Adventures on Studio Shared 2.0 Part II

21^st March – It’s called false hope sweetheart

Week 4 and we are diving deeper into our project. We began to focus on the issue of rising house prices. It’s so defeating to just think that our future will be bombarded with high buying prices when the job that we decided to do will not be suffice to guarantee me to accomplish owning something. On the other hand, there’s that gnawing tension between different classes, and also the loopholes of house ownership – overseas investors buying things up and the amount of investment properties accumulating overtime is terrifying.

The issue is, how do we tackle it? As a society, we are constantly thinking majority of the time for ourselves. We want security and a sense of dominance and authority by establishing who owns what. Our project: what if people who are renting exploit their own spaces in order to supplement their rent? It’s a tricky situation – because it boils down to the idea of ‘trust’. Except, are we ready to be naïve to allow strangers we barely know to live with us at the same time? Otherwise, are we willing to let go of our pride and insecurities or our preciousness of valuables in order to reconsider what we really need as a whole?

I’m only 22, and there are already so many worries that are constantly swimming in my mind.

From being mature, to whether I will be able to hold down a job.

This idealism will not take me very far so long as I know how to tackle the crisis of our issues.

28th March – We’re neighbours I guess…

Week 5 and we finally hit a eureka moment! That is, we decided to break down a house into a shell encompassing rooms. The idea of dividual spaces – is very much like the capsule or internet cafes you find in Japan (still need to visit one). However, I’m curious to know whether in the future people will adjust to the lifestyle of living in rooms. On top of that, I wonder if the society as a whole where majority of us have been growing up in big houses, can adjust to the lifestyle of living in small square metre rooms/ apartments. I’ve already tried/ attempted to design my ideal kind of house and the rooms are excessively huge (most likely cause I’m trying to have spaces that are related to the number 7). However, it will be interesting if we turn a block into a share-housesque lifestyle. To think though to be sleeping a wall away from your neighbours as a permanent structure…

But hey we will be earning something if we can afford to own a room of some sort!

18th April – Please tell me you didn’t drop the needle in the haystack

Yes, mid semester.

I cannot believe how fast time flies when you become so engrossed in what you do. My friends and I were looking at our project, trying to understand how the potential impacts it has on the ‘sharing economy’. I’m still not understanding the full terminology of ‘sharing economy’ nor ‘neo-liberal economy’ (modification of the economy within the private sector to become within the public sector). Let alone, to think back the day when me and my friend were on our way to our friend’s auction, his explanation of the sharing economy (which has unfortunately blanked out on me) puzzled me more.

Safe to say, the needle of definition has completely fallen into a pile of terminology and has completely lost me.

To put it simply – from my observation of my semester so far – I can only be certain of two things:

1.      The sharing economy is technically a subdivision of capitalism

2.      The main companies that define themselves as the sharing economy, are technically pseudo sharing since there is money and other agendas involved

During our mid semester presentation review, I noticed there was a constant pattern on each of my friends’ projects:

-        Where is your position in regards to the sharing economy?

-        Is your project critiquing the sharing economy or is it agreeing with the potentials?

Should we carefully look at our projects – I’d like to believe that we have actually developed a standing point on our project. Rather our quite dim and dystopian approach is perhaps the answer that has been camouflaged in our projects.

In all honesty, no matter how hard we try – our solutions though look ideally utopian is asking for it to become a dystopian matter. This is perhaps because we are living in a dystopian world yet have come to accept it. Moreover – because we are arguably culturally brought up to seek for loopholes and design alternative methods to complete a procedure, it is very easy for us to exploit and twist our own proposals. So from observing the projects we have done, we are perhaps proposing another door that can allow the audience to manipulate the potentials into a dystopian one should we decide that it should happen.

With regards to our project however, considering that they mentioned that there is a note of sadness where people can appear to only afford rooms. What struck a chord with me was a comment by the critic “people want comfort, windows” and also our observation just from looking at the images provided by the internet. Personally, coming from a high density city (Hong Kong) – I partially disagreed with what she said. Sure, the culture of Australia is to find a place where people can live comfortably however, back at my hometown, I watch my friends’ parents scrambling to find some place they can just afford let alone sleep in without wondering whether their current salary can pay off their rent. Come to think of it, despite being a bit too emotional about my home town (and perhaps constantly being cut off by my critis – which tends to happen very often) it reminded me of the time where my friend countered my argument about privacy and having privacy is a cultural thing.

