New items added to the Improvised Design photopool. Check them out.
Coming up soon. Jane Rendell's "Art & Architecture, A Place in Between". Where do improvised architectural responses to crisis fall in relation to architecture with a "A" and the world of "in-situ" and "off-site" art installations? Rendell makes some interesting assertions about functional art that might make you question your assumptions. More soon....
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Improvised Design Photopool
Haha, take that summer, score one for the Blog.
The "Improvised Design Photopool" is up and running.
Please take a look and more importantly please contribute to this fledgling collection of the worlds mostly unrecognized yet universal examples of how design exists at all levels of scope, budget, time and location. The improvised designs of those who build and make out of necessity should act as an inspiration for those who have any interest or connection with the world of design. It’s my hope that with the combination of inspiration through exposure and the background of training in design that new ideas can be fostered from this less than mainstream source.
The link again:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/improvised_design/
My apologies in advance if you are not a FLICKR member but registration is required to post images and is free and highly worth it for this reason and many others.
The "Improvised Design Photopool" is up and running.
Please take a look and more importantly please contribute to this fledgling collection of the worlds mostly unrecognized yet universal examples of how design exists at all levels of scope, budget, time and location. The improvised designs of those who build and make out of necessity should act as an inspiration for those who have any interest or connection with the world of design. It’s my hope that with the combination of inspiration through exposure and the background of training in design that new ideas can be fostered from this less than mainstream source.
The link again:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/improvised_design/
My apologies in advance if you are not a FLICKR member but registration is required to post images and is free and highly worth it for this reason and many others.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Improvised Architecture Photopool - Coming Soon
Fighting back the strong summer urges to give-in to the heat and associated laziness, I have been able to follow through on at least one of my plans. In connection with previous research and the Improvised Architectural Device proposal I’d like to put together a catalogue of Improvised Architecture and Design. Included in the proposal is the concession that “improvised design” exists today in abundance mainly through necessity. In many of these cases these designs offer relief in the form of shelter or other highly functional design. This innovative design is also largely created by those who use it and with little or no training as designers or builders.
It is this bridge between functionality, necessity and design which I find so interesting as well as the unexploited opportunity for the design community to embrace.
In order to inspire and in general to make visible this element of the world around us I will be creating a photopool of images through the FLICKR website which will be open to all to join and contribute to. It is my hope that through a collaborative effort we can expose each other to unique and otherwise unseen examples of design ingenuity which will in turn excite and motivate those who by training can make informed design decisions to apply this concept to other situation of equal necessity and challenge.
The details of the Improvised Design Photopool will be forthcoming in the next week as I prepare the site with some initial content. Please stay tuned for the announcement of its launch and in the meantime please keep your cameras ready and eyes open for that which is improvised, unique and inspiring.
It is this bridge between functionality, necessity and design which I find so interesting as well as the unexploited opportunity for the design community to embrace.
In order to inspire and in general to make visible this element of the world around us I will be creating a photopool of images through the FLICKR website which will be open to all to join and contribute to. It is my hope that through a collaborative effort we can expose each other to unique and otherwise unseen examples of design ingenuity which will in turn excite and motivate those who by training can make informed design decisions to apply this concept to other situation of equal necessity and challenge.
The details of the Improvised Design Photopool will be forthcoming in the next week as I prepare the site with some initial content. Please stay tuned for the announcement of its launch and in the meantime please keep your cameras ready and eyes open for that which is improvised, unique and inspiring.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Cities UnBuilt - VOLUME Issue #11
Today in conflict areas around the world architecture is being targeting in a kind of genocide of the built world. So says Ole Bouman and Robert Bevan and a host of other authors in the 11th issue of VOLUME magazine titled “Cities UnBuilt”. The term unbuilt is an interesting one. With the systematic targeting of architecture based solely on the cultural and social value of the buildings and not those inside (termed Warchitecture in Sarajevo in 1993), cities are picked apart during the course of war. This is a new tactic since historically the destruction of the built environment was considered a military necessity or merely collateral damage. With this surgical unraveling of a city or town’s fabric they are essentially becoming unbuilt. I do think that we should be careful in how this term is thrown around in reference to the destruction of buildings. During war, the destruction of buildings is exactly that, destruction. To be unbuilt I feel implies a certain care which can only be claimed at the scale of urban planning. To unbuild a specific building would I think entail its deconstruction in a similar but opposite way to its construction. It implies an incremental process, not the wholesale instantaneous leveling of a building. Anyway my point here is not to debate the term but discuss its effects and the conditions following it.
