Nothing is good or bad?

Dialogues

Contemporaty

Theory Final Project

Soraya Wongsatayanon 5434820725

Kotchamon Banyatlerttawon 5434831625

Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Kaem: Hi, Jane over here!

Jane: Hey , so sorry they was a protest in front house thats it take me so long to arrive here.

Kaem: its ok, by the way what do you want to do today...

Jane: hmmmm, let's go shopping

Kaem: yea, that is a good idea. where u wanna start?

Jane: Let's go and look at Siam Paragon.

Jane: Oh, look at that girl, she look amazing with her choky pink top,....  What do you think about fashion nowsdays? Are fashion trends harmful to our society or not?

Kaem: Yes, Ithink fashion is harmful to society, its sometimes bad for people because if you try to be fashionable you have to spend lots of money. 

Jane: When we think of fashion or at least the modern fashion, the first thought that comes to our minds is a completely act of showing-off! And it is a waste lots of money. Well....but I think Fashion is much more than that. Fashion can be easily depicted as a mirror. Just as your expressions, reactions and reflect your personality, fashion and the way you carry out yourself speak volumes about who you really are. It is a medium through which you show the outside world the real "you". Its a platform for you to express the difference in you. What would have been the world looking like if everyone adopted the same fashion? That is the whole point.  when you' re different  your fashion also different. Because everyone is UNIQUE and Your fashion remains YOURs

Kaem: yeah, it can be but sometimes it is not suitable, for example about school uniform some student wants to be unique. They want to wear tank top to school, which is not appropriate and cause sexually attraction, and I prefer uniform because it makes everyone equal. Some student that cannot afford fashionable clothes will not be noticed at school because everyone wears the same uniform.

Jane: Yes, I do agree with you it is good to wear school uniform in terms of appropriate even though it makes everyone looks the same but we can adapt fashion to our uniform in appropriate way. For example, like our faculty, people wear jeans and it becomes the uniform. Even its against the rule but it still polite acceptable.

Kaem: Yeah, and that is a reason why nowadays teenager do not pay much attention in school and spend there time watching MTV, magazine, YouTube, playing Facebook and being up to date every seconds

Jane : I agree with you because I am one of them. But it is nothing wrong to follow them for example Lady gaga, she is fashionable, smart, hard working and unique. She is the one who inspires and motivate me to work harder.

Kaem: Yes, That’s what I am trying to say that Fashion cause inequality. We all tend to look up to models and celebrities wearing expensive clothes. Fashion trends therefore harm relationships, dividing the people and labeling them as "haves", and "have nots".

Jane: …

Kaem: Trends also force us mostly women to be perfect, to be slim, to wear high heels, to have wider lips. This means an enormous pressure on .

Jane: But I think it doesn’t matter because we all want to look good.

Kaem: What about surgery that is quite popular in Thailand? It is quite harmful and it is not an only way to make people look good.  Like some trying to get slim by slender remove their excess muscle. And there is one celebrity in Hollywood that is addicted to plastic surgery….wait what is her name?

Jane: Michael Jackson!

Kaem: No, not him.

Jane : Ummmm... Is it Jocelyn Wildenstein, right?

Kaem: Yeahhhhh, it’s her! She is a wealthy socialite and the one With fierce competition in Hollywood which they always got their society’s standards of beauty and force her by going under the knife over and over again.

Jane: Yeah, Sometimes surgery is harmful and it is not a good thing to do because it is not safe at all.

Keam: Yeah, that is what people try to be one of those celebrities, which called aesthetic.

Jane: What you mean by aesthetic?

Kaem: Aesthetic is very subjective. It happens when people start to imitate and want to be another person. aesthetic is the judgment of each individual people designed to give pleasure through beauty. They can decide weather the appearance is pleasing to them or not. It is one of the ways of structural the society by observing the large majority of whom sharing the same taste.

Jane: Everything is not good or bad to follow the trends or not. It depends on individual thought if it is a way to make you feel better it is not a bad thing then.

A Things

We as the designer can't stop invented the new object or improving the old object that were already exist. There is no limits in designing a product, things that are need to be considered as the most is it's function. The film called Objectified, show us how we can improve the products. Why we need to keep on develop these object? Why is it so important to us? Actually there are a connection between we people and the object. We all want to have a 'thing', this can be considered as car, cloth, purse. Some people were so materialistic and so addidcted to brand name. So here you can see how much these 'thing' really effect the people.

