Architect as urban explorer (2 links)

Independently this week, we have written elsewhere on the idea of the architect as urban explorer.

Edwin’s piece ‘Intellectual Disaster Tourism‘ is featured over on Archined, where he casts the architect as contemporary urban archaeologist, continually seeking the ‘perverse pleasure’ of studying the next city in decline. With Detroit as his example, hollowed out by mass unemployment leading to urban decay, Edwin cites a ‘reversal of roles’, whereby

‘the affluent west receives intellectual development aid; the second and third worlds supply the apparently over-developed, trouble-free Europe with challenging cases for education and research. Young academics are scarcely aroused or stirred by problems within the borders of their own country any more. They’ve got to be more spectacular, more exotic, more extreme.’

Similarly, Rory and Todd Reisz have written of ‘The Architect as a City Critic’ over on the Huffington Post, as part of a new weekly blog looking at all things Al Manakh. Here, the recent emphasis on ‘research’ as a precondition to building is exposed as a competition of one-upmanship, with architects travelling further and further into ‘unexplored’ territory to stake their claim and expose the strange spatial experiments to the world. Focusing specifically on the Gulf region of the Middle East, it nevertheless emphasises the importance of understanding the rapid urbanisation of Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Riyadh, too often dismissed as unsustainable folly.

What both posts agree upon is that, whatever the motive, architects must immerse themselves in and interpret the wider world in order to design for it.

‘If you want to fuck with the falcons, you’d better learn how to fly’

A brief roundup of ‘extra/ordinary’, the Australian Institute of Architects national conference, Sydney, April 2010

Although delivered simply as an amusing anecdote, when taken out of context, this crude piece of wisdom from the elder statesman Peter Corrigan seemed to capture the essence of ‘extra/ordinary’. This was a conference about engaged practitioners; engaged in the ‘ordinary’ messy reality while still managing to scratch out something ‘extra’. Architects presented innovative (and often idealistic) approaches to complex problems, while not afraid to go beyond the discipline to engage with the pragmatics of financing, policy or public engagement in order to see them executed.

Creative director Mel Dodd’s vision for the conference included the words ‘contingency’, ‘compromise’, ‘complexity’, ‘concession’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘constraint’ – a clear endorsement for tentative conclusions and grappling with the real as opposed to the confident presentations of crisp and complete buildings by architectural stars as we have seen at past conferences. This is at once a reflection of our ‘no frills’ economic times – an end to the age of excess – but also a statement of urgency for the profession. If we continue to hitch our future on offering rarefied aesthetics instead of participation in the complex mechanisms of the city, our days are surely numbered.

However, these words of vision came back to haunt the organisers, who were forced to make compromises, contingencies and concessions as Iceland’s volcano left five of the eight international speakers grounded in European airspace. This served to highlight Australia’s location on the other side of the world, far away from the global centers of discourse. Although most were able to present via satellite with few technical hiccups, as is the cliché of conferences generally – it’s not what is presented that matters, but what is said in the bar afterward – a layer that was unfortunately missed.

One of those who did make it was Alejandro Aravena of the Chilean practice Elemental, who presented a number of community housing projects which challenge established methods of financing and delivery to produce a more equitable and quality end product. For the Quinta Monroy housing in Iquique, Elemental worked within the government subsidy for housing provision of around $10,000 per house, which is only enough to build a tiny 40m2 house. Instead of accepting this limitation and perpetuating sub-standard outcomes, they instead reframed the problem, to build as Aravena describes, ‘half of a good house’. This is done in a way that encourages infill and extension in the future when the family can afford the materials themselves. A genuinely innovative and demonstrably beneficial built project.

Elemental’s Quinta Monroy housing in Iquique, Chile.

This ethically-motivated project contrasted sharply with the other projects Aravena presented which were planned for Switzerland, Germany and the United States. Despite claiming that the practice tries ‘to approach design problems in the same way in developing countries as in the developed world … to achieve the same limit of irreducibility’, with a seat on the Pritzker jury, and a building in construction on the Vitra campus adjacent to the fire station by Zaha Hadid, Aravena makes no secret of his ambition to join the A-list.

