afrch

Make your own toy car

2011-10-24T16:47:00.000-07:00

Ghost Forest

2010-08-02T17:37:00.000-07:00

Not sure what to make of this yet... When I walked into my room a couple weeks ago at TED Global, I looked out the window and saw across the street from Oxford's Keble College an assortment of huge tree stumps on giant pedestals.

Several people said, "Hey did you see the trees from Ghana?" So I finally skipped a session to check them out. Originally, they were on display in Trafalgar Square and originally originally they grew in Ghana's Suhum forest. See Ghost Forest Art Project: Installation of Rainforest Trees from the Tropics and read the statement by artist Angela Palmer.

What is strange to me is that while I share pro-forestation sentiments, I am also an architect and usually engage with woods like wawa, denya or dahoma in the Accra timber market (below) or trying to tame the mahogany tree in my too-small backyard with a crocodile machete. Strangely exotic to see these trees as exotic plants instead.

(my photographs; rendering via BBC)

Africa Day

2010-05-25T02:59:00.000-07:00

Today being Africa Day, reminded me that I once scanned this October 1963 Daily Graphic (above): "Africa Looks to You for Salvation - Our Strength Lies in Unity" ...together with a set of 1960s Tema news articles at National Archives. Note how Pioneer Aluminum ad targets export to African continent; and Modern Furniture's chairs ranged from 'The Worker - special planned and made for the low-income' to 'The Republic' and 'The Ambassador.'

From 'kiosk culture' to 'active architecture'

2010-04-22T01:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the feedback via various modes of digital communication (other than the comments section, for some reason--except for @PanUrban). Expanded the Africentricity piece to explain more specifically what I meant by a call for a discourse on the Africentric city. And as I told @quilian as far as I am concerned this is the Afrch manifesto for the immediate future.

Picking up from the previous conclusion:

For architects, this means rethinking typologies and waste/energy cycles and thinking beyond buildings to fields of technology and local fabrication—to drive ecological and economic sustainability by building active architecture—a project of open source architecture robots—that input Africa's environmental wealth and output not only shelter but also energy, food, water, Internet access and information about how to make and market designed products from raw material.

I added the following:

Typically architecture serves to provide shelter. This is equivalent to—if architecture were an equation or a chemical reaction—a function's output or chemical reaction's product being: shelter (a process that consumes energy, and has economic value). Architecture as a process is contingent on inputs (capital, technical expertise, preferences, etc.) and has associated effects (on psychology of users, on internal micro-climate and exterior conditions such as environment, real estate markets, etc.) However, it is possible to reframe the concept of architecture, from the perspective of its design, from a project of creating a building tocreating a building that does things—still a building but an active architecture.

This is the focus of my current research in Tema. Taking as point of departure a survey of the active edges of Tema's industrial urbanism—what I refer to as “kiosk culture”—the research folds into the discourse of architecture not only the networks of low-cost (and often low-quality) informal shops and manufactories throughout Tema, but also the spatial practices of commerce and production that they support (see for example, the log-log chart of construction cost versus “effective micro-territory,” i.e. the urban footprint of a given kiosk or workshop). A host of technologies already exist that can upgrade this active edge of physical infrastructure within the city. Technologies that would allow upgraded kiosk architectures to collect and purify rainwater, recycle graywater, grow food, passively cool micro-climates, use the sun to cook food, heat water, generate electricity and deliver wireless Internet are not new, and in many cases they are low-tech and low-cost. Despite on-going improvements across the continent, many buildings and many people are still held hostage by unreliable or expensive delivery networks (i.e. water, electricity, telecommunications, etc.) in Africa. Therefore, determining how an active edge of kiosk culture can contribute to wider adoption of (economically and environmentally) sustainable technology on the ground in Tema, as well as Africa more generally, is critical.

I argue that it can be beneficial to think of Tema as not just an industrial city in the conventional sense, but also as a distributed information factory. That is, if we want to “build better kiosks” at the same time that we advance the scope and quality of the local manufacturing that occurs within “kiosk culture,” then we have to focus on building networks for sharing information. In Tema, the tiny- and small-scale industry at the edges, as well as the more formal medium- and large-scale businesses sited within officially zoned industrial areas, are well positioned to manufacture more sophisticated components for the local building industry—products like solar water heaters, rainwater collection, solar PV electricity or DIY wind energy, and alternative building materials. If a greater number of entrepreneurs within the informal economy have access to information about how to make these products, they will. Consequently, citizens of Tema and the city itself can exploit existing networks of production and information-sharing to amplify local innovation.

Max Bond once made a powerful observation regarding the social content of design: that the techniques of construction specified by architects affect who builds buildings.(7) This observation speaks volumes. Materials and techniques of construction impact the local building and fabrication industry, economically. In Ghana, key materials and equipment—ranging from glass, tiles, door handles, air conditioners to cell phones and laptops—tend to be imported (as well as models of the ideal city). In Tema, a city founded around an Aluminum smelter that does not source Ghanaian bauxite, the frontier of the locally-made is the poorer edges, the peri-urban, buildings and developments still under construction, the periphery, the tiny and small businesses along roadsides, the kiosks, the spaces where improvisation is automatic. The prototypes I am now developing in Ghana are for bamboo kiosks (that can eliminate construction cost entirely), bamboo-reinforced concrete floors (that can reduce construction cost), integrating stairs (to increase density), solar electricity, water collection and purification into kiosk mini-typologies, and strategies for wirelessly networking the active edges of the informal. The complexity of survival within African cities contains nontrivial clues for urban development. Africentricity is a call for architects in Africa to strategize for retrofitting African cities based on the everyday reality of how Africans use the city, independent of foreign prescriptions.

Note: (7) "For example, if one were to design a building completely out of aluminum products, very few minority people in America could work on the building, because the aluminum industry is one in which not many minorities are involved, from plant to fabrication to erection. If one were to design a building in brick or block, there would be a much greater chance of employing more minority people. Designing a building in materials that are more labor intensive obviously has other benefits as well." Max Bond and Paul Broches, "Social Content in Teaching and Design," Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 35, No.1, With People in Mind: The Architect-Teacher at Work (Autumn 1981), pp. 51-56. Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Inc.

This 1981 interview with the late Max Bond--a giant of the architecture profession and in my opinion the Godfather for black architects who work in the United States--is dope and super relevant today. I uploaded to Issuu here and embedded below:

Workstation 4 2

2010-03-04T14:39:00.000-08:00

Pics from fabrication of my desk. Welded steel frame on 5" rubber casters, 3/4" plywood surface inset and cable tray, sanded putty, candy white car finish... via a welder, carpenter and autobody mechanic.

Still getting used to moving the desk for/backward instead of my chair...

I used this axonometric drawing to explain the 4 ft x 4 ft frame to the welder (casters are welded to the steel frame) and the base Sketch-up model is available in Google 3D warehouse. Added two cross braces (2 in angle bar) at the bottom for stability, and so that each side of the desk has its own footrest.

Africentricity

2010-02-11T05:49:00.000-08:00

[My contribution to the forthcoming NOMA magazine 'Africa issue' ...(an afrch proto-manifesto) derived from the Tema/ network power research. While I am aware of the loaded history of the term Afrocentric, I prefer to reference that debate only indirectly—my goal is not to reframe global history, but rather to retool how we operate cities on the African continent... ***Addition: I should reiterate that I'm not 'against the system' or even anti-capitalist (in reference to a conversation over lunch today in Tema) its more about broadening the scope/demographics of control and privileging homegrown solutions. Thoughts/comments? ]

Under contemporary conditions of globalization, Africa has among the highest rates of urbanization in human history. Tema—the city closest to the planet's 0-0 geographic origin—offers a unique opportunity to measure the social and economic performance of modern architecture and planning in this context, because it is a new city built from scratch over the last fifty years. Designed by Doxiadis Associates of Greece for the newly independent Ghanaian postcolony, the purpose of Tema was to anchor nation-wide agro/industrial development. After several coups and a successful transition back to democracy two decades ago, Tema is now a city of half a million that was designed for a population half that size. Some administrators/planners, and some development pressure, still pursue a garden-factory city ideal that may not be entirely applicable. The idea of africentri-city refers to mobilizing instead to retrofit African cities according to the way they work not, by default, development models from aburokyiri.

In graduate school, I received an assignment for a final paper in 19th-Century Architecture; every suggested topic building was located in Europe or North America. The answer—in essence—to the question, "What about architecture in Africa [and elsewhere in the world]?" was "It only exists when someone utters the word 'Africa' [etc] in Paris."1 The late Edward Said expertly splices from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park a geographic inconsistency that parallels the relationship between the 'Architecture' that continues to define architecture's 'History' and the networks of commerce and geopolitics that circumscribe the globe:

Far from being nothing much 'out there', British colonial possessions in the Antilles and Leeward Islands were during Jane Austen's time a crucial setting for Anglo-French colonial competition. Revolutionary ideas from France were being exported there, and there was a steady decline in British profits: the French sugar plantations were producing more sugar at less cost. However, slave rebellions in and out of Haiti were incapacitating France and spurring British interests to intervene more directly and to gain greater local power. Still, compared with its earlier prominence for the home market, British Caribbean sugar production in the nineteenth century had to compete with alternative sugar-cane supplies in Brazil and Mauritius, the emergence of a European beet-sugar industry, and the gradual dominance of free-trade ideology and practice.2

Said notes that while the owners of sugar plantations populated Austen's novel, within the story they exist exclusively in England, while the landscapes of exploitation that finance their lifestyle are rendered invisible. Similarly, the "great buildings" of every era, like the 19th-century Paris Opera House, are born of the ashes of the Haitis of the world3: The alchemical wealth-creation that financed the construction of Modernity emerged through mercantilist and colonialist global networks of trade and resource-extraction. Today this web of capital flows—which not only pay for the buildings that architects build, but also transform territories elsewhere (plantations, mines, factories, etc.)—has transmogrified into the Empire of globalization, where multinational corporations, NGOs and transnational organizations challenge the sovereignty of nation-states and flatten the world into a homogenized marketplace. At the same time, Africa—like Asia, the Amazon and the Caribbean--has always been a part of the history of art and the human environment, long before Picasso et al looked to the Dark Continent for inspiration.

