;/p&#62;&#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62; 03.&#60;/strong&#62;The city might gauge its chances of survival by how-well informed its citizens are: democracy is no longer an act of choosing but an act of doing.&#60;/p&#62;    &#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62; 04&#60;/strong&#62;.Being a city whose permanent population is vastly outnumbered by its transient population, Venice must be the first city to question the traditional definitions of Citizenship.&#60;/p&#62;      &#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62; 05&#60;/strong&#62;.An application of technology is proposed whose stated intent is the support of remote and local participation IN ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP (i.e.-informed amateur knowledge of the environment in which you find yourself)&#60;br /&#62; &#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;06&#60;/strong&#62;. Architects have so far left the application of networking technology to computer scientists, who have done so, mostly, on an individual, domestic or global scale. The local has been largely ignored. Having constructed a &lsquo;global mind&rsquo;, programmers contrived to create a place within it: A WEBSITE. Can we do the opposite:&#60;span&#62;  &#60;/span&#62;Apply integrated intelligence tools to a physical location; A SITEWEB?&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;07.&#60;/strong&#62;Prediction: In the 21st century, architecture will be not so much concerned with making adjustments to the FORM of the city but to its OPERATING SYSTEM. &#60;/p&#62;    &#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;08.&#60;/strong&#62;The Jewish Synagogue in the city is already being constantly monitored, for the slightest structural movement, from an office in Germany, having been fitted with fibre-optic cables. &#60;/p&#62;  &#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;09&#60;/strong&#62;.Venice, being constrained by the huge economic value of its preserved artefactual beauty, paradoxically finds itself an unlikely pioneer of information-age urbanism. Industrial age architecture is of little use to it.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p&#62;&#60;strong&#62;10&#60;/strong&#62;.Set-out at intervals of 500m, the buoys operate as a frame for environmental measuring devices (simply clipped-on and plugged in). LED display bars exhibit data/statistics at specific times of night (as timetabled) Water ballast allows for future weight addition.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;11.&#60;/strong&#62;On each buoy, Local-access and remote-access&#60;span&#62;  &#60;/span&#62;hard drives are entirely separate to prevent &lsquo;hacking&rsquo;.&#60;/p&#62;    &#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;12.&#60;/strong&#62;EMERGENCY USE:&#60;span&#62;  &#60;/span&#62;THE HIGH RISK-OF / SENSITIVTY-TO A SHIPPING ACCIDENT IN THE LAGOON; RESULTING IN AN OIL-SPILL. AS AN IMMEDIATE RESPONSE, INFLATABLE DRACONES CAN BE CLIPPED TO THE BUOYS, THUS CONTAINING THE OIL WITHIN A SPECIFIC REGION.&#60;/p&#62;        &#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;13&#60;/strong&#62;.AT key times a specific DATA FEED is briefly exhibited as a colour light bar; lasting only 2 minutes (approximately the same interval as a total solar eclipse), the effect is to briefly reveal conditions which are otherwise invisible.&#60;/p&#62;            &#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;14.&#60;/strong&#62;Secret histories can be stored and retrieved only locally via Bluetooth and short range FM broadcasts. (An open-content audio-guide to the Lagoon Park.)&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p class=&#34;MsoNormal&#34;&#62;&#60;strong&#62;15&#60;/strong&#62;.IF IT SHOULD TURN OUT THAT VENICE CANNOT BE SAVED - WHAT WOULD BE LEFT BEHIND IS THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE ECHO IN MANKIND&rsquo;S HISTORY; A FLOATING anthology OF STORIES AND RECORDS - AN EXHAUSTIVE POOL OF DATA as a resource for future generations.&#60;/p&#62;  &#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F7%2Fsiteweb-venice.html&#38;title=Siteweb+%28Venice%29&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F7%2Fsiteweb-venice.html&#38;title=Siteweb+%28Venice%29&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F7%2Fsiteweb-venice.html&#38;t=Siteweb+%28Venice%29&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F7%2Fsiteweb-venice.html&#38;title=Siteweb+%28Venice%29&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F7%2Fsiteweb-venice.html@@ta 
&#38;=Siteweb+%28Venice%29&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F7%2Fsiteweb-venice.html&#38;t=Siteweb+%28Venice%29&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>Makeshift Posters</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/6/makeshift-posters.html</link><description>Hopefully you&#39;ve seen some of the new posters adorning the walls in a place near you.&#60;br /&#62;&#60;br /&#62;If you fancy printing a few off yourself to leave lying around you can download a pdf of them all &#60;a href=&#34;../../../../makeshiftposters.pdf&#34; target=&#34;_blank&#34; title=&#34;posters&#34;&#62;here&#60;/a&#62;. (16mb so please be patient... sorry)&#60;br /&#62;&#60;br /&#62;Hopefully we&#39;ll have them available as a screen saver in the not so distant future.&#60;br /&#62;&#60;br /&#62;Peace out.&#60;p&#62;&#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F6%2Fmakeshift-posters.html&#38;title=Makeshift+Posters&#34; title=&#34;del.icio.us&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/delicious.png&#34; alt=&#34;del.icio.us&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&#38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F6%2Fmakeshift-posters.html&#38;title=Makeshift+Posters&#34; title=&#34;digg&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/digg.png&#34; alt=&#34;digg&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F6%2Fmakeshift-posters.html&#38;t=Makeshift+Posters&#34; title=&#34;Furl&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/furl.png&#34; alt=&#34;Furl&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F6%2Fmakeshift-posters.html&#38;title=Makeshift+Posters&#34; title=&#34;Reddit&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/reddit.png&#34; alt=&#34;Reddit&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F6%2Fmakeshift-posters.html@@ta 