This seeming contradiction is highlighted further by the fact that Elemental is supported by the Chilean oil company Copec, who donate to the practice as part of their philanthropic investments. Although many assume this relationship to be sinister, could this instead signal an innovative practice model for the support of research into social projects? Just as Aravena upended the subsidy system in order to provide a full house with only half the budget, so his practice is also supported through an unlikely partnership. Both require vision beyond the ordinary.

Also flying the flag for the socially-engaged, research-driven approach was architect Teddy Cruz, who gave an express version of his excellent ‘Radicalizing the Local’ lecture via satellite. From a shocking analysis of the extreme disparities in wealth and opportunity that span the US–Mexico border, Cruz projected an architecture that could begin to address these social, economic and policy-related issues through built form.

Despite the obvious similarities in terms of territories and concerns, Aravena didn’t take kindly to my comparison of his work with that of Cruz, simply stating ‘I wouldn’t like to compare myself with him, because I haven’t seen any built work.’ I also have to admit, that while being incredibly impressed when I first came across the work of Cruz, by the third viewing I left feeling disappointed that his exceptional analysis and proposals have yet to be tested in reality. Of course, this need not be the responsibility of the urban researcher, but perhaps there are other architects who could adopt this thinking and deploy it as a case study? Without it, this incredible research is unlikely to make a difference where it is needed most.

Teddy Cruz, presenting via satellite.

In contrast to the earnestness of Cruz and Aravena, the inclusion of Sam Jacob (replacing his partner Sean Griffiths) from the UK firm FAT seemed a curious choice for a conference decidedly focused on the ‘ordinary’. But of course, this is precisely the territory FAT revel in, mining the language and peculiarities of ‘common’ taste – a kind of urban vernacular that dispenses with sober sincerity in lieu of humour and irony. We were treated to the chequered brick patterns of the Islington Square social housing development – supposedly derived from a dandy’s socks – and the digital mash up of a Gothic source book for the Sint Lucas school in Boxtel, Netherlands.

FAT’s Sint Lucas School, Boxtel, 2006

Not everyone supported this approach – again, Aravena showed his teeth (when I provoked him), claiming that ‘I don’t buy from that presentation that that is the taste of the people, it was extremely exaggerated, a bit ironic, and I don’t think you can play with these kinds of issues, [social housing] is a serious thing.’ This comment – and other backchat from delegates to the same effect – seemed to capture a major rift in the reception of the ideas presented; namely that social ambitions ought to be expressed with a corresponding language of earnestness. Has our Modernist training led us architects to measure authenticity and honesty by image not impact?

The doubters must have missed Jacob’s excellent potted history of half-timbering, where he traced the source of this so-called ‘authentic’ British style – revered by architectural conservatives such as Prince Charles – as one imported from Saxony, and originally built in England to remind these German invaders of home. Far from being vernacular, half-timbering in England is therefore nostalgic and referential at its very core. FAT pursue this superficial heritage to its extreme conclusion by creating a half-timbered font – pure communication – and use it to write nothing less than ‘Kill the Modernist Within’.

Indeed, hidden behind FAT’s fancy façades are buildings that are making a real difference in improving communities, a point reinforced in the presentation by Tom Bloxham of Urban Splash, the developer of the Islington Square project. FAT’s work brought much needed humour (and critical rigour) to a conference line-up bordering on high-horsery, and a reminder not to confuse the image of ethics or honesty with the actual social impact on the ground.

These speakers – and the many others I’ve overlooked here – represent a renewal of architecture’s instrumentality in dealing with social concerns. Our heritage and training in a spatial and aesthetic discipline is being augmented by a need to engage simultaneously on social, environmental and political levels. Our marriage to the market of past decades is being tempered by a broader responsibility for the city, and an ambition to take into account those needs beyond the commissioning client’s. It’s time we all learned how to fly.

