Toscana Mouton Navas
petitetoscana@gmail.com

Nowadays it seems that nobody can remain ignorant to the coronavirus. It’s all over the place, everywhere, an invisible entity that covers all the corners of the world, waiting patiently in silence for the next victim. Is this a natural virus? Is it manufactured? Is it intentionally caused with premeditation to end the elderly population? How long will it stay with us? So many questions with thousands of different answers. The matter of fact is, we just can see the tip of the iceberg from our window, the rest of this biological horror is hidden. I think there is only a couple of questions that can be answered by the thread of logical reasonings, and one of them is: is the virus changing us as a human race? Indeed, it is. But for how long? Perhaps forever.
Death as part of life

“He who is not busy being born is busy dying” (Bob Dylan)
The Coronavirus is here to remind us about how fragile life is and slap us in the face to be conscious about the possibility of dying. This can create a tornado of inner feelings that can produce death anxiety. We desperately collect all of those things that remind us that we are alive, just like food and the end of it (toilet paper). It is not only the fear of us dying, but also the fear of the world dying as it is, the version that we consider comfortable and predictable. We die a little bit more every day, but we also celebrate the end of the day by going to that world of dreams and nightmares every night. But, how such a little invisible thing can kill more than Hitler, without compassion, but without preference? How can we deal with this invisible enemy that we don’t know how to eradicate? We are each time closer and closer to the world of the spirits, using alcohol as holy water to eradicate the demonic entity of this virus.
Collective unconscious

“The Collective unconscious consist of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images” (Carl Jung).
There are different archetypes that live in por unconscious mind (such as the mother, the father) and many more reflected in myths and legends that are represented in the shape of images. But then, what is the archetypal image of the virus? We have seen thousands of times that grey round ball with tiny pretty red flowers on the surface as the shape of the coronavirus. The present generation might generate an adverse reflex towards anything that resembles a dark circle. This is such a paradox; we can see the virus on TV thousands of times but we cannot face it in reality. That enemy that is, but at the same time isn’t, almost promoting a psychotic way to approach the world. so, how this generations will face this archetypal image of a virus? Will this be transmitted to future generations? Will this virus haunt our dreams, our decisions and motives for life in an unconscious level? It probably will.
Tactile emptiness

“Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight” (Diane Ackerman)
The social distancing that we are experiencing will have definite consequences in the long term of mankind. Think about the pregnant mother without the touch of their family or friends, and how that baby will experience the serotonin reduction on her mothers’ blood. Think about that child that stares through the window for months, anxious to touch the spring flowers, the dogs passing by, the hands of its grandparents. That lack of touch makes social connections rusty and dry, empty and simple. The language will have to safe us in its infinite enrichment of words to transmit what we feel. That couple that cannot touch each other and gets sick of sadness, we will probably see a lot of depressed skin, waiting to be touched again, even for that stranger on the bus that holds your hand when you loose balance and almost fall. Will these change us? Yes, I hope for the best. Perhaps we will start giving much more value to the contact with others now more than ever.
The eye kingdom

“A man’s feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world”. George Santayana
The recognition of the baby though the eyes of the mother is the first step to the acknowledgment of being alive and being loved. The eye to eye connections that we are missing in our daily lives are reducing our awareness of being a living and sentient being. People watching you as soon as you go into the subway or that person that looks at you that will be sitting next to you on the plain are situations that helps us acknowledge that we exist, we are important, and we have rights. Without spectators, the theater of life loose its sense of existence.
Nature can breathe

“I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree”. Joyce Kilmer
We have been spectators of how animals have returned to natural habitats and how they are also “invading” city spaces. We selfishly call it invasion because that’s our “territory”, but now we realize that “our” territory is the stolen space that we took from nature to modify it to our taste and live in it. Is the coronavirus the virus of the world, or is it us? The delimitations between the urban world and the nature world are progressively disappearing to make us remember that we are part of nature, not only from a social and cultural structure. Will the animal behavior will change after having more freedom and less human intervention? It is more than likely.
Work/Study from home

