I recently started watching this DVD series, Architectures, and was so impressed that I thought to share.  Architectures is a 5-disc series of a television show that used to be recorded in France, and it is absolutely one of the best educational programs I have watched in quite a while.  Unlike many of the educational programs out there on television now, this show does not just skim the surface, noting the architect and showing pretty pictures, but really delves in deep to each project.  If the architect is still alive, the producers have interviewed them.  They also model each building, and most episodes use still shots of these during various times of construction to illustrate spatial or structural sequencing.  Even the issues surrounding the way each project was commissioned, funded, and sited are explored, as these issues play a heavy hand in the resulting project.  Then, if the project has been around for a substantial amount of time, they explore its cultural acceptance- how people have actually used the building (usually different than the architect intended), its maintenance problems, etc.  The best part is that the producers are not afraid to be critical when needed.

The buildings chosen for the series run the gamut of construction from the past 150 years, ever since the introduction of modern materials and non-classical thought.  Most of the buildings are located in France most likely due to limited funds, but some are international.  A featured building is chosen not necessarily due to its greatness,  but because of its substantial effort in tackling modern architectural problems.  These problems include social agendas (how buildings create interaction/isolation), structural ingenuities, and spatial organization.

It is definitely a low-budget production.  For example, at one point during a sweep of one of the buildings on the first disc, the cameraman runs into a door, and the producers have to keep it in the final cut.  Honestly, the mistake was funny, although it was obviously not meant to be.  But, despite the pitiful funding, the show is extremely well-done, incredibly informative, and fascinating to watch.  It is most certainly on my recommendations list.

Last night I attended a panel discussion about the cultural phenomenon Facebook.  The event, sponsored by University Housing, promised to be interesting- a mix of ex-social revolutionist, baby-boomer faculty and undergraduate student panelists set to discuss the topic with a predominantly undergraduate audience (the main users of the website).  The 2-hour long discussion hit on a number of interesting questions pertaining to the privacy and security of the users, the cultural implications large online communities have on the value of friendship and personal relations, and its place in the business world, particularly marketing.

The discussion began with the panelists throwing out a multitude of numbers astounding enough that I would like to share them- Facebook boasts 60 million user profiles, with 250,000 new members being added each day.  On college campuses, the place where this phenomenon originated, 95% of students have profiles.  Since it expanded its membership opportunities a year ago to those beyond university settings, 85% of incoming freshmen already have profiles.  The number of older member profiles is still small due to its youthful origin, but those numbers are growing as well.  Also, due to its ability to upload photos for sharing, it is the largest online repository for personal photo albums, with an average 44 photos per user.  The most astounding fact I have saved for last- this site has only been around since February 24, 2004.  All of this has occurred in just four years.

The question that was burning on my mind for most of this discussion was what happens when this site, and its users, mature?  Currently, it is mainly a youth phenomenon, a place to display and share your private self with friends.  Its main body of users are either still in college, or just graduated.  Much of the information shared pertains to general likes/dislikes. Photos display friendly outings, vacations, or parties attended.  These are sorts of things that everyone does, now and forever, generation after generation.  But for the first time, it is being publicly documented in an extremely personal way.   As its users age, it becomes a mini-biography, a public account of who, what, when, and where a particular person has been over the years.

The cultural implications have already been showing up.  Although no major social revolution has thus far been attempted, minor protest groups formed by users have caused universities to think twice about certain decisions, such as changing collegiate logos.  Students have been ousted from academic settings due to photo documentation of such actions as drinking in the dorms or tearing down goal posts after big games.  Even the face of dating, as one of the audience members demonstrated last night, is changing.  Now, because it is common when meeting someone new to become “Facebook friends,” much of the small talk that usually occurs on first dates becomes obsolete, as the information has already been provided online.  A level of prescreening occurs before the first date even happens.  The same is often true on the friendship level.  This site, and others like it, has the potential to impact the very core of how we relate to one another socially.

The world of big business, already so engrained in modern life, cannot be counted out of this social phenomenon much longer either.  The bevy of personal statistics and networks are much too desirable for marketing companies looking for the next way to gain customers.  Already there have been attempts by corporations to infiltrate the site, and some have been successful despite user protests.  Facebook, after all, is not just a social community site- it is a publicly traded company.  As such, Facebook has made deals with other business to track such things as user’s online purchases and then release the information to the users friend networks (Project Beacon).  Currently, due to user protests, the onslaught is being implemented in optional stages such as with this project.  However, it is the next level of marketing and as such the aggressive world of business will only be held off for so long.

