Turnitin for Wall Street

There is a common belief that mobile phones communication brought a lot more informality into our everyday lives. Allegedly, less professionalism, too.
It is not the first time for Goldman Sachs' employees to be accused offensive.
Read more about their new measures and tightening up the belt within the corporation's lingo.

Who really wanted to bring Mike over

Image: Thomas Haltner / Aurora Photos




source: Economist

Because the state did not want to take the risk of transporting Merlion, Mike has never made it to Venice Biennale.

But Barclays did make it to Singapore. Lately, they have also successfully been working on the new Cycle scheme for London. Many of Londoners would not bet on its enriching value for the public space. Yet, it does not stop the Group galloping towards further partnerships with state controlled firms.

After selling InterContinental Hotel stakes for £330m , Barclays group was not particularly concerned of a risk, when deciding to unstoppable expansion further East, selling the stakes to corporations supervised by Chenese and Singapore states. Temasek, an investment firm controlled by the Singapore government is investing 1.4 billion euros for 2.1 per sent stake. Finance sure does not threat the globalization, Alphaville confirms: "Western banks are now getting the 'flat' treatment, with the components of what promises to be the biggest banking merger on the planet now being put together in all corners of the globe." Moreover, Barclays are hiring six senior bankers in this Business Mecca, city-state.

The old saying says that 'who does not risk, they do not gain', still I remember that for opening the international student account at Barclays bank one had to deposit £1000. Obviously, risk is here to be taken by the weaker player. Of course they have a whole part of the Group dealing with all sorts of 'wealth service' - acquire, protect, use and enjoy or pass on wealth. Acquiring is particularly interesting, when observed through the links of gambling and the big players like this.

Gambling is illegal in Hong Kong, and although Macau is the Las Vegas of Asia - the potential for new similar centres in this part of the world appears to be spotted by the Western corporations. Singapore, despite its territorial limitation of CBD, pursued the plan of rebranding itself into gambling resort, in expectation of economic gain, naturally. It is planned to become "world's second-largest and most-expensive gaming enclave, spanning 2,600 hotel rooms, 50 restaurants, nearly 300 retail shops".

Interestingly enough - a financial adviser of Merrill Lynch, has been arrested for gambling! One of Merrill's biggest share holders is Temasek Holdings Pte, itself -one of Singapore's two sovereign wealth funds (also: SWF) and the investor of the gambling resort.

If we know that three years ago statistics noted 'over two-thirds of Britain was betting on something or other', this confusion of the internal rules deserves a Singapore sling. Chin chin!

Real men wear pink

On my moaning about how much effort is needed to meet up someone with a busy schedule in London, I have received a simple explanation this morning: "Better to be busy than a lonely ship at the bottom of the ocean". Psychological explanations are always so justified, that it simply appears inappropriate to fight it.
I do not agree 'busy' City people, scared to rush off home from work without drinks are really less lonely than the ones in front of their TVs or walking dogs in the parks. This normative of showing the happy face even after office hours seems so male to me. Honestly, I thought that metropolis is the best place for living through your impulses or just crying when you feel like crying.

As for the pink shirts, that might have been initially thought to be a nice casual insignia to break the rules, or stood for non-conformist signifier - I am amazed how such things that were supposed to be carefree - started being induced into torment for the ambitious individuals, craving for some sort of personal recognition. Even the recession asks for more standing out from the crowd, but conformity is what keeps the wheel turning, right? Just listen to the new gay jokes on the coalition.

Maybe a beer belly becomes fashionable soon.
Soft is the new tough. Photo stocks know it all.

Nice to meet you?

Milka Forcan and Miodrag Miskovic


Milka Forcan, Josep Lloveras and Olli Rehn


Project for Belgrade Danube Waterfront by Daniel Liebeskind, space property of Port Belgrade




My friend's, Branko Belacevic's, witty observation of what exactly is going on in Belgrade Danube Waterfont project


Renderings of project for Varsavska Street, Zagreb


Tomo Horvatincic, the investor of the project in Varsavska Street


Peaceful protests in Varsavska Street, Zagreb

Business women from Serbia, Milka Forcan has stirred up the public opinions lately with the news of her break up over the shareholdings of Delta holding company with her 20-year-old business partner Miroslav Miškovic, absolute monopolist on Serbian financial market. She states that it was not an easy decision, having emotions about the place she had also invested in it during her lifetime. Oops, looks like there is a formula to mix business and pleasure here?

