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Author Tay Kheng
Soon |
2001 Draft Notes
By Tay Kheng Soon for UIA Scientific Committee Preamble: Terrorism in
confronting the USA is in fact confronting Capitalism. Disentangling from its
political and presumed civilisational and religious connotations, the crisis
is ultimately a militant protest against the tendency of transnational
capitalism to crowd out smaller contenders in its bids for monopoly through
risk reduction. This is natural but when risk reduction reaches national and
global scale, it becomes exceeding rapacious and damaging to the initiatives
and rights of smaller and weaker peoples. This is the new crisis. This urgently
signals that Capitalism must re-invent itself. When Super-malls kill off
local neighbourhood shops so to speak, alarm bells must start sounding. When
this is systemic because of ideological blindness or overconfidence, fanatics
will urge strong measures and exploit popular sentiments to their cause.
There is of course no justification for terrorism as a means of change.
Capitalism must and will itself evolve to protect Capitalism through tending
the grounds from which it grows.
In shaping
the New World order after its triumph over Communism, Capitalism neglected to
cultivate the ground, to aerate the fields for small and medium size nations
and enterprises to grow. This includes care of the natural environment and
resolving unjust situations. This situation is thus the vulnerable underbelly
of global capitalism. In the urban
centres and in the natural environment, the dispossession and destruction can
be seen in the homogenisation and coarsening of the urban fabric and the
degradation of nature. In
architecture, the steel, concrete and glass box becomes the universal
language of architecture. The uniform steel and glass towers and big brutish
blocks stamp out the fine grain of humanised environments. Small-scale areas
and cultural areas in cities are destroyed for new blockish developments.
Even in residential architecture, the steel and glass box look takes on the
allure of sophistication and taste. Kitsch replaces and displaces authentic
aesthetic values. Kitsch has become the narcotic of the new middle classes.
The cultural politics of the Nation-state and civilisational icons are the
anaesthetic that obscures a truly global and universal consciousness from
arising. A few individuals, through hijack, kidnap and through the possession
of weapons of mass destruction wreak havoc on this process. Resolving environmental
and social injustices and restoring pride in oneself will go a long way to
undercut the basis of any support fanatics may get. In the light
of the current crisis, Capitalism will have to and will change. Thus, in
terms of physical urban form, architects and urban designers might imagine
what new spatial arrangements and expressions which are consonant with a
renewed understanding of global Cupertino and access to capital might be
rather than be slaves to the taste dictates of the West. In as much as
the new capitalism will be more highly differentiated, there should be a
tendency towards more differentiated physical settings as well. I believe
that the uniform and homogenising tendency of corporatist and bureaucratic
aesthetics will move towards opening space for real competition and
innovation from the ground up. Ground up and top down methodologies must find
a new meeting point. A New World order of big, which is able to work with the
small, is paralleled by big and small enterprises sustaining each other
synergistically. Big provides infrastructure. Communities and small
enterprises can then thrive in the new paradigm. The distinction between the
urban and the rural need no longer be regarded as separate and be
administrated separately but be conceived as one spatial ecological system.
Big and small must work together. Thus
distinctions between big and small do not necessarily equate to big eat
small. A fine-grained and
clustered urban pattern can arise. Local and global issues are not antagonistic.
High rise towers need not be uniform prismatic monuments anymore but can and
will be highly differentiated and appreciated for its variegated qualities.
Most buildings whether high rise or low rise, can be conceived as
infrastructure not finite decorated unitary statements but be made up of many
small units. A rich mix of many interventions by many small actors should be
made possible. Special buildings of intense artistic interest will still have
their rightful place in the cityscape. Indeed, Star Architecture, if they are
not to b33e obsolete or obscene are only viable in a just social and
environmental context. Urban
development thinking and values in contemporary times will thus have to
respond to the new and altered dynamics of Capitalism post 911. Now is the
time to rethink architecture and urban design for a new humanism, new
culture, new economy and new politics. A politics of knowledgeable
participation Types of forms spawned by Corporatist and
Bureaucratic Capital that must change:
Some Illustrations of alternatives in a different
paradigm:
Resentment
and alienation drive people to materialism, kitsch, consumerism and
retaliation. Consumptive kitsch and terror are two sides of the same coin.
The making of a new paradigm premised on a new capitalism will spawn a wholly
different environment. The
environment must and can become more differentiated and fine-grained due to
the realisation by Capital that to survive; it has to remodel its own
monopolistic and endlessly expansionistic operating outlook. It will then
allow appropriate enclaves, belts and locations for small and medium sized
enterprises and smaller capital to blossom and prosper within the ambit of
its actions. This is the implication of a new ethic resulting from a
differentiated capitalistic economic structure in a New World order. This
would be reflected in a more differentiated and compact urban form and
structure with more space for nature and agricultural production, lower
negative environmental impacts, better water shed protection, enhanced nature
reserves, reforestation repair work and elimination of climate altering
pollution. Many more clustered smaller settlements and lifestyle choices. |
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