Ole Bouman in his introductory piece “The Architecture of Destruction” starts framing this debate by suggesting that violence and conflict are now seen as inevitable and even taken for granted. Bouman tells us that through the specific targeting of our buildings, the goal is to incite outrage and fear as these targets are symbols of the opponent’s value system. He claims that architecture is not set up well to deal with despair or to place itself in a society which acknowledges the human condition as possibly a dangerous, fanatical and destructive force. One easily then makes the connection from architecture to its parents, the architects, and asks should architects take responsibility in considering the destruction of their buildings?
In a way they do. Consideration must be given to the gradual effects of gravity, the environment and the users so in this sense they consider the slow unbuilding but not necessarily the outright destruction of their buildings. This destruction might occur through acts of war or through other disaster.
What role then should we adopt as the contributors to the built world around us. Is it enough to merely recognize the targeted destruction of the buildings around us and the associated erasure of history and culture as well? Should we speak against it as creators/activists/preservationists and advocate its protection and exclusion from such treatment? Or should we go beyond this, take matters into our own hands and protect our own buildings. In thinking about this it leads me to consider the link from protected architecture to architecture as protection and we are back to the conversation about buildings as our own personal bunkers. Lets entertain the idea that significant social and cultural architecture should be protected and excluded from destruction during war. Its interesting to think then that in this case what you have created in essence is architecture as protection only instead of using four foot thick concrete walls, you are using the history and cultural importance as a shield. It’s a sticky situation to get around and for that reason probably why in most cases there is no such thing as untouchable architecture in the world of warfare.
So lets say then that there is no protection of our precious architectural achievements and that the architectural circle of life must continue unabated. In Ole Bouman’s aforementioned piece he makes a statement I find powerful. He says “Perhaps the most daring and at the same time uncanny position is for architects who devise strategies to cope with destruction by finding ways to deceive, ridicule or pervert it and in doing so possibly help to avoid it.” This I think is fantastic.
Niloufar Tajeri’s essay “Towards Non-destructive Aid” highlights the fact that relief architecture in response to conflict “negate and erase contexts” and that more often than not they are deployed temporarily but never are. The problem here is that this is the norm. The cookie cutter solution does not subvert the destruction which it responds to in any way. In Esther Charlesworth’s essay “Architects Should Act!” she makes a call for what she describes as roaming, collaborative, mobile agents to work outside traditional constraints. I think this would definitely take steps to address the problem that as architects we are not responding quick enough to the vacuum created by a post conflict situation.
Traditionally architects have thrived on post disaster situations due to opportunities for rebuilding. In this day and age, the architect’s role it seems has been relegated or by choice limited to maintaining an established image of an environment which already exists. In other cases it is to establish this same image in a location where it is at least is deemed safe & ready to accept it (ie. Dubai). What architects need to do is pounce on the opportunities created in post conflict scenarios despite the discomfort and embrace the potential to implement new non-western language (or western if its appropriate) and create something unique to the situation. This may require a more Macgyver (untraditional ad-hoc) methodology of design but the challenge should provide for interesting results. These unorthodox solutions could subvert the destruction and as a consequence devalue the violence and its necessity. Its time to bring the Wild West to architecture, attention all architects, get on your horses and ride.