On a another business note, as Face book’s users age and enter the professional world, the implications of sharing your personal life publicly become potentially detrimental- a tell-all biography available to not only your friends but also your boss and clients.  As this reality sets in along with the knowledge information is being used by business for marketing purposes, does the use of Facebook change?  Do people get more guarded?  Or does the plethora of personal documentation cause a shift in social values?  Since the 1920’s, public morality as determined by an overarching societal code has been continually disappearing, heading instead towards a society where truly “anything goes,” and each individual must rely upon himself or herself to create a code of personal ethics.  Is Facebook, and its potential implications, another step in that process?  Although I personally see this latter thought as a far-fetched as it would require a massive shift in societal values even still, I am interested to see how this phenomenon develops into maturity

Community sites like Facebook truly are part of the shift to Internet 2.0, the next phase of the information age’s transformation of modern society.  Such Internet use penetrates to the core of our social interactions and lifestyle choices.  Its implications have yet to completely manifest themselves due to their youth, but they could spell major change.  It will be interesting to watch.

I had an interesting discussion recently on the values of Design versus Fine Art.  Despite having attended a design school rather than a fine arts program, I had never considered their pursuits as being different in the slightest.  Designers and artists both seek to create, and  with their creations to impact the world in a way that they believe make it better.  In the past I have used the terms interchangably, though after this recent discussion I may have to reconsider my personal thesaurus.

The discussion started at a New Year’s Eve party in Brooklyn when Matt, a local fine artist, found himself at a party full of employed designers and design school graduates, such as myself, my good friend Sarah,  and one of her local friends, a graphic designer by the name of Andrew.  It was Sarah’s status as an artist who attended a design school that prompted Matt, who had recently taken some design courses in his spare time, to pose a question that had obviously been bugging him for a bit.

I don’t think I could write a blog about architecture without mentioning the current nationally-scaled housing crisis.  Architects, although occupying only a nominal portion of what is mainly a speculation/development driven market, are still affected by this bust, and it would be silly to ignore it.  For those of you living under a rock, most of the nation is currently experiencing a major contraction in the housing market: i.e., there is way more available than can sale, particularly in the McMansion sector (speculative houses valued at $500,000 or above).  Rapid speculation due to rising prices and easy-to-get house loans ballooned the market for a good 15 years, and with recent economic slowdowns in other sectors, the bubble simply burst this past year.  Normally this wouldn’t be so problematic- housing bubbles have burst before- but due to profound changes in how the housing market fundamentally works, it is now a huge problem.

It used to be that when the economy was good, and people wanted new houses, the local contractor went out and built a few.  During bad times, this contractor hunkered down, doing smaller renovation-type projects until the market picked back up. Architecture firms in the housing market, much like the old independent contractor, operate on a similar basis both then and now.

But while architectural practices in the housing field have remained much the same, contractor practices have not.  Development companies have gone national, building massive subdivisions and planning projects years in advance.  When markets slow, they can’t just shut down- they are too big and corporate to do so.  Toll Brothers, Inc.,  is one such company- because they cannot stop building until the next market boom, they are having to sell their goods at a financial loss, hoping the economic boom returns before complete bankruptcy (for more information).  In the meantime, their goods continue to flood an already overflowing market.

This, unfortunately, is only part of the problem.  The other half, and potentially the more crippling “oops” in this whole debacle pertains to the loan practices that made both this bubble possible and are causing its collapse to be truly scary to the financial world. In the past 15 years, loans were easy to get, easier than they had ever been.  Both banks and those that approached them were certain of the paybacks that could come out of the rising home prices, so they threw much of the previously-relied upon caution to the wind and went for it.   Unfortunately, once the market started crashing and people realized the money they owed was higher than the current worth of their property, they defaulted on their loans just as casually as they had sought them previously.  In the meantime, their loans had been bundled, bought, and sold so many times by financial organizations that no one really know who holds the defaulted loans anymore.  Because this can mean potential billions of dollar losses to these financial giants, people are scared, and the fluctuating stock market and constant new reports are reflecting it.  ”Subprime,” a word that refers to the type of home loans that are creating this crisis, has recently been voted 2007’s word of the year by the American Dialect Society.  In other words, it’s a really big deal that could potentially have far-reaching affects.

Luckily, unless the “worst nightmare” scenario is reached and the economy completely collapses, architecture firms will not be heavily affected by this debacle.  Most architects are not in the business of speculation; rather clients approach them to build high quality, custom work.  It is a niche market which operates slightly separate from the mainstream market, with a certain clientele.  Unless a massive economic downturn occurs that vastly reduces the economic stability of even these niche clients, the architectural home market should remain stable.  And with all the economic checks placed in the system since the massive crash of 1929, this really shouldn’t happen to that scale.  Even if the market turns and the need for architects shrinks and firms have to shut down even as much as they did in the 1970’s, the crisis currently hitting the overly corporate speculative home market should be avoidable.  Architects recovered from the last housing bust, albeit slowly, and they can again.  In fact, the fluctuations in the speculative market may in fact help the architectural home market in the long run as people realize the financial benefits of investing in a unique, well-built and thereby more marketable home.

So while I certainly am concerned about the effects of this subprime speculative fiasco, I have to privately smile and think, “This could be good for architecture.”