(1) Tradition: The African artisan as indigenous genius. This approach echoes previous preoccupation with organic architecture and the vernacular, embracing traditional techniques of construction and the spiritual dimensions of the culture of building (Labelle Prussin’s work on gender and space, Suzanne Blier’s study of the Batammaliba, Ron Eglash’s ethnomathematics of African fractals).

(2) Conflict: African as refugee. Africa’s defining conditions are poverty and war, but design can help (Architecture for Humanity, Shigeru Ban’s earlier emergency architecture for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees).

(3) Crisis: African as innovator. Citizens of African cities are remarkable because they collectively (mysteriously) develop tactics for survival in cities that are so deeply in crisis that they approach total breakdown of social and physical infrastructure (Boeck and Plissart’s Kinshasa, Koolhaas’ Lagos).

So what is the African city, and what is its future history? It depends who you ask.

For Koolhaas, Lagos is important because it “might be the most radical urban condition on the planet.”4 This latest attempt to conquer the enduring mystery of Africa replaces the focus on traditional techniques and materials of construction (mud mosques and village housing) with Africa’s new urbanism, an alternate culture of congestion, emergent entrepreneurship and the interface of infrastructure and the informal. Rem’s Lagos research deliberately plays with the historical idea of “the expedition,” but takes as its territory of discovery Lagos’ “dangerous” and “unexplored” urban spaces: an ultimate urbanism produced by people who survive despite the collapse of the city, the future of the West. His search for the future primitive glosses over the fact that for the millions of Africans who live and trade in the city, Lagos is not unknown.

Technocrats argue that the dysfunction of African cities is bad economics, derived from the continent's failure to adopt good governance. The World Bank in November 2009 issued its Urban and Local Government Strategy, a plan to leverage the 70 million new urban dwellers projected annually (2 billion over 20 years) primarily in the developing world, for economic growth and poverty reduction.5 The plan—billed as both pro-city and pro-poor—makes sense from the perspective of the World Bank, i.e. a business with a vested interest in integrating the global economy by promoting urban economic clusters. Thus the World Bank foregrounds private property rights—in both urban and rural land systems—to incentivize private development and economic activity. But the citizens of the African city who operate on the edges—of roadways, property lines, bankruptcy and legality—are a central part of its dynamism, and their collective approaches to using the city are not the same as those of aid donors and foreign direct investors.

Tema is among the African cities that can be described as thickly transactional spaces. That is, the urban network that connects houses to workplaces and markets via paratransit (tro-tros or converted passenger vans) and private cars is highly redundant: there are a great many individual instances (places) where one can find transportation, buy cement blocks, get a haircut, a dress, a metal gate (or something else made by hand), kenke, water or mobile phone credits. In areas of the city under the most construction, and in those areas least regulated, there are the greatest number of temporary or semi-legal structures, including distributed manufactories—small kiosks that house low-tech production of shoes, doors, braids, burglar-proofing, tro-tros, DIY electronics, etc. While many things (many of them the same) are accessible simultaneously at many places, the problem is uniquity: if someone has a unique product, question or ambition, how do they make that known? More globally, how does one acquire knowledge about how best to improve on an existing scenario or to innovate with as much information as possible? I would argue that the limiting constraint in many African cities is not physical capital but rather access to information: How to locate a particular product, procedure or protocol/ Where exactly to find something specific, How to connect to remote markets, How to optimize productivity,...

The Tema case suggests that the real challenge for many African cities may be less how to create a city of 'clean lines' with no poor people working in the streets, and more one of how to amplify existing ways of living and working in the city into an advanced regime of higher information density. The anti-hawker and anti-kiosk stance of the political elite and economically mobile hurts many people's livelihoods and lines many policemen and womens' pockets. Alternatively, this active edge of infrastructure and economies can be understood as a future-oriented system of organization for the city—one in which flexible urban ecologies absorb new human material through a network of small-scale and low-tech productive nodes. V.K. Desai, whose company Tiny Tech Plants develops technology for "tiny enterprises" argues that smaller-scale development precipitates freedom through self-reliance:

Governments of Africa follow the same pattern of development as Europe and U.S.A. followed. So every African country is trying to establish big industries, is trying to develop highways, cities, power stations, ports, airports and infrastructure required by giant industries. I VENTURE TO ASSERT THAT THIS IS NOT THE PATH OF HAPPINESS BUT THIS IS THE PATH OF EXPLOITATION AND PERMANENT SLAVERY OF AFRICAN PEOPLE. If you want homogeneous development and progress of entire society of millions of masses, you have to evolve your own economic strategy based on local self reliance at least for primary needs of people i.e. for food, cloth and shelter...this type of local self reliance can be achieved through cottage scale family size industries based on small and simple technology.6

For architects, this means rethinking typologies and waste/energy cycles and thinking beyond buildings to fields of technology and local fabrication—to drive ecological and economic sustainability by building active architecture—a project of open source architecture robots—that input Africa's environmental wealth and output not only shelter but also energy, food, water, Internet access and information about how to make and market designed products from raw material.

Notes

1 I wrote a paper about the bizarre union of abolitionists and slave-owners who pressed the United States to colonize Liberia, and who gave rise to the phenomenon of former slaves from the United States rebuilding the plantation houses that they built in Southern USAmerica in West Africa. For incredible photographs of trans-Atlantic building transfer, check out Holsoe, Herman and Belcher, A Land and Life Remembered: Americo-Liberian Folk Architecture (University of Georgia Press, 1988).

2 Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage/Random House, 1994), p.107-108.

3 For an angle on Haiti's history, see UC Berkley journalism professor Mark Danner's 11 January 2010 New York Times Op-Ed, "To Heal Haiti, Look to History not Nature." Today too in Africa, terrains of conflict diamonds, conflict minerals and oil, biopiracy, agro-business and other forms of exploitation brokered by multinational corporations mirror Haiti's geopolitical experience.

4 This is the subtitle of the Harvard Project on the City Lagos Handbook. P. Belanger, M. Cosmas, A.D. Hamilton, L. Ip, J. Kim and N.L. Slayton. Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2000 (unpublished). Koolhaas supervised this research and essentially composited his “Lecture on Lagos” from the student work contained in the Lagos Handbook. My take may seem critical; however, in my view the Handbook is an impressive text and I argue for more of this type of research, not less. The key is that architects from outside Africa move beyond the Dark Continent narrative of environmental determinism (i.e. the mysterious nature of African landscapes).

5 Urban populations of Asia and Africa will double over the same period. Full report online here.

6 India has since independence prioritized self-reliance, based in part on the Gandhian political framework. Charles and Ray Eames, in their 1958 Eames' Report for the Government of India, called to expand this model of local production and innovation through professional (industrial) design training.

Posted on Places /Design Observer

2010-01-12T00:09:00.000-08:00

via @DSGNAGNC:

Report on Afro-Colombian port city of Buenaventura, with Quilian Riano. (Slideshow) Some of the final edits may sound overhype, but its more an attempt to share our experience on Colombia's Pacific Coast...hopefully more will happen with BV.

Fighting fire with fire

2010-01-02T02:44:00.000-08:00

Not only is it a new year, it's a new decade. While I must admit that I am ecstatic that this is the first in many years that I am not in school pursuing a degree, I felt a need to post this note as a final bookend to my eight years of fighting (for the right!) to formulate my own educational experience while at Harvard.

In October, Quilian Riano and I gave a lecture at Cornell called 'Dispatch from GSD: design as social activism,' sharing our experiences with the student group Social Change and Activism (SoCA) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). And just before Christmas I agreed to be an advisor to the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) chapter at the University of Ghana, Legon; we had a fascinating conversation about how students can most effectively advance their own interests within an administration that can at times seem deaf to students' voices. In instances like these, students who *are* still in school have asked for more information about how we challenged the administration to prioritize *our agenda* alongside what *they* considered important: in my case that meant to balance starchitecture, techno-formalism and what I like to call 'fancy-pants design' (hyper-expensive art museums and grossly unrealistic 'visionary' urban design proposals) with a commitment to community design, diversity and the social dimensions of design. Here is my take on the problem and countermeasures that worked for me.

Problem =

Universities, typically, are conservative institutions. I do not mean in terms of politics. What I mean is that the conventions that most tertiary institutions adopt are designed to ensure that the school will protect (the sanctity of) the 'academy': the mechanics that govern how the school operates seek to guarantee that the school will last for generations. You may say, 'Well that means the school needs to change in order to survive.' Sure, that is true. But (most) schools are designed to change very slowly. Universities have a (near-)infinite time horizon, whereas students are only students for ~4 years.

What that translates to for the student or student group that wants their school to better align with their own interests, ways of working or perspective on the world is that the school as an institution is built to resist you.

Countermeasures =

1) Win respect -- In my experience, professors are arrogant. They are the enlightened ones that students pay to receive the light of truth. As a student, by default, the faculty are unlikely to respect you let alone consider input from you. (To be fair, they are also jaded; you would be too if you taught the same thing to different students, year after year). If you want faculty or the administration of your school to listen to you, the best step you can take is to earn their respect. Take your coursework seriously. Listen before you talk. Respect your teachers or they will never respect you. Challenge them openly when you disagree--after you take the time to put your thoughts in order--and offer alternatives.

