Plans for 2008...More than Just Architectural Delights...they are the new IT Places

The New York Times 53 Places to visit in 2008 List ....Wow...so many places. How will I decide? I would love to visit all, but I'm going to aim to at least cover 1/4 of the places, not including the obvious that I will trek to by default.

So here's the list:

1. Laos

2. Lisbon

3. Tunisia

4. Mauritius

5. Mid-Beach, Miami

6. South Beach, Miami

7. Maldives

8. Death Valley

9. Courchevel, France

10. Libya

11. Hvar, Croatia

12. Puerto Vallarta

13. Sylt, Germany

14. Prague

15. Quito

16. Liverpool

17. Munich

18. Iran

19. Tuscany

20. Anguilla

21. Bogota

22. Playa Blanca, Panama

23. Alexandria

24. Mazatlan

25. St. Lucia

26. Oslo

27. Buenos Aires

28. Rimini, Italy

29. Malawi

30. Roatan, Honduras

31. Mozambique

32. Kuwait City

33. Verbier, Swiss Alps

34. Lombok

35. Northwest Passage

36. Easter Island

37. Virgin Gorda

38. Namibia

39. San Francisco

40. Detroit

41. Itacare, Brazil

42. Kilimanjaro

43. Algeria

44. San Diego

45. Malaga

46. Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic

47. London

48. Vietnam

49. Essaouira, Morocco

50. Las Vegas

51. Barossa Valley, Australia

52. Tokaj, Hungary

53. New York City

Style Directions

Thou shalt follow the following fortune cookie advice:

"Be yourself, and you will always be in fashion"

Town Architecture, Part 1 The Case of Mexico

I'm getting ready for a journey down to my mother's homeland, Mexico, in the next 2 weeks. I have not been deep down in Mexico in almost 10 years and the excitement is churning up my insides with more excitement. Since my last visit I have become an architecture and culture aficionada, and I'm sure that my eye will wander and wonder with enchantment at all of the structures and ways in which people move through life.

In doing my usual research before trecking aimlessly through Mexico City, Toluca and S.L.P, I realized thatI do not know much about Mexican architects or architecture. I'm familar with Aztec, Mayan and Enrique Norten architecture, but apart from that I'm clueless, but I know that this trip will help to rectify this knowledge gap.

There is no doubt of the influence from Spanish architectural tradition in Mexican architecture. And of course I am also sure that population, political and economic growth has dictated the installations of formal and informal buildings, but who were these cities and towns built by? In the case of Mexico, have new buildings in small towns been more a result of proactive formal planning or of reactive informal planning? My assuption is the latter, but my certainty is ambivalent, I need more information.

Halloween Fashion...2007

Let's play the "Do You Know" game:

• Do you know that Halloween originated from the Pagan festival Samhain, celebrated among the Celts of Ireland and Great Britain?
• Do you know that the Church traditionally celebrated that day as the Vigil of All Saints (because all Saints Day is on Nov. 1st), and, until 1970, it was also a day of fasting?

Don't feel so bad I really didn't even know until I decided to Wikipedia-It a few seconds ago.

I have always associated Halloween with trick or treating, parades, parties, scary stuff and costumes.

• Do you know why we wear costumes...because ancient Gaels wore costumes and masks to the festivals in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits to placate them.

Picking a costume and putting it together really leads up to all the festivities. Most Halloween costumes for women tend to have one theme in common: sex. It doesn't matter if you're nurse, witch, Dorothy, etc., whenever someone asks someone like me what they plan to be, the answer 9.9 times out of 10 will always be: "A Sexy _____" if not you will get those looks, the "she's a weird girl" look. Is this how we blend with evil spirits?

Personally I don't always mind it, I just wonder if my costume really changes much from year to year. It makes things easier for me and I am not forced to buy those awful polyester outfits that cost and arm and a leg for cheap versions of items that I can find in my closet. Plus I feel that any great Halloween outfit really comes together with the accessories.

So do you know what you're going to be Halloween this year?

Oh Condé...Why Don't You Care?

Oh Condé, why don't you tell me more?

I'm constantly disappointed by the coverage of Fashion Weeks around the world. The news sources only care about the pictures and the show itself, but what about the reason that collections were even created?

Fashion Designers want to be taken more seriously as artists but how will that be if the treads of inspiration are not shared?

The picture coverage is phenomenal but most of the articles do not reveal anything beyond the make-up behind the image. Personally I don't care much about what so and so is eating or not. Plus people don't need to get ideas to eat Kleenex to feel full, we already have enough fuzzy girls running around thinking fuzzy bones are sexy. Yet these details make the cut along with trashy celebrity gossip, while more important details are overlooked, but then again who cares about civilization or the environment for that matter.

The Cult of Culture

Pop-Quiz:
I'm the dancer in this picture, where am I?















Possible answers:

1. Casablanca
2. Moscow
3. Paris
4. New York
5. La Havana

If you don't know the answer, you don't deserve to know the answer.

Street Holes

The street is a public space. It is literally the road that gives order to any city. It is the means by which we navigate and explore with a conceptual sense of cultural context.

I hate the fact that we all pay taxes and there are potholes everywhere that ruin my peace of mind while I drive around with all of the psychos on the road.

I wish there were less potholes, perhaps LA would be a nicer place, but unfortunately this is not a priority for our politicians. At a national level politicians care more about having a political penis contest than really protecting the best interests of the people who pay their salaries, at a very local level the mayor of LA can't seem to keep his penis in his pants to actually fix simple things like potholes.

And then I can't help but wonder if the press would get me out of my jam if I didn't pay my taxes because I don't think politicians deserve their compensation, maybe not since I'm not worth much to corporations because I do not have the power to give out government contracts. I say that if we really lived in a democracy then the citizens of the world should be able to have some say in the corralation between the performance of politicians and their pay, but this isn't the case.

