Dive into the archives.
- Domus 03.03: Elizabeth Diller
[Photo: Iwan Baan]For the third installment in my series of conversations with women in architecture, I spoke with Elizabeth Diller, the co-founder of Diller Scofido + Renfro, a multidisciplinary studio based in New York. Equal parts artist, architect, and academic, Diller has produced a body of work that resists easy classification. For more than twenty years, she, together with her partner Ricardo Scofidio, has engaged in a series of ongoing spatial experiments, played out in buildings, theatres, galleries, books, boardrooms, and class rooms. We talked about this varied output, smart and dumb technology, and New York’s testosterone-fueled architecture.
In this series we’re trying to better understand female architects’ work by discussing the personal experiences and interests that inspire it. If you don’t mind, I’d like to begin by talking a bit about your personal history. I know that you were born and spent your early years in Poland before moving with your family to America. I’m curious to know how you feel your time in Poland and immigrant experience in the US has affected your perspective on art and architecture.
I don’t actually think of myself as Polish. My parents raised me as a European Jew. My family was victimized by the Holocaust and, in their minds, Poland was as culpable as Germany, and so the Polish part of my background was never emphasized in my household, even though it’s my native language. But I feel, perhaps, more European than American and that is probably because of how my parents raised me. I came [to America] when I was between five and six and I didn’t learn to read English until much later, so I kind of absorbed everything.
There were some circumstances around the immigration that were part of my early formation and that I am sure have made a lasting influence and changed my outlook on things, but I can’t exactly grasp what it is. [Laughs] It’s just that I don’t really feel like I’m part of any world, but part of all worlds. It’s good and bad. But the reading thing was definitely an issue. I think I was a little bit slow in picking up my cultural surroundings.
After your family moved, did you find yourself within a community of other expatriated European Jews?
Yes, my upbringing wasn’t religious at all, but there was a community of Europeans that my parents were a part of and if anything the social life was concentrated around other European families. That was very much part of the formation, but pretty soon after that I became a rebel. In my teenage years I just made my own context.Popularity: 5% [?]
- AInterview
Here’s a little interview I did with Ai Weiwei for the November/December issue of Flash Art magazine. In stores now, pick it up.
Your installation for the Unilever Commission recently opened at the Tate Turbine Hall in London. That seems to me a very difficult commission, not just because of the prominence of the institution and quality of past recipients, but due to the character of the Turbine Hall itself. How did these aspects affect you?
As you say, the Unilever Commission is a program that’s been running. I’m already the eleventh person invited by the Tate to do this. Of course, you see that those artists go in very different directions in terms of their personal histories, their artistic statements, and their public performance. This is important, because the Unilever Commission really is a public performance, since it’s in a public space that attracts a few million visitors and a lot of media attention. I felt that the work had to have some kind of relation to that condition. It could be a very minimal relation, but still you need to decide what kind of position you want to take. You’re not really trying to prove something to yourself or to challenge, but rather to speak very quietly but certainly about certain elements of life.
It’s really a metaphysical thing, because you present one work to the public, as a statement. It’s very difficult: it’s as if someone asked you to say one word about your life or your ideology. I think most people would say God, but my type of work is mostly about uncertainty. (more…)
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Shameless Plug: Who is Architecture?
Who is Architecture? is a book based on my 2009 interview series for Domus China magazine.
The series tries to understand architecture by ignoring architects, speaking instead to their collaborators – the engineers, contractors, curators, educators, and digital renders on whom architects depend to realize their designs. The book features conversations with Michael Rock of 2×4, Lu Zhenggang of Crystal CG, Rory McGowan of Arup, Barry Bergdoll of MoMA, Jeroen Koolhaas & Dre Urhahn of Haas & Hahn, Reinier De Graaf of AMO-OMA, John Dekron & Markus Schneider of thismedia, Jennifer Sigler of Hunch/SMLXL, Mark Wigley of Columbia GSA, and Tan Xiaochun of Beijing Urban Construction Group. In stores in November; available from Amazon now.
(I’ve posted a few of the interviews here, here , and here.)
Some Pics:
My editor’s letter:
Popularity: 3% [?]
