Sensory Overload and the Urban Trends I Witness
I paced the streets today looking for a tiny cowboy boot shop that I keep passing but don't have the guts to enter. Do I really need to buy cowboy boots? No. I have a nice pair of Castaners (Made in Spain) at home. But, I am dying for new shoes, and have been casually looking for a nice pair since two weeks ago. Instead I got two wool scarves, black houndstooth and grey, from Shanghai Story.
Haven't been updating, because I've had this information and sensory overload every single day since being here. It's like my mind has been to near rupture, and if I attempt to release just a little, it's going to break the entire dam that is my skull. Not to overdramatize or anything (>_o), but if I were to really express every major theme of the narrative/metanarrative that is my life in Shanghai thus far, my writing would be more troubled and convoluted than a mini Tolstoy, although still not as fragmented. Yep, filled with intrigue, sex, drugs, art, architecture, and characters that flit in and out, and an overall melancholy and disdain for life. Just kidding. Only partially. More like a very different lifestyle entirely. Hyper self awareness, maybe. Half in and half out, everywhere I go. I don't think I'd want to live my life this way for too long. Maybe it's hanging out with all these people with their own firms / with foremost interest in developing their careers. I really like them, but I am 21 for God's sake!
I've really lived one place my adult life, and mentally, only half there. Half in and half out.
Being here clarifies certain trends going on in GLOBAL URBANIZATION in general:
-Chaos in a fury of what the Westerner-bred like to call "the Gold-Rush Mentality" (short-term profit without any long term thought at ALL--nil--an enthusiasm and readiness with cheap labor to rebuild and destroy and rebuild and destroy etc etc), and citizens with a feeling that progress is happening.
-Total domination of the urban fabric by developers, not by people and communities.
-Did you see the Shanghai features in Time and Vogue lately? Where is all this publicity coming from? On the global scene, Shanghai is an awkward teenager with strange clothes, becoming too cool for school.
-I've been working on a 250 sq km planned community with mixed middle income townhouses, highrises (12-24 storeys), duplexes, and commercial, with a disgustingly high FAR. I am designing facades and working on residential towers. It's exhausting in all respects.
-What are architectural trends? I've so much more understand the relevance of the local to architectural design and have never seen such disregard for tradition and lack of interest in traces of memory, the preservation of memory.
-Being a foreigner here makes me feel both totally fancy elite and totally guilty. But being a Chinese-American makes me double-aligned, double-tongued, double-historied, and always ... inside and outside, misinterpreted, privy (but not completely) to cultural secrets from both sides.
-Where am I going with this design degree, and what do I want to do a masters in, and what kind of architecture do I want to practice. Where do I need to go, what do I need to do (where do I need to work, who do I need to know, how much money to do I need to make to make things happen). How much power do I want to have in the future, and should I be aggressive in pursuing it. Does having power matter to me, and how much, and for whom. How hard am I willing to work for what.
-"Grey" areas.
-I need to find a place and stay there.
More later. Gonna get something to drink!
Haven't been updating, because I've had this information and sensory overload every single day since being here. It's like my mind has been to near rupture, and if I attempt to release just a little, it's going to break the entire dam that is my skull. Not to overdramatize or anything (>_o), but if I were to really express every major theme of the narrative/metanarrative that is my life in Shanghai thus far, my writing would be more troubled and convoluted than a mini Tolstoy, although still not as fragmented. Yep, filled with intrigue, sex, drugs, art, architecture, and characters that flit in and out, and an overall melancholy and disdain for life. Just kidding. Only partially. More like a very different lifestyle entirely. Hyper self awareness, maybe. Half in and half out, everywhere I go. I don't think I'd want to live my life this way for too long. Maybe it's hanging out with all these people with their own firms / with foremost interest in developing their careers. I really like them, but I am 21 for God's sake!
I've really lived one place my adult life, and mentally, only half there. Half in and half out.
Being here clarifies certain trends going on in GLOBAL URBANIZATION in general:
-Chaos in a fury of what the Westerner-bred like to call "the Gold-Rush Mentality" (short-term profit without any long term thought at ALL--nil--an enthusiasm and readiness with cheap labor to rebuild and destroy and rebuild and destroy etc etc), and citizens with a feeling that progress is happening.
-Total domination of the urban fabric by developers, not by people and communities.
-Did you see the Shanghai features in Time and Vogue lately? Where is all this publicity coming from? On the global scene, Shanghai is an awkward teenager with strange clothes, becoming too cool for school.
-I've been working on a 250 sq km planned community with mixed middle income townhouses, highrises (12-24 storeys), duplexes, and commercial, with a disgustingly high FAR. I am designing facades and working on residential towers. It's exhausting in all respects.
-What are architectural trends? I've so much more understand the relevance of the local to architectural design and have never seen such disregard for tradition and lack of interest in traces of memory, the preservation of memory.
-Being a foreigner here makes me feel both totally fancy elite and totally guilty. But being a Chinese-American makes me double-aligned, double-tongued, double-historied, and always ... inside and outside, misinterpreted, privy (but not completely) to cultural secrets from both sides.
-Where am I going with this design degree, and what do I want to do a masters in, and what kind of architecture do I want to practice. Where do I need to go, what do I need to do (where do I need to work, who do I need to know, how much money to do I need to make to make things happen). How much power do I want to have in the future, and should I be aggressive in pursuing it. Does having power matter to me, and how much, and for whom. How hard am I willing to work for what.
-"Grey" areas.
-I need to find a place and stay there.
More later. Gonna get something to drink!
posted by Miss J at 2:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home