Yes, it is possible to be self-reliant and efficient from home as well. Of course, there are so many professions and occupations that cannot exist working from home. The stigma of the education through internet as inferior will change, as we can even see that Harvard and Oxford will teach online. Our perception of education and work will change now that there is evidence of the fact that humans can be free from the office, they can also be efficient and responsible, as well as students.
The perennial tragedy of distance

“Your memory feels like home to me. So, whenever my mind wanders, it always finds it’s way back to you” Ranata Suzuki
Distance is a painful symptom that immigrants and refugees experience every single day, and now more than ever, isolated families are experiencing the same feelings of the immigrants by being away from their own family, but in the same territory. Elderly parents waving their daughters and sons through the window of a residence reminds me of me and my mother waving at skype from different countries. Globalization and the frequent mobilization of people throughout the world to find a better life or to have their basic rights respected have created a more disconnected world than ever before. Perhaps I hope that people will become more sensitive towards immigrant minorities all over the world when they experienced the same pain of distance and hopefully governments will take measures about this. Sadly, the most likely is that the governments will strengthen their borders to contain this virus or other future diseases.
Future phobias

“Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is” German Proverb
As we already know, there are people that call themselves “germophobes”, and in some extreme cases, we have the cases of hypochondriasis, nosophobia, and other more extreme cases where a psychotic or manic breakdown can contain coronavirus elements. People struggling with mental health diagnoses could be affected for a spike of tremendous fear and anxiety towards the coronavirus, and It will be possible to see a spike of terror reflected on children’s drawings, psychiatric offices, murals and hygiene habits in the entire world. Mental health professionals will experience a higher percent of cases related with terror to this disease, mainly when someone loses a child, or a parent due to the coronavirus. Our relationship with germs will be affected permanently. Germs and viruses won’t be ignored as they generally are, and they will be part of the dark side of our psyche.

Religion as a passive spectator

“When I do good, I feel good, when I do bad, I feel bad, and that’s my religion” Abraham Lincoln
With the containment and isolation that the entire world is experiencing these days, religion makes a U turn towards inner spirituality. The absence of congregations in religious spaces and also the absence of community and charity work will turn our beliefs (or lack of) inwards. We can think about these situations as a Tsunami. When an earthquake hits, our spiritual believes leave the shores of certainty, leaving an empty space of reflection and fear, waiting for a waive of uncertainty in God, Allah and buddha. The saints sit and wait for the prayers of the believers, the undead can hear the whisper of their living relatives calling for them. It is inevitable to experience an inner tsunami, as passive spectators of the catastrophe.

Darwin is laughing

“I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival” Kurt Vonnegut.
As we know from our biology classes, Darwin dictated the rule that defines our existence. Change and adaptation are necessary to survive. The coronavirus is pushing us as biological beings to modify our DNA structures to be more resistant to the ever-changing environment. I can only imagine Darwin in 2020, laughing of us, talking with CNN and Fox news about his theory, terrifying the crowds and giving little hope for the situation, accepting the situation, and perhaps hoping very deep inside of his soul for God to show up and fix all of this mess that we got into.

The Architecture presentation has become, what seems like an ever growing crucial aspect of project and can subsequently signal its success or failure almost before the initial idea fully gestates into something real. A project can go on to become a success built piece of architecture or it can for ever exist as a grand idea purely based on ones ability to convey the potential projects merits through presentation. The importance of presentation is partially born out of necessity in academia as each semester typically consist of a conceptual project that culminates in a final presentation with professors playing the role as clients and critics. The ever growing complexity of projects and issues that architecture attempts to address has subsequently promoted the architectural diagram as the ultimate form of conveying a grand overarching idea. Recently these diagrams have become more than a pretty graphic to explain context and design choices and now more often than not embody the projects design ideology ,even in some cases appearing to be used as a tool of design.

REX is a firm that utilizes diagrams to present the design ideology behind each project. Obviously this firm is very well known and therefore one could say they are very successful in the ways that they use diagrams to present the ideology and design choices behind each project. I have insert a few of these diagrams from their Canti-lever House project in New York.

The Diagrams for this project tell a story of how design aesthetics and construction techniques in the early 1900’s drove a programmatic layout which was bottom heavy and in-turn was a model that did not capitalize on up scale/high paying tenants. So the solution of inverting the form and with it the programs becomes obvious and almost predicted with the second diagram. The final diagrams finalize the intended form and are not really crucial to selling the idea. It truly is impressive how well this works on most of their projects and it is easy to see why it has become almost a standard for successful project and firms.