- Domus 02.06: Stephen Wolfram
It’s been a while since I posted an interview up here. I still do one a month for Domus China and this year I’ve been able to speak to some truly amazing people. The man above is one. He’s Dr Stephen Wolfram, renowned scientist, inventor, and author. For the past thirty years, Wolfram has led a series of explorations into the laws of science and mathematics, discovering along the way critical insights into the nature of technology and design. He is the person behind Mathematica and A New Kind of Science. (Here is a very long, good article about him by Steven Levy.) We talked about his latest project, WolframAlpha, a searchable database of the world’s accumulated scientific knowledge, the similarities between designing architecture and writing code, and how algorithms will determine our future cities. The conversation is long and pretty dense but very worth it if you’re into that sort of thing.
Favorite Quote:
I view my use of computers a little bit like the Galileo approach from 400 year ago: computers had existed as practical tools, just as telescopes had existed as tools for looking at ships before Galileo decided to look at the sky with a telescope.
BM: In this interview series we’re imagining how changes in technology will affect urban life in the future. There are several of things related to your work that I think are relevant for architects and urban planners, and to begin I’d like to talk about one of your central projects, the book A New Kind of Science, in which you lay out many of the principles that shape your work. For those of us not familiar, could you provide some background on that book - how it came about and where it led you?
SW: The “new kind of science” is concerned with the general science of computation. It is concerned with exploring the computational universe. When we think about computation today we usually think about specific programs that we write on computers to perform specific tasks, but there’s a more general scientific question: if we think about all possible programs out there in the computational universe, what are the characteristics of those programs, what is this computational universe like?
BM: What do you mean by “computational universe”?
SW: The computational universe is the universe of all possible programs. We know about programs from computers. Most programs that do interesting things that are useful - whether it’s your CAD program or drawing program or word processor - these are big, complicated programs that are built to perform specific tasks. But these programs are built up from simple instructions and the question is: what if you just start building programs at random? What will these programs do? What type of behavior do you see?
You don’t need the idea of a computer to talk about this, but it is the best metaphor we have today. In a sense, what we’re talking about is following all possible types of systematic rules. Now, typically today as a practical matter we implement these rules in computers and that’s our best modern metaphor for this, but in principle these could be rules that are applied to pieces of mosaic or something else. They don’t have to be operating in a computer. We’re just talking about looking at the space of all possible rules, the universe of all possible rules.
The main discovery of A New Kind of Science, and this was very unexpected to me, is that you don’t have to go very far in this computational universe before you see that even very simple programs can generate incredibly rich and complex behavior. The thing that is exciting as it connects to existing science is that this abstract observation - that out in the computational universe even simple programs produce complex behavior - explains the secret that nature is using to produce a lot of the complexity that we see in the natural world, whether it’s in physics or biology or elsewhere.
I think the significance of the [new kind of] science at one level is that it lets one understand things about the natural world but it also gives one a new way to get things like technology and art, because it gives one a way to go out into this computational universe. Once one is there, one finds all these rich resources that are represented by simple programs. Then the challenge is: can you mine these resources for something that is useful for technology? It is sort of analogous to saying, go out into the natural world and find magnetic material or liquid crystals or something like that. Can one take those things that exist in the material world and apply them for human technological purposes? The same question exists for this computational universe: can one take what one finds and apply it to human technological goals? One can do that for traditional technology but also for more artistically-oriented things.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Domus 02.04: HoloDuke
Image: Duke EngineeringThese days I’m doing an interview series for Domus China on the future of the city and the connection between virtual and real. (I posted an interview from early in the series here a couple months ago.) One of the people I’ve talked to is Tony O’Driscoll, a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the executive director of its Center for IT and Media. It was a long, winding conversation, but he did mention one thing that sort of blew me away and I want to share…
Apparently the university has something called the Duke immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE), which is a 6-sided virtual reality theater that functions basically as a holodeck:
But apparently, here’s lot of non-jazzy applications for the non-Trek version, like treating phobias and figuring out where to drill for oil. Here’s some specifics from the DiVE site:
The DiVE is a 3m x 3m x 3m stereoscopic rear projected room with head and hand tracking and real time computer graphics. All six surfaces – the four walls, the ceiling and the floor – are used as screens onto which computer graphics are displayed. For virtual worlds designed for this system, it is a fully immersive room in which the individual (researcher, educator, etc) literally walks into the world, is surrounded by the display and is capable of interacting with virtual objects in the world. Stereo glasses provide depth perception, and a handheld “wand” controls navigation and input to into the world for manipulating virtual objects.