Extra/ordinary conference site
Interviews with Sam Jacob and Alejandro Aravena for The Architects

Revising Practice

From my archive, an essay I wrote in 2006, which is relevant to the theme of this blog. The essay deals with the discrepancies between theory and practice , and the role of criticality in this relation. Two of the main source texts which functioned as the point of departure for The Projective Landscape conference are analyzed and compared in respect to these themes.

Revising Practice;
Strategies and attitudes for architecture in the next century.

Stan Allen’s endeavor in reformulating architectural practice and theory in his book “Practice, Architecture, Technique and Representation”[1] is not a solo undertaking. In recent years a lot of academics in the field of architecture have done the same. All trying to define a new way of practicing architecture and theory, all slightly different but with many similarities in the direction where the look for answers. This search for the definition of contemporary and future architectural practice is part of a bigger debate. A debate in the United States around notions such as ‘post-critical’[2] and ‘projective practice’ . The American debate however seems to be extremely geared towards a reaction against the architecture and theory of Peter Eisenman. Although the debate is colored with this sort of motives it persists to be a very interesting developments and appears to be putting forward a fruitful strategy for architectural practice for the 21st century.

In this essay I would like to put Stan Allen’s “Introduction, Practice vs, Project” from the book “Practice, Architecture, Technique and Representation” [3] in context of this debate, mainly through the article “Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism” [4]. This article is much more specifically taking position against the a generation embodied by the work of Peter Eisenman and K. Michael Hays and has a lot of overlaps in formulating the alternative that the new generation (here personified by Stan Allen, Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting) is proposing to counter the dominant model so far (I have to note that this debate and generation conflict is mostly taking place within the American academia). But both writings leave one question unanswered: “What about architectural critique?” The issue of critique was very central in the work of Eisenman and Hays and an entire group of architects and writers of their generation. All taking ‘a’ critical stance towards society, capitalism and other societal structures. But how will this notion of critique be part of the formulation of architectural practice for the next century.

One of the issues that stands at the root of this debate is the troublesome relationship between architectural practice and theory. Allen does a very good job explaining how these entities are positioned towards one and other and why they cause a problem.

“Theory and practice are (…) equally rule-bound: theory devoted to the production of rules, practice relegated to the implementation of those same rules (…) Theory’s promise is to make up for what practice lacks: to confer unity on the disparate procedures of design and construction.”[5] These quotes summarize the situation as is predominantly seen and already gives us a clue about what the problem is. “In this view, theory tends to envelope and protect practice, while practice excuses theory from the obligation to engage reality. Design is reduced to the implementation of rules set down elsewhere.(…) Theory imposes regulated ideological criteria over the undisciplined heterogeneity of the real, while the unstated assumptions of conventional practice enforce known solutions and safe repetitions. In both cases, small differences accumulate, but never add up to make a difference.”[6]
Theory and practice are captured by one and other and in this situation both incapable of engaging reality, this is a sad and dumb situation according to Allen. This does not mean; let’s get rid of one of them to liberate the other. Allen proposes a revision of both definitions. So he reformulates practice as well as theory as ‘material practice’ and ‘hermeneutic practice’. Two practices that work more closely together in engaging reality. Hermeneutic practice understands the present through analyzing the past and material practice analyses the present “in order to project transformations into the future” [7]. In this new relationship, architecture is not the object of theory and architecture does not need theory as legitimation for defining the form in which it manifests itself. “What is proposed instead is a notion of practice flexible enough to engage the complexity of the real, yet sufficiently secure in its own technical and conceptual bases to go beyond the simple reflection of the real as given” [8]

