'Honestly....its not about you'

So here's a little advice for your hand-in on 8th January 2018 to the school office on the third floor of the Tower Block of your collection of blogs and your essay.

Your blogs should be printed out in reverse order, so that I can see your progress from session one to session ten. Please bind them together simply- we don't need a book- and make sure your name and student number is clear on your submission receipt. The part-time cohort do not have to supply a blog on Marshall McLuhan.

As to your essay, this is a 3000 word preliminary study that will take you some way towards a dissertation topic, taking inspiration from one or more of the readings, and applying it to 'something else'. Of course it does not not trap you in to that particular topic, since we will be developing your area of interest over the next semester.

It is important that you remember that we have thoroughly interrogated the 'me me me' generation overall, so make sure that you do not get carried away with yourself. You are investigating the 'something else' and that 'something else' is of historical interest; so demonstrate your knowledge of it, not just your speculations upon it. Also bind this in a simple manner, again we do not need a book, and make sure it is clearly headed by your name and student number, even if you are submitting these two components together, under the same submission receipt.

A rubber band holding the two together as one might be a good idea.

Highly marked essays will demonstrate such historical interest. Why else would I stand before you each week with sixty books on Le Corbusier on my shelves, a portion of which appear above!

It has been a pleasure to present you with these readings over the term. I do not use the term lightly. However we must learn from the material. If we don't, calamity awaits.

My best wishes for the season, and thank you for your engagement with the material.

Paul

Session Ten: Ayn Rand

You will be relieved that this week you do not have a reading task, you simply have to come along to the session and enjoy (?!) a speedy rendering of Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead as a movie. You should note that the tone here, that of the triumph of the individual against all odds. This is not the same as the heroism in the name other others that we have recognised in Le Corbusier- an architecture of tragedy. 

You should note that the publication of both book and film bracket the period when McCarthyism was prevalent in the USA; when previous allies became mortal enemies, and the 'red menace' had to be stopped in it's tracks. Ayn Rand became one of the doyens of 'neoliberalism', the ideology that has dominated our world following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

My own opinions on the Roark phenomenon are articulated in the Reputations feature in the December 2013 edition of Architectural Review.

Hint for Dissertation Ten: 

Clearly this vivid portrayal of the architect leads us in to discussion of the 'image of the architect' a subject well dissected by Andrew Saint in a book of the same name, and in my own 'Architects Guide to Fame'.