KATHY

a part of an autobiographical novel (Cautiously Pessimistic) that I started but haven't finished: 

KATHY Friday 8/28, 2009 7:30pm

They rode home from dinner in silence.  Both of them were tired from a long week.  A beer sloshed around lazily in Jacob’s stomach.  A beer fog swirled lazily around his brain.  Breana stared out the window, meditating as much as driving.  She looked sad.

“What are you thinking about Beautiful?” he asked, gazing out the window.  He turned down the AC.

“Kathy”

He straightened up a little.  “Want to talk about it?”  The dark streets of Marblehead crawled slowly by.

“It just makes me sad.  Kathy really fought you know, right up to the end”

“I know,” he said, reassuring.  He looked over at her face, she was sad but she wasn’t crying.

“It makes me think,” she continued, “every time I get obsessed about all the little things that go wrong… she really had some shit she went through in her life, divorces, bad career stuff… cancer… and she really fought through it – right to the end.”  She seemed to be talking to herself.  He just listened.  “She really was an inspiration to me.  I kinda feel guilty,” she sniffed a little, “like, I’m not her kid or anything, like I don’t really have a claim on her to be so sad.”

“You can’t claim people like that; you have a right to be sad.  She was your friend,” Jacob said. “Besides, I don’t think her family would want you not to be sad about her dying.  It’s important to remember people.”  He thought, Strange, I don’t think I ever met Kathy.  He felt like he knew her.

“Kathy was very good to me.  When I started on UNC, she helped me a lot.  She really taught me how to detail.  My ‘reputation’” she made air quotes, “for being good at that, for being good at anything – in the office – she taught it to me.  Not anybody else, just Kathy.”

“Really?” he had no idea.

“Yeah, she drew all the details by hand then handed them to me to draft in AutoCAD.  But she didn’t just use me as her pen,” she was looking back into time and out the windshield at the same time.  “She took the time to explain things to me.  She sat me down and told me ‘Studs are spaced like this’ and ‘If you’re doing a wood wall you do this’, like that,” a note of sadness filled her voice, “She always looked out for me.

“I remember she asked me one time where my family came from.  I told her that I thought my Dad’s family was from Latvia or Lithuania and she said, ‘You’re a Slav!  That’s why you’re so smart!’  And I remember thinking that was such a compliment, because Kathy always seemed so brilliant.  She always was so interesting.  She was like the woman I want to be – strong.”  There was a wistful note in her voice.  “And I could really talk to her about India; she always seemed like the only person who really understood what we meant when we talk about it.  I think people just think we’re crazy half the time.”

“Yeah, no kidding” he seized on the opportunity to turn the topic away from Breana’s dark thoughts.  Too much dwelling probably wasn’t good for Breana right now.  Too many stresses in her life.  “I hope your parents have a good time there”

“I think they will,” she said thoughtfully

“I hope so” Jacob said, thinking of Donna’s penchant for 5 star hotels.  “I hope they come home with some fun crazy stories.”

She smiled, “They will.”  They drove home in a lighter mood.

The Tyranny of AC

a piece I wrote for a professional writing workshop:


Every summer I put an air conditioner in our bedroom window.  Most of the time it's off.  I hate using it.  But, a few days each summer it gets so hot that our window fan just can’t cut it any more.  So I turn the AC on before we go to bed.  


When I wake up in the morning, I always feel much more tired than on other days. 


I can’t figure out why, but I feel it every time.  My theory is that I sleep in some kind of coma while it’s on.  The AC makes a humming noise that drowns out all other sounds (even my snoring) and the temperature is perfectly constant.  The whole world disappears.  You’d think it would be great for sleeping – and maybe it is.  It’s just not so great for waking up.

AC is one of the great transformative elements of modern architecture.  It’s allowed us to build bigger and more consistently.  It’s let us build in hostile climates.  And it’s helped us make hospitals cleaner and manufacturing more precise. 

After a half century of universal AC, we expect that buildings (any building, every building) should be unchangingly comfortable.  They should have uniform lighting, constant temperature, no breeze, no humidity, no smell.  They should be like goldilocks’ bed: not too cold, not too hot, but juuust right.  And they should be that way no matter what's happing outside.

Think about that.  Think about your office.  Has the AC ever broken in the summer?  Have you ever thought about opening a window then realized that you couldn’t?  Were you surprised that you didn’t know you couldn’t?  Have you ever looked out the window, then gone outside for lunch and realized it was much hotter or colder than you thought – or that it was raining?  Were you surprised?

Of course, stability can be good; in some situations, it’s absolutely necessary.  If the temperature varied dramatically in a hospital, people could die.  If an office were so humid that dew formed on the desks in the morning, the office computers wouldn’t last very long.  But it’s easy to take it too far.

Because we expect buildings to be perfect, architects design offices and homes as if they were hospitals.  We install complex HVAC machines to keep our indoor environment at the perfect temperature.  We lock the windows so nobody can defeat the careful environmental control.  This is important in some settings (like microchip manufacturing and operating rooms). But rarely.  It has no place in our offices, our schools, or our homes.

