C4 hell

Back from Finland suffering vast increase in alcohol consumption, I'm a little unsteady coming back to the ways of the English. Last night three consecutive televisual offerings on Channel 4 sequentially horrified me; a thing on British Cheese (and stuff like that) horribly hosted and utterly xenophobic ('Get those French cheeses off OUR SHELVES!!) then the horrific Jamie's Dream School, so utterly devoid of thought other than 'It's not my fault I can't learn (or even be interested) in anything- so save me maestro'. That was just sickening, everybody going on about how they've been 'let down terribly' and if this is the sentiment of the youth of today, we're fucked, there are not enough maestros, there are normal teachers trying to get through the day- why should they suddenly have to turn in to superheroes? This abomination was followed by 'The Agency' which strived for new heights in the glorification of the selfish, the banal, the financially lucrative, the stupid, the innocent, the exploitative and the generally crass.

And on the back of that, I was in to review third year this morning and it was instructive at least, blindingly instructive, namely in the fact that the hamsters know absolutely nothing about buildings. There is a reason for this, it is the obsession with individualism, personal values and so called creativity (all these are highly political) that means they've slowly began to think buildings are something else other than buildings, namely some vacuous and excruciating exercise in the impossible connection of vague ideas, and that the process is entirely internal to them, and that the whole enterprise of the Western Enlightenment Project has never even fucking existed. If you want to design architecture around the 'concept' of a psychotic banana, go ahead, but it won't do any of us any good.