NEWS LETTER - 30/09/98.

Our identity crisis last week should now be promting architectural responses to what we found out. By posing as other people many of us have exposed the stereotype images we have of some of the groups within our society. The drug users, the criminals... perhaps these stereotypes have come from truthful generalisations, or maybe they highlight the superficial understanding we often have of groups within society. As architects we (if I may include myself in these premature stages of my career) often fail to use empathy in our work. By this I mean a thorough understanding of those involved. From the client to the builder, right down to the end user. Not designing social housing because we think it is what people want, but doing it because we know it is required. Knowledge is power, and we should make ourselves so intelligent, no one can break us.

We have also learned much about how we have all interpreted the spaces between. The mental: sleep, dreamland, virtual spaces; the physical: carparks, riverbanks, public toilets, wasteland, darkened streets and alleys.....

what for what point what pupose?

This week we are beginning our journey to the 5th November spectacle. Suggestions for the preliminary events, pieces or plots have included:

street parades, exhibitions, flyers, video footage, organised (and ideally legal) anarchy, amongst some of the institutions we take for granted (this may be in the form of the Bath St. Theatre Co. mentioned) bringing confusion and inquisitiveness to daily life... shopping, leisure activities, transport, education, court proceedings, eating. Could we make every payphone in Hull ring at once? Hull Daily Mail will lap up such activity in the city... it must!

There is not a huge amount of coherence to this so far, but that is what monday is about, strolling down our individual paths of architectural delight and gathering like tribes people dressed in yellow to discover our similar desires.

It has been suggested that we may be subconsciously using these explorations as a vehicle to identify any relationships between architecture and entertainment. That's great. Commercialisation, games, fairs, retail parks, leisure facilities, virtual reality, holographic art, arcades, cinema, theatre, music... need I go on? Simply endless oppotunities for project thought and realisation using these discoveries as prompts.

Other words that spring to my mind, quite randomly, are: Europe,single currency, sponsorship, fireworks, unemployment, art installations, billboards, modernisation & efficiency, unemployment again, depression, recession, leisure time, freedom, chaos, anarchy, and of course flapjack.

architecture is fun!