To understand what exactly is meant by these terms hermeneutic and material practice it is perhaps more interesting if we compare them with a third term ‘projective practice’ which aims at a very similar redefinition of practice and places these ‘redefinitions’ in the context of the current debate described earlier. The term ‘projective’ is put forward in the article ‘Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism’ by Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting. When Somol & Whiting introduce the term ‘projective’. They also address the problem of the theory-practice distinction but in a far more indirect way, in their argument these are still very much intertwined. The article starts off with the heading “from critical to projective”. This needs some further explanation. The notion of ‘critical’ to which is referred in this article originates from how K. Michael Hays uses it in his article “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form”. In this article Hays uses the architecture of Mies van der Rohe as a paradigm to explain how through dialectics architecture can occupy a in between status between two contradicting positions. Architecture can do this through using its autonomy, detaching itself from reality but at the same time reflecting it. “For Hays, Mies’ architecture situates itself ‘between the efficient representation of preexisting cultural values and the wholly detached autonomy of an abstract formal system.’ [9] This status of being in the world yet resistant to it is attained by the way the architectural object materially reflects its specific temporal and spatial context, as well as the way it serves as trace of its productive systems.” [10] In this way ,Hays explains, Mies’ architecture can be critical, because it has positioned itself at the necessary distance to be critical through architectural means of its materiality through which it can reflect on contemporary reality. Even though architecture is produced by reality and the way a building is built is a trace of that reality, autonomy is a form of resistance to this reality. This piece of theory and the formulation of ‘critical architecture’ had such an influence that “What for Hays was then an exceptional practice, has now been rendered an everyday fact of life.” [11] This is the role of theory which Allen is referring to: “The enlightened discourse of theory (scientific, and generaliazable) is contrasted to the mechanical techniques of practice. Today this view persists in the form of a mandate for ‘critical’ practices that would hold the individual instances of practice accountable to ideological criteria.” [12] Practice held prisoner by criteria of a theory that refuses to fully engage reality and instead detaches itself from reality through retreating into formalistic autonomy, an almost autistic architecture.

Both Somol & Whiting as Allen are not content with this state of affairs. And propose a more open, flexible approach to reality through an architectural practice that is confident in its own modes of operation and intrinsic disciplinary knowledge. In contrast to architectural autonomy, Somol & Whiting state: “If critical dialectics established architecture’s autonomy as a means of defining architecture’s field of discipline, a Doppler architecture acknowledges the adaptive synthesis of architecture’s many contingencies. Rather than isolating a singular autonomy, the Doppler focuses upon the effect and exchanges of architecture’s inherent multiplicities: material, program, writing, atmosphere, form, technologies, economics, etc.” [13] With the ‘Doppler effect’ notion Somol & Whiting want to counter the rigid position of architecture positioned ‘in between’ the two oppositions (culture and form) that constitute a dialectical framework. In the Doppler situation the (op)positions are constantly moving and changing with a relative velocity to one and other. This reflects a much more flexible and larger space for architecture to maneuver in and to choose it’s own position at any instance. “More significantly, practice is not a static construct, but is defined precisely by its movements and trajectories. There is no theory, there is no practice. There are only practices, which consist in action and agency. They unfold in time, and their repetitions are never identical. It is for this reason that the ‘know-how’ of practice (whether of writing or design) is a continual source of innovation and change.” [14] The hard distinction between a theory that instructs how a practice should operate have disappeared in this formulation, they are now equally important practices, existing next to each other and informing each other. “Ironically, practice (usually assumed unproblematically identified with reality) will discover new uses for theory only as it moves closer to the complex and problematic character of the real itself.” [15]