Deep Ecology

From my understanding deep ecology is the environment system. Before you can design something you need to consider the context around you. Big or even small building we need to understand the people, animals, social condition, landscape, and even weather your building can't be independent it must depend on everything around it. The environmental system are very interested because everything are connected. For example if you cut one tree, you might end up killing one species and this might destroy the  environment system.

TOPIAS- "Hunger Game"

The term for Topias is a places that are contrast so that we can see the contrast of each other. Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia are all term that can define as 'topias'. The movie Hunger Game is one good example to define the world 'topos', which mean the definition of place. In the film you will see the lifestyle of 2 classes of people. The capital, where there are a lot of tall building and people dressed up, while people on the other districts people doesn't have good cloths or good food. People from the Capital use the people from other district need to work for them. Both the Capital and other district can be consider as heterotopia because they need to be rely on one another. If there the rich doesn't exist and how you will know that you are poor.

Place and Space?

Place and Space sound very similar, but actually there aren't the same. Place somehow are include in the space but space is not a place. This might sound a little bit weird. Okay, let's make this easier to understand. A place is a space that have identities and memories of individual, which make it different from a space. If you are talking with your friend. Try to change the word 'place' into 'space'. For example, last night I went to this space. Your friend might be so confuse and don't understand what you talking about. Yea, we people are more familiar with the one place more than a word space. During the lecture Aj. Taylor show us this film, called "Powaggatsi, the Life in Transformation". The film distinguish a space and a place, it show how the space can be identifies into a place by showing the transformation of each landscape. 

Erotic... why sublime?

Erotic doesn't sound like architectural term at all but after the lecture it make more sense. The definition of the erotic is how the object are interaction between each other. Building can be express by its form and element to the audience. The building and be express in many kind of feeling. The word feeling is very abstract that we can't even specifically describe it. We can feel warm, happy, or even depress in some kind of architecture but another type of feeling of erotic is sublime. This feeling would not happen to us every day in probably will happen where we can't predict. It is a perception that it reaches our limits. It is like when you are really mad of someone and you feel like you are going to explode. Some time I agree with erotic architecture but some time I don't understand why the designer want to give this type of sadness and depression in their building.

AESTHETIC

AESTHETIC

Aesthetic is mean a "taste" of majority universal. The beauty itself is depend on what most people think. Most of the time we were influence by the Hollywood star, our favorite actor and actress, white skin blue eyes. But do we ever ask ourselves where these standard come from? If we have red hair can this called pretty or ugly? But if what the society say that it's wrong to have black hair? So we people were control by the aesthetic, which is how most people judge or thing about trend.

When modernism exist, where everything turn to be simple and minimal. It become an international style where people were force to follow and share this aesthetic. People were force to dress up the same, act the same, think the same way, which don't think it can possibly be true. Yea, we can follow the instruction for a period of time but it is impossible to be like that forever, because we still have our own perspective. So for me I don't really agree with aesthetic, even though sometime I followed. I think people need to express themselves and have their own style not by follow the what others say.

Profane... Right or Wrong?

Profane is when you play with the art or design. Which some people disagree with profanity but for me I think it is another method that can pull high art down, so that another people can understand. In the past people thing that art is for only high class people and normal people can't understand it, but then Andy Warhol use the method of profane. He created a funny art piece that allow people to understand it such as the cambell soup, which is played with the concept of reproduction in that time.  After he play with this kind of profane it become more popular and finally it ease the old concept of art always need to be high class that normal people can't reached. Andy Warhol is an example of successful profane but there aren't like that. The Mandarin Oriental Chiang Mai is also trying to play with the idea of profane, by using  the form of Lana temple and reuse it in the resort. But some people disagree with what they are doing, for some think that they are making fun with Buddhism. So I think before you will use profanity you must think carefully that is it okay to play with it or not. 

"Empty" or "NOT empty"??

     To say that this place is an 'empty space' it mean that there is no specific function for this space but in another hand empty space can also mean multi function place.  Aj Taylor have show us an example of a church that can also function as a bar, which church and bar are two opposite thing but the architect itself can create a working space for these two type of function. Another example that are show in class is the Memorial of Murdered Jew, for me when I saw this I can't even guess what is this place for and this is the purpose of empty space. We don't really know what is it for so it's depend on us how we are going to use it. Some people use it for park where you can walk on top on the rectangle box, some use it for fashion shooting scene, or even a maze. We as an architecture, I don't think all of the design need to have a specific function, we can just provide an empty space for the user and let them think how will they going to use it, so in another word is "not the control the user but let them control the architect.", letting them use their own creativity in creating new function.  After this lecture end, I really surprise about the idea of empty space, which is "not empty" but "more function". 