2) Build counter-institutions -- As I said above, if a single student raises an objection, (maybe) a professor or administrator will listen to them. But unless there are potential legal implications, they are unlikely to act in response to that objection. If a group of students raise an objection, they are even more likely to have the administration listen. But they are not necessarily any more likely to generate a response from the administration. That is because in both cases, the institution-apparatus knows--even if only unconsciously--that in a few short years, those students will graduate (or leave) and so will the objections. But (most) institutions will pay more attention when they recognize that they are facing a counter-institution, an organization that may last longer than the tenure of a single student, a group that may be able to sustain resistance for a period that begins to approach the infinite time-horizon of the Institution itself. The longer the counter-institution is likely to last, the more the institution will pay attention. This is the reason why companies instinctively seek to subvert unions.

3) Write memos -- Once students organize into collective bodies and reach consensus about how to structure that organization over time, the true groundwork is laid to fight fire with fire. In my opinion, the single-most powerful action that students can take is to write memos. I understand that this may seem underwhelming or even flat-out wrong. Maybe this shows the world that my generation and the even newer generations now live in... While I was at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a group of GSD students became increasingly alarmed by not only the limited diversity at the school (at first glance, the student body is overwhelmingly international--which it is--but there are essentially no black, Hispanic or Native American students from the United States) but also the lack of any legible commitment by the administration to address the problem.

I remember discussing this with older black alumni from the GSD who said we should organize protests, or a sit-in, something loud and noisy that would panic the school into taking action. Instead, we began a years-long process of working with and for the administration on the problem. After years of writing memos (plus attending meetings and organizing lectures and symposia) the school's attitude on diversity has improved remarkably. The admissions office now aggressively recruits nation-wide and works with alumni to cast a wide net for potential minority applicants. The school funds a student-led Saturday school and summer design program for under-represented minority high school students, GSD student attendance at annual conferences of the National Organization of Minority Architects, and the new(ish) Dean Mohsen Mostafavi has set-up a Dean's Advisory Committee on Diversity to which he seems genuinely dedicated. If students want a seat at the table, demanding it by yelling in a loud voice is not always the most productive strategy. Write memos instead--that is how institutions work: memos can be circulated and archived; memos are non-confrontational and cooperative; memos are constructive. I am in the camp that says, work *within* the system: that is how you fight fire with fire.

4) Recognize your power -- I always tell students, 'Don't be brainwashed.' The University will tell you that they have all the power, and the student body does not. That, however, is bogus. In private institutions, it is the cash money of collective tuition fees that make the school's budget function. In the case of public institutions, the express mandate of the entire system is to serve the students, preparing the next generation; the student body does not exist to serve the school. That does not mean you should abuse your power--that is how you become irrelevant. Rather, it means refuse to be discounted or dismissed.

In 2005, as a group of us began to explore what SoCA could mean as a student organization--how we could best advance issues of social responsibility and diversity at the GSD--Laura Crescimano and another student John Taylor said: have an open dialogue with students on the subject--and then write a memo. Laura gave me a copy of a memo she and Women in Design had written to the administration (see below) and I used that as a model. Since then, thanks to Laura C., I now always tell students--'Write memos!'--and students say--'What are you talking about?'--so I have uploaded a cross-section of memos that myself and other students wrote to the administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Design between 2005 and 2008. Not because I think they are exceptional, but because I have always found precedents helpful... If you are a student trying to challenge your school to be more open-minded, scan the PDFs linked below to see examples of how we tried to formalize our voices as students and fight fire with fire.

(above) Agenda for Open Dialogue on Social Responsibility, which evolved into SoCA's 4-year plan

Women in Design (WiD) memo on gender equity within the GSD community

Social Change and Activism (SoCA) memo re: 'Open Dialogue' on social responsibility

Report on NOMA and diversity at the GSD (2006)

Report on NOMA and diversity at the GSD (2007)

Dean Search letter by GSD Student Forum

FuturePresent symposium proposal

FuturePresent symposium program

FuturePresent symposium follow-up report

Systems for Inclusion conference on design and social action

Notes from Barcamp Ghana 2009

2009-12-22T00:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I attended Barcamp Ghana 2009. Most exciting to me was to see so many people congregate with the express purpose of sharing strategies and ideas about building enterprise and engagement here on the ground in Ghana. And I appreciate the effort to use social tech: I found out about this Barcamp Gh on Twitter and found the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (a nonprofit venture by the Norwegian IT company) the morning of using Google Maps and GPS on my G1 phone (without which it would have been infinitely more difficult to find). The use of technology--both in organizing and real-time sharing of this most recent barcamp in Ghana--was also testament to the opportunities for using social tech/media more/effectively (check out #bcghana09 on Twitter).

The morning panel addressed opportunities for youth leadership in development, mostly on an entrepreneurial/open-source/civic-engagement tip. Panelists were Estelle Akofio-Sowah (Country Manager of Google Ghana, former CEO of Busy Internet), Patrick Awuah (founder of Ashesi University), George Minta (ED of Empretec Business Forum) and Anna Bannerman-Richter (CEO of the Longevity Project). After lunch were threee one-hour blocks of break-out sessions. Notes (my highlights, not comprehensive) from the three sections I attended are below... I'm particularly interested if there is more out on there from the sessions on prison reform, using Google maps for businesses, social networks and innovation, and the entrepreneurship session taught by Meltwater faculty... Oluniyi David Ajao has notes from the session on blogging led by Kajsa Hallberg Adu of GhanaBlogging.com

1 // FASHION // leads: Adwoa Perbi and Esi Cleland

Ms. Perbi and Ms. Cleland have launched afrochiconline.com - 'an online clothing store born out of a vision to clothe Africa from within.' The broader business vision is to demonstrate that African print clothing can be contemporary and through sales of Gh-made clothing support local textile manufacture and resist the pressure of cheap imports: AfroChic clothes feature exclusively Gh-made prints (only womens clothing to date, but plan to sell menswear eventually as well -- AfroChic is afro-sheek not afro-chik). They led a discussion about starting an online clothing retailer in Ghana, sharing their own experience and soliciting feedback.

They developed their own standards for clothing sizes. An early visit to the Ghana Standards Board suggested over reliance on ISO designations for clothing sizes, largely un-calibrated to the Gh market or local clothing production. So they chose to define their own--after compiling data from a large number of seamstresses/tailors in Accra metro (I think as many as 50 or 90). Interesting that the founders are a computer scientist and a physicist.

AfroChic releases new clothing items online as often as biweekly. They warehouse ready-made garments sized according to their in-house sizing. Shoppers browse the catalog and order online but pay on delivery--AfroChic delivers to buyer's home or business. Clothing production is distributed across a local network in which each individual seamstress/tailor has first successfully sewn a default size of the garment they produce. Quality control derives from the centralized warehousing prior to delivery. The intended market is Gh women 18-35; the online shop only sells within Accra metro now but sees the entire West African market as a viable future.

Re: competition. One of the participants explained that he stopped the business making bags that he started in high school because suddenly a dozen classmates were also making and selling bags, and blatant copying was rampant. At the same time, the ubiquity of fashion-related signage alone in Accra hints that there is a huge market for homegrown options. Perbi and Cleland added that not only do they welcome competition, it is critical for the development of African clothiers that can compete at scale with imported clothing.

In my opinion, if they can sustain their sizing standards it could represent a major innovation--not simply as a metric, but as a method to build a local platform for distributed production and delivery of Gh clothing. This could be amplified considerably if they integrate social media (how many Ghanaians in their target market *do not* visit Facebook each week) and geo-tagging (I have no idea how they manage delivery now, but using GPS-enabled smart phones and Google Maps could be instrumental as they increase volume). Having consistent sizes, quality, fresh design available via online shopping and to-door delivery seems like a winning combination, while the sizing itself has potential to become a market-wide standard.

Picture: Golda Addo, left (who chaired the session on renewable energy) and Esi Cleland, middle. Lively debate over setting optimal price points. Verdict: type of fabric and stitching affect cost, and a modest premium can help establish brand quality at launch.

2 // GREEN ENERGY // lead: Golda Addo

Ms. Addo is the founder and managing director of Energy Solutions Foundation - 'a Ghanaian NGO focused on the development and use of Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) and the promotion of Waste Recycling in Ghana.' She became interested in sustainability when she witnessed Accra's garbage dumping practices and felt driven to organize against ecological degradation and energy crisis in Ghana. Ms. Addo opened up a group conversation about greening Ghana after an overview of the Energy Solutions Foundation's findings, how they have been seeking change in policy and on the ground in both enterprise opportunities and wider cultural attitudes about waste and energy.

Most significantly, she pointed out that Ghana has tremendous potential for the use of solar and wind energy, biogas and biowaste briquettes. How optimally can adoption of these alternative energy practices counter the decline in available firewood and electricity, especially hydropower. The Foundation has lobbied Gh government to prioritize renewable energy and commit to solutions that engage communities. (Wind turbines were installed on the Tema-Kpone road, but have apparently fallen into disrepair...has anyone seen this or know more info?) Ms. Addo also argued that one of the biggest deterrents for consumer adoption is the lack of access to simple output vs. cost metrics (e.g. if I pay GHC1800, I will get 1kW of solar power with 48 battery back-up). Break-down of renewable energy technologies by size vs. cost is a way to help citizens better understand their options. Renewable energy does not have to be either/or. It is just as possible for people to re-wire a few outlets to switched solar--so that when the power grid goes off, they retain a modest supply perhaps enough to run a fan a few lights, a laptop. Incremental change can--in aggregate--transform how Ghanaians generate and use energy.

Of the maybe 15 participants in this break-out session, only one had renewable energy installed in their house(s)--although notably, it was a house with solar and battery back-up. Participants noted that it is also hard for consumers to find technical capacity. In Ghana, its easy to find a mason or a plumber, but radically more difficult someone who can install a PV solar array or a biogas digester. The Energy Solutions Foundation has a number of volunteers and contacts on request who can assist in many cases, and also leads workshops and training. Several inspiring projects so far include student design projects and plastics recycling. There is a wide open space for creative thinking (see Trashy Bags) but scaling up remains a challenge (e.g. a plastics recycler in El Mina does weekly pick-ups in Accra, paying 15 pesawas per 1 kilo of lightweight plastic, but how do potential collectors identify this business opportunity?) Participants also asked: how do we find out more information?