The definition of architectural practice might now seem to be one with a very vague outline. But Allen and Somol & Whiting also sketch a new perimeter for architectural practice. “Architecture’s limits are understood pragmatically –as resource and an opportunity- and not a defining boundary. The practitioner looks for performative multiplicities in the interplay between an open catalog of procedures and a stubbornly indifferent reality.” [16] “A projective architecture does not make a claim for expertise outside the field of architecture nor does it limit its field of expertise to an absolute definition of architecture. Design is what keeps architecture from slipping into a cloud of heterogeneity. It delineates the fluctuating borders of architecture’s disciplinarity and expertise. So when architects engage topics that are seemingly outside of architecture’s historically-defined scope –questions of economics or civic politics, for example- they don’t engage those topics as experts on economics or civic politics but, rather as experts on design and how design may affect economics or politics. They engage these other fields as experts on design’s relationship to those other disciplines, rather than as critics.” [17] The limits of architecture are not clearly defined in both quotes, but what is very clear is that the practice and field of architecture is defined from within the discipline itself. From a ‘historically-defined’ body of knowledge and an ‘open catalog of procedures’ new knowledge and procedures will emerge, when architectural practice is confronted with the real. But what is overseen here is that the real imposes limits on architecture as well. Liberating architectural discourse of Marxists rhetorics and the architecture as an a priori critical practice is one thing. But shaping this ‘new’ practice from the inherent knowledge of the discipline is something else, and a paramount question. The argument of returning to the body of knowledge intrinsic to the architectural discipline can be interpreted in two very different ways. One is a revaluation of the craft of making buildings and spaces, the effects of materiality , tactility and spatial atmospheres. The other is regarding the operations in architectural practice abstractly, in ways of architectural thinking, design tools and strategies. These operation can be applied on any problem and the product of the process can be anything, so not necessary a building or a spatial design. Architectural or design thinking as a body of knowledge and a set of tools and operation which can address a multitude of issues. But history teaches us that the nuance of both paradigms existing next to each other under the flag of ‘architecture’ is unlikely.

But what about critique? Critique on architecture’s position society and how it should or should not operate in this relationship? The ‘critical practices’ very specifically addressed the problems of the relations and structures in contemporary society. With the negating autonomy of Eisenman as prime example of the American version of ‘Critical’. How would a projective or material practice address these issues of societal criticism? Somol & Whiting leave this question open ended with their closing statement : “Setting out this projective program does not necessarily entail a capitulation to market forces, but actually respects or reorganizes multiple economies, ecologies, information systems, and social groups.” [18] Respecting reality seems like a very sensible thing to do, and a lot less naïve then believing in the critical strategies rendered capable of refusing or changing society. But the problem remains, if architecture doesn’t take a certain distance, how can it be critical. How can you be truly critical of the systems of which you yourself are dependent on. Allen has maybe a more fruitful strategy to address this problem. In this arguments he uses the example of ‘the walker in the city’ used by De Certeau to illustrate his story how one can improvise with a present system, just like the geometric spaces of the city can not dictate the trajectory of the walker. “De Certeau describes a series of ‘tricky and stubborn procedures that elude discipline without being outside the field in which it is exercised.’ [19] He has confidence that there will always exist fissures and cracks that provide openings for tactical reworkings. Making opportunistic use of these footholds, the creativity of everyday practice can often outwit the rigid structures of imposed order, or out-maneuver the weighty apparatus of institutional control” [20] Allen describes with the use of De Certeau how one can outwit the structures in which one is embedded. The strategy proposed could be characterized as embedded critique, but it has to be said that this is a very different position and less credible to state critique from. But the Marxist critical position is not feasible either from within architectural practice. The main problem with critique in our contemporary society is that it is largely internalized within our societal systems. Marxism always poses a critique on how the whole of capitalist society is organized, there are very few positions from where you can pose a credible critique like that and it has to be a position without any appearance of conflicting interests. The academic world has always been a haven for critical thinking like this. But architectural practice is deeply intertwined with all kinds of interests, and its even one the architect’s many capacities to work with them in a smart way. Architecture is also a business, so practice as a vocation of academic critical thinking won’t get any bread on the table, and even if it could your critique can never entirely credible, because your client pays for it. Critique in the Marxist sense as part of any business practice is problematic. But this doesn’t directly mean that you capitulate to all market force. Everywhere in business there are ideals, principles and societal criticisms which drive enterprises. But this form of idealism which also has to be pragmatic and has to be commercially viable is aimed at concrete results and not at reflection on mankinds existential condition in our post-industrial globalized society.