Hyper reality! So what is real??

     Hyper reality is when you can't see the different between real and pretending. In the lecture Aj Taylor show us a different image of place, all of the picture look like it's located somewhere is Europe region, we see the red telephone box which we normally see it in London, or a picture of Paris, and even a picture of London bridge, we all thought that all of the picture were took somewhere in France or maybe England, but hell no, actually all of them was took in China. These images freak me out, it is so scary that now a days we can't tell the different between real and copy. And another example that Aj Taylor show us is a film called "Borat", this is a film that show the simulation of a character. The film convincing us that everything is real, the accent of the character, the clothes, and even the setting it is so real that we all believe that he really came from Kazakhstan. But actually  everything is all made up, so a simulation is to influence people to make them believe in things that is not exist in the real world. After the lecture end I start to us myself is everything around me is real? or is it a simulation. Now I can't even tell the different between reality or fake.

"Design" "De-sign"

In architecture design, sign and symbol are used to represent thing in term of shape or words. Everything can transform to a sign, for example McDonald can be simplified as "MC" and people can understand it right away that this is a McDonald fast food restaurant. However, each signs can give different effect on our thinking, color, front, and shape can translate to our mind differently, because this depend on our understanding. The sign in architecture doesn't only give us the meaning or each sign but also give the function of it. For example, the restroom sign is just a simple symbol of female and male but we know right away that it is a restroom, so here some sign are used to extend of becoming its own thing rather than the object that it try to representing it. There is one good example in the lecture Aj Taylor show us a pentagon shape, some people say it a simple pentagon shape but some says that this is sign of a house. Yea, pentagon shape is like a sign to representing a house, so here I think that sign can be anything and anywhere. This is a power of "design" and "de-sign", creativities making something new. In conclusion, I'm impress with the power of sign that can effect us people so much in differently point of view. Sign is everywhere around us, sometime we doesn't even know it. 

Phenomenology and STUDIO PROJECT

Phenomenology, can be define as "feeling" or the effect of what you feel toward the object. How do you feel about the architecture? Does it affect you? Warm/ Happy/ Depress? Actually this remind me of the erotic architecture, which is ike a relationship between the user and the architecture.

So in my studio design project I try to make a relationship between the user and the sculpture. The 8 sculpture have different meaning, which some of them are every complicated to understand. So I want to create a space (pavillion) where people can just walk into the area and understand the sculpture by absorb the 4 senses. Which is hearing, smelling, touching, seeing. What I want to do is let the user read the architecture (wall, proportion, opening) and get the idea of the sculpture. 

The 8 sculpture also have a good and bad meaning behind it, all of them reflect our society now a days. In this part I also want to inform us people about our mistake and tell them the right thing to do. So now my pavillion is not just only a space to keep the sculpture but also a space that will inform them about the issue that's going on in our society (Budda teaching). 

However as a designer we also need to concern about the context around our site. This pavillion will be placed at Parc Paragon which is very crowned place and most of the people there are in hurry that I don't think they going to have time to visit the pavillion, in this case I think the only way that can attract them is to create a attractive facade. The facade can be made from different material and texture or maybe having a different sizes of opening.

Eyal Weizman: Lethal Theory

Why there is a wall? Why you need to walk on a street? Why do we need to open a door? Why we sit on a chair? Where do these object come from and how come we know how to use it? The reason why we know what to do with all of this it because we never "think". The way how we live our lives today is by following other without asking ourself why. Wall is a boundary telling us the limit of space and the door is for the entrance, but if you look deeper we don't always need a door for entering. For example in a war if you were a soldier and your enemy are on the other side of the wall and they're waiting for you in the front of the door. Would you walk through the wall? Where your enemy are waiting or you choose to "walk through the wall". A window and be a door during the emergency and a door can be a window when you need a bigger opening.  After thinking about this theory an architecture element (such as door, window, floor, ceiling) can be more than just what we already know but it can be "anything".

Conclusion

We were told to do things and react to things in the same way which is good but in some situation such as the military that need to take a risk. Doing something else from what we were told (example: walk through door/ break it down/ jump of the window/ climb up the column).