It is important to know the power position of this woman in the international affairs, as she reported she will continue her career in lobbying, after she had proved to be an important player in Serbian business' contribution to EU integration; discussing these issues, for example, with Olli Rehn and Josep Lloveras. In this region, there is a popular pattern of direct ascribing political potential to the financially successful individuals. I don't know if I support this woman for being such a strong opponent to Mišković, in the male dominated state, or just dislike her, as it looks like they have quite the same aims and objectives. I wonder if the monopoly of Miskovic's emporium has helped her be seen as AAA woman of the region- attractive, actual, active.

Knowing that same Delta's first man was financing political parties, and has been involved in criminal activities of illegal privatization of Port of Belgrade, even Daniel Liebeskind could not resist his power, and created this flashy project, promising a bright future for the Belgrade waterfront.

In addition, talking about the powerful connections of state and the business, and politics of public space, this is already late information, but 140 citizens were arrested last week in Zagreb, protesting non/violently over the long, similar, dispute of turning the square in the centre of the city into a shopping mall and closing the pedestrian paths.

Are politics or space of the countries with EU accession ambition in need for more lobbyists?

Apropos their divine cause

from the post below, I hope you did not decide yet to volunteer for this police. Please, read more about the scandalous juridical decision to put off the charges against police officer assaulting Ian Thomlinson at the G20 riots, who died shortly after that.

Burke's parlour

via intelbriefs

I have recently seen the advertisement for volunteering with Metropolitan Police.
Apparently, it is not such a recent programme (since 2001), and adult individuals have a chance to 'gain valuable experiences' by volunteering in their neighbourhood or around places where they work. While the accent is definitely on softening the borders between the private and state matters by 'increasing contact between local communities and the police', I wonder whose privacy is invested here.

Speaking of privacy and loyalty to the community, not only Russia is sending spies to the UK, (as recent saturation of the media with the news about Anna Chapman's revocation of the citizenship says) but Europeans are threatening London's Square Mile. They are 'grabbing the land', and the sincere Prime Minister's confession that several generations in his family have been faithful to the City is to guarantee the importance of it for the new government. Still, this tightrope walk does not fully insure us whether the financial sector is a matter of national pride or the gathered experience of the family businesses.

Now, if half of the business is networking, and lip service, than these informal talks have also very important role in a fine participation and exchange of the information. Clubs with free distribution of cocaine help the businessmen to be attuned to this need of perpetual crossing the borders and shifting them back. But, again, who says when it is enough and who can participate? Stephen Perkins has been denounced, crossing the borders of the City forever, by backing out and trading 7m barrels of oil after a weekend of heavy drinking. Maybe he should start purging away the sins by volunteering with 'met'?

Ask the janitor.

Aloha Friday

In a recent conversation, Trenton has uncovered an astonishing truth to me about the early Friday frenzy in the City of London.
It is indeed sometimes a wonderful social image seeing people happily drinking outside the pubs already around lunch time on Fridays, be it winter or summer. Still, in London, it is mostly not because these city employees are such relaxed chaps, but because - other big stock exchanges in different time zones are already closed at that hour. Alas, in the name of the globally supervised, untied, mostly male crowd, already for hours standing on the pavements slightly eastern from the City, small warning from Saint Etienne:



See you on Monday on the Central line. Cheers.

Who will harvest the opportunity?

"Manhattan is the richest, most professional, most congested and without a doubt most fascinating island in the world. To attempt to plant , sustain and harvest two acres of wheat here, wasting valuable real estate, obstructing the machinery by going against the system, was an affrontery that made it the powerful paradox I had sought" Agnes Denes, Wheatfield: A Confrontation 1982


via The City Project


Damon Rich, Cities Destroyed for Cash, 2009, 1431 plastic markers on a panorama of New York City, c.30 x 30m. Photograph: Damon Rich


Damon Rich, Red Lines Housing Crisis Learning Center, 2008. Installation views at MIT Museum, Cambridge, MA. (Photos: Judith M. Daniels)


Centre Point tower, London





I have no intention here, alas, solving the puzzle ever revolving around the question whether architecture is just the means and instrument, or the very source for changing the world. Yet, we know for sure that the real estate and the buildings themselves, at least in their very physical presence accelerated the last credit crunch. 'It's quite fascinating how this is possibly the first crisis of our times that has a distinctive architectural aesthetic - empty, detached suburban mansions connected by deserted streets, or slum-like frame houses in varying states of dilapidation,' says Joseph Grima, director of Storefront for Art and Architecture.

While the architecture of financial districts brings no hope of resolving the aforementioned puzzle, as it only makes them culturalized products, their today immense unrented, empty space offers maybe a crack into the heart of the problem. In Berlin, Potsdamer Platz, the facade became more valuable than the space itself. Look, also, at the enormous TINAG collection of London City office space waiting to be rented.