Ms. Addo offered the Foundation's network as a resource, welcomed volunteers and mentioned that GTZ may be a reference source for more substantial projects. A Google search also returned this list of solar (and wind) energy businesses in Ghana, no idea how up-to-date and the Energy Center at KNUST.

Picture: the facilitator for the session on starting a company in Ghana, introducing his break-out during the agenda setting session.

3 // START-UPS //

I didn't get the name of the gentleman who led this third session on 'how to start a company in Ghana.' But it was a big group of over two dozen young people (median age under 30 or 25), many of whom had already started businesses both in Gh and abroad, and many more who were either actively beginning the process or planning to in future. It was a lively discussion and the moderator did well by steering the conversation away from corruption! transparency! integrity! critiques to nuts-and-bolts dialog of lessons learnt and best practices.

A lot of the conversation centered on registering a business. Some complained that the documents dated 'from the colonial era' while other countered that the legal language can be frustrating but is useful in the event of litigation (wording is designed to avoid ambiguity). There was some disagreement on requirements such as how long you can operate without registering and sequencing registration across a decentralized set of government agencies. Answers to my question 'why bother registering in the first place?' were a) to avoid getting in trouble down the line; and b) to support Ghana's development by paying taxes...I thought both responses were pretty solid.

Similarly, one participant explained how his company--which develops games for mobile phones--is registered in Ghana and just completed a nontrivial process of getting a (paid I assume) game on the iPhone App Store. The company deliberately chose to register in Ghana and seeks to prove that is not incompatible with global ambitions. Clearly in digital space, there are exciting prospects for this class of attitude about global competitiveness. It was also cool to see a rep from Web4Africa, a sponsor of Barcamp Ghana 2009, sat in on the break-out session...growth of Gh IT and web entrepreneurship should demand infrastructure for local hosting.

Other key points:

! Everyone thinks they need someone to do *it* for them...but be proactive--do things for your yourself! ...where *it* ranges from registering a company to navigating red tape to filing paperwork. Several participants mentioned that they paid consultants to facilitate their registration process, but one noted that he paid GHC 200 for this service several years ago and only GHC 80 when this year he directly registered a new company himself.

! That said, don't try to do everything: Complement your expertise with assistance from experts in other areas. Know your limitations and find top people to consult for your business when you need help.

! Business success in Ghana occurs within an 'economy of affection.' While the group had competing approaches ('I include finder's fees in my books,' 'it was suggested to me by government employees to keep two sets of books,' 'what are the actual legal guidelines for ethical behavior?') there was still consensus that all aspects of business are easier the more people like you.

! In Ghana we don't have documentation centers--the information is in people's heads. (see above)

! You are expected to have started your business *before* you initiate the registration process. Application materials will ask for a 'date of commencement.' Although there are different forms of incorporation, with various exemptions in some cases (e.g. Ghana Free Zone businesses, manufacturing, start-ups that are not-yet profitable) typically you are legally obliged to register within 30 days of commencing business (possibly defined by date of first sales?); it is illegal to operate a business after 1 year without having registered that business.

! Anticipate timelines. Some suggested that people tend to pay for fast-tracked or preferrential treatment when they have not budgeted enough time for a given task. If you may need a passport in six months, apply now: you will then have sufficient time to follow official procedure.

George Minta-Jacobs, Executive Director of Empretec Business Forum which supports SMEs in Ghana, offered three rules of thumb: 1) Register your business (after developing your business plan and setting a 'date of commencement'); 2) Get your Tax ID Number and VAT (if your business is not turning a profit in early stages, report nil profit but you are still required to file); 3) Keep your books well! (get help if you need to, but educate yourself or you could unwittingly be taken advantage of).

The session focused more on educating yourself and the power of documentation than on specific business models or opportunities for entrepreneurship. For more information: former Gh Attorney General Joe Ghartey has written the best overall guide, Doing Business and Investing in Ghana: legal and institutional framework if you can find it. Several participants also praised Doing Business which documents business regulations globally and has a section on Ghana and the SME Toolkit developed by the IFC which is available online for free. Participants of the break-out session compiled a list of emails and phone numbers in order to generate a working group on entrepreneurship out of Barcamp 2009.

Thanks and congratulations to the organizers for a great event.

Always true grow your own house

2009-11-06T12:35:00.001-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/garden/05tree.html

2009-10-25T08:24:00.001-07:00

Still digging Blitz the Ambassador's album Stereotype after 2 mos. and his stereo-brain-blowing logo. >> music: Something to Believe

Yet as sometimes in the arts, for every first in black US America there tends to be a predecessor in France or Germany... like Sekou L'Ambassador:

Without fact checking, I believe Sekou's tenure as ambassador precedes Blitz's.

Open source

2009-10-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

I don't wear a watch. I used to. Then I realized that ever-present wristbands feel like chains. I don't wear a watch now, and I feel less constrained. Time still progresses, and you can always verify it--particularly in the cell phone era. Watches are cosmetic.

Today I unlocked my T-mobile G1 (you can request here with your IMEI number); if feels similar to not wearing a watch. I can flip SIM cards.

I am preoccupied with how digital networks can re-orient urban interaction. That's why the My Tracks Android app (which I've used often) impressed me so much today in Ghana (I also got Google Maps update pushed today). After a GPS connection on my roof deck, it tracked my route around the neighborhood/block while in my pocket. That means the geolocation was triangulated from the cell phone network. There will be enormous effects as Africa transitions to higher smartphone density and market-specific mobile apps.

(below) from the 'send to Google' option in My Tracks;
Google Docs:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t04-s0hNT-sCQn8n-8HtsKw&output=html
Google Maps:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=203811272969523791297.000475ffe164e0e459774

***
For the record: I am two weeks into a 10-month Fulbright in Ghana. The views expressed on my blog are my own solely and do not in any way reflect the opinions or policy of the U.S. State Department. In order to avoid any opening for being called a US spy, my goal is to share online as close to the entirety of my research as my Zipnet bandwidth can support.

Article published for Ecologies of Inequality conference at PennDesign

2009-08-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

Thesis final review

2009-05-23T02:18:00.001-07:00

HAA .May 1, 2009

2009-05-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

Presented SoCA, pK and UTEC today to the Harvard Alumni Association Board of Directors, along with Jon Evans and Andy Lantz talking about Design Initiative for Youth/DIY/ProjectLink and Marrikka Trotter talking about Department of Micro-urbanism/Chinatown Insert. It felt strange partly because I felt visibly jaded about Harvard's bubble, and partly because of the Manchurian Candidate effect...that despite having acted, through SoCA, etc. as an attempt to protest the orientation of the GSD, we have in the end--through Harvard's own financial support--ultimately proved part of the institution. This is not really surprising, and at least our work helps connect the GSD to real communities, but it still feels weird..

Prof. Laura Miller introduced us to the UTEC project but never really advised us. When we started pK, Prof. Toshiko Mori advised us to not do the project ("Nonprofits are tricky"...which is true, but not necessarily reason to not become involved). Project Link only got financed after years of lobbying, attending conferences and arguing that institutions like Harvard need to aggressively build their own pipelines for underrepresented minority students. True, Marrikka has built DMU through her own energy, but INSERT! is part of the Harvard fundraising machine now.

On the upside, at least students were part of presenting the GSD to Harvard alumni, along with the Dean and Department Chairs.

09 Unspoken Borders: Ecologies of Inequality

2009-04-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

I guess I should get used to having my name misspelled.

But the conference was great thanks to Riziki House, Thabo Lenneiye, Nakita Johnson, Michelle Lin et al who organized the conference and started this blog to continue exploring the issues that Unspoken Borders 09 addressed.

Boards from mid-review 1: information download, design to follow

2009-03-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

Tema Network Power

2009-02-22T14:55:00.000-08:00

Draft for UPenn's Unspoken Borders 09 conference... With my thesis I am working to push the idea of designing standards, not just "architecture" and especially not just the one-off architectural masterpiece...

---

[ Network Power in a West African New Town | Dk Osseo-Asare ]

“Was it not yesterday that the first truck rumbled into the bush village?” [E. Maxwell Fry, 1964]

“On the 8th of March 2000, having acquired the visas, tickets, and general property of the expedition, we left Cambridge for the west coast of Africa to begin our explorations. It is not without some nostalgia that we set forth to discover Graham Greene’s ‘blank’ and ‘unexplored’ spaces. Driven by ‘a curiosity to discover if one can from what we have come, to recall at what point we went astray.’ To find what we are becoming, and what our future will be.” [Foreward, Lagos Handbook]

“African cities operate as a platform for people to engage in processes and territories elsewhere.” [AbdulMaliq Simone, 2001. “On the Worldling of African Cities.”]

The goal of this text is two-fold. First, I question dominant approaches to framing architecture in Africa. Second, I test the concept of “network power” as a tool for relating the agency of architecture and planning to local and global power differentials in the African city, starting with the industrial new town of Tema, Ghana.

Approach

While architects write about African cities far less than do journalists, novelists, lyricists, anthropologists, sociologists and development policy “experts,” Africa is back in the discourse thanks in part to Rem's Lagos. What was it before? Mali, Maasai, mud and magic... African architecture is typically considered through several lenses. (1) Tradition: The African artisan as indigenous genius. This approach echoes previous preoccupation with organic architecture and the vernacular, embracing traditional techniques of construction and the spiritual dimensions of the culture of building (Labelle Prussin’s work on gender and space, Suzanne Blier’s study of the Batammaliba, Ron Eglash’s ethnomathematics of African fractals). (2) Conflict: African as refugee. Africa’s defining conditions are poverty and war, but design can help (Architecture for Humanity, Shigeru Ban’s earlier emergency architecture for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees). (3) Crisis: African as innovator. Citizens of African cities are remarkable because they collectively (mysteriously) develop tactics for survival in cities that are so deeply in crisis that they approach total breakdown of social and physical infrastructure (Boeck and Plissart’s Kinshasa, Koolhaas’ Lagos).

