Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture

281 Pages·2013·6.166 MB·English

by  Rory Hyde

Rory Hyde
futuRe
pRactice
conversatio
ns
from
the edge of
architecture
2012
i foreword: Dan Hill 6
ii introduction 16
iii endnotes 269
iv image credits 271
v contributor biographies 272
vi index 274
vii imprint page and credits 279
tHe MaSSiVe cHaNGeR 26
Bruce Mau
tHe ciVic eNtRepReNeuR 42
indy Johar 00:/
tHe wHole-eaRtH aRcHitect 56
Reinier de Graaf & laura Baird aMo
tHe DouBle aGeNt 72
Mel Dodd muf_aus
tHe HiStoRiaN of tHe pReSeNt 86
wouter Vanstiphout crimson
tHe uRBaN actiViSt 102
camila Bustamante
tHe coNtRactual iNNoVatoR 112
Steve ashton aRM
tHe NeaR futuRe iNVeNtoR 124
Matt webb BeRG
tHe StRateGic DeSiGNeR 134
Bryan Boyer Helsinki Design lab
tHe MaNaGeMeNt tHiNkeRS 148
todd Reisz on consultants
tHe coMMuNity eNaBleR 166
Marcus westbury Renew Newcastle
tHe New aMSteRDaM ScHool 180
DuS architects
tHe pRofeSSioNal GeNeRaliSt 192
Jeanne Gang Studio Gang
tHe aRcHitect aS puBlic iNtellectual 206
conrad Hamann on Robin Boyd
tHe eDucatoR of exceSS 222
liam young unknown fields
tHe eDitoR of tHe BeyoND 240
arjen oosterman & lilet Breddels Volume
tHe eNViRoNMeNtal MeDic 254
Natalie Jeremijenko xclinic
foRewoRD
Dan Hill
the disruptive power of an edge
this is not a book of predictions. as physicist Niels Bohr
once said, ‘prediction is very difficult, particularly about the
future’. this certainly now applies to trades as much as
technologies. occupations were once so static that we took
our surnames from them: Smith, cooper, taylor, potter…
Not any more. today’s combination of economic perma-
frost and pervasive volatility, peppered with black swans,
means that even informed projections are more problematic
than ever.
either way, people within a profession are often least well
placed to see the disruptive challenge or the ‘adjacent
possibles’, as Steven Johnson puts it. Don’t ask an architect
about the future of architecture. Most won’t know. Just
as few journalists, say, will know the future of journalism,
or few retailers will be able to contemplate the future of
retail.
from within, it is difficult to even perceive, and so ques-
tion, the deeper values, motives, models or possibilities
for the profession; hence, many professional bodies tend to
be slowly fossilising within the compacting strata of their
habits, discourse, and silent assumptions. entire professions
are now susceptible to creative disruption.
So this is not a book of predictions. But in lassoing
together a set of interesting people and arranging them
to define an edge of architectural practice, from both within
and without the profession, Rory Hyde is describing a set of
possible trajectories nonetheless.
those selected from inside architecture are amongst
those within the profession most likely to retain a critical
distance, most likely to be capable of rewiring the guts of the
practice from within, most likely to genuinely take forward
the idea of spatial intelligence and practice, forging new rela-
tionships and positions.
7 Dan Hill
those drawn in from the other side offer up the most
interesting connectors or alternatives, originating outside of
architecture and free of its baggage, yet drawing from its his-
tory and practices when it is productive to do so.
‘the disruptive power of an edge must be
reckoned with’.1
we still won’t know the x, y, z coordinates of this edge, and
it is constantly moving. yet designers at least have an almost
instinctive way of finding out what the edge might mean,
and that is to prototype. this book offers a set of half-drawn
blueprints, half-formed thoughts, tentative experiments,
contingent structures, and false memories of alternative
trajectories; in other words, perfect material to prototype the
new edges of architecture with.
yet Rory’s introduction to this publication starts with the
word ‘crisis’ rather than opportunity. we’ve been here before.
that word is strongly reminiscent of the title of a 1974 publi-
cation by Malcolm Macewan, Crisis in Architecture.2
Macewan described a profession labouring under a ‘world
economic crisis’ as well as contributing to an ecological
imbalance in terms of resource inefficiency in construction,
whilst implicitly supporting the craven exploitation of land
value and communities. He suggested ‘a return to first
principles and the release of the latent skills and energies
that are now being misused or frustrated’.
it could’ve been written yesterday.
the business model is still a mess. Most architects are
poorly paid or work long hours to impossibly tight margins,
and those practices with high-profile projects seem to exist
purely through a form of voluntary slave labour from
interns. uS-based research recently found that architecture
graduates had the highest rates of unemployment, of all
graduates.3 (even when they do gain employment, many will
8 foreword
never actually work within the field of architecture.)
there has been no meaningful advance on architects
working as developer/builders; source of income is still
largely a percentage of construction fees, neatly limiting
solutions to buildings, which is very limited indeed. in the
main, business development means waiting for clients to
ask. the trade is trapped in the ‘build and sell, hit and run’
model of development and construction, according to
Hans Vermeulen of DuS architects, leading to architects
inadvertently becoming ‘“experts” in typologies that we will
never be asked to repeat’, as Rem koolhaas once eeyore’d.4
there has been no meaningful innovation around product
or service models, or genuine advances in mainstream
construction technologies. the idea of architectural intelli-
gence embedded in organisations is more redolent of the
1950s than the present day.
the lack of progress is mystifying, particularly as, again,
we’ve been here before. two decades before Macewan was
writing, in smoggy 1950s london, you could find the london
county council architecture department (a training ground
for the Smithsons and archigram) developing the notion of
active and embedded design intelligence at the heart of
government. you’d also find the hybrid model of Span Devel-
opments, positioning design excellence at the heart of archi-
tect-led property development, and the multidisciplinary
Design Research unit, a practice that combined architecture,
graphics, and industrial design to eventually become one
of europe’s largest design offices, and with a hand in
shaping the fabric of everyday British life, from pubs, town
centres and railways to the festival of Britain.
However, over half a century on, we are still debating
whether the potency of traditional architecture’s core propo-
sition – spatial intelligence – is overplayed. as wouter
Vanstiphout discusses here, the deeper strategy for the banli-
eues of paris, and indeed our approach to cities in general,
9 Dan Hill