Post 2

• #1. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bw9GMa8TQNUkaDFlTllDelpDMVU/edit?usp=sharing 
• #2. Alla Kazovsky, alla@designedrealestate.com 
• #3. Is it really necessary to be able to design to understand design in the context of material culture? 

#4 & 5:

After taking this class, and doing some reading and observation on my own, I found that the practice of architecture, as it exists in the West today, has values, beliefs, and practices that directly contradict my own. The foremost of these contradictions is architecture's habit of placing vastly more value on the process than on the finished product. I agree, in order to arrive at a product, there is a process.  However, in architecture, the process is all consuming - many of the most prestigious architectural awards can and have been won with a drawing.  Sites dedicated to architecture are filled with Revit drawings instead of actual buildings. I find this outrageous. To make a poor comparison, it would be like someone wining the Pulitzer Prize for an outline, or a having a website dedicated to character notes. 

Amusingly, at least to myself, I'm still interested in architecture, but I now understand better that interest; I'm not so much interested in architecture from a design perspective as from a material culture perspective.  However, I have only some 60-odd years remaining in life, and there are a thousand disciplines I could spend ten thousand lifetimes perfecting.  So I'm going to start with economics, which will give me the best possible skill set.