Ole Bouman in his introductory piece “The Architecture of Destruction” starts framing this debate by suggesting that violence and conflict are now seen as inevitable and even taken for granted. Bouman tells us that through the specific targeting of our buildings, the goal is to incite outrage and fear as these targets are symbols of the opponent’s value system. He claims that architecture is not set up well to deal with despair or to place itself in a society which acknowledges the human condition as possibly a dangerous, fanatical and destructive force. One easily then makes the connection from architecture to its parents, the architects, and asks should architects take responsibility in considering the destruction of their buildings?
In a way they do. Consideration must be given to the gradual effects of gravity, the environment and the users so in this sense they consider the slow unbuilding but not necessarily the outright destruction of their buildings. This destruction might occur through acts of war or through other disaster.
What role then should we adopt as the contributors to the built world around us. Is it enough to merely recognize the targeted destruction of the buildings around us and the associated erasure of history and culture as well? Should we speak against it as creators/activists/preservationists and advocate its protection and exclusion from such treatment? Or should we go beyond this, take matters into our own hands and protect our own buildings. In thinking about this it leads me to consider the link from protected architecture to architecture as protection and we are back to the conversation about buildings as our own personal bunkers. Lets entertain the idea that significant social and cultural architecture should be protected and excluded from destruction during war. Its interesting to think then that in this case what you have created in essence is architecture as protection only instead of using four foot thick concrete walls, you are using the history and cultural importance as a shield. It’s a sticky situation to get around and for that reason probably why in most cases there is no such thing as untouchable architecture in the world of warfare.
So lets say then that there is no protection of our precious architectural achievements and that the architectural circle of life must continue unabated. In Ole Bouman’s aforementioned piece he makes a statement I find powerful. He says “Perhaps the most daring and at the same time uncanny position is for architects who devise strategies to cope with destruction by finding ways to deceive, ridicule or pervert it and in doing so possibly help to avoid it.” This I think is fantastic.
Niloufar Tajeri’s essay “Towards Non-destructive Aid” highlights the fact that relief architecture in response to conflict “negate and erase contexts” and that more often than not they are deployed temporarily but never are. The problem here is that this is the norm. The cookie cutter solution does not subvert the destruction which it responds to in any way. In Esther Charlesworth’s essay “Architects Should Act!” she makes a call for what she describes as roaming, collaborative, mobile agents to work outside traditional constraints. I think this would definitely take steps to address the problem that as architects we are not responding quick enough to the vacuum created by a post conflict situation.
Traditionally architects have thrived on post disaster situations due to opportunities for rebuilding. In this day and age, the architect’s role it seems has been relegated or by choice limited to maintaining an established image of an environment which already exists. In other cases it is to establish this same image in a location where it is at least is deemed safe & ready to accept it (ie. Dubai). What architects need to do is pounce on the opportunities created in post conflict scenarios despite the discomfort and embrace the potential to implement new non-western language (or western if its appropriate) and create something unique to the situation. This may require a more Macgyver (untraditional ad-hoc) methodology of design but the challenge should provide for interesting results. These unorthodox solutions could subvert the destruction and as a consequence devalue the violence and its necessity. Its time to bring the Wild West to architecture, attention all architects, get on your horses and ride.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Postopolis Recap
So its almost been a month, I figured I should probably recap The Architecture of Fear's participation in what was a great event. Take a look at the links below for other opinion on the day and the blogger panel specfically:
BLDGBLOG
Subtopia
and almost full coverage at City of Sound.
The conversation was a short one and pointed out most interstingly the lack of female bloggers at the event although as it was then pointed out that they are out there. Other conversation centered on the relation of new content to site hits and the beauty of anonymity in the blogging world. Post discussion drinks were had and the conversation picked up. Introductions were made, emails were exchanged, and the seeds for grand plans of collaboration were planted. I'm excited for some potential spin-offs in the future as a result.
BLDGBLOG
Subtopia
and almost full coverage at City of Sound.