The housing schemes are unmistakeably connected to the corporations whether East or West. Maybe contemporary art has retained the means to confront the problem without falling into the culturalization trap. Damon Rich from Centre for Urban Pedagogy is in his project Red Lines Housing Crisis Learning Centre trying to unveil how does the notion of financial risk affect the built environment?

Office space is mirroring the capital, but sometimes, like in the example of Centre Point tower of London, built in the 1960s - floors waiting to be rented for years did not reflect the lack of the interest in this space - but the power and the monopoly of one man to raise the rent by such a gesture. There we are again at the same integral interdependent point of the state and its tax relief for the land developers. In Britain, it took a long time for broader public to accept the outlook of the tall buildings and the city smart facades, but in this country the traditionalists would probably embrace its first failure to use it for their understanding of some 'more human' form. If the dragons and lions did not help the City of London headway, can Feng Shui (in the year of Tiger) or at least, Maneki Neko?

Death in June

Blackfriars Bridge, at the edge of the City, London


1 Poultry, London - one of the mortal leap's location






Do you remember this man?

The case of Roberto Calvi's murder has been never resolved, although his close relations to Vatican proved to be linked to it, even if partly. Yet, waves of bankers' suicides date long before Italian 'God's banker' has been found hanged on London's Blackfriars bridge in 1982.

Evidently, recent frequent reports on bankers from around the world committing suicides has some overlapping historical facts with Black Thursday in 1929 crash. The statistics show that the monetary crisis had impact on the growing numbers of suicides among financial sector employees. Despite the fact that only after the crisis settles down, the true mortal impact can be indicated, there is no way to measure the true vulnerability of the successful individuals and even untouchable businessmen like HSBC's Christen Schnor, friend of Danish royal family. Although, back in 1929, along with the Wall Street brokers literally leaping through hotel windows, big number of people affected were from other service sectors, too. These personal tragedies maybe are not so personal, after all, although they tend to be represented as such in media.We can have a look on our public health and the demands that financial sector sets as a normative of success, productivity, growth and ask ourselves:

How many times does an action have to be repeated in order to learn mistakes from it?

Public art of private space?

After the graffiti spraying This is Not Art over the sculpture in SoHo last year, the decision has been made to continue with showcasing artworks in the same spot, as otherwise it would "lie vacant", said curator Adam Kleinman.

Curiously, the 'filling up' process of these vacant spaces by big names's artwork
seems to be a win-win combination for both city authorities and the investors of financial districts' developments around the world. The first group counts on receiving acclamation for enriching the public space by a mere display of art objects, and the latter ones on eliminating height restrictions by investing in public amenities.

The space in-between the office towers and on plazas among them is often given the 'new identity' by artwork such as James Turrell's five glass panels in Brookfield's Bay Adelaide Centre in Toronto's financial district, Michael Heizer's fountain in Manhattan, or Jenny Holzer's instalation in LA Standard Hotel. Broadgate Estate in London is proudly mapping the art around their properties. Influence on public opinion and a qualitative change of space attained by these installations is debatable.

However, artists in Hamburg crossed the border of the permitted art. Their open discontent by the newest establishments has been not acknowledged as the enrichment of public space, but simply as protests.

For more on 'American' model of politics and aesthetics of public space read a text bySharon Zukin.
Art collective Platform has been running critical project Museum of Corporation and walks around London City promoting an alternative model of art taking place in the spatial set-up of London City.

Timeline of GIFT City Mega-development

Gujarat International Finance Tec-City has been promoted as a city for the next generation, India's "financial muscle" and the infrastructural source to augment the capacity of Mumbai . Planned by ECADI, public-private partnership, but also the largest project of Gujarat state government, it was aimed to cope with existing financial districts like Shanghai or London Docklands. State decision to build GIFT City combined with the planning ideas of green and recreational space allocated by the skyscrapers' low occupation of the land, and the sustainable energy consumption, all evoke the grand times of Modernism. However, the physical space has been supported by CISCO , partner for Internet Protocol services, in order to improve the management. A question still stays why this "New York of India" needs to be promoted both as a contemporary business district development and a place where traditional ideas of building codes are respected.

Shift of focus in London real-estate: from the City towards the West End

Britain’s second-largest real estate trust, plans to invest 330 million pounds in redeveloping properties in London's West End. After selling 50 per cent of Broadgate complex last September, British Land announces plan to slowly move from the City and office space towards entertainment and shorter lettings due to the drop in the rents there.

Architectures of Dereliction

Owen Hatherley's article published on Mute website. Reviewing the books Where the other half lives and The Architecture and Urban Culture of Financial Crisis, he claims the fatality of architecture as a discipline for the neoliberal Non-Plan trend.

G20 riots in Toronto

Pictures of performative resistance to the G20 Summit in Toronto this June.

via
daerah zhrh