This brings us back to the academia, the school for architecture. Where theoretical discourse has its real influence on practice by training the next generation of architects. In this sense the school is critical in how architects think about what architects and architecture should do and its meaning in society at large.
Here I would like to make a point. Architectural theory as teached in schools in general generates the image that architecture should be employed to intellectually reflect on the existential conditions of contemporary mankind, heavily drawing on ideas from philosophy. This together with the dogma of architects being artists creates the climate on architecture schools that the ideal architecture should be a high-cultural-intellectual-practice, with the architect as central author/artist or guru. Here I am missing a nuance in a way thinking which can engage reality more directly, instead of through intellectual culture production. The paradox of the architecture school is that is doesn’t demystifies architectural design, but actually mystifies architectural design. The idea that architects are also entrepreneurs, which in my opinion is the most fruitful way to constitute new forms of practice and reinvent what architecture can do in engaging reality, seems to be an idea which is unable to enter the academic world and become an integral part in the thinking about architecture. In other words you could describe this again as problematic relation between the sphere of theory (being the school) and that of practice (being the office).
Nevertheless I think both texts of Allen and Somol & Whiting are signals that support the idea that theory and practice should work more closely as two equal but not similar practices. Theory and practice should formulate what architectures operations, tools are and together plot out a strategy to conquer new territories where ‘architecture’ can be applied by architects which see themselves as thinkers, designers and entrepreneurs.

___

1 Stan Allen, Practice: architecture, technique and representation, (London: Routledge, 2000)
2 ‘post critical’ was one of the buzzwords at ‘The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century’ Conference held at Columbia University on the 28-19th of March 2003. Bernard Tschumi, Irene Cheng (editors), The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century, (New York, The Monacelli Press, 2003)
3 Stan Allen, Practice: architecture, technique and representation, (London: Routledge, 2000), pp.13-25
4 Robert Somol & Sarah Whiting, “Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism”, Perspecta 33, The Yale architectural Journal, (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002), pp.72-77
5 Stan Allen, Practice: architecture, technique and representation, (London: Routledge, 2000), pp.15
6 Ibid.,pp.16
7 Ibid.,pp.18
8 Ibid.,pp.16
9 K. Michael Hays, “Critical Architecure: Between Culture and Form”, Perspecta 21, The Yale architectural Journal, (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1984), pp.15
10 Robert Somol & Sarah Whiting, “Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism”, Perspecta 33, The Yale architectural Journal, (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002), pp.74
11 Ibid.,pp.73
12 Stan Allen, Practice: architecture, technique and representation, (London: Routledge, 2000), pp.15
13 Robert Somol & Sarah Whiting, “Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism”, Perspecta 33,
The Yale architectural Journal, (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002), pp.75
14 Stan Allen, Practice: architecture, technique and representation, (London: Routledge, 2000), pp.17
15 Ibid., pp.17
16 Ibid., pp.18
17 Robert Somol & Sarah Whiting, “Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism”, Perspecta 33,
The Yale architectural Journal, (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002), pp.75
18 Ibid., pp.77
19 Michel de Certau, The Practices of Everyday Life, trans. Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988), pp.96
20 Stan Allen, Practice: architecture, technique and representation, (London: Routledge, 2000), pp.23

The Architectural Brain

a short fiction story published in Kaleidoscope #5 (Feb-Mar 2010)

[images: Drawings from SITELESS: 1001 Building Forms, The MIT Press, 2008 François Blanciak]

In The Architectural Cognition Laboratory, research is done on one of the most remarkable professional tribes known to man: architects. A team of neurobiologists, psychologists, ethnographers and an odd-ball theorist are interested in this tribe’s social and cultural practices, most importantly to reveal how the architect thinks. In the lab, an architectural studio has been recreated containing a group of architects working under the regime of a design competition. The Big Brother house for architects have eagerly surrendered themselves to the familiar practice of competition; the reward is vague but suggests the celebration of genius for those who win. All the ingredients are there to keep the architects entangled in the dynamics of their game. With regular intervals the subjects are taken apart so a researcher can interview him or her. 15 is called to come to the completely white room. 15 sits down at a table and hears a researcher’s voice over the speaker.