Ultimately the simplicity and clarity of these diagrams is what makes them so successful. With each project comes what seems like a new language, created to with the sole purpose of conveying a design ideology or idea. Relying on shapes and forms combined with minimal text and info these simple graphics can in-turn appear to say so much with the key word being appear. Each diagram appears to say so much not through the presentation of a great quantity of information but through the removal of it leaving only the desire info needed. Of course the author of each diagram understands the full context that lay hidden behind each diagram but the same can not be said for the outside observer. Most of the time this may not be a problem however i believe that this growing fixation on the diagram as design tool has an unintended effect of alienation.

This alienation comes from the abstractionist of subtractions nature of the diagrammatic architecture in two forms. Firstly alienation comes from the removal of information and therefore context, and the second comes in the form of the alienation of the human. In most case these cases present a final form or shape and present architectural intervention as merely an object or form. The latter issue is something i believe inherit in the design as we fly around in 3d computer programs playing god as we hypothetically create and destroy at will. The very nature of these programs not only allow us to increase our efficiency but also they allow us to see our design from perspectives and vantage points foreign to anything remotely realistic for the human eye.

I believe this to be similarly true of each of diagrams referenced from the REX project above. By presenting the architectural form with a programmatic economic overlay the message becomes more about economics as a spatial driver. I believe this to be a gross over simplification of the economic driving forces behind architectural design and real-estate in the early 1900’s and while also reinterpreting the established laws of supply and demand. If I’m not mistaken scarcity drives demand and therefore prices etc. It seems to be an ever persistent problem within architecture as each designer takes the position that through design you can have your cake and eat it too.

One architect Bjarke Ingles has even tried to build his design manifesto based on this idea of having it all. He calls it architectural bigamy, an idea he describes as “A pragmatic utopian architecture that takes on the creation of socially, economically and environmentally perfect places as a practical objective”(Yes is More TACHEN 2010). It is no surprise that Bjark’s firm BIG has become a big proponent of the diagram as a design tool. He has become a master of it and uses it to tell a story as if it is language in and of itself. It is not a language however for it lacks syntax and a system of rules. Languages typically are accompanied by some syntax or rules that define and set parameters making their meaning objective and agreeable. These design diagrams have no syntax they are creatures born of their creator’s conscious with the sole purpose of acceptance and objective agreement. They satisfy architecture’s need to shed its subjective aspects for it is afraid of its own shadow.

This is a story that I wanted to send to a contest of Architecture, but sadly my focus of the story went into the details of the human emotions, and not on the environmental details that the contest is asking for….

Caracas Blackout

The sunset reflects heat waves on the windows of the building, but it still feels cold inside. The windows and the light are always open, allowing the frustration to come in and out during the day. My cheap high heels made in China helps me to look professional, but they can be painful at the end of the day. Another cold breeze crosses the office, reminding us that the night is about to happen. I am cold, I get my jacket and get ready to go home after a heavy day of work. My friend Tomas says – “Are you cold again? at least we don’t have to be locked in the cold like those gringos, the breeze is purifying”- I walk to the window and respond -but of course it is! Can you see the cars flying by, purifying our lungs? Tomas takes a deep breath and says – my darling, I think is time for you to go home. You might use some rest for those dark thoughts -. We get up from our small cubicles like tired dogs after taking a nap and proceed to go home. Tomas always walks with me to the bus station. We are so used to each other that we plug our earphones as soon as we start walking. There is no need to say anything else, we know everything about each other. people can think this is awkward, but there is nothing else better than the experience of knowing someone and not having the pressure to talk. Before getting to the bus station, I noticed that something is not right.

