>This is like some Clintonesque, V-chippy
>micro-initiative. Think big, man! Look at the
>pace of Chinese rail-building, for example.
I like this kind of work because before getting into any suggestions about what is to be done, it gets down to the nitty-gritty of how things (infrastructure) are put together. The stuff I was sending about One Wilshire a couple weeks ago comes from Varnelis, working through the Center for Land Use Interpretation here in Los Angeles. (btw that's a great little place to visit, in person or online, and I was pleased to hear how fast it's bus tours sell out).
And I think there is some thinking big going on. At least that's what he says about his work:
>As far as how this book fits into my current
>work, I have always been much more interested in
>big picture investigationsthe scale of the
>Annales school or of thinkers like McLuhan,
>Jameson, and Baudrillardthan in microhistories.
>Even my dissertation was an affront to accepted
>notions of what a Ph.D. in the history of
>architecture should be: I set out to investigate
>how architecture turned to a spectacularized
>design methodology in the postwar era (most
>notably that very “Cornell and Cooper” education
>that I was taught) and how that synced up with a
>general aestheticization of politics in the
>field. When I was doing this kind of work
>everyone else was focusing on the small scale,
>on miniaturesque accounts of noble architects toiling somewhere in obscurity.
And here's something interesting concerning the dreaded pomo:
>My big project currently is a book on network
>culture. This is a theoretical reflection on our
>own time as an era distinct from postmodernism.
>I mean, surely we can’t operate with the idea
>that, a generation after it first came together,
>postmodernism is still a current theoretical
>model. The role of technology in everyday life
>is completely different, for example. It’s
>become a new dominant, a kind of horizon for our
>culture that it most emphatically was not back
>in those days. Meanwhile, financialization has
>risen to new heights and manufacturing has all
>but expired in the developed world. I’ve
>published
><http://varnelis.net/network_culture>stretches
>of the book already and am aiming to have a
>draft on my Web site by the end of the year.
>It’s a huge undertakingand a shifting onebut
>it’s crucial to leaving behind the notion that
>analysis has nothing to teach us anymore.
>Instead of bemoaning our economic condition,
>let’s celebrate the fact that the unreflective
>scramble for shoddy work is over.
http://m.ammoth.us/blog/2010/09/architects-without-architecture/