Sisyphus Unbound

“According to some, the punishment of the rock had only one purpose: to keep Sisyphus occupied and prevent him from hatching new schemes. But at the least expected moment, Sisyphus will devise something and he’ll come back to Earth...” - 2666, Roberto Bolaño

Of all the punishments in Greek mythology, few are as iconic as that imposed on Sisyphus. For ratting on Zeus, screwing around with Thanatos, and tricking Persephone, he was condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill in Tartarus and having it roll back down again. His fate of endless futility earns him the sympathy of us moderns. But his tale also warns us of the hubris and uselessness of intelligence against authority, a message which is anathema to our revolutionary Zeitgeist. Is intelligence always a force opposed to authority? If so, which would win in a Hegelian slugfest? Or are they two sides of the same coin? And what of the different forms of intelligence? Let us seek to answer these questions intelligently.

Concrete Thoughts

Architects must be really free, considering how much time they seem to devote to reading widely. Consider this debate (after the lecture). Perhaps it is the relic of a liberal arts education, or else built on that foundation. Possibly a soi-disant autodidactic Renaissance man could accumulate a comparable amount of knowledge, though shaped by individual preference which may prove inadequate in some areas during public discourse. Or do such intellectuals only seem unfathomably erudite because of our paucity of knowledge in those areas? After all, a study showed that participants who asked questions of their own specialty to outsiders were later appraised as being more knowledgeable by those outsiders.

On a side note, this reminds me how much I want to visit MAXXI. I'm still sceptical about parametricism as the future of architecture though; as interpreted thus far, its aesthetics are not natural nor immediate enough, at least to the untrained eye of the present public.

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The grand narrative of progress is shoved in our faces wherever we go. Since consciousness is bound to the illusory arrow of time granted us by thermodynamic entropy, the existence of psychological phenomena such as memory and (apparent) free will leads us to adopt that grand narrative. That presupposes a certain principle that guides free will toward progress, but the grand narrative itself reinforces the existence of that principle in a positive feedback loop. Such a tripartite Escherian structure cannot exist without any pillar; the grand narrative is necessary to justify der Wille zur Macht, that driving force of life, and der Wille is required for progress.

The Compleat Man

What are the qualities needed by the compleat man? Whatever qualities you may come up with, you can't deny that the compleat man exudes coolness by the megawatts. In the first part of this series we look at some men in very different fields who can lay claim to true coolness. 

Hippocrates Geometrica

I was dreaming of the Proust Geometrica again when the question struck me - would it be possible to integrate my interest in design with a career in medicine? Well, why not?

The idea is to have a stylishly and ergonomically designed hospital/clinic catering to rich patients. Through the use of colours and design, the building aims to improve the emotional conditions of patients and staff, which then leads to better health. This is not dissimilar to the concept proposed by the folks over at Reversible Destiny, that our surroundings influence our health. Perhaps they might even be interested in a tie-up, though it is likely most patients would be too sceptical.