I Did It For The LULZ!

So, recently one of my cousins wrote on his Facebook about the hacker group ANONYMOUS. What he was referring to was when they hacked an FBI website. This website the FBI created and asked anyone who could hack it, and that if they could the FBI would pay them a large sum of money and give them a job. ANONYMOUS hacked it and wrote "I did it for the LULZ", meaning they only hacked it for kicks and didn't want the money or the job. My cousin pointed out in his posting that the "LULZ" didn't have anything to do with LOL cats.

At first, I thought he was simply making an odd observation. But it then occurred to me that he is of the generation that has accepted "lol" as a legitimate word, and does not quite understand it's etymology. 

I was about 13 when "lol" was being used frequently on IM. I actually remember when I first came across this acronym I had to ask what it meant. It wasn't until I was about 15 that I heard people people say in everyday conversation "l-o-l" (i.e. spelling it out) And it wasn't until I was about 19 when I heard people simply saying "lol" (i.e. as in "lull"). He's about 14 years old (I think), which means he was about 3 years old when that term was beginning to gain momentum in usage.

For someone who studies word roots, etymology, and linguistics for kicks (or for the lols), I simply find this amazing. This is the birth of an actual word, no matter the vulgarity. Who knows how long that word may survive until found archaic or is corrupted (as lulz is a corruption of lols). And for someone who spends a good chuck of his research dedicated to the origin of things (namely architecture and the architect), it is amazing to actually experience the origin of something as simple as a word, rather than just reading about it in the dictionary. And just so we are clear here, on March 24th, 2011 the term "lol" was added into the Oxford Dictionary. Welcome to the Internet Meme generation. Get used to it Baby Boomers.

I particularly enjoy their reference of a possessed man (I suppose a "trolled" or "hacked" man) in Mark 5 : 9...

Tell Me Mr. Frank Gehry, Do You Hate Architecture Now?

I believe I'm not the only one who is beginning to wonder if Frank Gehry hates architecture. This is why I am dubbing him the new Mies van der Rohe.

Van der Rohe was one of those architects that changed the language of architecture, much the way Gehry introduced new forms for architectural consideration in design. One looks at Mies's early career and finds several very exciting projects of his. Two of my favorite buildings of all time are the Tungendhat House and the Barcelona Pavilion. The usage of materials in planar simplicity contribute so much to spatial definition and sensuality. Even the Seagram Tower is rather extraordinary, although simple (and today superfluous due to Miesian followers), it is still intriguing in its usage of that liquor-brown glass, as well as the detailing. Then comes Mies's later career, like the Martin Luther King Library in D.C. and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin... especially the Neue Nationalgalerie. It is really like he hates architecture by that point : it's just one big roof (about 14 feet deep, I believe) on 8 columns on the outside of the building (not at the corners) on a pedestal. No interior columns, no playful spatial definition through materiality. Nope, just a big roof on some columns, enclosed in glass. In fact, the roof was constructed on the ground, the columns attached at hinges, and the whole thing was lifted up and locked into place... ... he definitely hated architecture by that point.

Gehry's New World Center in South Beach, Miami is quite the same story. It's just a big white box with some glass walls, and with some curves thrown in here and there. Just like his proposal for the Eisenhower Memorial in D.C., it's like the man doesn't even try anymore. The Eisenhower Memorial looks like he just passed it off to his interns. Some would say he is maturing... that or he hates architecture.

So this is what architecture has turned into : just pass everything off to the interns and hope that somehow you still will win an award and end up in Architectural Record (i.e. Hadid), just because you were awesome at the beginning of your career. If it's all about the press coverage and awards, then architecture needs a serious rebirth. If it isn't dead, then the contractors will kill it no time.

Wasn't architectural supposed to remind of something eternal, like, oh, I don't know, the awesome things humans can build? Rather than these mere trifles of effort?

No seriously, this the Eisenhower Memorial proposal for D.C. :