 Thousands of people are walking through the sidewalks like aimless cats, making pauses, looking back, checking their phones. – “and here we go again with this bullshit, no electricity, no transportation, no nothing, ever” – I say to Tomas, which he responds – “well, my mother says that you have to learn to swim in filthy waters, so you won’t get drowned”. So, I say – “who is the one that needs a break now from negativity?” Tomas laughs briefly. Here we are again, the sunset is right there, people start to speed up the pace, and I am sure it will take me three hours to get home walking, my phone battery is 28% percent, better safe it for any call. Oh, of course, there is no electricity, which means no signal. I just hope that my family is ok knowing that I will be late. These are the days when you try to communicate telepathically with your family to make them sure you are “ok”. Tomas have to walk back on the opposite direction to get home. – “Listen, I think it is very dangerous for you to be walking by yourself in the dark. I will walk you home tonight to give you company”- I stopped for a second before replying. – I think I got this Tomas, but it is up to you. If you want to pretend to be a gentleman with me tonight, it is fine for me-. Tomas eyes look tired, and he replies in an exaggerated male voice – “of course senorita”-.

The sun light is sinking into the right side of my face, meanwhile the other half touches the infinite desperation and exhaustion of walking back home wearing heels in the middle of the pitch-black night. I cannot hide my fear, but I feel protected next to him. At least he will be with me. Rivers of people flow through the sidewalks like orange blood cells though the heart of the city, getting sunlight in half of their faces, just like me. – “Fuck this government, and every fake politician in this country”- Says Tomas in a loud voice, making people stare at him and trying to pretend not to laugh about it. Tomas eyes and eyebrows reflect beauty and darkness, something that I have never told him. Strangely, the air feels warmer, I don’t know if it’s me or is the city. We all walk, tired, like sad warriors to our trenches. The light blue turns into dark blue, my feet hurt. The few trees around the avenue smell like hot tea. I can see the sweat coming out of the face of an old short woman that is walking with a cast. I can feel a water drop falling into my right hand. It is about to rain. – “but of course, we have rain also”- says Tomas. The lights of the cars are our only guide to keep on walking. Street dogs decide to walk with people as well, as if they had a specific destination. Meanwhile I walk, I think about my grandmother at the hospital, is she ok? Is my mother ok at home? Am I ok? No, we are not ok. I can hear in the distance the screams from the buildings of people being upset. Some people are using their cell phone lights to walk, but my battery is low. When did we became into this strange concrete jungle? Is this ever going to change? Should I leave the country? The darkness comes, and Tomas takes my hand and says – “it is better…you know…we can get lost if we are not together”. A rush of blood goes up to my head. I am afraid of the city, but this hand, or his hand feels like a solid cold stone in a wild freezing river. The blackout makes the city sleep forcefully.

The buildings become part of the sky, the trees keep on breathing quietly, becoming the spectators of our fears. The fear of being robbed or assaulted cross my mind like a fast-paced train, and I hold Tomas hand a little bit tighter. It starts to rain, and people screams all around with anger, other people just laughs. I am not sure how to feel right now, I can feel but I cannot see. The city blackout digs deeper inside of me. Maybe when the city falls into darkness, our hearts become more awake. Tomas says – “Why do we had to read all of these books for college, or to become educated, we are walking in the middle of the heart of a dark jungle, and it is not exactly because we are camping”-. His words remined me the last part of the book I read last night, so I ask Tomas: – “did you know that Carl C. Jung says that the cities are a maternal symbol? Is like a mother that gives a home to her children”-. Tomas laughs loudly for some brief seconds and says – “So I am assuming that us Venezuelans are the worst kind of children and our mother is highly schizophrenic”-. I never thought about that actually. The darkness is finally here, the rain drops run slowly through my arm. I can barely notice the shape of the avenue through the lights coming from the cars. So much noise, foot steps crossing next to me, and we are so quiet. Tomas says – “who cares what people thinks about cities. This one just doesn’t work. We think about the city, but the city will never think about us”.  So, I say – “I think you are right, but would you think the same thing if you were living anywhere else in the world?” he replies – “I just think that this is a very deep conversation for being walking around in the dark”-.

