Different Angles by Architecture+Philosophy

Different angles. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; A manual of feminist design power-tools. By Poppe Ljungberg

Table of contents Introduction Top-down or down-to-top (and then back down again)? We are missing out Make a chili texts â&#x20AC;&#x201C; architecture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; politics Reading to a child. Myopia Conclusion Addendum

Introduction This Feminist design power tools-manual are produce by me as a part of the course â&#x20AC;&#x153;Architecture and Gender: Feminist design power toolsâ&#x20AC;? at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, fall 2013. During the course we produced texts and diagrams for the archandphil.wordpress.com/-blog and it is my part of that material you will in this book. On the blog you will find very many more ideas and thoughts over architecture and gender. The organization of the book simply follows the chronology of the course, each text can be read separately but when you read them all you will se there are some themes that goes through. I hope that you will find this book interesting and that it might give some new thoughts or perspectives, even though it is mainly written for me, these are my thoughts and reflections after reading the assigned text. I also want to recommend the source texts which all are referred to after each text. Have a good read. Poppe Ljungberg Stockholm January 13, 2014

Where do you gather your information?

Top-down or down-to-top (and then back down again)? Katarina Shonfeldt describes a design process built on muf:s own formula: detail/strategy=DETAIL and giving us some short examples. The design process is a way to show a strategy that will work in a small scale and at the same time create a strategy for a bigger scale impact, but thru a reformulation is this impact shown back on the particular detail itself and of course the strategy is a city-wide strategy. It is an interesting text which strongly, and well written, is working to show

other ways to work. I think that if we are opening our ways of working of course we have better chances to end up with different result and through evaluations a better result. To work with the same strategy over and over again and expect different result is not only strange – its really stupid. I like the idea of changing the big picture by starting, and ending, with the details. From within for the ones that is going to use the architecture. This strategy is working in many other fields than archi-

tecture and I think it is a user friendly strategy which in many ways are decentralize power and gives ways of working down-to-top (and back to down) instead of the so tiring top-down that is so widely spread in architecture, especially in city planning, and society.

Reading: Katherine Shonfield, ‘Premature Gratification and Other Pleasures’ in This is What we do: a muf manual, London: Elipsis London, 2001.

What is your base look like?

We are missing out I have read Lori A. Brown’s introduction to her Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture where she first meritorious goes thru why the book is needed and then give examples of what feminist design could be she looks briefly on feminist teaching, feminist practices in design research and feminist practicing in communities. “The primary goal of the project is to raise awareness for those both within and outside the profession about ways feminist methodologies impact design and our relationship to built environment.” (Brown, Feminist Practices, p. 1). From a personal experience point of view Brown tells us examples from what she has met during her years in architecture. She noticed at the bigger architect firms that none, or almost none, of the power

positions are possessed by women (or minorities). Even if the student’s who starts architect school are evenly distributed between the sexes there are a difference between dropouts and there are clearly more men in the fifth year. The student’s won’t have any woman teachers in latter stage of the education. Et cetera. This is a situation that is recognizable in Sweden even if the statistics are a bit different. But why is this matter? Does it matters? Well, it does. And it does because if we are dividing the world in two opposition gender ways of looking at it there are things, many things, there is not representative in the masculine discourse. Brown is here and there in her text touching other categories of people who has to step aside when we always looking thru the white hetero-

sexual, western, male eyes. KTH is a school no better than others, probably in many ways worse than other parts of the Swedish society. The starchitects are superheroes and the school would love to have produced the next Wingårdh. Even if there is nothing like that in there mission from the higher education authority. They say give us 100 architects a year. This is very important to me; we are missing so much by making our world smaller like this. If we are using a wider perspective of our society competence we will – without a doubt – get a better society. Reading: Lori Brown, ‘Introduction’ Lori Brown, ed., Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture, London: Ashgate, 2011.

Make a chili In the supermarket the other day I took a turn I normally don't and choose a path I haven't found earlier. There was on both sides all this pre-cooked food. I hadn’t seen this before. I didn't understood. Oh, well, I might have had seen it – but I had not realized it. We all can save time and live our lives faster. We can take the pre-cooked food and put in the microwave; ready to eat in the matter of seconds, if we eat it while brushing our tooth’s sitting on the toilette we are going to save a lot of time. Something’s must be lost and I don't understand why I have to hurry up my cooking and life. And if you buying pre-cooked food how can you now what you are going to eat? Whats inside that box? What inside that “food”? I want to now what I put in my body. What are we going to do with the time we save? Cook more? Clean? Work? None of the time we are saving is for us anyways; all this effiecy is just to make us more productive in other situations. I am so tired of all these things that going to save me time. Some say that the key to a good life is to spend time and concentration on everything you do and make the most of it. I say start with the food, and take your time, take the whole day, invite your friends, have a good time so that it doesn't matter how much time that good time takes.