And here’s an except from the interview where Tony talks about the applications…
TO: [...] Across the Duke community, virtual contexts are being used quite heavily in the medical field, for training purposes and teaching doctors about emergency room etiquette, dealing with critical incidents, and so on. At the nursing school, they’re using virtual environments for nursing education. Duke is also looking at the use of virtual context to help people deal with phobias or deal with stress disorders. If you’re scared of snakes, you can get thrown into a virtual context where it looks a little bit like [the film] Raiders of the Lost Arc, where Harrison Ford is surrounded by hundreds of snakes.
BM: How does that work?
TO: It’s called the Duke immersive Virtual Environment [DiVE]. It is a six sided CAVE like virtual reality theater that can simulate an experience . In the case of the snakes, your mind knows its fake, but at the same time it’s having that ‘fight or flight’ response and you’re physically experiencing the stress associated with your phobia. It’s actually helpful to be able to work through phobias in a context like that as it helps you parse out your cognitive processing of the experience.
BM: I’ve never heard of this. Could you tell me more…
TO: There is lots you can do in DiVE. You can create your own rollercoaster. You’re given a hand device and you create points in the space. Then you lay down and you feel kind of like you’re in [the film] Tron, riding the light cycle, and you’re essentially flying through the space, as if you’re riding on a rollercoaster of your own creation. You can be taken through a narrative where you meet all sorts of characters like a three-headed dog or you could get thrown into a snake pit as I mentioned earlier. There’s all kinds of uses, but the idea is that it is an immersive context. It’s a place where you are put either to see representations of data… Oil companies, for instance, like to use these 3D visualizations of data to try to figure out what the soil consistency might be and where they might find more oil. There’s lots of uses for it, but essentially it’s another context; it’s a virtual context where you array information to either elicit insight or emotion or help groups of people make informed decisions.
Beam me up.
Popularity: 3% [?]
- Domus Interview 2.02: Bruce Sterling
Image: Robert ScobleIn January I started a new interview series for Domus China. The series will be similar to the one I did with Domus last year, but the theme is different.
This one is focused on the future of architecture and urban life, specifically how developments in technology, ecology, and politics will alter the way cities work. The hope is that, by focusing on current innovation and learning from efforts in other fields, architects can get slightly ahead of the curve and take a more active approach to change.
For the February issue, I talked to the sci-fi writer and opinion machine Bruce Sterling. We talked about the changing status of architecture in a more digital world, the global impact of Chinese manufacturing, and the need to study the past to imagine the future. It was a good conversation I thought, so I’m gonna post it here.
Some quotables:
The digital revolution is about 25 years old, and now it’s like a big, grown-up girl with some serious personal problems. It’s not like five year old child who is carrying futurity on her back.
The difficulty of trying to build a skyscraper palace for Google is that Google is not going to live that long.
Thirty years ago the poor were in rags, now the poor dress in Chinese clothing. Clothing now is so cheap and so well made, and that’s entirely due to Chinese advances. They are clothing the planet and really alleviating a lot of suffering.
It took me quite a while to realize that the things that were important were not necessarily interesting.
I tend to look at technology as techno-social developments over a period of time. They’re not progress and when they pass from our radar that does not mean that they lose their consequence, it merely means that we stopped talking about them in a particular tone of voice.
You can’t understand by merely looking at the present day. In order to see what’s happening you have to go back twice as far you intend to jump forward. That is the rule.
If you’re interested, I posted a few interviews from last year’s series, which was about architectural collaboration: Michael Rock, Jennifer Sigler, Mark Wigley. The whole series will be available in a book called Who is Architecture? that should be hitting your local lavatory in the fall.
And now…
Futuretalk with Bruce Sterling
Brendan McGetrick: The purpose of this interview series is to try to get a sense of what the future of urban life will be so that architects might get slightly ahead of the curve. In your writing you’ve envisioned possible communities of the future, so to begin could you talk a little about your interest in architecture and how it informs you work?
Bruce Sterling: Well, I’m interested in creative disciplines of all kinds, and I must say that the things that I appreciate most about architecture are things like parametric architecture - computer-generated practice. I’m really more into network culture and this very large transition that has happened through many disciplines - different professions, different nations, different situations. Architects are very expressive about their theories and their ways of approaching the world and I’ve derived a lot of benefits from listening to them.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Domus Interview 09: Mark Wigley
Here’s the latest in the interview series I’ve been doing for the Domus China. (I’ve put up a couple of the others here and here). It’s with Mark Wigley, author, curator, and Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture. The conversation focuses mostly on education and how he approaches things at Columbia.