Perhaps one thing that makes certain topics become so debatable is because of each individual’s background. We all grew up with different beliefs while developing our own ones.  Because we come in observing someone’s project without understanding the personal side of the designer – we are quick to apply different connotations towards the design. Which I guess brings me to the next question.

How personal should we make each design?

24th April 2018 – We might as well create a new dictionary for the sharing economy

After a tumultuous week (and a couple of restful days of blissful rest) we settled into a new project by starting off with a research question. My partner and I settled on the idea of mass production dedicated for the sharing economy and how it gets exacerbated.

That is until…

She pointed out that we have completely irradiated the true intentions of ‘sharing’.

If we retrace the steps to the original idea of ‘sharing’ – people are renting out their current possessions in order to make a certain kind of profit (well pseudo sharing their only available resources). However, considering that there weren’t much regulations, on top of that because there is the sense of naivety of ‘trust’ within this sharing of own-possessions, it breeds another type of corruption and greed. As I have mentioned in the previous entry, as desperation for money increases coupled with lack of regulations and loop holes, your morality decreased. Currently, we are facing a global issue where people are turning to these so called ‘sharing’ platforms in order to generate easy profit that also impact the lives of others. The most infamous cases – AirBnb and Uber, these two major companies have affected the financial/ economic lifestyle of others. With people buying up apartments for AirBnb simply because of the higher turnover rate compared to actually renting on the real estate markets – it really limits other people’s opportunity to find a place to rent long term. This is similar to Uber, the ride sharing, while there is that novelty of sitting in someone’s car to go from location A to location B – we are really dismissing the skillset of Taxi Drivers or other cab businesses. Arguably it can leave a thinking of “if earning money just really requires a small amount of effort, why bother to hire people within that profession?”

While I could feel that multiple people reading this can argue that these services are giving more options and perhaps giving those who may not be as financially comfortable to have these kind of luxurious services, we need to consider another perspective. Put it this way, as an architecture student, I have spent an ample amount of years studying to know what kind of design and materials would best suit a house in certain conditions – however, I am competing with packaged home companies that can cut corners and cost of materials and still build a house. While I am aware that these people will also have experience and can still tailor designs to suit customers, this ‘mass production’ of template homes does not always deliver quality outcome, however people are still resorting to these businesses due to the affordability despite the circumstances. Yet, if you consider the longevity of a house designed by an architect compared to packaged homes – while one lasts longer than the other, it breeds a question about being sustainable. If the packaged home reaches its lifespan, it calls for another rebuild, which asks for more materials and demolition – which means more resources used and wasted.

Where am I going with this? Consider the bought-up apartments for quick money solutions, these empty houses that aren’t always occupied by someone is unsustainable and goes to waste – therefore defeating the sharing purpose altogether. In addition, the lack of presence of the actual owner within the space really reflects that we might as well be living in a hotel altogether.

It really does go to show that the original terminology has completely disappeared from the books.

What I find most laughable is how easily this term can be applied to different uses and activities. While researching on ‘sharing economy’ in other countries. In a Forbes article by Yue Wang “Sharing Is Caring: China's Smartphone 'Share Economy' Is Booming”, Wang pointed out that China’s take on ‘Sharing Economy’ has obscured to short-term rentals, however the borrowing on this term was to project an egalitarian ideal – quite romantic if you put it that way. It also reflects on how companies are clever in exploiting the meaning: from establishing booths that are short term gyms (do you really want people to see you run solo in the middle of a park though?), to charging stations or even basketballs. Since the general population in the country doesn’t want to ‘own’ a lot of possessions (ironic considering that owning designer items is still something that many seek) they are completely compliant with these ‘rental’ services. However, this is also a reflection on how heavily dependant we are on technology these days. Gone were the days where we would seek a large phone book of services that would allow us to satisfy our needs, now we simply have a digital screen and an application and the internet – we are one touch away from a stranger who would deliver our food or unlocking a bike that would enable us to go from place a to b. We are so comfortable of having easy access to resources that we forget the hard work of others that provide quality services since there are others who are less skilled yet more affordable and still get the job done are so readily available.

There is still this mental tug-of-war of where I stand about this ‘sharing economy’ – I am still idealistic in what I believe in yet, from just seeing how easy it is to pick up the holes in these situations, I am starting to feel very negative towards this ‘sharing economy’.

Especially when the service is really affecting our consideration of those who have worked so hard for a specific job yet outnumbered by those who haven’t.