For Koolhaas, Lagos is important because it “might be the most radical urban condition on the planet.”¹ This latest attempt to conquer the enduring mystery of the Dark Continent replaces the focus on traditional techniques and materials of construction (mud mosques and village housing) with Africa’s new urban phenomena, an alternate global culture of congestion, emergent entrepreneurship and the informal. Rem’s Lagos research deliberately plays with the historical idea of “the expedition,” but takes as its territory of discovery Lagos’ “dangerous” and “unexplored” urban space: an ultimate urbanism produced by people who survive despite the collapse of the city, the future of the West. His search for the future primitive finds only the uneven question of the informal...Like Urban Think Tank’s savvy branding of Caracas’ “informal city,” Lagos’ density proves not that it is wholly different, but that it is an enormous and emergent part of the global project of urbanism.

Despite the humanitarian motivation behind trends to expand the field of design by considering “informal” urbanization processes globally, we need to be careful. The current generation of designers seeking to alleviate Africa’s poverty and foster development through innovation is in danger of failing to critically examine previous efforts over the past sixty years. The Architecture for Humanity, Open Architecture Network, and Design for the Other 90% mentality that proclaims—“Design can save the world!”—risks becoming self-indulgent propaganda. Given today's global economic and existential crisis, design has in recent history been either underutilized, outmatched or ineffective.

Let us be more modest. Architecture, urban design and planning all have social effects—but the nature and extent of these effects is contingent on a host of other factors. We should not become so preoccupied with the provocative that we ignore the conventional. The reality of radical urban or environmental conditions in Africa today are linked to an equally real history of modern architecture and planning intervention. Yes, under contemporary conditions of globalization, Africa has some of the most phenomenal rates of urbanization in all human history, but architecture is not only now arriving on the scene. African technocrats trained in the US, the UK, Eastern Europe and later, the new African postcolonies have together with a displaced design, planning and engineering community of Western expatriates in Africa already built—on top of the colonial network—additional networks of infrastructure that dictate much of the new urban growth. The first wave of modern architecture and planning intervention in Africa was framed as an “experiment”²—Could design deliver development? A half-century later, before proposing new solutions, it is imperative that we map this history of design and development against the experimental results on the ground.

Power

In contrast to Lagos—which is important because it is different—what makes Tema relevant is not that it is unique, but that it exists. Tema, one of many African geographies with material circuits, folds conveniently into the discourse: it is a new town, built from scratch over the past fifty years, according to dominant conventions of modern urban planning and development policy. Planning and construction of new towns implicitly involves power—a more general concept than economics—given the relationship between decision-making hierarchies and agency. As urban artifacts, and because they were planned into being by fiat, new towns correlate completely to infrastructure. New towns are the opposite of spontaneous: like all large-scale infrastructure (a power grid, an interstate highway) Tema emerged within and because of a specific political ecology.³

Other modernist ‘New Town’ projects in developing countries, such as Chandigarh in India, Brasilia in Brazil, and Abuja in Nigeria, were designed as new administrative capitals for government. Tema was instead designed to be a modern city of industry⁴ at the core of the mid-20th-century Volta River Project (VRP). The VRP was an ambitious project to link hydroelectricity from the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River to large-scale industry and an artificial harbor at Tema (conceived by British business interests during the colonial period but executed primarily after independence in 1957). Doxiadis Associates re-designed the Tema Development Corporation’s original master plan of Tema for a larger projected population of 250,000 people.⁵ With a population now twice that size, Tema has successfully jumpstarted industrialization nation-wide and is a major industrial and transportation hub for West Africa.

Jane Jacobs wrote in 1984 that the Volta River Project was “one of the world’s great hydroelectric projects” but a “pointless investment,” producing power for which “almost nothing has materialized to make use.”⁶ According to Jacobs, the failure of Tema to produce enough factories to exploit the full electrical output of the Akosombo Dam renders the entire VRP development project “pointless.” Twenty years later, Ghana’s demand for electricity has grown larger than the hydroelectric capacity of the Volta River Authority (VRA), the government agency responsible for producing all of Ghana’s electricity. Today the VRA produces only half of Ghana’s electricity from the Akosombo and Kpong hydroelectric plants.⁷ In other words, Ghana now consumes far more power than the Akosombo dam produces.

Clearly something did materialize to make use of the VRP’s power; not only factories (and mines and farms) use energy—so do people, houses, shops and cities. In the case of Tema’s experiment in industrial urbanism, because the master plan and investment came first, it is impossible to argue that the city emerged spontaneously. Construction of Tema and the VRP built not only new physical geographies (the man-made Lake Volta, the artificial harbour at Tema, the city of Tema)—or infrastructure—but also new organizations to manage the project, and new economic and social organisms to occupy it—an associated political ecology.

While the narrative of Tema is that of modernity built on an empty plain, the construction of Tema city and port in reality displaced both a traditional fishing community and its cultural frame. Resettlement of the original Tema fishing village commenced in 1952 and involved the relocation of 12,000 people and 200 gods (to a new village, Tema New Town, two miles away). According to traditional knowledge, the Ga people who lived at Tema were protected spiritually first by the Sakumono and Chemu lagoons that flanked their village, and second by communal gods or otutu that lived in earth mounds within each family compound. Broad community opposition to the chief's sale of ancestral lands to the government—the land which became the Tema Acquisition Area—translated to years of protracted negotiation between community leaders and the Office of Social Welfare and the Ministry of Justice and Local Government. Systematic bulldozing of the original Tema village, known as “Operation Hardcore,” finally completed the resettlement process in 1960.⁸ Although the entire procedure was legal and justifiable in terms of advancing the public good of the nation, Tema's restructured land ownership—and the resettlement's suspension of tradition—is a radical shift that typifies the new power structure: in the new Tema, the mandate of modernization outranks both tradition and the gods themselves.

Planning

Once the process of city-building is initiated, who and what controls that process over time? In his essay “The Persistence of Planning,” Hashim Sarkis notes that Doxiadis introduced in Lebanon his ekistics philosophy as a descriptive framework that championed technocratic government-sponsored development, prioritized data-collection and physical planning, and sought to scientifically “accelerate” modernization of the nation-state.⁹ This reading moves beyond Doxiadis the geopolitical power broker¹⁰ to address the underlying tension of planning in a post-Doxiadis environment: who controls the planning machinery? Tema was also designed as part of a national development agenda andekistics study. Even more than in the case of Lebanon, foreign actors were involved from inception through implementation: business owners and investors, political advisors and technical experts. Consequently, it is inaccurate to present Tema as a purely national project, especially given the relative weakness of the Ghanaian nation-state compared to partners like Kaiser Aluminum and the U.S. State Department.

Although neocolonialism remains a valid critique of Tema’s construction and initial phases of operation, the term is conceptually tied to re-introduction of the European colonialist project through new forms of capitalist imperialism. Such models of global power dynamics are increasingly inadequate in accounting for contemporary globalization, in which new transnational actors and systems of coordination exert indirect control over the nation-state, sub-national and transnational bodies. At the same time—largely due to the port and because of Tema’s proximity to the capital Accra—local and cultural forces also exert powerful pressure on the city’s urban and industrial processes. In the decades since Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist administration framed the balance of power between industrialists and workers at Tema, the city’s social geography has become more complex and the field of competing power brokers more crowded. This corresponds to the success of the city, which has transformed from near-empty “bush” to now feature an array of commercial, industrial and informal entrepreneurial enterprises, satellite townships and 25 planned residential communities of a variety of income levels that in many cases are now generations-old.

Recent trends on the continent have decentralized the political authority of government. In Ghana, this process started even before (the latest version of) democracy: the Provisional National Defense Council Law 208 introduced decentralization reforms in 1988. The 1992 Constitution further transferred power from the state to the private sector, anticipating accelerated development and civic engagement, and in 2000 Ghana signed onto the Victoria Falls Declaration of an “African Vision on Decentralization” for the same reasons. Twenty years into the process of decentralization, the number of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs)—legally the highest political and administrative authority for planning and development—has increased from 65 to 170, but as a development model MMDAs have performed with only limited success.¹¹ While the intended outcome was loosely coordinated distribution of economic development, emphasis on the local fails to address how regional and transurban linkages in the African context can and do contribute to existing alternative models of economic sustainability.

Informal

Distinctions between “formal” and “informal” sectors are often made in reference to African cities. One attitude is that the informal sector represents an “invisible” sphere of economic activity and social transactions, networks of culture and knowledge. Integrating this economic capacity into the formal sector will facilitate development and lead to greater net human benefit by expanding access to capital, legality and efficacy. An opposing perspective is that the informal exists as much as does the Other. All transactional space is provisional: it is impossible to exactly identify the informal. People do not live completely inside “informal worlds” or operate solely according to “informal” rules. To the degree that there may be informal and formal modes of operation, most transactions occur along a spectrum of in/formality. Binary division of formal versus informal is less important, less possible, and less helpful than understanding transactional specifics.

At the same time that the operation of African cities is no longer an internal process—because economic networks are increasingly global—if the world today is an ever-contracting system of exchange, this phenomenon is new only in scale. The alchemical wealth-creation that financed the construction of modernity emerged through mercantilist and colonialist global networks of trade and resource-extraction. In the case of Tema, the central role of the city and the port in the VRP development program—which considered industry and industrialization to be the key driver of national economic development—both planning process and policy have historically been weighted toward industrial and business interests. Tema is a city that in theory exists first for industry—specifically heavy industry—as a landing point for global capital. This follows the principle that ideal economic conditions of social and physical infrastructure (cheap labor, energy, roads) will attract global capital investment for manufacturing. Irrespective of success, this strategy prioritizes relations with capital from elsewhere.