At present, Mark is battling it out with Jemaine Clement for the title of Greatest Living Kiwi, and I like his chances, because the man knows his way around a soundbite. Here’s a few favorite quotes: “Architects’ gift is to produce a hesitation in the rhythms of everyday life”, “Massive incompetence is a kind of normative lifestyle”, “We have a kind of stupidity… and the mission is reduce the level of stupidity.”
+++++
BM: In this interview series we’re trying to get a sense of who the architect is by talking to the people closest to them. The hope that by filling in the area around the subject in great detail we can create something like a silhouette of a profession. I’ve been anxious to speak with you, because education is such an important part of understanding where architects come from.
MW: It’s a very interesting concept, and it immediately begs the question: what is an architect? For me, it’s quite simple: an architect is someone who doesn’t know what a building is. That is to say, someone for whom a building is a set of questions, rather than a set of answers. Almost everybody knows what a building is, but the architect is someone for whom the building is filled with mystery.
What’s interesting then about the school is that you’re training a group of people and what holds them in common is that they don’t know what a building is. So, actually, in a school you can’t simply deliver a set of information about what architecture is and a set of professional procedures for accomplishing that. I like your concept of the silhouette: in a way, what you can do is deliver the silhouette of the big questions, the big doubts. Interestingly, architects are not allowed to share that doubt in public. In fact, architects are called on to do quite the opposite, to produce images of certainty and security, stability, and so on. So that an odd assignment - you take the one group in society who sees objects as full of mystery and you ask them to invest those objects with the symbolism of certainty.
What that means is that there is a big difference between the public and the private in architecture. If you look inside an architect’s head, I think it’s pretty messy and yet the work they do is very clear. If you look inside an architect’s studio, it’s a mess, but when they present to the client it’s very clear. When you look inside an architectural school it’s pretty messy, but then you look at the publications and the website, and everything seems very clear. Publicly, architects are certain, sure, confident, precise; privately they really don’t know what they’re doing, how they’re doing, why, and so on. This is not to say that they’re ignorant. On the contrary, architects have been talking amongst themselves about what a building is for 3000 years in the west, 10,000 years in the non-west and so on.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Domus Interview 01: Michael Rock
Throughout 09 I’m going to be doing an interview series for Domus China magazine. The idea behind the series is to examine architecture as a collaborative art form. To realize a building of even modest ambition requires architects to commit themselves to a huge number of specialists - engineers, a developer, a rendering company, plumbers, a photographer, etc. - each of whom is responsible for a vital piece of their vision. I hope that by talking to the people who operate around architecture’s edges, we can get a better understanding of what architects do and what sort of personality (disorders) architecture requires.
The first one came out this month and its with Michael Rock of 2×4, a NY-based design studio that’s works with Prada, Nike, as well as many architects OMA especially. It’s too long to put up here and I’m probably not supposed to do that anyway, but here is an excerpt. Michael’s talking about branding and the way that brand manuals have shifted control of design away from the architect and designer into the hands of the marketing and sales departments. He also mentions his idea for a Leica cell phone, which I think is awesome.
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Chinese Gvt: Don’t be a spastic - get drastic about plastic
I’m back in Beijing and the big piece of non-earthquake/non-Olympic news here is the new ban on free plastic bags. According to China Daily
From June 1 on, all Chinese retailers, including supermarkets, department stores and grocery stores, would no longer provide free plastic shopping bags.
The number of plastic bags consumed in China is literally unbelievable. It’s estimated that Beijing alone consumes nearly 10 billion plastic bags annually, which is equivalent to around 27 million bags per day. Really.
So this is great news for everybody I guess, but especially for China’s overworked, underappreciated environmental activists. Last year I got to know a bunch of them while I was doing research for the 桌志 | Eat Up project and I thought, to celebrate the new policy, I’d post up a conversation I had with Takeshi Ikeda, an organizer for Global Village Beijing, one of China’s earliest environmental NGOs. At the time he was spearheading an information campaign aimed at reducing the use of plastic bags. He talked a lot about the challenges of doing environmental activism in China, and he actually ended up saying the public advocacy doesn’t really work here. Anyway, I found it really interesting, check it out….
(more…)Popularity: 5% [?]