The conversation was a short one and pointed out most interstingly the lack of female bloggers at the event although as it was then pointed out that they are out there. Other conversation centered on the relation of new content to site hits and the beauty of anonymity in the blogging world. Post discussion drinks were had and the conversation picked up. Introductions were made, emails were exchanged, and the seeds for grand plans of collaboration were planted. I'm excited for some potential spin-offs in the future as a result.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
RECAP: Davis+Virillio+Miessen+Colomina+Trüby
Often times I find myself working on something for long enough that when I realize how close I’ve gotten to it I need to pull my nose off the page. Sometimes a little perspective or retrospective is necessary. In my case this was literally accomplished during the installation of the GSAPP Year End Show exhibit. By being able to stand back and take it all in I was also able to critically examine some common threads of thought between the different authors I had been critiquing individually.
I want to begin with a connection made across Mike Davis and Paul Virillio. One of my favorite thoughts expressed by Davis was the need for us to adjust our perspective towards change and disaster. I like this because it’s not something that you commonly hear and because of the potential to view this as a slightly cynical position. You can just imagine a group of people whose homes were wiped off a mountainside in a mudslide reacting to someone saying “You should have seen it coming!” You never hear that because it’s insensitive, it’s insensitive but it’s true. Anyway, Virillio in his book “War and Cinema” makes a similar point in regards to military battle, “…the history of battle is primarily the history of radically changing fields of perception.” I’d like to bring these two thoughts on perspective and perception together by referencing Beatriz Colomina and her writing about the Underground Home. Colomina illustrates the conversion of the home to a battlefield through its use of technology pioneered by military use. If she argues that the home is now a battlefield then it too might be subject to radically changing fields of perception as Virillio states. Danger from disaster, war and even around the home all require regular reevaluation of perspective and contextual understanding.
In contrast to any kind of adaptive contextual understanding, all the authors at some point make comment about either boundaries, borders or definitions. Davis is especially critical in an urban planning sense about policing through architectural boundaries whether it’s through physically gated communities or by police controlled zoning laws. Stephan Trüby claims that its difficult to define the difference between what architecture is and what could be the world around it. Virillio speaks about war without war as the state acts with military power without defining it as war in a game of political semantics. I think this tendency towards the definition of terms, boundaries, edges, etc, relates to the larger concept of outside versus inside, or often times as us versus them. This language of division is essential in defining defense, fortification (which only exists with two sides of a wall) and conflict (which needs two sides). Inside versus Outside is the architectural representation of combat and conflict. Davis claims that by establishing hard boundaries or reversing the traditional roles of these spaces that they have become marginalized (he cites the new suburban streetscape as a sewer for cars devoid of human life). Colomina outlines the extreme interiorization and exclusion of the exterior in the home. These are signs of our attempt to tame the exterior and domesticate it. If using the Underground Home as an example then Trüby certainly has a point about the fuzzy definition of architecture.
Markus Miessen’s essay on the architecture of deprivation also demonstrates the language of inside and outside as he speaks about the detachment of the exterior and the introverted effects of space designed to deprive. In this case the fear is generated from within. According to Trüby’s explanation of fear the internal location of fear qualifies it as risk versus an external origin of fear which qualifies as danger. In all of these examples it becomes apparent that when looking at the role of architecture in relation to the effects of fear one of its primary roles is that of separation. This notion can have many different labels; defense, fortification, protection, zoning, interior, exterior, public, private, secured, unsecured, or opaque and transparent.
Finally I want to touch on two smaller themes I found interesting. Both the mention of Scale and the Culture of War intrigued me. I thought Colomina’s essay on the Underground Home was interesting because of it’s reduction of the scale to the home. The home was one of the first places where the military apparatus was introduced to the common man/woman through appliances and the scale of the individual. Trüby addresses the scale of the individual towards the end of his essay on 5 Codes with some thoughts on a pervasive protected space which he envisioned at a personal scale.
Both Trüby and Colomina also speak to the Culture of War, Trüby in his discussion of classical society and its seamless integration of the celebration of war into its architecture and Colomina in her observation of the home as engaged in combat. I’ve heard the argument that Culture and War do not mix and to that I’d quickly direct anyone towards these writings and authors. War is heavily engrained in our culture, whether it’s classical society or today; look at any classical triumphal architecture or the current pop-culture use of camouflage. These are obvious examples and the list goes on.