A few minutes later, we were able to get to the building, but living in the 15^th floor without electricity is a cardio challenge for my tired body. I say –“Welcome to my humble building, now let’s proceed to climb the mountain”- Tomas barely replies with a weak –“ok”. Meanwhile we start the ascending, Tomas missed a step in the darkness and grabbed the back of my knee, which made me scream and fell as well. We both laughed for a couple of minutes, sitting in the darkness of the stairs. It felt so good to stop and rest, and laugh at the same time. – “I don’t want to get up, the cold feels so good on my body” – Tomas touches the area where he hold me before falling and asks –“are you ok?”- my heart races, and I can hear my heart pounding. I am afraid that he might hear it. –“yes I am, help me to get up” – Tomas takes both of my hands and lifts me up, and I say –“I don’t want to move”-. Tomas says, -“I don’t want to move either. I want to hold you, like this, in the dark”- I feel that I cannot talk. He takes his hand and place it in my chest and says –“the only thing that works in this city is your heart. That is the only light I need to keep on walking”- I am still quiet, and I wait patiently for his touch and his words

Over the sudden, the lights went back on…

Toscana Navas

In September of 2017 i packed everything up and moved to the big ole state of Texas to the Dallas fort worth area for employment.  After a lot of looking I found a place to live pretty close to my work which is located in the historic neighborhood of fairmount.  That will always be of high priority for me.  Previously me and my wife lived in new orleans in the historic bywater neighborhood.  Which happened to be right past the french quarter and only two miles from work.  It just so happens that i live 2 miles from my work here in texas as well.  How ever the the morning trips could not be more different from each other.  Even though fort worth is a larger city then new orleans  and i live within similar proximity to the downtown area the morning commutes pale in comparison.

The amount of architectural richness within my 8 minute drive to work in new Orleans is something that does not exist in Texas.  I think the same amount of architectural density is stretched out over 35 plus miles from Fort worth to Dallas.  Which means its basically nonexistent.  In comparison one feels alienated from experience that is fundamental to being…  well human.

The urban environment( or lack thereof)  is not the only difference.  With the move to a big new city came more opportunity and bigger roads and bigger investments in infrastructure and urban project.  There is daily talks on the news and with people about potential projects to benefit this area like ikea’s and possible amazon headquaters.  Or Hyper-loops connecting both cities along with austin and houston.  It is like the future is here, happening now.

The hyper loop talk is one thing that I peeked my interest when first hearing about it.  The thought of traveling to austin in 19 minutes as opposed to the hours it takes by car seemed like a great solution.  Until i started to think more about what exactly was it a solution to.  The hyper loop addresses the disconnect of cities spread out to much and to far from each other.  So it addresses a symptom  of a problem that we created by a lack of urban density therefore created disconnection.   We are solving the problem of disconnection by some technology that will only perpetuate it.  This is madness

The city of New Orleans covers around 349 square miles while fort worth covers around the same at 350 square miles.  Of that area, New orleans only has around 168 square miles of occupy able land while fort worth has some where around 340 square miles of occupy able land.  The population density of both cities is in between 2,000-3,000 people per square mile.  Which can be a little misleading  since less than half of New Orleans is actually able to have people live on it.  This translates to around double the population on half of the physical land. Possibly Explaining the rich experiential urban fabric as people build a rich dense urban environment.

There was never any talk of hyper loops in New Orleans, one reason was they could never afford it, the other was there was no need for it.

The rendering at the top of this post shows an “idealistic” vision of what a hyper loop could look like and tries to paint a picture of the positive impact it could make.   It does everything right it has people to add a  human scale to it is has a nice picturesque background, it even has animals.  How ever all I see is vast expanse( desert) that in reality would be void of any human activity hence the need for a hyper loop in order to connect the fragmented severely malnourished urban environment.  In fact there is not much that could possibly be more alien and foreign to the human experience than traveling in a dark tube at hundreds of miles an hour.  This used to be the preferred method of transit for bank deposit before we began to go paperless.  I do not know about you but I am not a piece of paper, I want to see things I want to touch and feel the texture of the environment.  I want experience.

I feel It is easy to get caught up in new technology and the excitement of companies like Tesla that I believe genuinely have intentions to solve problems.  It can be especially in a field like architecture as well since we have always pushed for solution and progress as something that will ultimately fix the mess that we find our selves in.  With finite resources being depleted and fractured nonexistent urban environments. One thing we seem to assume is that progress is linear, it however is not.  this is due to our limits with language and the almost identical meanings we have applied to words like progress and forward.  They have come to mean the same thing.