- Emerarti
Today is the opening of Dubai Next - a new exhibition on the culture of Dubai curated by Rem Koolhaas & Jack Persekian as part of Art Basel.
I’ve been in Dubai for the past few weeks making a publication for it. That comes out today too - available at the Vitra Museum (Fire station campus) for those in the neighborhood and as a supplement to Gulf News for those in the UAE. Here’s a pic of the cover…
The show features the work of my girls Charlie & Reineke, two European photographers who over three weeks took something like 16000 photos of Dubai in all its multi-culti, shimmer and sand glory. Both of them have very nice display techniques for their exhibits so I’m going to wait til I get proper photos from the museum to show their stuff.
UPDATE: Here are some pics from the opening…
For now though, here is a group discussion with four of the Emerati artists featured in the exhibition about life and art in Dubai. I had to edit it pretty drastically in the print version, so here is the fuller, more interesting edit….
Here’s an example of each artist’s contribution to the exhibition:
Jalal Abuthina
Lamya Gargash
Mohammed Kazem
Reem Al Ghaith
What I noticed first about your pieces is the emphasis on solitude and isolation. All of the images have very quiet quality, which goes against the common perception of Dubai as a kind of free trade adventureland. What do think this shared perspective says about life here?
Jalal Abuthina: What a lot of the work has in common is some sort of conflict with the surroundings - a new environment that’s opposed to the old. A struggle between the new surrounding and what was before.
Lamya Gargash: There’s a sense of loss in all of them.
Reem Al Ghaith: They all relate to the surroundings. So that’s a question: why are we saying this about Dubai - why are we talking about the struggle of stepping into this new environment? Because all five of us are saying the same thing.
Mohammed Kazem: We are living in a very horizontal culture in the UAE. If you go through the streets, you can see people of different nationalities, different kinds of buildings, different foods, you can smell different things - none of these elements have been part of the UAE for a long time. So it’s affected the people here, including the artists… But not all artists use art to criticize politics or ideology, because art doesn’t solve problems of politics or economics. Art has its own policy. So I use many elements from the society, but sometimes I am not provoking anything. Many times artists here are criticizing themselves to find out new things. In this case, they’re not focusing on what’s happening in the society.
(more…)Popularity: 4% [?]
-
- HOW TO NOT MAKE MONEY: good conversation with the head curator of Beijing’s first non-profit art center
One of the coolest things about being in Beijing at this point in history is watching the ways that the city processes the huge amounts of new cultural information that enter it each day. On its surface, Beijing’s cultural identity seems pretty fixed. It’s the PRC’s symbolic center, and it needs to look the part. But if you look below the surface, you see a city passionately seeking out and soaking in new forms of life and living. For the past few months, I’ve been interviewing some of the people who seem to be at the front of this process. I’ll post up some my favorites as time goes by.
For the second installment, here is a conversation I had last week with Colin Chinnery, the deputy director and head curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art , China’s first not-for-profit art center. As you’ll see, the project is blazing several trails at the same time….
Quotables:
“I think, without a doubt, there is not single person in this team who has had this amount of freedom, or could possibly expect to have anything like this amount of freedom in an institution in the West.”
“It’s a little bit like social engineering.”
“This money from the market and the speculators is a tidal wave, and a hell of a lot of artists are going to be washed out to sea.”
“The French called the Americans and the Americans called the Chinese, and both the French and Americans said, ‘This has to come down!’”
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Nice up the Republic: a conversation with Beijing’s ambassador to reggae
One of the coolest things about being in Beijing at this point in its history is watching the ways that the city processes the huge amounts of new cultural information that enter it each day. On its surface, Beijing’s cultural identity seems pretty fixed. It’s the PRC’s symbolic center, and it needs to look the part. But if you look below the surface, you see a city passionately seeking out and soaking in new forms of life and living. For the past few months, I’ve been interviewing some of the people who seem to be at the front of this process. I’ll post up some my favorites as time goes by.
To start, here’s a conversation I had a couple weeks ago with Robin Liao. Robin owns Together Bar, Beijing’s #1 (and only) reggae spot. I hope you enjoy….
Quotables:
“Reggae in China is like blind people touching an elephant.”
“If you put Bob-anything in the internet, you get Bob Dylan.”
“Sometimes an opportunity just falls down from the sky - like a pie in the sky. But sometimes it is really a pie.”
“I’m a Gemini so I always jump.”