A building should breathe.  It should acknowledge the seasons and celebrate the weather.  It should have variable lighting, temperature, humidity, even smell that changes with the day, the seasons, and the years.  A building should reflect its place and time.  It should have natural materials that are durable, but that age gracefully.  Most of all, a building should challenge us to feel the world around us.

Innovation?

innovate
ĭn'ə-vāt‘ – to introduce something new
from latin innovāre – to renew, alter

to create noticeable change in a process or product
an ipso facto characteristic of experimentation

• implies significant change (scale? or threshold?)
• not the change itself, rather...
• the desire to change or the recognition that change occurred
• the result of concerted effort toward other goals
• not something that can be focused on independently
• implies an agenda of experimentation
• in practice, implies tolerance for failure

in short - innovation is not a goal it is a result
so stop talking about "innovating" and start actually "experimenting"

Facebook for Architecture?

A "Facebook for Architecture"?
http://www.fastcompany.com/1594118/why-cant-the-worlds-best-architects-build-a-better-web-site

Alternate architecture - Maurilia

"In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old postcards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory.  If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits: admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one's eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and that in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was."
– Cities & Memory 5, Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino. 

Excellence?

excellence (ˈeksələns)
   1. The quality of being outstanding or extremely good.
   2. An outstanding feature or quality.


"Excellence" is meaningless.  Case in point.  The word is slippery, vague, and uncontroversial.  It expresses an aimless desire, with no roadmap for achievement.  Saying you "value" it is like saying you value goodness or truth .  Saying you "measure yourself by" it is just stating the obvious.  Saying you "strive for" it just means you aren't lazy.  Saying you "have a passion for" it just comes off as egotistical.  Meaningless.

What a tragedy.  Where did we go wrong?  There's a clue, I think, in the word's origins.  The Latin root is "excellens", meaning elevating or rising.  But the source of the idea is earlier.  It's heavily entwined with two Greek ideas: Arete and Aristos.

Loosely defined, Arete meant living up to one's inner potential, a kind of strength in the face of adversity, and self-control.  It suggested a just life and energetic pursuit of right action.  In this context Arete is often translated as "Virtue", rather than "Excellence".  Arete was process-oriented, applied during a task (or a life) to focus effort.  It was measured in personal bests.

Aristos, on the other hand, meant both superior ability and superiority over others.  Aristos is the root word of "Aristocracy", which literally translated should mean "rule by the best".  Aristos implied a comparative social standard, where beating the competition defined success.  It suggested an unbroken continuum of success over multiple actions.  Aristos was recognized after the fact, for prior achievements.  It was expressed in rank and prestige.

Our mixed-up modern word contains these two sub-components: disciplined progression toward one's potential (arete) - and - superior achievement (aristos).  Depending on the context, one or another of these is subconsciously emphasized.  But not both at the same time.  When arete is mistaken for aristos, vice-versa, or when neither is clearly identified, that's when the concept gets murky and useless, or worse, dangerous.

In sports, arete is naturally emphasized.  Student athletes understand that self-improvement is the true objective, not winning.  Most of sports wisdom revolves around this idea.  The old saying, "it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game" is an almost pure expression of arete.  But when hockey moms or soccer dads start confusing arete with aristos, dangerous things can happen.

In business and politics, aristos is emphasized.  All the focus is on profit and superiority.  Process and improvement are just means to the end - being the best.  When MBAs substitute resultant aristos for process-oriented arete, confusion sets in.  I think this is the main source of dissatisfaction with business books, of which "Good to Great" by Jim Collins is the most famous example.  Like nearly all business writing, the book is long on summary and short on substance.  Mr. Collins research is exhaustive and perfectly relevant for determining corporate aristos - for finding out, after the fact, which companies are excellent (at making a profit), and why.  But the book is almost entirely silent on corporate arete - exactly what to do to make your company better right now - despite that being the stated purpose of the book.  Post hoc ≠ propter hoc.  If you read the book, ask yourself, "How do I encourage Level 5 leadership"? or "How do I determine my company's BHAG"?  Confusion.

Successful modern expressions of excellence avoid the use of the word entirely. Nike's famous slogan "There is no finish line" is a brilliant example.  It implies arete perfectly - process oriented, aspirational, and clear. Energizer's slogan, "Nothing outlasts the Energizer. It keeps going and going and going..." is equally brilliant - for Aristos.  It ties the product to superior performance.  But, although these slogans are clever, skirting the use of the word is flirting with cliche.  Say the slogan once, it's powerful.  Print it on a million T-shirts, and it fades to nothing.

My inspiration isn't there.  But I'm not giving up.  There's an idea out there worth aspiring to.  And I'll keep pushing toward it.

Further exploration:
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/apr/05/
http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

Alternate Architecture 11 - the looking glass house

"'Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room you can see through the glass—that's just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair—all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see THAT bit! I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too—but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room."

- Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll, 1871. 

Welcome to 2012!  - Jacob