Very good article by Thomas Friedman about how America has turned into G.M.

SHA Christmas party.

We had our annual christmas party this year at the Linked Hybrid. 200 people attended, with lots of food and flowing wine within the cool, darkly lit belly of the sales office, which afforded amazing views of the project. We projected images of our work onto the sloping aluminum facade of the cinema outside, which really made it a truly magical experience.

Nick Vujicic speaks at BICF

A man with no arms or legs spoke this Sunday. An amazing testament of overcoming great barriers.

The New El Croquis is out!

I worked on one project in the book- the Nanjing Museum of Art and Architecture, due to be completed this winter.

Oct 12, 2008: Diana Krall Concert in Beijing.

Canadian jazz singer came to Beijing on Canadian Thanksgiving and dazzled the (mostly Chinese) crowd with a fantastic concert. She played all the familiars- "The Look of Love", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "P.S. I Love You.", and "S'Wonderful.  It was a perfect Sunday evening- listening to a quartet invent rhythms both melancholy and playful.  Krall is herself was impressive- quiet concentration on the piano while murmuring melodies with that sultry voice. She also gave well-timed, modest but beautifully authentic anecdotes of life in Canada. And for a brief hour or so, it felt like a warm June night in Montreal.

A birthday party of 40.

Steve, Elle and I celebrated our birthday (Oct 6) with 40 of our friends at IKEA. It was a crazy idea, but surprisingly, none of the IKEA staff minded.

Chuandixia: October 19, 2008

Went back to this 700 year old Ming dynasty village, with a lost city on the top of the mountain, a large cave, and a breath-taking gorge.

Jiankou: September 27, 2008.

Organized a trip out to Jiankou with the Chengdu team from SHA. It was a perfect trip: the weather was excellent, the hiking was amazing, and everybody had a great time.

(Photos by Lan Wu and Sarah Nichols)

Scale map.

View from the roof.

Jamming (our tired driver in the back).

Roberto on his iPhone, probably texting the client.

Contemplating the panorama with Lan's nephew.

Joe Kan predicts Obama will win by 15 points.

With two weeks to go, I have concluded that Obama will not only win the election, but he will win it in a landslide. Several factors over the past few weeks that make me believe this. First- the conversation has changed from one of negativity to one of "reality check". Obama clearly benefited from the debates, especially after revelations that "Joe the plumber" is not actually a plumber, and that his taxes won't actually go up under Obama's plan. There's also full recognition now that Obama is.. indeed.. black.. and that will have no negative influence on election day. There's also full recognition that McCain is indeed old.. and his policies, too, are old. With just two weeks to go, I predict Obama will win by 15.

In other news.. the Chinese Yuan is now at 5.6 to the Canadian dollar, which means that on paper, the value of my Chinese bank account is 30% higher than it was a year ago. Amazing!

 

Jiankou-Mutianyu, Oct 2-3, 2008

Slowdown in the economy..

So.. what do architects do when lucrative construction contracts evaporate during this world-wide financial crisis (ie. recession)? Here are some things I'm thinking about.

1. Start writing haiku.

2. Do other kinds of art.. like glass-blowing.

3. Do more competitions.

4. Move on to the next Olympic city... London!

5. Become an entrepreneur.. and start a Mexican restaurant chain.

6. Go on a sabbatical in the Venice and learn Italian.

7. Run for a seat in parliament.

8. Pick up the guitar and busk for a while.

9. Go to Yunnan and help an orphanage.

10. Build a boat.

Palin.. again..

Well, the sad truth is here. She's just not ready. Kathleen Parker, of the National Review, says it better than me.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. 

Just read an angry essay by Margaret Atwood today in the Globe and Mail criticizing Harper's recent comments about the arts. See her essay here. Seems like Harper isn't so keen about funding the arts, because he says that ordinary people don't seem to care for it. It would be very unfortunate if his cutbacks to the arts and culture continue. In Canada, the arts (literature, film making, music, architecture) is already a small and feeble industry (compared to most other countries), and it needs to be encouraged and grown, not pulled back. Canada continues to export creative talent overseas.. and it is necessary to stop this exodus. Why would I want to move back to a place that discourages innovative architecture? Where a society as a whole doesn't want to spend an extra penny on design? Right now, Steven Holl's project- first one in Canada- for the Toronto waterfront is put on hold because of none other than budget issues. For our cities to be inspiring places that people can be proud of (and want to live in), we need to demand more from our governments.. not less.

