If you’ve been paying attention to the links at the right, you might have noticed I’ve been looking at more product and industrial design news lately. I’ve had to swallow some of my architect-inferiority-complex-disguised-as-pride, but the more product-like nature of my work as of late has forced me into an eye-to-eye relationship, a very rewarding one that makes me need to examine why I’ve avoided this particular fiefdom of design for so long.

It’s partially, of course, the collective pressure of the Dwell/DWR/Apple Store world that bounces off my naturally reactionary psyche. And I’m sure if I went deep enough I’d find some moralizing against conspicuous consumption. But I think the real reason I avoided looking at designs smaller than a house (or at least a taco truck) until recently was a (mis)perceived lack of depth– I was always looking for the “real” innovation behind the scenes. I couldn’t be convinced that something that was purchasable immediately and in mass quantities could be pushing the boundaries of possibility in any way. To put it simply (and kind of offensively), it didn’t look difficult enough. This is condescension born of ignorance, I know. It took a gradual shift in a very stereotypical path – from furniture to lamps down into silverware – for me to realize that there are direct analogs that I was willfully ignoring. In some of these things there may be a lack of physical assemblage, but there is perhaps a greater mental assemblage, or at least a denser one– more considerations, from ergonomics to copyrights, per cubic inch than in anything else in the world.

This is what makes these things suddenly so appealing — to realize that they were forged, as it were, under intense mental pressures that extrude a unique object of ineffable value.

We recently lost the bottom two thirds of a power pole on Palms Boulevard. Perhaps because it is only carrying house current and low voltage lines, the city has allowed the remaining portion to hang, dangling askew from its adjacent poles, the streetlamp still functional. Shattered creosote pole is strewn all along the road and there is apocryphal “CAUTION: HIGH VOLTAGE” tape lying around, as well as a single road cone. Here, Katy took a picture.

For the last two days I’ve had this freakish totem waiting for me on my daily commute, stopping traffic and causing general unease. And while it has enacted an enormous transformation on its small dominion of road, I am beginning to get used to it being there. It makes me wonder if, in the future (pronounced fue–TCHA!), when all of our streetlamps levitate, how long it would take me to start ignoring them completely.

Working like mad on a project tonight, so all I can do is quote a nested quote from the most completely awesome Eggleston trust website. The quote in question is photographer Robert Adams, quoted by John Szarkowski in what might be first great analysis of color photography as art.

“Over and over again the photographer walks a few steps and peers, rather comically, into the camera; to the exasperation of family and friends, he inventories what seems an endless number of angles; he explains, if asked, that he is trying for effective composition, but hesitates to define it. What he means is that a photographer wants form, an unarguably right relationship of shapes, a visual stability in which all components are equally important. The photographer hopes, in brief, to discover a tension so exact that it is peace.

“Pictures that embody this calm are not synonymous, of course, with what we might see casually out of a car window (they may, however, be more effective if we can be tricked into thinking so). The form the photographer records, though discovered in a split second of literal fact, is different because it implies an order beyond itself, a landscape into which all fragments, no matter how imperfect, fit perfectly.”

The full text of the essay is here, and is chock-full of other readable revelations on photography that manage not to sound anything like Susan Sonntag.

Katy told me today about MoWACs. That’s Moms With A Camera. This is apparently the order of events generating this phenomenon:

1. “Prosumer” digital SLR cameras become relatively affordable.

2. Said cameras are given as presents to housewives.

3. Hundreds of pictures of children are taken.

4. Clever web programmers make some great templates for fantastic looking and user-friendly flash-based photographer websites.

5. Said housewives show pictures to friends, get comments, improve their craft incrementally.

6. Housewives begin taking pictures of friends’ children. Or maybe their pets.

7. Photos are posted on said fantastically easy websites.

8. Home-based child/pet photography business are born, by the thousands.

Hence a MoWAC explosion. Many professional photographers seem peeved by this phenomenon. While I can appreciate how it could be obnoxious for someone with lesser skill and training to be appropriating one’s vocation, and it is definitely true in most cases that the MoWAC photos probably do not measure up to the professional standard, this seems a little bit silly. None of these people were going to blow a grand on a pro for their kids’ 3rd birthday. The Wal-Mart photo studio is probably losing some business to this. Not you, Mr. Avedon.

This is happening across the creative spectrum– things like garage band and digital cameras are making the ranks of enthusiasts (and subsequently appreciation in general) swell for music production, photography, journalism, etc. However, the people attempting to make cottage businesses out of the same enthusiasms is undercutting the lower end of the market, while simultaneously eroding professional quality at that same end. I’d still rather have a lot of interest and a little overcrowding than some kind of Pro Himalayas, high above the masses, preaching to the choir.

Will rapid prototyping and the rapid democratization of 3d rendering lead to a whole new community of prosumer architects? It’s already starting to hit the world of 3d animation and motion graphics. I’d better build some cred and get licenced before the masses drag me down.

I apologize to both of you for the weekend-long pause; as one of you knows there was a wedding this weekend that took up a great deal of time. It did give me the opportunity to go home, however, and I got to play one of my favorite games: trying to see my hometown as for the first time. This is probably impossible, but having Katy in the car can be very helpful.

At one point I was lost in quasi-suburban Kansas City, and I mentioned that the area looked different than the one I was searching for. Fifteen minutes later, I remarked that I’d finally found the right neighborhood. “This looks more like it,” I said. Katy told me she couldn’t really tell the difference.