Popularity: 11% [?]
- Artalk: Yang Shaobin
I haven’t had much time to write anything lately, but I don’t want to go too long without a post so I have to reach into the vaults a little bit. This is an interview with the Chinese artist Yang Shaobin. I originally met him while I was researching an article on Beijing for Art Review magazine. At the time I was trying to put together a kind of oral history of Beijing’s contemporary art scene, so most of the conversation points in that direction. When we met I wasn’t very familiar with his work, but since I’ve learned more and I have to say he’s become a personal favorite. The photos were taken at his house/studio by Charlie Koolhaas.
One thing I’m trying to understand about art in Beijing is the concept of collective action and groups that organized themselves into, for lack of a better term, movements. There’s of course a big difference between an art movement and a political one, mostly because art movements are often identified after the fact by people who may not have been involved in the first place. But before we talk about your new works, I’m curious if you consider yourself part of any artistic movement.
I took part in the protection of the “1989 Movement”. It was a collective activity. Many artists created similar works starting in the early 1990s. At that time, everyone felt somewhat lost after the 1989 Movement. They couldn’t find their ideal pursuit. I can’t help thinking of my friends and recalling my old thoughts.
How were these feelings channeled through art?
There were two influential artistic styles, Political Pop art and Cynical Realism. Both could be described as successful in the world. At that time, there was a feeling of being cheated after the June 4 Movement. It could only be felt by artists in Beijing. I was not in Beijing but in my hometown Tangshan. As Beijing is the center, it exerted its influence to every corner of the country. And the influence was considerable.
What was the atmosphere like among artists prior to ’89?
Before 1989, the whole cultural circle was filled with ideals. How to save the world… In fact, it was just a slogan, not practical. Those movements before 1989, including 1985 New Art Movement, were just slogans, making no impact on the art of China. It took less than a decade to repeat the history of western fine arts over a century. It was a crazy age, but it was very important. I think it enlightened us.
After moving to Beijing, you lived in an artists’ community in the old Summer Palace with several artists who would become the leaders of the Political Pop and Cynical Realism styles. What was that experience like?
When we lived in Yuanming Yuan, we were very poor, no money, not enough food, and sometimes we were arrested by the police. It could be said that we were under great pressure; there was no safety just violence, actually the whole society was flooded with violence. During that period, I made many red paintings, very large, like blood flowing. From then on, my pressure began to release. You know, it is a tough job to work in art. Art describes the artist’s psychology.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Zhang Yimou convo
These days I’m working on a book for a Beijing-based architecture studio called MAD. Among other things, the book is a collection of conversations with people with people from across Chinese society (from hair dressers to government officials) and experts from outside, including Ian Buruma and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Sooo…. today my colleague Shuyu and I talked with Zhang Yimou, director of Raise the Red Lantern and Hero, among many others.
He struck me cool, calm, and collected. The main thing that struck me was his voice and gentle, subtly dramatic way of speaking.
I can’t post the interview before the book drops, of course. But here’s a little taste of man’s speech.
In case you’re wondering, we were asking him how his success abroad has affected his ability to work in China. He said something like, “There’s an old saying in China: ‘The blossom inside the wall is usually appreciated from the outside.’…”
Anyway, I’ll hopefully post some more about the book as it develops. It’s got to be printed by the beginning of November, so….
Popularity: 3% [?]
- Trader Talk I: Dragan Ivanov
During the past couple of days at the Canton Fair, I’ve been running around interviewing visitors about doing business in China.
I’ve been amazed at how succinct and emotionally cool most of their analysis is. For instance Dragan Ivanov, a computer hardware agent from Macedonia, basically broke down the whole of China’s world beating competitiveness in a single sentence: “They have good facilities, low labor rate, they don’t have the same ecological limitations, the people work 18 hours a day.” Here’s the rest of what he had to say.
Quotables:
“They have one billion people; we have only two million - that’s the difference.”“If you buy one kilo of metal, they sell you a refrigerator for the same price.”
“Even the big companies like iPods have factories here.”
“The cheaper countries, like India or Africa, can only benefit. They can buy good quality stuff for low money. Like now, you can buy a DVD [player] for $18. You cannot buy a hamburger in United States for $18.”
“In China they’ll make the software in our own language. If you go to Panasonic and tell them to make a Macedonian menu, they’ll never make it. They make anything here.”
Popularity: 4% [?]
