The Wall Street Journal-20080125-The Informed Reader - Insights and Items of Interest From Other Sources
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The Informed Reader / Insights and Items of Interest From Other Sources
Design:
Autocracies Free Architecture, if Little Else
Some of the most interesting building projects in recent years have emerged in autocratic societies, a trend that might make fans of architecture, and democracy, uneasy.
Dictators and sheiks often give architects carte blanche to pursue extravagant, bold projects. In freer societies, on the other hand, architects have to grapple with all sorts of civic constraints -- historical-preservation groups, environmentalists and legislators who question budgets.
Star architects Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando and Jean Nouvel have effused about the ability to work without restraints on their plans for a cultural center in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Shanghai will soon boast the completion of Rem Koolhaas's groundbreaking China Central Television Tower. In New York, meanwhile, Ground Zero's reconstruction has been delayed and aesthetically watered down as factions jockey for position.
As city dwellers in the West observe the creative building boom in the Middle East and Asia, a sense of nostalgia seems to be emerging for the times when architects could build with similar abandon, says critic Christopher Hawthorne. Robert Moses in New York in the 20th century and Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann in Paris in the 19th century once were viewed as villains for their massive urban-renewal projects. Now, their initiatives are celebrated in exhibits and books.
But democratic architecture does have one crucial thing going for it. It allows for the mess and chaos from which the best city neighborhoods around the world draw their energy. Architectural projects developed without public input often lack that energy. Instead, they have the same dreamland quality as Disneyland -- "not a place in which to grapple with the complexities of contemporary cities," says Mr. Hawthorne, "but to leave them behind."
-- Conde Nast Traveler -- February
Literature:
Final Frontier for Novel Ideas
May Be in Science Fiction
Science fiction has become the last bastion for the literature of ideas, says journalist Clive Thompson in Wired.
The realistic portrayals of contemporary life that win prizes have relinquished their claims of originality, says Mr. Thompson. By questioning society's basic rules and speculating on how other worlds might work, on the other hand, science fiction can raise fresher, more provocative questions. In Cory Doctorow's "After the Siege," rich countries try to violently stop poor ones from using a technology that can duplicate objects, posing fundamental questions about international law, justice and property. Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy examines the foundations of religious authority.
Given the philosophical potential of science fiction, it is no wonder that the genre has lured such high-profile literary writers as Philip Roth ("The Plot Against America") and Cormac McCarthy ("The Road") from the realistic, contemporary plots for which they are better known.
-- Wired -- February
India:
Vigilante Group Takes Aim
At Domestic Violence, Graft
A group of feminist vigilantes has taken it upon themselves to use any means necessary to stop domestic violence and expose official corruption in one of India's poorest regions.
The so-called Pink Gang -- named for the color of the saris they wear -- has about 200 members (including a few men) who live in Banda, in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state, reports Neeta Lal in the online Asian-affairs magazine Asia Sentinel. The group formed in 2006 with their first act of vigilantism: beating up a man believed to have dragged his wife around a courtyard by her hair. Since then, their tactics and their targets have expanded in a region where poor women have few freedoms and domestic violence is common.
-- Asia Sentinel -- Jan. 18
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