This approach to development locates Tema within the economic and political space of globalization—a process, ultimately, of power distribution. But how do we untangle the web of actors and agendas at work in sites that, like Tema, are designed from the outset for globalized integration? How do we determine if and when architecture and planning are complicit in transferring local power offshore? How can design move beyond false dichotomies like “formal” versus “informal” in order to amplify all networks that can enable African actors to compete within current modes of globalization, dominated by multinational corporations and Western powers?

Network Power

Researchers have used the term “network” in various ways over recent decades to describe the organizational logic of globalized/-ing urban space and to relate local conditions to global processes. Concepts of the world city, global city, networked city, and the network architecture of computing all already exist... Meanwhile, mesmerized by the graphic language of the network, “Architecture,” as Mark Wigley writes, “dreams of becoming a circuit board.”12 Architects, in general, approach networks visually, treating networks as a mode of spatial organization. This model, referring to mathematics in order to define a network as a system of nodes and links, lends itself to the production of pretty pictures. A second approach to conceptualizing networks is as a mode of standards-based association, rather than spatial configuration. Spatial networks are defined by where nodes are located in space and the degree to which links interconnect the full array of nodes. Standards networks are essentially de-spatialized, defining the boundaries of a given network not by nodal distribution, but by membership into a standardized protocol. Members may still constitute nodes but conceptual emphasis is on the standards that operate that network.

Harvard political scientist David Grewal advances a concept of network power to describe formations of human freedom under contemporary conditions of globalization.13 He observes that globalization is a critical issue today on which two camps fail to agree. Proponents of globalization claim that “transnational flows” increase freedom; critics argue that “global standards” constrain individual and national freedom. In response to the question “Is globalization a form of empire?” Grewal argues that globalization does represent a structure of domination, but is an informal system of empire because it does not exert control by force or direct control. Instead, globalization operates according to standards networks; network power is the degree of attractiveness of a given network's system of cooperation, whereby a network gains power in proportion to the number of people who adopt the standards of that network (e.g. the dominance of the network of English-speakers, for which the standard is the ability to speak English). Hence a network can exert pressure toward adoption of particular standards without physical force; one network’s network power can contribute to its supremacy over another network; networks exert power indirectly by reducing the viability of competing networks.

Networks are simultaneously determined by their spatial configuration and by the system of standards, conventions and protocols that define them. Tema, like all African cities and all urban spaces, is part of many (economic, political, techno-social, etc.) networks. It is not enough to merely isolate or identify the standards behind the networks of globalization. Instead of the endless project of classifying what is formal or what is informal, what is dominant or what is insurgent, technocratic or participatory, the agency of design lies in the design of network/ed standards themselves.

1 This is the subtitle of the Harvard Project on the City “Lagos Handbook.” P. Belanger, M. Cosmas, A.D. Hamilton, L. Ip, J. Kim and N.L. Slayton. Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2000 (unpublished). Rem Koolhaas supervised this research and partly composited his “Lecture on Lagos” from the student work contained in the Lagos Handbook. My take may seem critical; however, in my view the Handbook is an impressive text and I argue for more of this type of research, not less. The key is that architects move beyond the Dark Continent narrative.

2 E. Maxwell Fry, “African Experiment: Building for an Educational Programme in the Gold Coast.” Architectural Review 113: No. 677 (May 1953). For more on the Tropical Modernism project in West Africa, especially Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew before Chandigarh, see Hannah Le Roux “Modern Architecture in Post-Colonial Ghana and Nigeria.” Architectural History, Vol. 47 (2004), pp. 361-392. And Daniel Immerwahr. “The Politics of Architecture and Urbanism in Postcolonial Lagos, 1960-1986.” Journal of African Cultural Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (December 2007), pp. 165-186.

3 The term political ecology typically denotes the interdependent effects of politics, social factors and economics on the natural environment. Authors such as David Harvey (1997), while not discussing “political ecology” directly, have argued against false dichotomization of natural and built environments. I use the term political ecology throughout this text to highlight that in the case of Tema, the political power structure operates simultaneously on the natural and built environments, and is itself a system of social organisms interacting to achieve dynamic equilibrium over time.

4 Lisa Peattie made a similar observation about the industrial city of Guayana in her seminal text, Planning: Rethinking Ciudad Guayana. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987.

5 Construction of Tema began in 1954, under direction of the then Tema Development Organization (now, Corporation) in association with the Public Works Department. The TDC plan covered 5000 acres and a population of 80,000 people in seven residential communities of 10,000-12,000 each.

In March 1960 the Government of Ghana enlisted Doxiadis Associates to conduct an ekistics study for the entire country, as well as the Accra-Tema metropolitan area, the Accra-Tema-Akosombo triangle, the Accra Plains, the Southeast Coastal Plains, and the full region of the Volta River Project. In July 1961 the Government hired Doxiadis Associates to produce a master plan for the 63 sq. mi. Tema Acquisition Area and a comprehensive development program for the town and industrial area over a 25 year period and projected population of 235,000-250,000. Documentation of Doxiadis Associates’ Tema design appear in Ekistics 13: 17, 159-171. For ekistics study of Ghana see “Accra-Tema-Akosombo” in Ekistics 11: 65, 235-276.

By the time Doxiadis Associates came on board, two residential communities had already been completed with an estimated population of 22,000 and work begun on industrial sites, Tema harbor and infrastructure (roads, sewers, etc). The Doxiadis Associates’ plan with modifications has governed the city’s urban and industrial growth to date.

6 Jacobs, Jane. Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life. New York: Random House, 1984. Pp. 105.

7 While the VRA (www.vra.com) is still responsible for national production of Ghana’s electricity, the government is encouraging independent power producers in the private sector. So far only one private company is producing at scale, in partnership with the VRA at the Takoradi thermal plant. Significantly, Ghana’s electrical demand has continued to increase even while the Volta Aluminum Company (VALCO) aluminum smelter, which the World Bank calls the intended “primary consumer” of VRP power, has not run at full capacity since 2002, and current implementation of long-planned regional networking of West African energy infrastructure is only now making large-scale export of Ghana’s electricity viable (see website of the West African Power Pool, Economic Community of West African States: www.ecowapp.org).

8 G.W. Amarteifio, D.A.P. Butcher and David Whitham. Tema Manhean: A Study of Resettlement. Accra: Ghana Universities Press for the University of Science and Technology-Kumasi, 1966.

9 Sarkis, Hashim. Circa 1958: Lebanon in the pictures and plans of Constantinos Doxiadis. Beyrouth: Dar An-Nahar: Fares Foundation, 2003. Pp. 207. “If we continue to make plans (and we should), if we continue to interrogate the process and benefits of development including planning (and here again we should), we should do so by generating more information from different perspectives about the issues taken on by the plans.” Constantinos Doxiadis used the term ekistics to describe a science of human settlements.

10 For discussion of Doxiadis’ political prowess see Michelle Provoost, “New Towns on the Cold War Frontier: How modern urban planning was exported as an instrument in the battle for the developing world.” URL: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-06-28-provoost-en.html. Also, Markus Daechsel, “Misplaced Ekistics: Constantinos A. Doxiadis and urban plannning in Pakistan.” Paper from Doxiadis Foundation international workshop (Dec. 2006).

11 See The New Legon Observer. Ghana Society for Development Dialogue Publication. Vol. 2 No.9, 22 May 2008. “Decentralization, Cities and Development: Some Retrospective Issues and Challenges.”

12 Mark Wigley. “The Architectural Brain.” In Network Practices: New Strategies in Architecture and Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. Pp. 38.

13 Grewal, David. Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. And Grewal, “Network Power and Globalization.” Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 17, Issue 2, pp. 89-98).

C. contemplates not my thesis, but the fly in the fluourescent light

2009-02-16T21:16:00.000-08:00

Is this Lagos

2009-02-08T17:38:00.000-08:00

Can anyone confirm that the city in the background is Lagos?

Invisible Governance

2009-02-06T08:42:00.001-08:00

It came today: The Art of African Micropolitics by David Hecht & Abdoumaliq Simone.

Thanks Nat.

What is the point of thesis?

2009-02-05T08:49:00.001-08:00

This past week, trying to finish a document that was due weeks ago, I have found myself asking, "What is the point of thesis?" It seems that nearly everything I would say has already been said. In the age of Google, Google Books and Google Scholar, everything needs to be qualified. At the same time, since my thesis is actually a design thesis, not a written text, my overdue document ("thesis prep") serves solely to frame my design problem and my approach. So I wrote a note to myself, explaining why I am actually invested in this process:

This document is a record of my attempts to make sense of a city--Tema, Ghana--not as an end in itself, but in order to formulate a position about how design can be most relevant in that context. Why Tema? Why not. Africa is conspicuously absent from the discourse of architecture. Architects write about African cities far less than do journalists, novelists, lyricists, anthropologists, sociologists and development policy "experts." As a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the only time a faculty member mentioned Africa during the core curriculum was--in essence--to say that the continent only existed in the 19th century when someone said "Africa" in Paris. There is now a new trend in the design community to refocus attention on the Dark Continent (thanks, Rem). While I welcome the intent, I find some aspects disturbing. This latest generation of designers seeking to alleviate Africa's poverty and foster development through innovation fails to critically examine previous efforts over the past sixty years. The Architecture for Humanity / Open Architecture Network model proclaims that "Design can save the world!" I say, that is pure deception, self-indulgent propaganda that has already been disproven: If that is true, then why is the world in the midst of the worst economic (read: existential) crisis in a century?

Let us be more modest. Architecture has social effects--but the nature and extent of these effects is contingent on a host of other factors. I start with Tema because it is a piece of Africa that folds conveniently into the discourse--a new town, built from scratch over the past fifty years, according to dominant conventions of modern urban planning and development policy. My instinct is to distrust theories of "development," especially from institutions like the World Bank, that were designed not by the developing world but by the beneficiaries of centuries of global exploitation. Globalization is a process, ultimately, of power distribution; thus I take Tema as a given and ask how (if) design can increase local power.