Give the banks a break.

All this talk about the need to punish Wall Street for its mistakes.. is misguided. The i-banker isn't to blame. Sure.. he makes a six figure salary to simply move money around. Sure.. he travels the world in his private jet. But.. the real culprit, I think, is the system that fools us into thinking that there are guaranteed returns on our investments. That makes everyone think they are entitled to an acre of land and a large house. And a large car. A system buoyed up only by the rather fragile notion of market "confidence." 

I think we should rethink the idea of debt.. and start making better decisions based on real accumulation of capital. Not having a nice mortgage, or a platinum credit card, or a student loan.. can actually be a good thing. It will cause us to live according to what we can afford. Buildings will be built according our needs, and not what some developer thinks we want. Universities will no longer take for granted the number of students that walk through their gates. We will make smarter decisions about what to buy and what we cannot buy. We can live more simply...

Toxic Dairy Products, Toxic Yoghurt, and now.. Toxic White Rabbit Candy!

The dairy crisis in China has never been worse, and today, I read in the Straits Times that the popular White Rabbit Candy was found to have traces of melamine, the toxic industrial chemical blamed for sickening 53,000 children in China. I predict a real collapse of the dairy industry here. I've stopped buying milk products altogether. Here what it says:

"SINGAPORE has found traces of a toxic chemical in a third Chinese-made dairy product as a scandal over tainted milk spreads across Asia, authorities said on Sunday.

Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said samples of White Rabbit-brand Creamy Candy imported from China were contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical that can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure."

Beijing's pollution problems

At the beginning of the Olympics, the media was criticizing the government about the thick smog that was hovering over the city. I remember talking to my roommate, Kiel, and we made this analogy: China is like this big awkward kid with an odour problem that has always been picked on over the years. But now (during the Olympics), the big kid finally gets his chance at the spotlight.. and all he gets are insults from everyone else.. because even though he's cleaned up himself a fair bit, he still kind of smells.

Well, now that the Olympics and the Paralympics are over.. the factories are back up and running, and the licence plate restrictions are lifted.. and the pollution is back. I just read this funny quote.. originally from this blog.

"Like a giant kid who's been holding a fart in during a three week elevator ride, Beijing has apparently relaxed its many industrial sphincters and let a big one rip. That's the only way I can explain the lighting-fast deterioration in air quality."

The air quality is horrendous today.

Is Facebook on it's way down?

I don't really use Facebook very much anymore. Why? It's kind of become a little unwieldly- with all the advertisements, the applications, all these new features, etc. And as people's friends lists get longer, we just don't have the time to keep track of everyone. I don't need to see the news feed about everybody I know and everything they did. The only real useful application is the photo-sharing, and keeping a "wall". I think Facebook needs to simplify and to focus just on photos and its core business of managing friends list.. anything additional is going to eventually backfire. 

Google, on the other hand, seems to know how to do it well. Gmail is a wonderful invention that combines instant messaging and easy-to-use email in the same window. Their new browser- Google Chrome- is fantastic. I still use Google Finance, GoogleApps, iGoogle, Google Earth.. all these things are innovative, very useful, and fun to use.. 

Microsoft's strange new ad campaign..

Just watched a 5 min advertisement on the Microsoft site. Looks like they are trying to re-spin their image, which was so successfully trampled upon by Apple. But it is weird to watch two of the most famous people in the world  (Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates) do ordinary things, like buying shoes, fighting over a plastic giraffe, and having dinner with a typical suburban family. The strange juxtaposition isn't really that funny, and only emphasizes the point that they are both kind of irrelevant. 

I remember seeing a Mac in Jerry's apartment on Seinfeld. I wonder what happened that made him switch?

“Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time.
Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time.
Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time.
It’s time we gave this some thought.”

R. Buckminster Fuller

Cuandixia

Last Saturday, I went to Cuandixia- a Ming-dynasty village 90 km west of Beijing. A great place to escape the city to a different world.