So I feel professions that deal with architecture, urban planning and future professionals in school have to become more analytical of the solutions we offer through our proposals and projects.  We are in a wonderfully optimistic field that accesses the problems of the built environment that involve the building sciences along with the social and economic sciences.  We propose not only solutions but idealistic predictions of how we not only see the world but how we feel it should be.  This requires a certain ability to remove one self from the issue in order to have a unbiased (as possible) take on the issue and form questions that drive solutions.  In some cases the question may be more crucial than a solution  itself.  In fact after all my education in architecture school the most valuable skill i was learned was the ability to ask the right questions.  It far outweighed any computer software I learned or any courses on construction or design.

So why do we need a hyper loop?  Why are our cities so disconnected?  Why do I need to travel to austin in 19 minutes?  Why does the city I live not have what i need which drives me to travel hundreds of miles away?  Why is this better than building better cities?  Why is long distance travel the solution to long distance travel?

Every year or so, me and my wife will have a history scholar come and stay with us for a month or two.  When they come to visit from their home in Venezuela. I have the opportunity to have an additional person to have interesting conversation with.  Often times these  conversations leave me barely treading water for not only am I having a conversation with a former university professor,  but also a person who worked in historical preservation of architecture.  So they are well versed in multiple subjects with a deep philosophical understanding as well.  Ive been accused of being a grumpy cat so I happen to really enjoy challenging discussion about history and architecture’s sociological implications.  The more challenging provocative/cynical the better for me.

Often times conversations between would start on a seemingly simple mundane topic.  As we would progress the conversation would eventually get to a point were I was either deeply questioning some thoughts or opinions I have withing myself or the topics allowed my to stumble onto new thoughts.  Sometimes these ideas may not fully manifest until later.  Much like these thoughts I am typing about right now are based on a conversation from almost a year ago.

It was during the spring of 2016 towards the end of my 2nd semester as a graduate student.  I was deep in the middle of course that prepared us for my coming thesis project.  So I was trying to find out what my ideals about architecture were, and I was trying to decipher or translate my frustrations with it.  I felt there was a severe disconnect between architects/designers and “architecture”. From my perspective there is a real detachment, or self imposed divorce from the intrinsic nature or experience  From all the theory that we have to read to some of my professors themselves;  I picked up, what felt like to me was a deep desire to justify architecture objectively.  Almost as if Victor Hugo was both the reaction and a causation when he wrote that the printing press had killed architecture in the early 1800’s.   I mean how could one not feel threatened by a statement like that or be forced to react.  Justifiably  modernism attempted to address these insecurities by resisting ornamentation and embracing function.  This was causing me to experience a sort of existential crisis within my own little world of architecture.

Well like I stated before the conversations between myself and the visiting professor that day began with discussion about the futurist architecture movements and then onto the types of architecture in Latin America compared to the west.  Eventually we began talking about the use of concrete and its implementation.  I believe i may have made a comment/comparison to brutalism when discussing a piece of architecture or style she liked.  Well the conversation began to take on the ton of a debate as she took offense.  I did not quite understand as i kept on describing the architecture as brutalist in nature.  Eventually my wife came into the conversation.  The professor’s main language is obviously Spanish , and she understands English but only speaks a little of it, Which is more than i can say because i am still after being married for 3 years and my Spanish is muy poquito.  So it was not until my wife joined the conversation and spoke to her in Spanish that I learned that brute in Spanish has a more derogatory meaning and that they did not refer to that style of architecture as that.  She also took offense because she enjoyed this type of architecture and appreciated its historical significance.

This was the moment in the conversation were almost immediately mythoughts or notions about a subject were washed away and challenged.  Here I was having a conversation with someone about a subject that was derailed by one word.  Or more importantly the meaning.  I, like most took the meaning as universal fact.  I was knowingly talking to someone in there second language yet for about 15 minutes I did not even think about the meaning of words I was using.  For the sake of time and efficiency, I summarized a whole typology of architecture with one word.  The meaning for me being true in the face of its fiction to another.

I never really looked at words like that quite before.  Especially now that I am looking back at this conversation.  Its as if words and meaning embody contradictory characteristics.   I am both amazed at their ability to convey and confuse.  In a way I am attracted to this idea.   They both enable us while simultaneously being responsible for our inability.

P.s

The Visiting historian is my wife’s mother (my mother in law).