“15, I would like to ask you a question” the researchers voice said calmly “Can you tell me what your thoughts are made of?” “Hahaha. You expect me to just tell you this?” 15 said surprisingly. “Why not? Have you never wondered about how you think, what it is you think with?”, “Well no, not really, I never consciously thought about my own thinking that much. Isn’t it your job to find out?” “Yes, but I don’t have your brain. So you’ll have to help me out a bit here” “But how? I hardly understand what sort of answer you’re expecting. What do you mean when you talk about what ‘it’ is that you think with?” “Let’s say that when you’re designing, what then are the things you are manipulating?” “I guess I manipulate drawings, images, sketches, foam, 3D models, diagrams; those sort of things, but they are outside my brain” “Is their a difference, if it’s in or outside your brain?” “I think so” “What can you do in your brain that you cannot do on paper?” “Well I can imagine in my mind what a space should be like. Or I have a shape or organization in mind, but I can only go so far in the mind. It’s like a universe of half-formed thoughts, impressions, memories, shapes, patterns and structures that seem disparate” “good, go on” “ok, errr but I can only make sense of all these disparate thoughts when I start drawing, modeling, trying to get my premature associations and connections between these thought out of my brain into the world as a sketch or something. Then I have it before my eyes. Then I can progress. It’s kind of like, as if the paper and my pen are an external memory drive, like external RAM, outsourced working memory. Ha! Never thought about it like that” “Very good 15, tell me more about how this process of progression works” ” I guess that when I have something on paper it makes room for new thoughts. My head is like a hotel that can only hold so many thoughts at a time” The fluorescent light in the room flickered; a buzz slowly intensified and the lights popped. The researcher laughed “divine intervention … , we’re getting too close to the truth.”

Finally, an Ethnography of Design

Albena Yaneva (knowingly or not) took up Reyner Banham’s challenge as formulated 20 years ago in his Black Box essay; to venture into what architects actually ‘do’ and to do this through psychological and anthropological research into the messy reality of the office and observing the banal and mundane processes of design. This is what Albena Yaneva did and 010 publishers recently published her ethnographic research (which she did from 2002 till 2004) on the office life and design practice of OMA: Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An Ethnography of Design [buy]. Unlike the more traditional sociological research in architectural practice such as Dana Cuff’s Architecture: The Story of a Practice [buy], Yaneva has based her understanding of the social on Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT).

“ANT maps relations that are simultaneously material (between things) and “semiotic” (between concepts). It assumes that many relations are both material and “semiotic”. For example, the interactions in a bank involve both people, their ideas, and technologies.

Together these form a single network.
Actor-network theory tries to explain how material–semiotic networks come together to act as a whole (for example, a bank is both a network and an actor that hangs together, and for certain purposes acts as a single entity). As a part of this it may look at explicit strategies for relating different elements together into a network so that they form an apparently coherent whole.
According to actor-network theory, such actor-networks are potentially transient, existing in a constant making and re-making [1]. This means that relations need to be repeatedly “performed” or the network will dissolve. (The bank clerks need to come to work each day, and the computers need to keep on running.) They also assume that networks of relations are not intrinsically coherent, and may indeed contain conflicts (there may be poor labor relations, or computer software may be incompatible).” - Wikipdia (28-3-2010)

She has chosen to report on her research object, the office life and design practice at OMA , in the format of short stories composed of anecdotes, interviews and office stories. So, no academic language and heavy referencing, but staying close to the language, operations and materials on the office floor. Yaneva makes this deliberate choice based on a distinction she makes between meta- and infra-reflexive discourse, a distinction developed by Latour. “Meta-reflexivity is based on the idea that the most deleterious effect of a text is to be naively believed by the reader as in some way relating to a referent out there. Reflexivity is supposed to counteract this effect by rendering the text unfit for normal consumption  (which often means unreadable). This accepts as given that the readers are naïve believers, that there is such a thing as a normal consumption, that people easily believe what they read, and finally that believing is always to relate an account to some referent ‘out there.’ This is a very naïve set of beliefs in the naïve beliefs of readers.”( Bruno Latour in The Politics of Explanation: an Alternative [pdf]) “I prefer to follow an infra-reflexive approach that goes against this common belief by asking no privilege for the account at hand. This exercise in infra-reflexive writing can be seen as a test of the short story genre in design studies. In the accounts presented here, architects and their models are free and active anthropological projects, full of life, and ready to take part in an intriguing story; design process appears as a reflexive and responsive event.” - Yaneva Albena

