Rafael Vinoly Grant

They rejected the best grant proposal they are going to get in a long time. I think so, anyway, and since I wrote the thing, why wouldn't I think that? But still, the fact that they didn't pick this as one of the five grantees makes me wonder. What are they afraid of? A real Ph.D. candidate? One who isn't getting a Ph.D. in architecture, where they don't know real research if it bit them on the you-know-where, but in a field where architecture requires knowing other disciplines. Fields. An undergraduate degree that isn't primarily a skilled trade degree?

So here it is:

Despite all recent press, a close reading of China’s urbanization has not been performed by those trained in its history, language, culture, historiography or epistemology. Western, Orientalist discourses privilege the “Nest,” the “Egg,” CCTV or hutongs as the sole relevant examples of Chinese urbanization. They exemplify China’s modernity and its failings, along with superior Western design. Presumably China cannot attain true modernity, producing grotesque imitations plagued by uniquely Chinese problems: alienation, exploitation and the spectacle amidst indiscriminate demolition.

"This project transforms the entire discourse on Chinese urbanization, transcending narrow studies on “hutong preservation” or “migrant housing”. It frames context: Western discourses portray projects as decontextualized icons. We investigate an entire area of all formal, informal, small and medium-scale projects and spaces. Most importantly, we situate them in their larger context. We study Beijing because it has become the proxy for China’s failed modernization and has been so grossly misrepresented.

At stake is fundamentally changing strategies and policies for urbanizing China—not just Beijing—to prevent what Westerners lament and yet replicate: designs disassociated from China’s cultural and historical context. By documenting how architects, China’s government, residents and the Western gaze construct Beijing, this project will shape advanced strategies and policies."

My guess that the post-Orientalist, and anti-Orientalist approach was too much for their rather narrow, dare I even suggest racist? minds. I think so. They'd rather have some Chinese person from China, who doesn't question basic American epistemology about China, to make a proposal about China.

This was a grant about emerging economies, the BRIC economies, and I think it is just too threatening for conventional people not educated outside of the architectural field to contemplate something different. I guarantee none of them has ever read Edward Said. Or, dare I suggest a woman? Chandra Talpade Mohanty?

I await the de-Orientalizing of the architecture field

The Rafael Vinoly "Grant"

The premise of Rafael Vinoly’s research grant is to foster deeper understanding, one presumes, in the arenas of architecture, urbanism and material culture.

However, this premise seems to be a sham. This year’s competition explored the built environment of developing nations. The purpose was to understand and address problems inherent in countries like China, India, and presumably those in Africa. But China was the first area they specified as being interested in understanding.

So I submitted a proposal. It was a critique on the fact that Westerners, Americans and Europeans alike, assume that western designs in China, including the Nest, the Egg, CCTV Tower and the Cube, are representative of both the problems and the inadequate solutions for a unique Chinese urbanization.

The problem is that Chinese modernization supposedly victimizes the individual. It tears down “traditional” architecture like hutongs, which no one ever acknowledges are a uniquely Beijing typology.

Well, Beijing is not a stand-in for all of China. But it has become that.

As for Beijing “fatigue,” a phenomenon in which architects think they have fully explored Beijing, the problem is they haven’t explored it at all. What they have explored is themselves: Western architecture in Beijing. The editor in charge of Beijing at Architectural Record, for example, never actually explores Beijing. Instead, he helps people exoticize elements of Beijing that Westerners find interesting. Not coincidentally, these elements are the Western designs in Beijing named above.

But as for documenting the rest of Beijing, what Beijingers really experience, no, that’s not interesting. That does not reinforce assumptions westerners have about Beijing: that it dehumanizes people with its monument, that it is an out-of-control city developing with not regard for the people, and that Beijinger’s really miss their traditional architecture, which supposedly represents the pinnacle of Chinese architecture.

First, there are innumerable neighborhoods in Beijing of a human scale. No one ever bothers documenting those. And since Western architects can’t never speak the language when they go over there, how would they know what Beijingers feel about their city, anyway? Imagine if some Chinese person came over to the U.S. to study NY architecture, assuming it represented all of the U.S., and didn’t speak the language? Americans are so narrow-minded and gringoistic that they would immediately protest, “How can you study us without speaking American?” Yes, and the same goes for architectural tourists traveling in China who lament what’s going on without understanding the first thing about China. Like William Menking. The arrogance of his assumptions about China is mind-boggling: he knows nothing about it, doesn't speak the language, doesn't hold a degree in it, and has never visited there. But he sure is certain that the U.S. is superior, it doesn't trample people's human rights. Evidently, he has been out to lunch during this entire administration, doesn't understand how our prison system is racist, and knows absolutely nothing about institutionalized racism, sexism and classicism. But since he knows nothing of these problems in the U.S., it's alright to engage in architecture here.

Modernization is not defined by Western progress. It just isn’t. Other countries must necessarily define and determine their own trajectory towards a modernization that is uniquely their own. The West does not equal Modernization with a capital “M” but just typifies a modernization, one of many.

And the argument that “traditional” architecture represents the pinnacle of Chinese architectural innovation and that it should be saved? Well, as long as these people have access to other housing, do white Americans traveling as architectural tourists to Beijing know for a fact that they lament losing their housing? Have most of these hutongs actually been seen by superior Americans, or is that just a projected lament about our own inability to preserve our own monuments? Yes. That’s what these people do best: project.

Indeed, what is never specified is what elements of “traditional” architecture the hutongs represent that are so great. Never once is that specified. Instead, hutongs are used as an indictment of how the “Chinese government” is insensitive to the “people” and victimizes them. Of course, then when Americans begin talking about those “people” they begin talking about the ethnic minority, in a dizzying display of a lack of logic. These writers and architects don’t really care about the Han Chinese except as a symbol to indict the government. But as for actually understanding what these people want and need? No. That task is reserved for the ethnic minorities, the Tibetans and Uighurs are current favorite darlings of Westerners, but again, the discourse is “Isn’t the Chinese government awful?” The goal is never to truly understand but to reinforce the superiority of Americans and Western Europeans.

Finally, Rafael Vinoly grant doesn’t seem interested in people actually qualified to determine what is needed by Chinese people in order to propose architectural proposals that are not just projections. After all, in order to determine what is needed, one needs to speak the language. Have studied the history and culture so as not to exoticize. And have, finally, training in architecture. But one needs all those things. Speaking the language or living in China do not necessarily qualify one because again, one needs training in how to approach the problem.

In other words, one needs to know how to critically think. Something most architects lack. Critical thinking skills. They are too often seduced by surface. Which inevitably, always, culturally colonializes the Other.

Symposium in L.A. on Architecture and Urbanism/Urban Planning

If you're planning on being in L.A. this November, check this out at UCLA!

Asia in LA: Global Cities in Asia, Asia in the Global City

The first Asia in LA program brings together leading architects, designers, and UCLA faculty working in and on Asia.

Saturday, November 08, 2008
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Tom Bradley International Hall
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Rio