As I was driving home I started to think about what distinguishes one suburb from another. I’m not talking about whether the shopping center has a red tile roof, or the fancy water-jet-cut metal-and-stone welcome sign. I’m talking about the generic streets between subdivisions, the fabric of the area. And this is exactly what makes the difference. Curb cuts, streetlights, medians and retaining walls. Once you start looking for these things they begin to take over, as the secret language of exurbia. It makes me want to see a place where these typologies are liberated, where the curbs fly off into a field, escaping the road, and the streetlights suddenly are only 8 feet high, marching up a lawn and onto the sidewalk. If these things are going to define my hometown, I’d like for them to be a little less subservient.

Andrew’s wedding is this weekend! It’s like the last six months never happened. I’m about to get packin‘, but before I do a tidbit on air travel:

The sky is measured with invisible lines called “Victor airways.” These are direct vectors between points of navigation called VORs. From 1,200 to 18,000 feet, planes use these vectors like roadways. Traffic is stacked vertically, and opposite directions are alternated. The minimum vertical clearance is 500 feet. Jet travel is above 18,000 feet, and these planes generally have sophisticated enough avionics to be cleared for direct navigation, triangulating between VORs to make their own route.

This system is built on technology over 50 years old. In many cases GPS is just as accurate; with the direction things are going VORs will probably be obsolete within the decade. This marks a phase shift in navigation; we are no longer marking out lay lines on the globe; once again we are turning to the sky to find out where we are. The points of reference are in constant motion above, instead of fixed below. Distance is once again relative, not absolute.

The older VORs cone-shaped housings for antennas that spin at 1,800 revolutions a minute, changing its broadcast continuously to mark different directions. One of these sits just up the hill from our house at the Santa Monica Airport. Pretty soon it will stop marking the earth, and its continuous whine will stop, replaced by silent points of reference above.

The advancement of technology (and the parallel acceleration of the market economy) seems to be attempting to atomize everything from solid and monolithic to heterogeneous honeycombs. Everything that modern production touches is made less substantial and more complex. This is done in the name of sustainability and affordability and usability, and all of these abilities are great, but when one is taking toll of their physical presence in life, instead of a solid oak table with a brass lamp we have powdercoated aluminum and PTFE. It’s not terribly original (and quite reactionary to boot) to bemoan the lost of “honest” materiality, but this abrupt change in the stuff of our existence is a little to pervasive to be unacknowledged. To my mind, it’s the difference between standing on firm ground and shifting sand; the very reality of our surroundings is being challenged not only by allusion and mass production, but by the occult nature of the material itself. To not see the link between an object and its source is to lose a little bit of everyday poetry.

This is not to say that I need a rough-hewn iPod. Like i said, a sustainable and high-tech future is going to rely heavily on composites and advanced forms of production. But why is everything proprietary? I’d like to know what is in my plastics and alloys, no matter how complicated. What country does it come from? Who made it? What was left over? Anyone who doubts the intrinsic emotional value in this kind of data has only to go to any consumer product-rating website: we are obsessed with our stuff. We want to know every detail about our purchases, not only from an accountability standpoint (will this coffee maker give me thyroid cancer?) but because we are in love with our things. This is not the evils of advanced capitalism, this is human nature. Think of Excalibur, or the Maltese Falcon, the Holy Grail. Yes, these objects stood for something greater, but they also have faint echoes in every knife, cup and tchochke in existence. All I’m asking is that we forgive the things we own, and maybe get to know them a little better.

May I make a request? If you’re reviewing a project (or completing one, for that matter), and a complex and tortured form/schema/representation is justified solely through talk of “liminal spaces,” “seen/being seen” or any kind of celebration of complex social/antisocial interaction, mediated and intensified by the complexity of said form/schema/representation, ask them what their project does that the LA Farmer’s Market/Grove Shopping Center does not do for profit every day. Spending a few hours suspended in froth can be enjoyable, but if you’re really going to talk about something it should probably be better anchored lest it blow away or melt in the midst of conversation.

We got cut off on the 5 by a salt-rusted Explorer yesterday and Katy exploded. “Gold cars!” she said. Apparently they drive more aggressively than black, white, silver, or even red. Not only had I not noticed this statistical anomaly, but I hadn’t before noticed consciously a gold automobile in my entire life.

In the last 24 hours, I have been accosted by 24k cars. Three more blasted by in the left lane on the way to Encinitas. Parking spaces have been crowded in by gilded Jeeps and Oldsmobiles. I think they’re replicating behind my back, silent automitosis. Like killer bees, they will terrorize the country before eventually settling in Mexico and the desert Southwest. So prepare. The allergic will want to stock up on extra epi-pens and better insurance. They will attack in swarms, without provocation. No one is safe.

I’ve been working on some as-built drawings, which tends to skew your mental state the same way playing Mario Kart change the way you drive immediately after you play it. For the last few hours, dimensions have been paramount. Actual thicknesses and distances, not ideal or even perceived measurements, are what rule the day. It makes me wonder what as-builts could be for a totally alien architecture… what if your existing measurements were of transparency and clarity, or trace minerals in the air? What if I was tabulating the existing smell?

Architecture, as it is taught, is obsessed with dimensions. This is rightfully so; the first step to telling someone how to build something is to tell them how big it is. But, given my current employ as a midcentury modern crusader, I am left wondering if perhaps we’re not a little too obsessed with precise alignments and modules. When architects talk about “flushing things out,” they’re not discussing ritual purging. In all of this painstaking work nudging surfaces into position, we might be missing something equally vital about other characterizations of the space. Like, for instance, what it is for. Or how it sounds.

Or maybe we should just go metric so I don’t have to deal with sixteenths.