&#38;=Makeshift+Posters&#34; title=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/yahoomyweb.png&#34; alt=&#34;YahooMyWeb&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;a rel=&#34;nofollow&#34; href=&#34;http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bemakeshift.co.uk%2Fcatalogue%2F6%2Fmakeshift-posters.html&#38;t=Makeshift+Posters&#34; title=&#34;Facebook&#34;&#62;&#60;img src=&#34;/social_icons/facebook.gif&#34; alt=&#34;Facebook&#34; class=&#34;social_bookmarking&#34; /&#62;&#60;/a&#62; &#60;/p&#62;</description></item><item><title>The Gallery of Babel</title><link>http://www.bemakeshift.co.uk/catalogue/4/the-gallery-of-babel.html</link><description>How many distinct images can the eye see? Biologists say that in actual fact, you can�t work out the resolution of the eye because so much interpretation happens between the rods and cones in the eyeball and the brain. However, we increasingly assume that we can use our primary sense of vision to experience life via the media of a TV screen, computer monitor, digital camera or laser printer. These media create images from a finite series of pixels, each from a finite colour gamut.&#60;br /&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;p&#62;I�d always assumed that there were an infinite number of images to be seen. But then I realised that if we &#60;span class=&#34;Apple-style-span&#34; style=&#34;font-weight: bold&#34;&#62;DO&#60;/span&#62; assume that we can see every image that�s possible to see via a TV screen or digital photo, then there can�t actually be an infinite number. For instance, the laptop I�m writing this on has a resolution of 1024&#215;768 pixels, and in 24 bit colour mode, each pixel can be any of a possible 16,777,216 colours. This means it can present 786,432 ^ 16,777,216 possible images in total. For those more arithmetically challenged readers, this means 786,432 multiplied by itself almost 17 million times. Being used to conventional decimal numbers as we are, it�s difficult to put this number into any kind of perspective. &#60;/p&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;But then I thought, actually, in the old days, when everybody walked really stiffly and quickly, and had handlebar moustaches, they hadn�t yet invented colour. They all lived in 8 bit greyscale with 256 shades of grey and they seemed to do ok. So if I forsook colour, and only used 256 greys, then maybe I�d be able to list the digits on my calculator and get a grasp of this number.&#38;#8232;So 786,432 ^ 256 = 1.95 x 10 ^ 1509, which is about 2 with 1,509 zeros after it. Which is quite a lot.&#38;#8232;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;But not actually infinite.&#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62; &#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;I need to invent some language now to cope. If a UK billion is 1 with 12 zeros after it and a US billion is 1 with 9 zeros then let�s call a 1 with 1,500 zeros a Brazilian billion, or a �brazillion�.&#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62; &#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;So back to the point: it wouldn�t actually be that hard to write a computer program to make a movie of every single one of these distinct images. And if this was then played at the standard 24 frames per second, then it would take me over 2 brazillion years just to watch it � that�s a 2 with 1,500 zeros. Years. Which is quite a long time.&#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;But not actually forever.&#38;#8232;&#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;And that�s not even including commercial breaks!&#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62; &#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;But within that movie, I would have seen, amongst the white noise, every single image that is possible to see. From every single angle, in every single light. I would have seen my own birth and death. Both fact and fiction. I would have seen a picture of every possible life decision I did and did not make. Scenarios explored. Regrets reversed. I would have been a prince and a pauper. I would have explored the furthest reaches of the universe and to the minutest atomic depths. And not only my life, but every other human being�s life too. Past, present and future.&#38;#8232;&#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;But only for 1/24th of a second.&#38;#8232;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;And only in greyscale. &#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;&#60;br /&#62;&#60;/div&#62;&#60;div style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;It�s kind of similar to Jorge Luis Borges� Library of Babel. But instead of a fictitious library, comprising books composed of letters taken from a set alphabet, this collection of images is like a fictitious gallery, comprising images composed of pixels taken from a colour gamut. And it�s much, much huger.&#60;/div&#62;&#60;p style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;Borges� library is of course an allegory on this thing we call life. Each of us a borrower, searching the library for books, trying to find meaning, structure, direction in the limited time we have available. Similarly, for the gallery: the movie described above is like passing 24 pictures every second. Remember, this was all taken from watching a conventional laptop in 256 shades of grey, not a cinema screen in glorious technicolour. I have new-found respect for film directors who have taken the time and energy to explore this gallery of Babel, select a bunch of images and put them in a comprehensible order to tell their story in about 90 minutes.&#60;/p&#62;&#60;p style=&#34;text-align: left&#34;&#62;There is, of course, a notional concert hall of Babel too, where concerts are played, of a set length, with a certain orchestra, using notes taken seemingly at random. 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