I want to begin with a connection made across Mike Davis and Paul Virillio. One of my favorite thoughts expressed by Davis was the need for us to adjust our perspective towards change and disaster. I like this because it’s not something that you commonly hear and because of the potential to view this as a slightly cynical position. You can just imagine a group of people whose homes were wiped off a mountainside in a mudslide reacting to someone saying “You should have seen it coming!” You never hear that because it’s insensitive, it’s insensitive but it’s true. Anyway, Virillio in his book “War and Cinema” makes a similar point in regards to military battle, “…the history of battle is primarily the history of radically changing fields of perception.” I’d like to bring these two thoughts on perspective and perception together by referencing Beatriz Colomina and her writing about the Underground Home. Colomina illustrates the conversion of the home to a battlefield through its use of technology pioneered by military use. If she argues that the home is now a battlefield then it too might be subject to radically changing fields of perception as Virillio states. Danger from disaster, war and even around the home all require regular reevaluation of perspective and contextual understanding.
In contrast to any kind of adaptive contextual understanding, all the authors at some point make comment about either boundaries, borders or definitions. Davis is especially critical in an urban planning sense about policing through architectural boundaries whether it’s through physically gated communities or by police controlled zoning laws. Stephan Trüby claims that its difficult to define the difference between what architecture is and what could be the world around it. Virillio speaks about war without war as the state acts with military power without defining it as war in a game of political semantics. I think this tendency towards the definition of terms, boundaries, edges, etc, relates to the larger concept of outside versus inside, or often times as us versus them. This language of division is essential in defining defense, fortification (which only exists with two sides of a wall) and conflict (which needs two sides). Inside versus Outside is the architectural representation of combat and conflict. Davis claims that by establishing hard boundaries or reversing the traditional roles of these spaces that they have become marginalized (he cites the new suburban streetscape as a sewer for cars devoid of human life). Colomina outlines the extreme interiorization and exclusion of the exterior in the home. These are signs of our attempt to tame the exterior and domesticate it. If using the Underground Home as an example then Trüby certainly has a point about the fuzzy definition of architecture.
Markus Miessen’s essay on the architecture of deprivation also demonstrates the language of inside and outside as he speaks about the detachment of the exterior and the introverted effects of space designed to deprive. In this case the fear is generated from within. According to Trüby’s explanation of fear the internal location of fear qualifies it as risk versus an external origin of fear which qualifies as danger. In all of these examples it becomes apparent that when looking at the role of architecture in relation to the effects of fear one of its primary roles is that of separation. This notion can have many different labels; defense, fortification, protection, zoning, interior, exterior, public, private, secured, unsecured, or opaque and transparent.
Finally I want to touch on two smaller themes I found interesting. Both the mention of Scale and the Culture of War intrigued me. I thought Colomina’s essay on the Underground Home was interesting because of it’s reduction of the scale to the home. The home was one of the first places where the military apparatus was introduced to the common man/woman through appliances and the scale of the individual. Trüby addresses the scale of the individual towards the end of his essay on 5 Codes with some thoughts on a pervasive protected space which he envisioned at a personal scale.
Both Trüby and Colomina also speak to the Culture of War, Trüby in his discussion of classical society and its seamless integration of the celebration of war into its architecture and Colomina in her observation of the home as engaged in combat. I’ve heard the argument that Culture and War do not mix and to that I’d quickly direct anyone towards these writings and authors. War is heavily engrained in our culture, whether it’s classical society or today; look at any classical triumphal architecture or the current pop-culture use of camouflage. These are obvious examples and the list goes on.
Postopolis! Update
So the schedule has been finalized. I'll be part of a panel discussion with bloggers Alec Appelbaum, Abe Burmeister, John Hill, Miss Representation, Aaron Plewke, Enrique Ramirez, Quilian Riano, Chad Smith, and others to be announced beginning around 5pm on Saturday June 2nd. Hope to see you there!
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