2009-01-16T03:40:00.000-08:00

Tema 2.0

2009-01-09T11:21:00.000-08:00

when i wrote the first thesis chapter, Temaboy--trying to relate the postmodern and the postcolonial in the context of Tema's urbanism--i was somehow preoccupied with the World Bank-inspired idea of the 'worker' positioned against the backdrop of global commerce.

however--today--after a month of administrative negotiations i was finally able to go inside Tema Port and take about a thousand photographs. the fourth was perhaps the most interesting...an updated version of the World Bank photo, here a port 'worker' in front of the marine vessel(s of global commerce) fiddles with his mobile phone... Tema today is not about the oppressed worker trapped in the machine of global capitalism; although such imagery is not too far off-target, Tema also represents the portal of exchange between Ghana-Burkina-Niger-Mali and the rest-of-the-world...workers at the extreme local perimeter of international exchange are still deep within (front-and-center of?) Ghana's communication web...a web that links (nearly) all individuals to each other digitally and simultaneously as networked consumers. whatever happened to the idea of local production?

radio, music, media

2008-12-30T07:42:00.001-08:00

Results for Ghana's run-off election are due today. And while the gh-elections.com vote tracker has been frozen on last night's results (before NPP numbers surged overnight against the opposition) almost all radio stations in Greater Accra today have played non-stop music. The exception is Radio Gold, which has featured a continuous line-up of commentary on electoral conjecture and conspiracy, including rumors that the station was being forcibly pushed off-the-air.

Having just come back from Tema, the effects of this wall of music are palpable. With pro-sanity ("We love peace!") and nationalistic vibes ("Ghana belongs to you and me, Ghana belongs to all of us!") blasting on speakers everywhere, everyone awaits the electoral commission's verdict. Its interesting to see the effects of music so clearly. If all the stations were broadcasting talk radio's rumors and hearsay all day, the effect would be to amplify animosity between supporters of both parties. But with music dominating today, positivity pulsates despite the tension.

It sounds like the opposition NDC will win after all, and peaceful transition of power for the second time in this round of Ghana's democracy could be good merely if it reinforces the idea of democracy over communalism.

Seeing (hearing!) the electronic speakers population during Christmas reminds me that architecture in Tema is already integrated with existing electronic infrastructure...in Tema information infrastructure shouldn't be reduced to cell phone tech alone--the parallel network of radios, radio stations and gigantic speakers is also super-legit. I'm still trying to understand the speaker situation (is it cultural or environment-determined?)--people love "big, big" speakers here... even India is not this intense sonically.

in/formal

2008-12-22T01:00:00.000-08:00

There is an "informal" drinking spot next to my house: it's a little disconcerting to see local taxi drivers having shots for breakfast.

Public Wi-Fi

2008-12-09T00:21:00.000-08:00

[Note: I started this blog post at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport while waiting for my flight to Accra--I'm working on thesis in Tema through January--but lost battery power before I could post it. How appropriate.]

Having finally connected to free wi-fi at Schiphol airport I remembered what someone (Aron Chang?) said recently (during thesis workshop--a group of us doing theses at Harvard GSD, who meet to present our research-in-progress and to discuss ideas): "digital is physical too!" in reference to the physical infrastructure required to support digital environments (routers, servers, etc.) Saskia Sassen and Robert Latham wrote a related introduction to their edited volume Digital Formations in which they highlight that digitally networked technologies create new social formations. Reading texts like this I have wondered throughout the semester: what are the implications for architects? Since space is both physical and digital, how do we design for interrelating both forms of space?

Seeing in-transit travelers appropriating all kinds of Schiphol's nooks and crannies to work and play and communicate on laptops made me think first of a blogger in New Zealand who posted a really interesting piece on Wi-fi structures and people shapes...noting that

urban industry - in the widest sense of the word - in the knowledge economy is often invisible, at least immediately and in situ. Whereas urban industry would once have produced thick plumes of smoke or deafening sheets of sound, today's information-rich environments - like the State Library of Queensland, or a contemporary office - are places of still, quiet production, with few sensory side-effects. We see people everywhere, faces lit by their open laptops, yet no evidence of their production. They could be using Facebook, Photoshop, Excel or Processing.

(S/he also has another cool post on The street as platform.)

Its true that the information industry is AT TIMES invisible. However, all this obsession with mobility--"you can work ANYWHERE!"--is not true. Physical constraints determine the boundaries of anywhere...like my own search for a US-to-European adapter, a working outlet at Schiphol that was not already powering someone's electronic device, and which also was within range of a free wireless hub...

***
Now, today in Tema... after several days of attempting to call the internet company Zipnet's landline (dead), cell phone bank (no answer), they responded to email within hours...drove to my house and installed radio-based (? that's what they said) internet. RE: Thesis...Given that Tema was created as an industrial city, the new realities of the information industry (my obsession with information distribution and knowledge production) may involve architecture (i.e. "design") especially strongly at the level of infrastructure...

android networks

2008-11-05T23:25:00.000-08:00

i am writing right now about android networks: how technology networks by building machines support human drift toward being cyborg.

Thesis statement ver.1

2008-09-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

This thesis considers architecture as nothing different—part of the charged field of design that includes not only form-making, but also its relationships to technology, materials research, socio-cultural dynamics, geopolitical forces and economic drivers. My approach to the “discipline's” discourse will be to ignore it as much as possible.

1. Rem Koolhaas—Lagos
After “solving” the intellectual problem of architecture under the postmodern conditions of capitalism, Rem turns to the Pearl River Delta and Lagos in order to discover what comes next:

...the notion of the city has mutated into something that is no longer Western.
This work [Harvard Project on the City] is not inspired by the need to discover ever more exotic, violent, extreme urban thrills, but by the realization that the engrained vocabulary and values of architectural discourse are painfully inadequate to describe the current production of urban substance. They perpetuate an image of the city which is essentially Western, and subconsciously insist that all cities, wherever they are, be interpreted in that image; they systematically find wanting any urban form that does not conform...
...Some of the places that, at first sight, seemed to be tragic manifestations of degraded urban life were actually intensely emancipatory zones, where the recent arrivals from outside were “processed” as citizens of Lagos. {Koolhaas, “Fragments of a Lecture on Lagos” in Documenta 11 Platform 4, pp. 175-177.}

2. James Holston—Insurgent citizenship
A professor of “social cultural anthropology” at Berkeley, James Holston, argues that “insurgent citizenship” is the emergent space of re-imagining the modernist city and its organizational processes, and that this form of opposition implicates both architecture and planning together:

...this estrangement [“of the social in modern architecture and its related modes of planning generally”] is a consequence of a number of theoretical conditions that structure the current production of concepts in these fields about the urban landscape: (1) the rejection of the redemptive power of modernism deriving not only from the perceived failures of its utopian mode but also from the more general dissolution of the idea of the social itself in planning, architecture, government, and social science; (2) the inability of the professions of planning and architecture to move beyond that rejection to develop a new activist social
imagination; and (3) the preoccupation in postmodern theory with aesthetic formalism, technologies of communication, and concepts of virtual reality which tends to disembody the social and rematerialize it as commodity images. {Holston, “Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship” in Planning Theory 13, pp. 38}

3. David Grewal— Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization
Grewal, a Harvard PhD candidate in government, proposes the new logic for globalization: networks are the structures of possibility-expansion, whose production of diversity disturbs the nation-state and appears as economics; networks determine standards and—through the control of technology—all global information.

Discourse
My immediate concern is how to conceive and deploy city in the case of Tema, Ghana—a planned modernist experiment in industrialization—in ways that challenge economic neocolonialism and the contemporary conditions of globalization, international aid and development policy.

At this stage, I think the hip lingo to use is the language of citizenship and network power. The historical context of Tema as a built instance of modernism sets the stage for the coupled postmodern/postcolonial conflict of the in/formal city: between formal (legal) planning and informal (illegal) strategies for occupation. This thesis seeks reconfiguration of the typical structure of architecture—i.e., an energy-intensive product rendered exclusive by high cost—with low-cost, low-energy green systems. However, the critical and defining agenda is to leverage through architecture tools for Tema's multiple citizenries to take advantage of the rest of the world...this is Tema 2.0: Information Factory.

"Discourse"

2008-09-22T05:41:00.000-07:00

There is a "thesis prep" course required for all MArch I candidates at GSD, taught by Timothy Hyde. This is a separate course from "thesis prep" for MUP & MAUD students, taught by Marco Cenzatti. I am taking both.

Already this is interesting. For architecture prep, we have 60 students in a room with one professor, and our first assignment is to locate our project within the discourse of architecture. My first reaction is to roll my eyes; i don't buy this idea of the "the discipline" at all...for me, architecture is not like engineering, medicine or law; everything is architecture. Most of my brain is telling me to NOT look to architectural discourse, but rather to look for inspiration to technology and political economy...

For urban planning/design prep--a class with six students to one professor--our first assignment is to find a previous thesis and critically discuss it. While this is essentially the same task as for MArch prep (develop an understanding of the current discourse) it makes more sense to me. The reason? In my opinion student theses present the most relevant discourse, the interface that is already re-thinking design. If i have to locate my thesis in the discipline's "discourse," this is where.