12 9

12 12 9

9 3 6

6 Cook and play, stop the time.

Recepie

Accessories:

1 kg chuck roll, in pieces of 2x2x2 cm 150-200 g bacon, in pieces 3-4 yellow onions, finely chopped Chili, preferably fresh, first time I used one and a half fresh habaneros (without seeds) and a couple of dried chipotles. It is up to you, take the chili you dare (it's supposed to taste a bit). Finely chopped. Garlic Olive oil Butter Sugar 2 Tbsps. cumin 2 Tbsps. paprika Red wine Tomato puree, a can of crushed tomatoes, apple cider vinegar, veal stock, cold coffee, splash of water (amount of fluid may be reconciled to the cooking time and will).

Make a salad of tomato, red onion, lime and fresh cilantro (if you let the onions lie in a little apple cider vinegar you will be off with the pungent). Add in some mango if you are rich.

Fry meat on onions in parallel:

Hint: take your time.

In pot: fry the onion and chili quite hard in plenty of olive oil. Pour in the sugar, pepper and salt, cumin and paprika. Pour in the tomato puree, crushed tomato, vinegar, veal stock, coffee and water. Add fried meat (see below).

Enjoy!

Avocado (maybe mashed with lime, sour cream and some garlic?) Sour cream. Grated cheese. Tortilla bread.

In frying pan: Fry meat in plenty of butter, salt and pepper as you like, move the finished pieces to the pot. Fry bacon and put it in the pot as well. Pour in the wine in the pan and stir so that everything (everything) that was in the frying pan comes with the wine when you pour it into the pot. Make sure the pot boils up properly and then move it to a 150 degrees hot oven. Let boil for three or five or eight hours (the longer, the better, more or less), stir occasionally. This time is perfect for hanging out with friends. When you start to feel ready so you mash down the flesh to shreds by wooden spoon or whatever you have, the meat will be stringy, cook some more, so that liquid disappears.

Reading: Elizabeth Diller, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Bad Pressâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in Francesca Hughes, ed. The Architect Reconstructing her Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996

F I

Learn to read, learn to write.

texts – architecture – politics This morning I was thinking. I didn’t write any as I was supposing to. As always when I take myself the time write – or read – times just pass. NOthing happens. I sat in the corner; my writing corner in my library, as I use to call it. Its just two bookcases and the Aalvar Alto chair I got for free but I like them and sometimes I let my eyes move over the backs of the books. Those books I have read make me remember. Those I still have left. A chance to travel somewhere else. But this morning everything was still. Especially in my head, the silence in my head made everything else seem chaotic. So what was I thinking? What is architecture? And maybe more important – what aren’t? Architecture is everything. Architecture is nothing. And I think it is the

stuff in-between as well. Architecture is the room and the building and the space between the buildings and the moon and the stars in an illuminating sky under an open roof terrace. But does it matter? Architecture is politics and politics is everything. The private is politics. The public is politics. But does it matter? Could we ever get free? Free from the architecture? Free from the politics? When I was six I started to learn how to read and write. At first there were letters, A, B, C all the way to Z, but as well the extra three Swedish letters Å, Ä and Ö. 15 years later I started architecture school and I started learn how to write again. Pilotis, roof gardens, ground plan, façade, horizontal window. Who is Le Corbusier anyway? All this old men as house gods.

I realize the same way as I can’t pretend I don’t now how to read when I see a sign or a text I can’t pretend I don’t see that the world is designed. I doubt it is design for me (even though I am a man, white, Swedish, heterosexual, grown up in a villa, my parents got great educations etc. etc. etc.). I can’t pretend that the design doesn’t affect me. My life won’t change with the man who’s elected. Will it always be a man? Anyway I can’t pretend that politics doesn’t affect me.

Reading: Hélène Cixous, ‘Coming to Writing’ in Hélène Cixous, Coming to Writing and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991

MAN?

WOMAN?

HAMSTERFÅGELBARN

What does one see?