Yellow Lights on the C Road

Will the Council of Fashion Designers of America really be able to outlaw fashion copycat retailers and manufacturing companies?

So my question is:
How will regulating America regulate the world?

Fall 2007 Fashion - Blanks

A week or so ago I anxiously awaited my monthly Fashion news.

Elle supposedly came out with a new and improved layout, ehh it was A OK, not to different from before. I was hoping for more of a WOW factor but, but not the wow I got.

A Bang for your Block

Is design even a critical factor for the average end user, my guess is no. Why do I say this with so much conviction, well just take a look at the selection of the buildings around,… building economics perpetuates homogeneity.

It doesn’t take an expert to guess the answer to this question:
What does design mean to the end user vs. the architect?

This question doesn't get asked often enough, even though we live in a society full of opinionated people. Agree or not, if you don’t have an opinion then why are you reading? The process of Architecture today has no choice but to take millions of opinions from all different sides, mesh them into a cohesive design and ultimately form one big gigantic monumental decision (literally).

Have doubts, compare an architect’s initial concept and compare it to what is actually in the ground. The myriad process and the reality of price makes real estate easier to admire than to indulge; end users typically seek the combination of size and price than a building’s architecture merit....Again, one word: Economics.

Personal Style vs. Market Style

My fascination with culture theory questions how the fashion industry really manages the phenomena and demanding needs of "independent styles" in an era of global mass production homogeneity.

Independent style is usually thought of as a dissident reaction to mass consumption. My style, though in my mind is unique; it is not truly unique, it simply has a unique interpretation of the trends of the time because it is still dependent on the products provided by the market.

In my short life experience, I have learned that constraints are a natural part of everyday life. The art of fashion design relies on the ability of a designer to mix creative span with the constraints of raw material access (such as textile type, color and quality), budgets, product marketing and sales, and of course profitability maxims.

Fashion designers provide us with tools to create our independent style and like them the art of our independent style relies on our ability to mix our creative span with the constraints of product options, market access and spending budgets. Because let's face it, we all want that hot Chanel or Gucci something or other, but can we all really afford them...the answer is no.

In the imperfect utopia outside of our little perfect world there exists an effervescent presence of constraints on our style choices. Fortunately, our style will not be compromised even if we do not always get our optimum fashion preferences because we will always still go with something that captures the general essence of our preferences.

What you wear will define your value system. The question is, how much are you willing to compromise because of constraints? The answer should be: Not Much.

So, how much do you compromise?

So what do I wear?

Every day we have to make many decisions, there are certain decisions that we must make everyday, one of those decisions requires figuring out what to wear. How will you face the world?

Think about it, is there ever a day that you don't ask yourself:
"So what do I wear today?"
No

Unless you're a nudist, but even if you are a nudist you probably don't live in a nudist colony so you still have to face this question when you decide to leave your 'humble' abode and roam the non-nudist world.

So how do you figure it out? How do you make that oh, so important decision, of what to wear?

My decision is usually based on my mood, where I'm going, and what's clean & available.

$$$ Architectual Design Influencers $$$

An architect's inspiration or duty, there is a difference. The overlooked designed influencer: Money.

The architect has a vision but the owner has the money. The owner's money comes from various sources that generally fall under two categories: general operations (and its profits) and donations. The owner's general operations define their purpose and the donors tend to identify key stakeholders that are in one way related to the function and impact of a particular owner. I know it sounds a bit convoluted, and if it were portrayed in a diagram it would be one of those circular ones that show the arrows pointing in both directions. In a way the donors are almost like the president's cabinet, they have an immeasurable influence to the general public; only those in certain inner circles can decipher an idea of their true influence and what may end up on the street.

Even though the building will be in the public eye, the public does not have much say into what it will look like, because even if tax dollars are helping pay for it, the public is not the client, nor is it a big $$$ influencer. In the case of donations and their impact the differences between quality and quantity are very blurred.

So the big question is: How much does money and who is providing the money influence the design of a particular building structure?

Defined by The "Authorities"

As defined by the Oxford Dictionary

Fashion: the popular style of dress, customs, etc. at a given time
Architecture: the art or science of designing buildings
Design: a combination of lines or shapes to form a decoration
Culture: the appreciation and understanding of literature, arts, music, etc.
Technology: the scientific study of mechanical arts and applied sciences

As defined by Wikipedia (abbreviated)

Fashion: a prevailing mode of expression, but quite often applies to a personal mode of expression that may or may not apply to all. Inherent in the term is the idea that the mode will change more quickly than the culture as a whole
Architecture: the art and science of designing buildings and structures
Design: the process of originating and developing a plan for a product, structure, or component
Culture: refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance
Technology: a broad term dealing with the use and knowledge of humanity's tools and crafts

If there was ever a doubt...

From the new architecture curator at the MOMA, Barry Bergdoll, on the power of urban and architectural symbols as recent catastrophic events have demonstrated:

World Trade Center & Hurricane Katrina
" The World Trade Center was clearly chosen by the terrorists because of the place it had gained in the public imaginary, just as the flood in New Orleans struck a very particular cord with the imagination of the world. Even if much of New Orleans was terribly ordinary, its appeal was for its very distinctive culture, architectural and otherwise—a quality that’s growing ever more rare in a world of increasingly homogenized spaces, forms and experiences. It remains to be seen in both cases whether something genuine, with the potential for creating new vitality and new resonance—rather than a controlled themed environment—can be achieved."

New Year's Resolution ~ 2007

What's in store for 2007?

What design concepts will make me a better person?
hmmm...I wonder, but I am always a sucker for chic and sexy.