I have never met Jinan nor he me. I know him from a WhatsApp group, that they manage. I did not know of him before that, a year back that is. My only experience of him is through the chats we exchange. I may have in a sense only argued with him. Not because I disagree with him but in some places especially his positions on architecture it comes off as quite misinformed.

The main reason on the group I think we get into arguments is that people understand words differently. What I have gleaned is different professions understand words…

Abstract, came after the text fell in place. It is not very necessary to have it here but some extra words seem to linger in the head and it needs some space. This is the origin of this abstract. Just like you don’t always wish for rain especially when you have to go somewhere. Writing about rain didn’t happen out of any urgency but it's something that happened. It’s much like writing about snow or the clouds, both are forms of water but not water in itself. You don’t need to write about experiencing it but you do it for…

Inspired by _ Marc Koenig’s 100 Roam Tips | Beginner to Advanced Roam Research Guide the aim of the text is to review personal progress made in learning Roam Research. Yes, it’s an expensive note-taking app you need to actually learn how to use it effectively. The teaching of it happens around a community divided between slack, discord, and youtube. Productivity or its aspiration requires an investment at varying levels. There are times when notetaking does feel like a form of procrastination.

The original title of this text was 40 days learning Roam, notetaking, and digital productivity; thinking about writing…

It's not very clear why note-taking is an essential activity. But there is an industry around it mostly fueled by notetaking apps. They cite history for its relevance and prominent personas who with their copious notetaking habits generated a broad body of work.

This is not a treatise for or against notetaking but an attempt to test-drive Roamresearch (A note-taking tool for networked thought) from note to post. In practice, ideally, notetaking is a transcription of ideas from a source that needs recording so as to ‘free the mind to have to recall everything’.

We didn’t do a lot of…

“It doesn’t matter if the cat is yellow or black as long as it catches the mouse.” Comrade Liu Bocheng.

“I have come here to study money” Stephanie Smith.

2001 was productive for OMAMO who released 4 books that year. In its complete anticipated form, Great Leap Forward and Harvard Guide to Shopping were printed. Or so it looks that way. Two other modules from the Project on the City did not get published (*back page gossip). Mutations, a summary of the exercise leaves traces behind of Lagos and a ‘systematic’ Roman City. All these are studio reports, fieldwork, conducted…

“Yes, so I discovered Rem Koolhaas before I discovered Le Corbusier or Mies or any of the Modern Masters.” Bijarke Ingels interviewed by Charlie Rose

“That Christmas I also read Delirious New York for the first time — appropriately enough, while I was in bed with an alarmingly high fever.” Daniela Fabricius

what is research as a state in architecture?

Early 2000’s brought to end, architectural styles of postmodernism, deconstruction and critical regionalism. The profession was moving out of dependence on styles of building to design intelligence as a mode of production of spatial products. “Research” as an ideology was giving way to theory. It made sense at…

Architects do not put up exhibitions of their work in India. It is not present in our contemporary culture of architectural making. It does not have patronage like in the west. We do not do things that way. Getting featured in magazines is our thing. When others say they like our buildings, spatial products we feel validated. That is all about it. There is no active platform in the country where architectural practices conduct public display of ideas or for that matter invite criticism of their concepts. As a lack of experience in dealing with this frame of practice to…

There are more than a few good reasons why a review of S,M,L,XL cannot be written. John Shnier in conversation with Bruce Mau for Canadian Architect 11 (1995), 18–21

The copy in our college library had some of its pages pulled out. Why anyone should mutilate books is beyond me but there are those who need to do that. Now S, M, L, XL is that specimen of the book to bring a kind of violence on itself. There were only two other books to physically stand up to its scale at that time, i.e. Banister Fletcher, A History of…