The school of architecture provides us with the capacity to open our eyes to see through reality, to capture the meaning of thing and action. Also teach us how to use that new ability to express it in designs, physically and verbally. However, with all this teaching full of rules and programs to follow, sometimes it restricts our creativity to some topics that are not so important. For example, how is making a jacket out of paper will help me develop my architecture skills besides training me to work with little sleep, something that is useful in architecture mayor?
A place where these restrictions can disappear could be in a place like New Orleans, a place where they need help to reconstruct everything and give freedom to the ideas to come and develop into the real world. Here the ideas developed will not stay just in our head or paper but will take a physical presence that provides experience and understanding of our world. Our work will not only help us grow as architects but will be of assistance for the environment to reconstruct.
With a free development of our architecture imagination crazy thing will development that some time may not be good, but many could be for a better understanding of our environment and our connection with it. The design without rules give some times difficulties to produce because of the vast possibilities that can be us, but at the same time, give of the key to expand with out limits, to think through the impossible and consider every aspect. Architecture is a way of art, a way to express our ideas and believes; if we can work without the pressure of the expectation of a good great but the satisfaction of a family our free college development will have its reward.
This is our world, is a place where many species live and develop; where WE humans live and grow, so why are we using it as our personal house if we are not the only ones here. Furthermore, if this world is so important to us why are we slowly turning it into a dead piece of land without live? Our actions are causing more of these problems so why can we solve them?
“No matter how complex global problems may seem, it is we ourselves who have given rise to them. They cannot be beyond our power to resolve� - Daisaku Ikeda
In this quote, he makes me think that even though problems as global warming, or the extinction of many animals and plants are our own fault we are not even close to solving them. We are the cause so why is so difficult to stop them, it doesn’t matter how big they are if we know what is affecting and increasing their effects. One person alone can’t do anything, but if everyone puts a little bit of help, there will be a world to live in the future, with enough resources to maintain the population.
This picture expose how slowly we are letting our self consume more of what we have into a point that our lives will be in danger meanwhile in other parts that food that we are eating or wasting is killing someone else. Our environment is a delicate system that connects us all, the over exploitation of the resources that we are using are destroying our world and what we are living with.
"The planet should not be used as a warehouse of resources to serve humanity's selfishness" - Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, 2007 Christmas address
"Invincible", Pat Benatar.
This song “Invincible� make me understand that by sitting around doing nothing there will not be any solution, that we are the only ones responsible to solve this and is our live and of our sons and future families which our going to be affected, “We can’t afford to be innocent. Stand up and face the enemy. It’s a do or die situation�. “Won’t anybody help us? What are we running for? When there’s no where, no where we can run to anymore�. We just have one world to live in, so why are we not fitting back what we create through our past actions, there will be no one but use that can solve this. So what are we waiting? For a new planet to be created out of no where, well that is not going to happen and we need to act now or there will be no place to act later.
"Clocks", Coldplay
In this Song I can see how time pass and we are not taking action to solve anything, how times goes own and we look for someone for help when all we need is our own. How we want to be in a place that we can call home and feel save and protected. “Curse missed opportunities. Am I, a part of the cure? Or am I part of the disease?� Also how we can be two thing in this environmental problem, we can be the one producing it (how we are acting now), or we can be the one solving in. Furthermore, how we miss so many opportunities so solve it through time but we didn’t pay attention to the warning signals our world was giving us. Soon if we don’t act there would be no earth no safe or opportunities to act on.
The Twin Cities is a place where millions of people live, work and live will their families, however because there are so many, and every one of them have at least one car, the traffic congestion is getting worst with every year. In rush hour you can be sitting in your car looking through the window with the great view of millions of cars trap in traffic just like your poor soul, and with the only desire to be at home after a long day of work. This has gotten so awful that the city is in the league with Boston, Chicago and New York with this traffic problems!!.. and that a lot to say. The roads and freeways where design to produce a faster way to different places of the city, their dimensions and design brought great results for many years. However, with the increasing of population the capacity in rush hours exceeds his limit and stops for many hours the flow of cars.
With this problematic of being stock on a car for hours and not been able to do anything else, the citizens is not only killing them self of boredom and cold; but also loosing so much money without knowing. It was investigated by the Minnesota Department of Transportation that they are wasting 41.8 million gallons of full (1), how much money will that be? Imagine with so little reserve of full we have left and we are losing 41.8 million of gallons in such a brainless way, and don’t forget the annoying hours sitting in a car trying to get home before the next millennium. The freeways are design to easy our life’s when driving but the only things they do when we really want them to work are to lose time, the city doesn’t need bigger freeways but new rows that can work as alternative to release the congestion in the freeways. However, new roads means more taxes for construction, that result in less roads to use, and more hours stuck in the dull car; nothing can be solve without sacrifice of money and time… great options do we have there right? We can pay for new roads and get more lovely time in the car or don’t do anything and still be stuck in the car. An important factor for this difficulty was the collapse of the 35W Bridge last summer, by losing this important road the citizens start taking new roads to go to work and go home. This bridge provides an easy access for the citizens and without it the congestion in the rows got every time worst.
The freeways represent easy access in short time across the city; they give space to continue the circulation without the obnoxious red light of the normal roads to stop you every 10 minutes (with good luck), and they accomplish that almost all the time. However with the magnitude of people that lives in the Twin Cities, these roads where not design for such increase of traffic in the rush hours, so the congestions started and of what we can predict is not ending any time soon.
Every living and non living thing posses a flow of energy that can be perceive by the movement and change of his material. Andy Goldsworthy in the movie “Rivers and Tides� expose us with this vision that the flow of energy is a continue circle in every object, every time it change of shape or texture his energy is been transform in something new. This energy which is posses by nature is an endless force that transforms our environment and connects every piece in too the never-ending cycle of life.
The art of Goldsworthy express the continuous flow of energy through the environment, how it is connect and how we every new change more knowledge we can get of it. With each piece of work that he constructed with just what nature provide him, and that also nature will destroy, he learn and understand the object; he appreciate what each piece represent and what are they made for. Which every new failure the knowledge of the object increases, just like the project with the rocks in the sea; with each new rock he learn more of it. The environment is a place which we can take ideas and we are part of it. The world is open and it show us the flow of live and power that it posses to maintain order and stability; is the work of the artist to capture that force and express it their work.
That flow of energy that goes through nature is also present in the cities and towns, the movement of life and the constant changes that surround the lives of the people is an example. This never-ending cycle of transforming energy which never will destroy is presented by the constant development of the city, how old building that once where new are destroy to give space for a new building. Furthermore the constant daily life of the citizens gives live to the city with their activities and ambitions of development; it starts with the break of dawn and goes though out the day until night where the city rest to a new beginning next day.