Reading to a child Donna Haraway’s interesting Cyborg manifesto made me a little bit sad but at first I couldn't put my finger on why. I realize that the text's cyborg discussion feels old, older than the texts thirty years, but the main points of the text is so up to date that it could be written this morning. I like how she writes about how white feminism easily excludes too many and that dualism is a question of ideology. Most is a question of ideology but we also need knowledge to make changes, and a never-ending stock of patient. The text reminds me of how easy it is to just answer the way we are learn, at least I think so. That being aware sometimes is not enough and how deep some of the norms around us are, even those we are really aware of. I read for a child one afternoon. We choose one of Sven Nordqvist's children's book about Pettson and his cat Findus. After a few pages the kid ask me "Vad är det?"* and I answer immediately because I now that kids

sometimes are in a rush: "Det är en liten gubbe." Realizing that I do not have a clue about whether it is a man or a women or even why that little figure should have a sex at all. I don’t now at all what that is. And the pages are full of them. They sit on the back of a bike, taking a shower under a watering pot, having small houses underneath a drawer. Why should they have our sexes? The all look different, why do I want to put a (male) sex on that? Trapped in our old ideas. "Det skull kunna vara en gumma eller vad tror du?" I say hopefully to the kid and the kid says "Nää, jag tycker det ser ut som ett hamsterfågelbarn?" and I say: "Ja! Det måste vara någon slags hamsterfågelbarn." I think that children, at least in the beginning, are more undestroyed than we are. And the kid continue to grow up, hopefully continue to be a little bit smarter and with more wide-open eyes than us.

Translation of dialogue: – What is that? – It is a small man. … It could be a small lady or what do you think? – Nah, its looks like a baby hamster bird to me. – Yes! It has to be some kind of baby hamster bird.

Reading: Donna Haraway, ‘Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’ in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association Books, 1991, pp. 149-181

What doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t one see?

Myopia Middle school I am getting more and more myopic but I chose not to use my glasses – I never felt beautiful or even comfortable in those. And some kids made fun of me. They shouted "Glasögonorm glasögonorm!" and they shouted a lot of other stuff to, about other things, like my hair or ears, but the glasses I could take off and so I did. I didn't saw much at all on stuff further away than a few meters. I learn to compensate, I remember how people moved and what color there shirts were. My world was fuzzier but I did ok. And then I got my contact lenses and my eyes felt just like normal person’s eyes.

Conscription They get you when you are young, before you understand what it is all about. I travelled in the evening and in the night we shared a big dorm. In the morning we run some tests to see if we were worthy military service. If I had known then what I know now I wouldn't been a part of their game, but we all were young and I hadn't done enough thinking. Anyway they told me I was strong, they told me I was smart. Then they told me to read an opticians letters from the wall: no problem. I was told to take off my contacts and the optician took up another sign from the floor and I couldn't read the biggest letters even when the sign was half way to the original one. They told me I was nearly blind. Like I didn't now that. They told me to go home, I would be in no use in a war.

Cooking A summer a year or so ago I fell asleep in the sun before going to my friends the fashion design couple for dinner. We cooked together and after chopping vegetables I felt my cheek like it was burned and went to wash my face so that I could put some lotion on the sunburned skin. It wasn't the sun as much as the chili and I when was washing I spread it all over my face, including my eyes. It burned. My contacts had to be thrown away and after a blurred dinner I had a quite interesting blurred trip home. I couldn't read the signs on the subway or anything else; without contacts I only can read stuff that are really really close. I see sharp only a few decimetres, then it is getting fuzzier the further it gets.

I can see nearly perfect with my contacts or glasses (which I started to use just this summer) but when you don't see as you are suppose to you compensate. At least I do. Without thinking very much of it your other senses help you out. You hear more. Smell things. Feel more. Touch things. I really want to touch things when I don't see. When we in our first year of architecture school ate breakfast in the dark I realized a blurred vision is so much better than none. The less I see the stronger my other senses get. For sure it is good to see more, it should be, and probably good to sometimes see less. I think it is fundamental to look on everything from different angles; some of these angles should be with other senses than your vision. I think this is interesting and tries to sometimes think of architecture without vision. Or a world without vision. What would it be? How would it feel? How can we make it really super interesting? Reading: Peg Rawes, ‘Introduction’; ‘Touching and Sensing’ in Peg Rawes, Irigaray for Architects, London: Routledge, 2007.

Conclusion I enjoy to read, to write and to reflect even if I sometimes have to push myself to it. It is easier to just read and think a bit and then move on. The same goes when I look around, it is easier to just think a bit on all those things that are wrong, maybe I whisper to my friend, and then move on. To put myself in situations and reflect and then realize my part in the structures takes more and arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t easy. To use that information to change is even harder, and we can always do it better but a good first step is to try. Include as many as possible, be humble but react when there is power structures that favors the strong. This is so much more important when you are the one benefitting from the structures. The future is ours!