4.b. Hustle

2008-09-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

Yes, cities are full of the material. There is the materiality of fetching water, riding on overcrowded taxis, negotiating hard for a good price for tomatoes, avoiding the downpour seeping through a weathered tin roof, fighting off malarial fever, ignoring the stench of overflowing sewage drains, or taking apart an engine block in the hot sun. But across these activities, there is a large swatch of the ephemeral attempting to enroll the sweat and passion of hardworking urban bodies into networks of concrete becoming that go beyond the artifice of citizenship. (Simone, in Enwezor, 24)

Given that the legal structure of colonialism circumscribes a particularized field array of citizenship, the post-colony expands possibility automatically. Returning to Koolhaas' Lagos, he writes, “Some of the places that, at first sight, seemed to be tragic manifestations of degraded urban life were actually intensely emancipatory zones, where the recent arrivals from outside were 'processed' as citizens of Lagos.”1 Tema too is an industrial alternator, a machine for job-production that outputs “processed” citizens and new potentials. Here location matters: whereas the majority of New York's citizenry will remain unaware of the existence of Tema until or unless something happens to locate it, all citizens of Tema are always already aware of New York. Citizens of the postcolony understand without illusions that the world is a set of destinations, and that nation-states make some sources of opportunity more difficult to reach.

Focused absolutely on maximizing possibility, there are some who float either above or below the “artifice of citizenship.” Like Lagos' “area boys” and “419 boys,” Tema boy is in this class that does not give a damn and will do whatever it takes. For the Tema boy a factory job or a carpentry apprenticeship is barely a beginning and in no way an end—everything is a means and the sky is the limit. If he once was, Tema boy is no longer a worker; his genius is transformation from small boy to (adolescent) Big Man through sheer willpower and street smarts, although violence and deception hide in his shadow... The danger of living in the city according to his rules is what makes him larger than life but still anonymous. His goal is always to make a buck. Tema boy is aware of but not limited by geography, less concerned about the matrix of forces that oppose him than how to beat the game. What matters most is what opportunities are possible and which has the biggest payoff. Choosing not to be worried by the metaphysics of postmodern postcolony, Tema boy—capitalizing on the hustle as tactic for (outsmarting and) escaping the system—hustles not in Tema but in Empire.

§1 TEmaBoY

2008-09-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

Nana B. writes to rapper Disastrous on ghanamusic.com:

ooh for real you is a tema boy, ooo then i got madder love for you.

My question is what exactly is a Tema Boy and is Tema Little London?

Globalization discourse is the impossibility of bounding postmodernism within North/Western geographies. If the world today is an ever-contracting system of exchange, this phenomenon is new only in scale. The alchemical wealth-creation that financed the construction of modernity emerged through mercantilist and colonialist global networks of trade and resource-extraction.

Whereas postmodernism is reaction to modernism itself, postcolonialism, while enmeshed in myriad histories refracted post-colony, exists foremost as action against neo-colonialism. This coupled “post-” connects the Senegalese hawker selling fake Rolexes on Canal Street in New York City and the Ewe marketwoman selling Chinese-made Dutch wax prints in Makola Market in Accra.

+++

RE: Doxiadis

2008-07-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

So... I'm doing my GSD MArch thesis on Tema, Ghana: I will consider urban redevelopment strategies for the city of Tema, Ghana--under the contemporary conditions of globalization, international aid and development policy, and the continued relevance of neocolonialism and Pan-Africanism. Tema is a planned city that was built as Ghana achieved independence in 1957 (the first in Sub-Saharan Africa), and was an icon for modernization on the continent: Construction of Tema was linked to construction of an artificial harbor at Tema, and the Akosombo Dam, which created the largest man-made lake prior to China's Three Gorges project. Tema is an industrial city which supports the 18 km-distant capital, Accra.

Doxiadis Associates designed the master plan of Tema for an eventual population of 250,000, and Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew designed the master plan for Tema Newtown, the relocated fishing village that originally occupied the site of today's Tema port. Today Tema is fully built-out with a population of over 250,000; it has effectively jumpstarted all industry in the country and is now a major industrial and transportation hub in West Africa. Simultaneously, Tema Newtown has become one of the largest slums in Ghana, with a population of perhaps 100,000. The Fry-Drew plan was never fully realized, and the formal Doxiadis prescription for the formal city dissolves at the edges. The symbiotic relationship between the formal modernist planned city (Tema) and the self-build construction and irregular zoning (Tema Newtown) that emerges within a single city--Tema is now a suburb of pre/colonial-era Accra--is the point of departure for my thesis work.

Reading Michelle Provoost's text, New towns on the Cold War frontier, made me think deeply...why is that we (i.e. students/schools of architecture, planning and urban design in the U.S.) never mention Doxiadis, when he built dozens of new cities--more than anyone in the history of the world--but instead talk non-stop about Le Corbusier, Sert, etc. Why this warped history? It is totally not helpful for those of us who are enduring design education in the West for the express purpose of returning to re-think urban design in the global South.

I know about Doxiadis mainly because my Bucky Fuller-era undergrad advisor Arthur Loeb introduced me...but why the total absence from design history in the U.S. when Doxiadis overwhelmingly defined the global standard for urban development in the Third World, in large part due to his strategic relationships with the UN, USAID, Ford Foundation, CIA, etc!?!?

Doxiadis--again referencing Provoost--built modern cities in "Ghana, Zambia, Sudan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq, and the US"...how much more could this piece of architectural and planning history overlap with contemporary global politics!?

Reading this take on history, I also realize the inherent difficulty in my approach to (conceptualizing) redevelopment in Tema. On one hand, I hope to contribute to the critique of the neo-colonialist imposition of the Fordist city via the nexus of Western "international aid"; on the other, given my education in the U.S., I generally agree with contemporary trends in international development policy, such as the focus on clustered micro-enterprise, performance-based evaluation metrics and macroeconomic stabilization. Perhaps the glimmer of hope is my total allegiance to the idea that until the total (economic) liberation of Africa the entire 20th century is for naught.

Since *no one* teaches/talks about this history, how do we generate truly informed critique of the full picture of Western imperialism in the Third World over the past 60 years...how do we move forward most strategically?

2008-07-11T16:35:00.001-07:00

2008-07-10T13:08:00.002-07:00

2008-07-10T13:08:00.001-07:00

Bucky lives

2008-07-05T12:48:00.001-07:00

2008-07-05T03:54:00.001-07:00

2008-07-03T21:28:00.000-07:00

Shigeru Ban

2008-06-29T19:40:00.001-07:00

is widely hailed as materially progressive for pushing the legitimacy of (or lack of bias to automatically dismiss) paper, cardboard, bamboo (like Velez ). However, these materials are still not taught as if they are viable alternatives to steel, concrete and wood. That is clearly not in line with sustainability in the tropics.

1. If the cost of building approaches zero--economically and environmentally--this one condition completely re-defines architecture otherwise associated with exclusive expense and ecological tax.

2. Map of goods and postcolonial economic ties. Total quantities of money produced (in mass of paper and metal).

2008-06-29T09:04:00.001-07:00

2008-06-28T17:52:00.000-07:00

2008-06-28T17:51:00.001-07:00

Fwd:

2008-06-27T22:46:00.001-07:00

2008-06-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

Ship

this is a crazy election

2008-05-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

btw first ladies. hilary clinton was already a first lady. cindy mccain is a wealthy american dream. michelle obama is powerful.

and john edwards endorsement was powerful, but fucked up at the same time to see america in such bold contrasts: man, woman, white, black.

what will the americas look like in 2030?

My email to Obama

2007-11-05T21:14:00.001-08:00

COMMENT:

ARE THERE ANY PLANS FOR BARACK TO DO A GLOBAL (FUNDRAISING) TOUR?

I THINK THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY FOR MULTIPLE REASONS. AS THE ICON OF THE NEW AMERICA, BARACK HAS ENORMOUS (TO A CERTAIN EXTENT LATENT) SUPPORT ABROAD. HE IS AN AMERICAN WITH GLOBAL ROOTS, LIKE MILLIONS OF OTHER AMERICANS TODAY.

THIS WOULD BE AN UNPRECEDENTED MEDIA EVENT: An American presidential CANDIDATE doing a global "goodwill tour"...BARACK IN FRANKFURT, SIDNEY, TOKYO, JAKARTA...

Mainstream media is not sure how to treat Barack other than "superstar"...he is both "ethnic" and smart/powerful, which makes him impossible to put in a simple "box"... This move would mesh perfectly with how they know how to write about Obama, at the same time that it would re-energize the movement about how Obama is thinking globally (clearly, this must be weighted against people who may say he too celebrity-obsessed, why isn't he in iowa, etc.)

HOWEVER, even a whirlwind "goodwill" tour would bring major headlines, "buzz" and possibly millions of expat dollars. Has anyone in the campaign run an analysis?

As another young harvard grad with a black African father and white American mother, born in America, I identify with Barack in a very personal way. If there are any interesting ways to get involved in Boston please let me know...

I have to say, I am a die-hard Obama supporter; however, I went to the Boston rally and was HUGELY underimpressed. That crowd was ALL overeducated students and their older compatriots, largely from across the river in Cambridge. I have lived, worked and studied in Boston for 8 years (was at Harvard College before the Grad School of Design).

What was sickening: there was no evidence at that rally that all of Boston's typically UNDERREPRESENTED COMMUNITIES even exist: where were the Vietnamese, the Cape Verdeans, the Haitians, the Chinese-Americans, the Brazilians, the Jamaicans, the Dominicans, etc?

Instead what we got was an old white man and a young white woman talk about the Cape and the importance of New Hampshire.

No offense to whoever is behind the New England machine but that was SAD. That is NOT a new kind of politics. If there are political troops going into Boston, to talk to THESE communities about Obama, let me know. I will mobilize Harvard grad students.

best, Dk

2007-11-05T20:24:00.000-08:00

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h1zWNdv_nrRgJJ8avtCe_86A1MSQD8SNSQPO1

so obama trails clinton and richardson in us territory fundraising, but...even if its media-skewed, i dig the global dimension of his fundraising--michelle going to london, now this...if i were his campaign manager i would do a world circuit. clearly he has global support, and the media coverage would be huge...obama does frankfurt, sidney, jakarta, tokyo, beijing, and i'm sure he could raise a mil or two...