smallprojects

Economics runs our world today in ways we are only beginning to grasp. The force of economics serves the worlds of trade and commerce in a specific way, one involving the issues of purchasing clout, credibility and acquisition. It also subtly and globally undermines the very basis of sustainability. Although the dilemma has its roots in early civilisation, with feudal systems grown from pure physical domination, it has evolved and finally gained critical mass with the birth of global governmental systems of politics and its symbiosis with the domination of modern economics. And this unsubtle, yet unquestioned system of being has become central to our way of life, as it divides us and threatens the basis of the relationship we share with our built space - and more critically, with our environment and earth. It is a compromise made over a non-negotiable truth for all human well-being: modern society has unwittingly prized commodity ahead of context, and acquisition above the logistics of distribution.

This quartet of essays attempt to explain part of the problem, beginning with an understanding of how process, product and commodity are related to the issue of acquisition and how we have become incapable of distinguishing between brand recognition and true expertise.