picking through the cacophony

intermittent rants and some keepers

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Taking gigantic baby steps

Exercise for today:


1. What am I passionate about?
2. What am I genetically encoded for - what activities do I feel just "made to do"?
3. What makes economic sense - what can you make a living at?

Do these 3 circles overlap?

Do I spend at least 50% of my life within these circles? If not, I need to focus on my ...
'To stop list'


But let me start again from the top, even if I can't answer these questions now. With the simplest of starts, here goes:
1. Am I passionate about architecture?
2. Can I be the best at architecture in the world?
3. Does architecture best drive my economic engine?

It seems rather obvious that I am being rather vague about what my passion is but like all good questions, I think it lets me delve that bit further along with these in my head and see if the swirling will get me focusing on good answers.

Round Two:
1. I am passionate about positive changes to status quo - be it people's lives, people's understanding of things (including my own), urban fabric, governance, ...
2. I feel genetically encoded to analyse. I am not the best at proving myself and that explains my absolute inability in the face of authority. I am however nearly aggressive in my delivery of my analysis and conclusions to peers. It might have something to do with sensing the sometimes imagined and self-imposed levels of each participant or audience. For example, I do think that Keith thinks that he is the smartest man in the room every time he enters one and that helps him reach far and wide with his wit - useful to ignite or to diffuse.
3. I do not feel that doing what I do now is the most profitable way to spend my time, per hour. The way that I am practising architecture, or applying myself in the architectural development environment of my present employment and the way they practice, presents me with little real challenge and no real targets to meet. The tasks and assignments are insufficient for me and I keep wondering what to do better, what to get right, what to address and what represents a 'completion of the task'. I overthink it but it might be because I do not want to be seen as a non-thinking draftsman (cue to DB's "we're a company of architects, not CAD monkeys" which is strangely ironic given he starts off thinking and treating everyone like a peanut-munching CAD chimp until you prove otherwise - no doubt a fully paid up member of the TOUGH LOVE bloc).


Round Three:
1. Is designing the best way to fully understand and then help change things? Is architecture just about design? Is architecture only about designing buildings and all backdrops? Can we create scenarios? I read about Milner scoring a belter last night against Villa and then being "the architect" of the next one by Dyer. By 'architect', the broadsheet meant that the architect made something happen, he mediated in a situation to create a hero, he instigated a means to an end and/or he planned AND executed a move to create a platform for another scenario that he envisioned to happen. Insert D-Walker's analogy of architecture and ballet here regarding appreciation PLUS skill.

But we can design lives, our own, at least. So its not just paper and pen, lines and curves and certainly not just digital modeling. Is it here that I keep digging?

If the world is about specialists now, how does OMAMO operate to maximise itself? Devolution of it's two main enterprise - consultancy and design. With that clarity, Rem can already charge more while simultaneously finding more fuel for his sales pitch (for the design). Is that clarity the way forward for my present?

2. Analysis. Then what? Of what?
3. What jobs get paid good money for analysis?

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