Waua returns
After a brief hiatus (9 ½ years), I have decided to resuscitate this blog (on substack rather than wordpress, old posts can be found on: waua.wordpress.com ). The world has changed since the last time I blogged, as has the small and idiosyncratic world of architectural blogging. Clicking through my ‘blogroll’ from last time around, one might think that some unknown cataclysmic event put all architecture blogs into an indefinite slumber (this one included) at some point in 2013 or 2014. Those that survived appear to have become incorporated and mainly engaged in publishing press releases. The discussion has moved to other platforms. For a while, Patrick Schumacher’s Facebook was where it was at, and word in the studio has it that it is now on Instagram and Twitter, while academic blogs became institutionalized through Hypothesis (and then drifted off to sleep). This leaves the field wide open for WAUA to take the place as a medial arrière garde, unfashionably distanced (critically?) from the noise of ‘our time’.
The plan is to offer sporadic bursts of activity followed by prolonged stretches of nothing that will test the patience of any regular reader. This was how this blog was always run, and I think it’s a rather good way to write a blog. The slowness and distance come with both a price and possess a different kind of value. The architectural media landscape is not the only thing that has changed; other things related to the architectural discussion are different as well. Humankind is famously inept at reading her contemporary milieu (as McLuhan pointed out, it was certainly not a fish who discovered water), but in terms of what has changed over the ten-year hiatus, I will venture that the following differences are included: 1) Starchitects seem to roam the earth less these days, or, if they still do, I am blissfully unaware. 2) Architectural criticism seems far more focused on the discipline and workings of the architect rather than the output. If output is considered, it appears to be in terms of its symbolic content. 3.) Architectural discourse has become far more critically oriented through intersectional theory, post-colonial theory, feminist theory, queer theory, post-human theory, critique of neoliberalism and of architects as precarious workers, to mention but a few. This theoretical landscape shapes the discussion these days. 4.) The advent of the Anthropocene is making the climate discussion and architects’ roles in them far more urgent than ten years ago. (Have I missed anything important? do feel free to enlighten me in the comments section).
Things have also changed in the smaller perspective of this blog. Last time around, I was based in Berlin and wrote primarily on things connected to that city. These days, I’m based in southern Sweden, in the Malmö/Lund conurbation. The focus of the resuscitated blog will primarily be the Scandinavian context, with some unsubstantiated opinionating on other issues thrown in for good measure as well. In short: I will use the blog as a site to test and develop thoughts, just like before, but I will do so from a different vantage point.
I have changed as well, of course. When I look back at some of the posts from a decade ago, I realize that I wrote in a different voice back then, and there will inevitably be some dissonance between the posts below this one and the ones that will appear above this one. This is something we will have to live with.
Another transformation will be that I will try to write all (or at least some of) those book reviews I should have written the last decade, and in the process hopefully help somebody find an amazing book they had never come across before. Books are also slow, and although a staggering number are published, I would argue there is a point in keeping them relevant after the event of their publication, when the rays of the setting social media sun have scrolled below the horizon. That’s the plan at any rate. How it turns out remains to be seen. Finally, to those steadfast 46 followers of this blog who have forgotten to unsubscribe, I want to say: thank you for waiting!