What follows are accessible stories about office life, the trajectory of design objects through the office space, with simple illustrative examples, experiences of individual designers. The drawback of Yaneva’s approach is that the there is a lot of repetition in the text, the importance of the foam-model environment is stressed over and over again. Nonetheless, the book contains many revealing anecdotes and insightful interviews, also the restraint from academic referencing is a nice experience and makes it a quick and accessible read.

For me personally Yaneva’s work is special, because she really did the research I at one point in my graduation project at TU Delft had in mind. That is, to do a more or less ethnographic research in an architecture office based on a grounded theory method (which has some affinity with ANT). I eventually did a comparative literature research and wrote a theory [pdf]. One of my main inspirations was Donald Schön, as was Yaneva’s, since Schön was most interested in the perspective and experience of the designer him/herself, and thus also in working on a theory which would fit that experience. A theory that would be recognizable to architects, and not exclusively for one specific type of practice, or from only one point of view. So I’m very happy with Yaneva’s work! She writes:

“The common feature of all stories is that they all account for the nature of design invention; the latter is not reduced here to an abstract concept of creation or construction. Instead, I tackle it as something that revolves into concrete actions and practices: in collective rituals, techniques, habits and skills ingrained by training and daily repetition, in reuse of materials and recycling of historical knowledge and foam chunks. It is also a very fragile process - when a building is in the making and as long as it exists as a scale model, its existence is very tentative, very frail. At any moment in design process it can live or it can die, it can merge into something else, it can be reused, recollected. That is, a view of design as constituted from the inside; it stems from the experience of making.” - Yaneva Albena

What I found in Yaneva’s stories are illustrations and elaborations on many of my own theoretical ideas. In a series of posts that will follow I will elaborate on this. To be expected are posts on C.S.Peirce’s Diagrammatic Reasoning, illustrated by some of Yaneva’s anecdotes and observations, as well as an elaboration on the rhetoric behind the Seattle Central Library into which Yaneva provides some different angles on how this supposedly ’super-logical’ building came to be.

Banham would be pleased to read Yaneva’s ethnographic account of the ‘tribe’ of architects housed in their ‘tribal longhouse’ on the Heer Bokkelweg, especially when he would read about Olga’s dance.

“Watch Olga as she is seized by something unexpected: she starts straying in the office with the new NATO model in her hands. Is there a design idea that precedes the shape we see as we follow Olga in her excited dance through the office, showing the model that holds the idea to tell the architects from other project bubbles? No, no one can claim there is an abstract idea that first appears in the creator’s mind, and is later embedded, incorporated, materialized in a shape. The idea emerges as inseparable from sensible matter; it has an objective locus.” - Yaneva Albena

Something of the likes of a ritual almost happens in the office, Olga is exited by a ‘discovery’ and wants to share her excitement. Also it happens to her, it’s not a preconceived concept in the mind that just needs to be drawn or made. If there is anything of a mystical nature happening in architectural design it happens to the designer, and is not done by the designer. The locus of ideas is to a large extent outside the architects brain, and heavily influenced by the possibilities and limits of the tools and materials architects use in their studio. Models are never thrown away, architectural inventions (remember the patents in Content?) are cherished and constitute the laboratory architects works in. All these ideas, patterns, devices, parti or concepts materialized either as models, drawings or pixels, in other words this is the external hard-drive of the architectural brain, this is the stuff architect think with.

A review of Yaneva’s book at Archined (March 15 2010) : Blue Foam

Albena Yaneva, Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An Ethnography of Design, o10 publishers 2009, p. 128, € 19,50, ISBN 987 90 6450 714 4