In response to Who are you? by Klara October 2, 2013 http://archandphil.wordpress. com/2013/10/02/who-are-you/

In response to The language barrier by Malin Ahlgren Bergman. October 8, 2013 http://archandphil.wordpress. com/2013/10/08/the-language-barrier-2/

In response to Dissentent living by Matilda Schuman December 7, 2013 http://archandphil.wordpress. com/2013/12/07/dissident-living/

I find your blog post and the questions you are asking in the beginning of it interesting. I got similar thoughts when I first read Shonfeldt’s text; in what other contexts in the society is this strategy usable? To look at the question at an individual level, make that general, look further on this individual’s role in a democratic society and see how that affects the individual is probably pretty effective. I also think it is important that you are lifting the discrepancy that even that you are only one (who as little as anyone else does think like anyone else) you are still a part of this “society, this culture, religion or family”. It’s an important, and not small, note and dilemma. How can we now something about the whole if we only are looking on individuals? With respect for us being all different I don’t think it has to be a big problem, we still have more or less of our basic needs in common. As long as we don’t make our own thoughts and morals to laws that we believe everyone else agree on.

I find your text about the clothes interesting and that you write “how a woman never can be right”, and I do agree with you, the norm is strong. It strokes me that the same norm makes it really easy for me to be correct but when I do want something extravagant or colorful it getting much harder. The norm is treating a man easier but holding him in his place. I also like your anarchistic diagram on how we should use our homes and they really show one of the main points of Dillers text. I see this dissident living as something releasing and I almost always get happy when I see someone using a room or only a shelf or something else in a totally new way which really change the initial idea. Why not have your bathtub in the living room? Maybe it doesn’t get really interesting until we try this wider, that we leave our cloths and apartments. What happens when we, many of us, start to use our public spaces more the way we feel like and not the way it might been planned?

In response to ”refuse to disappear on cue” by Elsa Jannborg. November 28, 2013 http://archandphil.wordpress.com/2013/ 11/28/refuse-to-disappear-on-cue-p-177/

In response to Use tour words by Klara November 25, 2013 http://archandphil.wordpress. com/2013/11/25/coming-to-writing/

In response to Recent studies show brick walls manage emotions like humans do. by Anders. November 25, 2013 http://archandphil.wordpress.com/2013/ 12/11/recent-studies-show-brick-wallsmanage-emotions-like-humans-do/

I been thinking a bit about how you writing about how you are judgmental over texts and people you just met; this is something I been thinking about on and off. I do think we are many who react that way, we have learned to make fast decisions over situation (and persons) and thats mainly a good thing. With one glance we decide whether we like something or not, and I think we have to, otherwise there would be to much information, to many decisions. Our minds take care of that with all our earlier experience is in use, subconsciously, just to let us handle a situation where we cannot consciously take in all the information.

I do agree in a lot in your comment; that we should to use our words more and that written words differ from the spoken ones. I think that the spoken word are good if you want to talk to them around you at a special moment, it got another value than the written ones. But if you want to speak to those who aren’t in your absolute proximity or want to speak to so many more than you might meet in a year or in a lifetime: you write a book. A text, a book, can open your eyes in a unique way and the world that you might be force to out together

I love how you give the brick walls human feelings. Of course they have emotions and because we don’t see it (because we don’t look?), we are oppressing these feelings. Throughout history we have been oppressing brick walls for six millions years, how can we live with ourselves? And this anonymous researcher, who is s/he? How come the alarms are spreading? Black ink on frontpage headlines, screaming out the brick walls oppressed view of the world. Or are they oppressed? Or is that just I from a (what I think) superior position? So many questions. We must learn to communicate with our materials. If we tolerate this, what will be next? Who will be next? Must we stand up for the materials feelings? What does my table think about that? “We must stand up for the materials feelings!” I imagine it whispers with a hoarse voice.

We must just be aware so that we now that what we think we now is made out from earlier experience and might not be true in just this case, so we must try not to be to judgmental. After all, is it not the persons and books who surprises us that give us the most?

I wanted to comment on that it might be scary to write in another language. I almost always think it is scary to write, no matter what language. Of course it more or less scary, and it sure is different to write in another language. I used to work as a teacher and read a study of ten-year-old children writing a story. They started the story in first person singular (with the Swedish jag) and told great adventures, but in the story, as it got scarier and more personal, they (without noticing) switched from “jag” (I) to the third person singular pronoun “man” (one). I find this very interesting and realizing I am having similar switches in my writing, maybe if not so obvious.